The Various Haunts of Men (28 page)

‘I said –’

‘You said you have a lot of clients, yeah, right.’

The woman seemed suddenly warmer and more sympathetic as she leaned slightly forward, holding his glance. ‘What you’ve told us so far is really helpful, Mr Davison. But this is very important.
Even the smallest thing someone remembers may help us. We have a major police search covering the Hill at the moment.’

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Suddenly, they were talking life or death. He could picture the line of uniformed men beating with sticks to and fro, to and fro, creeping slowly forwards.

‘I do understand,’ he said quietly, meeting the woman’s eyes. ‘I know that the
Hill was mentioned as a place she might go as against the towpath but I honestly can’t remember if I suggested it or she did. Is that where she was last seen?’

‘We’re gathering information all the time, Mr Davison.’ The sergeant stood up. Her expression was closed as she came out with the bland official language, her moment of apparent intimacy with him finished.

She handed him her card. ‘I’d
like you to think hard about both your meetings with Debbie Parker. If possible, check any notes you may have made. And if anything, the smallest thing, occurs to you, please phone us as a matter of urgency. It doesn’t matter if it turns out to be nothing – let us be the judge of that.’

‘Of course. I’ll meditate about it tonight after my appointments are over.’

‘We’d really appreciate that.’
The young man’s tone was ironic but when Colin looked at him, his face was blank.

‘Better, much better. Now we’ll take it just once more from the top.’

The choir groaned faintly. They had worked harder tonight than they felt they had ever worked before and it was nine thirty, time for thirsts to be quenched.

‘When you’re ready, ladies and gentlemen.’

‘Sadist,’ someone said, just audibly.

The choirmaster, David Lester, smiled.

‘Thank you. Now,
Dona nobis pacem
… Paaaa … cem
and please remember, the word means peace … Baritones, do not boom … concentrate and … three four.’

‘
Dona nobis pacem
…’

In spite of tiredness and dry throats, the music still flowed out of them, inspiring them to better singing than ever. Freya had never felt so absorbed in music nor so moved by what she was singing, difficult though she found it. She listened as the altos rested
for several bars, imagining how Britten’s mighty oratorio would sound when they had a full orchestra with them in the cathedral
rather than just the assistant choirmaster, good as he was, on the piano.

The sound died away softly. No one coughed or stirred for several seconds. David Lester frowned slightly. They waited for him to say he wanted it again, and again …

‘I do wonder why I have to
wait until pub time for you to give of your best. That’s all. Thank you, choir.’

They broke up with a clatter of chairs and music stands.

‘See you in the Keys?’ Joan Younger, who sang next to her in the altos, touched Freya’s arm.

‘Not sure. I’m whacked tonight.’

‘I heard about that missing girl.’

‘Yes. Big op.’

‘All the more reason why you need to relax.’

‘Probably.’

Freya packed her
score away in the old black music case she had had since she was at school, and extricated herself from the throng. She had told the truth when she said she was tired, and she had a headache. Days like this were stressful for everyone no matter how case-hardened. She had come to the St Michael’s Singers rehearsal in spite of feeling more like a hot bath and early bed, because she knew she needed not
only the distraction of the music, but the balm it poured into her and the uplift the act of singing provided. It hadn’t failed. She felt more at peace within herself but she didn’t feel like an hour of drinking and shouting across the crowded, smoky pub. She had arrived after seven thirty and had to stumble her way through her row when everyone else was already in place. David Lester had stopped
and called attention irritably to the nuisance latecomers caused. Now, she walked out alone into the cool, starry night, joyful at being in the
fresh air again. Her car was on the other side of the cathedral as there had been no place left when she had arrived, and as she turned the corner, away from the main west door, everything went wonderfully quiet. The houses around her were dark, but there
were street lamps, old-fashioned ones like lamps from story books, from which pools of topaz light fell on to the cobbles.

