Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (43 page)

‘Visible
how?’

‘By
the patterns of the particles in the collisions.’

Berenice
nodded. ‘Right,’ she said.

There
was a small silence. ‘I told you I wasn’t an expert,’ he said.

‘Sounds
pretty clever to me,’ she said.

He
shook his head. ‘If I was really clever, I’d be able to explain it in a way you’d understand. You see, however many equations you do, it can only explain a tiny part. It’s like the Buddha’s handful of leaves.’

‘It
is?’

‘The
Buddha, with his disciples in the forest, he holds out a handful of leaves, and he says in terms of what they could know, there are all the leaves in the forest, but they only need that. Just the handful he’s offering them.’

‘A
scientist and a hippy too,’ she said.

‘You’d
be surprised.’

‘I
thought you scientists were supposed to be finding the answer.’

‘To
everything?’

‘Isn’t
that what we’re paying you for?’

He
laughed. ‘That’s what I love about all this.’ He waved his arm, as if to take in the grey office walls, the piles of papers on the floor, the thin strip of light across the ceiling, the plastic blinds on the window.

‘You
do?’ she said.

‘Over
at CERN,’ he said, ‘they’re replicating the conditions of the universe when it was less than a trillionth of a second old.’

‘And
you’re telling me they don’t know why they’re doing that?’

‘What
I’m saying is, we know what questions to ask. And we have the technology to set up the experiment to ask those questions. But no, we don’t know the answer. And if we did…’ He flicked at the plastic blinds, glanced outside. ‘If we did, we wouldn’t bother with the experiment, would we. It’s a huge act of faith.’

‘Oh.
And there’s me thinking that science was about evidence, not faith.’

‘But
you can’t have one without the other. That’s what I love about it. We’re a tiny planet on the edge of a minor solar system. We’re tiny life forms, on a tiny planet. We’re investigating the smallest possible components of matter, smaller than anyone’s ever seen. When we look outwards, we see stars, solar systems so far away they don’t even exist by now. And we ask questions. We investigate it, get to know it, get to know more about it… But we can’t do that without accepting, first and foremost, how little we know. We’re adrift in the chaos. You have to start from that. You can call it God if you want, and then it has meaning, it has a story, a reason… but if you don’t have God, if you trust in Science, as I do…’ He looked up at her. ‘That’s what science is. Being brave in the chaos.’

‘And
is there still a story?’

He
glanced towards the window, then back at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s a story. But you have to be careful about who’s doing the telling of it. If it’s God, you see, then you have the True Story, already written, In the beginning was the Word, all that… If it’s just us, here, now, then you have to be careful. You can’t just make it up. You have to be clear about what you can say about it.’

‘Hence
the very expensive tunnel,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’
he said. ‘Exactly.’

‘And
you don’t mind the chaos?’

He
smiled. ‘I don’t need my life to make sense.’

Again,
the glance towards the car park.

Berenice
smoothed her jacket. ‘Well, that’s physics covered. What about men? Murdo Maguire and Iain, and the Professor…’

His
laugh faded. ‘We’ve lost three very good scientists,’ he said. ‘Two of them more than very good. Irreplaceable. And in such circumstances… we’re all very jumpy here, you know. Did you send those heavies to man the front gates?’

‘Um…’
She hesitated. ‘Not me personally, no.’

‘My
sister thinks I need a personal body guard, not bouncers,’ he went on. ‘Tell me honestly…’ He fixed her with a clear gaze. ‘Do you think we’re all in danger here?’

‘Do
you?’ she countered.

‘You’re
the expert,’ he said.

She
got up, went over to the window. She turned and faced him. ‘Like you, my job involves seeing patterns in things. Seeing order in chaos. Murdo, Iain, Alan. They’re all connected. There’s the land sale, from the Voakes, which has got the wrong side of Clem, the old house on the edge of the lab. There’s Tobias, and his connection with the book, the van Mielen thing. And…’ She returned to her seat, looked up at him. ‘There’s the relationship between Elizabeth, Murdo and Iain.’

‘They
were friends,’ he said.

‘How
much would you have known, you and the rest of the lab?’

‘Good
scientists are team players. They don’t keep secrets.’

‘Even
from each other?’

His
reply was measured. ‘We knew, you see. Those three. We just accepted it. And then Elizabeth left, and the other two went back to normal.’

‘Is
that normal?’ Berenice was gazing out of the window.

He
didn’t reply.

‘“…
the man who has the power to turn lead into gold,”’ she said. ‘“Purified by one drop of baptismal water…’’

‘Oh,
the Book.’ He sighed.

‘You
don’t approve?’

‘My
view on the Book is that it’s seventeenth century alchemical rubbish re-written by a nineteenth century obsessive. And that wouldn’t matter, if it wasn’t that poor Tobias got far too caught up in it. Murdo’s wife should have kept it away from him.’

‘It
belonged to Elizabeth.’

‘It
was in her family. So what?’

Berenice
shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘So what.’

‘You
want me to say it was some kind of love token? The way the men were both after it – and the Professor…’ He stopped, looked at her. ‘That doesn’t make it true,’ he said.

‘No,’
she agreed.

His
attention had drifted away from her towards the corridor.

