Midnight Fugue

by Reginald Hill

  His involvement of Novello in the business, his subsequent phone contact with her, the whole sequence of events at the Keldale he described in exact detail. With the lass in hospital, glossing over things wasn’t an option here, not even if they made him look foolish or irresponsible. But he found himself over-stressing that when he passed on Watkins’s address to Novello, he’d told her to find out anything she could about the man but to avoid any direct contact.

  When he finished, Pascoe said peremptorily, ‘This photograph you mentioned, you’d better let me have it.’

  Have it, not see it.

  He took the envelope out of his inner pocket. Pascoe put his gloves back on before taking it.

  ‘Blond hair,’ said Pascoe. ‘But not wearing a wig. Though, if what you say about Gina Wolfe thinking she saw him watching her at the Keldale is correct, it wasn’t much of a disguise anyway. Of course we’re only guessing that Watkins is Wolfe.’

  ‘Same initials,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Andy, Wieldy’s got the same initials as Esther Williams but that doesn’t mean you want to see him in a figure-hugging swimsuit.’

  That was better. First name, a joke, altogether more relaxed. Or mebbe it was just part of the clever bugger’s technique.

  He said, ‘Any road, Mick Purdy thinks this is likely a fake.’

  ‘But you haven’t checked yet?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Not had time,’ said Dalziel defensively.

  ‘No, you have been rather busy. Eating and sleeping,’ murmured Pascoe.

  Before the Fat Man could decide how to respond to this piece of insolence, Pascoe handed the magazine page to the sergeant and said, ‘See if you can check this out, Wieldy. Who’ve we got at HQ?’

  ‘Seymour’s there.’

  ‘Just the man. Tell him to get himself a WPC then head off to the Keldale to bring Mrs Wolfe in. And we’ll need a team to look at her stuff. Car, clothes, the lot. What was she wearing when you last saw her, Andy?’

  ‘A sort of negligee,’ said Dalziel. ‘I explained…’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ said Pascoe. ‘Though her having a shower might be significant. So what was she wearing last time you saw her fully dressed?’

  Dalziel bit back an angry response. In Pascoe’s shoes, he’d be asking the same.

  He described Gina’s dress as best he could.

  ‘Right. Particular attention to that, Wieldy.’

  ‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘By the way, what are we going to do with the Duttas?’

  ‘They still here? I thought he was taking her back to his mother’s till SOCO got finished going over the corridor.’

  ‘She’s not keen to go. Don’t think she cares for her ma-in-law and she’s loving being at the centre of things here. I got her out of the caravan after taking their statement, but they’re still sitting round the back.’

  ‘I’ll have a word.’

  The sergeant got out of the car and headed for the caravan.

  Dalziel said, ‘Pete, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree about Gina Wolfe…’

  ‘It still needs barking up,’ said Pascoe. ‘Woman’s in the middle of getting her runaway husband declared officially dead so she can inherit his estate and remarry. She thinks she sees him in or around the same place as Shirley Novello spots a man who’s bugging your table. This man is later found murdered. He is wearing a wig, presumably to disguise his appearance. The woman had possibly overheard you passing on this man’s address to Novello. What would you do, Andy?’

  ‘I’d want to ask her what she’d been doing all afternoon,’ admitted Dalziel.

  ‘Of course you would. Right, let’s go and talk to the Duttas.’

  Inclusive, but not subordinate. Go with the flow, Andy, till you see where the flow is going, he told himself as he eased his bulk out of the car.

  Behind the caravan they found an Asian man standing alongside a woman seated on a fold-up canvas chair. The man, dressed in a Technicolor beach shirt and off-white Nadal-style shorts, looked rather anxious, but the woman, bright-eyed and beautiful in a shot-silk kaftan under which she was heavily pregnant, could have been relaxing in a holiday caravan park.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Dutta, this is my colleague Detective Superintendent Dalziel,’ said Pascoe. ‘Perhaps you could tell him what you told me earlier. Excuse me, Andy, I’ll be back in a minute.’

