A Clubbable Woman

by Reginald Hill

  Connon took the photograph from him.

  ‘That’s the only picture of me playing rugby I ever kept,’ he said.

  ‘Why this one?’ asked Antony.

  Connon stared down at the young man in the picture as if he was looking at a stranger and trying to analyse what made him seem vaguely familiar.

  ‘It was the first time I played for the County. I was nineteen. Still in the army, on a weekend pass. But nearly finished. There was a five-yard scrum. I was standing square over our own line ready for the pass back and the kick to touch. The pass came, I had plenty of time and shaped to kick to the near touch-line. Then I changed my mind. All their backs were coming up like the clappers. So I chipped it into a little space over the scrum, ran round, picked it up and went up the middle of the field. I don’t recall beating the full-back. They told me after I ran through him as if he wasn’t there. All I could see was the posts and the exact spot centrally between them where I was going to touch down. Nothing else was real till I grounded the ball. Then I started walking back up the field. No one runs up and kisses you in a rugby match. In those days it was considered bad form even to slap you on the back. You just walked back to your position trying to look unconcerned and got your clap from the crowd. I could feel this smile on my face, feel it spreading out to a grin. The crowd all roared like mad. It was the biggest crowd I’d ever played in front of. I bent my head a bit, look, you can see on the picture, but I couldn’t stop grinning. It was a grin of pure happiness. It felt as if it was fixed on my face for ever. I think I believed it was.’

  He stopped talking. Antony for once was stuck for words. He’s in the past, he thought, the poor devil’s anchored there beyond hope of release. What a state to get into.

  A wave of sympathy swept over him, some of which must have shown on his face, for Connon now smiled at him ironically.

  ‘I think you may be misunderstanding me, Antony,’ he said. ‘I don’t live down memory lane. What this photograph says to me is not that happiness is gone for ever, but that it’s repeatable. I’ve often felt like this since, mostly on occasions connected with Jenny. The picture reminds me of what’s possible again, that’s all, not of what’s gone for ever.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Antony, rather shame-faced. ‘I didn’t mean to … you’re very lucky. I’ll go and set the table.’

  He left the room with the cloth cast loosely over his shoulder like the end of a toga.

  It suits him, thought Connon. Then he returned his attention to the photograph.

  Repeatable? he asked himself. I wonder. Will it ever be possible again?

  From the kitchen Jenny’s portable radio began to play a selection of brass-band music. This faded almost at once, but then returned louder than before as though the set had been re-tuned.

  Connie listened, then a smile moved slowly across his face.

  I believe she’s leaving it on for me.

  It was five o’clock and dark and cold and wet. The shops were still crowded. Inside them it was bright and warm. Too warm. The crowds who had jostled close to each other all day, shoulder to ruthless shoulder, thigh to strange thigh, had left their unexpungeable smell. Sweat, scent, tobacco and damp clothing all mistily merged into an observable haze. The best shop-assistants were growing irritable, the worst had long been downright rude. But the artefacts of good cheer had not yet lost their power, the music was as merry as ever, the colours as gay, and nearly everyone was going home.

  The festive spirit stalked abroad, reaching out to seize backsliders.

  Mickey Annan had still not been found.

  And Jacko Roberts was talking on the telephone to Dalziel.

  ‘What the hell do you want, Jacko? I’m busy.’

  ‘I wish I was. This weather’s no good for my business.’

  ‘It doesn’t help mine much either. Come on now. Is this social? If it is, piss off. If not, get your finger out.’

  One day, Jacko promised himself, one day I’ll tap him on the head and wall him up in a brick kiln.

  It was his perennial New Year resolution.

  ‘A bit of both,’ he said. ‘I’m having a little party for a few select friends, tomorrow night. Christmas Eve. I’d like you to come.’

  Dalziel hesitated. Jacko Roberts rarely entertained but when he did, it was usually lavish. He regarded it as an investment. Dalziel didn’t mind being invested in as long as it was done the right way. A couple of years earlier, Jacko’s investment had consisted of the introduction of a group of very willing young ladies to his previously well liquored stag party of civic and other dignitaries.

