He asked the obvious questions without much hope. Anything odd she'd noticed? Any reason to think someone might want to hurt Lewis? Everything she replied discouraged him more and more in his theory that there might have been something personal in this killing. Dalziel was right, as always. The house-breaker had been disturbed and lashed out in panic. Tough on Lewis.
'Do you know why Mr Lewis came back on Monday?' he asked finally, preparatory to leaving.
'Oh no. Not exactly.'
'Not exactly? But you've got some idea?' asked Pascoe, suddenly interested. 'You heard something in the morning?'
'No, I didn't hear anything. I'd no idea he was coming back. It was just later when I heard . . . the news . . .'
'Blow your nose,' said Pascoe with headmistressly firmness. It seemed to work.
'I presume it was something to do with Mr Atkinson.'
'Who's he?' said Pascoe puzzled. The name rang some kind of bell, but not one connected with Lewis.
'I don't really know,' said the girl.
Pascoe was beginning to feel irritated, but he kept it in check. The girl's blether was far too near her eyeballs, as he had heard Dalziel say in one of his more Scottish moments.
'Then why do you say . . . well, whatever it is you do say?'
He thought he'd done it again, but she recovered. It was very hard being sympathetic for long, he suddenly realized. Grief was so anti-life. It is a relationship with the dead, emotional necrophilia.
'Mr Atkinson and Mr James and Mr Matt...’
'Who?'
'Mr Cowley and Mr Lewis. I always called them . . .'
'All right. Go on.'
'Well, they had been doing some business together for a long time. It seemed to be private, I mean there wasn't any correspondence, not that I was asked to do anyway.'
'Miss Clayton perhaps?'
'Perhaps. She was senior.'
She made seniority sound like a disease thought Pascoe.
'Anyway, I knew Mr Atkinson by sight. He always said hello when he came into the office.'
'And what makes you think that it was this business that brought Mr Lewis back on Monday?'
She looked at him in exasperation.
'I'm telling you. Mr Atkinson went along to the office that afternoon. That's why it was probably about their business. Why else should he go to the office when it was closed?'
Pascoe restrained himself with difficulty from shaking her till her crooked teeth rattled.
'You weren't at the office on Monday afternoon though?'
'No. But I was in the High Street shopping and I saw Mr Atkinson and Mr James going into the office.'
'Ah.'
There didn't seem much else to say for a moment.
'What time was this?' he managed finally.
'About three. A bit later perhaps.'
'But you didn't see Mr Lewis?'
'No.'
'Sure?'
'Of course I am! I'd have noticed, wouldn't I, especially as he was meant to be in Scotland?'
'I suppose you would. This Mr Atkinson now. . .'
He paused. Suddenly he recalled where he had seen the name. John Atkinson. Lochart 269. In Sturgeon's telephone book. It was an absurd coincidence.
'What does he look like?'
'Look like. Well; I don't know.'
Tall? Tall as me?'
'Oh no. A bit shorter, I'd say. But broader across the shoulders. And he's older too. He's got grey hair. And a nice smile.'
'Thank you, Miss Collinwood,' said Pascoe. 'You've been very helpful. Just one more thing.'
It was absurd. But he might as well ask.
'Just where in Scotland is Mr Lewis's cottage?'
'Where? It's in a village somewhere. Near a place called Callander.'
'Lochart?'
'That's right. How did you know? It sounded very nice. He once said I could stay there some time. When he and his family weren't there, of course.'
'Of course,' said Pascoe, not even noticing the imminence of tears this time. His mind was too occupied elsewhere.
His indifference seemed to be therapeutic, for suddenly the girl brightened and smiled sweetly at him.
'Are you driving through town? You couldn't give me a lift, could you? I want to make a hair appointment. It's my birthday on Saturday.'
'Certainly,' said Pascoe. When she smiled she looked extremely pretty. She should smile more often. Perhaps everybody should.
But he could not feel that any possible development in this particular case was going to cause much amusement.
Chapter 6
'Don't be daft,' said Dalziel more from habit than conviction. 'What kind of connection could there be?'
