Midnight Fugue (20 page)

When her parents caught up with her, she refused to be consoled, declaring her conviction that this must inevitably signal the end not only of Ali’s friendship but of her tuition, in acknowledgement of which she threatened to break her clarinet across her knee, prompting Pascoe, who’d found the duet quite hilarious, to say brightly, ‘Not all bad then,’ which did nothing to improve the moment. Nor did it help that the Sinfonietta quartet who were back in the pagoda now broke into a schmalzy rendering of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’.

It had taken the direct intervention of Ali Wintershine to lift the girl from the depths of despair, for which Ellie was grateful. But her gratitude grew somewhat dusty when Rosie, now revelling in her role as justified sinner, demanded yet one more reassurance that she was truly forgiven and Ali said, ‘A few of my very dearest friends are coming to the house for a cup of tea after we finish here. Why don’t you join us, Rosie? And your mum and dad, too, of course.’

Refusal would clearly have tipped the girl back into the depths, so Ellie had put mellow fruitfulness on hold, gritted her teeth, and said brightly, ‘That would be nice.’

Pascoe had taken the diversion fairly philosophically. Though looking forward with much enthusiasm to the promised bliss awaiting him at home, the afternoon was young, not yet half past two, and he didn’t mind a brief interval of tea and cake to neutralize the side-effects of too much champagne.

It was quickly apparent to Ellie that the alleged tea-party was little more than a ruse to complete Rosie’s restoration. There were only two
very dearest friends
there: a timpanist with a roving eye and a habit of testing all surfaces he encountered for resonance, including, whenever he got the chance, those of the other musical friend, a bassoonist too intoxicated to know her Arne from her Elgar. Ed Muir, perhaps thinking of the large cost of what hadn’t turned out to be a totally successful celebration, appeared somewhat distracted, provoking a
sotto voce
reproof from his partner, who clearly felt he wasn’t pulling his weight as co-host. Only Rosie looked unequivocally delighted. Getting her out of there, Ellie realized, was not going to be easy.

At this stage, though already feeling Dalziel’s unexpected appearance as augurous, she was still far from ascribing to him full responsibility for the day’s divagations.

Then Pascoe’s mobile rang.

Ellie sometimes claimed there was a ring tone undetectable by ordinary people. Only a policeman’s wife could catch it, and she heard it now.

He looked at the display, mouthed ‘Wieldy’ at her apologetically, and left the room at the same time as Ed Muir who’d vanished a little earlier re-entered to tell Ali there was a small catering crisis at the Arts Centre that required his presence. Ali started demanding details and there was no saying where this debate may have led if Pascoe hadn’t appeared in the doorway looking distracted and said, ‘Ellie, sorry, I’ve got to go. Can you get a taxi?’

‘Yes, sure,’ she replied instantly. She knew it had to be serious stuff to bring the afternoon to such a sudden conclusion.

Ali, sensing this too, backed off her confrontation with her partner, who said, ‘I can drop Ellie and Rosie off.’

‘But it’s out of your way,’ said Ellie. ‘We live north. You’ll be driving into the town centre.’

This seemed to nonplus him for a moment, then he said, ‘No problem,’ reinforcing his assurance with a rare smile.

‘Then thank you very much, Ed,’ Ellie replied, returning his smile. Generally she found him reserved to the point of diffidence, but as she got to know him better, she was beginning to see what Ali saw in him. And his tranquillity provided the perfect foil for Ali’s usual ebullience.

Ellie followed Pascoe out into the hall.

‘What’s happened?’ she murmured.

‘There’s been a shooting. Someone dead. Shirley Novello hurt.’

‘Oh shit. Not again.’

A few years earlier she’d actually been present when Novello was shot.

‘How bad?’ she asked.

‘Don’t have too many details, but it doesn’t sound good.’

Ellie felt all the residual warmth of the day fade from her body. She and Novello weren’t best buddies, but for a policeman’s wife, hearing of a serious injury to any officer is like a rehearsal of that moment when the bad news will be yours alone.

‘Was it an op?’ she asked.

He hesitated then said, ‘Nothing I knew about. Wieldy thinks Andy might have been using her for something.’

