‘Oh God.’
‘And that’s that. As some kind of rationality returns, he sets about tidying things up. He goes back to the cottage and unearths your friend’s notes for his book. These he must destroy. Then he comes across the jottings from the poem and sees how these might just sound like a suicide note. So he sets it all up. He’s lucky. No interruption and later it rains so heavily that all traces of Hopkin’s passage up to the stream are obliterated. Back home. His wife is out – with Sam Dixon, of course – and he’s safe. Except that his mother sees him, and then or later discovers the gun. Poor old woman. She suspected something, but with Hopkins still missing and apparently the killer, she persuaded herself all was well. Later however … Not a good way to end your life.’
‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘Davenant must have suspected?’
‘He claims he believed like every one else that it was Hopkins. I believe he went back to the cottage to remove the dangerous pieces and also got hold of the notes for the book. He was worried in case anyone coming across the reference to Culpepper might stir things up and he wasn’t very keen on Culpepper in his present frame of mind having any pressure put on him. Pure self-interest, of course. He tried to set fire to the cottage in case the manuscript was still there somewhere, and he searched your bedroom just in case you’d got hold of it as Hopkins’s friend. But once again, this is pure speculation. Nothing to show in court.’
‘It makes sense. More than anything I ever speculated about the case. I had it all worked out. Every premise a false one! I sometimes wonder if I’m fit for this business.’
‘Not for this particular bit of it, perhaps,’ said Backhouse gently. ‘But that’s not surprising. I’m sure you do sterling work back home.’
‘Home,’ said Pascoe. ‘That’s a nice word. It’s only a scruffy old bachelor flat, but it’ll do for the time being. That’s what I’d like to do now. Go home.’
‘There’s no place like home,’ said Dalziel, like a man making a completely original discovery.
‘True,’ said Pascoe.
‘That’s where they got that fellow Atkinson, in an old folks’ home in Romford. Told them he was seventy-two! He’s an old con artist from way back. He felt seventy-two when I’d done with him! But we’ve got enough to put Cowley away for a long time now.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Pascoe, relaxing in his chair and looking round the room with pride.
It was remarkable what a pleasant civilized place his flat had become. The candles on the table had seemed a little too much in the light of the afternoon, but now they were perfect. A woman’s touch worked wonders. Oh yes indeed.
He and Dalziel were sitting opposite each other, finishing off the sharp white wine which had accompanied their baked trout.
‘It taught me one thing,’ said Pascoe suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Information. If you’re cut off from local channels, you’re lost! Everyone knew about Culpepper except me. Everyone knew that it was Sam Dixon who was having a bit on the side with Marianne except me.’
‘Backhouse always did play his cards too close,’ said Dalziel. ‘I hope your promotion doesn’t get you transferred anywhere near him. You made a lousy impression!’ He laughed. ‘But he’s not such a hot judge. He reckons nowt to me either!’
‘Amazing,’ commented Pascoe. ‘Anyway it was Dixon who rang Crowther and told him Davenant was at the Culpeppers’. Marianne mentioned he’d come back and Sam was jealous! Not of her husband, mind you. No competition there. Old Mrs Culpepper knew what was going on, of course. She knew everything. That’s why she was so angry when Dixon turned up at the house. She made him break half a box of scotch!’
‘Tragic,’ said Dalziel. ‘But if he knew Culpepper was broke, why was he willing to supply the stuff anyway?’
‘Culpepper’s usual tradesmen were beginning to dig their heels in. The bills are huge, it seems. That’s why he turned to the local pubs for booze. Palfrey wasn’t going to play. He brought a couple of bottles to keep on the right side, so to speak, and shot a line about his low stocks. Dixon now, well, Dixon was in love. It made him willing to act quite irrationally. I told you it was him that banged me on the head at Brookside.’
‘Yes,’ said Dalziel. ‘A bloody ghoulish place, that, for a lovers’s tryst.’
