‘Cigarette, Superintendent?’
‘Thank you, no. It’s a habit I’ve broken.’
Since when? wondered Pascoe. This morning at the earliest! Some people break habits quicker than others.
‘Now, Mr Cowley, the thing is this. We’re anxious to get in touch with an acquaintance of Mr Lewis’s, a Mr John Atkinson. Do you know him by any chance?’
‘Well, yes. I think so. If it’s the same one. Hang on a moment, will you?’
He rose, opened a rather over-ornate walnut cabinet and took from it a folder.
‘Here we are. Atkinson, John. This was one of perhaps half a dozen clients Matt took a very personal interest in. Looking at the file, I remember why now. He met Mr Atkinson up at Lochart, that’s where he had his cottage, you know. That’s one of the addresses we had for him, the Lochart Hotel.’
‘And the other?’ asked Dalziel.
‘Another hotel. The Shelley in Bayswater. That’s in London.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dalziel. ‘What was Mr Atkinson’s interest down here?’
‘He was nearing retiring age, I believe. Had known the area a long time ago and talking with Matt had revived old memories. So he was looking round in a rather desultory fashion. You know, popping in occasionally and breaking his journey between London and Scotland.’
‘When did you last see him, sir?’ asked Dalziel.
‘Only yesterday morning. In fact, I think he was here when your sergeant came. If only you’d thought to mention him then, Sergeant.’
Dalziel looked reprovingly at Pascoe and shook his head.
‘Can’t be helped. Why was he here, sir?’
‘Why, he’d read about Matt’s death, of course, and come down specially to find out what had happened. He called on Mrs Lewis, I believe. He was most upset. The odd thing was he’d turned up by the chance on Monday afternoon and seen Matt then when he came back from Scotland.’
‘By chance you say?’ said Dalziel, exchanging glances with Pascoe.
‘Oh yes. He just drifted in. He didn’t realize the office is normally closed that afternoon. So he chatted for a while, saw that we were busy, and went on his way. He was very struck by the coincidence.’
‘Yes, yes, he would be. Yesterday you said he came down, didn’t you. From Scotland, you mean?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Cowley. ‘Possibly.’
He took a cigarette and lit it from a table lighter which matched the box.
‘Which would mean he was on his way up from London on Monday.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But he wasn’t in Lochart on Monday or Tuesday, Mr Cowley,’ said Dalziel mildly. ‘We checked.’
‘Perhaps it was the other way round.’
‘You mean he came down from Lochart on Monday? And called in here, knowing his friend Mr Lewis was still in Scotland?’
‘I don’t think they lived in each other’s pockets, Superintendent.’
‘No. Of course not. Where did he stay overnight when he was house-hunting?’
‘Really, I’ve no idea. This was Matt’s client, as I’ve told you. I only met the man two or three times. And then just for a couple of minutes. Is that all you wanted to ask me, Superintendent!’
He stood up, looking very irritated, stubbed out his cigarette and glanced at his watch. Dalziel ignored the hint.
‘Have you ever been to Lochart yourself, Mr Cowley?’
‘No. Never.’ There might have been a hesitation, thought Pascoe. An idea was forming in his mind.
‘Do you know a Mr Edgar Sturgeon?’ he interjected. Dalziel looked sharply at him, then settled back in his chair as if to enjoy the act.
‘No. I don’t think so,’ said Cowley.
‘Stocky. Grey-haired. Mid-sixties. Retired,’ rattled off Pascoe.
‘Sorry, he doesn’t ring a bell.’
It was probably a daft idea, thought Pascoe, but he might as well try. He took out his notebook.
‘I wonder if you can recall where you were on this week-end, sir,’ he said. He read out the date of the meeting between Archie Selkirk and Sturgeon.
Cowley whistled.
‘God knows. That’s a while ago, isn’t it?’
‘I realize that, sir. Do try. A diary, perhaps?’ suggested Pascoe.
‘I don’t keep one. Only my office diary and that doesn’t run to week-ends,’ said Cowley, flicking through the pages of his leatherbound desk diary. ‘Hang on though. You’re in luck.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, most of that week-end I was here. Working on accounts, checking our mailing list and property details, that kind of thing. It’s a half-yearly job. We take turns at it. This was mine. Poor Matthew, I remember, was in Scotland.’