This was untypically vague.

‘Why don’t you ask him?’

‘We will, when we can raise him,’ he said neutrally. ‘Wieldy’s tried. He’s not answering his mobile.’

Many questions were buzzing through her head. Already these uncertain references to Dalziel were shifting his role from ominous apparition to guilty first mover.

‘You mean the fat bastard’s up to his old tricks?’ she said. ‘Need-to-know rules, except he’s usually the only one who needs to know?’

‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve got to go.’

‘I know. Come here!’

She put her arms around him and drew him close, crushing him against her body. This had nothing to do with mellow fruitfulness. This came out of the dreadful awareness that only when she had him in her grasp like this could she be sure of him. Out of her sight he was at the mercy of whatever malignant Fate cared to hurl. She would never forget, could never forget, the moment they had come to tell her that he’d been caught in the same explosion that comatized Andy Dalziel.

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Or I may have to do you for perverting the course of justice.’

‘Do me any which perverted way you like, so long as you come back safe,’ she said.

He broke away and went out of the front door. Without his supporting strength she felt faint and dizzy.

How much easier life would be without love, she thought. The Holy Joes are forever preaching that it’s love that makes the world go round. It isn’t. It’s love that stops the world in its tracks. Be faithful in love, they tell us, and all will be well. Travel with love in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone.

They’re right. You’ll have a shadowy companion, invisible only at the moments of greatest ecstasy, but otherwise constantly present. His names are fear and loss and pain.

One way or another, love always betrays.

13.35–15.25

By the time Fleur Delay got back to the hotel, she was close to collapse.

The adrenalin rush of having to deal with the aftermath of Vince’s violence had kept her going till they reached the car. Then she’d said, ‘You drive,’ and sank into the passenger seat.

Vince said anxiously, ‘You OK, sis?’

‘Yes, sure, I just banged my head.’

She put her hand to her brow and looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a small cut there with a trickle of blood which she wiped away with a tissue.

Vince, reassured, drove carefully away from Loudwater Villas. He was normally a flashy driver, but he knew that his sister would get seriously pissed if he did anything that drew attention.

Sometimes Fleur felt it as a blessing that he was so easy to fool. Sometimes it filled her with fury and resentment. Anyone else living as close to her as he did would have been aware for a couple of months at least that there was something seriously wrong. There had been times after the fatal diagnosis when she had come close to telling him that she hadn’t been away from home for a minor woman’s operation, that the drugs he sometimes saw her taking couldn’t be bought over the counter at the local chemist’s, that the wigs she’d started wearing weren’t a belated fashion statement in reaction against the onset of middle age. If she could have hoped for loving support and comfort, she might have given way to the temptation. But she knew that when the time came to say, ‘Vince, I’ve got news for you. I have an inoperable brain tumour and I’m going to die,’ the support and comfort would be all one way.

She wanted to have him safe and secure when she told him, she wanted him to be a long way away from London, and most of all she wanted him to be a long way away from Goldie Gidman. Spain wasn’t all that far, but it was as far as she could hope to remove Vince, and even then she had found it hard to get him to share her enthusiasm for the idea of buying a villa on the Costa del Sol and settling down there. For a holiday it suited him very well with its sunny beaches, cheap booze, and unending supply of succulent bimbos who’d left their inhibitions behind at Luton Airport. But as for living there…!

She’d countered with economic arguments. This was the perfect opportunity for them to invest some of their hard-earned savings in a bit of truly palatial real estate. The Spanish property boom had gone into a nose-dive as the credit squeeze left lots of ex-pats unable to keep up payments. Making a sale even at a substantial loss was better than repossession and for someone with Fleur’s long experience of the economics of distress it had been easy to snap up a real bargain: four bedrooms, sea views, private garden, swimming pool, games room, all mod cons, at just over half the price the owners had paid three years ago.

The deal was close to completion, but the way she’d felt over the past few days, the sooner it was done the better.

‘We’re here, sis,’ said Vince.

She opened her eyes. They were in the Keldale car park.

In the next row she spotted the red Nissan, so that was all right.

She said to Vince, ‘Take the laptop up to your room. You can keep a check on her in case she goes out again.’

