Dalziel 09 Child's Play

by Reginald Hill

  'Oh good. You're eating anyway,' he said. 'How goes it?'

  'I'm fine,' said Wield. 'Thanks. I'll be back tomorrow.'

  Pascoe, all primed with reasons for not coming in and sitting down, was curiously put out by the lack of any attempt to urge him to do so. He felt a childish compulsion to delay his departure with uncharacteristic gabble.

  'Great,' he said. 'That'll be great. We're up to our necks as usual. This Italian corpse is turning out to be really interesting. And if that's not enough, Mr Watmough has finally flipped. Watch your aftershave when you come back! He's decided we're all Gay Gordons in CID and he's determined to sniff us out!'

  He sniffed stagily in demonstration.

  And again, not at all stagily.

  Wield said, 'What do you mean?'

  'Nothing. Some nonsense of the DCC's. You know how they get these ideas and with the selection board coming up, he's terrified in case anything happens to rock his boat. Look, Wieldy, I'll not keep you from your dinner. It smells very . . . exotic. So take care. See you in the morning, I hope.'

  Pascoe left, running down the stairs. His mind was running too. With Wield in his bath robe, who was responsible for the presumably takeaway Chinese feast? And for how long had marijuana been an ingredient of Chinese cuisine?

  He shook the questions out of his head and concentrated on getting across his own threshold before his pork chop came out to meet him.

  Wield re-entered his living-room.

  'One of your mates?' inquired Cliff. 'Why'd you not invite him in?'

  Wield stepped forward, tore the joint out of his fingers and hurled it into the fireplace. He'd seen Pascoe's expression and was suddenly filled with fear for the future.

  'You don't smoke shit here,' he said.

  'No? Why the hell not? Afraid of being raided, are you?'

  Wield ignored this.

  'Last night,' he said. 'You said something about trying to turn me into a news story.'

  'Did I? Bad news, from the way you're acting now,' said the boy negligently.

  'Tell me again, what exactly did you say when you rang the paper?'

  'Why? What's so important? Last night you said it didn't matter. What's changed?'

  Nothing. Except that in Pascoe's heedless quip about Gay Gordons he'd seen how what he felt as potentially tragic would be trivialized in the macho world of the police force. If Pascoe thought gay cops were comic, how would a monster like Dalziel respond? And why was the DCC interested?

  He was feeling the onset of panic, and knowing it didn't help control it. Once, with Maurice's strength allied to his own, it had seemed possible to face, and outface, the world. But the moment had passed, and Maurice's strength had proved delusory, and this child before him did not even offer the illusion of strong support.

  'Tell me again,' he urged. 'I need to know.'

  'Why? Why do you need to know? Don't you trust me?' demanded Sharman, beginning to grow angry.

  Wield drew in a deep breath. He didn't want another row. Or perhaps he did.

  He said quietly, 'I just need to know. There's evidently been something said down at the station, and I'd like to be quite sure what it is, that's all.'

  'Oh, is that all?' mimicked the boy. 'So you can make up your mind how to play it, is that it? So you can decide whether to go on being a fucking hypocrite all your life? I'll tell you what your trouble is, shall I, Mac? You've lived so long with straight pigs that you've started to think like them. You actually believe they're right and there really is something nasty and funny about gays. You know you can't help being one, but you wish you could, like a man who's got piles can't help it, but wishes he hadn't.'

  The youth paused as if afraid of Wield's reaction to what he'd said. Perhaps if Wield had kept quiet too there might have been a chance of truce, a fragile calm settling into a firmer peace. But too much control for too long takes its toll of a man as much as any other excess.

  'So that's my trouble, is it?' said Wield with soft

  savagery. 'And what's your trouble then, Cliff? Mebbe it's what I thought from the start. Mebbe you're nothing more than a nasty little crook who came up here to put the black on me, then got scared. Mebbe all that stuff about your long lost dad is a load of crap. Mebbe Maurice got you right when he said you were a thief and a tart . . .'

  The boy jumped up, his face working with rage and pain.

  'All right!' he screamed. 'And Mo was right about you too! He said you were a bloody loonie who wanted everything his way, no one else's! He said you were fucking pathetic and you are! Look at yourself, Mac. You're dead, did you know that? From the neck up and down. Dead. What do you know? - I've screwed with a dead pig! They should stick you on a platter with an orange in your mouth!'

