Midnight Fugue

by Reginald Hill

  He’d returned to work a week earlier, at his own insistence and against medical and domestic advice. But he’d insisted angrily that he felt fine and was more than ready to pick up the traces where he’d dropped them over three months ago.

  He hadn’t been lying. Trouble was, the traces weren’t there any more.

  If anywhere, they were in Peter Pascoe’s hands, and it had taken him a couple of days to realize the DCI’s reluctance to hand them over immediately was as much protective as presumptuous.

  Things had changed, both externally and internally. There might have been a sharp intake of breath across Mid-Yorkshire when he was admitted comatose to hospital, but it clearly hadn’t been held for long. The old truism was true. Life went on. Criminal life certainly did, and nature abhors a vacuum.

  He no longer had his finger on the pulse of things. He had a deal of catching up to do, not just in knowledge but in reputation. His famed omniscience depended on an extensive web of information and influence spun over many years, and in a couple of months this had fallen into serious disrepair. His underlings still tiptoed around him, but now their deference struck him as therapeutic rather than theocentric. He realized he was going to have to work hard to get back to where he’d been before the big bang, when he could have breezed in late to the case-review meeting, supremely confident of being able to prove yet again, as he’d once overheard Pascoe say with mingled admiration and irritation, that, like God, the Fat Man was always in the squad!

  Not now. And as well as the shock of realizing how out of touch he was, he’d been dismayed to find himself completely knackered after three or four hours on the job. When Pascoe had assured him that a new roster system imposed from above required that he should have the forthcoming weekend off, he hadn’t resisted. Cap Marvell, his non-live-in partner, was away that weekend, but no matter. Saturday was an easy day to fill. Long lie-in, then off down the rugger club to see some old mates. Couple of pints of lunch, watch the match in the afternoon, couple more pints after, then mebbe wander into town with a few convivial chums for a curry. Perfect.

  Except the day had dawned wet and windy. Everything seemed an effort, even though everything consisted of next to nothing. Noon arrived and he was still wandering round his house, undressed and unshaven. Going out to stand in wind and rain to shout at thirty young men wrestling in mud seemed pointless. There was a match on the telly he could watch. He fell asleep shortly after kick-off and woke to find the screen full of speedway bikes. Wasn’t worth getting dressed now. He summoned up the energy to put a mug of soup in the microwave and scalded his lip. Even that didn’t jerk him out of his trance-like state. In fact his chosen remedy, the litre bottle of Highland Park he’d found empty on his pillow this morning, had sucked him in deeper.

  And so the long hours had dragged by. Granny Dalziel would have been outraged by his dress and his demeanour, but her strict sabbatarianism could not have faulted his state of mind. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

  And there was the explanation. This morning his mind, recalling the previous day as a long, vacuous, will-to-live-sapping Scots Sabbath and unwilling to thole the notion of enduring such another, had decided it had to be Monday.

  Simple. Dead logical, really. Nowt to worry about there.

  Except that things like that didn’t happen to him. To other men maybe. There were a lot of weak, woolly, wobbly, wanked-out losers in the world, their minds in such a whirl they didn’t know their arses from their elbows. But not Andy Dalziel. It had taken half a ton of Semtex to put him on his back and he’d risen up again, shaken himself down, and returned to the fray, a bit bruised and battered and mud-bespattered, but ready and able to play out the rest of the game till the ref called no side!

  At least he hadn’t made it to the Station this morning. He shuddered to think what his colleagues would have made of the mighty Dalziel turning up for Monday’s meeting twenty-four hours early! They never come back, that’s what popular wisdom said about champion boxers. They try, they sometimes flatter to deceive, but they never really come back. He was going to prove them wrong, wasn’t he? He was going to delight his friends, scatter his enemies, and leave all the dismal doubters with enough egg on their faces to make a Spanish omelette.

