Devices and Desires

by P. D. James

  He had stood in the great turbine hall, ears pulsating, while Mair produced his facts and figures about pressures, voltages and breaking capacity; had stood, garbed in protective clothing, and looked down where the spent elements lay like sinister fishes underwater in the fuel-cooling pond for a hundred days before being despatched to Sellafield for reprocessing; had walked to the edge of the sea to look at the cooling-water plant and condensers. But the most interesting part of the visit had been in the reactor house. Mair, summoned by a bleep from his intercom, had temporarily left them, and Dalgliesh was alone with Lessingham. They had stood on a high walkway looking down at the black charge floors of the two reactors. To one side of the reactor was one of the two immense fuelling machines. Remembering Toby Gledhill, Dalgliesh glanced at his companion. Lessingham’s face was taut and so white that Dalgliesh feared that he was about to faint. Then he spoke almost like an automaton, reciting a lesson learned by rote.

  “There are twenty-six thousand, four hundred and eighty-eight fuel elements in each reactor, and they’re charged by the fuelling machinery over a period of five to ten years. Each of the fuelling machines is approximately twenty-three feet high and weighs a hundred and fifteen tons. It can hold fourteen fuel elements, as well as the other components which are necessary for the refuelling cycle. The pressure vessel is heavily shielded, with cast iron and densified wood. What you see mounted on top of the machine is the hoist unit for lifting the fuel elements. There is also a connecting unit which couples the machine to the reactor, and a television camera which allows viewing of the operations above the magazine.”

  He broke off and, looking at him, Dalgliesh saw that the hands gripping the rail in front of him were shaking. Neither spoke. The spasm lasted less than ten seconds. Then Lessingham said: “Shock is an odd phenomenon. I dreamed of watching Toby fall for weeks afterwards. Then the dream suddenly stopped. I thought I’d be able to look down at the reactor charge floor and put the image out of my mind. Most of the time I can. After all, I work here, this is my place. But the dream still recurs and sometimes, like now, I can see him lying there so clearly that it could be a hallucination.”

  Dalgliesh felt that nothing he could say would be other than banal. Lessingham went on: “I got to him first. He was lying prone but I couldn’t turn him over. I couldn’t make myself touch him. But I didn’t need to. I knew that he was dead. He looked very small, disjointed, a rag doll. All I was aware of were those ridiculous symbols of a yellow bee on the heels of his trainers. Christ, was I glad to get rid of those bloody shoes.”

  So Gledhill hadn’t been wearing protective clothing. The impulse to suicide hadn’t been completely spontaneous.

  Dalgliesh said: “He must have been a good climber.”

  “Oh yes, Toby could climb. That was the least of his talents.”

  And then, without a perceptible change in his voice, he had continued with the description of the reactor and the procedure for loading new fuel into the reactor core. Five minutes later Mair rejoined them. On their way back to his office at the end of the tour he had suddenly asked: “Have you heard of Richard Feynman?”

  “The American physicist? I saw a television programme about him a few months ago; otherwise the name wouldn’t have meant anything to me.”

  “Feynman said: ‘Far more marvellous is the truth than any artist of the past imagined. Why do poets of the present not speak of it?’ You’re a poet, but this place, the power it generates, the beauty of the engineering, the sheer magnificence of it, it doesn’t particularly interest you, does it? You or any other poet?”

  “It interests me. That doesn’t mean that I can make poetry out of it.”

  “No, your subjects are more predictable, aren’t they? How does it go? ‘Twenty per cent to God and to His saints, / Twenty per cent to nature and her proxies, / And all the rest devoted to the plaints / Of guys pursued by or pursuing doxies.’”

  Dalgliesh said: “The percentage for God and His saints is down, but I’d agree that the doxies are more than holding their own.”

  “And that poor devil out there, the Norfolk Whistler, he’s not poetic either, presumably.”

  “He’s human. That makes him a fit subject for poetry.”

