The Yeare's Midnight

by Ed O'Connor

  ‘There we are, Violet, I know it’s your favourite.’ Rose placed the cake on the small table in front of her sister and cut off two generous slices.

  ‘You shouldn’t have, Rose.’ Violet felt guilty. ‘You must have wasted a week’s rations on me.’

  ‘Nonsense. I always have more than I need. And I’ve no one else to cook for.’ Rose winced as the words came out. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Vi, I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘It’s been nearly a year now,’ Violet said. They left it at that.

  ‘I see my little trick worked on Madam,’ said Rose, looking over at the sleeping baby.

  ‘She’s dead to the world.’

  ‘Oh! You found one of my Burlington Shakespeares.’ Rose nodded at the book in Violet’s hand.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Rose. Wherever did you get them all?’

  ‘There’s a shop, Forbes Books, in Charing Cross Road. They have a wonderful selection. Very reasonable, too.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘They bought all the stock of Burlington Publishing when the company went broke a year or two ago. You can pick up some real bargains. Nobody wants quality books any more. I think they make the room.’

  ‘They do, Rose. I’m frightfully jealous.’

  ‘Why don’t you pop in there before you head home? You can pick up a bus on Seven Sisters Road. It would only take half an hour.’

  ‘I might do that.’ Violet turned back to the book. ‘Hamlet is masterly but I think I prefer Macbeth to all the other tragedies. The language is so compelling.’ She read aloud from the text:

  ‘Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!”

  Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep

  Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care …’

  Rose finished the quotation from memory:

  ‘The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s balm

  Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course.’

  Violet closed the book softly and smiled at her sister. ‘Only two schoolteachers would meet for lunch and end up quoting Shakespeare at each other.’

  ‘At least we put the emphasis in the right places.’

  ‘You have to know your iambs from your trochees!’

  Rose laughed. ‘“Iambic pentameter is the building block of modern culture.” Sound familiar?’

  ‘Father.’ Violet smiled too. ‘I always thought that his monologues on classical literature were his revenge on us for being girls.’

  ‘You may well be right.’ Rose paused for a moment. ‘Are you all right, Vi? I hope you don’t mind me asking but sometimes I can’t sleep for worrying about you and the baby.’

  ‘We’re fine.’ Violet’s eyes misted slightly but she wouldn’t cry, she would be strong. As she had always been. ‘We have the house and money’s not really a problem.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘I know what you meant.’

  ‘Losing someone like that. It must be a terrible thing.’

  Violet swallowed hard. The tears were brimming up inside her. She fought them all back except one. She looked her sister directly in the eye.

  ‘Talking about it doesn’t help me, Rose. I have to get there by myself.’

  ‘I understand. But I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t care, or that you can’t speak to me if you have to.’ Rose floundered for the right words. ‘I just feel so helpless.’

  Elizabeth suddenly started crying.

  ‘She’s hungry,’ said Violet. ‘Could you give me the milk bottle?’

  ‘Shall I give her a drop more brandy?’ Rose asked.

  ‘No. But you can pour me one,’ Violet joked despite herself.

  ‘We’ll both have one.’ Rose hurried out to the kitchen to find some glasses.

  Violet picked up her baby and cradled it in her arms. Elizabeth had her eyes: round and blue. She had her father’s smile, though, when she chose to. Violet hushed the baby softly and stared out of the living-room window. It was a sunny afternoon, warm for February. Seven Sisters Road bustled with activity beyond the glass: men in uniforms, women with babies. Violet Frayne suddenly felt very small and very alone. ‘Pull yourself together,’ she remonstrated with herself as she started to cry again. ‘Must be strong. Have to be strong.’

  Rose walked them to the bus stop about an hour later. They kissed each other goodbye and promised to meet more regularly. Rose slipped Violet a small bottle of brandy as the bus trundled up. ‘For whoever needs it,’ she whispered. The conductor helped Violet to carry the pram onto the bus. She had originally planned to get off at Finsbury Park and then take the Tube to Liverpool Street via King’s Cross. However, her mind wandered back to the bookshop that Rose had mentioned. Violet felt like she deserved a treat and she loved books. She decided to stay on the bus all the way to the West End and then walk down Charing Cross Road.