  He’d been vaguely aware of a continuo of faint religious murmuring beneath his thoughts, but now it stopped and was replaced by the sound of footsteps as the worshippers, unburdened of their sins, tripped lightly back down the long aisle. Service must be over already. Mebbe in this age of Fast Food and Speed Dating, the Church had brought in Quick Confession and Accelerated Absolution.

  More likely, his thought processes had just slowed to a crawl.

  The footsteps receded, finally there was silence, and then the organ started playing. He wasn’t a great fan of organ music, something a little ponderous about it, something too diffused to cut to the emotional heart of a good tune. But here in the great cathedral, whose dim and vast prismoids of space felt as if they might have been imported from beyond the stars, it was easy to think of it as the voice of God.

  He straightened up and the voice spoke.

  ‘Mr Dalziel?’

  He rolled his eyes upward. What was it going to be–the blinding light, or just a shower of dove crap?

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ said the voice of God. ‘I’m Gina Wolfe.’

  That God should be female didn’t surprise him. That she, or She, should be called Gina did.

  He turned his head to the right and found himself looking at the blonde from the red Nissan. Would God drive Japanese? He didn’t think so. This was flesh and blood, and very nice flesh and blood at that.

  ‘Gina Wolfe?’ she repeated with a faintly interrogative inflexion, as if anticipating the name would mean something to him.

  To the best of his recollection, he’d never seen her before in his life.

  On the other hand, a man whose recollection could dump whole days on a whim couldn’t be too dogmatic. Best to box clever till he worked out the circumstances and degree of their acquaintance.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Gina Wolfe,’ he said, thinking by the use of the whole name to cover all possible gradations of intimacy.

  Her expression told him he’d failed before she said, ‘Oh dear. You’ve no idea who I am, have you? I’m sorry. Mick Purdy said he was going to ring you…’

  ‘Mick?’ With relief he found a context for this name. ‘Oh aye, Mick! He did ring, just afore I came out this morning, left a message. I were in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘I noticed. I really had to put my foot down to keep up with you. Look, I’m sorry to interrupt your devotions. If you like, I can wait for you outside.’

  Dalziel was pleased to feel his mind clicking back into gear, not top maybe but a good third, which was enough to extrapolate two slightly disturbing pieces of information from what she’d just said.

  The first was, she’d been following him.

  The second, and more worrying, was she thought he’d been in a hurry to get to the cathedral to pray. Couldn’t have her telling Mick Purdy that. Important operational information could vanish without trace in the mazy communications network that allegedly linked the regional police forces. But news that Andy Dalziel had got religion would be disseminated with the speed of light.

  He said, ‘Nay, I weren’t devoting, luv. Just like to come here and listen to the music sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, rather doubtfully. ‘It’s Bach, isn’t it? “The Art of the Fugue”.’

  ‘Spot on,’ he said heartily. ‘Can’t get enough of them fugues, me.’

  A cop could survive worse things than a taste for the baroque. There was that hard bastard down in the Midlands who collected beetles and nobody messed with him. But get a reputation for religion and you were marked down as bonkers. Even Tony Blair knew that, though in his case mebbe he really was bonkers!

  ‘Right, luv,’ he went on. ‘Grab a pew, I mean a chair, not many pews left the
se days. Then you can tell me what it is Mick would have told me if I’d answered my phone.’

  She sat by his side. Though not quite recovered to his full fighting weight, his flesh still overspread the limits of the chair and he could feel the warmth of her thigh against his. She was wearing a perfume that would probably have got her burned during the Reformation.

  He raised his eyes not in supplication but simply to focus his mind away from these distractions. His gaze met that of the little marble dog who was peering over the end of the tomb as if in hope that after so many centuries of immobility at last someone was going to cry, ‘Walkies!’

  ‘OK,’ said Dalziel. ‘We’re in the right place. Confession time!’

  09.00–09.20

  David Gidman the Third awoke.

  It was Sunday. That was something being brought up in England did for you. Maybe it was some ancient race-memory, maybe all those church bells set up a vibration of the air even when you were well out of ear-shot; whatever it was, physical or metaphysical, it was strong enough to make itself felt no matter how many supermarkets were open, no matter how many football matches were being played.

