Midnight Fugue

by Reginald Hill

  On the other hand, not knowing meant he was getting everything up front, no pre-judgments.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry, luv. Didn’t know. Must have been terrible.’

  She said with unconvincing matter-of-factness, ‘Yes. Terrible just about sums it up. Certainly not the best of times to have this other stuff at work start up. Not that it seemed to bother Alex. He just didn’t seem to care. About anything. I got angry with him. I needed someone, but all he wanted was to be left alone. So I left him alone. I didn’t abandon him…we were in it together…except we weren’t…so I thought if left him alone…no I didn’t think that, I didn’t really think anything. I just had to be with people who would listen to me talking, and going into a room where Alex was felt like going into an empty room…’

  She was off again. Dalziel could only see one thing in this turmoil that might have anything to do with him. If it helped the woman to focus, that would be a plus too.

  ‘This work stuff, what was that about?’ he interrupted.

  She stopped talking and took a deep breath. Refocusing from her bereavement to her husband’s work problems seemed to bring a measure of genuine control. Her voice was stronger, less tremulous as she said, ‘They called it a leak enquiry, but it was actually about corruption. Alex was second in charge of a team targeting this businessman. It was called Operation Macavity. That was a joke. From T.S. Eliot’s poem. You know, Cats, the musical.’

  Dalziel was untroubled by the presumption that the only way he was likely to have heard of Eliot was via Cats. There were a lot of smart people spending a lot of hard time behind bars because they’d made similar presumptions.

  ‘Yeah, loved it,’ he said. ‘Because he was never there, right?’

  ‘Yes. But this time they had high hopes of getting to the man. It didn’t work out. I don’t know any details, but he always seemed to be several steps ahead of them. And while things were going wrong at work, at home things went into a nose dive…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Dalziel, determined not to drift back towards the dead child. ‘So the powers that be started wondering how the hell this Macavity always knew what was going on.’

  ‘I suppose so. Why the rat pack–sorry, that’s what Mick Purdy calls Internal Investigations–why they focused on Alex, I don’t know. But they did.’

  ‘Did they suspend him?’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Didn’t need to. This all blew up at the same time as…the rest, and he was on compassionate leave, so he wasn’t going into work anyway.’

  ‘So he’s at home, on compassionate leave, he’s in a state, the rat pack’s sniffing around, and eventually you leave him. Then…what? He takes off?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you looked for him?’

  ‘Of course I looked for him!’ she exclaimed. ‘I got in touch with his friends, his relations. I talked to the neighbours. I checked out everywhere I thought he was likely to have gone, places we’d been on holiday, that sort of thing. I rang round hospitals. I did everything I could.’

  ‘Including telling the police, I suppose?’

  ‘Obviously,’ she snapped. ‘They were just about the first people I contacted. Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Well,’ said the Fat Man, ‘for a start, they’re investigating him, right? It must have crossed your mind maybe they’re the ones he’s running from. Not sure, in your shoes, they’re the first buggers I’d tell.’

  She said tightly, ‘I knew Alex. I believed in him. He was confused, desperate maybe. But he certainly wasn’t corrupt. All I could think was he was out there somewhere, alone. So I called Mick Purdy. They were friends, so naturally I called Mick.’

  He’d anticipated this was probably Purdy’s connection. How had he reacted to the news? he wondered. Like a friend or like a cop?

  ‘And what did good old Mick say?’

  ‘He said to leave it with him, he’d make sure everything that could be done to trace Alex was done. Look, Mr Dalziel, I’m not sure how relevant all this is. We’re talking seven years ago. It’s here and now that I need help.’

  ‘Aye, seven years. And there’s been no sign of your husband all that time?’

  ‘Not a whisper. Nothing from his bank account, no use of credit cards. Nothing.’

  ‘Did he take his car?’

  ‘No, it was still in the garage. In fact, he took nothing, so far as I could see. No spare clothes, not even his toothbrush. Nothing.’

