Good Morning, Midnight

18

Arriving at Cothersley Hall was a very different experience from arriving at Casa Alba.

For a start there was no sign of the house from the roadway, just a pair of massive granite columns Pascoe was sure he’d once seen in the British Museum, crowned by eagles with wings outstretched and expressions of pained surprise, as though in the act of laying polyhedral eggs.

On either side of the columns as far as the eye could see stretched a six-foot wall topped by razor wire, and from them hung a double metal gate, apparently designed to obstruct incursion by anything less than a Centurion tank.

He began to get out of the car then paused as a small CCTV camera situated in the lea of one of the eagles turned towards him. It must have liked what it saw for a moment later the great gates began to swing silently open.

Come into my parlour…

But spiders offered no threat to a man fortified with what in fact had turned out to be a rather good ploughman’s at the Dog and Duck washed down with half a pint of lager. A fondness for lager was a vice he concealed from Andy Dalziel. He admired Shirley Novello’s refusal to be intimidated into drinking anything she didn’t fancy, but he hadn’t yet found the nerve to join her in sitting at the Fat Man’s table in the Black Bull sucking some Transylvanian pils called Schlurp straight out of the bottle.

It had been easy to get the Captain talking about his blue beer. In fact once started it had been hard to get him talking about anything else, though reference to the tragic death of Mr Maciver had stimulated a curious melange of what’s-the-world-coming-to-I-blame-the-government polemic and always-thought-there-was-something-odd-about-him Schadenfreude.

He set the car in motion and drove through the gateway into a long curving avenue of ancient beeches, festive with the first bright growth of spring. In his mirror he saw the gates closing behind him, occasioning a momentary feeling of unease which quickly vanished as the car rounded a bend and Cothersley Hall came into view.

Now this, he thought, was much more to Ellie’s taste than Casa Alba. It was a solid brick-built seventeenth-century manor house, south facing, adorned with but not swamped by gold-heart ivy, not over-large, just right for a gentleman farmer and his family, and, of course, a few necessary servants.

He tried to imagine what a seventeenth-century Ellie would have done about necessary servants and smiled.

Twenty-first-century Ellie certainly wouldn’t approve the single-storey extension on the western side of the building, with its broad expanses of glass through which he could glimpse a swimming pool, but its architect had done his considerable best to preserve the harmony of the place.

As he got out of the car, the house door opened and a man came out. He was in his forties, stockily well-built, with greying black hair just short of a crew cut and a leathery high-cheekboned face.

He came down the steps and said, “You the dick?”

“Some people have called me such,” said Pascoe. “I prefer Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe.”

“Yeah. Thought I recognized you from Kay’s description. I’m Tony Kafka.”

He shook hands with a firm but non-competitive grip.

“So what’s the word on Pal?” he asked. “Suicide, or is there more?”

“What makes you ask that?” said Pascoe.

“Ranking cop coming out of his way to interview the dead man’s former stepmother don’t strike me as routine procedure.”

He set off up the steps towards the door. He walked with a rolling gait like a traditional sailor.

“You’re conversant with routine procedure, are you?” said Pascoe following.

“I read a lot of crime crap,” said Kafka over his shoulder. “And I’ve been in business long enough to know a guy ducking a question when I see one. That guy who came out to the plant was just the same.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Guy with a face to sink a thousand ships. Detective Sergeant I think he was. Turned up just as I was leaving an hour or so ago. God knows what he wanted and neither of them was sharing the info with me.”

Wield had gone to Ash-Mac’s? What the hell for? wondered Pascoe as Kafka led the way across a shadowy heavily wainscoted hall. On a table by the door stood a well-used leather grip.

“In here,” said Kafka, pushing open the door into a long airy reception room where Kay Kafka was sitting on a chaise longue as gracefully as any character in a Jane Austen movie. “Honey, you got a visitor.”

“Mr Pascoe, how nice to see you again,” she said. “Please, sit down.”

“Yeah,” said Kafka. “Over there with your back to the light, that’s the best interrogation position, right? And do you want to grill us both at once or separately?”

“It’s Mrs Kafka I’d like to speak to,” said Pascoe.

Kay said, “You must forgive my husband, Chief Inspector. Tony, if the cabaret’s over, maybe you’d like to organize some drinks? Coffee? Tea? Or something stronger?”

“That’s to check how serious this is,” said Kafka. “If you say, ‘Not while I’m on duty, madam,’ we know we’re in for a rough ride.”

“I think you may have been reading the wrong crime crap,” said Pascoe courteously. “Coffee would be nice. Espresso if at all possible.”

