Chapter 47: A Chip In the Glass

Clutching a steel ashtray, Barnaby twisted the door handle to let himself into the interview room. It already stank of smoke, a fresh haze wafting over the stale coating that had probably permeated the paint and walls by now. Walking around the dark table, behind Paul Starkey and his solicitor, he set the dish in front of the young man who sat hunched forward in his chair. His hands trembled, though whether from the nicotine craving or the three mugs of motor oil coffee at his side...well, that was beyond the scope of his investigation. "Okay," Barnaby began, settling into his own seat, "let's go through this again. You left the pub at two o'clock...and went for a ride."

Starkey tapped the first bit of ash into the tray, still staring at the table as his shaggy brown hair fell into his eyes. "That's right, I just rode around."

The door opened again and this time it was Troy who stood in the frame, nodding so faintly, Barnaby might have missed it but for his instructions to his sergeant earlier: Let me know if anything comes up. "And on the way back," he continued, returning his attention to his young suspect, "you drove so fast through Friar's Copse you almost forced Dennis Carter off the road."

Starkey laughed; it sounded mean. "Fast? Dennis Carter dunno the meaning of the word."

Leaning forward, Barnaby laced his fingers together on the table. The stench of the cigarette was already seeping into his skin. "Paul, I'm going to ask you just once more: were you in Friar's Copse yesterday afternoon?"

Another puff escaped Starkey's mouth. "No. I wasn't. I told you."

Walking behind the young man and his solicitor, Troy reached between Barnaby and the two other men for the blue and white striped cardboard package of cigarettes, turning it up to check the label. "Can I have a word please, sir?" he asked softly.

"Of course. I'll be along in a minute." Troy set the cigarettes down again, taking the same course he had when he entered, peering down at Starkey. He slouched further and his neck disappeared into the collar of his coal colored leather jacket. The door's latch snapping shut, Barnaby pushed his chair forward, scraping the feet on the ancient tiled floor. "Now Paul, should I expect whatever Sergeant Troy has to tell me will prove you were not in Friar's Copse yesterday afternoon?"

Starkey sucked another mouthful of smoke from his cigarette, and another pile of ash fell into the grey tray. "Why wouldn't it? I wasn't there." His face still did not rise to meet Barnaby's.

"You aren't doing yourself any good."

"I've told you—"

"Well, one of you is lying to me. So just who should I believe? The local boy who's already had his tussles with the police, with a knife from his father's pub covered in blood at the murder scene? Or a single father with two jobs?" He shoved his chair back again, standing and straightening his grey jacket. "I know there's not very much love lost between Midsomer Parva and Devington School. But you're only digging yourself in deeper, right now. So I would think on it, Paul."

As Barnaby escaped the tiny cave for the fresher air of the squad room, Troy was scribbling a few words on a yellow Post-It. Really, this was the same story he had seen across Midsomer year after year after year. Just beneath the county's rural beauty—a world where money often came through inheritance rather than an occupation—the young often struggled against the static life of rural England. Paul Starkey was just the last in that line, for now. "They found fresh tire tracks in Friar's Copse," Troy said, "just here."

Barnaby glanced up as his sergeant taped his latest note to the sketch of the wood, smoothing the top out with his finger. All around the board's edge, glossy photographs gave voice to Daniel Talbot's final, failed struggle, red tape marking a dozen of so X's on the map. But—it doesn't make sense, he thought, crossing the squad room with a few fast paces. "There?" He peered at the board for a few moments. "You sure?"

"Yes, sir," Troy said, thrusting his hands into his pockets. "Definitely a motorbike, and cigarette ends. Starkey's brand."

"Well, Starkey is lying." He turned away from the board, a few steps opening the gap between Troy and himself. "I'm sure he was in Friar's Copse yesterday afternoon."

"So let's arrest him, sir—"

"But I don't think he killed Daniel Talbot," Barnaby went on, turning back to their mess of questions, images, and tragedy. "It doesn't add up, Troy, it doesn't add up. Look, look—the boys leave the lane and run down the path through the wood here." He tapped the sketch, tracing the damp dirt path that wound through trees and bushes and stumps. "Charlie Meynell catches Daniel about here"—he pointed to a section of the path farther along—"gets the ball off him. Then Charlie is tackled by Marcus Heywood. Daniel gets the ball back and goes along the path...back towards the school. So he must have been attacked somewhere between here—and here." It wasn't too much space, just a curve in the path large enough to hide a person...the perfect place for an ambush.

