Dying to Know (A Detective Inspector Berenice Killick Mystery) (44 page)

She
went to the grate. ‘Your wife – ’

‘Yes?’

She picked up a log from the basket.

‘She
must be in mourning too.’

‘Not
like yours.’

‘No,’
she agreed. She placed the log on the fire. ‘Murdo and I, we didn’t survive, you see. The silence. The nothing.’

‘No.’

She came and sat next to him again. ‘She’s far away from you.’

He
wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, she is.’

She
turned to him. She seemed full of life, her features softened by the firelight, her eyes bright as she gazed at him. Once again, he reached out and took her hand.

After
a moment she withdrew from him. She stood up, brushing ash from her skirt. ‘He’ll be back soon. Tobias. He said the bus would be late, repairs on the main road. We need to consider him.’

‘We
do?’

‘Of
course.’ She looked down at him. ‘He’s still a suspect, he’s taken refuge in all that magic. He’s still afraid.’

‘The
police must know that he can’t possibly have done these things.’

‘I
keep telling him that,’ she said. ‘I’ve told him that we’ll keep him safe.’

‘We?’
He gazed up at her.

She
smoothed at her skirt. She looked towards the window. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said.

Falling. Helen stared at the darkened hotel window as the word touched her thoughts.

Falling.

His
breathing, next to her. The tangle of white sheets, the white floodlights of the car park softening the darkness of the room.

How
had this happened?

She
could trace their path, of course. The walk to his car, the ring road, twilight, car park, the swish of doors, the awkwardness, his joke - something about a loyalty card - the cool blank look from the receptionist. And then no words, no jokes, just clothes ripped off, just the aching gasping breathing of desire, the play of limbs, the hot, sweating, timeless hours of pleasure and possession.

And
here I am, she thought. Here, in darkness, in these clean white sheets. And next to me, his breathing. Rising. And falling.

He
rolled sleepily towards her. ‘I love you,’ he murmured.

‘No
you don’t,’ she said, into his chest.

‘Do.’
He raised himself on an elbow, looked down at her. She saw the curves of his jaw, the stubble on his chin, the downy hair of his chest, his smooth muscularity, the dark yearning of his gaze, and felt once more a convulsion of desire.

‘Prove
it,’ she said.

The flames were dying down. The fire made a dim glow in the twilight. ‘Shall I put on another log?’ he asked.

‘Are
you staying?’ She went over to the table, switched on the lamp.

‘Do
you want me to?’

She
gave a small shrug.

‘I
mean,’ he went on, ‘as it’s his birthday.’

She
turned to him. ‘All these years, I’ve done this day alone. It makes no difference to me.’

The
light lent her a kind of grace, her hair in soft curls, her skirt in smooth folds.

‘And
if I want to stay?’ he said. ‘If I don’t want you to be alone?’

‘You
have a home to go to.’ Her voice was flat.

‘It’ll
be empty,’ he said, and as he spoke he knew, with a pit-of-the-stomach certainty, that it was true.

She
watched him. ‘If that’s the case,’ she said at last, ‘then the answer doesn’t lie in staying here. Does it?’

‘You
and Murdo,’ he began, wondering where his words would lead him. ‘And – ’

‘Elizabeth
van Mielen?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘No one loved that man as I did,’ she said. ‘Our child’s death was the ending of us.’ She sat down heavily on the sofa again. ‘Jacob’s death was sudden, of course. One minute here, the next gone. But what I didn’t realize was, death is also a slow, slow thing. And we died with him.’

She
was sitting very close to him. It occurred to him that he was waiting for her to speak again, waiting for her to fill in a gap, as if there was more to the story, and her silence now seemed like a deliberate withholding.

The
fire was turning to ash, with wisps of smoke.

‘Perhaps
I should go,’ he said. He stood up. Then, looking down at her, he said, ‘Is there more you want to say?’

She
met his eyes. ‘No’, she said. ‘Should there be?’

He
shook his head.

‘It’ll
take you longer,’ she said. ‘Main road closed for repairs.’

The
room had grown cold. He reached for his coat. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Check you’re OK.’

She
nodded.

On
the doorstep he touched her arm. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ he said. ‘In the gaps, and the silences.’

She
reached up, then, and all of a sudden, kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

The
door shut, and he was out in the cold evening air.

The headlights cut across dark lanes. Chad drove slowly, not wanting to go home, not wanting to face the empty silence of the vicarage. At the roundabout the signs said ‘Diversion.’ The road was unfamiliar, but signs still said Town Centre, so he followed them, until he found himself heading away from the town, somehow, and the signs were saying Canterbury.

Whether
he knew the church was there, or whether it was chance, a random event, or even the Lord’s will, but there it was, a steeple in the headlights, a flash of gothic windows… He parked, got out, his breath making mist in the cold night.

He tried the doorway. Locked, of course. A funny sort of church. An archway in thick grey stone. The gravestones too seemed old, with odd carvings, though he couldn’t read the dates.

