Death of Dalziel - Dalziel & Pascoe 22

by Reginald Hill

Though there was still no official confirmation, observers were absolutely definite that the dead man was Michael Carradice aka Abbas Asir, found not guilty a few hours earlier on terrorism charges. And now a leak from the police said it was suspected he'd died of ricin poisoning.

  'Shit!' said Pascoe.

  This was tragic. It might also be trouble. With Carradice's acquittal, he'd hoped that Ellie's connection with the man could remain a sleeping dog. But now, especially if this turned out to be a Templar killing, the press would be all over it.

  He returned his attention to the news, which had moved on to the Canadian air disaster with the inevitable speculation about possible terrorist involvement. In this case it seemed most unlikely, but it didn't stop the 'experts' from stirring the pot.

  Then at last it was the incident on the Fidler show. By comparison with the preceding items this was presented in a straightforward factual way with very little comment and a surprisingly small amount of film footage.

  I'm on the wrong channel! Pascoe told himself.

  Over the past couple of decades the great British public, once so phlegmatic and passive, had learned that fortitude might be the virtue of adversity but it doesn't get you money in the bank. Now many thousands who might have difficulty spelling the words psychological trauma had no problem understanding its value. A twenty-first-century Dunkirk would see the lines of rescued men heading first not for home or hospital but to their lawyers' offices, there to be reunited with their loved ones already queuing up to make a claim for compensation.

  The channel's lawyers would have advised. Play this down or you'll play the eventual bill up!

  But their rivals would have no such inhibition.

  He switched to another news programme and found he was right.

  But along with a lack of inhibition, there was also a lack of footage, though to some extent they turned this to their advantage, giving the impression through the words of eye-witnesses of something close to the gunfight at the OK Corral.

  Despite his superior knowledge, that was what it felt like to Pascoe too.

  The next couple of hours dragged by. He tried to get through to Ellie again, but either her phone was switched off or the battery had gone. Presumably she was on her way home now, otherwise he was sure she'd have found some way of letting him know.

  When his phone rang he snatched it up, certain it would be Ellie, but it was Wield's voice he heard.

  'Is Ellie back yet?' he asked.

  'No, but she should be on her way.'

  'Good. Thought you might like an update on what I've got out of my chum in Middlesborough. They've got the whole thing on tape. Cameras kept rolling even after they cut off transmission. That guy Kentmore was the hero of the hour, moved like lightning, got himself between Sarhadi and the gun, then disarmed the woman. And of course he didn't know it wasn't a real pistol. So a real hero.'

  'For which, much thanks. What's the SP on the woman?'

  'Only son worked in London. Got caught in one of the tube bombings. Died in hospital three months later. Since then anyone east of Spurn Head has been her perceived enemy. Also she's a Voice reader.'

  When its fellow tabloids fell into line behind the Bradford News's pro-Sarhadi campaign, it was inevitable that the Voice should break ranks.

  Coincidence? Maybe not! had been its headline over a photo of an under-fifteen soccer team with Sarhadi and Raza, heads ringed, standing next to each other. Once team mates, always team mates? it went on. No smoke without fire? And upon this flimsy base it had built a provable case which needs to be answered!

  When complaints were made to the Press Complaints Commission, the Voice hid behind its question marks and offered a single-sentence apology in small type above the small ads.

  'So it's just some poor deranged woman looking for someone to blame, that it?' said Pascoe.

  'Looks like it. There could be a question of how she got on the front row. All three of the panel said they'd noticed her looking a bit agitated from the start. Fidler said he noticed nothing, but one of his producers admitted they check the audience out on CCTV before the show and decide who's going to sit at the front.'

  'So if you're a bit wild-eyed and foaming at the mouth, you get put within striking distance of the panel? Nice. They ought to sack that bastard!'

  'Don't be daft, Pete. Tonight's do has probably doubled his ratings. Give my love to Ellie. We still on for tomorrow evening?'

  'Yeah. Cheers!'

  He hung up, opened another beer and settled down once more to wait.

  All logic told him Ellie was fine, but it was still a huge relief finally to hear her key in the front door.

  He rushed into the hall to greet her.