  You woke, you knew it was Sunday. And that was good.

  He rolled over and came up against naked flesh.

  He felt it cautiously. A woman.

  That was even better.

  She responded to his touch by saying sleepily, ‘Hi, Dave.’

  He grunted, not risking more till he was certain who it was.

  Like a blind man reading Braille, his fingers traced round her nipples and spelt out her name. He gave her a gentle tweak and breathed, ‘Hi, Sophie.’

  She turned to him and they kissed.

  This was better and better.

  ‘So how shall we spend today?’ she murmured.

  The bedside phone rang before he could answer.

  He rolled away and grabbed the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  He knew who it was before he heard the voice. Like Sunday, his PA, Maggie Pinchbeck, created her own vibes.

  ‘Just checking you’re awake and functioning. I’ll be round in an hour.’

  ‘An hour?’

  ‘To go over the timetable. Then at half ten I’ll drive you to St Osith’s. OK?’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t bloody well forgotten.’

  He put the phone down and turned back to the woman. An hour. Long enough, but he was no longer in the mood and anyway she was regarding him with suspicion.

  ‘What haven’t you forgotten?’ she demanded.

  No point poncing around.

  ‘I’m opening a community centre this lunchtime,’ he said.

  ‘You’re what? I’ve cleared the whole day, remember? George is in Liverpool; a.m. in the cathedral, p.m. at a footie match.’

  ‘I know. Looking to get the credit if they win, eh?’

  Her husband, George Harbott MP, known familiarly as Holy George, was the Labour spokesman on religious affairs.

  He saw at once his joke had fallen on stony ground.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘And I’m really sorry about today. Early Alzheimer’s.’

  He began to get out of bed.

  ‘What’s the hurry anyway?’ she queried. ‘Lunchtime’s hours away. And you could always ring them up and cancel, tell them you’ve got a cold or something. Come here and I’ll persuade you.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you could,’ he said, standing up out of her reach. ‘But no way I can cancel. This is my granpappy’s memorial community centre I’m opening.’

  ‘So? Your father’s still alive, if we can believe the Tory major contributors list. Why jump a generation? Let him open it.’

  ‘He says it’s a good vote-catcher for me,’ he replied. ‘And it’s not just lunchtime. I’ve got to go to church first.’

  ‘Church? You? Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Holy George’s, in a way. He rattles on so much about Christian values and getting back to the good old-fashioned Sabbath that Cameron’s getting edgy. What with your lot wallowing in Catholic converts and Scottish Presbyterianism, he feels he can’t rely on the old religious vote any more. His last newsletter stopped just short of establishing compulsory church parades. But it was Maggie who came up with this.’

  ‘Pinchbeck? Jesus, Dave, that woman’s got you by the pecker!’

  The image itself was absurd, but he couldn’t deny its truth. Whatever his leader said, church was the last place he wanted to be on a Sunday. In fact when Maggie had suggested opening the new community centre on Sunday rather than on Monday as proposed by the council, he’d told her she must be mad.

  She’d replied, ‘Monday there’s showers forecast, plus most people will be at work. You’ll get the council freeloaders and maybe a few bored mums with their wailing kids. Sunday’s the day for good works and this is a good work you’re doing. In fact, go to church first. St Osith’s is perfect. Just a mile down the road, plenty of room there and I know the vicar, Stephen Prendergast. He’ll be delighted to get the publicity. Service will be over by midday, so if we schedule the opening for one you should get most of the congregation along too, plus a whole gang of others with nothing better to do on a Sunday lunchtime.’

  ‘But what about the press?’

  ‘Leave the press to me. It will do that heathen bunch good to go to church.’

  ‘Won’t I risk alienating the ethnic vote?’

  ‘The Muslims, you mean? No. The moderates will be delighted to see you’re a man of faith. The extremists will want to blow you up whatever you do.’

  She had an answer for everything, and the trouble was it usually turned out to be the right answer.

