Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins (2 page)

The manager explained that it was a busy hotel. There had been a fiftieth birthday party the previous night. It would have been almost impossible to remove a dead body.

‘I have never known anything like it,’ Sidney fretted.

Keating tried to be generous. ‘It’s unlike you to make a mistake.’

‘I would never claim to be perfect. But I felt sure Madara was telling me the truth.’

‘Where’s the wife then?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it didn’t happen here but in his home?’

‘It’s more likely she’s left him,’ Keating continued. ‘They had a row and your man dreamed that he killed her without doing anything of the sort. Did you ask if he was taking any medicine?’

‘No . . .’

‘And could he have been drunk, or not himself?’

‘I can only judge what was put in front me: a man in distress, convinced that he had unwittingly stabbed his wife to death.’

‘I don’t suppose he had the knife with him.’

‘He said he threw it out of the window . . .’

‘Talk about a wild-goose chase . . .’

‘I
believed
him, Geordie.’

‘Perhaps his wife wasn’t staying with him at all.’ Keating turned to the hotel manager. ‘Did anyone see her?’

‘I can ask . . . I wasn’t on duty yesterday.’

‘We need to speak to whoever was. You say he slept in the room?’

The manager checked the bed. ‘Someone did.’

Sidney confirmed, ‘Madara told me.’

‘And if his story is true then perhaps he was the one that tidied up afterwards; and he was too shocked to remember anything he was doing?’

‘He told me he just left.’

‘But we can’t be sure of anything he has said.’

‘So why make all this up, Geordie?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because he wanted a bit of drama, or someone to talk to. Either that or he wanted you out of the way. Perhaps he’s going to rob your church?’

‘It’s quite an elaborate way of doing things.’

‘Nothing surprises me, Sidney. Do you want me to come and talk some sense into him?’

‘I don’t think there’s much we can do here.’

They were about to return to the staircase when a couple emerged from the room next door. They appeared furtive, as if they had been caught in the act of leaving without paying their bill. Sidney noticed that they carried musical instruments along with their luggage.

‘Are you, by any chance, members of the Holst Quartet?’

‘How do you know?’

‘You seem to be leaving in a hurry.’

‘Who are you?’ the woman asked.

‘Never you mind who he is,’ Keating interrupted. ‘I am a police officer.’

‘Are you departing?’ the hotel manager asked.

‘Our friends seem to have left already,’ Dmitri Zhirkov said. ‘We thought that we would wait for them as we normally travel together but I suppose they’ve decided to go on ahead.’

He was taller and thinner than Josef Madara, with receding hair, a slight stoop and round silver-framed glasses. Sidney remembered a friend telling him that just as couples sometimes grow to look like each other, so musicians matched their instruments. You never saw a fat flautist, she said, or a thin tuba player, or even an introverted percussionist. Looking at the couple, he wondered how much this was true, and if the missing woman was as shapely as a cello.

‘I think we need a bit of a chat,’ said Keating.

The manager took everyone down to one of the hotel’s hospitality rooms. There was more space there than in his office, he said, and they would not be disturbed for a good half hour.

The room contained the remains of the celebration from the previous evening. Deflated balloons were still tied to the chairs. Smeared plates, half-empty wine glasses and overflowing ashtrays were scattered across the tables. It needed an airing but someone had probably decided that it was too cold to do so. Sidney thought they should check how many of the guests had spent the night in the hotel and if it was worth keeping them in. He mentioned the idea to Keating but the inspector reminded him that there was no sign of any crime.

‘We’ll just ask some questions and then check if Sophie Madara has gone home or back to her mother’s. I don’t suppose you offered your man the use of a telephone?’

‘Madara thinks his wife is dead and that he killed her. Why would I suggest that he telephone her?’

While coffee was poured and biscuits offered, the Zhirkov couple repeated that they had assumed the Madaras had gone back to London. They were anxious to return themselves as they were due at an orchestra rehearsal on Monday.

‘Is that the only thing you are worried about?’

‘At the moment, yes.’

‘Then let me give you a little more to concern you,’ Keating warned.

Natasha Zhirkov leaned forward as she listened to the inspector, her dark hair cut in a bob that had been sharply styled to break up the roundness of her face. ‘Josef is very highly strung, Inspector,’ she explained with unusual calmness. ‘I am sure he is making all this up.’

‘He’s . . . he’s what you might call eccentric,’ her husband continued.

Neither asked how their colleague was, or how he could have got himself into such a state.

As the conversation went on, Dmitri Zhirkov kept repeating that he wanted to get back to London. His wife tried to bring the interrogation to a close. ‘I’m sure you don’t need very much from us, Inspector. Being a police officer, you must have been able to work out what’s happened?’

‘Were there tensions in the quartet?’ Keating persisted. ‘What is Mrs Madara like? Why would her husband say that he had killed her or why might she disappear?’

‘Shouldn’t you organise a search before asking these questions?’

‘I have already made a telephone call,’ Keating assured them. Sidney knew that this was not true. They had not been apart since the discovery of the empty bedroom.

Sidney asked if the couple would come to the church and talk to Madara. Perhaps the fugitive would tell his colleagues a little more than he had said already?

‘I very much doubt it,’ said Natasha.

‘But he is your friend.’

‘You wouldn’t have thought so if you had seen us all last night.’

Dmitri Zhirkov stopped his wife. ‘I hope you are not going to start on that.’

‘Why not?’

Sidney checked. ‘I thought you were playing in a concert?’

‘We were; and it went perfectly well. It was what happened afterwards . . .’

