Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery)

by Alison Joseph

  ‘What the fuck is that - ’ Her father stared through the darkness. ‘Your fucking dog - ?’ He looked at his phone. ‘It’s morning. Were we asleep?’

  ‘You were,’ she said. He had gradually slumped sideways, until he’d ended up asleep and snoring. She had stayed awake all night, watching him, hearing the sea encroach, hearing it withdraw again. The water levels had risen with the tide, lapping in the mud only feet away from them. There’d been sirens, police cars, and she’d thought at first they’d come to rescue her, but they too had faded with the dawn.

  The barking drew nearer.

  Clem stumbled to his feet. ‘That’s it, girl - ’ He moved towards the door, and for a moment, a brief moment of relief, she thought he’d changed his mind, that he was going to let her go. But all he did was kick the beam to check it was still there. Then he went to the bench and began to drag it, too, towards the door.

  ‘Dad – what you doing?’

  ‘Your fucking dog. She’ll bring the feds, won’t she?’

  ‘If we stay here, Dad – ’

  ‘We’ll be safe,’ he said. The bench left thick gouges in the mud. In the thin torch light Lisa could see wires, dials, churned to the surface.

  ‘Dad – if we stay here we’ll die.’

  ‘I’m not having them stealing from me.’ He stood back, panting with effort. The bench, too, was blocking the door. ‘All my life they took my dreams away. They won’t do it now. Not now.’

  Lisa began to cry. Cold, wet, hungry, she crouched down in the mud, among the old wires. At her feet something glittered in the torchlight. She dug into the mud, picked it up. A watch. An old one, with a chain.

  She held it in her hand and gazed at it. She wondered how it had come to be here, who had owned it before. She wondered if he, too, had died in the mud, and his watch was all that was left of him.

  Tazer was standing by Hank’s Tower, barking at an ancient strip of wood. Berenice approached. ‘Here?’

  The dog barked in reply.

  She approached the wood, saw that it was a door. ‘Holy crap, Taze,’ she said. ‘If they’re in there, they’re in trouble.’

  Tazer barked and jumped, running to and fro.

  Berenice grabbed her collar. ‘More to the point – if we go in alone, given his passion for firearms – we’ll be in trouble too.’

  She dragged the protesting dog back towards the car, grabbed her phone, clicked on Mary’s number, heard it go to voicemail.

  ‘Mary – I’ve found the missing kid. Holed up with her Dad. Call me.’

  Helen heard Chad’s car on the drive as she was putting the roast potatoes back into the oven. She heard his key in the door, looked up, ‘They’re not quite ready,’ she smiled.

  He gazed at her blankly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

  He leaned one hand on the kitchen table, standing stiff and awkward in his coat.

  ‘Your sermon…?’ she began.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t suppose they heard it. It was about truth, and stories, and how we all hear the stories that we need to hear.’

  ‘It sounds very interesting,’ she said.

  He was still staring at her. ‘You’re having an affair, aren’t you?’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘I have no husband. I have no child. I, Amelia van Mielen, am once more alone. With these pages I finish my story.’ Amelia lay down her pen next to the bottle of ink.

  The pages lay on the mahogany desk in front of her. At her side, a vase of white roses caught a shaft of sunlight from the open window. From the garden there wafted the scent of rosemary.

  Rosemary for remembrance, she thought.

  There is nothing more to say.

  I wanted so little in life. A home in which to raise my child. The love of my husband.

  All of it is gone. My child, my home. And the love of my husband was never mine.

  ‘I look around at this place I have called my home, and I know that soon it will no longer be mine. I shall turn my back on this plate and these cloths, the candles, the silverware. I shall take my leave of it all. I have no husband. I have no child. I, Amelia van Mielen, am once more alone. With these pages I finish my story.’

  Helen closed the rose-covered folder.

  I have no husband.

  He had been hushed and pale, his voice tight with rage, standing at the kitchen table. ‘That smarmy physicist,’ he’d said.

  And Helen, sunk onto a chair, her guts twisting with misery.

  ‘How often? Where? In this house – ’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not here.’

