Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (42 page)

She
gazed at the red ink scrawls.

It
doesn’t add up. Clem Voake is a small-time crook. A dealer in firearms. These notes are impassioned, steeped in righteousness.

Perhaps
the Chief was right to move me. I’m used to order. I’m used to criminals being criminal, and leaving traces, and being caught. The courts, well that’s up to them, but I’m used to doing my job well. But this… this is chaos. This is like smashing atoms and trying to see stuff in the mess, muons, mesons…

Tobias’s
box was sitting on the kitchen table. She pulled it towards her. She fingered the tiny bottles, the plastic lion, the postcard of the painting, Adam in the Garden, he’d said… She thought about Tobias’s orderly world where things could be grouped, managed, catalogued.

I
am out of my depth.

What
has any of this got to do with physics, or collisions? What makes three intelligent men all want to go to Hank’s Tower, one after the other, all meeting their death there?

She
bent to her case, and pulled out a plastic bag, in which was wrapped the green plastic lion. She took the lion out of the bag, and placed it carefully in Tobias’s collection.

She
clicked on her laptop. She pulled up a map, and traced lines on the screen; from the lab to the old Voake house; from the old house to Hank’s Tower; from Hank’s Tower to the Lab.

Liam wandered through his flat, his hair still wet from the shower. There were papers in heaps here and there, on the landing by his bedroom door, on a spare chair outside the bathroom. He pulled on a sweater, went to the kettle, opened cupboards in search of coffee.

‘Breakfast,
Jonas,’ he said.

The
dog sat at his feet, nosing at a packet of dry dog food.

‘Paw,
Jonas,’ and the dog offered him a paw to shake.

‘Good
dog.’ He put down the bowl of food. ‘The problem is, Jonas – ’ He went to the fridge, poured a glass of orange juice – ‘Women. Closed book. You’re lucky you don’t have to bother with all that…’ He glanced down at Jonas, who was watching him, one ear cocked. ‘Or perhaps you don’t see it that way. Impudent of me to presume, old chap…’ He sipped his juice. ‘I mean, I could call her. But then what? Last time I did that with a woman, got involved like that, it all went wrong, didn’t it, boy? Do you remember all that dumping of possessions outside my window? And it’s pouring with rain, and there’s me, running around trying to save the books, and half those chemicals were radioactive. Just as well she decided to run off to Almeria with a piano tuner.’

Jonas
returned to eating. ‘Oh, you’ve heard it all before, boy.’ Liam poured coffee, carried a mug over to the kitchen table. He shifted a pile of papers to clear a space, wiped some crumbs from the surface with the side of his hand, reached for his laptop. He sipped coffee, staring at the screen, idly scrolling.

‘Recorded
luminosity of a hundred and sixty-three point two. But you see, Jonas, at one inverse femtobarn…’ He scrolled some more. ‘These are weird. If these aren’t strong WW bosons…’ He flicked through some papers at his side, pulled out a sheet of figures. ‘I’d show these to you, but you chewed the last lot.’ He rang his finger along the paper. ‘It’s the generation of the W Boson mass. Perhaps Murdo was right about the Higgs mechanism… It still doesn’t explain all this.’

It
doesn’t explain three killings either.

He’d
had sister on the phone, ‘For Christ’s sake Liam, who’s next? Just get away from there, it’s all very well that bloke on the news going on about round-the-clock policing, you’re my only living relative, well, apart from Jake but he’s just my husband…’

And
Lisa. And Tobias.

I
ought to find out what’s happened.

Helen
would know.

He
stood up and refilled his mug. Jonas had finished eating, and was looking at him. ‘If I call her, what then? And if I don’t…?’ He went back to his computer and stared at the screen. ‘A married woman,’ he said. ‘Typical of me. It’s never straightforward, is it boy?’

Jonas’s
tail thumped loudly on the kitchen floor. Liam scrolled down his screen, scribbling numbers on the papers at his side.

Helen watched her husband. She sat with a cup of tea in front of her, her chin resting on her hands. He was spreading butter on a piece of toast.

‘Elizabeth
said she’d go to the police this morning.’

He
looked up. ‘Why?’

‘I
told you,’ she said. ‘We found the hair band. And the dog.’

‘Why?’
he said. He laid his knife down beside his place. ‘Why are you getting so involved in all this?’

He
was paper pale, the window bright behind him.

She
might have said, Because I care. She might have said, Because I’ve got nothing else to do, nothing else to live for…

‘You’re
just the same,’ she said.

‘Virginia’s
a parishioner,’ he said, and she wondered how he knew that’s what she meant. ‘I didn’t spend all that time with the police for fun,’ he said. ‘She has to have someone on her side.’

‘What’s
she got to hide?’ Helen stood up, bent to put her plate in the dishwasher.

‘Hide?’
His voice was sharp behind her.

‘Yes.
She had the book. She was dead keen to pass it on to you. Why?’

‘Her
husband,’ he began.

‘Her
husband was in love with Elizabeth.’

‘Your
new best friend,’ he said.

She
stacked mugs, plates, loudly into cupboards. ‘Wasn’t he?’ she said.

‘Yes.’
He stared at the table. ‘Yes, he was.’