‘Too true. Pelman had run into Marianne in the village and mentioned he’d met me where I was going. She dived for the nearest phone to warn Dixon. Rang twice, a pre-arranged signal so he’d know who it was. Naturally, he didn’t want me to answer and recognize her voice. So bang!’
‘A violent lot in Thornton Lacey.’
‘Yes. Not just me! Then off Dixon goes, worried sick about me. Picks up his car and drives back to find me ‘accidentally’. But good old Sergeant Palfrey’s done the job for him. So his guilty secret is safe. Was safe. The proud Marianne’s come out in the open now. Poor old Molly Dixon! They seemed perfectly matched.’
‘Aye. Well, it happens,’ said Dalziel dourly.
‘What happens?’ asked Ellie cheerfully, coming in from the kitchen with a vegetable tureen.
‘Policemen do the decent thing and get themselves engaged,’ announced Dalziel with heavy jocularity. ‘What’s next? It smells good.’
‘Surprise,’ said Ellie, grinning at Pascoe as she went out again. She had not been over-enthusiastic at the prospect of playing hostess to Andrew Dalziel, but somehow it had seemed a necessary thing to do. Why, she could not imagine! In the event she was enjoying her role tremendously and deriving much pleasure from the fat man’s vacillations between hearty, old-fashioned guestmanship and his more customary blunt vulgarity.
‘So Dixon was a dark horse,’ resumed Dalziel when he felt Ellie was safely out of earshot. ‘But his part was only incidental really, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. Though he frightened the pants off me when he followed me up the drive at Culpepper’s that night on his way to his rendezvous with Marianne!’
‘This fellow Pelman sounds more interesting.’
‘He was,’ said Pascoe. ‘Backhouse told me afterwards that, alibis apart, he couldn’t really suspect anyone being motivated to such a crime who could cheerfully dump loads of chicken-crap into the pool where his wife and her lover had killed themselves! Odd reasoning!’
‘Not at all,’ said Dalziel. ‘It’s being able to reason like that that makes you a superintendent! I don’t understand why he was willing to loan Culpepper a thousand quid. They weren’t great mates, and he knew the old man was pretty well bust.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t sentiment, rest assured of that!’ laughed Pascoe. ‘Culpepper went to see him the previous night to ask for the loan. And he took as security half a dozen pieces from his collection – all the bits, naturally, that Davenant had flogged him and which he wanted to keep out of sight for a while!’
‘Cunning old Culpepper,’ said Dalziel.
‘Yes,’ said Pascoe with sudden passion. ‘I hope he’s not so cunning that they don’t put him away for ever!’
‘Easy,’ said Dalziel, glancing warily at the kitchen.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘It’s just that it’s relatively so easy to be objective and impersonal in our business. You strain after it all the time. X kills Y. Find him. Charge him. Forget him. X has many names, we spend all our lives looking for X. He’s not unique. But sometimes Y has one particular name. Y is unique. Something has gone which to you personally is irreplacable. And then you begin to think it’s like this every time. For someone.’
‘Forget names,’ urged Dalziel. ‘Stick to X and Y. Life’s a series of wrecks. Make sure you’re always washed up with the survivors.’
‘Gosh,’ said Ellie at the kitchen door. ‘Does promotion get you a course in philosophy too? Sorry to interrupt the Socratic moment, but here we are!’
Triumphantly she brought to the table a large serving dish on which lay side by side two roast pheasants.
‘Jesus!’ said Dalziel in admiring anticipation. ‘Well, tha
t’s buggered my diet!’
They all laughed. Pascoe, watching Ellie’s genuine uninhibited amusement, felt the springs of his own laughter dry up. He busied himself with the carving knife and sharpening steel. It would be easy to become permanently suspicious of happiness, to taste no joy without glancing sharply over the shoulder to check who was watching. Perhaps this was the formula for survival that Dalziel would offer, though he could not think so, looking at the fat man this very moment.