Keating interrupted. ‘You had an argument.’

Natasha Zhirkov was looking out through the steaming windows to the snow on the grass, the parked cars. It was a day that had already seen the best of the light.

‘What was it about?’ Sidney asked.

‘It’s awkward,’ said Natasha Zhirkov, as the hotel maids entered the room and began to take down the balloons, clear away the plates and empty the ashtrays. One of them turned on the Hoover to clean the carpet.

‘I never imagined it was going to be easy,’ Keating replied. ‘If it was simple we would have finished by now.’

‘You might as well tell him,’ Dmitri Zhirkov cut in. ‘He’ll find out soon enough. This bloody vicar probably knows already.’

‘I have an idea,’ Sidney began, without quite being able to decide if he did or not. It always happened when he was tired. He would begin sentences and then hope that the sense would come to him halfway through what he was saying.

‘Josef thought that we should break up the quartet . . .’ Natasha began, perhaps hoping that the noise of the hoovering would drown out her words.

‘And why was that?’ Sidney asked.

‘He blamed our playing; even when it was Sophie making the mistakes.’

‘And you told him so.’

‘We hinted . . .’ her husband added.

‘But he didn’t understand . . .’

‘So we spelt it out . . .’

‘And then we all started talking at the same time. It wasn’t very edifying.’

‘You can’t unsay things after an argument, can you?’ Dmitri Zhirkov concluded.

Keating aimed for clarity. ‘But you don’t think this dispute could have led to murder?’

‘I don’t know, Inspector. You can’t always predict these things, I imagine. And if Josef did what he said he did . . .’

‘He hasn’t actually confessed,’ said Sidney, surprised that their colleague’s alleged death should have such little effect on the couple.

‘Then what has he said?’ Natasha Zhirkov asked. ‘How much has he told you?’

Sidney offered to go ahead and check that the fugitive was still in the church and that Malcolm was coping. He didn’t want to repeat the hotel experience by leading Inspector Keating to a second venue where someone had vanished; although he did half hope that his sanctuary-seeking guest might have gone back to London. Perhaps the eccentric musical couple had reunited after an unusual tiff, a terrible night and a hopeless fantasy?

No more snow had fallen but, with a further drop in temperature, any slush had frozen. It was too risky to bicycle home. It was safer for Sidney to walk with his head against the wind across the meadows. His hands were cold, his feet were damp, his cheeks red and his ears so frosted that he was not sure he could hear properly. He had forgotten his hat and he remembered his father telling him how much body heat escaped through the head. There was no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.

‘As soon as you feel the cold, it’s too late,’ he had told his son. Well, it was certainly too late now.

Sidney tried to think of the sermon he had to prepare for the first Sunday in Lent. He wondered if he could utilise the surprise he had felt at seeing the empty hotel room and imagine the shock Mary Magdalene experienced on finding the empty tomb of Jesus.

It must have been astonishing to have expectations so subverted; to be so bereaved, confused, lost and then finally exhilarated to discover the resurrection. How could that shock of faith be re-created today, Sidney thought, in, say, an anonymous hotel room, a home, a school or a factory? What would it mean to tell Josef Madara that the wife he thought had been dead was not lying in their room but alive again, however miraculous that might seem; that hope could remain even in the most desperate of situations?

His momentary optimism was dispelled by the familiar sight of Helena Randall talking to the churchwarden. An ambitious journalist from the
Cambridge Evening News
, she at least had prepared for the weather and was dressed in a duffel coat, wellington boots, fur mittens, what looked like a Russian fur hat, and a long scarf.

‘Since when did you start locking your church?’ she asked. ‘I thought it was supposed to be open for prayer at all times. Your lovely new curate won’t let me in. He’s very diligent.’

‘How did you hear about this?’ Sidney replied, determined not to let her get the upper hand.

‘I am an investigative journalist. Have you forgotten?’

‘Did Geordie tell you?’ (Helena had been flirtatious with the inspector for years and Keating still had a soft spot for her.)

‘I never reveal my sources.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Access, if you don’t mind.’

‘You are not normally so keen to enter a place of worship.’

‘Well you don’t
normally
provide anything so intriguing.’

‘I am not sure it is our role to entertain,’ Sidney replied. ‘There are other venues that await your pleasure . . .’

‘We have spoken about this before, Canon Chambers. The public has a limited appetite for religion, particularly when the atmosphere in your church is so drearily Victorian.’

‘Matters of morality, eternal life and the certainty of death are hardly dreary.’ Sidney looked for his keys and began to unlock the door.

‘You can’t take the public’s interest for granted,’ Helena continued. ‘They have so much more to do with their leisure time these days. They’re also less afraid of eternal damnation. The old frighteners don’t work any more. Are you going to let me come in or not?’

The police joined them before Sidney could answer. On seeing Helena, Keating muttered an ‘I might have known’ before announcing that Dmitri and Natasha Zhirkov had asked to talk to their colleague at the station. They wanted time to collect their thoughts. In the meantime he had telephoned Inspector Williams in London, who had agreed to send a couple of men round to the Madara flat to see if there was any sign of the missing wife.

‘Is our man still inside?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t been able to ascertain,’ Sidney replied.

‘What’s kept you?’

‘I have been speaking to Miss Randall.’

‘I suppose it’s simpler to have her working with us rather than against us.’

‘I’ve always proved my worth in the past,’ Helena smiled. ‘And you both love me really. You’re just reluctant to admit it.’

‘Don’t count on it.’

‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone.’