The Yeare's Midnight (12 page)

‘What did you make of that, sergeant?’ Underwood asked.

‘He’s hiding something. That’s for sure,’ said Harrison. ‘I don’t know, though, guv. He doesn’t strike me as the type.’

‘We shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.’ Underwood could tell his sergeant had suspected Heyer had been hiding something. ‘Let’s have a look at his phone records and see if we can dig up any background on the bloke – his business, his friends. Before we discount him, I want to be sure we’ve looked under every bloody rock in his garden.’

‘Will do.’

Underwood thought of Julia, imagined her perfume clinging to Heyer’s jacket, her hands on Heyer’s smooth pale skin. He felt a sting of jealousy but also strangely calm. Underwood had
looked straight into the eyes of his darkest suspicions and had felt no fear: just cold hate. Hate was a positive emotion. It was a harbinger of action. Maybe it was time for a chat with his wife.

Crowan
Frayne
sleeps
intermittently
through
the
afternoon.
His
mind
throws
off
sparks
like
a
Catherine
wheel.
Shallow
sleep
is
the
realm
of
dreams
and
Crowan
Frayne
wades
through
night
mares
that
cling
and
pull
him
down.
He
is
in
a
wooden
ship,
rolling
across
a
dark,
undulating
sea.
He
is
watching
the
sky.
Mapping
the
stars
that
smudge
like
raindrops
against
night’s
endless
black
panes.
Dimension
and
distance
gnaw
achingly
at
his
consciousness;
he
seeks
pattern
and
accord
where
there
is
none.
He
is
drawn
by
the
asteroid
Chiron.
It
completes
its
orbit
of
the
sun
once
every
fifty
years
despite
the
gravitational
whirl
pools
that
distort
its
progress:
one
blinding
flash
of
clarity,
one
mathematical
completion
in
a
human
lifetime.
He
imagines
Chiron’s
music
as
a
brilliant
deafening
glissando
that
completes
and
repeats
its
slide
once
every
fifty
years.

He
sees
distant
planets,
constellations
and
asterisms;
flickering
stars
that
may
already
be
dead.
Perhaps
he
is
dead:
perhaps
his
senses
and
awareness
are
mere
corruptions
of
light
and
time
distorted
by
the
vastness
of
space.
Others
can
map
and
record
his
dying
light
but
he
has
long
since
collapsed
into
an
oblivion
that
only
mathematics
can
comprehend.
Multiplication
upon
multiplication
above,
below,
behind
and
beyond:
multiplications
of
vastness
upon
emptiness
upon
chaos
upon
time.
What
gives
us
substance?
Self-perception?
Will?
There
are
submicroscopic
particles
that
only
mathematics
can
identify:
reductions
upon
reductions
upon
compressions.
Higgs-Bosun
particles
give
us
mass
and
form.
Ultimately,
our
existence
is
tangible
only
at
a
subatomic
level.
Crowan
Frayne
knows
there
is
music
in
the
tiny
rotations
of
electrons,
neutrinos
and
quarks.
It
is
infinitesimally
acute
like
a
white-hot
pin
in
the
brain.
He
is
awake
for
an
instant.
Winter
sunlight
pricks
at
his
eyes
but
he
can
eclipse
it
with
a
wink;
like
the
curtains
hide
the
garden.