But then, to look at Ellie now, proudly explaining the subtle modes by which the birds had been brought to their present fragrant succulence, who would know that a few hours previously he had found her standing in tears, looking down at the unplucked pheasants whose plumage’s iridescent green and purple gleamed on the kitchen table like the silk of a woman’s evening gown?
To be a look-out, to keep alert, was not a bad role. Particularly if you did not make a great show of it.
He put down the sharpening steel and approached the pheasants with the knife. Poker-faced, he jerked his head at Dalziel and said to Ellie, ‘Which one is his?’
They all began laughing again. This time Pascoe laughed to the finish.
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1
Epithalamium
No one knew how it came about that Dalziel was making a speech. Pascoe had with great reluctance let himself be persuaded into a church wedding, partly by the argument sentimental (Mum’s looking forward to it), partly by the argument economic (Dad’s paying for it), but mainly by the suspicion, hotly denied but well supported by circumstantial evidence, that Ellie herself wanted it.
But they had been agreed about the reception. A pint and a pie, insisted Pascoe. A glass of sherry and a sausage on a stick, Ellie translated to her mother. In the event, they were drinking champagne and eating creamed chicken canapés, but at least they were on their feet, able to mingle freely, and no one was going to start reading telegrams and making speeches. Especially not Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.
‘I reckon I know Sergeant Pascoe, Inspector Pascoe, Peter, as well as anybody,’ proclaimed Dalziel.
‘It can’t be the drink,’ murmured Pascoe. ‘He never gets drunk. Not so you’d notice.’
‘That’s on scotch. Dad says he’s sunk two bottles of Champagne so far,’ said Ellie.
‘He’s counting, is he?’
‘No! He just noticed, mainly because merry Andrew there keeps calling it perry. Which hurts when you’ve paid for genuine non-vintage Champers.’
They giggled together and drew some reproving glances from a group of elderly relations who clearly believed that Dalziel’s speech was the first reassuringly normal thing at a wedding where the bride had not worn white and there was no sit-down meal at the reception. If you do it standing up, it doesn’t count was a maxim which could carry a decent body through nearly all of life’s tribulations.
‘He’s a good policeman,’ Dalziel assured the elderly relatives. ‘He’ll go far. Deserves every success. I’ve encouraged him from the start. And I don’t flatter myself when I say I’ve managed to give him a bit of a leg-up …’
He paused and mopped his brow with a huge khaki handkerchief. The bald patch, uncompromisingly visible through the grey stubble of his hair, shone with sweat. He smiled now as he lumbered towards a dirty wedding joke, and with his shining face, broad smile, broader paunch, and the Champagne glass held perpetually at the ready a foot from his lips, he should have been a figure of Pickwickian jollity. Instead, he looked as if he had just kicked the door down and was demanding that no one moved as he had the place surrounded.
‘… a bit of a leg-up in his career,’ he resumed. ‘But he’ll have to manage by himself tonight.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ breathed Pascoe.
The elderly relatives didn’t much care for the joke but were still willing to give marks for effort.
‘Ellie I don’t know so well. But she’ll do very well, I’m certain. My old Scottish grand-dad used to say, when you’re picking a lassie, start at the bottom and work up. Broad hips for the bairns, broad shoulders for the housework, and a broad smile for good-nature and a peaceful life. Ellie, now …’
Some early-warning system must have told him that he was heading into troubled waters.
‘Ellie,’ he repeated. ‘It’s a hard job being a policeman’s wife. Not every woman can do it. But if she can, and I’m sure Ellie can, then it’s a grand and rewarding task. There’s nothing better for a policeman than to be well looked after at home. Nothing. I can tell you … I’ve been looked after in my time … once …’
‘In every Toby Belch there’s an Andrew Aguecheek trying to get out,’ murmured Ellie. ‘I think he’d have been better droning on about my big mouth and huge bum.’
‘So I give you,’ cried Dalziel, explosively recovering from his introspective lapse, ‘the happy pair! May their lot be a happy one!’