  Dalziel had been sober enough to leave early. He had noticed that the Roberts Building Company got a large share of municipal contracts the following year and had had words with Jacko.

  Now he wondered if he had forgotten.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself,’ snarled his prospective host. ‘It’s all respectable. They’ll all be there, from Noolan to the Town Clerk. With their wives.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Any time after eight.’

  ‘I can’t promise. I’ll try to make it.’

  ‘Oh, and Bruiser. As you’re short of a partner, why not bring that nice sergeant along? Whatsisname?’

  ‘Watch it, Jacko,’ said Dalziel softly. ‘There’s a notice on my overcoat which says, this is where Christmas stops.’

  ‘All right. But I meant it. Ask him anyway. It pleases these old cows to have a virile young man about the place.’

  Dalziel grunted and thought that Jacko must be doing well at the moment to be in, for him, so light-hearted a mood. He made a mental note to check on what the builder had been up to.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You said there was some business. Or is that what we’ve just been talking about?’

  ‘That’s an odd thing to say, super. No, but are you still interested in this Connon business or is it all neatly tied up?’

  ‘Don’t play clever buggers with me, Jacko. What have you got? Anything or nothing?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just that Mary Connon and Arthur Evans were seen in close confabulation over a drink the Friday before she died.’

  Dalziel digested the information for a moment.

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘The Bull, on the coast road.’

  ‘Anything else on a connection between them?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’

  ‘It’s probably nothing. That all?’

  ‘Unless you’re going to thank me.’

  Dalziel put the phone down hard and sat looking at it. Then he picked up the internal phone and pressed a button.

  ‘Sergeant Pascoe here.’

  ‘Dalziel. Busy?’

  ‘Well yes. I’ve just got in.’

  ‘Had your tea?’

  ‘Not yet. I was just going to …’

  ‘Then you can’t be all that busy. Step along here for a minute, will you. Bring your coat. I’ll probably want you to go out.’

  Pascoe sighed as he took his sodden riding mac off the radiator. A minute earlier he had been feeling sorry for the men who were still out on house-to-house questioning.

  Now he began to wonder if his sympathy was misplaced.

  Back in Dalziel’s office the phone rang again. He picked it up crossly, but after listening for a few moments, his expression softened and he nodded twice.

  ‘Yes, yes. That’s good. I’m glad, very very glad.’

  Pascoe was surprised to find him looking almost happy when he came through the door.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ muttered Detective-Constable Edwards. It was his private theory that Woodfield Council estate had been built as a series of experiments in wind-tunnelling. Behind him the door of the house whose occupant he had just been interviewing had been closed with considerable firmness. Some attempt had been made to turn the area immediately in front of the door into a rose-arbour by the erection of a bit of trellis work at right angles to the wall, and he crouched behind the little protecti
on this afforded. The wind came howling down the street full of rain and incipient snow. A shoot of the rambler clinging precariously to the trellis whipped round and slashed against his face.

  ‘Jesus,’ he repeated and turned up his collar and went up the path. As he closed the gate he saw the curtain drop into position in the front window.

  ‘All right. I’m off the premises,’ he said aloud. What a thing it was to be loved. Not that we deserve it anyway. Bloody half-wits. God, to think how chuffed I was to get out of uniform. Detective! All I’ve done since seems to be walk around and knock on doors. First Connon. Now this. Poor little bugger. I wonder where he is?

  He turned his mind away from the private conviction that little Mickey Annan was somewhere lying dead; deep beneath bracken on the moors; under an old sack in some outhouse; it didn’t matter where. His job at the moment was to ask questions.

  Someone must have seen the boy that night.

  His heart sank when he saw where his questionings would take him next. It was a little cul-de-sac of some two dozen semi-detached bungalows. Pensioners. Old Women. Mostly alone, often lonely. Welcoming, garrulous. He would be pressed to cups of tea, cocoa, Bovril, Horlicks. He tried to harden his heart in advance, but knew it was just a front.