On such a night it was a joy to be walking slowly through these ancient spaces, but as she did so, Freya’s mind was filled again with the two missing women. They had been walking or running somewhere alone – but then what had happened and where were they now, safe or in danger,
alive or dead? She shivered, not because she was afraid, especially not here in a sacred and protected place, but because inevitably her professional mind returned again to scenes of violence and its aftermath. This was the first case since she had come to Lafferton which had engaged her as fully as many of those she had dealt with in the Met. In spite of herself, she had begun to identify
with the two women. She felt under a personal obligation to them. She must do for them what they could not do for themselves.

The search of the Hill had been called off when it grew dark. Nothing had been found. It would be resumed at daybreak and continue either until there was something or the whole area had been combed without result.

She walked the last few yards to her car. She wanted to
clear her mind of the case and she could not, would not, now, until it was resolved one way or another. That was the nature of the job and her own nature too. A DI at the Met had once told her it was her weakness.

‘To climb right up the ranks you’ve got to learn detachment, Freya, and you don’t seem able to do that. You
can’t leave things at the end of the day. You take them home. You take them
to supper, you take them to bed with you. You’ll burn out.’

In a sense, that was exactly what she had done – burned out of the Met. But Lafferton had given her a new life and a new sense of commitment. She knew she let some cases get to her, take her over, insinuate themselves into her dreams, but she was what she was and forcing herself into a different mould would be a betrayal. It would also,
she was sure, make her a less effective officer.

Thinking deeply, she took a step off the path as a car swung round the corner, picking her up in its headlights. Freya turned as the driver braked and hooted.

‘Freya?’

She was blinded by the glare. The window of the silver BMW slid down as the headlamps dipped.

‘Who is this?’

But as she took a couple of steps nearer she saw him with a shock
of pleasure.

‘Sir?’

‘What are you doing walking in the close alone?’

‘Coming from a choir practice in the cathedral. I was so late I couldn’t get a space so I had to park my car down here.’

‘Was my mother singing?’

‘Not half. She’s gone to the Cross Keys with the others but I didn’t feel like it tonight.’

‘Hang on.’

He swung his car into a space beside one of the darkened houses, switched
off the engine and got out.

‘Are you here to look for Meriel?’

He laughed. ‘No, to come home. I live here.’

‘Good heavens. I didn’t think anyone did, I thought this end of the close was just offices.’

‘Pretty much. There are offices and there’s me. The clergy are all at the top end near the cathedral.’

‘Well, well.’

‘Come up and see. Come and have a drink at the end of a bad day.’

How easy
momentous words often sounded, she thought, how casually spoken a sentence which she would carry with her like a precious object perhaps for the rest of her life. ‘Come up and see. Come and have a drink.’ She followed him into the dark, silent building and up the stairs, looking at his back, his head, the white-blond hair, his long legs, the shoes he wore, the colour of his socks, remembering,
remembering. When you were young you pinched yourself to see if this was really happening, if you were you and awake and alive. Now, she could scarcely breathe but the sense of unreality was the same, the disbelief, the heightened awareness. The joy.

Serrailler
. She stared at his name on the plate beside the door.
Serrailler
. The letters were not ordinary letters. The name was illuminated.
Serrailler
.

He walked in ahead of her. Lights went on. Freya stood in the doorway of a room that took the rest of her breath away.

He glanced at her and smiled, the smile he had which lit up his face, the whole room, the space between them. ‘Drink? Coffee?’

‘It had better be coffee,’ she said. Her voice sounded odd but he seemed not to notice.

‘Do you mind if I have a whisky?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘Sit down.’

He went through a door on the left. More lights, brighter lights on pale walls. The kitchen.

