The Yeare's Midnight (22 page)

The gate was open and Dexter swung her car through in one smooth movement. She peered through the windscreen at The Beeches: it was certainly an impressive building. She crunched up the gravel drive and came to a halt next to the Audi TT with two flat tyres. The front door of the house was open but there were no signs of life. Should she radio for a squad car? She decided not to and walked up to the front of the house.

‘Hello?’ she called through the open door. ‘Elizabeth Drury?’ Silence. Dexter hesitated, then stepped inside. ‘Is anybody here? It’s the police.’ She looked down: there was blood on the carpet and a long red smear leading up the stairs. A cold rush of panic, then excitement. She should definitely call for a squad car now. She looked up the stairs: she had to know for sure. This was her discovery; the credit should be hers. Besides, she reasoned quickly, Drury might still be alive. ‘Inspector Dexter’ – she liked the sound of that. She took a deep breath and began to climb the stairs, her heart pounding.

Crowan Frayne stood flush to the wall at the side of the house, deciding what to do. He had put the framed prints in the back of his van. He knew he should make a dash for it: drive away while the policewoman marvelled at his poetry. He was shocked that they had made the connection with Elizabeth Drury so quickly. The woman had been awkward enough for him to find. Stussman was obviously alert to the notion of a pre-selected audience. Perhaps this policewoman was also worthy of admission.

He tried to reason clearly. It was too risky to delay. He should leave now. There was a good chance that she hadn’t seen his
car. He could be away before she realized what had happened. That was the most sensible option. He was about to get back into his van when he remembered that he had left his hammers and, more annoyingly, his medical instruments on Elizabeth Drury’s double bed.

Dexter, driven on by nervous excitement, fear and curiosity, pushed open the door to Elizabeth Drury’s bedroom. Bath taps. She heard the water running and, with a terrible sense of inevitability, stepped over the bloodstains on the carpet and pushed open the door to Drury’s lush en-suite bathroom.

Elizabeth Drury lay half-submerged in a bath of bloody water. Dexter felt her stomach contract but she wasn’t sick. She felt paralysed, unable to move. The woman was fully clothed, dressed for work. Her left eye had been removed and the socket stared emptily up at the ceiling. The water was thick red like some terrible soup and Dexter, inching closer, could see the edge of the impact wound in the side of Drury’s skull. The collar of the dead woman’s jacket was torn. Had she fought her attacker? Dexter shuddered at the thought. She followed Drury’s dead gaze to the ceiling, where in hideous red letters she read the following:

Steam from the hot tap was already making the text run. She took her notebook from her handbag and, with a shaking hand, wrote down the words. Then she noticed there was blood smeared on the lid of the toilet. Dexter took out her handkerchief and delicately turned off the bath taps, trying hard not to corrupt the fingerprints she knew wouldn’t be there. Then, with the same hand, she lifted the toilet lid.

Inside was a dead tabby cat. It had been placed sitting upright in the toilet pan, its tail in the water, its head bleeding and hanging down and to one side. Both the eyes were missing. Wedged between its forepaws and its bulging belly
was a piece of white card, carefully inscribed in flowing red handwriting:

Dexter knew she had to call for help now. Her early excitement had been replaced by a nagging fear and a sense of isolation. She stepped gingerly over the bloodstains on the bathroom floor and back into the bedroom. It was only then that she noticed the strange black case on the bed. And the two hammers. As she began to panic something hit her hard on the side of her head. She lurched against the bedroom wall, barely conscious. She could make out the dark image of a man. He was tall. She couldn’t fix her eyes on him: the room was moving around her. She knew she musn’t go down. Something struck at her again and she fell, hitting her head against the frame of the bathroom door. Darkness.

Frayne crouched over her, confident that the woman wasn’t getting up. She was breathing, though, moaning softly. There was a cut in the side of her head. He opened her bag and withdrew her police ID. Alison Dexter, Sergeant. Cambridgeshire CID. A number. A barely recognizable photograph. He sat back.

‘Alison Dexter.’ The name meant nothing to him: it was a colourless name. It scarcely resonated with poetry. And yet, she had found the Drury woman. She had found
him.
Crowan Frayne was impressed. He reached over and pushed back Dexter’s left eyelid and considered. Green eyes. Unfortunate. And yet, perhaps there
could
be a role for her in the final ecstasies of his argument. A child in the oven. The idea appealed.

Images.
A
man
standing
over
her.
Pain
banging
at
the
side
of
her
head,
warm
above
her
eye.
Panic.
Was
he
killing
her?
Had
he
taken
her
eye?
Please,
no.
Not
her
eyes.
She
tried
to
see.
Lights,
images,
the
room
spinning.
She
tried
to
move:
no
response.
He
was
over
her,
speaking:
‘Bedtogotobedtogo’.
Gib
berish.
Noise.
See
his
face.
Try
to
see
his
face.
He
was
moving.
He
was
gone.
‘Stupid
cow,
you
stoooooopid
ca’
–
her
mother’s
voice.
The
room
spins.
Sickness.
Nausea.
‘Come
on,
Ali,
got
to
move.’
She
hauled
herself
to
the
side
of
the
bed
and
blinked,
trying
to
decipher
the
chaos.
She
was
alone.
She
could
see.
Relief.
She
climbed
the
side
of
the
bed
and
got
to
her
feet.
She
could
hear
a
car.
Gravel
scrunching.
Bedtogotobedtogo.
She
scrabbled
in
her
bag
for
her
mobile
phone.
999.