  ‘And the police? They turned up nothing?’

  ‘The police, the Salvation Army, every organization I could think of, none of them found any trace.’

  ‘So, apart from being kidnapped by aliens, what did that leave you thinking happened to him?’

  He watched her reaction carefully and let her see he was watching.

  She met his gaze straight on and said, ‘You mean it seems obvious to you he was probably dead, right?’

  He shrugged but didn’t speak.

  She said, ‘That’s what Mick thought too, but I couldn’t get my head round the idea. Even when I’d finally accepted he was never going to come back, I found it hard to contemplate applying for a legal presumption of death. That seemed…I don’t know, disloyal almost, even though I really needed it.’

  ‘Oh aye. Why was that?’

  She said, ‘Lots of reasons, mainly financial. The house we lived in is Alex’s family house. It’s in his name, so I can’t sell it. There are various insurances that I can’t access without proof of death. Even his police pension is being paid into a bank account in his sole name, so it piles up and I can’t touch a penny of it.’

  ‘So they’re still paying his pension?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they? Nothing was ever proved against him, no charges were brought,’ she said indignantly.

  Dalziel glanced at his watch. The organ was still burping out bits of tunes that chased each other round and round without ever catching up. He knew how they felt.

  He said, ‘I’ve been listening to you for a quarter of an hour, luv, and I’m no closer to understanding what any of this has got to do with me. What the hell are you doing up here in Yorkshire anyway?’

  She said, ‘It’s simple. Next month it will be seven years since Alex vanished. My solicitor told me that after seven years we’d get a presumption of death on the nod. That made up my mind for me, so I said, let’s do it. And everything was going fine, then yesterday morning I got this.’

  She opened her shoulder bag and took out a C5 envelope which she passed over to Dalziel. He put his glasses on to study it. It had a Mid-York postmark and was addressed in black ink to Gina Wolfe, 28 Lombard Way, Ilford.

  The envelope contained a sheet of notepaper headed The Keldale Hotel, attached by a paper clip to a folded page from the September edition of MY Life, the glossy news, views and previews monthly magazine published by the Mid-Yorks Evening News.

  On the notepaper were typed the words The General reviews his troops.

  A good half of the page from MY Life was occupied by a photograph recording the recent visit of a minor royal to the city. She was shown receiving a posy of freesias from a small girl across a crush barrier during a walkabout. A thick red circle had been drawn around the head of a man just beyond the child.

  ‘This your husband?’ guessed Dalziel.

  ‘Yes.’

  The photo was very clear. It showed a man somewhere between late twenties and mid thirties, his blond hair tousled by the breeze as he observed the Royal with an expression more quizzical than enthusiastic.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘It’s Alex or his double,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ he said, turning his attention to the hotel notepaper.

  The Keldale was the town’s premier hotel, priding itself, with its spacious rooms, traditional menus and extensive gardens, on offering luxury in the old style.

  ‘The General reviews his troops,’ he read. ‘That means summat special, does it?’

  She said, ‘Alex’s family always liked t
o claim a family connection with General Wolfe…’

  He saw her hesitating whether she needed to explain who General Wolfe was.

  He said, ‘The one who’d rather have written Gray’s Elegy than whupped the Frogs, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Alex was rather proud of the connection and I used to make fun of him because of it, and we started playing this game…I was a plucky little trooper and he was General Wolfe reviewing his troops, and…’

  She was blushing. It became her.

  Dalziel handed back the magazine page and said, ‘Spare me the details, luv. This something your Alex would have boasted about to his mates after a couple of pints?’

  ‘No!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘Definitely not.’

  Dalziel noted the certainty without necessarily accepting it.

  ‘So you were convinced this was your man. What did you do?’

  ‘I rang Mick.’

  ‘Purdy? Oh aye. And what did he have to say?’

