Child's Play

by Reginald Hill

  Pascoe noted but resisted the tempting sidetrack of ‘crooked husband’ and pressed straight on.

  ‘So Goodenough was buying you off?’ he said. ‘I hope you didn’t come cheap.’

  ‘Cheap enough unless he wins the case,’ grunted Huby. ‘Then we get a bit more. But I’ll believe that when it happens.’

  ‘A percentage is it? I see. Then you’d not be all that happy to see someone turning up and claiming he was your dead cousin so he could sweep the pool?’

  ‘Just hold your horses!’ said Huby. ‘All right, I weren’t best pleased when I saw this bugger sitting in my pub. And mebbe I were a bit sharper than I should’ve been. But if any bugger goes around saying I’d kill someone for a bit of brass, I’ll knock his bloody head off!’

  This seemed a curious way for a man to deny his potential for violence, and it was followed up by a piece of reasoned argument perhaps even more curious for such a source.

  ‘Any road,’ said Huby, ‘if he were a fraud, the law’d never give him the money, and if he were genuine, it were his to have anyway.’

  ‘"If he were genuine"?’ said Pascoe. ‘I thought you were absolutely certain he was an impostor?’

  ‘Nay, that was you again, answering your own questions,’ said Huby. ‘I thought that at first, fair enough. And second time we met, I weren’t in the mood to look favourably at him. But thinking about it later, I got to wondering if mebbe I’d been too hasty. Mebbe I should’ve given him a hearing at least. He went meek as a lamb when I told him to get out, and that was just like Alexander. Never a lad to stand up to rough handling.’

  Pascoe digested this.

  ‘You’re talking about the boy you remember,’ he said. ‘But that boy became an officer, he did commando training. If Pontelli was by some remote chance your cousin, he’d been shot up pretty badly, and he’d made a life for himself in a strange country and cut himself off from everything familiar and comfortable back here. That sounds pretty tough to me.’

  ‘Mebbe,’ said Huby. ‘Except mebbe it were easier to stay away than come home. Mebbe he found himself out of the war and didn’t fancy getting back into it. What was to come back to in Greendale, any road? They pushed him round, his mam and dad, and it didn’t help that they pushed in opposite directions. No, happen he got a bang on the head, and when he started recalling his happy childhood days, he thought he’d be better off staying put where he was.’

  Pascoe was taken aback by this analysis. Not that he doubted Huby’s intelligence, but to date his impression had been that the man only regarded other people as potential obstacles to be walked through.

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t take this sympathetic view while you had the chance,’ said Pascoe. ‘You might have been able to ask some useful questions.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right,’ said Huby. ‘But I weren’t to know silly bugger were about to get himself killed, were I?’

  Pascoe glanced at his watch and groaned inwardly. Another late return to the steadily hardening bosom of his family.

  ‘Can I use your phone?’ he asked.

  ‘All we’ve got’s the pay-phone near the front door,’ said Huby. ‘Use it as much as you like, long as you keep feeding it money.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Pascoe, rising.

  As he reached the door, Huby said, ‘Hang on. There were one thing. I recall some mention of a birthmark or summat young Alex had. On his bum, so it would only be referred to all delicate like, the Lomases being so genteel.’

  ‘A birthmark. On his bum, you say!’ said Pascoe, keeping his face blank.

  ‘Aye. Not that I ever saw it myself, we weren’t that close. Perhaps me dad mentioned it, I don’t know. A sort of mole, or something. Shaped like a leaf. Aye, he’d still have that there, wouldn’t he, Mr Inspector?’

  Business looked fairly good as Pascoe made his way through the now-crowded bar. It was a fine warm evening, of course, good drinking weather.

  Seymour was leaning on the bar, engaged in what seemed like a very humorous conversation with Jane Huby. He caught Pascoe’s eye and Pascoe signalled two minutes as he passed. The phone was on the wall quite near the entrance and as he reached it, the door opened to admit the slight figure of Lexie Huby.

  She stopped short when she saw him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hello. There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  ‘What am I doing here, you mean?’ he laughed. ‘No. Just routine, as we say. I’m just going to ring my wife to tell her I’m late, which is what she knows already.’

