Midnight Fugue

by Reginald Hill

  So Jones had probably caught a fragment of a whisper, half overheard and wholly misinterpreted. Being a dedicated Gidman-baiter, he’d tossed it into the water and stood back to see if anything surfaced.

  Disregardable then, thought Maggie. If it hadn’t been for Tris Shandy’s party.

  Tristram Shandy (real name Ernie Moonie) was a former Irish boy-band singer who had survived changing fashion, waning hair and waxing waist with a flexibility worthy of the Vicar of Bray. In turns record producer, Celebrity-Up-the-Creek winner, comic novelist, Live Aid activist, panel game player, soap star and confessional autobiographer, he was now, rising fifty, revelling in his latest metamorphosis as chairman of Truce! this season’s mega-successful TV show. Its ostensible aim was to bring together warring parties ranging from quarrelling neighbours, divorcing couples, kids at odds with parents, and families divided by wills, to individuals in dispute with corporate bodies such as supermarkets, estate agents, manufactures, hospitals, lawyers, politicians.

  The resulting melange of glutinous sentimentality when disputants were reconciled, and blood on the carpet when they weren’t, was so much to the depraved taste of twenty-first-century Britain that Shandy had now joined the crowded ranks of those minutely talented, monstrously ego’d ‘media personalities’ whose contracts were worth millions.

  Maggie knew that today he was spending some of his loose change on a luncheon party on the Shah-Boat, the former Shah of Persia’s luxury yacht, found rusting in a remote backwater of the Black Sea by a Russian oil millionaire, restored to its previous opulence, and towed to its present location on Victoria Embankment where it had rapidly become the location of choice for those who liked to combine the maximum of privacy for their parties with the maximum of publicity for their personal wealth.

  Anybody with pretensions to being somebody would have been invited. Beanie the Bitch certainly fell into that category, and presumably, as her current server, Gwyn Jones too.

  So whatever it was that had brought the journalist to the Centre opening had been worth missing the party of the week for, as well as presumably pissing off the Bitch.

  If something was brewing that might affect her employer, Maggie Pinchbeck wanted to know. The potentially most fruitful line of enquiry had to be via Beanie Sample. Of course she might know nothing, but if she did, there were two reasons why she might be persuaded to share it.

  The first was that Jones’s defection had probably left her feeling seriously irritated, and the Bitch was famous for not getting mad but getting even.

  The second was that she owed Maggie Pinchbeck.

  At an early age Maggie had looked at herself, accepted that she was insignificant and turned insignificance into an art form. Raising funds for ChildSave had been her training ground. ‘She’s like a bloody pickpocket,’ one Captain of Industry had said wonderingly. ‘You hardly notice she’s around, then a bit later on, you realize your wallet’s disappeared!’ Working for Dave in that twilight zone where politics meets the media, she’d soon discovered that shadowiness got you places that brashness couldn’t reach. Thus it was that Maggie, seated unnoticed in the corner of a Fleet Street pub much favoured by the press before the great migration south, found herself listening to an alcoholic conversation between three old journalists haunting the place where whatever honour they’d ever possessed had probably died.

  Their subject was the Bitch, who had clearly trodden on each of them at some point with more than usual violence. Their theme was revenge. Their proposed method was to put in her way a young man possessing all those attributes guaranteed to set her juices flowing. He, armed with the very latest surveillance gear, would make a detailed audio-visual record of their encounters. No journal with any sense would touch this stuff, but the Internet has neither fears nor loyalties, and the knowledge that everyone she knew was revelling in these images must, the trio felt, pierce even the Bitch’s famous defences.

  Stage One, Maggie gathered, had been successful. The bait was on display. The Bitch was showing interest. But she was a wily old tigress who knew better than to pounce on any tethered goat. She would do a lot of checking first and the merry threesome were congratulating themselves on the thoroughness of their preparation, which they were sure would soothe even the most suppurating doubts.