  ‘Nothing. I couldn’t get him. I knew he was going to be busy this weekend. He’s been running some big Met op, he’s a commander now. They’ve got to the arrest stage, so that probably meant all mobiles switched off. Anyway, I left him a message.’

  Dalziel digested this. Purdy a commander. The lad had done well, but he’d had the look of a high-flier back when they’d met all those year ago. More puzzling was the woman’s knowledge of him; not his promotion, that was understandable, but the details of his operational timetable.

  He said, ‘Sorry, luv, I’m not getting this. Seven years on you’re trying to get your husband declared dead, then you get his picture through the post, and the first thing you do is ring his old boss? Why not your best friend, if it’s a bit of emotional support you want? Or your solicitor, if it’s professional advice. Why dig right back into the past and come up with your man’s old boss?’

  She said, ‘Sorry, Mr Dalziel, I keep forgetting you didn’t actually speak to Mick. I should have told you right away. There’s another reason I need to get a presumption of death. Mick and I are going to be married.’

  08.55–09.05

  Vince Delay watched Tubby stand up then sit down again and start talking to Blondie.

  Briefly he had a full-frontal view of the fat guy and now he dropped his eyes to compare what he’d seen with a photograph he was holding in his hymn book. It was a full-length shot of a man lounging against a tree, thirtyish, blond hair ruffled by a breeze, with the slightly mocking half-smile of a guy who knows what he wants and has no doubts about his ability to get it.

  The only time Vince had seen him in the flesh, trouble had wiped that smile from his face but otherwise he’d looked the same.

  Fleur had said, stick to Blondie and she’ll lead us to him, and this is where she’d led.

  He let his gaze drift from the photo to the bulky figure sitting close to the tart. Question was, could anything have changed this to that in seven years?

  Didn’t seem likely.

  Pity, he thought. Would have been nice if things had turned out so easy. Not that it bothered him. Not his responsibility, not since Fleur took him in hand. Would have been nice for Fleur though. Or maybe not. Fleur was clever and for some reason clever people often seemed to prefer things a bit complicated. Himself, he’d have been delighted if it had been Tubby. Whack! And then back down the motorway, leaving this northern dump to fall to pieces in its own time.

  One thing was sure: whoever Tubby was, all that praying, he had some heavy stuff on his mind. And now it looked like Blondie was laying some more on him. This surveillance stuff was real boring.

  Couldn’t even light up. Not many places you could these days. No laws to stop the bastards lighting candles though. Back in the car he guessed Fleur would be on her second or third ciggie by now, probably having a coffee from the flask. Maybe a little nip in it. No, scrub that. Not Fleur. On a job you had rules and you stuck to them. You look after the rules and the rules would look after you, she was fond of saying. And if she caught you breaking the rules–her rules–then retribution was instant and unpleasant.

  Though sending him to do the tailing was breaking the rules, wasn’t it?

  Maybe it meant she’d decided he wasn’t just muscle, he could think for himself.

  The idea was both flattering and disturbing. It suggested a change in their relationship and he didn’t like change.

  She’d laid down the terms pretty categorically in the prison visiting room as his last and longest stretch came within sight of the end. He’d served them years the hard way and he’d got respect, but at a price. Fleur was the only person he could share his horror with at the prospect of going back inside. In another sort of man this admission might have been linked to a resolve to go straight. Delay’s resolve was different.

  ‘I’ll top myself first,’ he said.

  Fleur had given him the look that since she was nine had reversed the three years between them and made him feel like her kid brother.

  ‘Don’t talk stupid, Vince,’ she’d said brusquely. ‘Now, where are you going when you get out?’

  He looked at her, puzzled, and said, ‘Thought I’d come home to start with…’

  ‘Home’s gone, Vince. I’ve got my own place now. You’re welcome to come and live with me, but there’s rules. You do things my way, in or out of the flat. Break the rules, and you’re on your own. For good. What do you say? Yes or no?’