  “But not one you’d choose?”

  Dalgliesh could have replied that a poet doesn’t choose his subject, it chooses him. But one reason for escaping to Norfolk had been to avoid discussions about poetry, and even if he had enjoyed talking about his writing, it wouldn’t have been with Alex Mair. But he had been surprised how little he had resented the questions. It was difficult to like the man, impossible not to respect him. And if he had murdered Hilary Robarts, then Rickards was faced with a formidable opponent.

  As he raked out the last ashes of the fire, he remembered with extraordinary clarity that moment when he had stood with Lessingham and looked down at the dark charge floor of the reactor, beneath which that potent and mysterious power was silently working away. He wondered how long it would be before Rickards asked himself why precisely the murderer had chosen that particular pair of shoes.

  5

  Rickards knew that Dalgliesh was right: it would have been an unwarranted intrusion to call on Mrs. Dennison so late at night. But he couldn’t drive past the Old Rectory without slowing down and glancing to see if there was any sign of life. There was none; the house stood dark and silent behind the wind-torn bushes. Entering his own darkened house, he felt a sudden overwhelming tiredness. But there was paperwork to be got through before he could go to bed, including his final report on the Whistler enquiry; awkward questions to be answered, a defence to be argued which would stand a chance of rebutting the charges, private and public, of police incompetence, poor supervision, too much reliance on technology and not enough good old-fashioned detection. And that was before he could begin scrutinizing the latest reports on the Robarts murder.

  It was nearly four o’clock before he tore off his clothes and slumped face-downwards onto the bed. Sometime during the night he must have been aware that he was cold, for he awoke to find himself under the bedclothes and, stretching out his hand to the bedside lamp, saw with dismay that he had slept through the alarm and that it was almost eight o’clock. Instantly awake, he threw back the bedclothes and stumbled over to peer at himself in the glass of his wife’s dressing table. The dressing table, kidney-shaped, was trimmed with pink-and-white flowered voile, the pretty matching set of ring-stand and tray still neatly in place, a stuffed doll which Susie had won at a fair as a child hanging from the side of the glass. Only her jars of make-up were missing, and their absence suddenly struck him as poignantly as if she were dead and they had been disposed of with the unimportant detritus of a life. What, he wondered, bending low to look more closely into the glass, had anything in this pink-and-white, utterly feminine bedroom to do with that gaunt face, that rough, masculine torso? He experienced again what he had felt initially when they first moved in a month after the honeymoon, that nothing in the house was truly his. When he was a young DC he would have been amazed had anyone told him that he would achieve such a house, a gravel sweep of drive, its own half-acre of garden, a drawing room and separate dining room, each with its carefully chosen suite of furniture which still smelt pristine new, reminding him, every time he entered, of the Oxford Street department store in which it had been chosen. But with Susie away he was again as ill at ease in it as if he were a barely tolerated and despised guest.

  Dragging on his dressing gown, he opened the door of the small room at the south of the house which was to be the nursery. The cot was in pale lemon and white, matching the curtains. The changing table, with its lower shelf for baby paraphernalia, its hanging bag for clean nappies, stood against the wall. The wallpaper was a riot of rabbits and leaping lambs. It was impossible to believe that any child of his would one day be sleeping here.

  And it wasn’t only the house which rejected him. With Susie absent it was sometimes difficult even to believe in the reality of his m
arriage. He had met her on a cultural cruise to Greece which he had booked as an alternative to the usual solitary walking holiday. She had been one of the few younger women on the ship, travelling with her mother, the widow of a dentist. He realized now that it was Susie who had made the running, who had determined on the marriage, who had chosen him long before he had thought of choosing her. But the realization when it came was flattering rather than disturbing and, after all, he hadn’t been unwilling. He had reached that time of life when he would occasionally indulge in an idealized picture of a wife waiting at home, domestic comfort, someone to return to at the end of the day, a child who would be his stake in the future, someone to work for.

