Bones and Silence dap-11

by Reginald Hill

  MITCHELL, GARY, BORN CONSETT NORTHUMBERLAND 8.6.59 ENLISTED CATERING CORPS 1977, DISCHARGED 1983, NO CRIMINAL RECORD.

  Beggars couldn't be choosers, he told himself. And with a bovine belch which reminded him how close it was to lunch-time, he rose and went to do a bit of stone-twisting at the Mid-Yorkshire Gun Club.

  The club clearly did good midday business as anxious executives got rid of their morning tensions. A distant fusillade from some indoor range punctured the air as he waited in a small and militarily tidy office. After a few minutes a tall athletic-looking man came in. He had earmuffs round his neck, an irritated expression on his face, and a broken revolver in his hand which he laid carefully on top of a filing cabinet.

  'I'm Mitchell,' he said, sitting on a swivel chair, crossing his legs on his desk and scratching his designer stubble. 'Hope this won't take too long. I said everything I had to say to your errand boy couple of weeks back.'

  Dalziel said solicitously, 'Nasty thing, that acne. Still, they say you get rid of it when you grow up. Was that why you gave up the cooking?'

  The fingers stopped scratching, thought of becoming a fist, decided against it.

  'What do you want, Superintendent is it?'

  'Detective-Superintendent Dalziel. But sir will do, Corporal. All I want's some facts. You were screwing Mrs Swain, right?'

  'No!'

  'But you tried your hand?'

  'I asked her to have a drink with me a couple of times. She said yes, but she made it clear that was as far as it went. She was that kind of chick, you know, all up front.'

  'Pardon?' said Dalziel, inserting a huge little finger into his ear and wagging it around. 'Didn't quite get that.'

  Mitchell ignored the provocation and said, 'All we ever did was talk, nothing more.'

  'What did you talk about?'

  'Guns. Shooting,' said Mitchell vaguely.

  'Piss off, noddy,' said Dalziel. 'Don't tell me you didn't talk about your fascinating life and hard times.'

  'Why should I?'

  'Because a corny would-be stud like you would imagine that was the way to turn her on. Get her rabbiting on about her troubles and next thing you could be doing some real rabbiting under the table. Isn't that how it works? So tell me about it.'

  'About my life and hard times?' said Mitchell, trying hard to eyeball Dalziel in this battle of words.

  'I'd rather read a ketchup bottle,' said Dalziel. 'What did she say to you?'

  'Listen, you fat slob, I've had enough of this. There's some very important people use this club . . .'

  Mitchell was now pure Geordie. Dalziel leaned forward and grasped his knee in a crocodile grip.

  'Aye,' he said softly. 'And how will these important people like it when their club's closed down 'cos its corporal cook rangemaster doesn't have the sense to observe regulations? I've spotted at least three you're in breach of already, and that's without looking. Once I really start poking about I doubt if you'd get a licence to run a fairground stall.'

  'You're bluffing,' said Mitchell. 'This place is run by the book.'

  'Aye, but it's me shouting the odds,' grinned Dalziel. 'What's up anyway, lad? She's dead, remember. She's not going to sue for breach of confidence!'

  Mitchell hesitated. He's wondering how far I'll really go if he doesn't give me something, thought Dalziel. He wandered across to the cabinet and picked up the revolver. There were a couple of rounds in the cylinder. He closed it, cocked it, squeezed the trigger. There was a loud explosion and the ceiling light shattered. Mitchell moved with tremendous speed. The athletic part of his image at least was no fraud, and glass shards were still pattering to the floor as he grabbed the gun from Dalziel's hand.

  'Jesus! Are you crazy?' he demanded, white-faced.

  'Me?' said Dalziel indignantly. 'Leaving loaded weapons lying around in public, that's crazy!'

  Mitchell went back to his desk, unlocked a drawer, dropped the gun inside, and relocked it. He regarded Dalziel with undisguised amazement.

  'I can't believe in you,' he said. 'Who do you think you are? Wyatt Earp?'

  'It's not me who goes poncing round like a Yankee film star,' said Dalziel comfortably. 'Now, you were telling me about Mrs Swain.'

