Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (16 page)

Helen
laughed. ‘It rather got lost when I married,’ she said to Elizabeth.’

‘Oh,
I know that one.’ Elizabeth nodded at her. ‘Is he a physicist, your husband?’

She
shook her head. ‘A priest,’ she said. ‘Anglican.’

‘Even
worse.’ Elizabeth threw her a smile. ‘Or maybe, better. What do I know?’

Liam
was watching the crowd. ‘He’s leaving,’ he said. ‘You’ve won.’

Elizabeth
breathed out. ‘Thank God for that.’

Liam
turned to Helen. ‘Elizabeth has been the hapless victim of Alan’s paranoia.’

‘We
take it in turns here.’ She smiled at Helen.

‘There’ve
been threats to the lab,’ Liam went on. ‘Weird notes stuck to the building, pushed under doors. For some reason Moffatt thinks she’s involved.’

‘It
passes from one to another here,’ she said. ‘Poor old Iain got it for a while.’

‘Is
that why he’s not here?’ Liam scanned the room.

She
shrugged. ‘There are many reasons why Iain’s not here. The main one being grief.’

‘Poor
man.’ Liam turned to Helen. ‘Iain was Murdo’s team-mate on the experiment - ’

‘Best
friend,’ Elizabeth added. ‘He couldn’t face it. Everyone trying to be jolly. When what we all feel is…’ Her voice tailed off. She looked at Liam. ‘His research… His results… and now he’s not here to see it. It was Iain who persuaded him to join the team. Iain said no one could do what he did. He was right, but…’ She stared at the floor.

‘Poor
Helen,’ Liam said. ‘You’re not seeing us at our best.’

Helen
was about to speak, when Elizabeth said, ‘Ah. Good. Here’s Neil…’

Liam
glanced across to the stairs. ‘Neil. More trouble.’

‘Neil’s
not trouble,’ Elizabeth said, turning to greet him. ‘Not if you know how to treat him.’

‘What
was that?’ A large, red-faced man with a chaotic moustache was approaching.

‘She
said you needed careful handling,’ Liam said. ‘Can I get you a drink as we seem to be the bartenders here?’

‘Another
glass of red would be just the thing.’ He spoke breathlessly, as if the effort of crossing the room had been a little too much.

Neil
kissed Elizabeth on both cheeks. ‘Nice to see you dear. How’s the family?’

‘Which
family?’ Helen noticed how her face looked blank.

‘The
Van Mielen’s, of course.’

‘Oh.’
Elizabeth breathed out. ‘The American family. They’re fine, thanks for asking. Dad’s bought another parcel of land at the back of the ranch. He’s talking of growing spelt, although I reckon the pets’ll take it over before he can plant it.’

‘Pets?’

‘The cows. Ponies. Cavies too. My step-mom is just so soft-hearted…’

Neil
laughed. ‘Typical Kentish farmers.’

‘In
Wisconsin?’

Neil
laughed again.

‘We’re
not even van Mielens,’ Elizabeth turned to Liam. ‘It was my grandmother’s name. It just amuses him to pretend I’m local.’

Neil
patted her arm, turned to Liam, took the glass of wine that Liam was holding out to him. ‘Any more news on the experiment?’

‘No
beam strength today.’ Liam spoke quietly. ‘So, no more significant reactions.’

Neil
nodded at him. ‘We’ve got a target luminosity of eleven hundred,’ he said. ‘Nowhere near that at the moment.’

‘Us
too – Ah, look Helen – ’ Liam’s eyes were on the crowd again. ‘Here’s your husband. So,’ he said, turning to Chad, ‘you managed to survive your brush with science?’

‘Science?’
Chad frowned at him. ‘Oh. Yes. I think it’s going to take more than one of these Boson things –’ He looked up at them. ‘Has anyone seen Tobias?’

‘Tobias?’
Liam glanced across the room. ‘I didn’t know he was here.’

‘I
saw him a while ago, out in the lobby. He was very upset, he was looking for you. I thought perhaps he’d found you.’

‘I
haven’t seen him.’ Liam’s face was concerned.

‘He
was ranting about the Professor. Very upset. Tearful, pacing about…’

‘Come
on – ’ Liam began to head for the lobby. The others followed.

They
heard Tobias before they saw him, a stream of words, a shouted muddle, ‘They’ll come for him, they’ll stop him, he shouldn’t have done that to me…’

He
was striding around in circles in the lobby, the thin light from the fluorescent tube above him, the windows dark navy.

‘They’ll
put a stop to him,’ Tobias was saying.

Liam
called to him. He stopped still, staring at the floor, his hands still winding around each other.

‘Tobias,’
Liam said again.

He
looked up, saw Liam, then saw the others standing behind him. He put one hand up to shield his eyes. Liam took a step towards him. ‘Tom,’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’

Tobias
shook his head, biting his lips.

‘Is
it the Professor?’ Liam stood close to him, his voice low.

‘He’s
done a wrong thing,’ Tobias said.

‘Have
you just seen him?’

‘He
was there – ’ Tobias pointed towards the door. ‘And I was coming in, and he said “There’s no place for you here young man.” His voice cracked with tears. ‘He said I didn’t work here anymore, and I said, but what about the collisions and the aether, and he said he can’t have me wasting time looking into all that anymore and he’d get someone who knew about things properly and not nonsense…’ He began to sob, big wet tears.

Liam
laid his hand gently on his arm.

‘And
he asked for the Book,’ Tobias said.

‘What
book?’ Liam said.

