Midnight Fugue

09.00–09.20

David Gidman the Third awoke.

It was Sunday. That was something being brought up in England did for you. Maybe it was some ancient race-memory maybe all those church bells set up a vibration of the air even when you were well out of ear-shot; whatever it was, physical or metaphysical, it was strong enough to make itself felt no matter how many supermarkets were open, no matter how many football matches were being played.

You woke, you knew it was Sunday. And that was good.

He rolled over and came up against naked flesh.

He felt it cautiously. A woman.

That was even better.

She responded to his touch by saying sleepily, ‘Hi, Dave.’

He grunted, not risking more till he was certain who it was.

Like a blind man reading Braille, his fingers traced round her nipples and spelt out her name. He gave her a gentle tweak and breathed, ‘Hi, Sophie.’

She turned to him and they kissed.

This was better and better.

‘So how shall we spend today?’ she murmured.

The bedside phone rang before he could answer.

He rolled away and grabbed the receiver.

‘Hello,’ he said.

He knew who it was before he heard the voice. Like Sunday, his PA, Maggie Pinchbeck, created her own vibes.

‘Just checking you’re awake and functioning. I’ll be round in an hour.’

‘An hour?’

‘To go over the timetable. Then at half ten I’ll drive you to St Osith’s. OK?’

‘Oh shit.’

‘You haven’t forgotten?’

‘Of course I haven’t bloody well forgotten.’

He put the phone down and turned back to the woman. An hour. Long enough, but he was no longer in the mood and anyway she was regarding him with suspicion.

‘What haven’t you forgotten?’ she demanded.

No point poncing around.

‘I’m opening a community centre this lunchtime,’ he said.

‘You’re what? I’ve cleared the whole day, remember? George is in Liverpool; a.m. in the cathedral, p.m. at a footie match.’

‘I know. Looking to get the credit if they win, eh?’

Her husband, George Harbott MP, known familiarly as Holy George, was the Labour spokesman on religious affairs.

He saw at once his joke had fallen on stony ground.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘And I’m really sorry about today. Early Alzheimer’s.’

He began to get out of bed.

‘What’s the hurry anyway?’ she queried. ‘Lunchtime’s hours away. And you could always ring them up and cancel, tell them you’ve got a cold or something. Come here and I’ll persuade you.’

‘I don’t doubt you could,’ he said, standing up out of her reach. ‘But no way I can cancel. This is my granpappy’s memorial community centre I’m opening.’

‘So? Your father’s still alive, if we can believe the Tory major contributors list. Why jump a generation? Let him open it.’

‘He says it’s a good vote-catcher for me,’ he replied. ‘And it’s not just lunchtime. I’ve got to go to church first.’

‘Church? You? Whose idea was that?’

‘Holy George’s, in a way. He rattles on so much about Christian values and getting back to the good old-fashioned Sabbath that Cameron’s getting edgy. What with your lot wallowing in Catholic converts and Scottish Presbyterianism, he feels he can’t rely on the old religious vote any more. His last newsletter stopped just short of establishing compulsory church parades. But it was Maggie who came up with this.’

‘Pinchbeck? Jesus, Dave, that woman’s got you by the pecker!’

The image itself was absurd, but he couldn’t deny its truth. Whatever his leader said, church was the last place he wanted to be on a Sunday. In fact when Maggie had suggested opening the new community centre on Sunday rather than on Monday as proposed by the council, he’d told her she must be mad.

She’d replied, ‘Monday there’s showers forecast, plus most people will be at work. You’ll get the council freeloaders and maybe a few bored mums with their wailing kids. Sunday’s the day for good works and this is a good work you’re doing. In fact, go to church first. St Osith’s is perfect. Just a mile down the road, plenty of room there and I know the vicar, Stephen Prendergast. He’ll be delighted to get the publicity. Service will be over by midday, so if we schedule the opening for one you should get most of the congregation along too, plus a whole gang of others with nothing better to do on a Sunday lunchtime.’

‘But what about the press?’

‘Leave the press to me. It will do that heathen bunch good to go to church.’

‘Won’t I risk alienating the ethnic vote?’

‘The Muslims, you mean? No. The moderates will be delighted to see you’re a man of faith. The extremists will want to blow you up whatever you do.’

She had an answer for everything, and the trouble was it usually turned out to be the right answer.

The woman was out of bed now and gathering up her clothes.