  It was little enough to shoot up a man's ceiling for. At most, it confirmed what Dalziel knew or had deduced from other sources.

  Gail Swain had grown confidential over drinks a couple of times. Dalziel guessed that after Mitchell had made his sexual play and been put pretty firmly in his place, Gail had been happy to keep him dangling as a devotee cum confidant. She didn't seem to get on well enough with other women to have made any close friends in England, so perhaps she needed a Mitchell in her life. After Atlas Tayler closed, she'd complained with more incomprehension than bitterness about Swain's refusal to take the post Delgado's offered in the States at three times his British salary. But real resentment had started creeping in when Swain's building business hadn't got off the ground and he started canvassing auld acquaintance for new jobs.

  'She didn't like that, and I think Swain tried to cut it down to a minimum because of this, but when she came back from her father's funeral, everything changed.'

  'Why?'

  'Two reasons,' said Mitchell. 'First she came back with an even better job offer for her husband. I don't think she could believe that he would refuse again.'

  'And the second reason?'

  'She was rotten rich! I don't know how much, millions maybe. She'd not been short before, but now it was dropping off her and Swain could see no reason why she shouldn't invest in his building company in a big way. She didn't see it like that and told him not a penny would he see till he was settled in LA. That's when he started up badgering his old mates again. He knew this really got up her nose and reckoned he could bounce her into coughing up the cash rather than suffer the embarrassment of being married to a notorious cadger. To tell the truth she was a hell of a snob, and he knew it.'

  'But it didn't work?'

  'Hell, no. Snob she might be, but she had true grit,' said Mitchell, who having decided that Dalziel was not to be denied was now relaxing into his role. 'The trouble as I saw it, was that those two were just on completely different wavelengths. She couldn't see why he wasn't jumping at the chance to go and live in sunny California. But he'd obviously really got the hump with Delgado's for closing down Atlas Tayler like they did. Also I don't think she could really grasp that he actually preferred being his own boss here in Yorkshire!'

  'She told you this?'

  'Most of it. She got really pissed one night, she was so upset. I don't know what Swain was playing at. I'd have gone like a shot.'

  'But you never got invited,' observed Dalziel.

  'No. She was a one-man woman, till the divorce courts got to work anyway. Even though her one man was a fulltime loser!'

  Dalziel smiled grimly. This wanker really did think he was the bee's knees. If a lass didn't fancy a bit on the side with him she didn't fancy it with anyone!

  'You don't like Philip Swain?' he said.

  'Missing a chance like that, he has to be a real asshole!' said Mitchell. 'Not that I knew him all that well personally. Like I told the other cop, he was never a member. But I remember his brother, he was a member, and no, I didn't much care for him either. Christ, the way he talked you'd have thought that Moscow Farm was a palace and the Swains were royalty!'

  'Tom Swain, would that be? The one who shot himself?'

  'That's right. Look, Superintendent, if that's all, I really should get back to my members. You'll keep my name out of things, won't you? I don't want the ladies round here to get the idea I'm the kind who kisses and tells!'

  His macho image was back on full beam.

  Dalziel said negligently, 'Don't see why not. After all, you've told me next to nowt I didn't know already.'

  When they've coughed, give 'em a hard slap between the shoulder-blades, telling 'em it's all useless crap, and you never know what last little gobbet they'll spit out.


  'Oh? Then you'll know that Tom Swain tried to touch Gail for money to save the farm.'

  'Gail? Surely it would be his brother he turned to?'

  'Philip didn't have money. Only his salary and that wasn't enough to keep his wife in Gucci knickers. No, Tom went to the source and she turned him down flat.'

  'She told you this?'

  'Indirectly. Also I heard him trying to put the bite on her one night here at the club. She didn't like that and really choked him off. Next day, bang! No wonder she felt guilty. That's why she helped Philip get Moscow Farm back into shape, of course. Guilt. He could have milked it for ever if the silly twit hadn't decided he'd rather be poor in this hole than rolling in it in LA.'

  'But why should she feel so guilty?' wondered Dalziel. 'I mean, Tom Swain must have tried to borrow money from everyone. Why should her refusal be seen as the one that pushed him over?'