There
are
flowers
in
the
garden
and
the
grass
is
overgrown.
Crowan
Frayne
is
a
child
who
plays
knee-deep
in
grass
alone. 
He
pulls grass from the ground with the soil that bore
it.
Soil
is
where
we
come
from.
Soil
is
where
we
go.
Death
gives
soil
its
richness.
Death
is
how
we
grow.
Nothing
is
ever
destroyed,
it
merely
changes
form:
even
Isaac
Newton.
Crowan
Frayne
travels
along
the
spider’s
web
of
carbons
and
proteins
that
simplify
us;
the
interlocking
spirals
of
acids
that
reduce
us
to
chains
of
numbers.
Every
dead
thing
is
simplified
in
the
soil
and
drawn
up
within
us
as
particles
of
food
and
fluid.
We
are
rich
with
the
dead.
Imbued
with
the
dead.
The
dead
are
everywhere:
drawn
into
flowers
and
trees,
the
water
in
rivers,
the
air
we
breathe.
They
interlace
us,
bind
us
together.
We
assimilate
the
molecules
of
the
dead
into
new
living
structures.
Nothing
ever
dies,
it
merely
changes
form.
Crowan
Frayne
feels
the
molecules
of
the
numberless
dead
sing
within
him.
If
mass
can
exist
only
at
the
subatomic
level,
he
must
be
a
billion
dead
things
wrought
into
newness;
forged
into
one
by
mathematics
and
will.
Every
thought,
pain,
memory
and
instinct
of
the
dead
is
bound
within
him.
He
is
a
multiplication
of
everything
that
went
before,
of
everyone
who
preceded
him.
The
dead
liveth
for
evermore …

He
sees
the
war
memorial
in
the
older
part
of
New
Bolden
cemetery.
It is a
white
marble
wall
carved
with
the
names
of
those
who
fell
1939
–45.
He
likes
to
visit
sometimes.
Arrayed
before
the
monolith
are
approximately
two
dozen
gravestones,
crosses
stained
grey
by
exposure
to
the
polluted
acidic
air
and
soot
from
the
railway.
Frayne
has
taken
cuttings
of
some
of
the
flowers
that
grow
there:
roses,
mainly
blood
red
and
bone
white.
He
has
learned
many
of
the
names
and
can
converse
with
them
as
friends.
Sgt
P.
Whittaker,
Pvt.
E.
Plum,
Cpt.
J.
Vigor.
Specks
of
dust
blown
into
oblivion.
Frayne
sees
politics,
war
and
conquest
as
essentially
organic:
no
different
in
essence
from
packs
of
animals
jockeying
and
fighting
for
territory
or
food.
Sharks
tearing
apart
seal
pups:
machine
guns
tearing
up
soldiers.
The
Spanish
Armada
was
carried
like
a
disease
by
the
wind
that
eventually
flung
it
to
the
bottom
of
the
sea.
Human
affairs
ultimately
reduce
to
basic
organic
functions:
birth,
survival,
death.
The
rest
is
poetry,
mathematics
and
will.

Crowan
Frayne
sits
up
and
pushes
back
the
hair
that
has
become
stuck
to
his
forehead.
There
is
a
cold
swaddle
of
sweat 
around
him.
He
feels
exhausted
but
he
faces
a
long,
important
evening.
The
power
of
his
rational
mind
will
draw
up
the
energies
that
are
buried
within
him.
He
will
be
ready.
He
rises
and
walks
to
his
desk.
There
are
Saintpaulia ionantha
plants
around
his
work.
He
has
transplanted
them
from
pots
to
his
grandmother’s
graveside
and
back
to
pots.
In
this
time
they
have
flowered
spectacularly.
He
knows
that
the
petals
and
delicate
stems
are
now
as
much
imbued
with
her
form
as
he
is
with
her
memory.
As
he
touches
the
petals
he
feels
like
he
is
holding
hands.

He
sits
and
extends
his
mind
around
the
day’s
events.
Plan
ning
and
the
rational
will
has
brought
him
so
far.
All
that
remains
is
concentration
and
energy.
He
has
already
mapped
the
constellation
of
possibilities.
After
the
Providence
of
Lucy
Har
rington
had
thunderclapped
across
his
consciousness
he
had
begun
developing
his
argument.
He
is
uncertain
where
the
next
woman
lives.
However,
he
knows
where
she
works;
he
has
watched
her
and
constructed
patterns
of
probability.
A
shark
can
smell
blood
in
the
water
from
three
miles
away.
To
Crowan
Frayne
human
vulnerabilities
are
even
more
obvious.