  I’m your friendly village-bobby-type, he thought, not your hard-as-nails CID boy. This is going to take hours.

  ‘Mrs Williams? Mrs Ivy Williams?’ he said to the large heavily-made-up woman who answered his ring.

  ‘No, that’s my mam. What are you after, then?’

  ‘I’m from the police. We’re checking on the movements of people in this area last night, Mrs …?’

  ‘My name’s Girton. Is it about that lad then what’s missing? Well, mam can’t help you. Never gets out at night, do you, mam?’

  An elderly woman had appeared out of the kitchen which Edwards could see through the half-opened door at the end of the small hallway.

  ‘What’s that? What’s up?’

  ‘It’s a policeman, mam. You weren’t out last night, were you, mam?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. Where’d I go?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Girton to Edwards. ‘Where’d she go?’

  ‘Well, thank you. You weren’t here yourself last night, were you?’

  ‘No, not me. Mondays and Thursdays are my regular nights. Sorry. ‘Will you have a cup of tea, eh?’ Mrs Williams was already turning into the kitchen. Her daughter caught the look on Edwards’s face and grinned sympathetically.

  ‘Don’t be daft, mam. He’s got a lot of work to do, haven’t you? Got to visit everyone in the road?’

  ‘That’s right. Thanks all the same. Good night.’

  He turned to go.

  ‘Everyone in the road, eh?’ shrilled the old woman. ‘Well, make sure you talk to Mrs Grogan next door, then. She knows something, eh? She’ll be able to tell you something if you’re from the police.’

  She disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Edwards raised his eyebrows quizzically at Mrs Girton, who shrugged.

  ‘You never know. She’s getting on now, but she takes good notice of whatever anyone says. I wouldn’t pay too much heed myself, though.’

  ‘Well, thanks anyway. Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  It was raining in earnest. He glanced at his sodden list under the street-lamp. Mrs Kathleen Grogan, No 2.

  There was a sharp double blast from a horn. Turning, he saw at the end of the cul-de-sac a police-car. He went towards it.

  ‘Hello, Brian,’ said the uniformed constable cheerily. ‘Enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Great. What are you doing here?’

  ‘They’ve found him. Mickey Annan.’

  Edwards nodded and said, more as assertion than question, ‘Dead?’

  ‘No. Alive and well. We’ve come to tell you to jack it in. Hop in and we’ll give you a lift back.’

  Edwards was half into the back seat before he remembered Mrs Grogan.

  He hesitated. ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘Look, John. Could you hang on just a couple of minutes? There’s just one more call I’d like to make.’

  ‘What’re you on about? Playing detectives? I told you, the house-to-house is off …’

  ‘Yes but …’

  ‘Sorry, Brian. I’ve got to get on. There’s at least two other poor sods trudging around in the wet when they could be clocking off and going home. Now hop in and let’s go.’

  Edwards got back out of the car.

  ‘OK, John. You shove off. I’ll make my own way back.’

  ‘Have it your own way. But you’re a silly bugger. Cheers.’

  Yes, I’m a silly bugger. The silly bugger to end all silly buggers.

  ‘Bugger!’ he said aloud as he watched the car’s taillights disappear into the driving rain. ‘I must be mad.’

  He made his way back along the pavement and turned up the narrow path.

  Pascoe had sat in silence as his superior swiftly and efficiently did his part in calling off the search for Mickey Annan. This was the first rule when an operation was over. Get your men back. There were too many working hours for too few police as it was without letting any be wasted unnecessarily.

  Finally Dalziel was done.

  ‘What happened?’ Pascoe had asked.

  ‘He was out looking for Jesus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s these bloody schools. When I was a kid it was two-times table and the sharp edge of a ruler along your arse if you didn’t know them. Now it’s all stimulating the imagination. Christ! Show me a kid who ever needed his imagination stimulated! Anyway, little Mickey Annan was a wise man in the school Nativity play and got very interested in guiding stars in the East, and all. Especially when his teacher explained that Jesus was born again for everyone every Christmas and Bethlehem was never far away. How many bloody miles to Bethlehem! His favourite poem! Anyway, to Mickey the East was where his Uncle Dick and Aunt Mavis live at High Burnton out towards the coast.’