  'Well, he pointed a pretty steady finger, I'd say. All right, so they said he probably picked it because it was the one most certain to do the job, but it was clear as a farewell note to me.'

  'What the hell are you talking about, laddie?' demanded Dalziel. 'Picked what?'

  Mitchell looked at him for a moment, then let out a bellow of triumphant laughter.

  'You don't know, do you? I know it wasn't made anything of at the inquest, but you'd think you blighters would keep full notes somewhere. Let me lighten your darkness, Mr Dalziel. The gun Tom Swain used to blow his head off was his sister-in-law's Colt Python!'

  CHAPTER SIX

  Peter Coombes was thin and dark with an ascetic mien more suited to a Jesuit mission than a modern personnel office, and an intense, unblinking gaze which made Pascoe feel uneasily that his thoughts were showing. It didn't help to find that when he broke the eye contact, over the other's shoulder he was looking at a framed photograph of a beautiful blonde woman lying on a lawn with a collie and two young children.

  Coombes glanced round, as though indeed catching something of Pascoe's thought, and said proudly, 'My family. And I don't exclude the dog. Do you have children, Mr Pascoe?'

  'One. A girl. No dog,' said Pascoe.

  'Yes. I suppose in your line of work,' said Coombes, mysteriously incomplete, leaving Pascoe to work out whether policing unfitted you for dog-ownership or more than one act of procreation.

  'It's about your Mr Waterson,' said Pascoe, accepting Coombes's gestured invitation to sit in an easy chair by a coffee table. Presumably the hard chair in front of Coombes's desk was reserved for another class of interviewee.

  'Not our Mr Waterson, not any more,' corrected Coombes. 'Is there any chance of being told what this is all about?'

  'I'm sorry. All I can say is, this has nothing to do with your firm, except in so far as Mr Waterson was once employed here. You have a Miss King on your staff, I believe? Beverley King?'

  It had seemed good thinking to kill two birds with one stone. Coombes was the obvious man to consult about personnel, and it gave Pascoe a chance to assess how things were in the Coombes household. If Christine Coombes were still living in the family house with her husband, two children and a dog, it didn't seem likely she'd have Waterson concealed in the potting-shed.

  'Wrong again, I'm afraid,' said Coombes. 'Yes, we did have a Miss King working for us. No, we don't any more.'

  'Really? When did she leave?' asked Pascoe, alert.

  To his disappointment, the reply was, 'A few weeks ago. I can easily check. Would I be right in guessing your interest in Miss King is connected with your inquiries about Mr Waterson?'

  He was obviously as careful as the priest he resembled.

  Pascoe said bluntly, 'You knew she and Mr Waterson were having an affair?'

  'Indeed,' he said gravely.

  'How did you know?'

  'I caught them in a compromising situation in the office one lunch-time.’

  ‘What did you do?'

  'I invited them to see me later that day.'

  'Together?' said Pascoe, surprised.

  'Of course not. Greg - Mr Waterson - and I had a friendly chat. I assured him I was not sitting in moral judgement but had to insist for the sake of the firm's reputation and the smooth running of office life, he carried on his love-life outside the premises.'

  'And what was his reaction?'

  'He seemed amused,' said Coombes. 'In fact he laughed out loud. He said he'd do his best, but I couldn't understand why he found it all so entertaining.'

  He fixed his eyes earnestly on Pascoe and Pascoe willed himself not to let his own slip past the man once more to the photograph of his wife lying on the lawn.

  'Did you take the same line with Miss King?' he asked.

  'Hardly.'

  'Oh? Why not?'

  'Miss King had only been with us a couple of months. She had not made a good impression.'

  'What exactly was her job?' interrupted Pascoe.

  'We took her on as a typist. She had word-processing and computing skills and we had hopes we might be able to use her in these fields as vacancies occurred, but to be quite frank, her time-keeping, attention to detail and general attitude were such as to have made this most unlikely.'

  'How come she applied for a typist's job with these qualifications?'

