The Dentist, page 15
It was then that Cross noticed next to a plate of homemade biscuits a large ribboned medal in a presentation box which she had obviously been showing to the young man. She followed his look and said, ‘Oh I’m sorry, let me put that away.’
‘Is it an MBE?’ asked Cross.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve seen them in the papers. The OBE is almost identical except that it’s gold, I think,’ he said.
‘Gosh, I wouldn’t know,’ she replied
‘She just got it last month from Prince William. That’s why I came over. Have a look. Say “congrats”,’ said Duncan.
‘He was lovely. We went up to the Palace - it was a lovely day out. Good excuse to dress up,’ said Sheila.
‘Show him the pictures,’ insisted Duncan.
‘No, don’t be silly.’
But Duncan got up, went over to the French dresser and picked up an envelope. He showed Cross the pictures of her receiving it, and she and her husband outside the Palace holding it up. Cross was unsure how to react, so came out with, ‘Well, congratulations.’
‘It’s well deserved,’ said Duncan as he picked up the one of her on her own. In her hat and dress bought for the occasion she was holding the medal up in front of her in the courtyard of the Palace.
‘I’m sure it is.’
Most people would now ask why she’d received it, but that wasn’t why Cross was there and so it didn’t occur to him. Duncan pointed to a noticeboard on the wall, which was covered in photographs of dozens of children with Sheila. Pictures with just them and in the occasional one with MacDonald as well. One had him in uniform with a young girl wearing his hat. In almost all the pictures everyone was laughing. There were some other pictures, more formal ones obviously, taken at schools with that ubiquitous cardboard frame, where the children looked a bit more uncomfortable, unhappy maybe. The children were all ages from babies to toddlers, young people to teens, all a mix of races.
‘She fosters,’ explained Duncan.
‘I see.’
‘She brought up all those kids.’
‘With Stuart,’ she interjected.
‘With Stuart. A bit,’ Duncan said, laughing. She joined in. There was no animus over Stuart’s role, Cross thought.
‘You must’ve done it for years to amass such a number,’ he said.
‘Decades really. We didn’t have any children of our own and when we realised that’s just how it was, it just seemed the natural thing to do,’ she replied.
‘You didn’t want to adopt?’ Cross asked.
‘Stuart did, but for me, well I thought this was the less selfish option and there was so much need.’
‘Do you still foster?’
‘No, not really, we’re getting on a bit. But we sometimes get a call, in an emergency, to take a baby for a few nights, that’s all.’
‘Time to look after yourselves,’ said Duncan.
‘But they all come back, from time to time, like Duncan. Some of them with their wives and husbands and children, that’s really special,’ she said.
‘And you remember them all?’ asked Cross.
‘Of course. They were mine for a bit, and for some of them, Al and I were all the family they knew. Sad really.’
‘Oh stop it Mum. We were blessed, you maybe not so much,’ Duncan laughed again, ‘there were one or two wrong’uns, weren’t there Sheila?’
‘Duncan…’
‘How many did you foster in all?’ asked Cross.
‘Eighty-seven over thirty years.’
‘That’s remarkable.’
‘I loved it, gave me something to do while Stuart worked. He worked all hours, but then you’d know all about that. Do you have family DS Cross?’
‘Just my father,’ he said.
‘Not married?’ she asked.
‘No.’
Half an hour later there was still no sign of MacDonald, so Cross made his excuses and left. On his way back to the station he thought about Sheila MacDonald and her husband; he couldn’t imagine for a moment devoting your life to bringing up so many children, children who weren’t even yours. He thought she was quite extraordinary. He wasn’t sure what it made him think about MacDonald, whether it changed his view of him at all. But maybe it was a recipe for a successful marriage, him busy at work and her likewise at home, dealing with so many children. They had once had nine children in the house, according to Sheila. It was only for a few months but Cross shuddered to think of all the chaos and disorder.
Chapter 25
That weekend, Cross was going through Hilary’s case in his mind. Usually he would have a board in the open area at work, displaying photographs of suspects, crimes scenes, connections and all relevant material to an investigation. Obviously he couldn’t in this case because he wasn’t supposed to be working on it and, therefore, neither was anyone else. But in fact he only made these boards for the benefit of others - to enable him to talk through potential actions with visual reference for them. He had no need of them because he had it all stored in his memory. He was changing his mind now about certain things, modifying them, primarily about the way he should go about solving the case.
Originally he thought he might find clues, the answer even, in the original police investigation; but the more he looked at it, the more he felt its overall inefficiency actually precluded any chance of finding anything conclusive. So he was going to conduct a new enquiry. Start over. Wojtchak’s admission that he had been there after the commission of the crime had thrown up a few new leads. The car, mainly. The original investigation thought that the killer must have been known to Hilary as she was entertaining him – ‘him’ because everyone agreed the strength used to strangle her indicated such, a broken trachea as with Leonard – and there was no sign of a break-in. The sightings of the car had been noted in the original investigation but puzzlingly not followed up in any depth. But there were now two new factors: the trade plates and another which must’ve been known to the team at the time, surely – the damaged parked car - as Leonard had mentioned it to MacDonald, on more than one occasion. But for now he would concentrate on the plates. He needed to press Mackenzie, so he called her.
