Death of Dalziel - Dalziel & Pascoe 22

by Reginald Hill

  'You will be careful what you say? Mustn't give the buggers any excuse to take you back into custody.'

  The two men parted.

  Stainton went out of the main entrance of the court building to be greeted by a media pack which began howling and yelping when they saw he was alone.

  'Mr Asir will join me shortly’ he assured them. 'Yes, he will be happy to answer questions. Meanwhile, if I may offer my own reactions to the trial and its outcome .. .'

  He began a carefully rehearsed statement in which the terms dodgy intelligence, rule of law, police state, historical freedoms, free speech etc, etc, occurred frequently, in fact rather more frequently than rhetoric demanded as his client's non-appearance obliged him to recycle his declaration of human rights to fill in the time.

  The pack members, scenting a deception, were beginning to snarl once more.

  Finally the solicitor excused himself and went back into the building.

  The court official who had approached them earlier assured him that the formalities of release had been completed at least ten minutes ago. His last sighting of Mr Asir had been as he left the room, presumably heading to the main entrance to celebrate his freedom.

  Stainton could only speculate that his client had changed his mind about meeting the gentlemen of the press and found another way out of the building. Doubting if he could persuade these same gents that he hadn't been party to the deception, and realizing that even if he succeeded all he would be doing was making himself look a fool, the solicitor decided his best option was to follow his client's example.

  Several of the more persistent pack members were already waiting for him at his office and in the end he had to tell his switchboard not to accept any more calls unless they were certain of the identity of the caller.

  He rang home to warn his wife. She told him rather irritably that there were already journalists camped outside the gate with a few bolder ones poking around in the greenhouse and the garden, clearly suspecting that Asir might have taken refuge there.

  He told her not to speak to them and when he finally headed home it was with some natural trepidation at the prospect of the welcome he was about to receive both outside and inside his house.

  But to his surprise and relief as he drove into the pleasant dormer village where he lived, he could spot no sign of alien life around the gateway of his mock-Georgian villa, and his wife confirmed that ten minutes earlier they had all suddenly got into their cars and headed off with much burning of rubber.

  ‘I told you not to worry,' he told her rather pompously. The good thing about our media is that, like children, they have a very short attention span. All that it takes to soothe away the pain of a disappointment is the promise of another bigger treat. Now I think I've earned a large G and ‘I.'

  As he busied himself preparing the drinks, his wife turned on the television to catch the early-evening local news programme.

  'Oh, look, George,' she said. 'Isn't that the mere?'

  As ardent birdwatchers, one of the attractions of their house for the Staintons was its proximity to a large reservoir with a thriving population of both resident and visiting waterfowl.

  There's something going on there,' said Mrs Stainton. ‘I do hope they're not disturbing the greylags.'

  Stainton turned to look at the picture. The camera was panning over crowds of people on the reedy banks of the reservoir. He recognized some of them. The disappearance of the reporters was now explained. He'd been right about the promise of a bigger treat and here they all were, thronging the banks in anticipation of it.

  The sound was turned down low but he thought he caught the name Carradice and suddenly he felt a vague unease. He took a sip from his glass, topped it up with gin and went to sit down next to his wife.

  Turn up the volume, will you?' he said.

  The commentator was explaining, clearly not for the first time, that every main media outlet had received a message suggesting that anyone concerned about the outcome of the Carradice trial should go to the reservoir where they might find something of interest.

  The camera now moved to give a shot out across the water.

  About sixty yards from the edge floated what looked like an inflatable rubber dinghy with a short mast and a loosely hanging sail. A motor boat full of uniformed policemen was speeding towards it. But the camera was quicker, zooming in close.

  There seemed to be something in the dinghy, but its alignment in relation to the camera made it hard to be certain what. Then a puff of breeze swung the vessel round.

  'Look at those poor grebes,' said his wife indignantly as birds rose from the surface to avoid the motor boat speeding through them.

  'Oh shit,' said the solicitor.

  Lolling in the dinghy with one arm trailing in the water was a man, his mouth agape, his eyes wide and staring. He had a thick black beard that stretched halfway down his chest.