  Maggie debated what to do, but not for long. She knew Beanie Sample only by reputation and didn’t much like what she’d heard. But she’d been fostered in infancy, and though treated by her foster parents with much kindness, her two foster sisters had never let her forget her status. The result had been a sensitivity to injustice on a par with Jane Eyre’s.

  She rang the Bitch at home. Getting through to her at work, though not impossible, would have taken a lot of time and effort. It was easier to extract her unlisted number from a common acquaintance who also owed Maggie a big favour.

  To start with, Beanie’s sole concern was to discover how Maggie had come by her home number, which she dispensed like an oenophile sharing a 2001 Yquem. Ignoring this, Maggie stated the facts baldly as she had overheard them and rang off.

  She then dropped the matter from her consciousness until it resurfaced a week later when the Bitch appeared at her flat with a huge bouquet of roses and a magnum of Mumm. They talked, but not for long. Both were too realistic not to face the fact that they didn’t warm to each other. But as the Bitch left, she’d said, ‘Remember, I owe you.’

  ‘You’ve paid me,’ said Maggie.

  But that wasn’t really true. Being pollen allergic, she’d passed the bouquet on to the ancient lady who lived next door. As for champagne, the bubbles gave her hiccoughs and the magnum was still in her fridge.

  Now as she drove back to her modest flat in Southwark, Maggie contemplated her next move.

  She could ring Beanie at her apartment again, but when she would return from the party was anybody’s guess. Also she’d probably changed her number. Anyway, getting was different from giving information. For getting you wanted face-to-face.

  She parked the car and climbed the stairs to her flat.

  In the corner of her living room was a filing cabinet in which she kept anything she didn’t want her employer to have access to. From this she took an envelope, and out of the envelope she took an invitation to Tris Shandy’s party.

  David Gidman the Third was definitely a somebody. Also, he’d appeared on Truce! to be confronted by a couple of angry constituents whom he had placated with considerable aplomb. The whole event had of course been carefully stage-managed, otherwise Maggie wouldn’t have let him anywhere near Shandy.

  But the Shah-Boat party was something different. No way was Maggie going to risk seeing Dave head off from the Centre opening to such a potentially scandalous event, so she’d simply hidden the invitation.

  Now it could come in useful.

  She thought of changing her clothes, decided nothing in her wardrobe was going to make her look more like one of the Shandy crowd, and contented herself with adding an a to David on the invitation.

  The security guards by the gangplank had clearly been chosen for their muscle rather than their political awareness. They checked her invitation against the guest list, showed no surprise that Davida should have been misprinted there as David, and even less that a female Member of Parliament should be plain and drably dressed.

  On the boat the party was in such full swing that probably no one would have noticed if Captain Jack Sparrow himself had come mincing up the gangplank at the head of his band of cutthroats, but this did not stop her from taking precautions as she went in search of Beanie Sample. Moving unnoticed among crowds of people whose sole desire was to be noticed might seem an easy option, but there were dangers. She was long practised in the art of scia-mimicry, but the sight of Gidman’s shadow moving independently of Gidman might provoke someone to draw attention to her presence in order to draw attention to himself.

  At one point in the main saloon she passed close to Tris Shandy and felt those shrewd Irish eyes registe
r her. Happily before he could rummage through the bran tub of his memory for her identity, one of the three bimbos competing for his attention upped the ante by letting her left boob loose from the confines of its halter with all the subtlety of a cannon ball bursting out of a paper bag.

  As Shandy, with the scholarly wit for which he was justly famous, called, ‘Fetch a warm spoon someone–better make that a shovel!’ Maggie slipped out of the saloon and found herself on a narrow walkway on the seaward side of the boat. Her luck was in, for there was the Bitch in all her flesh-flaunting finery, talking to a pretty black man Maggie recognized as a premiere league star. Coming between the goddess and her prey was not a good idea, and Maggie was preparing herself for a long wait when from the other direction arrived a young woman who clearly had no such inhibitions. Bearing all the episematic markings of the WAG, she shouldered Beanie aside with the gentle courtesy of Wayne Rooney on a bad day and bore her man along the walkway, filling his ear with the sedimentary vowels of estuary-speak from which Maggie, who could interpret whispers at fifty paces in a gale, excavated the phrases old enough to be your gran and fuck knows where she’s been.