‘However,’
she went on. ‘Like you, the author of the book is struggling with faith, and evidence. And like you, he’s finding another way to ask questions of the chaos.’

Liam
seemed to be about to say something, but then the door clicked open behind Berenice, and all she could see was the change to his face as he jumped to his feet.

‘Helen.’
His voice shook slightly. ‘You knew where to find me?’

‘Neil
walked me through reception. They gave me a pass,’ she said.

‘You
know DI – um – ’

‘We
spoke on the phone.’ Helen offered her hand.

‘So
we did.’ Berenice got to her feet. ‘We were just discussing chaos,’ she said.

Virginia poked at the ash in the grate. The early frost had given way to grey cloud and the room was dull and cold.

‘Love
gone wrong,’ she said.

Chad,
still in his coat, sat on one edge of the sofa.

‘Hate,’
she went on. ‘Hate is love gone wrong.’

He
listened to the scraping of the ash.

‘A
few sticks of wood,’ she said. ‘At least they’re dry. I don’t usually bother, but today…’

‘Not
on my account,’ he said.

‘No,’
she said. ‘Not on your account.’

She
laid the fire, struck a match. The flames struggled in the damp chimney, then flared into a feeble fire. She came to sit next to him. ‘His birthday,’ she said. ‘He’d have been fourteen.’

She
sat, dry-eyed, next to him. After a while, he placed one arm around her shoulders.

‘Your husband, Mrs. Meyrick - ’ Berenice watched the glance between Liam and Helen and wondered why she felt as if she’d said the wrong thing. ‘He’s been a great help to that family.’

‘Tobias.’
Helen was unbuttoning her coat. ‘Poor kid.’ She turned to Liam. ‘I met Elizabeth. At the caravan. She was so helpful.’

He
was gazing at her as she stood in her jeans, her pastel pink cashmere, her coat slung over one arm, her hair loose around her shoulders. Tall, and poised. Like a fashion model, Berenice thought. No wonder he’s looking at her like that.

Helen
turned to Berenice. ‘She was going to come and see you. We found Lisa’s hair band at the old house, she’s disappeared from the caravan but her dog was there, looking terrible - did she tell you? She said she’d call at your offices - ’

‘I
– um – I haven’t been there.’

‘Perhaps
she handed them into someone else. One of your team – ’

Berenice
could see the question in Helen’s eyes.

‘We
were really worried about her,’ Helen said.

‘A
dog – she was going to hand it in?’

Helen
shrugged. ‘She wasn’t that keen on keeping him, I don’t think. Mud all over her flash car…’

Liam
was smiling at her.

‘I’ll
go to HQ and see what they say.’ Berenice seemed reluctant to move.

Beyond
the slatted blinds, the sky was growing dark.

‘It’s
going to rain,’ Liam said.

‘This
land dispute – ’ Berenice turned to him. ‘How much of a dispute was it?’

‘All
I know is,’ Liam began, ‘Alan was very keen to get the land from whoever owned it – the Voakes, you say? I don’t know much about it. And the sale was agreed just before he died.’

Berenice picked up her bag. ‘I should be going,’ she said. At the door she turned to Liam. ‘These recent results – they’re not what you were expecting?’

‘They’re
odd, sure.’

‘WW
Boson scattering sort of odd?’

‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘That sort of thing.’

‘Not
bad for a handful of leaves,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the teachings.’

‘And
you call me a hippy?’ he said.

She
returned his smile. ‘See you around.’

It
was as if the tension in the room drifted out into the corridor with her. Her last glance backwards, as the door shut, took in the two of them, Helen taking a step towards him as he reached out his arms to her.

The flames crackled in the grate.

‘There
is nothing,’ Virginia said. ‘In the gaps. There’s silence. And nothing. Murdo knew that too.’

Chad
withdrew his hand from her shoulder. He sat, motionless, next to her.

‘He
knew it the way a scientist knows it,’ she went on. ‘Matter. Anti-matter. The nothing in the gaps between the smallest smallest particles. The silence of space. That was how he knew it. As a scientist.’

‘Whereas
you – ’

She
turned to him. ‘When there’s life, and breathing, and you’re listening to the in breath and the out breath, and in between… in between there’s a gap. And you listen, the breath in, the breath out… and they get slower and slower, and the gaps get longer and longer… and in those gaps there’s silence and nothingness. And terror, I suppose…’ She turned back to face the fire. ‘When he stopped breathing, I listened to the silence. And I knew it would always be with me.’

The
sticks of wood shifted, settled. Chad moved his hand so it was touching hers.

‘Perhaps
that’s what you’d call God?’ She turned, slightly.

‘I’m
not sure,’ he said. ‘The God beyond words, perhaps.’

‘The
gaps are still there,’ she said. ‘The nothing. Your God can’t fill those gaps.’

‘No,’
he agreed.

They
stared at the fire. The tired plaster of the walls seemed to brighten in the firelight.

‘But
in the gaps,’ he said. ‘Where God is. There is love.’

‘Love?’
Her voice was harsh. ‘Do you really think that?’

He
turned to face her. ‘I don’t mean easy love. I don’t mean happiness, or joy, or comfort… I mean the love where in our suffering God walks by our side.’

She
shook her head. ‘It’s not something I know. Does he walk next to you?’

He
met her eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t say he does.’