‘The
Book about the atoms and the Green Lion and the Nothingness,’ Tobias said, ‘and I told him we didn’t have it any more, and he got very angry, very very angry, and he said we shouldn’t have got rid of it…’ Tobias was gasping between sobs. ‘He said there’s a kind of knowledge which is dangerous in the wrong hands. And Murdo’s not here to tell him…’ Tobias bent and buried his face in Liam’s neck.

Liam
murmured, patting his back.

Helen
stepped forward with a tissue. Liam tucked a finger under Tobias’s chin and dabbed at his wet cheeks.

‘We
should get you home,’ Liam said. ‘Is Virginia back there?’

Tobias
nodded, through sniffs. He allowed Liam to take his arm and steer him out of the door into the car park. The small party followed awkwardly.

Chapter Eleven

The
night air was cool and fresh. Elizabeth smoothed down her coat. ‘I guess I’ll leave you to it, Liam. Neil and I…’

Neil
was nodding at them. ‘Not wanted on voyage, I’d say. Let’s go back inside.’

Chad
was swaying from foot to foot. ‘Perhaps I might be… I mean, we – ’

‘Sure.
We’ll go in my car.’

Helen
found herself getting into the back of Liam’s car, sitting next to her husband amongst paper cups and half-empty bottles of water.

Liam
steered Tobias in next to her, and Chad sat in the front.

Helen
watched the road, the hedgerows ghostly white in the headlamps. Tobias sat next to her. He was screwing up and unscrewing a lid on one of the water bottles, tipping it to and fro, watching it in his hands.

No
one spoke.

They
pulled up outside the cottage.

The
door opened sharply. Virginia stood there, white-faced. ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘I thought something had happened.’

Tobias
stumbled towards her, then past her and into the house. Helen watched as Liam briefly explained to her what had happened. She saw Virginia’s face harden at the name.

‘Moffatt?
What did he say to Tom to upset him so?’

Liam
helped her to a chair. ‘Something about there not being a place for him anymore.’ He spoke quietly, but Tobias overheard, coming back into the room. ‘He said I shouldn’t be looking at it on the screen, the beam, the collisions. But Bizzie showed me how to do it, I need to know about it, I told him, and that’s when he said I shouldn’t work there anymore.’

There
was a silence in the room. Chad sat down on an armchair, Helen perched on the arm next to him. It was Virginia who spoke first. ‘Bizzie?’ she said.

‘That’s
what I call her,’ Tobias said. ‘She’s kind. She helps me.’

Virginia
looked across at Liam. ‘Elizabeth?’

He
nodded.

Virginia
held his gaze for a brief moment, then turned to Tobias. ‘It’s kind of her to help you,’ she said.

Tobias
thumped himself down on the sofa next to Chad, punching the cushions either side of him.

Chad
said, ‘Alan wanted the book.’

Virginia
met his eyes. ‘The Book?’

‘He
was cross with poor Tobias here, for not having it anymore.’ He sighed. ‘I’m saying again, if you want it back… I don’t want to cause more trouble by hanging on to it…’

‘It’s
nothing to me.’ Virginia’s expression had hardened. ‘And God knows what Moffatt wants with it. Murdo must have talked about it.’ She crossed to the sofa, placed a hand on Tobias’s shoulders. ‘You should try and rest, dear. We can talk tomorrow about finding you another kind of work.’

He
turned away from her and shook his head.

‘There
are other things you can do.’

Another
shake of the head.

She
sat next to him, took his hand. ‘Do you want some hot chocolate?’

He
turned slightly towards her.

‘You
can make it yourself, if you like.’

‘Two
sugars?’ He faced her now.

‘If
you like.’

‘Three?’

She smiled. ‘As a special treat.’ She squeezed his hand.

He
got up from the sofa, murmuring ‘Three sugars’ in a sing-song voice. He went out to the kitchen and they heard the clatter of pans.

Liam
sat on the sofa, next to Virginia. He looked from Chad, to Helen. ‘This book? The same one that – ’

Virginia
shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. It’s an old thing of Murdo’s, a text from the early twenties. Tobias loves it, but we don’t need it anymore.’ She turned to Chad, as if to change the subject. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Can you be here at half past nine?’

‘If
you’re sure…’ he began.

‘You’re
my priest, aren’t you?’

‘But
you don’t believe…’

‘They
don’t know that.’ She gave a harsh laugh.

Helen
thought about the losses in her life, the mark they’d left in the lines around her eyes. She saw how Virginia’s face softened as she looked towards Chad, and how Chad returned her gaze. ‘OK, then’ Chad said. ‘But I can’t imagine they’ll let me in with you.’

There
was a clatter from the kitchen, the sound of a smash of a mug, a shriek of pain – ‘I’ve dropped it’ – followed by loud sobbing. ‘I’ve dropped the milk.’

Liam
jumped to his feet, followed by Virginia.

‘It
hurts on my hand,’ Helen could hear, followed by Virginia’s soothing voice, then Liam’s asking for cold water, ‘you’ll be OK,’ he was saying…

Helen
looked at Chad.’ We’re not needed,’ she said, quietly.

‘But
– ’ he was half on his feet. From the kitchen doorway, Virginia turned towards him.

‘We’re
in the way,’ Helen said. She stood up. ‘We should go,’ she said, her voice loud.

Virginia
turned back to Tobias. Helen could hear water running. Liam was squatting on the floor, picking up broken bits of mug.

Helen
went to the door. ‘Come on,’ she said.

‘We
ought to tell them we’re leaving,’ Chad said, looking back towards the kitchen.

‘Come
on.’ She was almost shouting now. Chad hesitated, then followed her through the door.