“If at all possible!” echoed Kafka as he left the room. “Only in England…!”

Somewhere a phone was ringing.

Kay said, “Excuse Tony. He thinks he’s putting you at ease.”

“No problem. I love a wag,” murmured Pascoe, sitting down at right angles to the window. “And I’m certainly at ease. Nice house you’ve got, Mrs Kafka.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” she said. “Though not precisely to my taste.”

“No?” said Pascoe, surprised.

“No,” she said firmly. “Tony bought and renovated it long before I married him. I’ve made some adjustments since, but the main structure’s pretty obdurate. As indeed is Tony.”

“My wife would like it,” said Pascoe.

“She would? How is she, by the way? We only met briefly the other night, but she struck me as a pretty capable lady.”

“She’s fine,” said Pascoe. “Look, I’m sorry to be troubling you, but there are a couple of uncertainties surrounding the sad death of your stepson which I thought you might be able to help with.”

She said, “Uncertainties? Yes, I should imagine that when someone chooses to kill himself in such a macabre fashion, there are bound to be uncertainties.”

“Macabre?” said Pascoe. “Shooting yourself is, alas, pretty commonplace.”

“But doing it in a manner which almost exactly replicated his own father’s death seems pretty macabre to me,” she replied.

“I suppose it was,” said Pascoe as if this had never occurred to him. “What do you think was going on in his mind when he chose to do that? Was he making some kind of statement, perhaps?”

“I doubt it. Striking a pose, perhaps.”

“A bit extreme, don’t you think? I mean, people strike poses to draw attention to themselves, but there’s not much point if you can’t enjoy that attention.”

She shook her head and said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t suggesting that as his reason for killing himself. God knows what that was, but once he’d decided to end his life, then, being the way he was, naturally he’d look for some specially dramatic way of making his exit. In fact, I’m not a psychiatrist, but it must take a lot of will power to carry you through from the idea of suicide to the actual execution, and maybe setting up some kind of formal dramatic structure is a good way of keeping you on track.”

“How would you apply that in your first husband’s case?” enquired Pascoe. “I hope you don’t mind me asking.”

“No, I don’t mind. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Pal Senior was very different from his son. He found the striking of poses offensive. He prided himself on his matter-of-factness. He was a man of business and proud of it, and he believed that once you set your mind to a task, you carried it through, no second thoughts allowed. So he wouldn’t need a dramatic structure. He had a shotgun. He used it.”

“Yet there was some artistic presentation involved,” insisted Pascoe. “The volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry on the desk, the particular poem it was open at. How did it go? He scanned it-staggered-dropped the Loop to Past or Present…”

“Past or Period,” she corrected. “Caught helpless at a sense as if His mind were going blind — ”

“Doesn’t sound very matter-of-fact to me,” said Pascoe dubiously. “Sounds like a man who feels things slipping out of control. Yet he seemed to do everything very methodically. Why do you think he left the book on his desk?”

This was dangerous ground, he realized. He was questioning a woman about the way her first husband had killed himself with her second about to return any moment. From what little he’d seen of Kafka he didn’t seem like a man who’d react kindly if he found someone had reduced his wife to a tearful breakdown.

But Kay didn’t look as if she was about to weep. Her expression was gravely compassionate rather than sorrow-stricken. It suited her. She was, he acknowledged yet again, and almost with a shock as if he’d somehow missed it before, a truly beautiful woman.

She said, “The poem was a message to me. I gave him the book, and because he knew it was important to me, he really worked hard to come to terms with Emily. But often I’d catch him reading it with a look of exasperated bafflement on his face, like a child asked to study what is yet beyond his ken. He once told me it troubled him that such short poems, often just a scatter of lines, a handful of words, should leave him groping after meaning.”

“Groped up, to see if God was there-Groped backward at Himself,” said Pascoe softly.

She smiled at him, briefly, then went on, “I think that what he was saying to me by leaving the volume open at this poem was, Listen, love, I got this one right in the end. Now I know what this one means. He was offering the only kind of comfort he could think of. I believe he tried to write me a note explaining what was going on in his mind, saying how sorry he was, but found the only words he could use were inadequate. So he chose instead to let Emily describe how he felt for him and, by using her poem, he said he loved me.”

She fell silent. Pascoe was deeply moved. All the nasty things that had been said about this woman sounded in his head now like mere snarls of envy and resentment. Oh yes, she was a pretty good magicker all right.

Time to pull something out of the hat himself, if he could.

He produced his wallet and from it took the sheet of paper on which he’d copied poem no. 870.