  This bit of domestic tittle-tattle seemed to reassure the girl and she managed a smile.

  ‘Just back from work?’ he asked. ‘They must put you through it at Thackeray’s!’

  ‘No. I had to go to the library to pick up some books I’d ordered.’

  He’d noticed she was carrying a battered old briefcase which looked packed to bursting point. Pascoe had a picture of this quiet little girl curling up in her room with a stack of highly coloured extremely romantic historical novels, bodice-rippers even, shutting out the noise and bustle and masculine heartiness of the pub below. But her mother said she was useful and popular! Well, what were mothers for if not to be partial on their children’s behalf?

  He smiled and said, ‘Well, nice to see you again,’ and picked up the phone. The door opened again to admit a large rubicund man who looked like a children’s book illustration of a farmer, an impression confirmed by a pair of well-manured Wellingtons.

  ‘Ee, Lexie, luv, is that you?’ he said with evident delight. ‘I hoped we might be in luck tonight.’

  ‘I’m just back from work, Mr Earnshaw,’ said the girl. ‘I’ve not had me tea yet and I’ll be busy later on.’

  ‘Date, is it?’ said the farmer.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve found yourself a young man at last,’ said Earnshaw with that hearty insensitivity which is the hallmark of the northern rustic. ‘But surely you could spare us a couple of minutes? I’ll tell that miserable old dad of thine I’m off to the Crown else!’

  The girl, who had been standing with her hand on the handle of the door marked Private which presumably led directly into the Huby’s living quarters, glanced at Pascoe who had been eavesdropping unashamedly. He grinned and shrugged slightly in what was intended as a gesture of young person’s solidarity but which quite clearly came across as old person’s patronization.

  ‘All right,’ the girl said, dropping her briefcase with a dusty thud. ‘A couple of minutes won’t harm.’

  Earnshaw ushered her into the bar and Pascoe, irritated once more at the ageing process the girl seemed to provoke in him, completed his dialling.

  As expected, Ellie was not pleased. Her displeasure prompted him to lie when she asked where he was ringing from. A kiosk in the middle of nowhere seemed less provocative than a pub. Unfortunately just then the bar room door opened letting out the sound of animated chatter, clinking glasses and, most damning of all, the merry tumult of an old piano on which Happy Days Are Here Again was being played with great vigour.

  ‘And that’s a passing hurdy-gurdy man, I suppose?’ said Ellie icily. ‘How long do you expect to be?’

  He said, ‘I’ve got to get back to town and collect my car. Oh, and I really ought to look in and say hello to Wieldy. He’s off sick. I won’t stay long, especially if he looks infectious.’

  He would have postponed the visit altogether, except that he remembered guiltily his efforts to choke Wield off on Saturday when he’d been so keen for a private chat. The opportunity to talk hadn’t arisen since and he felt somehow he’d let the man down.

  ‘Be back by eight, or you’ll find your dinner coming to meet you,’ ordered Ellie. ‘Ciao!’

  Pascoe opened the bar door to summon Seymour but the redhead was not inclined to have his eye caught. Interestingly, it wasn’t the busty blonde who was holding his attention but the piano-player in the corner who also made a verbal summons impossible.
Irritated, Pascoe went across the room and grasped Seymour’s elbow.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Didn’t see you were ready. Hey, but she can really swing that old Joanna, can’t she? You’d not think she’d have the strength to hit the keys like she does.’

  Pascoe looked to see who the object of this encomium was. There on the piano stool, doll-like in stature but electric with pent-up energy in every curve of her slight body, Lexie Huby was launching herself into the grand climax of what had turned into something like symphonic variations on Happy Days Are Here Again. With a series of accelerating arpeggios she brought these musical pyrotechnics to an end and the red-faced farmer led the rest of the listeners in enthusiastic applause.

  ‘More, more!’ he cried as the girl, slightly flushed with either exertion or pleasure, made to rise from the stool.

  She shook her head, caught Pascoe’s eye, hesitated, and sat down again. Her fingers moved, the music started again; Pascoe recognized the tune instantly. It was The Bold Gendarmes.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Seymour.