  The woman was out of bed now and gathering up her clothes.

  ‘Hey, Sofe,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get mad. No need to rush off. Stay for some breakfast…’

  ‘You want I should still be hanging round here like this when Pinchbeck turns up? I can feel those beady little eyes tracking over every inch of flesh, looking for bite marks. You knew about this when I rang yesterday afternoon, right? But you didn’t say a thing in case I told you I didn’t care to be kicked out of bed at sparrowfart like some cheap tart. Well, I bloody well don’t!’

  She disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the new power shower switch on. Half a minute later there was an enraged scream and Sophie appeared dripping water in the doorway.

  ‘You some kind of masochist, or what?’ she demanded. ‘That shower, it’s gone from red hot to icy cold of its own accord.’

  He regarded her indifferently. Even a nicely put together body like hers ceased to be a turn-on when it was wet and goose-pimpled and topped by a face contorted by anger.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been having some problems. Maggie got me a couple of Poles to fix things. Looks like I’ll need to have them back.’

  ‘Maggie!’ she spat. ‘I might have known she’d have something to do with it!’

  She vanished.

  David Gidman the Third yawned then picked up a remote from the dressing table and clicked it at a mini hi-fi system on top of a chest of drawers. Terfel’s sumptuous voice started singing ‘Ich habe genug’.

  ‘Now that’s what I call serendipity,’ he said.

  He turned to a full-length mirror set in the wardrobe door and sang along for a while, studying himself in the glass.

  Golden-skinned, craggily handsome, muscularly slim, reasonably well hung, and above all youthful; David Gidman the Third MP, the Tory Party’s Great Off-white Hope.

  He stopped singing, dropped his voice, uttered a couple of gorilla grunts, scratched his balls, leered prognathically into the mirror, and said huskily, ‘The next PM but one–here’s looking at you, baby!’

  08.55–09.15

  For what felt like a good minute the woman called Gina Wolfe said nothing, but stared down at her hands, which were nervously plucking at the hem of her short skirt. Then sud
denly out came a tumble of words.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the thing is, I’d like to make it clear from the start, I don’t want Alex dead…OK, I know that’s the way it started out, me needing to prove he was dead, but what I mean is if I found him alive I wouldn’t want him to be killed…’

  ‘Just as well, missus,’ interrupted Dalziel. ‘’Cos I need to know folk really well afore I start doing favours like that.’

  That stemmed the flow. Her hands stopped their movement and she looked him straight in the face. Then she smiled weakly.

  ‘I’m gabbling, aren’t I? It’s just that I didn’t think I was going to have to start at the start, so to speak.’

  ‘Because Mick Purdy would have put me in the picture, right? OK, let’s see if I can get you on track with a couple of questions. First, who’s Alex?’

  ‘Of course. Sorry. Alex Wolfe. My husband.’

  ‘And he left you?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no, I suppose strictly speaking I left him. But not really. I never abandoned him…I never thought of it as permanent…things had just got so bad that I needed space…we both did. And in a sense, he’d left me a long time before…’

  ‘Whoa!’ said Dalziel. ‘Lots of things I need to get straight afore we get into the blame game. Where was this? When was this? What did Alex Wolfe do for a living? Why did you leave him? I think that’ll do for starters.’

  ‘It was in Ilford, we lived in Ilford. I still do. That’s part of the problem…sorry. What did Alex do? He was like you. A policeman. Not as important. A detective inspector.’

  Ilford. He’d heard of Ilford. It was in Essex. DI Mick Purdy had been with the Essex division of the Met. And Alex the walkabout husband had been a cop. Things were beginning to join up, but he was still a lot of lines short of a picture.

  ‘And you leaving him? What was that about? A woman?’

  ‘No! That would have been easy. Easier. It was a very bad time. For both of us. We lost…there was a bereavement…our daughter, Lucy…’

  He could feel the effort she was making to keep herself together. Oh shit, he thought, me and my big boots. He’d have known about this presumably if he’d listened to Purdy on the phone.