"Right," Troy said, pulling his right hand from his pocket, mapping his own trail for Daniel's attacker. "So Paul Starkey parks his bike here, makes his way through the wood, hides in the bushes—waits. Along comes Daniel, Starkey jumps out—does the deed."

Another thing that was always the same: the younger man's predilection for leaping to conclusions. The barest bit of information, and off he went. "And then what? Does he run straight back to his bike? No, he does not. For some reason, he goes off in quite another direction—up there!" He stabbed the plan of the wood again. "Look: chucks away his knife up there and then—and only then—goes back to his bike."

"Sir?"

Barnaby glanced over his shoulder to a blond constable who held a brown folder out for him. "Hmm?" As he took it, he mumbled a thank you, his eyes already racing over the black words and numbers. "Oh, forensic on the knife. Heh...no prints." Well, there's no point in making it too easy, I suppose. "Blood matches Daniel Talbot's."

Satisfied with the summary of the blood, he flipped the page up, now skimming over an analysis of the knife itself. "Traces of ammonia, acetic acid, and other chemicals. A common cleaning agent, apparently." And a pub would surely need something along those lines, with so many forks and knives. And not just any knives, but ones identical to the murder weapon, glistening in harsh electric light as they lay swaddled innocently in a wicker basket.

"There's something in the back of my mind about the end of that race, yesterday." As Daniel emerged through stone arch beneath the school's clock, something had been wrong, just...off. "Can't think of what it is." It would prickle, nag at his mind until he finally identified it.

Troy was silent for a second. "Sir, if you don't formally arrest Paul Starkey, we'll have to let him go."

"All right, Troy," he said, dropping the folder on his desk, scattering the other reports and notes that lay scattered across it. "Arrest him."

While Troy processed Starkey's arrest, Barnaby peered at the map of Friar's Copse again, sipping on a stale mug of coffee, occasionally pacing back and forth, sometimes taking a step closer to check—yet again—that each item of evidence was discovered where he recalled. Draining the last of his coffee, he shuddered at the bitter brew. "The knife," he whispered, taking his seat behind his desk once more, dropping his mug in the far corner. It made no sense why it lay discarded there. Starkey and all the boys in the race, particularly Meynell and Heywood, just on Daniel Talbot's heels: if any one of them was the culprit...why? Why go so far out of the way, rather than fling it deep amongst the trees and bushes? Meynell and Heywood would only delay their return to Devington School, increasing suspicion; Starkey only raised the chance of being observed by any one of the dozens of boys panting along the path. "It just doesn't add up."

He turned his left wrist up, glancing at his watch's face. A few minutes after six. Much longer—sitting here turning over questions without the evidence to answer them—and Barnaby knew a headache would throb behind his eyes the rest of the evening. Might as well let it wait until tomorrow.

Lifting his office phone's receiver, he punched the speed dial button for home. One ring...two...thr— "Hello?"

"Hi, Joyce?"

"Tom?"

"I'll be leaving in a few minutes. Anything you need me to pick up?"

"No, nothing."

"See you soon." As he dropped the receiver back on the cradle, Barnaby looked up. Across the squad room, Troy was at his desk, head bent forward as he wrote furiously. "Everything filed?" he asked his sergeant.

The younger man looked up, his hand pausing. "Yes, sir. Nothing complicated, just finishing the last notes for it."

"All right," he said, standing with a crack from his lower back. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Troy's gaze narrowed and he sat up straight. "Sir—"

"I've had enough of the country these past couple of days." He tugged at the dark knot in his tie, loosening it from the base of his neck. "I need a good breath of city air."

The typically brief commute from CID to the more residential outskirts of Causton was longer than usual, more of the city employees making their way home now than at his normal hour. He let the driver's side window down for a cool breeze, something to clear the cigarette stench from his nose and lungs. And bustle of Causton—its car horns, cyclists' bells, and occasional screeching tires—drove the crushing silence of Midsomer Parva from his ears and memory. Somehow, the farthest villages' peace and quiet could unnerve him—or perhaps it was the inevitable unease of their denizens. Lips held tight, tongues bitten, the high and mighty as well as the lowly and beaten down all kept their secrets close.