  He stopped, appalled at where his rage had taken him.

  'You'd better go,' said Wield. 'Quickly.'

  'What? No charges, no threats?' said Sharman with a poor effort at jauntiness.

  'You're a liar, a cheat, a thief. What should I threaten you with? Just get out of my sight.'

  Cliff Sharman went to the door, glanced back once, said something inaudible, and left.

  Wield stood quite still by the table looking down at the array of congealing dishes. There was a voice high in his skull screaming at him to drag the tablecloth off and bring the feast crashing to the floor. He ignored it. Control was everything. He took three deep breaths, letting the steady surf-like rhythms of his breathing drown out that strident, insistent voice.

  He paused.

  Silence.

  Then the voice screamed again with an intensity that vibrated the whole arch of his skull and he seized the cloth and with one spasmodic pull he hurled the Chinese feast across the room to trickle down the opposing wall like blood and guts from a belly wound.

  He went through to the bedroom and stared at himself in the mirror, aghast. Once he had hated the way he looked. Then for many years, the years of control and disguise, he had thought of his face as a blessing, a mask ready made for a man who thought he needed a mask.

  Now he hated it once more.

  He threw aside his bath robe, dragged on his clothes and minutes later went out in the cidrous gold of the autumn evening.

  A farm labourer found Cliff Sharman's body early the next morning. It lay in a shallow grave no deeper than the scrape of a hare's form, beneath an old hedge of blackthorn and hawthorn and alder, bound round with ivy and jewelled with pearly dog-rose. Some hand, either of the killer or the night wind, had strewn the childishly young face with the first dead leaves of the season, but when the labourer's fingers brushed them aside, the bright colours seemed to remain to stain the bruised and torn features. More terrible still was the gaudy T-shirt across which ran the unmistakable tread of the tyre which had crushed the boy's chest.

  From a high tree the voice of a telltale blackbird sang out its bubbly warning. The labourer rose and looked where best to go for help. Over the hedge about a quarter of a mile distant, he could see a roof and chimneys sailing ship-like through the morning mist.

  Pushing his way through the hedgerow, the man began to trot at a steady pace towards Troy House.

  First Act

  Voices from a Far Country

  Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise;

  Your spring and your day are wasted in play,

  And your winter and night in disguise.

  Blake: Nurse's Song

  Chapter 1

  It was mid-morning when Dalziel paid his first visit to Troy House.

  He was admitted by a young man in shirtsleeves who identified himself as Rod Lomas and pre-empted Dalziel's self-introduction as he led him in to the drawing-room.

  'You've heard of me, then?' said Dalziel.

  'Not to know you argues oneself unknown,' said Lomas.

  Dalziel digested this, then broke wind gently.

  'Sorry,' he said. 'Miss Keech at home?'

  'Yes, but she's unwell, I'm afraid. This busine
ss has come as a tremendous shock to her.'

  'Which business?'

  'This business,' said Lomas, looking at him as if doubtful of his sanity. 'This murder on our doorstep.'

  Dalziel walked to the window and peered in the general direction of the quarter-mile distant hedgerow beneath which Sharman's body had been found.

  'If that's your doorstep,' he said, 'there's a donkey crapping on your hall carpet.'

  'Yes. Look, Superintendent, this is the countryside and Troy House is pretty isolated, so the thought of a killer wandering around loose is surely quite enough to upset most old ladies, wouldn't you say?'

  'Likely you're right. Did you hear owt last night?'

  'I've already made a statement,' said Lomas impatiently. 'I heard nothing, saw nothing. Do I have to go through all this again?'

  ‘For someone who makes his living going through the same old stuff night after night, you're making a lot of fuss about saying summat twice,' observed Dalziel.

  'All right,' sighed Lomas. 'Catechize me if you must.'

  'Why? Is there summat you want to get off your chest?'

  'But just a second ago . . .'

  'Grasshopper mind, that's me. Let's go up and see the old lady.'

  'Really, no,' said Lomas. 'I've had the doctor to her and he says she ought to rest.'

  But he was talking to Dalziel's broad back as it vanished through the door. Moving with surprising speed and not-so-surprising instinct, the fat man was already tapping on Miss Keech's bedroom door by the time Lomas caught up with him.