‘The happy pair!’ echoed the assembled crowd of about forty relations, colleagues, friends, while Pascoe and Ellie looked at each other with love and speculation in their eyes.
Later as they ran across the car park of the Three Bells to Pascoe’s ancient Riley, it was Dalziel who trotted alongside them, using a Martini table-parasol to fend off the rain which had been beating down unremittingly on Lincolnshire for twenty-four hours.
‘Good luck,’ mouthed Dalziel at the passenger window. To Ellie he was almost invisible through the running glass. She smiled and waved. Her parents and the other guests had not risked their wedding finery in the downpour, which meant that at least they were spared the usual primitive valedictory rites. It also meant that she couldn’t see anyone to wave at except Dalziel and even he had moved out of their way round the back of the car.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
Looking back, she saw him standing in the middle of the car park, waving the umbrella in a gesture of farewell and (accidentally, she hoped) menace.
‘You’re sure he doesn’t know where we’re going?’ she asked Pascoe anxiously.
‘No one does,’ he replied with confidence.
‘Thank God for that. I wouldn’t put it past him to decide to spend his holiday with us.’ She relaxed with a deep sigh, then suddenly laughed. ‘But he was funny, wasn’t he? Leg up!’
Pascoe laughed with her and they even managed to laugh again five minutes later when they were stopped by a police Panda driver, curious to know why they were towing a police helmet, a police boot and a banner inscribed Hello! Hello!! Hello!!!
‘I thought it went very well, George,’ said Dalziel. ‘Very well.’
He sounded self-congratulatory as though he had arranged the ceremony himself.
‘I suppose it did,’ said Detective Inspector George Headingley, glancing at his watch. He and Dalziel were the sole survivors of five policemen who had travelled down from Yorkshire for the wedding. In fact they were the sole survivors of the entire wedding group and it was only his awareness of their profession and status which prevented mine host of the Three Bells from pushing them out into the gloomy damp of a late spring afternoon in Lincolnshire.
‘Stop looking at your watch, George,’ said Dalziel. ‘Have another drink.’
He had abandoned the pernicious ‘perry’ and obtained a bottle of the true Hippocrene, Glen Grant straight malt, two large doses of which had restored him to his customary dignity and composure.
‘I really mustn’t, sir,’ said Headingley. ‘It’s all right for you, but I’ve got to drive back this evening. God knows what’s happened back there with all the best minds down here!’
‘Mondays are always quiet,’ pronounced Dalziel. ‘One for the road. A small one.’
Headingley knew better than to resist when Dalziel insisted. He watched the broad strong hand pour another measure of scotch into his glass. There was no unsteadiness, no wastage.
‘A small one,’ to Dalziel was the precise equivalent of a Scottish pub double. Dalziel’s ancestry had long been subsumed by his Yorkshire upbringing, but in some matters he was true to his heritage. He tended to become very sad at the sight of an English small whisky and very irritated when people mispronounced his name.
Headingley had known him, or known of him, all his working life. Dalziel had been a sergeant when Headingley joined the mid-Yorkshire force and his reputation was already established. Thick as two short planks, opined the scions of the uniformed branch. But if you get hit by two short planks, it doesn’t half hurt.
His rise to his present rank of Detective Superintendent had not been meteoric, but it had been inevitable. When the hippo comes up for air, the lighter creatures of the surface impede the process at their peril. These lighter creatures had included his wife.
Headingley did not like the man, but in his own interests had developed a protective shield of long-suffering diffidence which passed for a relationship. He usually contrived to be on the move in Dalziel’s vicinity and letting himself be pinned down like this was an error attributable to champagne and post-wedding sentimentality. And also, he suspected, to a reluctance on Dalziel’s part to be left to himself.
‘Do you think they’ll make a go of it?’ he asked suddenly.
‘What?’ said Dalziel.
‘Pascoe and his missus.’
The fat man shifted his bulk, not visibly affected by several months of intermittent dieting, and fixed his wide, short-sighted gaze on Headingley.
Ruling Passion Page 27