  As he folded her passionately in his arms, over her shoulder he saw she wasn't alone. A man and a woman stood behind her on the threshold, making a big thing of examining the elegant 'Pompon de Paris' climbing up the porch pillar.

  The man he recognized as Maurice Kentmore, Ellie's fellow panellist. The woman was familiar but it took him a second to realize it was the woman who'd been sitting next to Sarhadi's fiancee. In the flesh she looked even more striking.

  Emaciation merely underlined her elegant facial bone structure and made her dark eyes seem huge. Against the blackness of her cropped hair the pallor of her skin seemed to glow.

  'Peter, this is Maurice Kentmore,' said Ellie as she broke away. 'And Kilda.'

  'Maurice's sister-in-law,' said the woman, offering her hand. Her voice had the faintest hint of an Irish accent. Her grip was firm, her palm dry but chilly.

  'There wasn't a car booked for me because I was a last-minute job,' explained Ellie, 'and getting a taxi in Middlesbrough on a Friday night's like getting a plumber on Christmas day. Then Maurice offered a lift, even though it's well out of his way.'

  'Glad to help,' said Kentmore. 'Now, it's late, so perhaps we should leave you . . .'

  'Don't be silly. A drink's the least we can offer you,' said Ellie.

  'Yes, please come in,' urged Pascoe with an enthusiasm over-egged by his private hope that they'd insist on being on their way.

  'Well, just for a minute then,' said Kentmore.

  As Pascoe ushered them in, he said to Ellie, 'You got through to Rosie?'

  'Yes, she was really worried. We spoke till my battery gave out. I convinced her I wasn't dead, but not much more. She says she's coming home in the morning.'

  'But I thought Jane was taking the whole gang of them ice-skating.'

  'Not our daughter. She's a real doubting Thomas, won't be happy till she sees for herself I'm not in a wheelchair. Sorry, Maurice. The joys of family life, eh?'

  'It's understandable that she's concerned,' said Kentmore.

  'Drinks?' said Pascoe.

  Kentmore and Ellie had Scotches. The woman had a vodka on the rocks, grimacing when he offered her tonic. Pascoe had another lager.

  He said, 'Quite a night.'

  'Not what I was expecting, and I don't just mean the lady with the gun,' said Kentmore. ‘I made it quite clear when they invited me that my brother's death was a no-go area. I gather Ellie got ambushed too.'

  'Bloody right, I did,' said Ellie. 'Ffion even pretended to have completely forgotten Pete was a cop when I reminded her that I didn't answer questions on his job.'

  Kilda glanced at Pascoe and raised her thin black eyebrows.

  'Good to see naivety isn't a gender thing, eh, Peter?' she murmured, shaking her glass to produce the tinkle of ice undulled by liquid.

  He returned her smile and refilled her glass. When he looked at Ellie he saw, unsurprised, that she didn't take kindly to being called naive, even when she definitely had been. Or maybe, he told himself smugly, she just didn't care to see him exchanging smiles with a sexy young woman, which

  Kilda in her skinny and bony way definitely was.

  Kentmore said, 'I read about the explosion. Good to see you didn't take any long term-damage, Peter, but Ellie was saying your boss is still very ill.'

/>   'Yes,' said Pascoe, more brusquely than he intended.

  'Sorry, didn't mean to intrude,' said the man, finishing his drink. 'Think we should be moving.'

  'No, look, have another drink,' said Pascoe, pushing the bottle forward as he recalled that not only had this guy also been through a traumatic experience, but his intervention had probably stopped Ellie from flinging herself on the gun-toting woman. ‘I don't mean to be rude. It's just that there's nothing to tell. Andy, that's my boss, is in a coma. Nobody knows if he'll come out of it, or, if he does, what condition he'll be in.'

  He thought he spoke calmly, but Kilda reached across to him and gently squeezed his hand. Kentmore poured himself more whisky, which he drank as if he needed it. As if in sympathy, the woman helped herself to another large vodka.

  Ellie said, ‘I wonder what drove that poor woman to do something so crazy.'

  'Some close personal loss, I'd guess,' said Kilda. 'It drives different people to different things.'

