Midnight Fugue

by Reginald Hill

  When the flow turns into a tsunami, you’ve no choice but to go with it.

  ‘Wieldy, you get that?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Think they likely got it in Shetland,’ said Wield.

  The car was moving already as Pascoe scrambled in.

  ‘Andy, where are we going?’ he gasped.

  ‘The sort of nice quiet spot a pair of psychos might take a woman to ask her some personal questions,’ said Dalziel, leaning his considerable weight on the accelerator. In a less solid car, his foot might well have gone through the floor and hit the road.

  ‘We can’t know for sure the Delays have got her, and even if they have, they’re certainly not going to hang around here,’ protested Pascoe.

  ‘Wrong,’ said Dalziel. ‘They’ll be in a hurry, no time for subtlety. It’ll be water-boarding from the start, or if they’re short of water, they’ll slap her around a bit to show they’re serious, then stick a gun up her jaxy and start counting down from ten.’

  Pascoe still looked dubious.

  ‘You don’t even know what direction they went in,’ he said.

  ‘They didn’t drive back, else we’d have seen them. No, this is where they’ll be, mark my words.’

  He spoke with all the oracular authority of his prime, that long period during which his judgments, though often cloudily mysterious, almost inevitably turned out to be correct, a period that some posited had come to an end when he walked with godlike certainty straight into the blast of a terrorist explosion.

  Pascoe felt the man’s old power, but he also recalled the moment not long before when his legs had given way on hearing the news of Novello’s recovery. That burden of responsibility had clearly weighed heavy. Was he now feeling the same sense of having let the Wolfe woman down? And was it himself he was trying to reassure by this assertion of confidence in what at best had to be a fairly wild guess?

  The next few minutes would tell.

  And which would be worse? Dalziel proved wrong and the quarry empty?

  Or Dalziel proved right and the two unarmed policemen confronted by a killer with a shotgun?

  Though perhaps, thought Pascoe with a kind of hysterical merriment as they approached the T-junction with no perceptible diminution of speed, perhaps the fat bastard’s driving will kill us both first!

  18.45–18.52

  I’m not thinking straight, thought Fleur Delay. Too much pressure, too many pills.

  The laptop had shown the Nissan standing still on an unclassified road.

  A rendezvous, she’d decided. If they got there in time, they’d find the Wolfes sitting together in the car, talking. Or maybe in his car. When they separated, follow him and grab him. She didn’t want any truck with the woman. Disappearing a guy who has already disappeared was no problem. Disappearing the blonde was going to raise complications.

  Then they’d driven past the Lost Traveller over the brow of the hill, and a couple of hundred yards ahead of them there she was, just reaching her car.

  Fleur had worked things out instantly.

  She’d met Wolfe at the pub. They’d talked and separated. She’d walked back to her car, he’d driven off in his. They’d probably crossed with him as they drove towards the pub. She tried to remember the cars they’d passed after they left the arterial. There’d been two, maybe three. A year ago she’d have remembered details, but not today.

  Anyway, it was too late and she had to decide what to do next.

  Following the blonde was an option, but not an attractive one. If she’d just been talking to Wolfe, she was hardly likely to lead them back to him now.

  As she braked alongside the Nissan she said to Vince, ‘We take her.’

  There had seemed no choice.

  But now, looking at the terrified woman as she lay on the ground before them, Fleur knew she’d somehow reached a very wrong place.

  Soon as Vince had shot the young journalist and laid out the policewoman, she should have followed her instinct and got out, to hell with The Man!

  Her whole strategy, not just on this assignment but ever since the day she got the fatal diagnosis, had been based on a false premise.

  Head for Spain, get Vince settled there before she died, and he’d be safe from The Man.

  Maybe.

  But there was nowhere in the world she could put Vince where he’d be safe from himself.

  She looked at him now, standing astride the blonde, his sawn-off held in one hand, waiting for his sister’s instructions.

  She’d driven a couple of miles from where they’d snatched Gina Wolfe, looking for somewhere quiet and secluded to stop. At the T-junction she’d turned left. Right would take them south. Back towards suburban spillage from the city. North would be lonelier, emptier.