  Central London was a friendly chaos. Violet Frayne pushed her pram against a seemingly endless tide of people. A group of American servicemen smirked at the shop girls in a Woolworth’s store. One pressed his lips tightly against the window. A couple of them caught Violet’s eye, then saw the pram and quickly looked away. She found their attention shaming.

  Strange faces and accents milled around her. There were policemen, boiler-suited ARP wardens, couples holding hands, and children. Lots of children, running and shouting. Most of the evacuated children had returned to the capital over the previous few months as the threat of air raids receded. Violet enjoyed the distractions but she didn’t like London any more: compared to Bolden it seemed dirty and noisy.

  Bumped and jostled, she turned along Charing Cross Road and made her way south towards Leicester Square. The crowd gradually thinned and she began to pass the various second-hand bookshops. Finally she found Forbes Books. It had a smart dark blue awning and a small table of books outside the window. on the pavement. She ran her hand across a few of them. Treasure Island, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy. None of them particularly inspired her and, in fact, many of them looked rather tatty. Perhaps exposure to the air had damaged them. She went inside.

  The shop bell tinkled as she pushed her pram through the narrow doorway. A young man stood behind the counter. He wore severe-looking half-glasses over a thin, angular face. He watched her struggle for a moment before his expression softened and he helped her guide the pram into the centre of the shop.

  ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘Plenty of room.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Violet, her gaze drifting around the shop. It was an impressive sight. Row upon row of new and used books, some beautifully presented as Rose’s had been, others worn and dusty with age. The room smelled of leather. Violet felt a sudden hunger for knowledge that had been absent from her for some time.

  ‘Was there anything in particular, madam?’ the assistant asked. ‘We have a number of books on special offer.’

  ‘My sister has some leather-bound editions of Shakespeare that she bought from you. I think they were published by Burlington’s.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The assistant guided her to the back of the shop. ‘We bought them as a lot. They’re rather well put together. Burlington produced a whole series like that. English classics, you know: Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy and so forth. Sadly, there’re only a few remaining. They’ve proved rather popular.’

  Violet looked at the shelf: there were six books bound in the same attractive black covers as Rose’s copy of Macbeth. She scanned the titles: Titus Andronicus and A Winter’s Tale. She didn’t like either of those. The Mayor of Casterbridge and Joseph Andrews. She already owned a copy of the former and despised the latter. The last two books were more promising: Great Expectations and Donne: Complete Works. She took them both off the shelf as the shop assistant padded back to his chair at the counter.

  Both were in excellent condition. She smelled the leather on them before opening each in turn and delicately turning the pages. Great Expectations was her favourite novel and Donne her favourite poet. She resolved to buy them both and handed over the s
even shillings and sixpence for each with a warm glow of satisfaction. The assistant wrapped them carefully in paper and wished her a good afternoon before returning to his own copy of An Ideal Husband.

  Violet tried to get her bearings as she stepped into the light. The Underground was probably the quickest way to get to Liverpool Street but negotiating the stairs with a pram would be exhausting. Better to get a bus. She turned right and headed up towards Tottenham Court Road where she hoped to find a bus stop. She eventually found the correct stop and stood at the end of a queue. Boredom quickly overcame her and she turned to look into a shop window: the shop sold antiques and Violet gazed at a beautiful bracket clock.

  It had been made by Frodsham of Gracechurch Street and was fixed in a highly polished mahogany case with a bright brass inlay and matching brass hands. It was in excellent condition. She guessed it had been made around 1820. It seemed a fair price. Had she been intending to buy it, Violet would have insisted on seeing the mechanism: the hands were frozen at half-past six.