  The cunning bastard’s leaving me stuck with this lot while he gets on with God knows what! thought the Fat Man. But he wanted to hear it anyway.

  Mr Dutta began to speak rapidly.

  ‘Yes, on Sundays we go to have lunch with my mother. She lives in Bagley Street near the post office, and usually we would stay there all afternoon, sometimes into the evening, but Devi was not feeling so good when we arrived, so we hardly had any lunch at all and came home early only for all this to happen and I am very worried about Devi who should not be put under any strain because of her condition as you can see.’

  Devi, from Dalziel’s observation, did not look to be suffering from anything other than a keen desire to find out what was going on and a certain amount of excitement at being at the centre of it. His guess was she was milking her condition for all it was worth to minimize contact with her mother-in-law.

  He said, ‘Right, we’ll keep it short then. Tell me about Mr Watkins. Did you know him well?’

  ‘Not very well,’ began Ravi Dutta.

  ‘Not very well?’ his wife cut in. ‘I think I’ve seen him once! Number 39 was empty when we moved in six months ago; we looked at it because the rent was much cheaper than our flat, but that was because it is so small, and we needed the extra room with baby on the way, and Ravi has a good job so we can afford it even though his mammy did not want us to leave–we used to live with her, you see, and that was bad enough when there were just the two of us but soon as I knew I was carrying, I said to Ravi, this will not do at all…’

  Dalziel said, ‘So how long has number 39 been occupied?’

  ‘I am not precisely sure…’ began Ravi.

  ‘Four months ago I started hearing noises, television and radio, the walls are very thin, but not so loud I needed to complain,’ said Devi. ‘In any case, it was not every day; a lot of the time there did not seem to be anyone there, then I would hear the TV again, then another few days or a week and nothing. I thought he must travel a lot…’

  ‘So tell me what happened today.’

  Now Mr Dutta got a short innings. To save his wife the walk, he had gone to get the car, which he kept in a lock-up a minute’s walk away. He’d expected to find her waiting outside the Villas. When she wasn’t there, he had gone back inside to fetch her.

  ‘See anyone hanging around outside?’ asked Dalziel.

  ‘No, I do not think so. Though I think someone came into the building behind me.’

  Now Devi took over again.

  ‘There was noise from the TV next door, it was a movie, it sounded an exciting movie, lots of shouting and shooting and loud music, and I was thinking how nice it would be to sit and watch a movie this afternoon instead of making a visit, and then there was a noise like someone falling and a big bang and voices and suddenly the music and everything got much louder, and I said to Ravi, What is that? And he said, It is the television, come on we are late, and I said, It sounded different from the movie, but he was so anxious not to be late at his mammy’s that I did not have time to knock on the door and ask if everything was all right.’

  Lucky you, thought Dalziel.

  ‘But when we came back early because I was not feeling well, while Ravi was parking the car, I went up to the flat and the TV next door was still playing as loud as ever, so I knocked at the door but no one came, and when Ravi came up he knocked too, but still no one come, so I said, Now we must tell someone. Ravi did not want to cause a row but I said, No, this we cannot put up with, in any case maybe Mr Watkins is ill, so I went into our flat and rang 999. Soon your men came, they made us stay in our flat then they brought us out here. What is h
appening, Superintendent? Is Mr Watkins dead? Did he attack the lady they carried out? When shall we…’

  ‘Hold on, luv,’ said Dalziel. ‘What you’re saying is very important, I think mebbe we need to get you down to our headquarters so you can make a proper recorded statement. Excuse me.’

  He walked away and climbed into the caravan.

  Pascoe and Wield were standing together looking at a creased and soiled copy of MY Times open at the page containing the picture of the loyal citizens cheering the royal visitor.

  ‘By God, Wieldy that were quick,’ said Dalziel admiringly.

  ‘There’s some recycle dumpsters round the side of the building,’ said the sergeant. ‘I set a couple of lads to go through the paper skip. Take a look, sir.’

  He held it up alongside the page that Gina Wolfe had received through the post to show that, in the genuine copy, the face in the space occupied by Alex Wolfe was that of a balding middle-aged man.