“I wonder if you recognize this,” he said.

She took the paper from his hand, unfolded it, placed it on the table to smooth it out, then read it without any change of expression.

Finished, she said, “It’s Emily Dickinson, of course. I’ve read it but I wouldn’t say I know it.”

“Sorry, I thought being an expert…”

She smiled and said, “I’m only expert enough to know how hard she can be. What’s your reading of it? Andy Dalziel tells me you’re a grad, and bright with it.”

He liked the easy way she brought her acquaintance with the Fat Man in and the mischief in her eyes which suggested that what Dalziel had said was something like, Clever bugger, yon Pascoe. Went to college but he’s turned out not a bad cop despite that.

He said, “It seems to me it’s about delusion, deceit, loss. She seems to be saying that we invent quests for ourselves to give our existence meaning but that the only result of this is to make ourselves as fallacious as the invention.”

She said, “Wow. I see what Andy meant.”

“But I know so little about her,” he went on. “Is she the kind of writer whose references need close exploration? For instance, does she want us to be thinking about Ino who hated her stepchildren so much that they could only escape her wrath by fleeing on a golden ram with wings? Or Medea who killed the kids she’d had with Jason after he betrayed her? Or… well, you see what I’m getting at.”

“She certainly knew all about the complexities of family relationships,” she said. “Mother, brother, sister, sister-in-law-enough material for several Greek tragedies there, with maybe the odd comedy thrown in. She had a wry sense of humour, did you know that? It’s always worth recalling before you take everything she says too seriously.”

She paused, fixing a wide candid gaze on him, then asked, “Why are you so interested in this particular poem anyway?”

“I just happened across it,” he said, meeting the gaze unblinkingly. “You know how it is. Something comes up-some name, some place, something you haven’t thought about for years, if at all-and suddenly you happen on references almost anywhere you look.”

“Yes, I know the feeling. Life’s all about patterns, I sometimes think. Patterns imposed upon us, patterns we impose upon ourselves. Ah, here’s Tony.”

Kafka came back into the room with a tray.

“One espresso-if-at-all-possible,” he said. “Mr Pascoe, you want to talk to me for any reason?”

“I can’t think of any reason offhand,” said Pascoe. “So unless you can suggest one, then no.”

“Good. It’s just that I’m heading down to London shortly. Got a plane to catch first thing in the morning so I’ll be staying out at Heathrow.”

“I haven’t forgotten I’m driving you to the station,” said Kay. ‘But we don’t have to go for an hour at least.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to break up your tete-a-tete,” said Kafka. “In fact it can go on long as you like. Just got a call, I need to get back to the plant. Sod’s law, I’m there all morning, nothing happens. Soon as I come away, I’m needed. It’s OK, I’ll drive myself and leave my car in the station park.”

He spoke perhaps just a shade too casually.

“You sure?” said Kay. “I can easily…”

“No problem,” he said. “Goodbye, Mr Pascoe. Don’t get up.”

He offered his hand again. Then he went to his wife, bent to her, kissed her lightly on the cheek and said, “I’ll ring you from the hotel.”

He went out. After a moment of silence, Kay said, “Excuse me just a moment, Mr Pascoe. Something I forgot.”

She rose and went out after her husband. Watching her move was worth paying money for, thought Pascoe. A grace so understated you hardly noticed it till you realized you were holding your breath.

Outside, Kay caught up with her husband as he tossed his grip into the boot of his car.

“Tony,” she said, “is everything OK?”

“It will be,” he said lightly.

“I wish I were coming with you.”

“To the plant?”

“To the States.”

“Yeah?” he said. “And miss seeing the twins every day?”

“I didn’t mean for good. I meant so that I’d be around when you meet Joe and the others.”

“Honey, there’s nothing to worry about. Like I told you last night after I talked to Joe, he was OK with the way I felt. He said the time had come for a rethink, this wasn’t just about politics any more, this was about patriotism.”

“No. With Joe it will always be about profit, however you spell it.”

“Hey, I thought I did cynicism in this family. I’ll be fine. You stay here, make sure Helen turns into the kind of mom you’d have been. Things are going to be OK.”

“And if they’re not? If Joe won’t listen?”

Kafka’s expression became hard.

“Then it’s golden handshake time. And maybe I’ll crush a few fingers while we’re at it.”

She shook her head as if acknowledging that there was nothing more she could say. Then she put her hands round his neck and drew his head down to hers and kissed him long and passionately.

“Goodbye, Tony,” she said.

He drew back and viewed her quizzically.

