His gaze was open, almost amused.
She was staring at him, white-faced. ‘Tom… When did you see this?’
‘It was when Uncle Murdo was still alive. It was the day before it all went wrong.’
‘The day before he died?’ She clapped one hand to her lips. ‘Tom – were you there?’ Her voice was hushed, appalled.
He studied her. ‘I didn’t tell them, Auntie Ginny. Was that the right thing to do?’
She leaned back against her chair. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it was the right thing to do.’ She sipped at her tea. Chad noticed the tremor in her hands as she placed the mug down on the table.
‘Virginia… surely, evidence like that…?’
She met his eyes. ‘You don’t understand. What will they do with information like that? They’ll say it puts Tom here at the scene of the crime. It’s bad enough these images they claim they have of him being there when Moffatt died - ’
‘But I was, Aunty, I was - ’
‘Yes, dear, I know.’
‘That doesn’t mean I killed him, does it?’
She reached across and patted his hand. ‘No. It doesn’t mean you killed him.’
He gave a long sigh. Then he got up and left the room.
She turned to Chad. ‘You must understand. I cannot risk them putting anything on to him.’ She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. ‘I am so tired,’ she said.
From upstairs came a bang, a crash.
She opened her eyes. ‘It’s just Tom,’ she said. ‘He’ll be looking for something in the old cupboard.’ She gave a weary smile. ‘You see, I have had to fight for everything. Everything,’ she repeated. ‘My marriage. My motherhood. And before that. Even this…’ She flicked a hand towards the space around them. ‘I ran away from home with nothing. I took every job I could find. I ended up as a secretary at the university here, that’s when I met Murdo…’ Her eyes clouded. ‘I’ve had to fight for all of it. And I’ve still ended up with nothing…’
Another series of thumping noises, and Tobias reappeared. He was carrying a box, an old, square mahogany box. He settled on the sofa, the box on his knee, and opened it. He began to arrange the things within it.
Another thin smile. ‘Not nothing.’ She turned to Chad. ‘But now you understand why I’ll fight for him.’
He nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘The Green Lion and the Red - ’ Tobias waved a small figure. ‘I found them, didn’t I, Auntie? But now I’ve only got the red one.’ He replaced it in the box. ‘And here’s the fifth essence - ’ He waved a bottle at Chad. ‘It’s my collection. I don’t show everyone. Lisa knows about it. When I’ve got everything, then I’ll put it all together like in the book. I’ve got the lead, but I still need some mercury, it’s difficult because it’s a liquid you see, even though it’s a metal. And a prism. And some hydrogen, I don’t know where I’ll get that – Oh.’ He was staring into the box. ‘Pictures.’ He produced two photographs.
‘Where did you get those, Tom?’ She reached out a hand.
‘You don’t mind, do you Auntie?’
She shook her head. She stared at the images, then passed them to Chad.
He saw a photograph of a boy, blond-curled, blue eyes, a wide, gap-toothed smile.
‘Jacob,’ she said.
The other was a park of some kind, a garden, filled with people – no, of course, a graveyard, a funeral, a small white coffin, a single arrangement of roses.
He studied it for a long minute, then handed it back to her.
She gazed at the image of the boy. She went over to the fireplace and placed it carefully on the mantelpiece, next to a dusty old vase and a plastic bowl filled with old buttons.
Tobias had taken some pages out of his box and was furiously writing on them.
‘Time,’ he said. ‘If things can be and not be, maybe what it is, is that it’s time that’s different. Like anti-matter and matter, right?’ He looked up at Chad. ‘It’s like we’re going backwards and forwards, all the time, between matter and anti-matter, but when we look we think we’re seeing just matter. Because it’s all so fast.’
Chad smiled at him. ‘I’m trying to write something about that too. For a sermon.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s about the question of truth, of reality. How human beings always need evidence for things, which is why we’ve made the advances we’ve made, in science, for example, because we’re good at asking questions and finding the evidence for the answers. But then you look at the wider question, about why, why we’re here, is there a reason for it, is it just random, and our tendency to look for evidence doesn’t really help us.’
Tobias was nodding. ‘Yes,’ he said. He bent to his paper and began to write again. ‘Evidence,’ he said.
Virginia watched Tobias. She turned to Chad. ‘What does your wife think?’
‘Of what?’ He looked at her blankly.
‘Of your sermon, of course.’
‘Oh. I don’t know.’
They sat in silence, with only the loud scratch of Tobias’s pencil. Then Tobias got up. ‘Thirsty,’ he said. ‘What am I allowed?’
‘Whatever you like, dear.’
He placed his box carefully on his chair, and headed out to the kitchen.
Chad stared at the floor. My wife, he thought. It’s so long since I asked her anything at all.
‘What are you thinking?’ Virginia broke the silence.
He didn’t know what to say. The true answer would have been, Liam Phelps, but he didn’t want to say that.
‘Loss,’ she said. ‘That seems to be why I’ve been put on this earth. To have everything taken away from me.’ Her voice cracked with feeling. She stared straight ahead, her lips working.
He reached across and placed his hand on her arm. She touched his hand with her own.
