Daughters of Darkness

by Sally Spencer

  I don’t immediately respond, but that’s not because I’m struck dumb – we hard-bitten, mean-street-pounding gumshoes are almost never struck dumb. Rather, I pause because I need to fully assess what is – you must admit – a rather melodramatic statement.

  Is she winding me up, or being serious?

  If she’s winding me up, she can bugger off right now, because my work – as trivial as it might seem to some people – matters to me, and is the one thing I never joke about.

  But what if she’s being serious? That could be a problem, because people who are being serious tend not to take it well when they’re turned down. Mostly they do no more than shout and scream – which I’d rather avoid – but sometimes they actually throw things, and my office is far too small for that kind of grand gesture. Besides, I’ve grown quite fond of my souvenir ashtray.

  She is still waiting for a response, so whether I like it or not, I have to say something.

  ‘I don’t investigate murders,’ I tell her, still watching for her reaction. ‘That’s a job for the police.’

  She doesn’t take it badly at all. In fact, she gives me a knowing smile, as if that was just what she’d been expecting me to say.

  ‘The police!’ she repeats, with just a hint of scorn. ‘The police have pretty much given up on ever finding the killer.’

  I sigh – partly because I feel genuine exasperation, and partly to signal to her that if she didn’t like what I’ve just said, she’s going to like what I’m about to say even less.

  ‘If you’ll forgive me, dismissing the police like that is a typical layman’s reaction—’ I begin.

  ‘Laywoman’s,’ she interrupts.

  ‘Laywoman’s,’ I agree. ‘Yours is a typical laywoman’s reaction. It may seem to you, looking in at the police from the outside, that they’ve given up but, though you’re probably not aware of it, I’ve been on the inside myself and—’

  ‘I’m well aware of it,’ she interrupts again. ‘You were a police officer for six years. You were forced to resign because you were on the verge of proving that a certain chief superintendent – whose name, I believe, was Dunn – was as dirty as a toilet brush in a dysentery outbreak.’

  The way it’s supposed to work in the gumshoe–client scenario is that the gumshoe studies the client’s reaction for clues. But guess what: here, it’s working the other way around as well. That’s why she’s leaning back in her chair – so she can study my face in cinemascope!

  ‘I’m supposed to be shocked, aren’t I?’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘And are you?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I reply, because it would be pointless to pretend I’m not. ‘But the question isn’t really how you found out about me – it’s why you would want to use it to shock me?’

  She frowns, but says nothing.

  ‘It’s not the response you were expecting, is it?’ I continue, scoring my first point on the comeback trail.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ she admits.

  ‘What you thought I would be bound to ask you was how you knew so much about my chequered career?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she says, lamely.

  ‘But it’s so obvious where your information came from – you got it from DCI Macintosh.’

  This is a shot in the dark – but since Macintosh is one of the few people who know my whole story, it’s a calculated shot – and from the expression on her face, it seems that I’m right on target.

  ‘Why did you want to shock me?’ I repeat.

  ‘Because I needed to do something to knock you off balance before you started patronizing me.’

  ‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’ I ask.

  ‘“The police are very busy people”,’ she replies in a voice which is intended to be a parody of mine and – in all honesty – comes a little too close for comfort. ‘“I’m sure they’ve done all they can to find your mummy’s killer”.’

  ‘I never said that,’ I protest, but my heart isn’t really in it, because I know the words lack conviction.

  ‘No, you didn’t exactly say it,’ she agrees, ‘but if I’d let you run on, you’d have ended up saying something just like that.’

  It’s a fair cop – I wouldn’t have used the tone, but the content would have run along those lines.

  ‘I am a senior lecturer in the University of Cambridge Physics Department, and a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,’ she says. ‘I advise both the British government and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I am an expert in my field to such an extent that much of my work is highly classified …’ She pauses. ‘And you – I have established through careful inquiry – are an expert in your field. I need your help …’

  And here there is a slight tremble in her voice – the first indication that she is not completely in control.

  ‘… but I don’t need it at any price. If you can’t respect me as a junior partner, then we’d probably better call it a day.’

  The words have been carefully thought out, and are carefully delivered. She knows that I would never agree to her being an equal partner, but if we settle on the term junior partner, we can both interpret it in the way we each feel most comfortable with.

  And then I realize what she’s really done – that in getting me to think about how we might work together, she’s made me half-acknowledge that I might take the case.

  ‘If they found out I was investigating an unsolved murder, the police would have my guts for garters,’ I say.

  ‘No, they wouldn’t,’ she replies, with a confidence that I’m starting to find irritating.

  ‘That’s what they’ve told you, is it?’ I say. ‘They’ve said it would be all right for me to go blundering about in their case?’

  ‘Is that sarcasm?’ she asks me – when she bloody well already knows that it is.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘It is sarcasm. It comes from the Greek, you know – and it means to tear the flesh.’

  Actually, I’m suddenly feeling rather badly about it, because we both know that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, and therefore a poor response from someone with a 2:1 in literature from Oxford University. Yet at the same time, there’s a part of me that thinks I have every right to go in low and dirty, because – when all’s said and done – the bloody woman has provoked me.