  She was right. Half a mile on, she’d spotted a small quarry, not much more than a slice dug out of a hillside by some farmer looking for hard-core, its upper edge visible from the road but with enough of a scattering of scrubby trees at the lower level to hide a car from passing eyes. In the dusky light, it was a desolate spot, fit for foul deeds.

  Fleur stooped over the blonde and looked into the woman’s fear-dilated pupils.

  ‘All we want to know is where we’ll find him,’ she said. ‘Tell us that and…’

  She paused…. and we’ll take you back to your car and let you go… No, this was a bright woman, she wasn’t going to believe that.

  ‘…and no harm will come to you, I promise.’

  Pretty feeble, but it might provide enough straw for a terrified woman to grasp at.

  The dark blue eyes moved from hers to the shotgun barrel and back again.

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ gasped Gina. ‘Yes, he rang me, or someone saying it was him, and he told me where to go, but when I got here, nothing happened. So after a while I walked up to the pub just on the off-chance he might be there, but he wasn’t, so I went back to the car…’

  ‘Vince,’ said Fleur.

  Her brother raised his right foot and stamped down hard on the blonde’s left hand.

  She screamed in pain.

  ‘Look,’ said Fleur, ‘the more you make us hurt you, the harder it’s going to be to let you go. I mean, once you can’t move around by yourself and drive your car, what the hell are we going to do with you? All I want is to talk with Wolfe, find out what his plans are. If he’s going to keep his head down and you’re going to keep your mouth shut, then we’re sorted.’

  There were tears in the blue eyes now, and Gina Wolfe’s voice trembled, but her words showed a mind still holding itself together.

  ‘That’s just what he wants…no fuss…me too…I just want things to carry on…no waves…I’ll go back to London and that’ll be an end to it…’

  Fleur almost believed her, but she knew she’d never sell that to Goldie. He wanted closure, and closure did not mean leaving Wolfe alive to tell the tale.

  Or this woman either.

  There. She’d reached a decision that had been inevitable the moment they’d grabbed her.

  She said, ‘Vince.’

  ‘What this time?’ said her brother, grinning. ‘Do her kneecap? Or mebbe…’

  He reached down and flicked her skirt up around her waist with the gun barrel, revealing skimpy panties with a lace edging.

  ‘None of that, Vince!’ snarled Fleur, pulling the skirt back down.

  For a moment this display of female sympathy brought a flicker of hope to Gina, but it was snuffed out immediately as Fleur Delay continued, ‘We’ll do her kneecaps if we have to, but let’s give her a foretaste.’

  She kicked her square-toed shoe violently against the woman’s left knee.

  Her scream echoed around the little quarry.

  ‘Bad?’ said Fleur. ‘Imagine what it’s going to feel like when he blows it to pieces. Come on, dearie. What do you owe that lousy bastard anyway? He dumped you, he walked away, the only reason you got anywhere near him was us, and you want him dead so’s you can marry your other copper. Don’t be
a stupid bitch all your life. Talk!’

  She drew back her foot in preparation for another kick.

  ‘Please, no!’ cried Gina, pushing herself into a sitting position. Her gaze flickered desperately around the quarry as if in search of some impossible escape route, then her eyes focused on her captors.

  ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ she gabbled. ‘I’ll do anything you want…anything!’

  She was looking up at Vince now. Her hands went down to her skirt and she dragged it even higher than he’d pushed it with the gun barrel. Then she slipped her thumbs inside the waist of her panties and began to ease them down. As her bush started to come into view, as vigorous and blonde as the hair on her head, a broad grin stretched Vince’s lips.

  What the hell’s she doing this for? Fleur asked herself. Not only was it out of character, but even if she let Vince fuck her, she must know that, once he was done, the questioning was going to resume. So why…?

  The answer was obvious. So obvious that on top form she’d have got there seconds earlier.

  Distraction!

  She turned in time to see a figure coming towards them at a dead run. In his hand was a jagged stone.