  ‘His place? Or hotels, perhaps? How sordid.’ He stared at her, as if at a stranger. ‘How did you become such a person?’

  He appeared to be wanting an answer. She shook her head, staring at the table.

  ‘I suppose you’ll say I’m to blame – ’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Because I’m not. It was your choice. Was it his cute dog? Is that what I’m lacking?’

  ‘Chad, please…’

  ‘Please what?’

  She raised her eyes to his.

  His gaze was fiery. ‘At the risk of sounding like a clergyman,’ he said, ‘I must remind you, we made vows. In church. To love, honour, to renounce all others… Didn’t we?’

  Again, waiting for an answer. She nodded.

  ‘So, there is nowhere to go from here. Is there?’

  ‘Chad – ’

  ‘Is there?’ he repeated, his voice loud.

  ‘If you say so,’ she murmured.

  ‘I do say so.’

  After that, there had been no more words. Just sounds, coat buttoned up, briefcase gathered up, front door slamming, car revving, fading away.

  And now here she sat, in the debris, with the dishes of a burnt Sunday roast cooling around her.

  Tazer sat in the back of the car, whimpering. Berenice surveyed the empty, rain-soaked beach. She dialled Mary’s number again, left another message.

  ‘Not a soul here. I saw a kid, a lad, dragging a piece of driftwood, but he took one look at me and legged it. The girl’s here, and her dad, I reckon. I need back-up. Ring me – ’

  The sound of a car. A sleek, black sports car appeared at her side. A woman got out of it, her tailored raincoat flapping in the wind.

  Berenice wound down her window.

  ‘Dr Merletti - ?’

  ‘I thought you might need a hand,’ she said.

  Lisa held the watch in her hand. The dog had gone away. The torchlight was fading as the batteries began to die.

  Her father was digging in the mud, scrabbling through the puddles with his bare hands, while the sea lapped under the brick wall. The tide must be coming in again, Lisa thought.

  She wondered how high it would come up this time.

  Clem was murmuring… ‘if the other stuff was there, then they’d be there too…’ He dug deeper, found something, pulled at it. A ragged piece of something… leather. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Well done, girl. Of course he’d have put it with his other stuff. Under his bench… I should have dug here before.’ He grabbed the torch, shone it at the square of leather in his hand. ‘The deeds,’ he said. ‘The deeds to the house. That’s why everyone came here. Moffatt knew they were here, but he didn’t know about the tunnel, did he? Only I know this place.’ His voice was raised, jubilant. ‘They can’t take it away from me now, can they?’ He slipped one finger inside the folder. Pieces of rotten leather fell into the mud. ‘The deeds…’ he was murmuring. He pulled out a scrap of paper, a fragment, held between finger and thumb. ‘They’ve… but…’ He opened the folder and peered into it, shining the torch towards it. ‘But…’

  ‘Dad… the sea…’

  The torch fell from his hand. She picked it up. He was holding the folder open, shaking out tiny pieces of paper. They scattered like leaves on to the wet ground.

  He stared at them. ‘They can’t take it away from me. I fought them for
this…’

  ‘Dad – we’ve got to get out of here.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Dad – even if you’ve killed – ’

  His face was shadowed in the dim light. ‘I had to,’ he said. ‘He weren’t expecting it, see. Fist into his face, he were gone then. And then up there…’ He jerked his head in the direction of the tower above them. ‘They fall,’ he said. ‘You watch them. Tip them over the edge, them bricks at the top. At first they look like a man, a big heavy lump of human being. But then, falling, they get smaller and smaller. And then there’s the splash, long time after. They’re just a black speck after that. Just the sea and the rocks. You have to get the tide right…’

  He fell silent.

  Lisa clutched the watch in her hand. She sat, dry-eyed with despair. She watched the scraps of paper floating in the rising water, and wondered what it felt like to drown.

  ‘I was at home, you see, picking dog hairs off my sofa…’ Elizabeth was sitting in the passenger seat of Berenice’s car. ‘And I thought, that poor girl. And here’s me, her closest relative after her god-awful father.’