'I don't know, sir,' said Pascoe. 'All I know is the connection that already exists.'
'Lewis has a cottage in a village called Lochart where Sturgeon appears to know somebody? It's not much!'
'Where Sturgeon appears not to know somebody. Remember that Harry Lauder, or whatever his name was, denied the existence of an Archie Selkirk.'
Dalziel whistled a few bars of 'Roamin' in the Gloamin', ending with a scornful discord.
'And there was the other man, Atkinson, also with a Lochart number.'
'Oh? Have you tried ringing it?'
'Not yet. I thought I'd check with Lauder first.'
'Go ahead,' commanded Dalziel waving at the phone on his desk.
He's hooked, thought Pascoe. It's a bit early yet for him to admit he likes the taste, but the bait's been swallowed.
'And there's another connection,' said Pascoe as he waited for his call to be put through.
'Yes?' said Dalziel, who had removed his left shoe and was scratching the sole of his foot on the corner of his desk.
'They were both burgled.'
'So they were. But so were a dozen others. You're not seriously suggesting that Lewis wasn't killed by laddo, but by someone else who had it in for him personally?'
'I don't know, sir.'
'You realize there's only one guy to date who might connect the two things. And that's your mate, Sturgeon. What's the theory then? He wants to do for Lewis, so lies in wait for him at his home, beats him to death, then makes it look like a housebreaking along the same lines as happened to him? Did he strike you as being the super-criminal type?'
'On the contrary,' said Pascoe. 'But men do strange things when . . . hello! Sergeant Lauder? Look, it's Sergeant Pascoe again, Mid-York . . . PASCOE, yes. We spoke earlier. No, it's not about Archie Selkirk again. No. John Atkinson. What's that you say?'
Some impediment on the line suddenly cleared and Lauder's voice came through loud and as clear as his accent would permit.
'No. There's nae such creature, Sergeant Pascoe. What is it that's making ye think all the missing persons in Yorkshire are coming here to Lochart? We're just a wee village, ye ken. Are ye no' mistaking us for Glasgow, mebbe?'
Dalziel took the phone from Pascoe and held it close to his lips.
'This is Detective-Superintendent Dalziel here, Sergeant. Let's not waste public money. Just answer the questions. Right? Lochart 269, whose number's that?'
'Good evening to ye, Superintendent Dalziel. You're no' from these parts, are ye? If it was a Dalziel you were seeking after, I could lay my hands on a dozen. They seem to be very thick about here.'
Too true anywhere, thought Pascoe, keeping a straight face with difficulty.
'Now, 269. Well, that's easy. It's the hotel. The Lochart Hotel. It's very comfortable, I believe.'
'I'm not bloody well going to stay there!' roared Dalziel. 'Listen, I'm interested in a man called Atkinson, John Atkinson, who may have stayed there in the recent past. I don't know how recent. Now if without causing too much disturbance you could find out when he was there, how long, and (if possible) why, I'd be very grateful.'
Description, mouthed Pascoe, trying to make it look somehow accidental.
'Shall I try for a description also?' asked Lauder. 'To make sure it's the right man?'
'Please,' murmured Dalziel with a self-restraint which Pascoe would not have believed he possessed. 'Soon as you can, eh.'
He gave Lauder his telephone number, replaced the receiver, and picked it up again straightaway.
'Get me the infirmary at Doncaster, will you?' he said. 'I want someone who knows something about the condition of Mr Edgar Sturgeon. I don't want some little brown man who doesn't know a thermometer from a banana.'
If they could expel Dalziel from the Commonwealth, thought Pascoe, there might be hope for peace in our time.
'Your girl-friend called, Sergeant,' said Dalziel suddenly.
'What?'
'I spoke to her.'
'What! I mean, what did she want, sir?'
'How should I know? She said bugger all to me.'
A tiny, tinny voice was coming out of the ear-piece with which Dalziel was massaging his bald spot. Finally he became aware of it.
'Hello!' he roared, reducing it to silence. But after introducing himself, he settled down to listen.
