This time the front door was shut but she had Helen’s key, the key Helen insisted on having when the house went on the market. And this time she did not need to rely on finding a stub of candle and a book of matches. Providently she had a pencil torch in her pocket.
Its thin beam led her up the staircase to the study door. She turned the handle and pushed. It swung open and without even a second’s hesitation she stepped into the room where her husband and her stepson had both died.
Now her mind did register something, but it was surprise not fear, caused by the room’s emptiness. She let the torch beam stray hither and thither. Everything had gone. Furniture, picture, even the books. How very thorough. Andy had told her DCI Pascoe was a man for fine detail but she hadn’t expected anything like this.
But their thoroughness had not taken them quite all the way. They had not attempted to remove the gun cabinet from the wall.
She went to it and opened it.
The dust that had gathered inside looked undisturbed.
She reached in, took hold of the gun-retaining clip, twisted it anticlockwise and pulled. It swung out easily on well-oiled hinges and she let the torch beam play into the revealed chamber.
At the same time the room’s central light came on and a voice said, “Once saw a movie where there was a safe hidden behind a safe. Should have thought of that.”
For a second she froze but when she turned, her face showed nothing but the pleasure of a welcoming hostess.
“How nice to see you, Sergeant,” she said. “I’m so glad to have been of assistance.”
“You’ve certainly been that,” agreed Wield. “So what brings you here, Mrs Kafka?”
“It was Mr Pascoe, actually. He asked me if I knew anything about another gun. I said no, but later I got to thinking, and I had this recollection of seeing my husband, my first husband that is, closing this cabinet one day. It struck me as odd that it should swing out completely but I never really thought there might be another cabinet behind it, not till Mr Pascoe made me think, that is. And once I got the notion in my head, that was it. I found I couldn’t rest until I’d seen for myself.”
“Didn’t think of just ringing Mr Pascoe?”
“And send him on a wild-goose chase? No, I thought I’d come down here myself and ask the policeman on duty if I could test out my theory.”
“And when you saw there wasn’t a policeman on duty?”
She smiled at him.
“But of course, there is, Sergeant. You. So here you are. One little mystery solved. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be getting home. My husband’s away and he will probably try to ring me from his hotel. Good night to you, Mr Wield.”
She walked towards him.
He watched her approach, his face giving away nothing.
Then he stood aside and said, “Good night, Mrs Kafka.”
In St Cuthbert’s church Dolly Upshott had no idea how long she’d been sitting.
It was cold in here, but not cold enough to mask the unique smell of the place, what her brother called the odour of sanctity. It comprised wood and leather and cloth and stone and dampness and the ghost of incense and hyssop (David was quite “high”). The stained-glass windows, beautiful with the sun behind them, were too heavily tinted for starlight to penetrate. Only to the south-west where a gibbous moon glanced on a high narrow window did a diffused light pass through, and she’d taken her seat here.
She didn’t move, not even when she heard the church door, which she’d left ajar, creak fully open and footsteps come up the aisle.
“I saw the door was open as I drove by,” said Kay Kafka. “It seemed like an invitation. But if I’m disturbing you…”
“No more than life. Have a pew.”
Uncertain if this was an English joke or not, Kay sat down and looked up at the window where the moonlight set the stained glass glowing. The design showed two haloed figures walking towards each other across a stretch of water. This was usually interpreted as Herbert of Derwentwater visiting his chum Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, or maybe vice versa. One of the figures (probably Herbert) looked a lot less certain than the other, as if not quite able to get it out of his mind that the slightest flicker of faith could have him plunging to a weedy grave.
“I know how he feels,” said Kay.
“Sorry?”
“The picture in the window. Walking on water’s fine till something comes along to remind you it’s water you’re walking on.”
“Like a ship, you mean?”
“Or a shark.”
They shared a moment of humour, but soon they moved beyond sharing, each into some private space where they looked for whatever it was that had brought them into this place at this time.
It was the church clock striking midnight that brought them out of their reveries.
Even now neither spoke nor moved till the twelfth note had sounded across the green, rolling out beyond the sleeping cottages and farms, past the near meadows, over the still streams, finally fading to nothingness in the neighbouring valley-glades.
Now they rose and walked down the aisle together.
Outside they stood for a moment looking up at the brilliant stars above the dark unheeding village.
“Looks set fair for tomorrow, doesn’t it?” said Kay.
“You think so?” said Dolly. “Doesn’t matter. Even if it rains, water’s not the end of the world, is it? We can always swim.”
“So can sharks,” said Kay.
March 23rd, 2002
1 A LADY CALLS
Peter Pascoe awoke on Saturday morning feeling good. Drowsily he tried to give shape to the as-yet amorphous causes of this pleasant state. It was the beginning of a free weekend; last night’s concert had been close to a triumph, Rosie playing with a brio which visually more than compensated for her somewhat cavalier attitude to musical notation; he and Ellie had put her to bed with love and kisses, and not long after put themselves to bed with even more; and one of the shapes which was contributing largely to his euphoria, or perhaps one should more accurately say two of them, was, or were, pressed invitingly close against his belly at this moment.
Then a thin wail from his mobile phone brought him out of his dream.
He grabbed it from the bedside table, switched off the sound, checked the display. It was Wield. What the hell did he want at ten to eight on a Saturday morning?
As he staggered out of the room to find out, it occurred to him that his irritation was misdirected. His long lie-in was already spoken for. He had a date with Dalziel to pay a visit to Cothersley Hall. Plus, and even more imperatively, he had an agreement with Rosie to drop her off for her nine a.m. clarinet lesson on the way in to the station. After last night she would have the Royal Festival Hall in her sights, or at least the Wigmore. Indeed, as he settled on the loo seat to answer his phone, he could already hear her running up a scale whose atonality would have left Schoenberg gasping.
“Yes?” he yawned.
“Morning, Pete,” said Wield, sounding disgustingly wide awake. “Wanted to catch you before you set out.”
Briefly he described the events at Moscow House the previous night.
“You didn’t bring her in for questioning then?” said Pascoe.
