Reginald Hill - Midnight Fugue

‘I’ve left it in the car,’ she said. ‘But I can remember the number.’

She recited it and he copied it into his phone.

‘Always a good memory,’ he said admiringly. ‘Ali’s the same. Must be all that music buzzing around in your heads. A real talent, memory. Except sometimes it’s a real pain.’

He reached over and opened her door. His arm brushed against her breast. After seven years, that’s the nearest we’ve come to intimate contact, she thought.

‘Goodbye, Gina,’ he said.

‘But what are you going to do? They won’t stop looking, will they?’

‘They might. You never know. Things change.’

‘For a man who thinks there’s a hitman after him, you don’t sound all that worried.’

‘You’re thinking of Alex Wolfe. He’d have been worried. I don’t think I’ve got anything to worry about if you keep your mouth shut. Goodbye.’

He sounded slightly impatient now.

She said, ‘Just one more thing. That general and the plucky little trooper game, did you ever tell anyone about it?’

‘I don’t think so. You?’

‘No.’

‘Never mind. One of those things, eh? A lucky guess.’

She got out of the car then stopped to take what she imagined might be one last look at him.

She said, ‘Goodbye, Edwin Muir. I pack your stars into my purse, and bid you, bid you so farewell.’

He stared back at her uncomprehendingly. Why should he understand when she hardly understood herself?

He didn’t say goodbye for a third time, just looked at her till finally she got out of the car. She closed the door behind her, firmly but trying not to slam it. She didn’t want him to think she was leaving him in anger. Not that it would have mattered. Through the window she saw he had taken out his mobile and was dialling a number. For a second she thought he must be ringing Mick. Then someone answered and she saw a smile spread across his face as he started talking. It wasn’t the guarded knowing smile he’d flashed as they spoke. This was a smile that turned him once more into the young man she remembered, the man she’d married.

He was, she guessed, talking to his new partner. Ali, the music teacher. The mother of Lucinda.

She felt all the pain of loss again as she hadn’t felt it for years. Not that it had ever truly gone away, she realized now. There were things that had the power to obliviate the pain for a while. Music. Sex. But like a ground bass, it ran beneath all the variations of life, good and bad. Perhaps it was a necessary part of living. Perhaps humans needed a loss that felt worse than death to make the inevitability of their own death bearable.

But she would not wish this pain on anyone. She certainly did not want to have it dragged into the public domain once more. She recalled how intrusive the press had been in the aftermath of Alex’s disappearance.

What Alex had told her about the threat from Goldie Gidman was hard to credit, it smacked too much of a TV thriller. But anything touching on the financier and his MP son would certainly be big news, and the thought of being besieged by journalists, midnight phone calls, cameras and mikes being thrust into her face whenever she emerged, her image appearing in newspapers and news items all over the country, was a horror worse than the threat of death.

No, though her own pain was not something she would wish on anyone, she was sure that if she had the chance to take the kind of pain journalists specialized in and turn it on them, she would not hesitate.

Alex was right. At least in this they were in accord. Silence was her refuge. She resolved that nothing would make her admit to the meeting and exchange that had just taken place. Nothing.

She set off down the hill towards her car.

Gwyn Jones’s progress north had been slower than anticipated.

He’d stopped at the first service station on the motorway to ring Beanie. The conversation had gone pretty well, he told himself complacently. She had sounded really sympathetic as he span his tale of his grandmother’s illness and the dutiful son heading back to the land of his fathers to take his place at the old lady’s bedside. Then he’d bought himself a coffee and a sandwich to make up for his missed lunch, tried Gareth again without any luck, and rejoined the thickening traffic only to be held up by an accident a few miles ahead.

The next ten miles took over half an hour, but once clear he’d made reasonable time and now he was definitely up north, passing through what had formerly been known as the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire where King Arthur lined up his coal-face knights to tilt against the great tyrant Thatcher.

A Welshman on a left-wing paper ought to have felt a frisson of fraternal nostalgia as he traversed this holy landscape, but Jones hardly spared it a thought or a glance.

He’d fed the Loudwater Villas details into his sat-nav. For most of the journey it had had nothing to do but tell him to keep going straight on. Finally it instructed him to turn off the motorway and soon the directions were coming thick and fast as he entered an urban environment.

The streets were pretty empty, not surprising at this time on a Sunday, but he indulged in a complacent sneer at this evidence that he was deep into the provinces.

In a few hundred yards he was warned he would need to turn right on to a road running alongside a river. Here was the turning and there was the river. Loudwater Villas should be in view in half a minute.

Ahead he saw flashing lights and some vehicles pulled on to the verge, among them a van bearing the logo of Mid-Yorkshire TV. Beyond them there seemed to be a barrier across the road. As he slowed, figures came alongside the car, some with cameras. A flashbulb directly into his face almost blinded him, forcing him to stop some yards short of the barrier. He wound down the window and swore at the cameraman. A woman thrust a microphone through the window and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, MYTV. Can you tell us who you are and why you’re here?’

He said, ‘No, I bloody can’t. Get that thing out of my fucking face.’

He pushed the mike away forcefully and a man’s face replaced the woman’s. It was a lean, weathered face with bright probing eyes that were scanning the contents of the car as if committing them to memory.

‘Sammy Ruddlesdin,’ said the man. ‘Mid-Yorkshire News. Sorry to bother you, sir…’

There was a pause as the man focused more closely on Jones’s face.

Then he said in a lower voice, ‘Don’t I know you?’

‘I doubt it. What the hell’s going on here?’

‘Just a little local murder. I’m sure I’ve seen your face somewhere. You’re press, aren’t you? Don’t be shy. National, is it? Listen, you want local colour, I’m your man.’

He was being ambushed by reporters! The irony of the situation might have been amusing, but the man’s words had roused emotions that left no room for amusement.

‘What do you mean, murder? Who’s been murdered?’

‘That’s what we’re all trying to find out,’ said Ruddlesdin. ‘Look, if you’re not here after the story, what the hell are you here for?’

He didn’t answer but climbed out of the car and went up to the barrier with the media pack in close attendance.

A uniformed policeman confronted him.

‘Can I help, sir?’

‘Not in front of this lot you can’t,’ said Jones, who knew that every word he spoke was being recorded by those nearest him.

The policeman took his point and led him behind the barrier. Even here he took care to keep his back firmly directed towards the press pack and dropped his voice so that the policeman had to lean close to catch his words.

‘Yes, I need to get into Loudwater Villas. I’m visiting my brother.’