'He woke up and realized you'd gone and he says there's something he wanted to say to you, Peter. Do you mind?' 'Of course not.'
As the door closed behind Pascoe, Cap looked at Ellie curiously and said, 'You two OK, are you?'
'Yes. Fine,' said Ellie shortly. Then she added, because she disliked prevarication, and Cap, though not close, was a friend, 'He promised me all this business with CAT was behind him. He's lucky to have got out of it as lightly as he did. I just think that he ought to give it a rest and settle back into things here.'
'It was Andy who wanted to hear all about it,' said Cap.
'That's what Peter said, but I can tell, it's stirred it all up again.'
'Ellie,' said Cap gently, 'one thing I've learned since I partnered up with Andy is we need to be linked together by a long and loose rope.'
'Peter's not Andy.'
'Of course he isn't. But the rope linking them is in some ways a lot shorter and tighter than ours.'
The two women found things to look at in the empty corridor. They knew they were in a minefield where even a cautious step might end in explosion, and so they stood in silence, waiting for rescue.
There was a saving silence too at Dalziel's bedside. To Pascoe it seemed that the Fat Man had gone to sleep again and he felt relieved, suspecting that anything said now was merely going to confirm his worst fears.
He began to turn away.
A sound from the bed stopped him and he leaned over the still figure.
The lips moved a fraction, letting out scarcely enough breath to stir a feather. Pascoe thought he heard his name on the breath.
He said, 'Yes?'
'Peter, is that you?'
This was marginally stronger but not so strong it would have done more than tremble a candle flame.
'Yes, Andy, it's me.'
The Fat Man's eyes opened. The pupils seemed cloudy and unfocused. He said, 'Peter.' 'Yes.'
His left hand moved. Pascoe instinctively patted it and felt his fingers seized in a grip weaker than he recalled his daughter's when first he held her.
'Pete, mate, I thought you'd gone.'
'No, Andy, still here,' said Pascoe, thinking mate! Oh Jesus, this was bad.
'Something I need to . . . Cap told me . . . back in Mill Street when I got blown up ...'
The voice failed. Were those tears in his eyes? Oh shit, this was very bad!
'It's OK, Andy,' he said. 'You rest now. We'll talk about it later, OK?'
'No . . . need to do it now ... in case . . . you know. In case. Cap said ... if it weren't for you I'd like have . . . she said you saved me, Pete . . . you saved me . . .'
His voice choked as if the emotion were too much for his depleted strength.
‘I can't recall much about it now, Andy,' said Pascoe, eager to get out of here before the Fat Man said something so cloyingly sentimental it would clog up their relationship for ever. But the grip on his fingers was too strong now for him to break away without it being quite clear that's what he was doing.
'.. . and what I want to say, Pete . . .'
The voice was getting fainter again, the eyes had closed. Perhaps the poor bastard's debility was going to save him! He leaned forward closer to catch the soft-spoken words.
'.. . what I want to say is . . .'
And the eyes snapped open and stared straight into Pascoe's, bright and tearless.
'Just because tha gave me the kiss of life doesn't mean we're bloody engaged!'
Now the great mouth opened wide to let out a bellow of laughter so strong Pascoe felt himself blasted upright.
'You rotten bugger,' he said. 'Oh, you rotten bugger!'
Grinning broadly, he made for the door. The two women, attracted by the sudden outburst within, greeted him anxiously. 'Is he all right?' asked Ellie.
'I'm afraid so,' said Pascoe. 'Well, look who's here.'
Along the corridor, moving on a pair of crutches with a strange crab-like motion, came Hector. Tucked into the neck of his ‘I-shirt was a bunch of lilies whose pollen had redistributed itself generously across gaunt features giving him the appearance of a man who had just died of some rare form of jaundice.
'How're you doing, Hec?' enquired Pascoe.
'Fine, thank you, sir. How's Mr Dalziel? Can I go in to see him?'
Cap began to say, 'No, he's resting . . .' when Pascoe stepped in front of her and opened the door.
'Mr Dalziel's fine,' he said. 'And he'd love to see you. In you go, Hec/
The constable hopped sideways through the door, which Pascoe closed gently after him. There was a moment's silence then came a crash, presumably as Hector dropped one of his crutches in order to extract his bouquet, then a dull thud, presumably as he fell across the bed, followed by a great cry of shock or rage or pain.
'Why did you let Hector in?' asked Ellie curiously as they left the hospital.
'Why not?' asked Pascoe gaily. 'After all, in a way it was them two that started it all. Only fitting that they should bring it to an end, don't you think?'
'Yes,' agreed Ellie, returning his smile. 'The end. Only fitting. Now let's go home.'
2
really the end
But it wasn't really the end.
The following sunny Sunday Pascoe and Rosie and Tig had gone for a walk to a favourite spot by the river where Tig could swim, Rosie could paddle and Pascoe could lie in a green shade and think thoughts of whatever colour he pleased. Ellie had excused herself on the grounds of a woman's work never being done.
This was true, but the work in question was not in fact the implied mountain of ironing, it was work on her novel, which had reached a sticky patch.
Not admitting this was of course just silly. In regard to her literary ambitions, Peter had never been anything but a source of support, admiration and praise. Yet, until she could wave a very large royalty cheque at their bank balance, she couldn't avoid this absurd sense of guilt at the inroads into her family life made by the creative impulse.
She switched on the computer and as always checked for e-mail.
There was a small backlog which she dealt with swiftly. Peter had a couple also, one from Cap Marveil. After a moment's thought, she brought it up.