He turned the book round so that they could see the entry.
‘So you were alone, Mr Cowley?’
‘Yes.’
‘You live by yourself as well, don’t you?’
‘You seem to know a lot about me,’ said Cowley aggressively.
‘We took closely at everyone connected with a murder victim,’ said Dalziel placatingly. ‘Sergeant, what’s your point? We mustn’t keep Mr Cowley from his customer.’
Cheeky sod! thought Pascoe.
‘No point really, sir. I was just interested in Mr Cowley’s whereabouts that week-end. I’m sure someone saw him …’
‘Saw me? Of course someone saw me!’ Cowley looked at Pascoe as if he were some rare and rather unpleasant animal. ‘For a start I don’t do the job by myself, you know. Miss Clayton and Miss Collingwood were here too doing their bit. Ask ’em! Superintendent, I don’t understand your underling. If he’d wanted to know about this week-end or Monday afternoon, that would figure. But all that time ago … !’
‘Don’t worry, sir. We’re checking that too,’ said Dalziel, rising. ‘No sign of your client yet? Sergeant, have a look.’
Solemnly, Pascoe peered into the outer office.
‘No, sir. Empty.’
‘Dear me. I hope we haven’t chased him away. Well, thank you for your time, Mr Cowley. Sorry to have troubled you. If Mr Atkinson should get in touch again, please let us know. Good evening.’
Outside Dalziel looked assessingly at the sun’s declension.
‘You can buy me a drink,’ he said finally.
‘The Black Eagle, sir?’
‘No. Somewhere where telephones don’t ring. Round the corner here’ll do.’
At this time of evening they were the only customers in the ugly little pub Dalziel had discovered. Instead of his usual scotch he ordered a gin and a sugar-free tonic.
Pascoe expressed surprise.
‘I’m cutting down,’ said Dalziel, adding two drops of the tonic to his gin and drinking the mixture with a shudder.
‘Ah,’ said Pascoe.
‘Your bright idea that Cowley and Selkirk might be one and the same sank like turtle-shit, didn’t it?’ said Dalziel gleefully.
‘It was a thought,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ll check with the girls all the same. If it wasn’t that, then what part could he have played? I suppose he could be in the clear?’
‘Who knows? I doubt it, but I could be biased. He’s not a kind of man I care for.’
It was like the Pope admitting some uncertainty about the position of the Mormons.
‘What’s the next move, sir?’
‘We’ll try the Shelley, but I doubt if we’ll have much luck. Have a word with Mrs Lewis, see what she can tell us about Atkinson. After that, God knows.’
He shrugged fatalistically and finished his drink. He looked tired.
‘Is it possible Lewis got taken as well? That he wasn’t in the con after all?’
‘No. Cowley I’ll admit some doubt about. Lewis, no. We’d better get some expert help from the fraud lads on this. That forty thou’s got to be somewhere. Do you want another?’
‘No, thanks. I talked with Lauder about the Lewises. He reckoned Lewis sometimes took a bit of spare up there.’
‘It figur
es. A man needs his hobbies. Anything else?’
‘No. Except he wants to know what to do with the Lewises’ dog.’
‘Dog?’ Dalziel looked interested. ‘Dog? That reminds me, I had a notion earlier. But no. It doesn’t help much, does it?’
‘What doesn’t?’ asked Pascoe patiently.
‘These break-ins. There seem to be a lot of pets around. Sturgeon’s cats. Cottingley’s dog. You keep on coming back with more hairs on you than a gorilla’s arse. If there was a tip-off coming from a kennels, it’d explain how our friend knew whose house is empty when. But if the Lewises’ dog went with them, it doesn’t work.’
‘Unless, as you suggested before, the Lewis job wasn’t in the series,’ said Pascoe.
‘But you don’t reckon Sturgeon?’
‘No. But that still leaves Atkinson. And perhaps Cowley. And forty thousand pounds.’
‘True, Sergeant. Check the other houses that got done for pets, then. See if there is a connection.’
‘Now, sir?’
‘You said you didn’t want another drink, so you can’t have anything else to do.’
The old Dalziel logic. Pascoe drank the last of his beer. He must be reaching maturity, he hardly felt even slightly irritated.
