Midnight Fugue

‘And what did good old Mick say?’

‘He said to leave it with him, he’d make sure everything that could be done to trace Alex was done. Look, Mr Dalziel, I’m not sure how relevant all this is. We’re talking seven years ago. It’s here and now that I need help.’

‘Aye, seven years. And there’s been no sign of your husband all that time?’

‘Not a whisper. Nothing from his bank account, no use of credit cards. Nothing.’

‘Did he take his car?’

‘No, it was still in the garage. In fact, he took nothing, so far as I could see. No spare clothes, not even his toothbrush. Nothing.’

‘And the police? They turned up nothing?’

‘The police, the Salvation Army, every organization I could think of, none of them found any trace.’

‘So, apart from being kidnapped by aliens, what did that leave you thinking happened to him?’

He watched her reaction carefully and let her see he was watching.

She met his gaze straight on and said, ‘You mean it seems obvious to you he was probably dead, right?’

He shrugged but didn’t speak.

She said, ‘That’s what Mick thought too, but I couldn’t get my head round the idea. Even when I’d finally accepted he was never going to come back, I found it hard to contemplate applying for a legal presumption of death. That seemed…I don’t know, disloyal almost, even though I really needed it.’

‘Oh aye. Why was that?’

She said, ‘Lots of reasons, mainly financial. The house we lived in is Alex’s family house. It’s in his name, so I can’t sell it. There are various insurances that I can’t access without proof of death. Even his police pension is being paid into a bank account in his sole name, so it piles up and I can’t touch a penny of it.’

‘So they’re still paying his pension?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? Nothing was ever proved against him, no charges were brought,’ she said indignantly.

Dalziel glanced at his watch. The organ was still burping out bits of tunes that chased each other round and round without ever catching up. He knew how they felt.

He said, ‘I’ve been listening to you for a quarter of an hour, luv, and I’m no closer to understanding what any of this has got to do with me. What the hell are you doing up here in Yorkshire anyway?’

She said, ‘It’s simple. Next month it will be seven years since Alex vanished. My solicitor told me that after seven years we’d get a presumption of death on the nod. That made up my mind for me, so I said, let’s do it. And everything was going fine, then yesterday morning I got this.’

She opened her shoulder bag and took out a C5 envelope which she passed over to Dalziel. He put his glasses on to study it. It had a Mid-York postmark and was addressed in black ink to Gina Wolfe, 28 Lombard Way, Ilford.

The envelope contained a sheet of notepaper headed The Keldale Hotel, attached by a paper clip to a folded page from the September edition of MY Life, the glossy news, views and previews monthly magazine published by the Mid-Yorks Evening News.

On the notepaper were typed the words The General reviews his troops.

A good half of the page from MY Life was occupied by a photograph recording the recent visit of a minor royal to the city. She was shown receiving a posy of freesias from a small girl across a crush barrier during a walkabout. A thick red circle had been drawn around the head of a man just beyond the child.

‘This your husband?’ guessed Dalziel.

‘Yes.’

The photo was very clear. It showed a man somewhere between late twenties and mid thirties, his blond hair tousled by the breeze as he observed the Royal with an expression more quizzical than enthusiastic.

‘You sure?’

‘It’s Alex or his double,’ she said.

‘Right,’ he said, turning his attention to the hotel notepaper.

The Keldale was the town’s premier hotel, priding itself, with its spacious rooms, traditional menus and extensive gardens, on offering luxury in the old style.

‘The General reviews his troops,’ he read. ‘That means summat special, does it?’

She said, ‘Alex’s family always liked to claim a family connection with General Wolfe…’

He saw her hesitating whether she needed to explain who General Wolfe was.

He said, ‘The one who’d rather have written Gray’s Elegy than whupped the Frogs, right?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Alex was rather proud of the connection and I used to make fun of him because of it, and we started playing this game…I was a plucky little trooper and he was General Wolfe reviewing his troops, and…’

She was blushing. It became her.

Dalziel handed back the magazine page and said, ‘Spare me the details, luv. This something your Alex would have boasted about to his mates after a couple of pints?’

‘No!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘Definitely not.’

Dalziel noted the certainty without necessarily accepting it.

‘So you were convinced this was your man. What did you do?’

‘I rang Mick.’

‘Purdy? Oh aye. And what did he have to say?’

‘Nothing. I couldn’t get him. I knew he was going to be busy this weekend. He’s been running some big Met op, he’s a commander now. They’ve got to the arrest stage, so that probably meant all mobiles switched off. Anyway, I left him a message.’

Dalziel digested this. Purdy a commander. The lad had done well, but he’d had the look of a high-flier back when they’d met all those year ago. More puzzling was the woman’s knowledge of him; not his promotion, that was understandable, but the details of his operational timetable.

He said, ‘Sorry, luv, I’m not getting this. Seven years on you’re trying to get your husband declared dead, then you get his picture through the post, and the first thing you do is ring his old boss? Why not your best friend, if it’s a bit of emotional support you want? Or your solicitor, if it’s professional advice. Why dig right back into the past and come up with your man’s old boss?’

She said, ‘Sorry, Mr Dalziel, I keep forgetting you didn’t actually speak to Mick. I should have told you right away. There’s another reason I need to get a presumption of death. Mick and I are going to be married.’

08.55–09.05 (#ulink_7bcd8c13-7084-55d5-8c38-971794eec9bd)

Vince Delay watched Tubby stand up then sit down again and start talking to Blondie.

Briefly he had a full-frontal view of the fat guy and now he dropped his eyes to compare what he’d seen with a photograph he was holding in his hymn book. It was a full-length shot of a man lounging against a tree, thirtyish, blond hair ruffled by a breeze, with the slightly mocking half-smile of a guy who knows what he wants and has no doubts about his ability to get it.