  She had time to scream, ‘Vince!’ before the man’s shoulder hit her and flung her aside. Vince turned, the shotgun came up, Alex Wolfe swung his right arm and brought the stone crashing against the side of her brother’s head.

  His legs folded, his arms flung wide, the gun sailed through the air, he collapsed on to his knees then fell slowly forward till his head rested against the ground in a grotesque parody of a Muslim at prayer.

  Wolfe dropped the stone and knelt beside Gina.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  She fought to control the sobs that were suddenly fountaining up through her chest and gasped, ‘Fine…oh Christ…I thought I was going to die…’

  The sobs won and she leaned against him, crying uncontrollably.

  He said, ‘It’s OK, I’m here, it’s OK. I saw them as I drove away. I thought, I know those faces…I couldn’t be sure, but I turned round anyway…things are going to be fine…you’re safe now…’

  As he threw words at her to calm her down, his thoughts were racing in furious counterpoint. Seven years ago his life had disintegrated and he had fled into a saving darkness. He had emerged to find that, somehow, with only the most shadowy awareness of how it had happened, he had created a new life, patterned on the old, but with promise of greater durability.

  He had checked out that old life and, though he did not doubt that his actions had left scars, he had been able to convince himself that he would do more damage by re-entering it than by staying out of it.

  And then by one act of stupidity, by a joy-fuelled desire to give thanks, to pour a libation, he had put everything at risk. In that first life, the gods had destroyed him. In this second life, he had come close to destroying himself.

  But it was still possible to restore the balance. Gidman was a pragmatist. Once he understood there was more danger in pursuing his prey than leaving it alone, he would call off his hunters. All he had to do was get that message to him, and he knew just the man to act as messenger. But first of all he had to make sure the Delays got the message too, and with Vince still in his devout oriental position, he’d made a pretty good start with that.

  Then Gina screamed, ‘Alex!’ and he shifted his gaze and his heartbeat stuttered in fear as he found himself looking at a creature like an escapee from Dr Who with a high polished skull and black staring eyes in a face perfectly white except for the twin rivulets of red streaming from its nostrils.

  It took a moment to recognize this as the woman he’d bowled over, dislodging her wig; and another to register that she was holding her brother’s shotgun.

  He stood up and stepped away from Gina, partly to keep her out of the firing line, and partly to offer a moving target, though at this range and with this weapon, it wasn’t going to be easy to miss.

  He said, ‘Fleur, Miss Delay, there’s no need for this. Ring Goldie, it’s all being taken care of…’ but even as he spoke he knew that yet again he’d let the chance of happiness slip through his fingers and not all the honeyed songs of Orpheus would be enough to soothe this wild beast.

  18.57–19.22

  Hendrix was singing ‘Castles Made of Sand’, but at the sight of this new visitor, Goldie Gidman did not hesitate to switch him off.

  ‘Mick! Good to see you. It’s been a long time. You’re looking well. Sit down, have a cigar.’

  ‘No thanks, Goldie. Gave up a long time ago.’

  Purdy looked at the man seated in a deep leather swivel chair set in front of the huge TV screen. He hadn’t seen him in the flesh for some time. Not a lot had changed. A few more pounds on his belly, a crisping of frost on his tight-curled hair, but he still created the same impression of controlled menace.

  ‘Fell for the health propaganda, huh?’ said Gidman with a laugh. ‘Flo’s got me dieting, but I won’t give up my smokes. It’s all bull, Mick. You ever notice it’s always the good shit that’s bad for you? Them bible-punchers got this government by the short and curlies. Iran thinks it’s a religious state, they should come here!’

  ‘That going to figure in the next Tory manifesto, Goldie?’

  Gidman laughed again and said, ‘Now how’d I know about that? Politics I leave to the boy. Sorry he couldn’t be around to make your better acquaintance, Mick. Heard you got off on the wrong foot at that committee thing. He’s had to take off with Flo down to Broadstairs. Her sister’s taken bad. Flo’s real worried. Me, I hope the cow snuffs it. Never did take to Flo marrying a nigger. Came round a bit when I got rich and respectable, but I got a long memory.’