Freya went to the window. The shutters were open and she looked down into the still, lamplit Cathedral Close. In spite of the emotion of being here, in this amazing room at Simon Serrailler’s invitation, in spite of her shaking hands, it was the missing women who filled her thoughts again.
She feared for them, and the frustration of knowing nothing, having discovered nothing, was unbearable. Every hour that passed meant time during which something might have been done, something vital uncovered. She had gone over and over the case notes, trying to see something she might have missed. She turned and looked again at the room. It was perfect. It had everything she might have chosen, but
designed and arranged better than she could have done it – furniture, rugs, pictures, books, the lighting exactly right, the spaces between exactly right. She walked across to look at a set of four framed drawings in a group above the chocolate-brown leather sofa. They were of Venice – the domes of Santa Maria Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore, plus two churches she did not know, the line vibrant
and clear, the detail minute and yet beautifully economical. The initials SO were just visible in each lower right-hand corner.

‘Here we are.’ He came out of the kitchen with a tray and set down cafetière, milk and sugar and small pottery mug on the low table.

‘Who did these? I love them.’

‘I did.’

‘I didn’t realise.’

‘Intent to deceive … O is my middle initial.’

‘Simon, they’re beautiful.
What are you doing in the police force?’

‘Ah, but would I enjoy art so much if I did it twenty-four/seven? Drawing keeps me sane.’ He went to a white-painted cube on the wall, opened the front and took out a whisky bottle and glass.

‘Do you paint as well?’

‘No. It’s line I love – I work in pencil, pen and charcoal, never colour.’

‘How long have you done it?’

‘Always. I went to art school
but I left because no one was interested in drawing or the teaching of drawing. It was a bad time. Everyone wanted conceptual stuff. Installation art. I wasn’t interested.’

‘But then –’ Freya sat down on the sofa – ‘the police force?’

‘I went to university to read law so that I could come in on fast track as a graduate. It was always either drawing or policing.’

‘But your parents are doctors.’

‘My entire family going back three generations have been medics. I’m the black sheep.’

‘I’d have thought you were a refreshing change.’

‘My mother has come round to seeing it a bit like that now.’

‘Your father?’

‘No.’

He said it in a way that defied her to ask more. She did not, but pressed the plunger on her cafetière and watched it sink slowly down, crushing the layer of coffee grains to
the bottom.

Simon took the deep easy chair opposite to her, crossed his long legs easily, and leaned back, whisky in hand. She could scarcely breathe. It was not possible to look at him.

‘I didn’t get back to the Hill before the search was called off but I presume nothing was found?’

‘Nothing at all.’ She poured her coffee to keep her head down, her hand shaking.

She wanted him to talk, to
get to know the sound of his voice so well that when she had left here she would be able to hear it exactly, carry it with her.

‘But we’re off duty. How long have you been a choral singer?’

An hour and a half later, Freya had talked about herself and her past life more intimately than she had ever talked to anyone. Simon was a listener, prompting only occasionally and then with nothing more
than a word or two, looking at her all the time as she spoke. She found herself talking about her family, her training, the Met, her marriage and its breakdown, and wanting to go on and on, wanting him to know her and everything about her. After a while, she was able to glance at him, to look at his face in the light from the angled lamp behind his chair, in profile, as he drank his whisky, as he
faced her again.

She was absolutely in love with him, she knew that now, but tonight had changed things. She no longer wanted to reject this, to swear it away, no longer said Damn, Damn, Damn at the thought and the sight of him and the acute awareness of her reaction. She had never known a man who had given her such full and concentrated attention, who had listened to her and looked at her in
this way, as if she were important, what she said mattered and there was nothing else and no one else of interest to him in the world.

The cathedral bells chimed midnight, making her
aware of how long she had talked, how much of herself she had yielded up. She fell silent. His room, this flat, in this corner of the quiet close was the most beautiful, tranquil place she had ever been in, with
an atmosphere like no other. Just to sit here, in the silence opposite him, made her tremble.

‘Goodness,’ she said now.

‘Thank you.’

‘What for?’

He smiled. ‘Telling me so much. People are not often so generous with themselves.’

It was a unique, extraordinary way of putting it. But he is unique, she thought, there can be no one else like him in the world.