  The explosion came from behind her and to her right. There was no warning. The noise was vast and sudden, a terrible dull metallic crash. There was a tremendous rush of air and as Violet half-turned in shock she was blown against the shop window, which imploded and shattered in her face. The air was thick with flying glass. Splinters spat at Violet Frayne’s legs and arms, and then, horribly, tore into an eye. She was aware of a terrible pain in the side of her face. Lying on a carpet of debris, she raised her hand to her face and felt a shard of glass jutting from her left eye. Her hands were warm with blood. She could hear people screaming, sirens beginning to wail. She reached out blindly for Elizabeth. The pram had been blown onto its side. Violet could hear Elizabeth crying.

  It took an hour for her to be moved. She was taken by stretcher-bearers to the Middlesex Hospital and placed under heavy sedation. Her left eye was removed the following morning after it became obvious that it could not be saved. Two days later, Violet was moved to Moorfields Eye Hospital on the City Road. Here, specialist eye doctors cleaned her wounded socket and tidied up the emergency operation that had been performed at the Middlesex.

  She had lost a lot of blood and was exhausted and traumatized. Violet lay for a week, half-asleep and dreaming morphine dreams. She was vaguely aware of Rose at her bedside, of her sister crying, of someone saying that Elizabeth was fine. Rose talked about books and read her poems: Donne and Shakespeare’s sonnets. She talked about the V-2 attack. That people had been killed. That Violet was fortunate to be alive. Clarity gradually returned to her mind and Violet came to realize that she had been desecrated.

  53

  Alison Dexter drove to New Bolden Infirmary in a state of shock. Chief Superintendent Chalmers had called her to his office at 7.30 a.m. Accompanied by a senior officer from Huntingdon whom Dexter didn’t recognize and Chalmers didn’t identify, the chief superintendent told her that Inspector Underwood was in hospital recovering from a heart attack. He also told her that there were ‘extenuating circumstances’ and that, with immediate effect, Underwood would no longer be heading the investigation into the New Bolden killings. She would be in temporary charge until a new detective inspector from the AMIP office at Huntingdon could be brought in.

  Dexter eventually found a parking space in the hospital car park and, on entering the main building, headed for Ward S6, the cardiac recovery ward. The lift was hot and crowded: Dexter felt a snake of sweat slither down her back. At reception on the sixth floor, a staff nurse directed her along a noisy corridor to a bay at the far end. John Underwood was asleep, surrounded by machines that monitored his pulse and blood pressure. Dexter checked the digital read-outs of the machines: pulse 68 b.p.m., blood pressure 180 over 90. That seemed high. She walked over to the bed and sat down. Underwood stirred, his head moved slightly and he half-opened his eyes.

  ‘Dex.’ It was no more than a croak, dry and rasping.

  ‘Look at you, guv.’ Dexter tried to be light-hearted. ‘A right two and eight.’

  ‘Been better.’ His eyes closed again as exhaustion clamped them shut.

  ‘You’ve been stupid,’ she corrected him. ‘You’ve been ill for weeks. It’s too much for …’

  ‘… For someone my age?’ He coughed and pain seared at him. His heart rate jumped to 82 b.p.m. Dexter shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Shall I get a nurse?’ she asked.

  ‘No … no, I’m all right.’ Images rolled across his mind like clouds: the sea, the wind rattling against windows, Julia cowering away from him in terror, Paul Heyer trussed like a turkey. He forced his eyes open and saw Dexter as the clouds began to dissipate. ‘Dex … listen to me.’ He gulped phlegm from his throat and the effort made him wheeze. ‘I think you’re in danger I …’ He gasped for air at the edge of unconsciousness. ‘He’s not performing … not performing. That isn’t the point.’ His eyes closed.

  A staff nurse walked up and checked Underwood’s machines. ‘He’s very tired,’ she told Dexter with a faint night-shift smile. ‘Don’t be long.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Dexter replied as the nurse walked away.

  Underwood drifted back from a fragment of a dream about drowning. The drugs had made him extremely drowsy, as if his limbs were filled with water. He focused on Dexter’s sparkling green eyes as they fizzed over his face: he could take them and put them in Julia’s head to make her pretty again.