‘I don’t know how to help you,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘It’s enough you’re here,’ she said. ‘Though I don’t suppose I should keep you here much longer. You must be expected back home.’
Home.
He looked at the low damp walls and dusty unused stove. It felt warmer than the vicarage.
‘I can stay for a while,’ he said.
It was Helen who let herself into the empty house, surprised by the darkness. She switched on lights, called her husband’s name, hearing nothing in reply.
She went up to the bedroom, reached for the lamp beside the bed, lay down on the covers.
I wonder where he is.
Liam had brought her home. A taxi from the hotel to the lab, to get his car, and then he’d driven as far as the end of the lane and stopped. A silent agreement had passed between them, that they didn’t want the car to be seen. And now he’d gone.
A tumble of memories. His soft kisses, his taut muscularity. A tangle of sheets, white in the slash of street light from the window. Breathlessness, wetness, pleasure, oh God such pleasure…
She thought, with a tightening sensation that was, perhaps, guilt, that must never happen again.
She thought, with a tightening sensation that was definitely desire, I can’t wait to see him again.
And then she thought, I wonder where Chad is.
She had been silent on the drive home, imagining how it would be, facing her husband, explaining her lateness, she’d worked it all out, ‘oh, I had to drive one of the ballet kids home, these negligent parents, and of course it’s always the wealthy ones, one of those great big townhouses on the other side of the hill…’
And now here she was in an empty house. No need to explain. No need to account for herself at all.
She got up from the bed and went to have a shower.
When Chad did appear, an hour or so later, Helen was standing at the stove with a sizzling pan in front of her.
‘Omelette?’ she said. ‘You’re just in time.’
The kitchen was brightly lit and warm. He smiled, went to her, wrapped his arms around her waist. ‘Ye
s please,’ he said.
Her face was against his chest. ‘Where have you been?’ she said, into his shirt.
‘I was with Virginia. I told you I was going there…’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
He let go of her, and she went back to the frying pan. She heard the pop of a cork from a wine bottle, the distant chiming of the clock in the living room. Calm, quiet sounds, the bubbling of the eggs in the pan in front of her.
‘Tobias saw something odd, the night that Murdo died. One man, carrying another up Hank’s Tower.’
‘Oh.’ She looked up from her cooking. ‘How extraordinary.’
‘She’s adamant that the police shouldn’t know.’
‘Oh,’ she said again. She reached for the cheese grater.
‘She’s exhausted, poor woman. I don’t really know what to do. I don’t want to bring Tobias even further into the frame. It was all tied up with tales of ghosts, too.’
She watched him pour two glasses of wine. The kitchen was bright and light and warm, and already, it seemed to her, Liam had become something faded and thin, drifting away beyond the steamed-up windows, into the night.
She lifted the pan from the heat and placed it on the table mat. ‘Let’s eat,’ she said.
Liam unlocked the door to his empty flat. He felt light-hearted, awash with delight. ‘Like a man,’ he said to himself, wondering at the same time whether that is, truly, what it is to be a man, thinking of her body, her breasts, the deep, urgent possession of her. He recognizes this lightness of spirit as familiar, and temporary, and destined to fade.
But while the feeling lasts, he pours himself a whisky, opens kitchen cupboards in search of food, finds some spaghetti, boils the kettle, even humming to himself, humming, me, he thinks, I never hum, enjoy it while it lasts, he thinks, pouring water into the saucepan, searching for a jar of sauce, and so fails to see the three missed calls from Neil on his mobile.
It’s only much much later, when he’s back at his computer, poring over the results from the lab, wondering about these results, still so inexplicable, that he glances at his phone, and thinks, well I’ll see him in the morning.
“My husband believes that all will be well. He does not see the chaos that surrounds us, the whirls and the eddies, the warning signs of the flood that is readying to rush in over our heads. For me, it is too late. I do not care. I have no reason to live or die. I follow my husband, because what God has joined together, no man must put asunder.”
Helen held the pages in her hand.
There was a ticking of central heating. Chad had gone to bed some time ago.
They’d eaten, exchanging bits of conversation, the budget figures for the Parish Council, the changes to the syllabus from the Associated Board.
It had been normal life, she thought.
And yet, so far from normal.
She’d come in here to delay the moment of sliding into bed next to him.
Let no man put asunder.
Had she imagined Chad’s distance, some hesitation as he bent and kissed the top of her head, ‘don’t stay up too late, will you?’
She leaned back among the cushions.
She thought about the warnings of the flood to come, the chaos that would ‘rush in over our heads…’
This is what I’ve brought about. This loneliness. I can’t ask him what he’s thinking. I can’t hold him to account, even though he came back late and distracted, and he’d been at Virginia’s all that time…
She looked down at the pages in her hand. Had they stayed together, this troubled couple? And what of these Van Mielens that link them to Elizabeth at the lab, that are connected to that poor injured girl?
Helen got up, smoothed the sofa, tidied the cushions. Something is still buried, she thought. The warnings are still there, whirling and eddying, ready to rush in as a flood over our heads.
She walked up the stairs in stockinged feet. A few minutes later she crept into bed beside her sleeping husband.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘What did you tell them?’ Clem Voake turned to face his daughter, stooping against the low caravan ceiling.