‘Alice, it’s DS Cross.’
‘Hi, is everything alright?’ he ignored what he knew to be another question which didn’t require an answer.
‘How are you getting on with the plates?’
‘I’m drawing up a list as you asked.’
‘When can I have it?’
‘Well, I’ll get back to it on Monday.’
‘Monday?’
‘Um, no, I could, of course I could work on it today.’
‘Call me when it’s complete.’
Did “thank you” simply not exist in this man’s vocabulary? It was the weekend, for fuck’s sake, and this woman had been dead for over fifteen years - what’s the rush? She lay back in her bed and realised that, if she didn’t want a further series of calls over the weekend and a bad start to the week at work, she’d better pull out of brunch with her school-friends. But fuck, she was hosting it. She’d have to do both – that was it! She grabbed her laptop off the floor and started typing.
Ottey had told Cross about her conversation with Carson, commenting how he had inadvertently blurted out something in his frustration about Cross’ continuing investigation, which might actually be of use in the Leonard case. She had come to tell him when she found his office empty and, in truth, had been tempted to keep it to herself as some form of childish punishment. Anyway, in his disparaging of Cross’ ‘same killer’ theory Carson had asked her how, if it was the same culprit, had he managed to find Leonard on the streets? In fact, now that he thought about it, how did he know Leonard was back in Bristol when no-one else did, his family in particular? Even if he did, how would he know where he was, and how would he recognise him when he was completely unrecognisable from the man he was at the time of his wife’s death fifteen years earlier? Cross thought about this for a moment. Even though they had no idea how he could’ve done any of this, it was an intriguing, if not critical thought. If it was the same killer, as he was convinced it was, how indeed did he know Leonard was back and that this filthy, unkempt, drunken man was him. If they could work that out, maybe they could find their killer. But, as Cross knew, it was the wrong way round – a cart-before-the-horse situation. How could they find out how he knew, when they didn’t know who he was. One of the constant Catch-22s that cropped up in detective work.
Cross wasn’t a religious man, far from it. His Aspergic sense of strict logic inevitably led him to the conclusion that on probability – well indeed in all certainty, bar the fact that he had no solid proof either way and so certainty wasn’t something he felt comfortable applying to this situation – God didn’t exist, and that religion in all its various forms was simply a man-made creation to provide the prospect of something further after death. Also a way of building quite privileged, and financially profitable, institutions and a fantastic way of life for a few. One of his hobbies was the church organ. He had visited most of the great organs in the British Isles, often with a reluctant Raymond in tow, and one or two in Europe. He had a profound knowledge of the instrument and its history and so it was a natural progression for him to learn how to play. He was now a self-taught, and more than proficient organist. In fact you could go as far as to say he was actually quite accomplished, such was his dedication to it.
This talent had, however, come at a cost. He had, for many years, gone to organ recitals and would sit in a concert hall or church appreciating the acoustics of the room and the tone of the instrument being played. He was now incapable of going to an organ recital without criticising the technique of the person playing, or their interpretation of the piece being played. He was also something of an expert of the organ canon, orchestral as well as ecclesiastical, as he had started, many years before, collecting organ scores. Once he’d collected all the major pieces a self-respecting organ aficionado should own, he began to collect old or rare ones – first editions, in a way. He would often scour ebay at weekends and specialist music sites on the internet in his search for the rare and elusive. He’d even been asked by one seller of antiquarian books and music scores with whom he dealt frequently, to come and talk to the local music society. Obviously this kind of thing was completely outside his comfort zone and he’d declined, politely he thought, although the offended music seller would have to disagree.
His interest in organs was the reason for his cycling to a small parish church in the St Paul’s area of Bristol that day. He had struck a deal with the previous priest - who he had inevitably met through work – some years before, that in exchange for being able to practise on the church organ he would maintain it on a regular basis, repairing when necessary. His interest in organs had expanded exponentially from gaining knowledge of the history of the instrument, collecting music, learning how to play, to an in-depth knowledge of the workings and construction of the instrument himself. He could possibly, with Raymond’s help, actually build one from scratch. So today he had arranged to tune the organ for the new, much younger priest, Stephen, who was immensely grateful for the help and accommodated Cross’ practice needs – he even had his own key to the church. He was, however, a little too eager to engage him in lengthy philosophical discussions about faith and atheism for Cross’ taste.
The organ in question was tuned by altering the small apertures on each pipe, tapping the small slides open or closed as needed. Stephen was playing notes as Cross called them out and then adjusted the note to his ear. He called for an A flat and nothing happened. He called for it again.
‘Ah, Brian did mention that one of the keys isn’t working. Sorry I completely forgot,’ Stephen said. Cross sighed, not for Stephen’s forgetfulness but at the mention of Brian, the long-time and, in his opinion, inept organist. Not only was he pretty talentless but extraordinarily heavy-handed in his treatment of the instrument both with his hands and his feet. Cross has repaired far too many keys and stops than he felt was normal, even though the organ hadn’t been exactly well-maintained before he arrived. It was in quite a state of neglect and Cross had spent a lot of time and quite a lot of his own money (not that Stephen knew this) restoring it back to some semblance of working order. But it was still in a delicate state and needed careful handling. It was his intention to dedicate his next annual leave to completely dismantling the organ and giving it a thorough, long overdue, service.