Tapping the left indicator with a light finger, Barnaby turned into the drive of his own home, the tires turning quietly over the pavement. After crunching over gravel and pebbles the entire day, it was a welcome change. He clicked the switch to close the driver's window, then turned his keys over before tugging them from the ignition, letting out a deep breath before throwing the driver's door open.

A hint of smoke still clung to his clothes as he opened the front door of his house, the gentle noises of home shoving aside a bit of the day's nastiness. It was like a warm glow deep in his bones, a peace that the last days' tragedies could not tarnish. As he slipped his keys back into his pocket, Barnaby called out, "Joyce?"

"In the kitchen, Tom."

As he approached the kitchen, a second voice rose up with his wife's. "...be plenty, right Mum?" That's odd, he thought, stepping into the warm room, awash in aroma of tomato and basil. As Joyce stirred a pan on the stove top and a pot of water bubbled behind it beneath a column of steam, Cully tipped a bag of salad into a large bowl.

"I'm sure it will be fine." As his shoes clicked on the tile, both women looked back.

His daughter crumpled the plastic bag before placing it in the bin. "Hi, Dad." She looked...tired, the dark purple circles beneath her eyes vibrant—almost harsh. And while the library van hardly required Sunday's best, the large white pullover and loose jeans she wore were things she rarely donned outside the house.

"You're home early today," he said, settling an arm around Joyce's shoulder. The pot of tomato sauce in front hissed and spat, throwing out a red speck here and there on the white stove top, nearly catching his jacket sleeve once as well.

"Aren't you, too?" she asked, pushing her sleeves up her arms as she reached for and shook the bottle of salad dressing on the counter.

"Very true."

Looking back to the bowl and drizzling the vinaigrette around the edge of the bowl, Cully added, "I took today off."

"Oh?"

She sighed, resealing the bottle before tucking it back into the refrigerator. "I just needed some time to think, that's all."

What about? he wondered to himself. She had been rather upset after Aunt Alice's passing—hardly surprising—but yesterday evening, it was like a new and dark mood had settled in her mind. As she sat across from him in the front room, reading through Salomé again, he'd hardly heard or saw her turn a page—not reading at all. "Is that so?"

"It's nothing—really."

As Joyce finished dinner—spaghetti bolognese and garlic bread—Barnaby laid the table with Cully's help. White plates, the fork, the knife, the spoon, tongs for the salad and the pasta, a wine glass for each setting.

It was really no different than any other dinner, though his wife's culinary effort appeared more successful than usual; evenings like these, he offered silent prayers of gratitude to Tesco. The conversation ran from the mundane ("They're trying to collect another round of signatures about felling some trees."), to the personal ("There's a new community choir starting in Newton Magna, Tom." "Bit far out, isn't it?"), to the case developing in Midsomer Parva ("Well, we have made an arrest." "That was fast." "But I'm of a mind that he shouldn't be there.").

"So is there anymore, about what will be at the Playhouse?" Joyce asked.

With a sip of wine, Cully shrugged her shoulders, though it was nearly impossible to see, her arms swamped by her pullover. "Not yet, but no one's said otherwise."

"I'd have thought they'd make a decision by now," Barnaby said.

"I don't think that's the—"

"I have thought..." Cully's voice trailed away, her gaze now very focused on twirling pasta onto her fork.

"Yes?" His daughter was often direct, sometimes to a fault. But, something had been different, the last couple of days.

"Well, I..." She fell silent again, her hands slowing in the dance above her plate.

Reaching for his own glass, Barnaby asked, "Something wrong, Cully?"

She settled her silverware on opposite edges of the plate, biting her lip for a moment. "I'm just wondering—how much longer I should wait."

"Wait for what?" Joyce asked.

"For the committee to decide—whether to put on Salomé or not."

"Not to your taste, after all?" Barnaby asked. Odd. Or...perhaps not. So many things had been odd over the past weeks and months. So many little things, ebbing and flowing: troubling, impossible to pinpoint, but refusing to fall silent.

"...ly quite interesting, everything he worked in to the story," Cully said, and he looked back at her. She had a small smile as her mind turned back to the theater, away from whatever else was haunting her. He hadn't been listening. "Just restless, I guess."

Leaning forward, Joyce said. "It's only been a few weeks."

