Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (52 page)

‘I
know,’ she whispers, staring at the ground.

He
touches her chin, tilts her face upwards. ‘Sitting in the wreckage,’ he says.

‘It’s
my fault – ’

‘No.
No blame. Not now.’

‘But
– ’

‘I
didn’t listen to you. You wanting a child… I didn’t hear what you were saying.’

She
meets his eyes. ‘Sitting in the wreckage,’ she says.

He
takes hold of her hands. ‘It’s as good as any place to start.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

It
was a moonlit night. Tobias squeezed through the gap in the fence. He saw the flicker of candlelight in the broken windows.

He
opened the door. A smell of wood smoke, cigarette smoke.

‘Chips,’
he said. ‘And ketchup.’

A
loud bark greeted him.

‘I
got enough for Taze,’ he said.

‘They
ain’t no good for her,’ came Lisa’s voice from the darkness. ‘Tomorrow I’ll go thief some dog food.’

She
was sitting by the fire, which blazed brightly. Tobias joined her, and they ate the chips, passing one or two to the dog from time to time.

‘Tom
– we can’t stay here, y’know.’

‘Yes
we can,’ he said.

‘They’ll
find us.’

‘Where
are they going to send us?’ he said. ‘Auntie Ginny’s not there anymore…’ A catch in his voice. He sniffed, ate another chip.

Lisa
patted his arm.

‘She’s
all right, though,’ he went on. ‘She’s happy where she is. That’s what she told me last time.’

‘She
can look after herself, that one,’ Lisa said.

‘Yes,’
he agreed. ‘She can.’

‘But
we still have to find somewhere else,’ Lisa said. ‘I’m fed up with the rain coming in.’

‘And
the ghost,’ Tobias said.

‘I
ain’t seen no ghost,’ Lisa said. ‘Never have.’

‘I
don’t mind him,’ Tobias said. ‘He’s a friendly ghost.’

Lisa
finished her chips. She got out papers and tobacco and began to roll a joint.

Rain
dripped from the corner of the ceiling.

‘Weird
thing is,’ she said, ‘it probably belongs to me, this house. If Dad found them deeds and now he’s banged up… Funny he knew the papers were there all along. And they’re still there. When he opened the thing what he’d dug up, they just fell out in tiny bits.’ She took a long drag on the joint.

Tobias
licked ketchup from his finger. ‘We can grow white roses round the door,’ Tobias said, and Lisa laughed.

The moon shone through the wide windows, as Liam walked along the corridor. Through the glass screens he could see the curves of the machine, hunched in semi-darkness, humming quietly.

He
reached his office, switched on his computer, stared at the screen. He thought about Helen. Again.

I
don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again.

He’d
glimpsed her in town, the day before, he was sure it was her, her light step, her ballet-dancer’s walk, her coat swinging at her legs… He’d imagined running towards her, grabbing her hand, ‘Helen, it’s me…’

It
was impossible.

Sinead
was right.

He
clicked on the keyboard. He looked at the two lines, one red, one blue. He looked again. Something had changed.

His
door swung open. Roger was standing there.

‘Have
you seen – ’ Roger said.

‘It’s
different – ’

‘It’s
a regular pattern again. B-mesons. Don’t you think?’

Liam
gazed at the screen. He clicked through a series of graphs, then back to the beam.

‘I’ve
just seen Neil,’ Roger said. ‘He reckons that whatever we were seeing, it was just a B-D asymmetry. That’s all. I’m going to put in a call to Richard. Get him to call off the press hounds.’

Liam,
alone, stared at the screen. Patterns, he thought. We scan the evidence to find a pattern, to find meaning.

Three
physicists dead looked like a pattern.

But
in the end, there was no meaning. There was just chaos. Messy, human, murderous chaos.

He
clicked on a graph. ‘B-D asymmetry,’ he said out loud. In that case, he thought… if we’ve got these charges here… a co-sign of that…

He
turned to the notebook at his side and began to scribble numbers.

In the moonlight, a car drew up outside the Voake house.

Berenice
got out. A thin column of smoke rose from the chimney.

She
walked up the overgrown drive, and pushed at the door.

Candlelight.
The smell of cannabis, of chips, of dog. Two warm faces turned to her.

Lisa
spoke. ‘You can’t make us leave.’

‘It’s
her house,’ Tobias said. ‘We live here.’

Tazer
eyed her, growling.

Berenice
looked at the rain dripping from the ceiling.

‘Well,’
she said, ‘at least let me recommend you some decent builders.’

Chapter Thirty-Six

The
reception area of the lab was thronged with people. There was a hubbub of chatter, the clink of glasses. Richard circulated, greeting people.

‘…
results still very significant, of course, not quite what we thought at first, but even so…’

‘…
terrible events, terrible, I know, sorely missed, we feel their absence…’

Liam
watched the staircase. He remembered the last time, the way she’d descended the polished steps, her grace, her shyness…

She
won’t be here. They were invited, but they won’t come. Of course.

‘Ghosts?’
Elizabeth handed him a glass of champagne.

‘Ghosts.’
He smiled at her.

‘All
we can see are the gaps. The people who should be here.’She surveyed the room. ‘I don’t know why he bothered. No Alan. No Iain. No Murdo. These so-called significant results he’s announcing, and the people who made them aren’t here.’