‘Hey, Sofe,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get mad. No need to rush off. Stay for some breakfast…’

‘You want I should still be hanging round here like this when Pinchbeck turns up? I can feel those beady little eyes tracking over every inch of flesh, looking for bite marks. You knew about this when I rang yesterday afternoon, right? But you didn’t say a thing in case I told you I didn’t care to be kicked out of bed at sparrowfart like some cheap tart. Well, I bloody well don’t!’

She disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the new power shower switch on. Half a minute later there was an enraged scream and Sophie appeared dripping water in the doorway.

‘You some kind of masochist, or what?’ she demanded. ‘That shower, it’s gone from red hot to icy cold of its own accord.’

He regarded her indifferently. Even a nicely put together body like hers ceased to be a turn-on when it was wet and goose-pimpled and topped by a face contorted by anger.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been having some problems. Maggie got me a couple of Poles to fix things. Looks like I’ll need to have them back.’

‘Maggie!’ she spat. ‘I might have known she’d have something to do with it!’

She vanished.

David Gidman the Third yawned then picked up a remote from the dressing table and clicked it at a mini hi-fi system on top of a chest of drawers. Terfel’s sumptuous voice started singing ‘Ich habe genug’.

‘Now that’s what I call serendipity,’ he said.

He turned to a full-length mirror set in the wardrobe door and sang along for a while, studying himself in the glass.

Golden-skinned, craggily handsome, muscularly slim, reasonably well hung, and above all youthful; David Gidman the Third MP, the Tory Party’s Great Oil-white Hope.

He stopped singing, dropped his voice, uttered a couple of gorilla grunts, scratched his balls, leered prognathically into the mirror, and said huskily, ‘The next PM but one–here’s looking at you, baby!’

08.55–09.15

For what felt like a good minute the woman called Gina Wolfe said nothing, but stared down at her hands, which were nervously plucking at the hem of her short skirt. Then suddenly out came a tumble of words.

‘Look,’ she said, ’the thing is, I’d like to make it clear from the start, I don’t want Alex dead…OK, I know that’s the way it started out, me needing to prove he was dead, but what I mean is if I found him alive I wouldn’t want him to be killed

‘Just as well, missus,’ interrupted Dalziel. “Cos I need to know folk really well afore I start doing favours like that.’

That stemmed the flow. Her hands stopped their movement and she looked him straight in the face. Then she smiled weakly.

‘I’m gabbling, aren’t I? It’s just that I didn’t think I was going to have to start at the start, so to speak.’

‘Because Mick Purdy would have put me in the picture, right? OK, let’s see if I can get you on track with a couple of questions. First, who’s Alex?’

‘Of course. Sorry. Alex Wolfe. My husband.’

‘And he left you?’

‘Yes. Well, no, I suppose strictly speaking I left him. But not really. I never abandoned him…I never thought of it as permanent…things had just got so bad that I needed space…we both did. And in a sense, he’d left me a long time before…’

‘Whoa!’ said Dalziel. ‘Lots of things I need to get straight afore we get into the blame game. Where was this? When was this? What did Alex Wolfe do for a living? Why did you leave him? I think that’ll do for starters.’

‘It was in Ilford, we lived in Ilford. I still do. That’s part of the problem…sorry. What did Alex do? He was like you. A policeman. Not as important. A detective inspector.’

Ilford. He’d heard of Ilford. It was in Essex. DI Mick Purdy had been with the Essex division of the Met. And Alex the walkabout husband had been a cop. Things were beginning to join up, but he was still a lot of lines short of a picture.

‘And you leaving him? What was that about? A woman?’

‘No! That would have been easy. Easier. It was a very bad time. For both of us. We lost…there was a bereavement…our daughter, Lucy…’

He could feel the effort she was making to keep herself together. Oh shit, he thought, me and my big boots. He’d have known about this presumably if he’d listened to Purdy on the phone.

On the other hand, not knowing meant he was getting everything up front, no pre-judgments.

He said, ‘I’m sorry, luv. Didn’t know. Must have been terrible.’

She said with unconvincing matter-of-factness, ‘Yes. Terrible just about sums it up. Certainly not the best of times to have this other stuff at work start up. Not that it seemed to bother Alex. He just didn’t seem to care. About anything. I got angry with him. I needed someone, but all he wanted was to be left alone. So I left him alone. I didn’t abandon him…we were in it together…except we weren’t…so I thought if left him alone…no I didn’t think that, I didn’t really think anything. I just had to be with people who would listen to me talking, and going into a room where Alex was felt like going into an empty room

She was off again. Dalziel could only see one thing in this turmoil that might have anything to do with him. If it helped the woman to focus, that would be a plus too.