  As he opened the front door of the pub, he noticed the girl’s case still lying by the Private door. Ignoring Seymour’s curious gaze, he stooped and opened it.

  He would have been disappointed now to find it full of bodice-rippers, but he whistled in surprise when he found himself looking at Milton’s God by William Empson, The King’s War by C.V. Wedgwood and The English Legal System by R.J. Walker.

  ‘Anything up?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘No,’ said Pascoe, refastening the case. ‘Just a simple lesson in not judging the goods by the packaging, my boy. You’d do well to remember it.’

  ‘You mean the little lass playing the piano?’ said Seymour astutely. ‘I see what you mean, sir. On the other hand, that was her sister I was talking to behind the bar, and did you see the packaging there!’

  ‘You lecherous young sod,’ said Pascoe. ‘And you almost an engaged man! Mind you, it could all be done with fibre glass and Bostik, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Mebbe. But it’d be fun finding out,’ said Seymour dreamily. ‘It’d be fun finding out.’

  Chapter 8

  It had been a strange day for Wield. Guilt and happiness had boxed for possession of his mind. During the morning, happiness had established a points lead. Cliff had been content to sit around the flat, drinking coffee, listening to a pop channel on the radio, chatting about nothing in particular. Wield had sat and watched and listened and understood his loneliness in recent years, and felt it as a personal reproach.

  Guilt began to fight back in the afternoon as the boy grew restless and sullen and said he was tired of being cooped up, and couldn’t they go out? Wield said that he’d rung in sick, something he’d only done a couple of times ever and never when it wasn’t true, and he couldn’t go wandering off. Someone might ring, or he might be seen. But there was no reason why Cliff shouldn’t go out if he wanted to.

  To his disappointment the boy accepted with alacrity, and for an hour or more it was Wield’s turn to feel restless, but when Sharman returned about five o’clock, he was so lively and affectionate that the sergeant’s insurgent misgivings were soon soothed away. They ended up in bed again. At half past six the youth rose and said he would sort out their evening meal. This evidently involved another trip out of the flat as Wield heard the door open and shut. He lay for another quarter of an hour, then got up himself and decided to have a bath.

  He’d been in it long enough to start worrying once again when there was the sound of the flat door and shortly afterwards, Sharman’s voice calling that dinner would be on the table in five minutes, so would he get a move on?

  Wield took his time, discovering in himself a reluctance to be bossed around in his own apartment. When he entered the living-room wrapped in the towelling robe which Cliff had borrowed on his first night here, he saw the table set with a Chinese takeaway feast. It was not food he cared for very much, but he forced an appreciative smile. There was, however, in the air a smell additional to the rich odours of oil and spices and soy sauce. He looked at the boy, sitting crosslegged on the floor with an easy grace and an expression of fatuous self-congratulation. He was smoking and it wasn’t tobacco.

  Before Wield could speak, the doorbell rang.

  He answered it without considering possible consequences as it delayed the saying of whatever he was going to say to Sharman.

  ‘Sick call,’ said Pascoe. ‘Oh hell, have I got you out of bed?’

  This seemed the obvious interpretation of the robe. Then through the open door of the living-room he glimpsed the food-laden table.

  ‘Oh good. You’re eating anyway,’ he said. ‘How goes it?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Wield. ‘Thanks. I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  Pascoe, all primed with reasons for not coming in and sitting down, was curiously put out by the lack of any attempt to urge him to do so. He felt a childish compulsion to delay his departure with uncharacteristic gabble.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘That’ll be great. We’re up to our necks as usual. This Italian corpse is turning out to be really interesting. And if that’s not enough, Mr Watmough has finally flipped. Watch your aftershave when you come back! He’s decided we’re all Gay Gordons in CID and he’s determined to sniff us out!’

  He sniffed stagily in demonstration.

  And again, not at all stagily.

  Wield said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Some nonsense of the DCC’s. You know how they get these ideas and with the selection board coming up, he’s terrified in case anything happens to rock his boat. Look, Wieldy, I’ll not keep you from your dinner. It smells very … exotic. So take care. See you in the morning, I hope.’