  The camera moved slowly up the mast, which turned out not to be a real mast but an oar or paddle propped upright. And the sail wasn't a real sail but some sort of banner with words printed on it, illegible until another puff of wind straightened it out above the reservoir's dark blue water, revealing it as the kind of swallow-tail guidon that might have fluttered above a troop of medieval knights galloping into battle. The resemblance didn't end there. At the broad end of the pennant in bright red was painted the cross of St George.

  Alongside it were some words, block capitals in black. It took a little time for the camera and the wind to make these readable, but when they were, the solicitor emptied his gin and tonic in a single gulp.

  NOW IT'S SAFE!

  Part Four

  A man that looks on glasse.

  On it may staye his eye,

  Or if he pleaseth, through it pass ...

  George Herbert, The Elixer'

  1

  the shock of recognition

  Andy Dalziel is having an out-of-body experience.

  How he knows this is different from dancing with Tottie Truman in the old Mirely Mecca or tumbling like a pigeon in the bright air high over Mid-Yorkshire, he isn't sure, but that small core of awareness which preserves the self even in the wildest dreams and the scariest nightmares detects the difference.

  Perhaps it's the fact that he can see himself? A man doesn't dream himself, does he? And if you can see your own body, then it is self-evident that you are out of it.

  The body in question lies supine on a bed. It has tubes and wires connected to it. What it is doing there the Dalziel consciousness floating above it has neither the capacity nor the inclination to enquire, but it does have the critical power to remark that it's not a pretty sight. If anything, it reminds him of the carcase of a beached whale he once saw near Flamborough.

  And that had been dead three days.

  A couple of nurses are working on the hulk, cleaning it, anointing it, checking the inlets and outlets of the various tubes. Their purpose he has no curiosity about, but he feels sorry that such a pretty pair of lasses should have nothing better to do with their time than administer to this slab of unattractive flesh.

  He moves away. It's easy. No need to fart this time, no question of effort, hardly even of volition. This is very different from the pigeon-tumbling which his dream self so enjoyed. Then his fecund fancy created for himself the physical delight of flight - air streaming over the limbs like water over a swimmer, the exhilaration of the swoop, the serenity of the soar - just as the same fancy recreated the voluptuous softness of Tottie Truman's flesh .. .

  Now however there is no physicality. Flesh was that hulk on the bed. Good riddance to it.

  He drifts through other rooms full of beds on which lie men and women in all sorts of conditions, some comatose, some in pain, some sitting upright, bright-eyed and impatient for their time of escape, some with visitors whom they find delightful, debilitating or downright depressing in equal proportions.

  And then he penetrates into a small ward with only two beds in it, one empty, one
occupied by a figure who looks strangely familiar.

  He hovers above it, trying to arrange those sleep-blanked features into a pattern with a name.

  Suddenly the eyes open wide.

  The woken face makes identification easy.

  But there's something more, something unexpected in those eyes, something which shocks Dalziel.

  They belong to Constable Hector, and they look as if they're actually seeing him.

  He doesn't wait to check this out but flees like a ghost at daybreak back to the welcome unconsciousness of the beached whale.

  2

  Rule Five

  If being in your friends' thoughts is truly a form of survival, then Andy Dalziel needn't have had any fears, for hardly a minute went by without someone somewhere in Mid-Yorkshire having occasion to think of him.

  Some thought of him with affection, with tears, even with prayer. Others with a quiet satisfaction that one great obstacle to their hopes and dreams had been removed. The triggers of memory were many and varied. The drawing of a pint of beer, a simple turn of phrase, the distant slamming of a door, the shadow of a cloud drifting across a hillside, a dog lying in the sun and scratching itself contentedly.

  And sometimes it was a situation that brought into the minds of those who knew him best one of those philosophical truths with which the Marcus Aurelius of Mid-Yorkshire from time to time condescended to improve their lives.

  Such a maxim popped into Peter Pascoe's mind on his return home that Friday evening.