This work stuff, what was that about?’ he interrupted.

She stopped talking and took a deep breath. Refocusing from her bereavement to her husband’s work problems seemed to bring a measure of genuine control. Her voice was stronger, less tremulous as she said, ‘They called it a leak enquiry, but it was actually about corruption. Alex was second in charge of a team targeting this businessman. It was called Operation Macavity That was a joke. From T.S. Eliot’s poem. You know, Cats, the musical.’

Dalziel was untroubled by the presumption that the only way he was likely to have heard of Eliot was via Cats. There were a lot of smart people spending a lot of hard time behind bars because they’d made similar presumptions.

‘Yeah, loved it,’ he said. ‘Because he was never there, right?’

‘Yes. But this time they had high hopes of getting to the man. It didn’t work out. I don’t know any details, but he always seemed to be several steps ahead of them. And while things were going wrong at work, at home things went into a nose dive…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Dalziel, determined not to drift back towards the dead child. ‘So the powers that be started wondering how the hell this Macavity always knew what was going on.’

‘I suppose so. Why the rat pack–sorry, that’s what Mick Purdy calls Internal Investigations–why they focused on Alex, I don’t know. But they did.’

‘Did they suspend him?’ said Dalziel.

‘Didn’t need to. This all blew up at the same time as…the rest, and he was on compassionate leave, so he wasn’t going into work anyway’

‘So he’s at home, on compassionate leave, he’s in a state, the rat pack’s sniffing around, and eventually you leave him. Then…what? He takes off?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you looked for him?’

‘Of course I looked for him!’ she exclaimed. ‘I got in touch with his friends, his relations. I talked to the neighbours. I checked out everywhere I thought he was likely to have gone, places we’d been on holiday, that sort of thing. I rang round hospitals. I did everything I could.’

‘Including telling the police, I suppose?’

‘Obviously,’ she snapped. ‘They were just about the first people I contacted. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Well,’ said the Fat Man, ‘for a start, they’re investigating him, right? It must have crossed your mind maybe they’re the ones he’s running from. Not sure, in your shoes, they’re the first buggers I’d tell.’

She said tightly, ‘I knew Alex. I believed in him. He was confused, desperate maybe. But he certainly wasn’t corrupt. All I could think was he was out there somewhere, alone. So I called Mick Purdy. They were friends, so naturally I called Mick.’

He’d anticipated this was probably Purdy’s connection. How had he reacted to the news? he wondered. Like a friend or like a cop?

‘And what did good old Mick say?’

‘He said to leave it with him, he’d make sure everything that could be done to trace Alex was done. Look, Mr Dalziel, I’m not sure how relevant all this is. We’re talking seven years ago. It’s here and now that I need help.’

‘Aye, seven years. And there’s been no sign of your husband all that time?’

‘Not a whisper. Nothing from his bank account, no use of credit cards. Nothing.’

‘Did he take his car?’

‘No, it was still in the garage. In fact, he took nothing, so far as I could see. No spare clothes, not even his toothbrush. Nothing.’

‘And the police? They turned up nothing?’

‘The police, the Salvation Army, every organization I could think of, none of them found any trace.’

‘So, apart from being kidnapped by aliens, what did that leave you thinking happened to him?’

He watched her reaction carefully and let her see he was watching.

She met his gaze straight on and said, ‘You mean it seems obvious to you he was probably dead, right?’

He shrugged but didn’t speak.

She said, ‘That’s what Mick thought too, but I couldn’t get my head round the idea. Even when I’d finally accepted he was never going to come back, I found it hard to contemplate applying for a legal presumption of death. That seemed…I don’t know, disloyal almost, even though I really needed it.’

‘Oh aye. Why was that?’

She said, ‘Lots of reasons, mainly financial. The house we lived in is Alex’s family house. It’s in his name, so I can’t sell it. There are various insurances that I can’t access without proof of death. Even his police pension is being paid into a bank account in his sole name, so it piles up and I can’t touch a penny of it.’

‘So they’re still paying his pension?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? Nothing was ever proved against him, no charges were brought,’ she said indignantly.

Dalziel glanced at his watch. The organ was still burping out bits of tunes that chased each other round and round without ever catching up. He knew how they felt.

He said, ‘I’ve been listening to you for a quarter of an hour, luv, and I’m no closer to understanding what any of this has got to do with me. What the hell are you doing up here in Yorkshire anyway?’

She said, ‘It’s simple. Next month it will be seven years since Alex vanished. My solicitor told me that after seven years we’d get a presumption of death on the nod. That made up my mind for me, so I said, let’s do it. And everything was going fine, then yesterday morning I got this.’