  Pascoe left, running down the stairs. His mind was running too. With Wield in his bathrobe, who was responsible for the presumably takeaway Chinese feast?

  And for how long had marijuana been an ingredient of Chinese cuisine?

  He shook the questions out of his head and concentrated on getting across his own threshold before his pork chop came out to meet him.

  Wield re-entered his living-room.

  ‘One of your mates?’ inquired Cliff. ‘Why’d you not invite him in?’

  Wield stepped forward, tore the joint out of his fingers and hurled it into the fireplace. He’d seen Pascoe’s expression and was suddenly filled with fear for the future.

  ‘You don’t smoke shit here,’ he said.

  ‘No? Why the hell not? Afraid of being raided, are you?’

  Wield ignored this.

  ‘Last night,’ he said. ‘You said something about trying to turn me into a news story.’

  ‘Did I? Bad news, from the way you’re acting now,’ said the boy negligently.

  ‘Tell me again, what exactly did you say when you rang the paper?’

  ‘Why? What’s so important? Last night you said it didn’t matter. What’s changed?’

  Nothing. Except that in Pascoe’s heedless quip about Gay Gordons he’d seen how what he felt as potentially tragic would be trivialized in the macho world of the police force. If Pascoe thought gay cops were comic, how would a monster like Dalziel respond? And why was the DCC interested?

  He was feeling the onset of panic, and knowing it didn’t help control it. Once, with Maurice’s strength allied to his own, it had seemed possible to face, and outface, the world. But the moment had passed, and Maurice’s strength had proved delusory, and this child before him did not even offer the illusion of strong support.

  ‘Tell me again,’ he urged. ‘I need to know.’

  ‘Why? Why do you need to know? Don’t you trust me?’ demanded Sharman, beginning to grow angry.

  Wield drew in a deep breath. He didn’t want another row. Or perhaps he did.

  He said quietly, ‘I just need to know. There’s evidently been something said down at the station, and I’d like to be quite sure what it is, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ mimicked the boy. ‘So you can make u
p your mind how to play it, is that it? So you can decide whether to go on being a fucking hypocrite all your life? I’ll tell you what your trouble is, shall I, Mac? You’ve lived so long with straight pigs that you’ve started to think like them. You actually believe they’re right and there really is something nasty and funny about gays. You know you can’t help being one, but you wish you could, like a man who’s got piles can’t help it, but wishes he hadn’t.’

  The youth paused as if afraid of Wield’s reaction to what he’d said. Perhaps if Wield had kept quiet too there might have been a chance of a truce, a fragile calm settling into a firmer peace. But too much control for too long takes its toll of a man as much as any other excess.

  ‘So that’s my trouble, is it?’ said Wield with soft savagery. ‘And what’s your trouble then, Cliff? Mebbe it’s what I thought from the start. Mebbe you’re nothing more than a nasty little crook who came up here to put the black on me, then got scared. Mebbe all that stuff about your long lost dad is a load of crap. Mebbe Maurice got you right when he said you were a thief and a tart …’

  The boy jumped up, his face working with rage and pain.

  ‘All right!’ he screamed. ‘And Mo was right about you too! He said you were a bloody loonie who wanted everything his way, no one else’s! He said you were fucking pathetic and you are! Look at yourself, Mac. You’re dead, did you know that? From the neck up and down. Dead. What do you know? - I’ve screwed with a dead pig! They should stick you on a platter with an orange in your mouth!’

  He stopped, appalled at where his rage had taken him.

  ‘You’d better go,’ said Wield. ‘Quickly.’

  ‘What? No charges, no threats?’ said Sharman, with a poor effort at jauntiness.

  ‘You’re a liar, a cheat, a thief. What should I threaten you with? Just get out of my sight.’

  Cliff Sharman went to the door, glanced back once, said something inaudible, and left.

  Wield stood quite still by the table looking down at the array of congealing dishes. There was a voice high in his skull screaming at him to drag the tablecloth off and bring the feast crashing to the floor. He ignored it. Control was everything. He took three deep breaths, letting the steady surf-like rhythms of his breathing drown out that strident, insistent voice.