  ‘Mick were right then,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Why would someone go to all the trouble of faking this?’ wondered Pascoe.

  ‘Not much trouble,’ said Wield dismissively. ‘Kid could do it with a decent scanner and printer.’

  ‘Purdy reckons someone might be wanting to have a pop at him,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Blowing a man’s face off and putting a cop in hospital’s a bit more than a pop,’ said Pascoe. ‘I think it’s time to have a long chat with Mrs Wolfe.’

  A phone rang. The constable who answered it called, ‘Sarge–Seymour for you.’

  ‘So what do you make of the Duttas, Andy?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘You got a problem. Keep them here and they’ll drive you mad and she’ll be into everything. Turn ’em loose and she’ll be on every channel, spilling everything she’s seen and heard. I’d get her taken down to HQ and let her talk her head off to some poor sod. Paddy Ireland’s a good listener. With a bit of luck, eventually she’ll go into labour, then we’ll be shut of her for a while.’

  ‘Andy, you’re all heart. But it’s not a bad idea. I’ll get Wieldy to sort it.’

  But the sergeant had other things on his mind as he rejoined them.

  ‘That were Seymour from the Keldale,’ he said. ‘Seems Mrs Wolfe checked out half an hour back.’

  Pascoe turned on Dalziel.

  ‘Well, Andy,’ he said. ‘How’s your instinct feeling now?’

  ‘Bearing up,’ said the Fat Man. ‘Likely it means nowt. Decided she wanted to get out of reach of everyone to consider her options.’

  It sounded so feeble he almost smiled apologetically as he said it.

  Pascoe said, ‘Wieldy, put out a call. You should be able to get the details of her car from the hotel…’

  ‘No need,’ said Wield. ‘Call’s out. I knew the details already. Super asked me to check them this morning.’

  ‘So he did. Lucky to have him around, aren’t we?’ said Pascoe savagely.

  But this chunk of heavy irony fell short of its mark.

  Dalziel had moved away and was talking urgently into his mobile.

  ‘Mick,’ he said. ‘When you get this, don’t care if you’re saving the fucking universe from aliens, ring me!’

  13.35–17.30

  Finding Dalziel still in her room when she returned had been a serious disappointment to Gina Wolfe.

  She hadn’t expected a senior police officer to drop everything and devote himself totally to her concerns, but the degree of interest shown by the Fat Man over lunch had given her hope that he’d do everything in his power to help. Lying in her bed, sleeping off an excess of booze, did not strike her as a very promising start.

  Her mood had not been improved by her afternoon. She’d gone out into the Keldale garden and rung Mick Purdy to give him a progress report. His phone was switched off so she left him a message. She sat for a couple of minutes longer, trying to work out if she was any further forward. Then her phone rang. It was Mick.

  He said, ‘Sorry. Still at my desk, tying up loose ends.’

  He sounded very tired, not surprising as she guessed he hadn’t had much sleep for the best part of two days. But he listened very carefully to her account of what had happened, constantly interrupting with questions, till in the end she got a strong impression that he had a better understanding of what was going on than she did. Maybe he was able to put himself in Dalziel’s place and create a whole picture out of disconnected fragments.

  In the end she got rather annoyed with his insistent questioning and said, ‘Look, Mick, I’m not in one of your interview rooms, OK? I’ve told you what happened and the net result, so far as I can see, is that I’ve got another boozed-up cop snoring in my bed!’

  ‘You’ve never complained before,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘No. Sorry. Listen, I’ll talk to Andy when he wakes up…’

  ‘To get a truly professional picture, you mean? The things I’ve missed, or maybe the things he’s not telling me?’

  ‘Hey, don’t be so sensitive. We’re cops, we speak the same language, that’s all. Listen, what are you doing now?’

  ‘I’m sitting in the hotel garden talking to you on my phone.’

  ‘That’s fine. Good idea to stay there, don’t go wandering off. Look, I need to finish stuff here, than I’ll get back to you…’

  ‘No need. I’m perfectly capable of managing myself. And you sound like you could do with getting your head down for a couple of hours at least.’