She
turned to him. ‘See what I mean? Too much to hide.’

‘Why
is that hiding anything?’ The chair scraped the floor as he stood up. ‘She’s struggling, surely you can see that? Her husband killed, that poor boy she cares for under suspicion, all these rumours of her husband’s infidelity – ’

‘More
than rumours,’ she said.

‘Well
you’d know all about that,’ he said. ‘Who went with you?’

‘When?’

‘When you visited the caravan and bumped into the Merletti woman.’

She
breathed. ‘I went alone,’ she said.

A
mutual pause. They stared at each other. Then he turned, picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘I have to see the archdeacon,’ he said. ‘Insurance renewal. And then…’

‘And
then?’

He
turned back to her. ‘Virginia…’ he began. ‘Just a short visit… after that Detective woman yesterday, Tobias is still in danger of being arrested…’

‘Yes,
of course,’ she said.

His
eyes held hers. ‘I…’

She
waited.

He
fiddled his keys into a pocket. ‘I’ll be back for dinner.’

She
heard the front door slam.

The
house was cold. Even her studio was cold. She stood in the silence, one hand on the barre, immobile, staring at the sea, at the gathering rainclouds.

Berenice’s mobile rang loudly on the table.

‘Mary
- ’ she snatched it up.

‘Are
you hiding?’

‘Something
like that, yeah. Any news?’

‘Nada.
Though, what do I know, the Chief’s been in hiding with his homies from the Met all morning. Nah, I just thought I’d wish you a nice weekend. Seeing as we’re off the case.’

‘Weekend?’
Berenice looked at the rain-spattered window.

‘Oh,
Boss, don’t tell me – ’

‘I
just thought I’d call into the lab. They’re clever guys, I can ask them all about everything.’

‘Even
though – ’

‘Yes.’
Her voice was firm.

‘You
mean, they can take the case off the girl but they can’t take the girl off the case?’

Berenice
laughed. ‘Something like that. What about you?’

‘London,
since you ask. Hen night. Remember Issy from college?’

‘She’s
never getting married.’

‘To
a girl.’

‘Ah.’
Berenice said. ‘Lucky her.’

‘See
you Monday. Or, tomorrow. If they cancel all leave again.’

Her
phone clicked off. The kitchen seemed even quieter. Berenice put the Book into her bag, picked up her car keys and left.

I need him to save me from myself.

Helen
crossed the room and sat down at the table.

I
need Chad to see…

She
stared into a cup of cold tea.

He’s
the last person I can ask. My own husband…

How
has it come to this? The man I love, taking refuge in that weird cottage…

If
only… if only he’d reach out to me instead.

She
saw him, wind-blown, coat flapping, striding along the cliffs towards that woman’s fireside. She recalled Elizabeth’s words about Amelia, how she was angry with Gabriel…

A
car engine approached. Perhaps he’d come back, perhaps he, too, had realized that all that was left to them was to cling together, hold fast, wait for this tide of chaos to wash back out and leave them alone once more…

The
car engine faded away to silence.

The
silence was shattered by the ringing of her mobile phone.

Liam,
she saw, answering it.

‘Hi,’
she said.

His
voice was low, warm, apologetic.

‘Sure,’
she said. ‘The lab. I’ll see you then.’

One tiny decision, Helen thought, accelerating away from the lights. Should I, shouldn’t I… So, you say yes. And then everything follows from there, and then the decisions aren’t small any more, they’re huge great big things…

She
turned on to the ring road out of town.

Life
is too short to turn away from love. Or, life is too short to do the wrong thing.

Not
a decision at all, in fact. Just fumbling my way through the chaos. Knowing that I have to see him again. Wanting so much to see him again that I can hardly breathe.

In
the fields around her, the grass glinted wetly, the frost thawing in the sunlight.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘It
was you I wanted to see.’ Berenice thumped her briefcase down on Liam’s desk.

‘Me?’
He looked up at her. ‘What do I know?’

Berenice
pulled up a chair next to him. ‘This case. It’s about physics. And it’s about men. And you’re an expert in both.’

He
laughed. ‘Not me, lady. I’m an expert in neither. The truth of my work is elusive. And as for being a man… completely in the dark about that. But fire ahead.’

She
smiled. ‘OK. What we know is, there’s something about the experiment you guys are working on. There’s something that’s drawn three physicists to Hank’s Tower. And then, between Iain and Murdo, this Elizabeth – ’

Liam
held up his hand. ‘That was years ago. From what I’ve heard, there was gossip, sure. But then Elizabeth was in Italy.’

‘And
then she came back.’

Liam
adjusted his desk chair.

‘This
experiment,’ Berenice pursued. ‘There’ve been odd results.’

He
nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Do
you want to tell me?’

He
eyed her, as if making a judgement. ‘It’s dynamical symmetry breaking, strong WW Boson scattering.’

‘Right,’
she said.

‘The
force that arrests the growth of the collision rate is also responsible for generation of the W boson mass. That’s what we’re looking at.’

‘Go
on,’ she said.

He
hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s all about the three generations of spin-half particles, measured in units of Planck’s quantum. What we’re looking at is asymmetry, where matter dominates. At the point where you’re colliding protons at ten giga electronvolts, B-mesons are visible.’