‘I think I can spare you half an hour of my time, sir,’ he said lightly. The reaction surprised him.
‘You can spare me as much of your bloody time as I require,’ said Dalziel with some force. ‘We don’t work nine to five and we can’t afford private lives. Haven’t you learned that much yet?’
‘I’ve learned that if you’re one thing all your life you become less than that one thing,’ answered Pascoe, feeling his recent sense of mature invulnerability evaporating. ‘You can be too dedicated.’
‘Can you? What the hell do you know, Sergeant? Do you want to spend your life in the company of people who think of us as “pigs”?’
‘You’re talking about Ellie Soper?’
‘I didn’t mention her,’ grunted Dalziel.
‘Now listen,’ said Pascoe with quiet vehemence. ‘I’ve had the gist of what you said to her on the phone the other day. You’d better understand, sir, I make my own decisions. I need no keeper, no protection. You’re my superior officer, but what I do with my life’s my own business. And who I do it with.’
Dalziel didn’t speak but went to the bar and bought another round. Pascoe’s was a large scotch, his own another gin and tonic.
‘What’s this for?’ asked Pascoe, looking suspiciously at his glass.
‘Drink it down. Your promotion’s through. It’ll be published next week.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. Congratulations.’
Pascoe drank, his mind full of fragmented thoughts.
‘You’ll probably be off somewhere else.’
‘Will I?’
‘It’s usual.’
Pascoe smiled almost apologetically.
‘You’ll have to find youself another boy,’ he said.
‘This time I might try for a man,’ answered Dalziel.
But there was no force, no passion behind the exchange. Instead it hung on the air like the dully resigned, totally inadequate farewells of friends who part, uncertain whether they will ever meet again.
The next morning Pascoe heard that the Thornton Lacey inquest was to be reopened and would take place on the following Tuesday.
PART THREE
Chapter 1
What sudden horrors rise! a naked lover bound and bleeding speed the soft intercourse from still on that breast enamoured let me he best can paint ’em who shall give all thou canst and let me dream the rest her gloomy presence a browner horror all is calm in this eternal sleep here for ever death, only death, can break here, even then, shall my cold dust remain I view my crime but kindle at I come, I come! thither where sinners may have rest I go in sacred vestments mayst thou stand teach me at once and learn of me to die condemned.
The piece of paper was crumpled and grubby from much handling and examination. A jagged upper edge showed it had been torn off a larger sheet. But the handwriting was indisputably Colin’s as far as Pascoe could assess, and the experts had agreed.
‘What did they find?’ he asked, just for the sake of speaking rationally through the confusion of thoughts stirred up by what he had read.
‘Fingerprints – Hopkin’s – they checked them against sets in the cottage known to be his by elimination. Also the young lad’s who found the car. No others. Written recently. Ink and paper of a kind discovered in the cottage. What do you make of it?’
‘It’s confusing sir,’ answered Pascoe, returning the plastic encapsulated paper to Backhouse.
‘It’s certainly that. Our pet psychiatrist took several hours to come to the same conclusion. Or rather that whoever wrote it was in a state of confusion. Which would fit the suspected circumstances. He also talked a lot about quotation. The use of other people’s words in a situation where a man’s own mind refused to confront directly what had happened.’
‘You think he’s in the quarry pool then?’
Backhouse looked thoughtful. He also looked very tired and drawn. Pascoe thought of Dalziel. Was this kind of strain the price of promotion?
‘It seems possible. We found a shoe.’
‘Colin’s?’ asked Pascoe.
‘It’s being checked as best we can. But it’s not that. If you were going to write a suicide note and not commit suicide, what kind of note would you write?’
Pascoe thought for a moment, then nodded.
‘I take your point, sir.’
‘That’s right. Something traditional, clear, unambiguous. I have done wrong and I cannot go on living. That’s what you’d write. Unless you were very clever, of course.’
Pascoe stared out of the window of Constable Crowther’s office. The sun was continuing to pour its late blessings on Thornton Lacey’s mellow stone.
‘Colin was clever,’ he said.
‘Yes. I gathered so much,’ said Backhouse. ‘This clever?’
He waved a sheet of paper in the air.
‘Not in those circumstances. I can’t see it.’