Their daughter glanced away for a second, sighing as she turned back. "I know. But there are a few other venues, just a little farther out. And..." She rubbed her left hand over her shoulder, the darkness returning. "Well...I saw—they're putting on Noises Off in Cambridge. Auditions are coming up in a few weeks."

As she turned to her daughter, Joyce said, "I thought you were already in that one, in London—"

"Yes, a couple years ago." She lifted her fork, shuddering as she added, "With Paul Pearson."

"I didn't think you liked doing plays twice."

"Dad."

"It's what you've said before."

Cully chewed through her next bite of pasta, then set her fork down again with a gentle clink beside the spoon on the edge of her plate. "I thought—well, I was cast as Brooke, before. I might like to try for Belinda, or Poppy. They're such different characters."

"But you just said you've already read Salomé," Joyce said.

"Yes, and I don't know how long it's been since I read Wilde." As she tucked a loose strand of hair back from her face, her eyes rose toward the ceiling like she was trying to remember. "I think it might have been Dorian Gray for class."

"Can't say I remember when I read him, either. Maybe not since..." Barnaby's words faded. Not since my mum died. As with so much of what was cleared from her house, that book had sat untouched, the memories too sharp and harsh, then neglected as his career advanced, just like so many other stories and hobbies. And now it was just an antique book with a cracked binding and yellowed pages, its life faded.

"It's been a few years since you acted up there," Joyce said. "Why now?"

Picking up her fork and spoon again, Cully listlessly twisted another mouthful of pasta around the tines. "It just—would be a nice change of pace. Clear the cobwebs, something like that."

It was hardly her first time leaving home, after all, and not her first time to go off to Cambridge; she'd even shared a flat with Nico, for god's sake. But the darkness that gazed out of her eyes...it was fresh and raw, just like when she left for—was it London, that time? Though his wife and daughter heard the details of many of his cases as they had just now, he had shielded them as best he could. But that night, after a rope was looped about his neck, choking the air from his lungs*...There was no protection from the bruising on his neck, the lingering drowsiness from the tranquilizer, the terror of what had so nearly happened. His world had crashed into theirs in a new and harsh way, and before long, Cully had found a play elsewhere, disappearing from Midsomer—and her fears—for months. But if it was the same course being run again, well, what was it? Why?

Well, there was always that, to be sure, Barnaby thought, taking a bite of just overly crisped garlic bread that scraped at the fleshy top of his mouth. It wasn't as though he hadn't tried—more than once—to warn her, to have her see what waited right in front of her eyes: just who Gavin Troy really was, the man underneath the creamy pale skin. Sometimes crass, sometimes rude, and nearly always leaping into the future feet-first without knowing where the bottom lay. "And what does—he think?" he muttered after swallowing the dry bread. Over the past few weeks, each of them wrestling with their own grief, no one had spoken of Troy, except for a few passing remarks of his own. And those were thanks for his sergeant's extra time at CID, giving Barnaby more precious hours to sit with his own sadness, to embrace it before releasing that grief in exchange for memory. Well earned, to be sure, but they did not erase the rest of the man's flaws.

Cully looked up, no longer fiddling with her utensils. "I haven't mentioned it yet."

"Oh?"

Joyce turned her head between them, and he knew that gaze in her brown eyes well: Don't pry, it said. A bit loudly, she said, "You hadn't said anything about Cambridge for a time, that's all."

Their daughter lay the ends of her spoon and fork of twirled spaghetti on her plate once more, then shoved the loose sleeves of her pullover away from her wrists again. "I'm just thinking about it. Really, that's all."

Though they sat at the dining room table for a few more minutes to finish the meal, conversation mostly waned, just a further comment or two about where Barnaby's new case might lead. Even that was mostly Joyce asking him questions—her concern still piqued after witnessing the Talbot boy collapse—and Barnaby offering the few observations he had. Cully remained mostly silent, though she did laugh for a second as he recounted Troy's notion of an APB just as Paul Starkey's thundering motorbike returned him to his father's pub—the first smile he had seen from her all day. It banished the darkness in her eyes, only for it to rise anew after a few seconds.