‘You’re
here,’ he said.

She
looked up at him. She looked older, and weary, in spite of the hair pinned up, the heels, the black dress. ‘Not really,’ she said.

‘What
will you do?’

‘Do
you remember Bruno, at CERN? He’s asked me if I want to join the LHCb experiment there. I’ve said yes.’ Again her gaze scanned the room, the be-suited people, funding bodies, the press. ‘There’s nothing for me here.’

‘Will
you keep in touch?’

‘There’s
one person here… one person I care about…’ She was still surveying the crowd, and suddenly her face lit up. ‘Ah. Good. I invited them – ’

Tobias
was standing at the top of the steps, with Lisa on his arm. He was wearing a suit. She was in a skirt and low heels, with newly-straightened hair.

They
smiled at Elizabeth as they came to join her.

‘You
look like man and wife,’ she said.

‘Don’t
be stupid,’ Lisa said. ‘Brother and sister, more like.’

‘Forever,’
Tobias said.

Lisa
reached up to Elizabeth and hugged her. ‘No sling, then?’

‘Doesn’t
match my dress,’ she said. ‘And anyway, it only hurts at night these days. How are things?’

‘Fine,’
Lisa said.

‘I
heard you were living at the old house,’ Elizabeth said.

Lisa
looked at Tobias and giggled. ‘We were, weren’t we, Tom? Thought we was going to stay there forever, didn’t we.’

Tobias
smiled. ‘But then they made it so we can go back home. So we’re both there. And Taze, she’s there too.’

‘His
Aunty Ginny’s house,’ Lisa added. ‘That copper came and sorted it for us.’

‘We
even have a social worker,’ Tobias said. ‘She drinks all our tea and complains about our food.’

‘Too
many chips, she says,’ Lisa said.

‘Says
the dog should be vegetarian,’ Tobias said.

‘She
hates cheese, Taze does. We tried it, didn’t we, Tom?’

Liam
smiled. ‘It sounds like she isn’t much use.’

‘But
we do,’ Lisa said. ‘We really need her. Taze and the cat can’t stand each other, fighting and that, she comes and sorts them out.’

Tobias
turned to Liam. ‘Is this about the results, then?’ He waved an arm towards the crowd.

‘Yes,’
Liam said.

‘Is
it a new particle?’ Tobias said.

Liam
shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just a new pattern, perhaps. It just confirms something we suspected about B and D Mesons.’

Tobias
nodded. ‘I’m looking for a new particle. I’ve set up my lab in Aunty Ginny’s room as she won’t need it for a while.’

‘Your
lab?’

Tobias
nodded. ‘I’ve got it all working. I’m looking for aether rays.’

‘How
– ’ Liam stared at him. ‘How does that work?’

‘I’ve
got batteries, because you need a beam. And in the middle of it all I’ve got Lisa’s magic watch.’

‘Lisa’s
magic watch?’

Tobias
nodded. ‘From the old tunnel. She found it in the mud. I’ve wired it into the machine. It works off the cogs, see.’

‘I
see,’ Liam said.

‘You
could try it here,’ Tobias said. ‘Only you’d need a very big watch. A very very big one.’

‘I hope he’s OK. Tobias.’ Virginia faced Berenice across the table in the visitors’ room.

‘They’re
doing fine,’ Berenice said.

‘How
long has it been?’

‘A
month. Since they moved back into your house.’

‘Is
he happy?’

Berenice
nodded.

‘Does
he miss me?’

Berenice
hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he does.’

‘I
bet Lisa lets him eat chips the whole time.’

‘They’ve
got a social worker – ’

‘What
good will that do?’ Virginia shifted on the hard plastic seat. ‘They offered me counselling here, you know. I said, what’s the point of that? I know what I did and I know why I did it. Then they went on about mitigating circumstances.’ She frowned. ‘What do they know, these people?’

‘It’s
about sentencing. That’s what they mean.’

‘What,
diminished responsibility? I’m not pleading that.’ She leaned back on her chair. The room was high ceilinged, with dim fluorescent lighting and blank, pale walls. ‘I was completely responsible,’ Virginia went on. ‘I’ve told my solicitor. She says I might feel differently when the case comes up. But I won’t. I know I won’t.’ Her face clouded. ‘I killed a man. Iain… he didn’t deserve to die.’ Her eyes seemed to focus on a distant scene. ‘He should be here. And now – now he isn’t. And it’s because of me.’ She looked up at Berenice. ‘All I can say is, that anger would have killed me. I would have died of it. And instead… ’ Again, that faraway look. ‘Instead, I’m here. And he isn’t.’ She reached for one of the biscuits that Berenice had brought. Around them there was the murmur of other visits, the occasional squawk of a child.

‘Chad
was here yesterday,’ Virginia said.

‘The
vicar?’

‘He
pops in from time to time.’

‘Does
he think he’ll convert you?’

Virginia
smiled, shook her head. ‘He knows me better than that. I wanted to apologise to him. I deceived him, you see, I almost told him, two or three times I was on the point of telling him, but it was too big a story, I didn’t know where to start… And the strange thing is, he doesn’t seem to mind. It’s like he doesn’t judge me. I said to him, doesn’t it say in the Bible, an eye for an eye. Shouldn’t it be a life for a life?’