surprised you two irreligious sods didn’t know that. Not much chance of running into you in church, is there?’
‘But why, sir?’ insisted Pascoe. ‘You’ve not been born again or something.’
Wield hastily supped his beer. Something must have gone down the wrong way as he choked slightly.
Dalziel said, ‘Born again? Nay. I’d guess it were a right painful experience for me mam the first time. Size I am now, I’d likely challenge an elephant. No, it’s the music.’
His two colleagues exchanged glances then Pascoe said incredulously on a sliding scale that would have got him the part of Lady Bracknell, ‘The music?’
‘Aye. You ought to go there and have a listen some time. Smashing acoustic. And the organist were practising his Bach this morning: “Art of the Fugue”. My favourite. Tha knows what a fugue is? Bit of a tune that chases itself round and round till it vanishes up its own arsehole.’
He whistled a series of random notes in alleged illustration. As if in sympathetic counterpoint, the old Vienna clock began to strike midnight.
Man and timepiece finished together. Dalziel stared at his interlocutors as if challenging response.
None came, and he said with some satisfaction, ‘Aye, there’s many a good fugue played on an old organ. You two might do well to remember that. Now, whose round is it anyway? I think some bugger must have drunk mine!’
FIVE
con fuoco poi smorzando
POSTLUDE
Midnight.
Splintered woodwork, bedroom door flung open, feet pounding into the room, duvet ripped off, grim faces looking down at him…
He sits upright and screams, ‘NO!’
Even in his shock and terror a part of his mind is assuring him that this is a nightmare, not all that surprising in view of the evening’s stresses.
A voice he recognizes says ‘Hello, Goldie’ and, despite the oddity of hearing it in his bedroom, the very familiarity helps soothe his fears, and he closes his eyes in relief and lies back, thinking that this must signal his awakening.
When he opens his eyes again, the duvet is tucked under his chin and the room is full of light. But the grim faces are still there on either side of the bed, men in their twenties or early thirties, dressed in dark sweaters and jeans; only two of them, it’s true, but looking strong and active enough to dowse any thought of resistance, even if he had the strength.
He looks to the end of the bed and sees the source of the familiar voice and tries to rekindle the initial relief he felt at hearing it, but somehow it’s reluctant to return.
‘Maggie…that you?’ he says.
It takes real effort to produce the words, like squeezing toothpaste from a nearly empty tube. What the hell’s wrong with him? OK, he’d drunk a bit more than he did when Flo was around, and he’d taken a sleeping pill like he usually did when she wasn’t, but no way could that account for feeling like he was swimming in gumbo.
‘What’s…going…on? Something…happened…to…Dave?…crashed…that…fucking…car…?’
Maggie Pinchbeck says, ‘No, Dave’s quite well, far as I know. Should be back from Broadstairs now. Hope he goes straight to bed and gets a bit of sleep before the police wake him up.’
‘Why…police…wake…him?’ asks Goldie Gidman, clinging to the fragile structure of conversation like a drowning man.
‘To tell him about the fire, of course.’
‘…fire…?’
‘The one at Windrush House that killed you, Goldie. That fire.’
It is both a comfort and a pain that in some remote part of his mind his thought processes seem to be working at normal levels of efficiency. So the nightmare continues, he comforts himself. All those years of sleeping sound while he was doing all that dodgy stuff, and suddenly a little crisis brings on the night sweats! Maybe he’d hit the rum even more than he recalled last night.
You been living too soft, man! he admonishes himself. Let this be a warning.
He tries closing his eyes again, hoping to slip back into sleep. A sharp prick in his left arm brings him back upright. One of the men is stooping over him with a hypodermic needle in his hand. The other is filling the tumbler on the bedside table with rum. His hands are gloved.
‘Don’t worry,’ says Maggie. ‘Just a little Temezepam. Drugi here lives up to his name, I’m sorry to say. Knows how to get his hands on all kinds of shit. You’ve already taken a bit more Restoril than you thought. Think of it as a kindness. You should be out of it when the flames really take hold. But who knows, Goldie? Who knows?’
‘Maggie, what…the…fuck…you…talking…about? Sling! Sling!’
He tries to kick off the duvet but doesn’t have the strength and in any case the man with the hypodermic has no problem holding him down with one hand. Maggie Pinchbeck comes round the bed, picks up the TV remote from the bedside table. On the wall the flat-screen fills with colour.
‘Say goodbye to Jimi,’ she says, turning the sound down. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll turn him up full blast before we leave.’
‘Sling! Where…are…you…man? SLING!’
‘He’s outside, Goldie. But he’ll be in here with you before you go. Faithful retainer makes brave attempt to rescue his old friend and master, breaks down locked door with axe, but the smoke gets to him and they perish together. The tabs will love it.’
‘Why…you…doing…this…?’ he asks, terror fighting against the drowsiness spreading through his veins. Now the deep sleep he had so desired to slip into just a few moments earlier looms like the mouth of a volcano. ‘You men…what…she’s…paying…I’ll…double…’
‘Come on, Goldie!’ she admonishes. ‘Double? You’re a billionaire, for God’s sake. You can do better than that. This is your life we’re talking about here. What’s it worth? How much did Mr Janowski owe you? Five hundred, was it? A thousand maybe? Surely your life’s worth a lot more than a Polish tailor’s?’
‘What’s…he…got…to…do…with…?’
‘Let’s give you a clue. Say hello to the boys. That’s Drugi who gave you your injection, and this is Kuba. Drugi’s a plumber, Kuba’s an electrician. He’s fixed your smoke detector, by the way. They’re brothers. Very strong sense of family. Have you guessed what family that is? That’s right, the Janowski family. My family, Goldie. When you checked me out, that didn’t come up, did it? Maggie Pinchbeck is the name I grew up with. But the name I was christened, the name I had before I was adopted, was Magdalena Janowski. I’m that baby girl you and Sling tried to burn to death with my mother and father, all because he complained that you’d crushed his fingers with a hammer over a little debt.’
‘Not…true…not…true…’
‘Yes, I found it hard to believe when I first heard it. That wasn’t till fairly recently. I didn’t find out I was adopted till I was eighteen, after Mum and Dad-that’s my second Mum and Dad-got burnt to death in a car crash. I’m sure they were going to tell me, but they left it too late. Maybe that’s what started me working with ChildSave. It wasn’t till seven or eight years later I felt able to start digging deeper and found I hadn’t been abandoned. I was Magdalena Janowski and my real parents had died in a fire too. Oh yes, Goldie. Some things they say you can’t experience twice. But thanks to you, I managed to be orphaned twice, both times by fire. That’s one for the Guinness Book of Records, don’t you think?’
She smiles, bitterly, humourlessly.
Goldie Gidman is fighting to keep his eyes open. The man called Kuba pours rum out of the bottle on to the duvet, then replaces the bottle on the table. There is a cigar case lying alongside it. Drugi takes a cigar out, carefully cuts off the end, looks at Maggie questioningly.