  ‘How did he get there? He did get there, I take it?’

  ‘Oh yes. Sat on a bus. Told the women he was sharing a seat with that he’d lost his money. He reckons wise men don’t need to bother much with the truth as far as ordinary mortals are concerned. Anyway his uncle had gone off for Christmas with his family, the house was empty. He got in through a half-closed larder window. Very small evidently. Then he bedded down.’

  ‘But what’s he been doing today, then?’

  Dalziel had looked pityingly at the sergeant.

  ‘Wise men don’t travel by day,’ he said. ‘You can’t see any stars by day. You’ve got to wait till it’s night.’

  ‘Oh? I suppose you would, really.’

  ‘Anyway the woman in the bus saw his picture in this evening’s paper, told the local bobby and gave him the boy’s uncle’s address which the lad had passed on to her the previous evening. He was very chatty, evidently, not a care in the world when she was with him. She never associated him with the missing lad till she saw the picture. Off they went to Uncle Dick’s just in time to meet Belshazzar taking off in search of a clear patch of sky. Kids! I hope his father whacks him till he’s a confirmed atheist.’

  Pascoe was still grinning at the story as he rang the doorbell of Arthur Evans’s house. There were lights on all over the house but no one seemed in a hurry to answer the door. He hoped it would be Gwen Evans who came, though his business was with her husband.

  Analysing his emotions, he came to the conclusion that Gwen’s affair with Marcus, far from making her more inaccessible, had merely confirmed her accessibility.

  He rang the bell once more.

  Almost instantly this time the door was flung open. Arthur Evans stood there. He looked distraught, his tie was pulled down and his collar open, his hair was ruffled, but even if he had been neatly dressed and groomed, the bright staring eyes and hectic cheeks would have warned Pascoe that something was amiss. And the smell of whisky.

  ‘Wh
at the hell do you want?’ demanded Evans, then with a sudden change of tone. ‘Is anything wrong? Have you found them?’

  ‘Found who?’ enquired Pascoe politely.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Evans, letting his shoulders sag as he turned and walked away from the open door. Pascoe hesitated a moment then followed him, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Evans had gone through into the lounge and was standing leaning against the mantelpiece in the classic pose of grief.

  But this was no mere pose, Pascoe decided.

  ‘Mr Evans,’ he said softly, ‘what has happened?’

  Evans looked at him wretchedly.

  ‘What am I to do without her?’ he groaned.

  ‘Without Mrs Evans, you mean?’ asked Pascoe. ‘Why, where is she, Mr Evans. What’s happened to her?’

  He did not go any further into the room but stood in the door keeping a watchful eye on Evans. For all he knew, Gwen was lying upstairs dead and the man in front of him was building up to another outburst.

  ‘She’s left me,’ said Evans with difficulty, mouthing the words in an exaggerated way as if examining them in disbelief as they came out.

  ‘Left you? How do you know she’s left you?’ asked

  Pascoe, still suspicious that he might be listening to the self-deceiving euphemism of murder.

  Evans reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, crumpled as though it had been thrust deeply and desperately out of sight.

  Pascoe came carefully forward and took it.

  ‘Dear Arthur,’ he read, ‘I am leaving you. Our marriage has been at an end for some time as far as I am concerned. I am sorry, but there’s nothing else to be done. Please forgive me. Gwen.’

  What the hell do I say? Pascoe asked himself. Oh, Bruiser, I wish you were here.

  Evans sobbed drily, gulping in great mouthfuls of air, and rocked back and forward against the mantelpiece which was lined with Christmas cards. One rocked and fell. He looked up then and became aware of the others. Soundlessly, he swept his forearm down the whole length of the mantelpiece, scattering cards and ornaments alike.