  She spoke dispassionately, you might almost have said uncaringly if you didn't know about her own loss, thought Pascoe. What had it driven her to? Drink, was the obvious answer.

  He said, 'Yes, you're right.'

  He saw no problem in passing on what Wield had told him about the woman, confident that every detail of her life would be splashed across the papers tomorrow.

  When he finished, Kentmore nodded and said, 'Yes, I noticed her earlier and thought she looked a bit disturbed. Didn't expect a gun, though.'

  Ellic said, 'If Fidler wanted a panel with some strong personal slant on the terrorism question, maybe the bastard got his researchers to make sure some of the audience were affected too.'

  'I'd put money on it,' said Pascoe.

  It's terrible, using people like that,' said Kentmore angrily.

  'I did try to warn you about shows like Fidler's,' murmured Kilda, whose glass seemed to be filling itself.

  'Yes, you did,' said Kentmore, frowning. 'But I was foolish enough to believe my views on agriculture were enough to make me prime-time television fodder. Silly me. Ellie, Peter, I think we should be heading off. Many thanks for your hospitality.'

  He hesitated then took a card out of his wallet and set it down on the table.

  'Look, it would be nice to keep in touch, if you like, that is. In fact, as I was telling Ellic earlier, doing a bit of touting for custom, it's our local village fete tomorrow . . .'

  'Yes,' said Pascoe, seeing where he was heading.

  'I heard Fidler giving it a plug. Weather forecast sounds good. I hope you have a lovely day.'

  But Kentmore was not to be diverted.

  'They always have it on one of my fields,' he went on. 'From what you were saying, your little girl's going to miss out on her skating treat. I know it's not the same, but the organizers always go out of their way to give the kiddies a good time. So, just a thought, we're no distance really, Haresyke, just the far side of Harrogate. If you felt like a breath of country air . ..'

  'What a nice idea,' said Ellie. 'We might just do that, mightn't we, Peter?'

  She spoke with a degree of enthusiasm which seemed to go beyond politeness.

  'Yes. Sounds great,' he said.

  His own effort at enthusiasm must have fallen short because Kilda Kentmore grinned slyly at him, then finished her drink and leaned forward to brush her ice-chilled lips against his cheek, murmuring, 'Thanks for the drink. Good night, Ellie.'

  Ellie shook Kentmore's hand and said, 'Thanks for the lift, and everything.'

  'My pleasure. Goodnight.'

  'Well, you seem to have made a hit there,' said Ellie after their guests had left.

  'He seemed a nice enough guy,' said Pascoe.

  'I wasn't talking about the guy but Miss Stolichnaya. Weird relationship.'

  'You find a nice guy taking care of his dead brother's widow weird?'

  'Still taking care a couple of years on I find weird. But you're right, he is rather nice. For a land-owning, Tory-voting, peasant-oppressing country squire, that is. Maybe it would be fun to drive down and take a look at him in his natural milieu - what do you think? And at lean and thirsty Kilda too, of course.'

  'Kilda,' said Pascoe. 'Interesting name. Rings a bell.'

  'She is, or was, a fashion photographer. Dropped out after she lost her husband, I gather. But maybe you recall it from a few years back when you were drooling over the lingerie adverts in the glossy mags.'

  'Could be. But isn't there a saint called Kilda?'

  'Wrong,' said Ellie, one of whose less attractive traits was combining snippets of esoteric knowledge with a love of being right. 'True, it's the name of a barren windswept island in the Outer Hebrides whence all life has fled, but in fact there never was an actual saint called Kilda. So a sort of pseudo saint. Fits in most respects, so far as I can see.'

  Women beware women, thought Pascoe. Time to move on. But subtly.

  'Talking of lean mean women,' he said, 'how did things end between you and F-Fiona? Did you pull one of her two f-faces off?'

  'Don't be silly. I offered her a deal. Either I strangled her there and then or she undertook to get my next book the biggest exposure since Harry Potter.'

  'I presume she's still breathing? I think you'll do very well in the media business, love. You've got the right twisted mind for it.'

  'You reckon? So how would your nice straight mind react if I said let's take this bottle of Scotch upstairs and finish it in bed?'

  Pascoe stood up and said, ‘I feel a twist coming on.'