  ‘I haven’t police permission,’ she admits. ‘Not per se. But DCI Macintosh is willing to give it his unofficial blessing – and far from thinking you’ll go blundering about, he seems to believe that there’s just a slim chance that you’ll find out something they missed …’ She pauses. ‘He appears to have a very high opinion of your detecting skills.’

  That would come from us having worked together on what my own personal Dr Watson (if such a character existed) would probably have called the Strange Case of the Shivering Turn.

  ‘How do you know Ken Macintosh?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s a family friend.’

  Macintosh is from Scotland, but has been based in Oxford for over twenty years. He used to have thick black hair, and a bushy beard which was reputed to be the home of a family of crows. These days, he keeps the beard trimmed and the hair is prematurely white, which, he claims, is proof positive that he’s been doing his job properly.

  ‘If Ken Macintosh is an old family friend, then you must have lived in Oxford once,’ I say.

  ‘We did. My father still does.’

  I run through the names of people murdered in Oxford in recent years. It doesn’t take long, because in this city of 150,000 people, two murders in a year are regarded as something of a bumper crop.

  No one called Pemberton comes to mind, so though she’s almost convinced me of her sincerity by invoking the name of DCI Macintosh, it’s starting to look as if she was taking the piss after all.

  ‘Listen, Miss Pemberton …’ I begin.

  ‘Mrs Pemberton,’ she corrects me. She laughs – awkwardly, and with clear signs of embarrassment. ‘You’d think a feminist like me would
have insisted on keeping her maiden name after she got married, wouldn’t you? But James was most insistent, and he looked so little-boy-hurt when I said I wouldn’t be taking his name that eventually I gave way. I should have known then that the marriage wasn’t going to last.’

  ‘What was your maiden name, Mrs Pemberton?’ I ask, trying not to show my impatience.

  ‘What? Oh, sorry, it’s Stockton.’

  Stockton? Stockton …

  Oh my God!

  ‘Your mother was Dr Grace Stockton?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  I remember, as an undergraduate studying western mythology, that I read a couple of her papers on the myths of Papua New Guinea to widen my perspective. And I remember becoming angry – some might even say almost bitter – when I realized that however much I worked, and tried and strained, I would never be as clever as the woman who had written those papers.

  Happy days!

  So how long is it since her body (or most of it, anyway) was discovered in the woods?

  Two years?

  Three?

  Certainly no more than that.

  It created a sensation at the time, because distinguished academics rarely get murdered, and even more rarely are decapitated.

  For a moment, I forget who I’m speaking to, and am about to ask her if the head ever turned up, then I do a verbal swerve and ask her if her father is Dr Derek Stockton, Professor of Comparative Religion at St Luke’s College.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ she says.

  ‘St Luke’s is where I read my degree,’ I tell her.

  ‘I know,’ she replies.

  And suddenly this is all starting to feel rather too close for comfort.

  ‘No, they didn’t,’ she says, completely out of the blue.

  No, they didn’t?

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ I confess.

  ‘When you asked me if my father was Derek Stockton, what you really wanted to ask was another question entirely.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘And what was that question?’ she persists.

  We sit there in silence for maybe thirty seconds, and then – because this is getting ridiculous – I say, ‘I was wondering if they ever found your mother’s head?’

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘they didn’t.’

  There are three good reasons why I shouldn’t take on this case.

  The first is that even if the police are willing to co-operate with me (and I only have her word for that) it’s still their business, rather than mine.

  The second is that if the police have not come close to solving the murder in three years, then working on my own, I have absolutely no chance.

  And the third – which shouldn’t matter to me but does – is that I don’t like the woman who would be my client, because I don’t like anyone who tries to mess around with my brain.

  Thus, there are three good reasons for backing away, and no good reasons for embracing the case.

  Except that …

  Except that she’s expecting me to turn her down, and while she’s not exactly pleased at the thought, she is sort of congratulating herself on having assessed me correctly.

  Well, I’m not going to give the bitch the satisfaction!

  ‘I charge seventy-five pounds a day plus expenses, and as far as results go, I can guarantee you absolutely nothing,’ I say in a harsh voice which only vaguely resembles my own.

  ‘That seems rather expensive,’ she says. ‘I’ve been checking around, and most detectives charge a lot less.’

  ‘Those are my rates,’ I counter, stubbornly. And so they are – for her. ‘I’m sorry if you can’t afford it.’

  She laughs. ‘Oh, I can afford it easily enough. I occasionally work on the American lecture circuit, which is obscenely well paid. I reckon I earn seventy-five pounds in the amount of time it takes me to stop and fart mid-lecture. Imagine that – seventy-five pounds for farting,’

  She reaches across my desk and holds out her hand, and – against my better judgement – I take it and shake it.