The
half-moon had risen above the trees. He stood in the graveyard. He thought about how Virginia had hesitated, there on her doorstep. He wondered what she was hiding from him. He wondered why he didn’t want to go home. He wondered what he was afraid of finding there.

He
walked slowly back along the overgrown path.

A
man’s face emerged from the branches. Chad stopped, stared, his heart racing. The face stared back.

Chad
wondered whether to speak. He breathed, took a step forward.

The
face was empty-eyed and still, and made of stone, Chad realized as he approached. A carving of a man’s head emerging from a tree. Chad put out his hand and touched the rough jaw, the tangles of hair entwined with leaves.

There
were other carvings, Chad saw. Another tree, a snaked wrapped round its trunk, a man and a woman carved on each side. The fall, of course, Adam and Eve. And then the third, the Holy Cross itself, and Jesus crucified. All in rough stone, but the details stood out, the patterns on the leaves, the apple in the woman’s hand, the almost friendly smile of the snake, the wounds in the body of Our Lord.

Was
it a progression? he wondered. From something ancient and Pagan, through the Fall, to our redemption of sin by Christ’s death. Or, just a commentary, a series of stories. Or even, a commission, and the sculptor just doing as he was told…

In
every case, a tree. A tree of life. He looked back towards the church, and in the moonlight it looked squat and ancient, as if it had been here forever, long before the Christian story, bearing witness to other tales, far older, even, than our own.

Life,
it’s beginning and its end.

And
it still goes on, he thought, in the circle of the tunnel down the road, telling the story of the first few moments of the universe itself.

For
Newton, it was still the work of God. In the discovery of the vacuum, the Great Nothing, God’s starting point. For those chaps down the road, they don’t need God. In their great, silent, colder-than-cold Nothing where the truth will be revealed, they have no need of God. I don’t suppose that friend of my wife’s believes in God.

Perhaps
that’s what she needs.

It
was a sudden, jolting thought. Chad sat down, breathless, on a gravestone.

That
scientist, sitting in my house, all warmth and smiles. While my wife and I, living in emptiness, struggling with childlessness, and all I preach is God and love...

I’ve
driven her away.

The
Green Man seemed to watch him in the darkness. A story too ancient to be told.

He
stared back at the stone face. He thought about the sculptor, echoing some ancient truth, now lost. He gazed at the crucifix, another version of man emerging from a tree, but in this case a tale of humanity divine, a God in human form.

A
promise of redemption.

Chad
stood up, stamping his feet against the cold.

And
what if it, too, is an empty promise? What if this God, who so loved the world that he gave us his Son, is no more or less true than the hurtling particles in the gleaming tunnel, or this savage ancient face that stares me out, telling me a story that I cannot understand.

He
fished in his pocket for the car keys. The graveyard had a pale sheen in the moonlight, in the frosty air, as he walked back down the drive.

He
started the car engine, picturing his home. One version, cold and dark; the other, warm, illumined, his wife seated at the kitchen table.

He
turned back towards the lane. Whether present or absent, he thought – the truth is, that she’s left me.

Helen sat in her living room, watching the slow tick of the carriage clock.

He
is with Virginia, she thought.

I’m
back home, showered, changed, it’s now nearly eleven, and my husband is not here.

He
is with that woman.

Which
of us has done this?

She
went to the window, stared out into the night.

Then
she rushed to the pages, snatched them up, read Amelia’s words, seeing a new sense in them.

‘It
is over, my husband said to me. It is the ending. And now I write these words, a woman alone, with no husband and no child. And I say to him again, though he is far away, which of us is to blame? Which of us has brought about this destruction, this catastrophe? Were I to blame him, then he could turn to me and place the blame on me. Yet am I blameless.’

Helen
held the pages in her hands. She placed them back in the folder.

A
car engine, a distant hum, approaching.

I
am to blame, she thought. Whatever he has done… I am to blame.

The
gravel on the drive. The engine stops. My husband, coming home.

I
will never make love with Liam again.

And
my marriage is over.

Berenice drove fast through the dark lanes.

‘Bastard
– Stuart fucking Coles – Bastard…’

The
brakes screeched on a corner.

‘Bastard
– to take me off the case and then do that…’

She’d
gone from the lab to HQ. She’d gone to the Chief’s office, asking to see him. He’d refused to meet her. Ben, in the corridor, stopped her, told her that the woman from the lab had come in with evidence, Lisa’s dog, of all things, he’d sent her away…

‘Sent
her away?’

She’d
gone straight to his office then, asked him straight out, Lisa’s our main witness, her dog is a gift, the best way to find her, if she’s still in the country –

He’d
laughed. ‘You can take on a missing person’s case if you want, Miss Killick.’

‘Her
father is our main suspect.’

‘We’re
doing all we can.’

‘Why
didn’t you impound the dog?’

He’d
sat, a silent sneer on his lips.

And
then she’d realized. ‘She asked for me, didn’t she? And you wouldn’t admit I was off the case.’

The
sneer had stayed, unchanged. He’d said nothing more, just waved towards the door.