‘I said, Dad. I didn’t tell them nothing.’
Tazer sat by Lisa’s feet, her eyes fixed on Clem.
‘Why did you go running to them, then?’
‘I didn’t go to the feds. I told you.’
Clem slumped onto a seat. Tazer winced as he moved.
‘I’ve got a plan, girl. You know I have. I ain’t going to let you down.’ He reached for a can of beer and snapped it open.
‘Yes, Dad. I know.’ She sat down, wearily.
‘It’s nearly all in place now. They can try and take it away from me, but they ain’t going to win. Not now. I’ve had enough, see.’
‘Yes, Dad.’ There was a packet of crisps open on the table, and she reached for it.
‘All my life, I’ve been waiting. That’s how I got by, when I were a kid. Whatever they were doing to me, I would hold it here, in my heart - ’ he bashed his fist against his chest. ‘A dream. The old house, right, the old tunnel… that bloke, that scientist, he made dreams come true… before the flood. And when I found out he was family, right, I knew it would come to me…’
She took two more crisps, passed one to the dog who was still at her feet.
‘… it was like he’d passed it on to me. That knowledge. I just had to keep the dream close to my heart. Whatever they were doing, however angry it made me, I knew they couldn’t take it away from me. So when I heard that Moffatt was trying to get it away from me…’
‘Yes, Dad. You’ve told me all this.’ Her voice was tired.
He looked at her. ‘So why did you go telling them?’
‘I’ve told you. It was Finn, innit. He said I needed help - ’
‘I won’t have you seeing that boy? You hear me? I’m all you need, you’re my little girl, I’m going to take care of you - ’
‘Yes, Dad. I know.’
‘When I get that house. A big house, it is, you’ve seen it. You’ll have the best of everything, I’ll show that whore of a mother and her pimp - ’
His phone trilled in his pocket. He snatched it up. ‘Manny - ’ He listened. The flush of his cheeks faded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Ta for the warning.’ He clicked off his phone. He stared ahead of him.
‘Dad – what’s happened?’
‘It’s coming true,’ he said. ‘What they always said, that the flood would come and wash it all clean. That lab – that new tunnel - ’ He was clenching his fists in front of him, and his breathing was uneven.
Tazer gave a quiet snarl.
‘ – they should never have made a new tunnel. The truth is in the old tunnel…’
‘Dad - ’
He looked at her, his eyes blank. ‘There’s more trouble for us. They’ve found… at the lab… that other one who was out to get it…’ He stared around the caravan as if unsure of where he was. ‘We’ve got to go. We’ve got to get out of here.’ He stumbled to his feet, drained his can of beer. ‘We’ve got to go.’
‘Where, Dad – what’s happening - ’
He grabbed her arm. ‘If you hadn’t gone telling that vicar - ’
‘I didn’t tell anyone, Dad - ’
‘And now they’ll think - ’ He was pushing her out of the caravan.
‘Where are we going? – Dad – ’
Lisa was shouting but he didn’t seem to hear.
‘There’ll be more than just the feds after us - ’
She was fighting him, struggling against the grip of his big hands on her wrists.
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘This is it. This is when we make a new life. This is when the dream comes true.’
They were out in the field, now, and he was dragging her towards his van. Tazer growled and jumped at his legs.
‘Where?’ Lisa shouted at him. ‘Where are we gonna make a new life?’ She broke away from him, but he grabbed her shoulders, one arm round her neck.
<
br /> ‘It’ll still be you, Dad. You and me. You ain’t gonna get away from you, are you? Whatever your shit, you’re stuck with it - ’
‘I won’t let them get us. I won’t have your mother trying to get you back – I won’t let them win – ’
She twisted away from him, but he grabbed her hair.
‘Ow, Dad – ’ He pushed Lisa into the van, slammed the doors, started the engine.
The tyres spun as he turned the van round, spattering mud across the site.
Tazer, sat, whimpering, watching them go.
Amelia sat by the window. She knew where her husband was. ‘The new experiment,’ he called it. ‘The tunnel.’ He’d leave his laboratory, his workbench, and he’d walk towards the sea, towards the Scallop Tower. Once she’d followed him, some of the way, until she sensed his awareness of her, and turned back. All she knew was that there was another laboratory, somewhere near the Tower, perhaps even at the Tower.
She wished Guy were here to ask, or her father. ‘What kind of experiment is it, that needs a tunnel? What is he looking for?’
But she knew, as she sat, staring out into dusk, that if Guy were still alive, Gabriel would have no need for this. There would be no tunnel, no new experiment, no obsession with the aether, the quintessence, the force that defeats the great Nothing. Instead we would be as we were, the three of us. We would be unburdened and joyful, and Gabriel would learn, at last, how to be a father to Grace.
And a husband to me.
Gabriel lifted the heavy oak beam that sealed the door, and entered the tunnel. He carried two candles, which he placed either side of his makeshift workbench. He had stumbled upon this tunnel, a smugglers’ hideout, some weeks ago, and had made it his own. He knew it was ideal for his experiment, which needed darkness, away from the forces above ground, away from the particles of light.
Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) Page 19