  ‘What made you come here?’ Berenice watched the rain through the misted-up windscreen.

  ‘I don’t know. I was just driving around wondering what to do, and I saw your car, and I thought… I don’t know what I thought. When I saw your car, well, I thought that was odd. I thought you’d have back-up, you know, a whole police force, a team…’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Berenice said.

  ‘Being an outsider?’ Elizabeth said.

  Berenice nodded.

  There were voices, shouts. Berenice opened the car door. ‘It’s OK,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘Here’s the cavalry. And he’s still got his driftwood with him.’

  Finn was walking towards the car. Next to him, walked Tobias. ‘I brought him, Miss. I made him come. I said, Lise is there and she needs you.’

  Berenice got out of her car. ‘It’s kind of you – but this is dangerous. You have to understand. The man is armed. I’m waiting for my team to arrive – ’

  Tazer jumped out of the car, and ran down to the tower, to the old wooden door. She barked and growled and jumped at the door.

  Tobias turned to Berenice. ‘I don’t think there’s time to wait any more.’ He began to walk, stride across the stones, towards the tower.

  ‘Stop – ’ Berenice called after him. ‘I can’t have this – what if he gets shot – what if – ’

  Finn put up his hand to silence her. ‘Ain’t no one going to sit on the sidelines no more, Miss.’

  Barking. Loud barking. ‘Taze,’ Lisa said. She stumbled to her feet. ‘Tayza,’ she began to shout.

  ‘What - ?’ Clem was on his feet too.

  ‘We’re here,’ Lisa was shouting.

  ‘Shut it, girl – ’

  ‘Tayze – ’ Clem’s hand was clamped across her mouth.

  Lisa struggled in his grip. He kicked the torch and the light died.

  ‘I won’t let them take it away,’ Clem was saying. ‘Not now. No one’s going to take what’s mine…’

  A crash. Shouting, footsteps. A rattling of the heavy door. The beam wedged fast across it, the bench alongside.

  Another crash. The tearing of rotten wood, as the door was beaten down. In the shaft of pale light, a pair of hands appeared, large hands. A blond head bent down, and through the gap that had appeared in the wood, the hands went to the beam. Slowly, they lifted it away from the door.

  ‘Tobias,’ Lisa breathed. Clem’s grip loosened as he stared too.

  Tobias stood, holding the beam. The workbench was still in the doorway. He put the beam down, leaning it against the wall. Then he put his weight against the bench and pushed.

  A moment of stillness. Then chaos. Shouting, barking, seawater, Tobias’s voice, ‘Run, run for it – ’

  But Lisa was still trapped in her father’s grip, and even though Tazer was growling at her feet, splashing through the waves, she couldn’t move.

  Clem began to walk, holding Lisa in front of him. He moved slowly, through the doorway, emerging blinking into the rain, one arm still locked round his daughter’s neck, the other holding his pistol.

  Lisa was blue-lipped and shivering.

  Tobias stared. Finn stared.

  Berenice too, was staring. What she saw was the gun, levelled, aiming at them all.

  Clem spoke. ‘Ain’t no one going to beat me this time. Me and my kid, we’re going – ’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ It was Elizabeth. She stepped forward and faced him. ‘You’re going to let Lisa go,’ she said.

  Clem shook his head. ‘You of all people…’

  ‘My name is nothing to do with it – ’

  ‘I found them, bitch. I found them papers… buried there… If I can’t have that house, ain’t no one else going to have it.’

  ‘It’s over, Clem.’

  Then, two things happened. The first was that Tobias lunged at Clem. The second, was that Clem fired.

  A shot, two shots.

  A flash of pale coat, then searing red.

  Rain, blood, screaming, barking.

  Berenice saw the pistol arcing through the air. It landed at her feet. She saw Clem, on the ground, pinned there by Tobias. Finn, holding Lisa, who seemed uninjured. Elizabeth, lying on her side, bleeding, panting, empty-eyed. And through the rain, flashing blue lights, sirens. The slam of car doors, people shouting, uniforms, stretchers, blankets, oxygen. Clem, handcuffed, bundled into a van.

