Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (27 page)

‘When
was this?’

She
gazed at the ceiling, calculating. ‘About seven, no, eight months ago, it must be.

‘And
did you see much of him?’

She
met her eyes. ‘Here, yes. Of course. We were on the same team.’

‘As
colleagues?’

‘Of
course. As colleagues.’ The voice was firm.

‘And
in any other sense?’ Berenice’s voice, too, was firm.

‘I
consider that intrusive, but I shall answer it anyway. You have to understand, Mrs. – ’ she stopped, thwarted in her perfect manners.

‘Detective
Inspector.’ Mary’s voice was sharp. ‘Not Mrs.’

‘You
have to understand – ’ Elizabeth spoke as if Mary wasn’t there. ‘It was a meeting of minds. A perfect love affair. At the time, maybe, I didn’t see how perfect. It was only afterwards… Later, when I met my husband, I thought I could just slough it off, like an animal changes their skin, just start again. But it wasn’t like that. Oh no,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t like that at all.’

The
composure had returned.

A
meeting of minds, Berenice thought. Two scientists as one, in the pursuit of knowledge. She looked at the well-fitted cashmere sweater and wondered whether Elizabeth was entirely right about that one. From what I know of men, Berenice thought, it wouldn’t be her mind that kept him coming back. But then, she thought, maybe it’s me who’s wrong, what do I know of physicists, clever men like that, not stupid, stupid, moronic bastard journalists – She realized Elizabeth was speaking again.

‘…
and that drooping, self-pitying wife of his, keeping him for herself, she knew he’d had a chance of happiness and she made sure he turned away from it, made sure he tiptoed back into his grey, love-less existence.’

Ah
yes, Berenice thought, the wife. I must have thought that too, told myself that I was all he wanted, I was the only one who could make him happy, until I found out that not only was she keeping him financially but they had a fab sex-life too –

‘They’d
fallen out of love long before he met me,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It’s not as if I stole him from her.’

My
words exactly, Berenice thought. Word for word. I used to say exactly that -

‘Did
you say something?’ Elizabeth was looking at her, and Mary shot her a glance.

‘No.
Nothing. Do go on. What I want to know is, the timescale.’ Berenice adjusted her voice to business-like. ‘When was this affair? When did he go back to his wife? When did you leave?’

‘Your
assistant here has all the dates.’ Elizabeth waved vaguely towards Mary.

‘Detective
Constable.’ Berenice’s voice was sharp. ‘Not Assistant.’ She caught a twitch of a smile on Mary’s face. ‘Tell me – ’ Berenice leaned forward. ‘Would you say there was any bad feeling in the lab? Between the Professor, say, and Dr. Maguire?’

There
was a moment of hesitation, then Elizabeth shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re a team. Differences, maybe, but nothing that would lead to… to this.’

There
was more, sitting in that stuffy room as the afternoon wore on and the rain eased. Mary’s pen scratched away, taking notes, yes, Elizabeth supposed, the hate mail might be significant. And yes, she conceded, the Professor was more of a manager than a scientist. Was it a mistake to sack Tobias? Certainly it was, and as for you charging him, I will not hear a word against that poor boy, I can’t believe you’re even thinking of it, so what if he was spotted on those camera things? He likes Hank’s Tower, it’s a known fact about him, he does what he calls his experiments up there, completely harmless… Someone else, someone with a grudge against both men? It’s possible, yes, like you say, we’ve had these threats. Do I feel that I’m in danger? At this, she’d shrugged. ‘Not any more than usual,’ she’d said, and Mary had written it down.

At the end of the interview, Elizabeth turned her pale face to Berenice. ‘There will be a funeral, won’t there? You don’t keep them in fridges forever, do you?’

‘We
try not to,’ Berenice said, gently.

‘I’d
like to… at least, if I couldn’t be there when he…’

‘Yes,
of course.’ Berenice got to her feet, and Elizabeth followed.

At
the main entrance, Elizabeth turned to her. ‘If Murdo was in danger, he’d have told me. You have to know that, Detective Inspector. If anything was going on in his life, I’d have known.’ Her eyes welled with tears. She stood in the doorway, newly vulnerable.

Berenice
offered her hand. ‘Thanks for coming in, Dr. Merletti,’ she said. ‘I appreciate it’s difficult.’

‘I
want to help,’ she said, wearily, returning the handshake. ‘Anything you want to know, just ask.’

Berenice
watched her go, clicking her way along the rainy, light-splashed pavement.

Funerals,
she thought, turning back inside the building. I hadn’t reckoned on that. If he dies, will I be there, lurking in the crowd, hiding from his wife?

Yet
another hold he has over me. Bastard.

‘Penny
for them?’ Mary was waiting in the corridor.

‘I
wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,’ Berenice said.

‘Him
again?’ Mary nodded sympathetically. ‘Time’s a great healer, you know.’

Chad bent his head against the rain, which was falling with renewed zeal.

…of
Water does each Thing have its Beginning… What was it that Van Mielen had said, about water as Prime Matter? The Abyss, where Behemoth lives…

He
rounded the corner into St. Mary’s Street. The church spire at the end of the road loomed darkly, blurred by rain. There’ll be about four people there, he thought. Six if I’m lucky, if Mrs. Benfield comes with her sister. Mind you, they’ll be exchanging glances if there’s anything too fancy about the readings. They like their religion plain round here.

The
gravel of the church drive crunched under his feet. The rhododendron bushes shuddered with rain.

Like
my father, he thought. He liked a no-nonsense God, a sensible kind of chap who rewarded the good as long as they didn’t get above themselves and sent his Son to keep an eye on things.