  TWO

  My new client drives away from my office, looking cool and sophisticated behind the wheel of a brand-new Lotus Esprit sports car. (I know this because I am lurking behind my bargain basement curtains, watching her.) Shortly thereafter, I set out myself, looking equally cool and sophisticated behind the handlebars of my three-year-old Raleigh pushbike (and if you believe that … ).

  I am on my way to see my usual contact in the Thames Valley Police, DS George Hobson.

  The conversation that the two of us have just had over the telephone went as follows:

  Me: How are you, George?

  Him: I’m fine. What can I do for you, Jennie?

  Me (slightly wheedling): Listen, George, I need to see you, when you can spare the time.

  Him: Fine. How about meeting in the Bulldog in an hour?

  Me (caught somewhere between suspicion, relief and incredulity): Did you say an hour?

  Him: That’s right.

  Me: Just like that?

  Him: Yes, just like that.

  But it has never been just like that before. I wonder what George’s angle is, because our relationship is a delicate balance of advantage, and I’d hate to fall off the seesaw just because I don’t know the new rules.

  I set off up the Iffley Road. It is already late October, and the air has a bite to it that holds out the promise of future runny noses and chilblains. On an empty plot of land to my left, children have already begun to build a bonfire on which they will burn an effigy of the traitor (or martyr, depending on your perspective) Guy Fawkes in a few days’ time, and I notice that a couple of the shops I whizz past have large advertisements in their windows for Standard Fireworks and their biggest rivals, Brocks.

  The buildings on the Iffley Road offer no evidence that the road constitutes a small part of something extraordinary. Indeed, as I cycle past the houses (some of them three-storied terraces, some semi-detached and a few standing completely independent), it is the very ordinariness which is most striking. This is a street which could be slipped into a free slot in Bedford or Gloucester (or a score of other towns), without being noticed, and to even suggest that it belongs to the city of dreaming spires seems almost laughable.

  Then I cross the river, and things change, because I am suddenly surrounded on all sides by seven hundred years of monumental busyness and expansion.

  To my right is Magdalen College, (pronounced maudlin after the emotion, rather than Magdalen after Jesus Christ’s close companion). It is dominated by its square tower, built between 1492 (when Columbus sailed the ocean blue) and 1509. And what a tower it is! Its stonework glows golden, even in the weak autumn sun, and at 144 feet, it is still the tallest building in Oxford. It has four octagonal turrets, which look like nothing from the ground, but the northwest one (which is only slightly larger than the others) is big enough to have a spiral staircase running up it.

  To my left are the University Botanical Gardens, entered by the baroque Danby Arch, with its framed niches from which statues of Charles I (who lost his head during the English Revolution) and Charles II (who didn’t) gaze down haughtily. Beyond the gate I catch a quick glimpse of the islands of colour created by some of the 6000 species of plants grown in what is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world.

  A little further up the road is St Edmund’s Hall, the only surviving medieval hall in the university, and across the road is the imposing Examinations Schools, where, at the end of Finals, it is common to see undergraduates throwing their mortar boards in the air with one hand, and quaffing champagne with the other.

  How’s all that for instant history!

  On a more mundane (modern) level, an advertising poster – composed of two photographs and a message – is pasted on the side of the bus shelter outside Oriel College. The upper photo is of a man in late middle age, and is in colour. He is dressed for the races – top hat, binoculars, etc – and he has a glass of champagne in his hand. Th
e photograph below it is in black and white, and features three miserable-looking children who are not quite dressed in rags, but are clearly concerned about where their next meal will be coming from.

  The message – in accusing red letters against a black background – reads: ‘What will you pass on to your children? Call in at Bradshaw’s County Bank for free advice.’

  The message is, in other words, that if you die leaving your kids absolutely nothing, you are a failure both as a parent and as a human being, whereas if you scrape and save and never have any fun out of life, then, when you breathe your final breath, your relatives will have your substantial estate to cushion the emotional blow of your departure.

  I snort in disgust at the whole slick, manipulative con trick. There are times, you know, when I almost suspect myself of being cynical.

  And what is my legacy from my cold and distant father? I find myself wondering.

  A crop of red hair and the name Redhead!

  Given the laws of genetics, the hair was inevitable.

  But the name most certainly wasn’t!

  If my ancestor – the founder of the dynasty (ha! Some founder, some dynasty) – had been red-haired but also had lived near the edge of the forest, I could have been called Woodend (which coincidentally, was the name of one of my heroes – a detective chief inspector – when I was growing up in Whitebridge).

  In fact, the possibilities of what I could have been called are endless. If that ancestor of mine had been a barrel maker, that would probably have mattered more than the hair, and I could have been Jennie Cooper. If he’d produced arrows for a living (‘My forefather was a merchant of death,’ confesses local PI in shockingly candid interview), I’d have been a Fletcher.

  But instead, my forefather had handed his hair colour down through the generations. Some of the inheritors made no use of it themselves. My late father, for example, could have accurately been called Harold Mousybrownhead. But he conserved it in his genes, and when he engaged in successfully pro-creational sexual intercourse with my mother (the very thought of which brings me out in cold sweats and hot flushes simultaneously) he passed it on to me.