  ‘You said he’s not performing, sir, I don’t understand what you mean.’ Her voice snapped him back: her accent was as abrasive as her personality. He summoned the strength to answer her: the will.

  ‘The audience … he’s not performing … he’s educating, using Stussman.’ He was nauseous now, the room was starting to spin gently away from him. Got to concentrate. ‘You found him … he’ll come for you.’

  ‘Why didn’t he kill me when he had me, then? Why let me go?’

  ‘He wanted you to see the Drury woman … to understand … to be improved by it … he killed the couple that found him … why not you – unless he wanted you for something else?’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ Dexter assured him. She wasn’t convinced, besides she had green eyes, not blue. She had been told once that they were her best feature.

  Only once.

  ‘What about that Heyer bloke that you went to see? You want me to rattle his cage some more?’ she asked.

  A shadow flitted across Underwood’s face. ‘Waste of time. Leave him alone.’ His eyes flickered and closed. Dexter wondered if he would live. She hoped so.

  Underwood was speaking again: much softer this time, as if he was muttering something in his sleep. His words ebbed away as unconsciousness overtook him. Dexter’s eyes moved instinctively towards the computer screen next to the bed: 65 b.p.m., 180 over 90. He was OK. Underwood breathed heavily in front of her. He was sleeping. Dexter watched him for a second and then left without looking back.

  Dexter’s head ached inside and out as she drove back to New Bolden police station. The morning traffic was thick and the journey was an irritation. Was she in danger? She touched the laceration on the side of her head where the killer had struck her. If he had wanted to kill her he could have done so already. He could even have taken her with him, she mused. If only she could remember his face. He was tall certainly, slim, white. What else? She racked her brain for something. What else did they know? He was clever.

  ‘Fucking pathetic.’ Dexter slammed her hands against the steering column and cursed the limits of her own imagination. Four people dead and all she could manage was ‘clever’. The traffic began to clear ahead of her and she accelerated hard to vent her frustration. The thing that worried her most now was that she was in charge of the investigation – albeit temporarily. How would she feel if someone else was murdered now? Responsibility burned like the headlights of an onrushing truck.

  She drove into the station car park and glided smoothly to a halt. Rain began to spatter on her windscreen. She thought of Elizabeth Drury. How had the killer f
ound her? Dexter had located Drury from a two-year-old newspaper article. Surely the killer hadn’t waited two years to kill her. The thought troubled her as she climbed the stairs to the crime room. Both victims had been mentioned in newspaper articles. That was the only link between them, apart from their names. It had to mean something. Did the killer have access to some database like the one at County Police Headquarters in Huntingdon that could search thousands of old newspapers for specific names? They were expensive systems. Dexter knew some banks and law firms had them. Where else?

  Harrison was waiting for her. He looked tired. ‘We’re getting Inspector Tarrant from AMIP tomorrow. They’re bringing him back from holiday.’ Dexter gently closed the door to Underwood’s office and walked through to the Incident Room. ‘What’s up with Underwood?’ Harrison continued. ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘Don’t know. He doesn’t look too clever.’ Dexter paused in front of the pictures of Harrington and Drury on the board. Educating us. Why is he educating us?

  ‘Word is,’ Harrison whispered in Dexter’s ear, ‘he went cuckoo last night. Roughed up his wife and beat up her boyfriend.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Dexter snorted. ‘He’s had a heart attack.’

  ‘I’m just saying.’ Harrison guided her into a quiet corner of the room. ‘We heard a rumour out of Norwich CID. Jensen knows a DC there.’

  ‘I’ll bet she does,’ Dexter replied acidly.

  ‘He told her that our man Underwood was arrested, picked up from some arse-end-of-nowhere cottage and taken to hospital. His wife gave a statement saying that Underwood had broken in, tied up her boyfriend, smacked him on the head and dumped him on top of some cliff.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘I’m being serious. Guess who the boyfriend is?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’