Heather Stussman’s phone rang at 10.30 that morning. The voice filled her with dread.

‘Write this down.’ He sounded dry, irritated, tired.

‘Who is this?’

‘You know who it is. Don’t waste time. Write this down. It’s your starter for ten.’

She picked up a pen. ‘Go on.’

Crowan Frayne dictated the stanza of poetry that Misty the cat had shown to Alison Dexter.

Stussman recognized it.

‘It’s from “A Feaver”.’

‘Correct. Ask yourself. When is the world a “carkasse”?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your list obviously worked.’ The had voice softened.

‘My list?’

‘The list you did for the police. It worked.’

‘The coterie idea? I gave them a list of names, associates of Donne’s.’

‘Do you think you understand?’

‘I understand Donne. Isn’t that why you contacted me?’

‘You have a narrow window of perception. But you operate in two dimensions. You wire plugs without comprehending the nature of electricity. Do you hear music when you stand at your little window? When you look at the stars and pirouetting planets, do you hear the intelligences? The Harmoniae Mundorum?’

‘I like music. I don’t hear the music of the spheres, though. Isn’t that just a poetic idea? A romantic construction?’

‘All the meanings we attach to things that are beyond our understanding are poetic constructions, Dr Stussman. The music of the spheres is no less provable than the idea that we all exploded out from some compressed mega-atom. Poetic constructions are the only things that distinguish us from cockroaches.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Oh, I do,’ Crowan Frayne said, ‘and you will understand the nature of my conceit. When the world has become a carkasse you will understand, Dr Stussman. In the meantime, I recommend that you call your police friends to discuss “The Anniversaries” and “A Feaver”. Be gentle with them: the clever one has a terrible headache.’

The line went dead. Heather Stussman ran to her door and called in the bored police constable who was standing guard outside.

Two minutes later, at the news desk of the
New
Bolden
Echo,
George Gardiner also received a phone call.

Underwood raced his car along Blindman’s Lane towards Afton. Harrison had called him half an hour earlier and had told him about Elizabeth Drury and then about Dexter. Underwood had been filled with a sudden terrible sense of shame. And anger.

‘Dexter has been hurt,’ Harrison had said sharply. ‘Seems like she caught the bastard in the act. She’s lucky to be alive.’

The driveway at The Beeches was crowded. There was an ambulance, police squad cars, Dexter’s car too. Dexter was sitting on the back step of the ambulance, holding a large cotton swab to the side of her head. She had dried blood on her cheeks. It looked like she had been crying as well. Underwood went straight up to her.

‘Where have you been, guv?’ she asked, half annoyed, half pathetic.

‘I’ve been ill. Went to the doctor’s,’ he lied. ‘What happened, Dex? Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine.’ She considered for a second. ‘Actually I’m shaking like a fucking leaf and I’ve got the mother of all headaches.’

‘She’s got concussion,’ said a nearby ambulance man. ‘She should go to hospital for a scan.’

‘Did you see him?’ asked Underwood.

Dexter shook her head and winced as the pain rushed at her again. ‘Not really. I found the Drury woman in the bath. I went back into the bedroom and something whacked me. I went down. He whacked me again. I didn’t see his face. He was quite tall, I suppose – about six foot. He had a boiler suit on, I think. But I didn’t see his face clearly, guv. I wouldn’t recognize him again. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly. You should go to hospital now.’

‘No, thanks.’ Dexter looked at the blood on her fingertips, surprised and irritated.

‘That’s an order.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. This is
my
party.’ She wiped her
fingers clean on her skirt and tried to will the pain away. ‘There were two hammers on the bed, sir, and a black box, like a little briefcase. They’re not there any more. And there’s more poetry on the ceiling – I wrote it down.’ She offered him her notebook. ‘Bastard messed her cat up, too. It’s not pretty up there.’

‘He took her eye?’

‘Yes. Left eye, same as before. Dumped her in the bath. I turned the taps off just before he whacked me.’

‘You’re bloody lucky to be alive, Dex. You should have brought someone with you.’

She ignored the rebuke. It was rich, coming from Underwood. ‘There’s something else. I think he said something to me.’

‘What?’

‘This might sound stupid but I think he told me to go to bed.’

‘You sure?’

‘That’s what it sounded like.’ Dexter suddenly lurched forward in a half-crouch and was sick onto the driveway. She was swaying and Underwood had to hold her firmly to stop her from falling.

Underwood took the notebook and sat Dexter back down on the step of the ambulance. She wiped the vomit from the side of her face. He put his arm round her. After a minute or two, she stopped shaking.

His mobile rang. It was Heather Stussman. She sounded panicky.

‘He called again, John. He sounded different. Pissed off.’

‘I’m not surprised. My sergeant interrupted him in the middle of his morning workout.’

‘Oh, God, John, were we right? About the name?’

‘Dr Elizabeth Drury.’

‘Christ. Is she dead?’

‘Very.’

‘How’s your colleague?’

‘She’s OK.’ He looked at Dexter. ‘Tough as old boots.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘There’s nothing to say. Your list got us very close to him. Quicker than he anticipated, judging by what’s happened this morning.’

‘Is there anything I can do? I feel so useless, cooped up here.’

‘Write down everything you can remember from the conversation this morning. I want you to come down to New Bolden. We’ll send a car. I want you to look at the poetry he’s left on the wall for us here and tell us what you know about it.’ He looked at Dexter’s notebook. ‘Something about a bath full of tears.’