‘You know, Sergeant, you’re beginning to talk as if you’re ready to think Hopkins might after all have done the killings,’ said Backhouse with a note of compassion in his voice.
‘I suppose I am,’ replied Pascoe, making the admission for the first time even to himself. ‘That’s the trouble with our job, isn’t it sir? After a while you begin to believe anybody could do anything.’
‘Given the right pressure in the right places,’ agreed Backhouse.
‘Though if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you seem to have moved a little bit the other way.’
‘Away from a firm conviction of Hopkins’s guilt, you mean? No. It was a theory. It still is. Information accrues and the theory might have to shift or take a different shape, but it remains. Tell me, Sergeant, given a choice between drowning and blowing your head off with a shotgun, how would you dispatch yourself?’
‘I wouldn’t fancy either much,’ said Pascoe. ‘The gun, I suppose, but it’s not like using a revolver, is it? I mean, a single bullet’s one thing, but a headful of shot… !’
‘A point,’ mused Backhouse. ‘Well, I should like to find the gun all the same. Would you jump over a quarry edge with a shotgun in your hands?’
‘No. But if I was a local peasant and came across a car with a shotgun lying around on the back seat, I might very well lift it.’
‘My men are out talking to all likely candidates,’ said Backhouse in a tone of mild reproof. ‘Well, I must be off. I shall see you at the inquest tomorrow, Sergeant.’
‘Why is the inquest being reopened now?’ asked Pascoe.
‘It’s well within the coroner’s powers at present,’ said Backhouse. ‘Though, as you are clearly aware, it is unusual in a case like this. I am not privy to the working of Mr French’s mind, but I surmise that some kind of local pressure is bearing on him. People
want to sleep untroubled in their beds. A verdict of murder against Hopkins would do this nicely.’
‘But it’s almost unheard of nowadays!’ protested Pascoe.
‘You may hear it tomorrow,’ warned Backhouse as he left. ‘Behave yourself, Sergeant.’
Whether he meant during the proceedings or during the intervening period, Pascoe didn’t know. It was not altogether unflattering, he discovered, to be regarded as potentially dangerous. Like the Western gunman enjoying the noise-hiatus as he entered a bar.
The thought made him glance at his watch. Far too early for a drink, alas. He stared glumly out of the window once more. He could not imagine what had prompted him to sacrifice a precious rest day in travelling down here. The adjourned inquest was not due to restart until ten o’clock the following morning. Ellie had absolutely refused to come near the place till then. She was probably wise. One thing he wanted to do was take another look at the cottage. Backhouse had not raised any objection and no one else was likely to. Crowther was looking after the key in case anyone with a legitimate claim to it turned up. It now rested in Pascoe’s pocket but he felt reluctant to set off to use it.
Mrs Crowther poked her head through the door.
‘Cup of tea, Sergeant?’ she asked. ‘And a piece of my shortcake?’
It was a tempting offer but, like a bare bosom shaken alluringly at a devout puritan, its effect was opposite to that intended.
‘No, thanks,’ said Pascoe. ‘I must be off.’
‘Please yourself,’ grunted Mrs Crowther. ‘We’ll see you for supper?’
‘Yes, please.’
Pascoe was staying with the Crowthers. The only alternative had been to thrust himself upon the Culpeppers once more, and his memory of his last stay there did not encourage this. Of course, he could have stopped at a hotel, but this would have meant being some distance from the village and this did not suit his albeit unformulated purpose in coming down that day.
He left his car by the kerb and set off on foot, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. Soon he reached the edge of the village and the houses began to thin out. A small scattering of ‘executive residences’ had erupted on the right of the road. He thought he saw Sandra Bell by the garage of one of them but she made no sign of recognition. Then came a small block of old cottages, untouched though probably not undesired by the renovators. Culpepper’s modern stately home lay somewhere along the ridge to the left. It would probably be visible from the road when autumn finally got among the trees and started shaking the branches bare, but the foliage still had all the fullness of summer, edged now with gold but not yet weighed down by it. On the right now he passed the narrow ill-kept track which must lead up to Pelman’s house; Pelman’s woods looked denser, more sombre, perhaps because the sun was throwing the shadows of these trees across his path as he walked.
Ruling Passion Page 17