  And she had married him despite the opposition from her mother, who at first had seemed to collude in the enterprise, perhaps reminding herself that Susie was twenty-eight and time not on her side, but who, once the engagement had been secured, had made it plain that her only child could have done better, and had embarked on a policy of ostentatiously making the best of it while undertaking a vigorous campaign of his social re-education. But even she hadn’t been able to find fault with the house. It had cost him all his savings, and the mortgage was the largest his income could support, but it stood as a solid symbol of the two things that mattered most to him, his marriage and his job.

  Susie had been trained as a secretary but had seemed glad to give it up. If she had wanted to carry on working, he would have supported her, as he would in any interest she cared to take up. But he preferred her to be happily satisfied with the house and the garden, to find her waiting for him when he returned at the end of the day. It was not the kind of marriage that was currently fashionable, nor the kind that most couples could afford; but it was his kind of marriage and he was grateful that it was hers.

  He hadn’t been in love with her at the time of the marriage, he knew that now. He would, indeed, have said that he hardly knew the meaning of the word, since it had certainly nothing to do with the half-shameful affairs, the humiliations of his earlier experiences with women. And yet not only poets and writers, the whole world used the word, seeming to know by instinct if not by direct experience exactly what it meant. Sometimes he felt uniquely disadvantaged, excluded from a universal birthright, as a man might be who had been born without a sense of taste or smell. And when, three months after the honeymoon, he had fallen in love with Susie, it had seemed like the revelation of something known but never experienced, as blinded eyes might suddenly open to the reality of light and colour and form. It was one night when, for the first time, she had found joy in his lovemaking and, half-crying, half-laughing, had clung to him, whispering incoherent endearments. Tightening his arms about her, he had known in what seemed a moment of amazed recognition that this was love. That moment of affirmation had been both a fulfilment and a promise, not the end of searching but the beginning of discovery. It left no room for doubts; his love, once acknowledged, seemed to him indestructible. Their marriage might have its moments of shared unhappiness and anxiety, but it could never be less than it was at this moment. Was it really possible, he thought now, that it could be seriously threatened if not destroyed by its first serious test, her decision to give in to her mother’s calculated mixture of bullying and entreaty and leave him when their first child was about to be born? When the baby was first placed in her arms he wanted to be there. Now he might not even be told when she went into labour. The picture which persistently haunted his imagination before he fell asleep and at waking, of his mother-in-law standing triumphantly in the labour ward with his child in her arms, deepened his dislike of her almost to paranoia.

  To the right of the dressing table was one of their wedding photographs in a silver-plated frame, taken after a marriage ceremony which could have been specifically designed to emphasize the social differences between the two families. Susie was leaning a little towards him, her peaked, vulnerable face looking younger than her twenty-eight years, the fair head with its chaplet of flowers barely reaching his shoulder. The flowers had been artificial, rosebuds and lilies of the valley, but in memory, as on the day, there rose from them a transitory sweetness. Her face, gravely smiling, revealed nothing, not even what the whole white mystique surely symbolized: This is what I worked for, what I want, what I’ve achieved. He was looking straight at the camera, stolidly enduring what had after all been the last of the seemingly endless photographs taken outside the church. The family group had at last been released. Here were Susie and himself, legally yoked, an accepted pair. The photographic session had, it seemed in retrospect, been the most important part of the ceremony, the service merely a preliminary to this complicated arranging and rearranging of incongruously garbed strangers according to some hierarchy not wholly understood by him but of which the hectoring photographer was obviously master. He heard again his mother-in-law’s voice: “Yes, a bit of a rough diamond, I’m afraid, but he’s really very able. Chief Constable material, I’m told.”

  Well, he wasn’t Chief Constable material and she had known it, but at least she hadn’t been able to criticize the house which he had provided for her only child.