‘Me?’ said Vince dubiously. Like following Blondie and Tubby into the cathedral, this wasn’t the kind of task he was usually given. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to get cleaned up, then I’ll take a close look at the stuff I took off that guy you shot, and then I’ll report in to The Man. That OK with you, Vince?’

She spoke sharply. She’d always felt the need to be firm with Vince, but lately firmness had drifted into irritability.

‘No need to get in a strop,’ he said. ‘All I meant was, how long will you be? If the guy I offed is our man, we’ll be heading for home, right?’

He sounded hopeful.

She said, ‘Maybe.’

She checked herself in the mirror. She looked a bit pale, but the cut on her forehead had stopped bleeding. Taking a deep breath, she got out of the car and willed herself to walk steadily towards the hotel.

It seemed to take an age, but finally she was in her room with the
Do not disturb
sign on her door. She kicked her shoes off, went into the bathroom and bathed her face in cold water. Then she took a couple of tablets. How many had she taken today? She couldn’t remember.

Back in the bedroom she looked longingly at the bed. It invited her to lie on it. Instead she spread across the duvet the trophies she’d brought with her from Loudwater Villas. A hip wallet, a mini recorder, and a phone.

First she examined the contents of the wallet.

A few pounds. A pack of condoms. Cards in the name of Gareth Jones.

Jones. Not Watkins. Was that good or bad?

Then she listened to the conversation on the recorder.

Nothing she heard there surprised her.

Finally she checked the incoming and outgoing numbers on his phone, wrote them down, accessed his messages, checked out his phone book and made notes.

She tried to make sense of what she’d found, or rather make of it the kind of sense she wanted to make. It was no use. No way she was going to sell this to The Man as job done. Best she could look for was damage limitation.

She took out her phone and rang Goldie Gidman.

When he answered she gave no name but started straight in with her report, editing out all references to timings and her collapse, and editing in a version of events that made Vince’s reaction absolutely essential. She was as selective as she dared to be with the details of the contents of the wallet and the info she’d gleaned from the phone, but she needn’t have bothered. He’d always had the knack of smashing through no matter how thick a coating of verbiage to the essential truth of thing. At least he wasn’t close enough to reinforce the process with a hammer.

‘It’s not the guy,’ he said.

‘Probably not,’ she agreed wearily. ‘So what shall I do now?’

There was a long pause. In her mind’s eye she could see him sitting there, the phone in his hand, staring into space. His mind would be checking over the known facts, formulating the possible outcomes. Eventually he would reach a decision about the best course of action. She’d known the process to take several minutes. She’d learned early not to interrupt with speech or movement, not even if your bladder was bursting or the ciggie in your fingers had burnt down to the skin.

He said, ‘Where’s the woman?’

‘In her room. Vince is keeping an eye on her.’

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t decide to shoot her.’

A joke, or serious? Without a video phone, she couldn’t tell. The plus was, he couldn’t see her sitting here, bald as a snooker ball.

If he was waiting for a laugh, he was disappointed.

He said, ‘Question is, if it wasn’t Wolfe, why the fuck was he bugging Gina?’

‘Don’t know, Goldie.’

‘Makes no odds, I still need Wolfe. And fast. Don’t let the wife out of your sight.’

The phone went dead.

She looked in the dressing-table mirror and saw that the dome of her head was beaded with sweat.

‘You look like you just landed from Mars,’ she told herself. ‘Pity you don’t have a return ticket.’

She had a sense of things falling apart, but when you felt like that the only thing to do was stick with the plan. Not that there was much of a plan. Follow the woman. If Vince saw the tracker moving on the laptop screen he’d bang on the door. Fleur hoped to hell the blonde cow stayed put for another hour at least. She needed the rest.

She swept the Jones/Watkins trophies to the floor, fell across the bed, rolled over to wrap the duvet round her, and closed her eyes.

In the room next door Vince had obediently set up the laptop. He realized he didn’t have its mains lead. That would be in Fleur’s room, but he didn’t want to risk worsening her mood by disturbing her. It wasn’t that he was scared of his sister, but no denying she could be scary! There was plenty of juice in the batteries anyway, so it didn’t matter.