With dinner at an end, Barnaby gathered the plates, the ceramic clattering as he dropped the silverware on the top dish. Joyce and Cully lingered around the table, collecting the larger plates and utensils as well as the more delicate wine glasses. He had already trekked through the kitchen to the sink, drawing the short curtains closed across the window above after settling them in the ceramic basin. Before he had a moment to turn the tap to hot water and start the washing up, he heard the voices spilling over from the dining room, muted but still loud enough to travel.

"You've been quiet all day, Cully," he heard Joyce say, followed by a brief clink of glasses against one another.

"I just have some things on my mind."

"What is it, then?"

A second of silence. "I'm not sure if the Playhouse—if they go through with Salomé...I don't know if it's right for me."

"You've acted in his plays before."

"The Importance of Being Earnest is a little different, Mum."

"Did something—"

"No," Cully interrupted. "I mean—no, just—"

Barnaby lifted tap, sliding it to the left to open the floodgate of hot water. He slipped his fingers beneath the flow, testing the temperature: now tepid, growing warmer. There was something very wrong, he felt, eavesdropping on his own family. He had no qualms about seeking out his suspects' hushed exchanges when they believed themselves alone—but his daughter and wife...Well, that was a whole different world.

Another pair of feet tapped on the tiled floor, and Barnaby turned at the sound. His wife—alone—had the serving plates in both hands, glasses and large utensils laying in the middle of the salad bowl.

"What was all that about?" he asked, trying to keep his voice low.

"What do you mean?" Joyce said, settling the stack gently on the counter by the sink, tugging back each sleeve of her long blue shirt.

"That, back there." Barnaby threw his head back toward the dining room. "Just now." The water from the tap now flowed hot, and he pressed the stopper into the drain, adding a splash of dish soap. As the seconds passed, the bubbles grew, rising to engulf the plates and the final traces of sauce, salad, and bread.

"She didn't say, exactly. Just that she's still thinking about looking outside of Causton, for a little while."

"Not that. I know what you were trying to ask."

As he wiped the first of the plates with the sponge and soap, she reached for the towel. "Tom—"

"If something happened," Barnaby went on, handing her the clean piece.

"She didn't say." Moving the damp plate to her left hand along with the white towel, she brushed her hand against his shoulder, finally bringing it to rest at the top of his arm, squeezing his muscle gently. "Tom, I know you worry."

"Not without reason." He didn't quite have the right words, didn't know exactly what was concerning him. But he had never forgotten his daughter's face, in this same room, rising up in immediate defense: "What did you say to Gavin?" He sponged off the next plate, rinsing it beneath the clean hot water then slipping it into the rack as Joyce dried the one she held. Perhaps that was it, the worry that her defense of the man was undeserved and unearned.

"But you have to let her stop being your little girl."

He cocked his head toward her. "I most certainly have."

Placing the first dry plate on the kitchen table, Joyce reached for the next one. "Then let her tell you when she's ready."

"I don't want to let you make another mistake." He'd no sooner said that to Cully than she bit back, like she was still a teenager. "I suppose you're right," he murmured. Some days, his daughter was an enigma—a mystery, really—her path going hither and yon: no clues and, perhaps, the only person of interest increasingly in the shadows.

* "Death and Dreams", S06E02

A/N: So I want to give some insight into this chapter for y'all: armchair psychology and all that good jazz (don't get used to this sort of note...). In an ideal world, I think there comes a point when your primary, positive emotional relationship ceases to be with your parents; it was certainly my experience as an only child in a close nuclear family, which is basically what we see here. (Conversely, there also comes a point where parents stop asking about the deeper personal things in a child's life and should instead allow for that information to be given freely, 'cause, ya know, that is now an adult.) Obviously, friends are hugely important, but even with a best friend, that emotional relationship is different than the one you have with your parents and, potentially, a romantic partner. Cully has had those romantic partners before, but at the moment, that partner is transitioning to be Troy.

...Except that thanks to wretched, evil circumstances set in motion by the author, there have been, up to this point, few moments to continue building that emotional relationship. And since whatever remains from their past has some conflict or trauma attached...it's messy. Add in Barnaby's clear dislike of such a relationship from the very first beginning, Joyce's belief that her daughter can make her own reasoned decisions, and Cully and Troy's current mutual desire for said relationship—combined with their respective stubbornness and wavering anxiety about it—it can be pretty durn difficult to figure out WTF to do, whom to turn to, and how much you want anyone to know. Those are my guns and I'm stickin' to 'em!