  According to the Great Sage Dalziel, the fifth rule of marriage was. Never give your wife a surprise she doesn’t know about.

  'The first four rules,' he'd gone on to explain, 'aren't allowed to be writ down, else no man would ever get married.'

  Pascoe had broken Rule Five by deciding to turn up at home unannounced. Alongside a conventional male fantasy of the possible delectable consequences of taking Ellie unawares, he had a good rational reason for his decision. There were things he needed to do in Mid-Yorkshire and he didn't know how long they might take. To ring Ellie and say, 'Hello, darling, I've got the rest of the day off so why don't you slip into something comfortable like our bed, I'll be back as soon as I can,' was one thing. To ring and say, 'Hello, darling, I've got the rest of the day off but there's stuff I want to do which I rate more important than heading straight home,' was quite another.

  As his various diversions occupied several hours, his decision seemed quite a wise one as he pulled into his driveway at shortly after six. The evening stretched out invitingly before him. There'd be only the two of them. Friday night was stopover night. Rosie and a couple of classmates were spending it with their friend Mandy Pulman whose mother Jane was taking them ice-skating in the morning, thus guaranteeing the long lie-in he was hoping would prove necessary.

  He opened the front door quietly. Tig came to meet him. Happily he greeted everyone silently except for Rosie, and Pascoe rewarded his restraint with a pat on the head. The downstairs rooms were unoccupied but he heard a sound upstairs. This got better. Perhaps she was having a shower. Or taking a nap. His fantasy was in full flight now and he tiptoed up the stairs, anticipating melting into her dream as the rose blendeth its odour with the violet. Ahead was the bedroom door, ajar. Gently he pushed it open.

  Ellie was sitting at her dressing table, applying lipstick. She saw him in the glass. Those rich dark eyes and those deep incarnadined lips rounded in surprise.

  She said, 'Oh shit.'

  This wasn't quite the greeting he'd hoped for, but creeping up on her had been pretty infantile so he made allowances, which was easy as she looked gorgeous.

  'Sorry,' he said. 'Should have rung, but here I am anyway.'

  He went to her and they kissed. It was a pretty good kiss, but it didn't feel like it was going anywhere.

  He said, 'Had a hard day, love?' he hoped sympathetically, as she pulled away and started repairing her make-up.

  'Not really. Peter, it's great to have you home, but I've just arranged to go out.'

  'Oh,' he said. 'Can't you unarrange?'

  'No, not really. Sorry, but this is big. They want me on Fidler's Three. Tonight.'

  Fidler's Three was the current big-hit television talk show. Each week its host, Joe Fidler, invited three guests to join him in a different venue to discuss matters of current interest before a participating audience. Fidler's Three had two gimmicks that made it very popular. First, no politicians, journalists or A-list personalities were permitted on the panel. Second, at the start of each show a list of debating cliches scrolled down the screen starting with the old favourites - level playing field, at the end of the day, with great respect, hard-working families, etc - then moving on to the latest arrivals. Guests undertook to make a donation of fifty pounds to a charity of Fidler's choice each time they used any of these, a slip marked by a recorded voice crying, 'Order! Order!' above a cacophony of zoo sounds which were the signal for audience participation in the form of a barrage of multicoloured ping-pong balls hurled at the offender.

  Fidler himself was a personable young man who'd been a New Labour MP till 'the sheer meaningless gab of it' had driven him to resign and spend more time with his money by becoming a TV personality. He claimed that the only qualification needed by his guests was that they should be articulate and opinionated, but usually there turned out to be some kind of linking theme to his choice.

  'A bit short notice, isn't it?' said Pascoe.

  'Well, it's Ffion, actually,' said Ellie. 'Ah.'

  Ffion Lyke-Evans was the press officer in charge of the publicity for Ellie's novel. Pascbe had met her at a signing in Leeds. Delayed, he'd entered the almost empty store twenty minutes late. Seeing Ellie's solitary figure sitting alongside a wall of unsold books, her desperate eyes giving the lie to her insouciant smile, he might have stolen quietly away if a seductive Welsh voice hadn't lilted into his ear, 'Hello, sir. Come for the signing, have you? It's a lovely book, you won't be able to put it down.'