She opened her shoulder bag and took out a C5 envelope which she passed over to Dalziel. He put his glasses on to study it. It had a Mid-York postmark and was addressed in black ink to Gina Wolfe, 28 Lombard Way, Ilford.

The envelope contained a sheet of notepaper headed The Keldale Hotel, attached by a paper clip to a folded page from the September edition of MY Life, the glossy news, views and previews monthly magazine published by the Mid-Yorks Evening News.

On the notepaper were typed the words The General reviews his troops.

A good half of the page from MY Life was occupied by a photograph recording the recent visit of a minor royal to the city. She was shown receiving a posy of freesias from a small girl across a crush barrier during a walkabout. A thick red circle had been drawn around the head of a man just beyond the child.

‘This your husband?’ guessed Dalziel.

‘Yes.’

The photo was very clear. It showed a man somewhere between late twenties and mid thirties, his blond hair tousled by the breeze as he observed the Royal with an expression more quizzical than enthusiastic.

‘You sure?’

‘It’s Alex or his double,’ she said.

‘Right,’ he said, turning his attention to the hotel notepaper.

The Keldale was the town’s premier hotel, priding itself, with its spacious rooms, traditional menus and extensive gardens, on offering luxury in the old style.

‘The General reviews his troops,’ he read. ‘That means summat special, does it?’

She said, ‘Alex’s family always liked to claim a family connection with General Wolfe…’

He saw her hesitating whether she needed to explain who General Wolfe was.

He said, ‘The one who’d rather have written Gray’s Elegy than whupped the Frogs, right?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Alex was rather proud of the connection and I used to make fun of him because of it, and we started playing this game…I was a plucky little trooper and he was General Wolfe reviewing his troops, and…’

She was blushing. It became her.

Dalziel handed back the magazine page and said, ‘Spare me the details, luv. This something your Alex would have boasted about to his mates after a couple of pints?’

‘No!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘Definitely not.’

Dalziel noted the certainty without necessarily accepting it.

‘So you were convinced this was your man. What did you do?’

‘I rang Mick.’

‘Purdy? Oh aye. And what did he have to say?’

‘Nothing. I couldn’t get him. I knew he was going to be busy this weekend. He’s been running some big Met op, he’s a commander now. They’ve got to the arrest stage, so that probably meant all mobiles switched off. Anyway, I left him a message.’

Dalziel digested this. Purdy a commander. The lad had done well, but he’d had the look of a high-flier back when they’d met all those year ago. More puzzling was the woman’s knowledge of him; not his promotion, that was understandable, but the details of his operational timetable.

He said, ‘Sorry, luv, I’m not getting this. Seven years on you’re trying to get your husband declared dead, then you get his picture through the post, and the first thing you do is ring his old boss? Why not your best friend, if it’s a bit of emotional support you want? Or your solicitor, if it’s professional advice. Why dig right back into the past and come up with your man’s old boss?’

She said, ‘Sorry, Mr Dalziel, I keep forgetting you didn’t actually speak to Mick. I should have told you right away. There’s another reason I need to get a presumption of death. Mick and I are going to be married.’

08.55–09.05

Vince Delay watched Tubby stand up then sit down again and start talking to Blondie.

Briefly he had a full-frontal view of the fat guy and now he dropped his eyes to compare what he’d seen with a photograph he was holding in his hymn book. It was a full-length shot of a man lounging against a tree, thirtyish, blond hair ruffled by a breeze, with the slightly mocking half-smile of a guy who knows what he wants and has no doubts about his ability to get it.

The only time Vince had seen him in the flesh, trouble had wiped that smile from his face but otherwise he’d looked the same.

Fleur had said, stick to Blondie and she’ll lead us to him, and this is where she’d led.

He let his gaze drift from the photo to the bulky figure sitting close to the tart. Question was, could anything have changed this to that in seven years?

Didn’t seem likely.

Pity, he thought. Would have been nice if things had turned out so easy. Not that it bothered him. Not his responsibility, not since Fleur took him in hand. Would have been nice for Fleur though. Or maybe not. Fleur was clever and for some reason clever people often seemed to prefer things a bit complicated. Himself, he’d have been delighted if it had been Tubby. Whack! And then back down the motorway, leaving this northern dump to fall to pieces in its own time.

One thing was sure: whoever Tubby was, all that praying, he had some heavy stuff on his mind. And now it looked like Blondie was laying some more on him. This surveillance stuff was real boring.