  'She didn't so much apply as present herself,' said Coombes. 'She'd worked in London for Chester Belcourt, our parent company. A note from one of their directors said she'd had some personal problems which might be eased by a return to Yorkshire and if there was anything we could do to help her with employment it would be a kindness to her and a favour to him.'

  'Return, you say? She's local, then?'

  'Monksley. Do you know it?'

  Monksley was a small village on the northern moors, rather isolated without the compensation of being picturesque.

  'Vaguely,' said Pascoe. 'Is that where she's living?'

  'We did have an address there to start with, I believe, but after she joined us, she moved into town in a manner of speaking.'

  'What manner was that?' inquired Pascoe.

  'She rented a boat, called Bluebell, would you believe? One of those tubs moored along Bulmer's Wharf,' he said with distaste. 'I'm sure you know them.'

  Pascoe smiled. The old warehouses once serviced by Bulmer's Wharf had been demolished and a small estate of maisonettes erected on the site. The contractors, eager to maximize their return, had also rented out moorings along the wharf. It may not have been their intention that people should set up in more or less permanent residence there, but this was what had happened and eventually, inevitably, tensions had developed between the property-owning land-lubbers and the generally more raffish boat-people. A few months earlier these had exploded into accusations that one or more of the boats had been used as a bawdy house. Investigation had revealed little more than a penchant for uninhibited parties on the part of a couple of girl tenants, but there had passed permanently into middle-class mythology this fantasy of a fleet of floating brothels, each richly appointed as Cleopatra's barge, where lovers kept stroke to the tune of flutes.

  'I don't know them personally,' said Pascoe. 'But I see you do. What happened at your interview with Miss King, Mr Coombes?'

  'Nothing pleasant, I assure you. I tried to speak to her rationally but she entered full of defiance and moved very rapidly through insolence to abuse. To cut a long story short, she resigned.'

  'Walked out, you mean.'

  'Indeed. This led to another unpleasant scene, this time with Mr Waterson who accused me of sacking her. I urged him to check his facts, but he walked out too.'

  'Was this the occasion of his leaving the firm permanently?'

  'Not immediately. We had become fairly inured to Gregory Waterson's explosions here. They were regarded by some as outbursts of temperament. But a few days later he really went over the top at a meeting with our managing director when there was a client present. All this business of Miss King came out once more and I gather he was personally abusive towards me and eventually to our
managing director, and the client. Enough's enough. He seemed really amazed when he was told that this was the end. The directors were generous, more generous than they needed to have been in view of the circumstances. I doubt if there's an industrial tribunal in the land that would have awarded him a penny.'

  It struck Pascoe that Coombes was in sympathy with this hardness rather than his directors' generosity and he wondered what hints of Waterson's liaison with his wife had reached the man's ears. No doubt Waterson's final outburst had left no stone unthrown. But he couldn't feel too much sympathy for a man whose reaction to an office affair was to pontificate at the girl and have a friendly chat with the man.

  He stood up and said, 'If I could have Miss King's address. In Monksley as well as Bulmer's Wharf. And I'd also like the name of the director of Chester Belcourt who recommended her to you.'

  There was no real need for this. He asked merely as a sign of his distaste and he saw that Coombes took the message. Pascoe guessed that next time he came to this office, if there was a next time, it would be the hard seat in front of the desk for him.

  * * *

  Bulmer's Wharf proved a double disappointment, being more like an aquatic Wimpey Estate than a floating Street of a Thousand Pleasures. Also, where Bluebell should have been was a gap. A middle-aged woman nursing a sullen baby on the boat next door confirmed that Beverley King had lived there till three maybe four weeks ago when Bluebell had moved off without warning or explanation. She thought she recognized Waterson as a frequent visitor from Pascoe's description but could offer no further help, except her expert nautical opinion that Bluebell's only remaining ambitions were submarine and any voyage of more than a few miles would probably see them realized.

  Frustrated, Pascoe left. His route back to the station took him along String Lane. He'd forgotten about Harold Park, but as he approached Food For Thought, he noticed a grimy Peugeot estate parked outside with Govan, the bearded Scot, talking to someone through its window. Pascoe couldn't see the number, but it was worth checking.