“Wow,” he said. “Maybe I should go away more often.”

She turned from him and went back into the house.

Pascoe, who had been watching from the window, hastily resumed his seat.

A moment or two later Kay came back into the room.

“Everything all right?” said Pascoe.

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“No reason. I just thought Mr Kafka seemed a little… rushed?”

“Tony is a good man. He wants to be a good American,” she said, as if this answered him. “Now, Mr Pascoe, where were we?”

“I think somehow we’d got on to critical interpretation of Emily Dickinson,” he said with a smile. “If we could return to the sad matter in hand, I’ll try not to keep you much longer. How would you describe your relationship with your stepson, Mrs Kafka?”

She showed no surprise at the question but after a pause for consideration replied, “It ended better than it started. Though I’m not sure I understand the relevance…?”

“Just looking for details in a picture,” he said. “From what I’ve learned from Mr Dalziel, it seems on occasion to have been a little fraught.”

Let her know that Fat Andy’s my colleague as well as her buddy.

“As a boy he resented me taking his mother’s place. As an adolescent, I think these feelings of resentment got muddled with the kind of sexual fantasies young men have about any personable female within easy reach. Guilt feelings after his father’s death brought everything to a climax and for several years I think his easiest solution was to condemn me as the cause of everything disturbing and distressing in his life.”

“How did this manifest itself?”

“By barring me from re-entering Moscow House. By making allegations about my conduct which I might have had to answer in the courts if he hadn’t been brought to see the foolishness, and the danger to himself, of his actions. By instituting legal proceedings to remove Helen from my custody.”

“But that never came to court?”

“Thanks mainly to Tony. Pal’s objections were based on me being American and the lack of blood relationship. What, he asked, if I decided to return to the States? His father wouldn’t have wanted his daughter brought up out of the UK. Or what if I remarried and my new husband didn’t care for the child? With no blood relationship between us, wouldn’t it be easy for me simply to dump her? Tony listened to my troubles and said, ‘Let’s get married and officially adopt the kid.’ That, plus undertakings to have her educated wholly in the UK no matter what happened to Tony in his job, cut the ground from under Pal’s feet. But I guess you know most of this already, Mr Pascoe.”

Her smile was ironic.

He said, “Detective work is all about hearing the same things again and again and looking for new angles, or discrepancies, Mrs Kafka.”

“You spotted any yet?”

“Nothing that can’t be explained by forgetfulness, natural bias, or inadvertence. But things got better, you say. Why was that?”

“Time, maturity, perspective. A recognition that the situation as it was now wasn’t going to change.”

“The situation being that you had succeeded in bringing Helen up in Mid-Yorkshire, she was now legally of age, not to mention married and pregnant. And he had accepted this, I understand. There’d been a rapprochement as evidenced by his playing squash with his brother-in-law.”

“So it would appear.”

“Which makes it a strange time to decide to commit suicide. If he’d hung on another day, he would have been an uncle. As it was, he was sounding a new note of family tragedy at the very time when the Macivers should have been popping corks to celebrate the start of the next generation.”

“Pal was never a man to let the needs or wishes of others take priority over his own.”

“You mean he might have chosen this time deliberately to upstage his own sister?” said Pascoe incredulously.

“I don’t say that. I just mean that all potential suicides must develop some form of tunnel vision; with Pal the tunnel was always there.”

His mobile rang. Mouthing an apology, he took it out and read the number.

Dalziel.

“Excuse me,” he said.

He stepped out into the hall and took the call.

“Pascoe.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“I’m at Cothersley,” he said. Then, annoyed at his own circumspection he added, “Cothersley Hall.”

“Oh aye. Best get back here.”

“What’s up, sir? Developments?”

“You could say. Meeting, my room, thirty minutes. And that’s an order.”

He went back into the room and said, “Thank you for your time, Mrs Kafka.”

“Does that mean we’re done? Or have you merely been interrupted?”

“Who knows?” he said. “Oh, by the way. Your husband, your first husband I mean, he owned two shotguns, I believe?”

“I seem to recall so.”

“The one he used is still in police hands. The one your stepson used seems to be the other half of the pair. Any idea where it’s been for the last ten years?”

“I don’t know… in Moscow House I presume.”

“Perhaps. Certainly not in the gun case in the study, which only has room for one gun and shows no sign of having had a weapon in it for some considerable time.”

“Then I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

Can’t you? he wondered. I think perhaps you can.

But he said nothing, took his leave and went out to his car.

As he drove away he glanced towards the window.

And was rather disappointed this time to find no one watching him.