He
remembered the chapel he’d go to as a boy, its blank walls, narrow pews, outsized and angular pulpit that seemed to be preparing to lecture its audience before the minister even stepped up to it.

I
am no longer like my father, he thought. My faith is coloured red and gold, draped with altar cloths and incense, candles and flowers. My God is unknowable, his Son is Love incarnate. There is nothing no-nonsense about a faith that turns wine to blood.

He
unlocked the church door, pushed at the heavy iron handle, walked through the darkness, switched on the lights. He found himself standing beneath the painting on the north aisle.

It
was a modern painting of the crucifixion; the cross painted as a tree, in almost photographic detail, the bloodstained male form, the nails through the hands and feet.

He
thought about the Green Man of Van Mielen’s book, the first Adam and the last, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.

And
now, he thought, there’s a new, Godless creation story, where the universe explodes into life, a story of fiery collidings told in mathematical equations. The beginning of matter itself.

As
it was in the beginning, he thought. Is now and shall be forever, world without end…

He
wondered if the physicists believed in a world without end. He wondered what his father would make of the lab’s work, then thought that probably there was, even in the maths, even in these curves and signs and patterns, too much wonder for a man such as he.

He
went to the Lady Chapel. Mrs. Lynch’s flower arrangement drooped on its pedestal, wilted and yellowing.

He
began to light the candles, listening to the rain hammering against the roof.

Helen too, was listening, standing by the sitting-room window. Was that it, that low rumble, his car approaching through the rain? But then the sound faded away, to leave just the ticking of the old clock, the dripping of the guttering.

Half
an hour earlier, her phone had rung.

‘Hi,
it’s me,’ he’d said.

His
voice on the phone.

She
could hardly breathe. I know, she wanted to say, but he was still speaking. ‘It’s just, the police, they’ve been asking me questions, and I didn’t tell them everything, and it’s on my mind, I’m so worried about Tobias… Hello? Helen? Are you there?’

‘Yes,’
she’d said, ‘I’m here.’

There’d
been a silence, then, until he’d said, ‘I could come over. If you want…’

‘Yes,’
she’d said. ‘Come over.’

Now
she was standing by the windows, un-looping the heavy curtain cords, blocking out the rain and the darkness, as a car drew up, and she heard a knock at the back door.

He
was damp-haired and dishevelled, and she smiled up at him. ‘No dog?’

He
shook his head. ‘I think he’d disapprove,’ he said.

‘Of
what?’

He
stood, looking down at her. ‘Oh God. Of this. Of us.’

‘He’s
not the only one,’ she managed to say.

‘You
look fantastic,’ he said.

She
wondered, briefly, what it was about her jeans, her navy sweater, simple stud earrings, no make-up… She thought, briefly, that it was a long time since she’d been admired. But then he put his arms around her, and once again there was that feeling of completeness, of his lips against hers, and it was only the clock chiming the half hour, reminding her that Chad would be back from church, that made her take a step away from him, shaking her head, brushing her hair back from her face…

He
was pink-faced, breathing hard.

‘I’ll
make us some tea,’ she said, and the words sounded ridiculous.

He
followed her into the kitchen, sat down at the kitchen table, watched her doing things with mugs and spoons. ‘Tobias,’ he said. ‘That’s why I came. Although, if I’m honest… it was you, of course.’

She
turned to face him. ‘Liam… it can’t be – ’

‘No,’
he agreed. ‘No. It can’t.’

There
was a silence. He glanced at the day’s paper on the table, flicked at its pages. He looked up at her. ‘Everything points to Tobias being there when Moffatt was killed, and it can’t be true. I’m a scientist, I deal with the evidence, that’s what I said to that policewoman today, but in this case, just because the CCTV images show Tobias, that doesn’t make him a murderer, does it? It makes him someone who likes being up at Hank’s Tower, that’s all.’

The
kettle whistled loudly on the Aga. She stood with her back to him, pouring hot water.

‘I
tried to call Virginia today,’ he went on, ‘but she wouldn’t speak to me, and then I thought, perhaps your husband could talk to her, she trusts him, doesn’t she. What I’ve been thinking is, just because the evidence puts Tobias in the frame for Moffatt’s killing, it doesn’t connect him with Murdo’s, and anyway, Tobias loved Murdo, he wouldn’t wish him harm, and it’s far more likely that the two deaths are connected, something to do with the lab, I reckon. Something to do with Moffatt wanting to expand the lab into the neighbouring land.’

Helen
placed two mugs of tea on the table, then sat down opposite him. ‘These threats to the lab, you mean?’ she said.

He
shook his head. ‘I think it goes back before that. Neil Parrish was talking about it, you remember him, you met him at the lab, red-faced, jolly type. Anyway, he says Moffatt was trying to buy the land over the wall, where the old house is. Neil thinks he’d actually completed the sale just before all this happened. And then I was telling Neil about the book, and he said the old house was owned by the van Mielens before one of them married one of the Voake family, and then it became derelict. He reckoned Moffatt got it for next to nothing, even though Iain was after it too.’

‘Why
wouldn’t Virginia speak to you?’

He
tipped some milk into his mug. ‘I asked her about the book. Neil said that Moffatt had confided in Murdo about the sale, I thought maybe she’d know, and it might take the heat off Tobias… She said, “If it’s about that van Mielen house, I don’t care.” Then she practically hung up on me.’

Helen
frowned into her tea.

‘She
said the book was with the police,’ he went on, and that she hoped they locked it away for good. And then she put the phone down.’