  The tower loomed, black against the stormy sky. At its feet the sea crashed across the rocks.

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘Is she still in hospital, the kid?’ Berenice looked up as Mary came into her office.

  Mary nodded. ‘They’re keeping her in overnight. Shock, mostly. She seems OK.’ She put two paper cups down on Berenice’s desk.

  ‘And Elizabeth?’

  ‘It could have been much worse, the medics are saying. One bullet missed, the other grazed her ribs. She’ll be fine.’

  ‘Thanks to Tobias.’

  Mary nodded.

  ‘Not thanks to me.’ Berenice gazed at the darkness outside, the flood lights of the car park. ‘No way they’ll let me keep my job. Not even traffic offences.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’ Mary sat down.

  ‘What about Clem. Is he talking?’ Berenice picked up her coffee.

  Mary shrugged. ‘Not much. Stuff about destiny and flood and tunnels, and the deeds to the house. They want you down there.’

  ‘Me? But I’m – I mean… where’s the Chief?’

  ‘Stuart? Oh, Ashford I think.’

  Berenice stared at her. Then smiled. She got to her feet. ‘Thanks for picking up the call.’

  ‘Duty, Boss.’

  ‘How was the hen night?’

  Mary sighed.

  ‘Disappointing?’

  ‘I just was expecting something a bit less…’

  ‘Oh. You mean it was all – ’

  ‘Yes. Pink. Loud. Tinsel. Whistles. Too much Tequila…’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Nice that she’s happy though.’

  The night gave way to dawn. Clem refused to speak. Reminded of the charges against him, the killing of three men, wounding with intent, possession of firearms, kidnap, he stared straight ahead of him. From time to time he shook his head, or murmured something. Once he fixed his gaze on Berenice and said, ‘My little girl…? She’s OK?’

  ‘Yes, Berenice replied. ‘She’s fine.’

  He nodded, and returned to silence.

  By morning they decided to give it a rest. Berenice went to get some sleep, driving home through the rain. The flood, she wondered, yawning. The ending of it all.

  At the lab, people arrived, gathering in corners, in coffee bars, ‘have you heard… they’ve got him… Dr. Merletti shot, yes, really… We’re safe, it seems… Elizabeth was really brave… Someone’s organised a card for her… out of hospital in a day or two
, they said…’ People settled at their desks, stared at their screens.

  ‘There’s still the little matter of our weird results,’ Roger said to Neil.

  ‘Perhaps this Voake chap caused those too. Perhaps it’ll all go back to normal now.’

  Roger gave a thin smile. ‘Whatever normal is.’

  ‘I look around at this place I have called my home, and I know that soon it will no longer be mine. I shall turn my back on this plate and these cloths, the candles, the silverware. I shall take my leave of it all.’

  Helen put down the yellowing pages on her kitchen table.

  This place I have called my home.

  I wonder how the church views the re-housing of divorced vicar’s wives, she thought.

  Knowing the church, not at all.

  Perhaps if children are involved…

  If children were involved… would I have done the same? Liam, with his care, his concern, his sexiness, his laughter - would I have fallen just the same?

  In her mind, the picture of Chad, leaving. Not a shuffling, defeated, half-man, but tall and broad and strong, and striding away from her. Forever, she supposed.

  I wonder where people live when they only live half a life. Wherever it is, that’s where I’m headed…

  A loud knocking at the kitchen door. A breath of relief, he’s back, of course he is, he’s not going to let our marriage go –

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Liam.’

  He’d been talking to his sister, in his head, all the way there, driving along the coastal road, the rain against the windscreen.

  She listens, he’d told Sinead. When I talk about my work, she understands. Not all of it, obviously, but she likes to hear about it. It’s the way she speaks, the way she laughs. It’s the way she moves. When she moves it’s always in the right way. When she throws an old cardigan over a pair of jeans, it hangs in the right way, as if there was no other way that it could hang. And when we’re in bed…

  Oh God.

  I have to have her. Not just for now. Forever…

  And now here she was, standing in her kitchen doorway, staring up at him.