  ‘Everyone’s got long memories since they invented computers, Goldie. I can remember when you had some very bad habits. I shouldn’t like to think you’re falling back into them.’

  ‘Sure you won’t have a cigar? You won’t mind if I do? This is the only room in the house Flo let’s me smoke in, can you believe that? She got smoke alarms fitted everywhere else so’s the fire brigade will come running the minute I light up. Even got a specially sensitive one over our bed in case I should even dream of daring to smoke in there when she ain’t around.’

  He carefully snipped off the end of a cigar and went on, ‘But I know how to turn it off, Mick. That’s the secret to enjoying life, Not having no problems, nobody can manage that; but knowing how to turn them off, that’s the trick. Wouldn’t you agree, Mick?’

  He put the cigar in his mouth. Slingsby, who’d followed Purdy into the room and taken up his stance by the door, came forward with a book of matches, struck one and moved it gently under the cigar’s end.

  ‘Never use a lighter, Mick,’ said Gidman between puffs. ‘You want a gentle flame for fine tobacco. Too sharp a flame and you start a bad reaction. Just enough and you get that slow, relaxing burn. There we go. Thank you, Sling.’

  ’I’m here to talk about Gina,’ said Purdy.

  ‘Gina? We’re talking Lollobrigida here?’

  ‘Don’t fuck about, Goldie. What the hell are you playing at?’

  Gidman drew on his cigar and let out a long sigh of smoky satisfaction.

  ‘Not sure what you’re getting at, Mick.’

  ‘I’m getting at you faking a photo to get Gina shooting off to Yorkshire looking for her missing husband. And don’t give me that old-fashioned bewildered look. I know your pet pair of psychos are up there looking too. And I know they’ve managed to kill one guy and put a female cop in hospital.’

  ‘That’s a lot of interesting stuff you know, Mick,’ said Gidman. ‘Let’s suppose just for the sake of argument that I did send Fleur and that creepy brother of hers to have a little chat with DI Wolfe, if that’s where he turns out to be. What’s your problem? You got twice as many reasons as me for not wanting Wolfe to come back from the dead.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  Another long puff. The atmosphere in
the room was getting a bluey-grey tinge.

  ‘Well,’ said Goldie, ‘we both might have reasons to be a tad worried in case he started saying bad things about us. But at least I ain’t fucking his wife.’

  Purdy took a step towards the man in the chair. He didn’t hear Slingsby move but suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘That’s right, Sling, get Mick a chair. I think he’s a bit overwrought, he needs to sit down.’

  A chair was pushed against the back of his legs and he sank into it.

  He breathed in deeply, grimaced at the taste of the smoke, and said in a low hard voice, ‘Goldie, what you do about Alex is your own affair, but I don’t want that pair anywhere near Gina. What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, doing this without reference to me?’

  ‘First off, didn’t realize you were so serious about the woman. Thought you were just pleasuring yourself there till something better came along. I recall way back when Wolfe went missing, it was you told us all everything you knew about him that might help put us on his trail. Including that stuff he told you when you were pissed one night about the games him and whatser-name, Gina, liked to play. That came in very useful getting her up there to winkle him out. She still like to play that plucky little trooper game, Mick?’

  Purdy began to rise, but his buttocks hadn’t got more than a couple of inches off the chair before he felt Sling’s hand on his shoulder once more, this time accompanied by the touch of cold sharp steel at his jugular.

  ‘Take it easy, Mick,’ said Gidman. ‘Don’t mean to offend you. I consider you a friend. Always have done. That’s why I made no fuss when you made it clear way back we were done, you’d chosen the path of righteousness and wanted to bury the past. I felt the same, Mick. That’s why I respected your choice. You never had to look over your shoulder and see me there, right?’

  ‘You were there when they set up Macavity,’ said Purdy accusingly.

  ‘Come on, Mick. I knew that wasn’t the kind of operation you were into. But no harm in ringing up an old friend and asking him if he could think of anyone might be interested in keeping me up to date with what was going on. And you gave me DI Wolfe. No pressure. You just gave him up.’