  'Come in,' called a slightly quavery voice.

  Dalziel opened the door.

  "Morning, ma'am,' he said to the old lady in the huge bed, 'Sorry to disturb you.'

  He recalled Pascoe's description of the woman as lively and bright for her years and saw indeed that the morning's events must have been a shock. The face that turned towards him was pale, the features pinched sharp as though by a killing frost.

  Lomas behind him whispered, 'For heaven's sake, Superintendent!'

  'I'll not be long."

  'But she doesn't know anything!'

  'About the body, you mean? Mebbe not. But it's not that body I wanted to ask about. Miss Keech, you were Alexander Huby's nurse when you first came to Troy House, weren't you?'

  He advanced to the bedside as he spoke.

  'Indeed I was. Nursery maid to be exact.'

  Ill she might be, but there was still an alert gleam in her eyes.

  'Did the boy have any distinguishing marks that you recall? Birth marks, scars, that sort of thing?'

  'No. None,' she said without hesitation.

  'To be more precise, did he have a mark on his left buttock, a sort of mole shaped a bit like a maple leaf?'

  'No,' she said very clearly. 'He did not.'

  'Thank you. Miss Keech. I hope you get well soon.'

  He gravely touched a phantom forelock and left.

  'Is that it?' inquired Lomas as they descended the stairs.

  'Still wanting to unburden yourself?' said Dalziel.

  'No!'

  'Well, that's it for me. I'm off back to town. Some of us work for a living.'

  'All of us!' said Lomas looking at his watch. 'I've skipped this morning's rehearsal, but Chung will kill me if I don't make it this afternoon. Oh, Mrs Brooks, there you are!'

  A woman had come through the front door, middle-aged, headscarfed, gap-toothed and squint-eyed.

  'Mrs Brooks cleans for Miss Keech,' explained Lomas. 'She said she'd come back and stay with her this afternoon so I can get about my business. Many thanks, Mrs Brooks.'

  'My pleasure, love,' said the woman, observing Dalziel keenly with her fixed eye. 'He the police? I thought so. I'll see if she'll try a boiled egg for dinner. Here, I wouldn't like to have the feeding of him!'

  With a stomach-churning sweep of the left eye and a rising trill of laughter, she went up the stairs.

  'Excuse me,' said Lomas, 'it occurs to me, if you're going into town . . .'

  'You'd like a lift? Can't shake you off, can I, lad? You're like one of them gropies.'

  'I think - I hope - that possibly you mean groupie,' said Lomas. 'And the lift?'

  'As long as you don't start reciting and frighten me driver,' said Dalziel. 'Come on, then! I'll not hang about.'

  'Why is it that up here no one can offer you a lift without saying that?' wondered Lomas as he went rushing off in search of his velvet jacket.

  Back at the station, Dalziel found Pascoe and Seymour shuffling sheafs of paper like a pair of nervous fan-dancers.

  'Are you going to swallow these after you've read them?' asked Dalziel. 'Where's Wield? He can rhyme things off like he's got a real mind when the fancy takes him.'

  'Still ill,' said Pascoe. 'Or perhaps, 'correcting himself pedantically, 'ill again. He showed his face, said he was OK, then off he went again.'

  'That's right,' chimed in Seymour. 'I was bringing him up to date with what's going off, and he just keeled over. I wanted to call the doctor, but he wouldn't have it.'

  'We'll have to make do with paper, then,' grunted Dalziel. 'Come on up to my room, Peter, and just bring what you think's necessary.'

  In Dalziel's room, the fat man poured himself a slug of malt so pale it might pass for water to the uncritical eye.

  'Start,' he said.

  Pascoe began.

  'I've been talking to Florence, sir,' he said.

  'Oh aye? And what did she have to say?'

  Dalziel never let the popular prejudice against the obvious interfere with his jokes. He was, however, slightly puzzled when Pascoe laughed appreciatively before going on, 'Alessandro Pontelli, born Palermo, Sicily 1923, wounded while serving with partisans, hospitalized by Americans near Siena, continued in Tuscany after the war acting as interpreter and courier, first for military authorities, then as things got back to normal for the tourist trade. No criminal record, unmarried, no known family. Flew out of Pisa airport four days before the funeral. At this end we have the immigration record at Gatwick. After that, nothing.'