  She talked a good book, Pascoe had to admit. She was young and attractive, with long black hair, huge dark eyes, lips to suck men's souls with, and a winningly mischievous smile. Once Pascoe identified himself, she offered him twenty-five convincing reasons for the absence of punters. Pascoe was unpersuaded but noticed that Ellie, the arch-sceptic, hung on every spellbinding word uttered by the Welsh witch.

  Her faith had been blunted a little by the subsequent silence of all branches of the literary media, but still, if invited to share a joke at Ffion's expense, she would insist the girl knew her job. And, despite his ingrained scepticism, Pascoe, whenever he spoke to Ffion, always found himself momentarily infected by her merry optimism.

  Today it seemed all Ffion's skills had been put to the test. She had contrived to get one of her authors domiciled in the north-east on to Fidler's Three and had made the long journey north to smooth his path and calm his nerves. Then, just as she arrived in Middlesbrough, her mobile rang and she was told he couldn't make it, having been summoned to the sickbed of a near and dear relative.

  Faced with the prospect of Joe Fidler's fury and the loss of her own credibility, she'd thought quickly. First she rang Ellie and explained the situation. Ellie's first novel launch hadn't been her finest hour, she admitted, which was why, she went on with scarcely a breath, she'd been really excited at this God-given chance to make up for past failings by offering Fidler Ellie's name.

  'Not tentatively,' she told Ellie. 'TV doesn't do tentative. I told them you're wise, witty, and wacky, opinionated, assertive and articulate, and that you are a definite rising star, the next George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie . . .'

  'Agatha Christie?' queried Ellie indignantly.

  ‘I could see they hadn't heard of the others,' said Ffion. 'So they're not surprised they haven't heard of you! But they're desperate to have you. Can you come?'

  'Try to stop me!'

  'Great. Grab a taxi and get yourself up here pronto! See you!'

  Ffion
Lyke-Evans broke the connection and punched in Joe Fidler's mobile number. She didn't think she'd been dishonest. In her job a simple temporal reorganization was a long way from a lie.

  What would have been stupid was to sell Ellie to Joe and then discover she was on holiday. Of course if Fidler said, 'No way!' she'd have to ring Ellie back and invent a reason for disappointing her, but dealing with authors' disappointments was the first thing they taught you at publicist school. Anyway, she was sure that she had the arguments to persuade Fidler to accept Ellie as substitute.

  'Hi, Joe,' she said. 'It's Ffion. Listen, I've got some rather bad news and some incredibly good news . . .'

  And Peter Pascoe, cynical though he was about anything connected with the media, could not bring himself to voice any doubts when he saw that Ellie regarded this as incredibly good news too.

  'So I can't ring back and tell Ffion I can't do it after all, can I?' she concluded.

  'No, of course not,' he agreed. 'Who are the other guests, by the way?'

  'No idea. No one knows who the three are going to be till show-time, not the audience, not even the guests. Which is good. No one will know I was a second choice!'

  'And they'd find it hard to believe anyway,' he said gallantly.

  She mouthed him a kiss.

  'Thank you kindly,' she said. 'It's really great to know you'll be here when I get back. By the way, did you hear about Hector?'

  'No. What's he done now? Got the Nobel Prize for Brain Surgery?'

  'Not funny. The poor sod got knocked over this morning. Hit and run. Wieldy told me this afternoon when he rang to see how I was. He's OK, though.'

  She told him the story.

  'Poor bastard,' said Pascoe. 'If I'd known. I could have looked in on him earlier.' 'Earlier?'

  'Yes,' said Pascoe, mentally kicking himself. ‘I called in at the hospital to see how Andy was.'

  It was, like the best lies, only half a lie. He had certainly called at the hospital, but his enquiry about the Fat Man had been an afterthought made on the internal phone.

  Ellie, though susceptible to her press officer's blandishments, had been a detective's wife long enough to have developed a sensor for evasions.