  7

  in the mood

  On Saturday morning two nurses were straining their backs cleaning and rearranging Dalziel.

  'Much more of this and they'll be finding a bed for me,' complained one of them, a little blonde with the face and figure of a well-fed angel. 'How long before they switch this bugger off?'

  Her friend, used to excursions into the macabre as an escape route from the everyday horrors of their job, replied, 'Could be they're keeping him going till they find someone in need of a big heart. With his weight, he must have a huge one.'

  'Not just his heart,' said the first nurse, looking down. 'Wonder if I could get that transplanted on to my Steve? Mind you, with his weak knees, he'd probably fall over every time he stood up!'

  Dalziel, could he have heard the exchange, might have enjoyed a good laugh. Unfortunately he isn't having an out-of-body experience today. In fact he is very much in body, awareness reduced to a pinprick of dim light in a black box at the

  bottom of the deepest shaft of an abandoned mine. There is nothing in this awareness that could be called memory, not even of the most generalized kind - rain in the grass, light on the land, sun on the sea - no sense of anywhere else, not even really a sense of here and now, just the thinnest membrane of differentiation between pinprick and darkness.

  And the only choice remaining is when to let the pressure of the dark pop the membrane and go out, go out, beyond all doubt .. .

  The blonde nurse said, 'Right, that's Fatty done. No, hang on. Best put the music back on else his girlfriend will be looking for someone's arse to kick.'

  Cap Marvell's mini-disc frequently got switched off, sometimes because a cleaner wanted the power point, sometimes because a consultant didn't like competition with the sound of his own voice, sometimes because a member of staff simply found Swinging with the Big Bands even pianissimo set his teeth on edge, but mainly because very few people believed it served any function other than to bolster delusional hope.

  But delusion was not a term anyone cared to use in face of Cap Marvell's very real anger, so now the strains of 'In the Mood' played by the Dorsey Brothers' Orchestra stole forth once more, crept into the Fat Man's ear and sent its brassy brightness spiralling down into the darkness.

  A couple of seconds later a momentary respondent syncopation of the hitherto regular notes of the heart monitor might have interested the nurses, but by now they were out of the door and on their way to their next angelic as
signment.

  8

  without fear or favour

  On Saturday morning Pascoe, as a result of what had been very much an in-body experience, woke late.

  Ellie's side of the bed still bore her warm imprint and he rolled into it as he ran over the events of the previous night. After their initial frantic bout of love-making, Ellie had confessed how frightened she'd been at the sight of the gun and he had told her how he had felt in those long minutes after the screen went blank. Then they had lain silent in each other's arms for a long while, clinging to each other less like lovers than a pair of lost children in a dark forest who can face any terror except the terror of being alone.

  The bedroom door opened. He looked towards it, smiling, expecting to see Ellie come in bearing coffee and croissants.

  She came in, but coffee-less. And she didn't return his smile.

  'I just heard the news. They've murdered Mike. Did you know about this?'

  Who's Mike? he wondered, but happily before he could articulate the question his brain answered: Michael Carradice, aka Abbas Asir, suspected terrorist.

  He sat up and said, 'There was something on the news about a body, his name was mentioned but nothing definite. Has it been confirmed it's him?'

  'Oh yes. Why didn't you say something?' 'I had other things on my mind, remember?' 'Like sex, you mean?'

  He didn't reply but regarded her gravely till she grimaced and said, 'Sorry. I know . . . I'm just so . . . shit, I don't know what I am. This is England, isn't it? But there's bombs going off, people getting their heads chopped off and waving guns around on the telly, and now this . . . What's happening, Pete?'

  He reached out his hand and drew her down on to the bed beside him.

  'I don't know, but I'm going to find out,' he said. 'What else did the police say?'

  'Just that they confirmed the body was his. The reporters kept on asking about cause of death. Everyone's saying it was ricin poisoning, but the spokesman wouldn't confirm this. I put the telly on and I saw the shot they took of the dinghy he was in, and the banner. Now it's safe. Pete, they're saying they've heard from those Templar lunatics who beheaded Said Mazraani. He was acquitted, and they murdered him just the same.'