  It was an early hour to telephone, and he knew that his mother-in-law, who was a late riser, would make the most of the first grievance of the day. But if he didn’t speak to Susie now, it might well be late at night before he had another opportunity. For a moment he stood looking down at the bedside telephone, unwilling to stretch out his hand. If things had been different, if it hadn’t been for this new murder, he could have got in the Rover, driven north to York and brought her home. Face-to-face with him, she might have found the strength to resist her mother. Now she would have to travel alone, or with Mrs. Cartwright if her mother insisted on accompanying her. Well, he would put up with her if she insisted on coming, and it might be better for Susie than facing the long train journey alone. But he wanted her home; he wanted her here in this house.

  The ringing tone seemed to last for an inordinate time and it was his mother-in-law who answered, enunciating the number with weary resignation, as if this had been the twentieth call of the morning.

  He said: “This is Terry, Mrs. Cartwright. Is Susie awake?”

  He had never called her Mother. That was a nonsense which he had never been able to get his tongue round and, to do her justice, she had never suggested it.

  “Well, she will be now, won’t she? Not very considerate, Terry, to ring before nine. Susie isn’t sleeping very well just now, and she needs her lie-in. And she was trying to get you all last evening. Hold on.”

  And then, at least a minute later, came the small, tentative: “Terry?”

  “Are you all right, darling?”

  “Yes, everything’s fine. Mummy took me to Dr. Maine yesterday. He used to look after me when I was a child. He’s keeping an eye on me, and he says that everything’s going on very well. He’s booked me a bed in the local hospital just in case.”

  So she’s even got that fixed up, he thought bitterly, and for a moment the treacherous thought lodged in his mind that the two of them might have planned it together, that this was what Susie wanted. He said: “I’m sorry I couldn’t spend longer on the phone yesterday. Things got pretty hectic. But I wanted you to know that the Whistler was dead.”

  “It’s been in all the papers, Terry. It’s wonderful news. Are you all right? Are you feeding yourself properly?”

  “Fine. I’m fine. Tired, but I’m OK. Look, darling, this new murder, it’s different. We haven’t got another serial murderer on the loose. The danger’s over now. I’m afraid there’s no chance I can get away to fetch you, but I could meet you at Norwich. Do you think you could make it today? There’s a fast train at two minutes past three. If your mother would like to come, stay until after the baby is born, well, that’s all right, of course.”

  It wasn’t all right, but it was a small price to pay.

  “Hold on, Terry. Mummy wants to talk to you.”

  Then, after another long delay, he heard her moth
er’s voice.

  “Susie is staying here, Terry.”

  “The Whistler is dead, Mrs. Cartwright. The danger’s over.”

  “I know that the Whistler’s dead. But you’ve had another murder down there, haven’t you? There’s still a killer at large, and you’re the man who’s hunting him. This baby is due in less than two weeks, and what Susie needs now is to get away from murder and death. Her health has to be my first consideration. What she needs is a little cosseting and kindness.”

  “She’s had that here, Mrs. Cartwright.”

  “I dare say you did your best, but you’re never there, are you? Susie rang you four times last night. She really needed to talk to you, Terry, and you weren’t there. It isn’t good enough, not now, it isn’t. Out half the night catching murderers, or not catching them. I know that’s your job, but it’s hardly fair on Susie. I want my grandchild born safely. A girl’s place is with her mother at a time like this.”

  “I thought that a wife’s place was with her husband.”

  Oh God, he thought, that I should ever hear myself speaking those words. A wave of utter misery swept over him compounded of self-disgust, anger and despair. He thought, If she doesn’t come today she’ll never come. The baby will be born in York and her mother will hold him in her arms before I do. She’ll get her clutches into both of them, now and forever. He knew how strong was that bond between widow and only child. There wasn’t a day when Susie didn’t telephone her mother, sometimes more than once. He knew with what difficulty and patience he had begun to wean her away from that obsessive maternal embrace. Now he had given Mrs. Cartwright another weapon. He heard the triumph in her voice.