  'And before that, not bloody much,' grumbled Dalziel with the sour complacency of one who hadn't expected anything more from foreigners.

  'We've not got much more on our true-blue British boy,' protested Pascoe.

  'Bugger looked half brown to me,' said Dalziel. 'But give.'

  'Sharman, Clifford, age nineteen, born Dulwich, London, address given to court was Flat 29, Leacock Court, East Dulwich, occupied by his grandmother, Mrs Miriam Hornsby, but he hasn't lived there for more than three years. Various other addresses for social security claims, but nothing permanent or significant. Only previous was that shoplifting fine last week.'

  'What was he doing up here anyway?' wondered Dalziel. 'It's a long way to come just to shoplift.'

  'God knows. He told Seymour he was just hiking around, living rough. Interestingly, Seymour says he didn't believe him. He didn't smell right - or ripe. We've got the P.M report already. Mr Longbottom was working late - or early - and still in the cutting mood. Cause of death was confirmed as having his chest crushed by being run over after he'd been beaten up. Oh, by the way, Longbottom says the body looked pretty well scrubbed. Also underwear was clean, apart from soiling caused at time of death, so it sounds as if Seymour could have been right.'

  'So where was he staying?'

  'Don't know, but we'll soon find out,' said Pascoe confidently. 'Best leads seem to be that his last meal was a toasted cheese sandwich not long before death, he'd recently had anal intercourse, and he was carrying five grammes of pot in a small plastic bag from a local supermarket, so presumably he bought it up here.'

  'They're selling it in supermarkets now, are they?'

  Again Pascoe laughed so appreciatively that all Dalziel's defence mechanisms went on red alert.

  'Might as well,' the Inspector said. 'It's not difficult to get hold of, but it does cost. Could be that Sharman was flogging his ring to pay for the pot and his boyfriend decided to
give him a punching rather than pay up and went too far.'

  'Bloody sight too far,' grunted Dalziel. 'Was he on the game, do you reckon?'

  Pascoe shrugged.

  'Hard to say, but perhaps his grandmother, that's Mrs Hornsby, can tell us more. She's arriving at two by the way, sir. I've given instructions for her to be taken straight up to see you as I thought you'd like a chat before you took her to the mortuary . . .'

  'Whoa!' shouted Dalziel. 'So that's why it's been laugh-along-with-the-Super time! No sale! Being nice to grieving grannies isn't my speciality; that's what we employ smarmy sods with degrees for!'

  'I'm extremely busy with the Pontelli inquiry, sir. I've got Seymour sorting through the contents of Mrs Huby's cabinet, and I've still got to see Lomas about why he broke into it.'

  'He's lunching in the Kemble bar,' interposed Dalziel. 'I brought him in with me. Funny young sod, isn't he? Fancies himself. And not the only one round here. You reckon you're on to something with these papers, then?'

  'Not really,' admitted Pascoe. 'They're just a rather pathetic record of an obsession. Seymour claims to see a bit of a gap a few years back, but as it coincides with the time the old girl had her first stroke, there would be, wouldn't there?'

  'But you'll still waste time chasing after Lomas?' said Dalziel satirically. 'You still really believe you'll find a motive in this Huby will business, do you?'

  'I'm sure there's something there,' said Pascoe. 'I ran everything through CPC . . .'

  'Oh God. I knew the mighty Wurlitzer would be in on the act!" growled Dalziel, who regarded the Central Police Computer with a luddite hatred.

  '. . . and I came up with a few things. John Huby's bad temper doesn't just confine itself to kicking stuffed dogs. He has a record for brawling as a young man and more recently he got fined for using excessive violence in ejecting an unwanted customer.'

  'Some bleeding heart on the Bench, I dare say,' grunted Dalziel.

  'No. It was hang 'em, flog 'em, castrate 'em, Mrs Jones JP. Even she thought that throwing the customer through the windscreen of his own car was excessive. Nothing on the other Hubys. Rod Lomas, assorted motoring offences and one possession charge. Hash. They found it on him at Heathrow. He managed to persuade them it was for his own use, not for re-sale. Nothing on his mother except . . .'