  ‘Couple of days would be better. Listen, keep in touch. And remember what I say. Until we’re sure what’s going off here, be careful. Don’t go wandering off by yourself.’

  Maybe she should have been touched by his concern, but all it did was irritate her.

  What right did he have to start dishing out instructions? So he was worried on her behalf. How much more worried would he have been if she’d told him about her several sightings of Alex, both the obviously fallacious ones this morning, and especially the much more powerful image she’d glimpsed just before Dalziel dropped the water jug.

  This was one of the reasons she’d come into the garden, to stare at the space the image had briefly occupied in hope of recreating it.

  It didn’t work. She looked at her watch. Two o’clock. The christening party looked as if it was breaking up. Dalziel would soon have had his half-hour, but she suspected he might need a little more. Dissatisfied with herself and also with the tone of her conversation with Mick she rose from the bench she was sitting on and headed for the car park. Aimlessly driving around wasn’t going to advance matters but at least it was doing something in a world where men expected her to do nothing without their imprimatur.

  It was of course totally non-productive. This time she didn’t even imagine she’d spotted Alex. So finally at half past three she’d returned to her room, not in the mood to make any allowances whatsoever if she found the fat slob still in her bed, which of course he was.

  The shower soothed her bodily and mentally. As she was towelling herself down she heard the phone ringing in the bedroom. Checking first that the Fat Man had definitely gone, she picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hello?’

  There was no reply, just a faint sound of breathing.

  She said, ‘Room 25, who is this, please?’

  Distantly a voice said, ‘Gina?’

  She froze.

  After a while the voice said, ‘Gina, you there?’

  She managed to relax her throat muscles sufficiently to say, ‘Alex, is that you?’

  Now it was the caller’s turn to pause. When he finally spoke, he said, ‘Yes, it’s me,’ but hesitantly, like a witness whose certainties begin to crumble in the witness box.

  Gina heard the doubt and forced herself to restrain the torrent of questions welling up in her head.

  She said, ‘Alex, it’s so good to hear your voice. Where are you? Can we meet?’

  Another long silence made her wonder if even that had been a question too far, then the
voice said, ‘Why are you here?’

  She said, ‘Someone sent me the photo of you in MY Life magazine.’

  ‘Photo? Which photo?’ He sounded puzzled, with a faint note of alarm.

  She said reassuringly, ‘The photo of you in the crowd during the royal visit last week. I thought it might be you who’d sent it. You were right at the front, I knew at once it was you. Like I did when I saw you today, in the garden at the Keldale.’

  Silence. Am I losing him? she wondered. Again.

  Then he spoke and for the first time the voice was that of the man she’d married: alert, positive, forceful.

  ‘Gina, what are you driving?’

  ‘A Nissan 350Z. Red.’

  ‘Give me your mobile number.’

  She obeyed.

  ‘Now get out of there. Check out and leave. Drive north. Leave your phone switched on. I’ll be in touch. Gina, don’t hang about!’

  The phone went dead.

  She sat on the bed because her legs had lost all strength. Despite everything she’d done since getting the photo, everything she’d said to Mick and to Dalziel, in her heart she’d refused to believe that Alex could really be alive. Even all those ‘sightings’ of him had been good. The ones she knew for certain were false reinforced the chances that the ones that were doubtful were false too.

  And now she’d heard his voice. Could that be a delusion too? She wanted it to be. Over the past seven years she’d built up a barrier against all the pain of that time of loss, she’d buried it as deep, so she thought, as the small white coffin. But now she knew–had known as soon as she saw the photo–that the barrier she’d built wasn’t the sturdy bulwark clad in tempered steel of adamantean proof she’d imagined, but a rice-paper wall a dead child could poke a finger through.

  She felt herself on the edge of the state of shock, but she must not succumb, not while there was still doubt. There were questions to ask. Questions were good. They forced the mind to work at seeking answers.

  First, was it really Alex?

  Every instinct told her it was. The voice was his.