  The Bitch was ready, Maggie decided. Getting no joy from the substitutes bench, she would be in no mood to feel protective about her absent Welsh striker.

  Plus she owes me!

  But for all that, as Beanie Sample came along the walkway towards her, Maggie felt about as confident as Androcles in the Coliseum. Just because you’d once helped a lion didn’t always mean it would be grateful next time you met.

  The editor’s mood as evidenced by her greeting didn’t hold out much promise.

  ‘So Dave the Turd came after all, did he?’ said Beanie. ‘Rattle the swill pail, even the fattest pig comes running.’

  One of the few things Maggie found to admire about the Bitch was that she’d stated publicly she’d rather bed a porcupine than a politician.

  She said, ‘In fact I’m here by myself. I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Yeah? You want a job on Bitch!, hon, you’ll need to smarten yourself up.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve got a job. That’s why I’m here. I want to know what Gwyn Jones is up to.’

  Beanie’s face went blank.

  ‘What makes you think he’s up to anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Because he came to the opening of the Gidman Memorial Community Centre instead of strutting his stuff here as your Stud of the Month.’

  There was no point, Maggie had decided, in beating about this bush. Directness would get her what she wanted, or get her thrown overboard.

  For a moment she thought the odds were on the latter.

  Then a phone rang.

  Beanie dived into her Vuitton bag and plucked out a mobile whose diamond-studded case matched her earrings and choker.

  She checked the display then turned away from Maggie and walked out of earshot, or so she thought. But the acoustic of the walkway, plus her priceless acuity of hearing, allowed Maggie to catch Beanie’s half of the conversation.

  ‘Hi, honey. Where are you?’

  ‘Jesus! So what’s going on?’

  ‘Hell, that’s truly terrible. How long will it take?’

  ‘No, I understand. Families are important. Of course you’ve got to put them first.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK here. No fun without you, though. I probably won’t stay long.’

  ‘I love you too. Hope everything goes OK. You take care now. Bye.’

  Her tone as she spoke was affectionate and concerned, but her expression as she made her way back to Maggie was gorgonian.

  ‘Bad news?’ said Maggie.

  The Bitch glowered at her for a moment, then her features relaxed into a smile that would have made Jones nostalgic for Llufwwadog.

  ‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘You got a car? Don’t know about you, but I’m ready to abandon this rust bucket before I get sea-sick. You can drive me home and on the way we’ll have a nice little chat about Jones the Mess.’

  15.50–16.15

  Dalziel looked out of the window of 39 Loudwater Villas.

  The view of industrial dereliction across the Trench wasn’t pretty, but it was preferable to the view inside. Even his normally cast-iron stomach had experienced a spasm as he looked down at the body. It wasn’t just the ruined head that made him queasy, it was the idea that he’d been responsible for putting Novello close to this carnage.

  ‘Shotgun–sawn-off, from the spread,’ said Pascoe. ‘Death instantaneous.’

  ‘Often is when you lose most of your head,’ said Dalziel.

  It was a feeble attempt to assert control.

  On arrival he’d found the street in front of the Villas had been cordoned off. This was easy to do as it was a dead-end for vehicle traffic, narrowing down within fifty yards to a rutted track following the course of the river. An incident room caravan had already arrived, reminding the Fat Man how far behind the game he was. Pascoe emerged from it as he approached. Before he could speak, Dalziel had barked, ‘What’s the news on Ivor?’

  ‘Still unconscious, but active signs are good. They’ll let us know soon as there’s any change. Sir…’

  ‘Save it, lad. Need to take a look for myself first.’

  The DCI hadn’t demurred, merely produced a couple of white sterile cover-alls from the caravan and said, ‘We’ll need these. SOCO’s up there already.’