Cap embraced all new forms of technology and their idiom with a fervour which brought out the mad Luddite in Dalziel. As Ellie picked her way through the message she felt some sympathy with the Fat Man. If this is what she did to her e-mails, God knows what her text messaging looked like!
Hi! Wnt to see Ktbg at Sndytn ystrdy - rmmbrd ur intrst in E Hodge as I ws lvng - Ktty v trd by thn - sd shd thnk abt it - gt e frm her tdy when Im frwdng - A mkng gd prgss - tlks of cming hme - dr sys nt 4 a cpl wkks at Ist - thn cnvlsce smwhre lke Sndytn whre wrks nt on hs drstp! Luv 2EI nd Rsi nd Tg Cap
Ellie turned to the forwarded message and was relieved to find that Dame Kitty had not followed her old pupil down the path of mangled language. To her, e-mail was simply a faster way of sending a letter.
The Avalon Nursing Home
Sandytown
East Yorkshire
Dear Amanda,
Thank you for your visit of yesterday. Buried in this necropolis, it is always pleasant to receive news from the world of the living, despite the fact that, as you doubtless observed, I find even the vicarious sharing of a life like yours quite exhausting.
I am sorry I was too fatigued by the end of your visit to deal with your enquiry about Edie Hodge, but I woke up this morning feeling much refreshed and all the details of Edie's adventure came flooding back.
The story that it was I myself who caught them in the potting shed is in fact untrue. The truth is, as so often, both likelier and stranger.
It was in fact Jacob, the boy's father, who came across them. You might have thought that his concern would have been to keep things quiet for fear of the possible consequences for his son, but his reaction was as Old Testament as his name. The way he saw it, his son was not the seducer but the seduced, led astray and defiled by a Daug
hter of Satan!
While not able to go along with this completely, knowing Edie as I did left me with the suspicion that it was probably six of one and half a dozen of the other. At least after that onslaught from Jacob, dealing with Matt Hodge was relatively easy. Initially, of course, he was very angry indeed, such anger being the natural emotion of a good Catholic parent who feels that his child's welfare has been neglected by those paid to take care of it. But though he was a doting father, he was by no means blindly so, and I do not doubt he was well aware of Edie's
proclivities. Indeed, after his initial anger, I wondered whether he did not see this case of in flagrante as an opportunity to re-establish some control over his wayward child.
So the withdrawal of Edie from St Dot's was a decision reached amicably on both sides. Jacob despatched his son to fresh woods and pastures new, and I kept an excellent gardener!
Once the dust had settled, I must confess I was much more surprised by Edith's rapid return to a state of grace than by her fall from it. I suspect her marriage to Andrew Kewley was a case of her father striking a deal while the iron was hot! The nature of the heat is a matter of speculation, of course. 1 have no firm facts, though the circumstantial evidence does come close to being a trout in the milk. When I was left holding the baby at the Founder's Day reception (much to the amusement, I do not doubt, of all you girls), I was able to examine the infant at close quarters. And my reaction was, if this is a Kewley, I'm the Queen Mother! The hasty marriage, its speedy outcome, the change in the Kewley fortunes and the Kewley name were all explained, or at least explicable!
But I have always been an addict of detective fiction, so perhaps I only saw what an overheated imagination inclined me to see, though the giving of her lost love's name to the baby does seem indicative. Of course, when I read all these years later in the newspapers of the poor boy's sad fate, such speculation seemed irrelevant, almost indecent. Poor Edith. That her pursuit of pleasure, and her father's pursuit of respectability, should have brought them to this ambush! Indeed, as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
But I am very pleased to hear that the wanton gods have not put paid to your Andy. May his improvement continue. He sounds an interesting man. Perhaps I may meet him some day? By way of hint, let me remind you that the Avalon Clinic complex is not simply a place where old tuskers like myself come to die. The old house, for instance, is used for convalescence, and its inmates have been seen to leave on their own two feet.
Whatever you decide, do keep in touch, if only to remind me that our speculative astronomers are right and there definitely is life out there!
Yours affectionately.
Kittle Bagnold
PS. I almost forgot. You asked about the background of the gardener. He was a Pole who came here as a child in 1945 when his family decided that, after five years under the Nazis, they deserved more than a communist future. He grew up, married a Yorkshire girl, and they produced that remarkably dishy young boy (yes, even in the staff room we remarked on such things!) who caused all the trouble.
The father was called Jakub, which we turned to Jacob, the boy Lukasz, which we turned to Luke, and their family name was Komorowski.
Ellic sat quite still for several minutes. She thought of many things, of truth and deception, of justice and revenge, of human savagery and human rights, of principle and pragmatism, of conscience and consequence. She thought of parents and children and how you lived through them and sometimes suffered through them too. She thought of fathers and sons, of pride and hope, of hope shattered and pride deformed. She thought of fathers and daughters, of Peter and Rosie, of them both waving goodbye as they left with Tig, of Peter looking almost young and fit enough to be the girl's elder brother rather than her father. She thought of him lounging by the river watching Rosie and Tig competing madly to see which of them could return home the wettest and muddiest. She thought of the troubled weeks after the Mill Street explosion, and she thought of the placid days since their visit to see Dalziel, and she thought of Peter's joy at the prospect of the fat old sod's eventual complete recovery.
The time might be out of joint, but it was someone else's turn to put it right.
Somehow the imagined world of her novel in which her characters moved in a tangled mesh of conflicting loyalties and moral choices was no longer a place she wanted to be just now.
She pressed delete and went downstairs to do some ironing.
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Death of Dalziel - Dalziel & Pascoe 22 Page 39