  ‘Well, sounds all right, sis, but a guy’s got to have a bit of choice, know what I mean…’

  ‘Yes or no, Vince. That’s one of the rules. I ask yes or no, you answer yes or no.’

  ‘OK, keep your hair on. I mean yes.’

  ‘Something else. I think I can get you a job.’

  ‘You mean, like…a job?’ he said, horrified.

  She shook her head. She knew her limitations.

  ‘I mean like the kind of job you’re good at,’ she said. ‘Except that what you’re not good at is not getting caught. So if you come to live with me, you come to work for me too, OK? No branching out on your own. I call the shots, OK?’

  ‘Is that a yes or no question, sis?’

  ‘It’s a yes or yes question, Vince. If you want to live with me, that is.’

  ‘Then yes.’

  It had been a good decision. There’d been a couple of rebellious moments–like he’d said, a man’s got to have a bit of independence–but they’d all got sorted, and Fleur had one great argument to support that her way was the best way: for more than a dozen years now he’d stayed out of jail!

  He put the photo back in his wallet and for want of anything better to do let his gaze focus on the open hymn book once more. Some of this stuff was dead easy, but a lot of it was like reading the instruction book for a computer.

  A servant with this clause

  Makes drudgery divine.

  Who sweeps a room as for thy laws

  Makes that and the action fine.

  What the hell was that all about?

  He sighed and shifted in the chair whose wickerwork seat felt as if it was stamping its imprint on his behind. The thought took him back to his first time inside. They’d made him strip and take a shower. One of the screws had said mockingly, ‘Nice arse, Delay. You’re going to enjoy yourself here.’

  It had taken half a dozen of the bastards to drag him off the man and then they’d given him a good kicking. But he’d been limping round the yard a couple of days later, an object of respect, and the screw had still been in hospital.

  Happy days.

  But not the kind of happy days he ever wanted to enjoy again. He was going to stay out whatever it took. And if ever Fleur’s way looked like failing, then he’d just have to do things his own way.

  09.15–09.30

  Normally Andy Dalziel was to diplomacy what Alexander the Great was to knots, but this time he hesitated the cutting edge and essayed a bit of gentle plucking.

  ‘So you and Mick, this a long-standing engagement…?’


  She laughed, a pleasant sound which the old cathedral absorbed with indifference though a few human heads turned in surprise.

  ‘What you mean is, how long have we been at it? Or even more bluntly, were we at it while Alex was still around? Very much not. Mick stayed in touch, we became good friends, we were close, I could tell he was interested romantically, so to speak, but it wasn’t till the end of last year that I finally acknowledged that Alex was gone for good. Mick’s told me since he was starting to think I’d never get Alex out of my system. It came as a real shock to him when I finally made the break.’

  Hearing himself proposing marriage must have come as a bit of a shock to Mick, too, thought Dalziel. He recalled Purdy declaring one boozy night that the only woman worth marrying was a billionairess with huge tits, no family, and an hour to live.

  Still, men often change their views on marriage. He certainly had.

  He went on, ‘So you left Mick a message telling him to ring you. And then…?’

  ‘I called my solicitor. He wasn’t all that pleased, it being Saturday. That didn’t bother me. I’m paying the louse and no doubt he’ll charge me double time.’

  ‘Good lass,’ said Dalziel, who loved anybody who hated lawyers. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he wished I hadn’t told him about the photo. Because now I had, he was bound to include knowledge of it in his plea for assumption of death.’

  ‘Covering himself in case it later came out that Alex was alive, right?’

  ‘Right. I asked him what I should do. He said that all I could do was make every reasonable effort to check out the possibility that my husband was alive and living in Mid-Yorkshire. He said that on receipt of my written assurance that such an effort had been made, he would go ahead with the application.’

  ‘Lawyers,’ said Dalziel, ‘I’ve shit ’em. So what did you do then?’

  ‘I rang the Keldale Hotel.’