  So, agreement, obedience, just what a senior officer arriving at the scene expected. But as they made their way up to the second floor, Dalziel had a sense of being escorted rather than being in charge.

  The feeling had persisted in the flat. Pascoe, usually the sensitive plant when it came to gore, had taken him through the details of the fatal injury without a tremor, his gaze fixed on the Fat Man as if determined to register every reaction.

  What’s he want? A confession? Dalziel asked himself. But he knew that if the circumstances were reversed he’d be doing exactly the same.

  He said, ‘Who found him?’

  ‘Two uniforms. A neighbour called in to say she was worried, the TV set was on playing very loud but when she knocked at the door to ask Mr Watkins…’

  ‘Watkins?’ interrupted Dalziel. ‘That the dead man?’

  ‘Alun Watkins is the name of the man renting the flat,’ said Pascoe carefully. ‘As I was saying, when she couldn’t get a reply, she decided to ring the emergency services. Couple of uniforms turned up. They couldn’t get an answer either. Then one of them thought he smelled gas, which was odd as there isn’t any gas connected here…’

  ‘Probably the drainage,’ said Dalziel. A sensitive nose came in handy when you needed to get into premises without a warrant.

  ‘Whatever, it was as well they did. First thing they saw was Novello lying on the floor, bleeding from the head. They reacted by the book, one of them did what he could for her while the other called up an ambulance, told them exactly what the situation was so they came prepared. Their quick actions probably saved her life.’

  ‘Thank Christ we’ve got a few buggers we can trust,’ said Dalziel fervently.

  ‘Yes, that is a comfort, isn’t it?’ said Pascoe, looking at him pointedly.

  Fuck, thought Dalziel. He’s not going to make this easy.

  He made himself concentrate on the body.

  He said, ‘Any identification?’

  ‘Nothing found. He had no ID on him.’

  ‘Nothing at all? No wallet. Meaning mebbe it were stolen?’

  ‘Possibly. So, probably Watkins, but we’ll need to wait for positive identification.’

  ‘You’ll not be asking his mum,’ said Dalziel, forcing himself to look unblinkingly at the ruined face.

  ‘Dental records should do the trick if there’s enough of his teeth,’ said Pascoe. ‘Or fingerprints maybe.’

  Dalziel stooped lower.

  ‘Hey, look at this,’ he said. ‘I think the bugger’s wearing a rug.’

  ‘So it would seem,’ said Pascoe neutrally.

/>   The Fat Man delicately tweaked the black wig to reveal the true close-cropped blond hair beneath. Then he straightened up with a sigh.

  ‘Pete,’ he said, ‘are you going to tell me everything you know, or are you going to play clever buggers to see if I let slip summat I couldn’t know without knowing a lot more than I’m letting on to you?’

  ‘Don’t think I need to play clever buggers to reach that conclusion, sir,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Because of the address, you mean?’

  ‘That will do for starters. Why don’t we step outside and let these good people get on with their work?’

  Dalziel took a last look round the room. There were signs of a search, drawers open, papers scattered, a rack of CDs emptied on to the floor. Just inside the door a body-shaped outline had been marked on the carpet. He stepped carefully over it and went out. Behind him the CSIs who had been waiting patiently recommenced their painstaking examinations.

  Outside as they took off their cover-alls, they saw Ed Wield come out of the caravan. Pascoe made a beckoning sign, then opened the door of his car. Dalziel got the message. There’d be other officers in the caravan and the DCI wasn’t sure he’d want them to hear everything his boss was going to say.

  He sat in the back seat with Pascoe next to him. Wield got into the front passenger seat and twisted round. At least, thought Dalziel, they haven’t locked the doors.

  ‘So fill me in,’ said the DCI.

  Wonder what he’d do if I said, No, you go first? thought Dalziel. Arrest me? Wouldn’t put it past the bugger!

  He said, ‘That woman you saw me with at the Keldale, her name’s Gina Wolfe…’

  He told the story fairly straight, though he did omit his confusion about the day, and glossed over the fact that he and the woman had met in the cathedral.