After the tuning was complete Cross packed up his tools in a vintage canvas holdall, the kind that plumbers used to carry. They were about fifty years old, a bargain he’d found on ebay from a family whose grandfather had been an organ technician years before. Cross had an instinctive admiration for this man and had come to the conclusion from the condition and ordered nature of his tools that he must’ve been very good at his work. As he walked down the aisle to his bike leaning by the front door, Stephen quickly ended a phone call and caught up with him. Then began the regular pantomime that played out between them, with Stephen attempting to pay Cross for his time and Cross pointing out the quid pro quo nature of their transaction. ‘You let me play, I maintain.’ This was always a prelude to Stephen’s bemoaning Brian’s lack of talent and his attitude to playing the organ during services. He feared it had become a chore for Brian after all these years, but at the same time couldn’t suggest a change because he couldn’t risk hurting his feelings. Cross noted this latest embellishment to the situation and wondered where it was all leading.
‘If you could just see your way to playing maybe a few weddings I’m sure he wouldn’t mind and, in time, he might see his way to retiring completely,’ said Stephen.
Cross said nothing.
‘Imagine playing the Widor in anger,’ the Priest said.
‘Why would I play it in anger?’ asked Cross.
‘It’s an expression, George.’
Cross had explained to him on many occasions that he couldn’t play during a service because he was an atheist. Stephen had tried to point out that a belief in God was not a prerequisite for playing the organ during a service.
‘A service is an act of worship and to play the organ at a service is to take part in that act, which I’m not comfortable with,’ Cross said.
‘It just seems such a shame you keep your gift to yourself. Some people might even say selfish,’ said Stephen.
Cross concentrated on fixing his bag to the back pannier on his bike, hoping that Stephen’s conversation would come to a natural conclusion.
‘You should share it with others. It would give them so much pleasure.’
‘I thought church services were meant to be devotional not pleasurable,’ Cross reasoned.
‘I happen to think the two can go hand in hand.’
‘I can’t. There it is. Goodbye,’ said Cross, as he wheeled his bike out of the door, closing it carefully behind him. Stephen was used to his perfunctory, peremptory manner and took no offence. Then he remembered something and opened the door, to find Cross putting on his helmet.
‘I was talking to Peter at St Mary Redcliffe. He’d be delighted if you’d like to play their organ one day. I believe it’s lovely,’ he said, getting Cross’ immediate attention. He turned to face the priest.
‘Harrison and Harrison, built in 1912. Four manuals, seventy-one stops, over four thousand, three hundred pipes. Restored in 2010. The original was built in 1726 by John Harris and John Byfield,’ Cross informed him.
‘Right. Anyway here’s his number.’
Stephen’s desire to get George to play to his congregation was entirely genuine. Unbeknownst to George, whenever he practised in the church and Stephen was in the vicarage next door, he would drop whatever he was doing and go into the church and listen. He found such moments to be wonderfully contemplative in the middle of his generally frenetic days. Indeed, on occasion, when in a meeting next door, and hearing George playing, he had taken those in the meeting with him into the church to listen. Last time this had happened, he had joked to them about what a privilege it was for him to have these private recitals regularly, for nothing, and this was what had prompted his new plan of action to get George to perform.
Chapter 26
The noise level in Alice’s small rented flat was much lower than normal. This was because all five of her guests were looking intently at their laptops which she had told them to bring shortly after she’d spoken to Cross. The five glasses of Prosecco on the table had also remained uncharacteristically full – unusual to the point of being unheard-of. This was because she’d had the brilliant idea of doing brunch and Cross’ legwork at the same time, by delegating to her friends. Mostly mates from uni, they had, as a group, always been hugely competitive and so she had set them the task of finding out as many businesses in the local area that had access to trade license plates.
‘The first to ten will get… well, they’ll have won,’ she announced.
This was enough for them, together with the idea that how often in life do you get an opportunity to work on a murder case? They were still at the age where you took every chance to experience the unusual when it presents itself. So here they were - a couple of trainee solicitors, an internee at a bank, a TV researcher who had already given up her ambition to be an actress, and a junior doctor who they rarely saw as she seemed to work every weekend and public holiday of the year - tapping away furiously at their keyboards to be the first past the winning post.
Alice called Cross in the afternoon after they’d all left, a little apprehensive as she was aware she may have had a glass too many, as they had set the world to rights after brunch. She practised out loud before ringing, to see if she could detect any slurring in her speech. She couldn’t, but then realised this was no consolation as her judgement in this matter might well be impaired. She didn’t expect any thanks from Cross that she, or rather her friends, had gleaned this information from the internet, but she kicked herself for not anticipating what he would say. If she hadn’t had a drink and then a laugh with her friends, she would’ve thought to task him with what, in retrospect, was his inevitable question.