'Well, there's no help there,' he said when he had finished. 'It seems to me as if Sturgeon and Lewis are soon going to have something else in common. They're both going to be dead.'
The men searched the ground thoroughly for over an hour. Then they searched it again, this time with a metal detector. Only after this second search and after as comprehensive a photographing of the area as was possible outside Hollywood did Backhouse send the order to tow the blue Mini-Cooper away. There was no question of driving it away. The ignition had been left on, the engine was sodden wet and the wheels had buried themselves deep in a morass caused by the recent rains.
Backhouse walked through the gap in the wire and peered down into the clay-pit.
'I wouldn't go too near the edge, sir,' said Constable Crowther, practising what he preached and standing a good two yards back. Always sensitive to local expertise, Backhouse retreated before asking why.
'If you look over to the other side, sir, you'll see there's quite an overhang. Well, that continues all the way round. They gouged deep into the sides before they decided the place was played out.'
'When was that?'
'Oh, when I was just a lad, sir. I'm from these parts, as you know. There was always trouble with the drainage, I believe. Water coming in, but not finding a way out very easily. Finally they struck an underground stream and that was that. Once they stopped pumping it away, the place just filled up.'
'It's deep then?'
'It is, especially after the rain we've been having.
Deep and dangerous. Bits of the overhang drop in from time to time. That's why they've got this wire round it. But what's wire to kids? Or anyone determined to get through?'
'What indeed?' said Backhouse staring at the neatly cut gap in the fence. 'Any fatalities?'
'Three, sir, that I know of.'
'Children?'
'That's what you'd expect, sir, but the answer's no. If they'd all been kids, something would have been done about the place long ago. Only one was anything like a child. Boy of sixteen, skylarking with friends round the edge, slipped and fell in. He couldn't swim.'
'And the others?'
'A man and woman, sir. Suicide pact. They were having an affair, but there were difficulties. They both wanted divorces but there was little chance of that. So they talked it over, it seems, then strolled up here one night and jumped in.'
'Good Lord! Yes, I seem to remember something. About twelve years ago?'
'That's right, sir.'
'I wasn't in this area then, of course, but it was in the national Press. Wait now, wasn't one of them called..’
'Yes, sir. Mary Pelman. She was married to Mr Angus Pelman.'
'Well now. There is a thing, Crowther,' said Backhouse. It was difficult to know whether he was commenting on Crowther's information or the arrival of the breakdown vehicle which came grinding up the long, wet track from the distant road.
'We found her almost at once,' Crowther continued. 'She came up to the surface. He stopped down in the mud. It took nearly three weeks before they got him out.'
'Who does it belong to, Crowther?' asked Backhouse, watching the breakdown truck negotiate itself into position before the Mini.
'No one, really,' said Crowther. 'Mr Pelman owns most of the land on this side, the south. His house is at the back of that ridge over there. Then the land drops away, woodland mainly, down to the village.'
'The woods behind Brookside Cottage?' said Backhouse.
'That's right. But there's no direct route. Not for a car. It'd have to come round by the road and up the old track. Three miles about.'
'Something seems to have come this way pretty regularly,' said Backhouse, examining the ground carefully. 'I wonder why? And who would want to cut a gap in the wire?'
'Can't say, sir,' said Crowther. 'Do you think Hopkins is in there, sir?'
'I don't know yet. I'm not even sure if I'd like him to be. It'd be neat, certainly. But I don't know.'
Forgetting Crowther's injunction, he strolled back towards the edge, thinking of the odd, enigmatic note found in the car. It was back at HQ now undergoing the most rigorous examination. Fingerprints, handwriting, type of paper, all would be subjected to the closest scrutiny. But the state of mind of the writer was what interested Backhouse. Could it be read as a confession and the last desperate cry of a man about to drown himself? It might well be. Hopkins seemed to have been something of an original. Perhaps the opinion of that other highly individual young man, Sergeant Pascoe, might be worth seeking. If it could be obtained without sparking off some kind of explosion.
The breakdown truck was advancing from the bosky tunnel into which the Mini had reversed. He turned to watch it. It wasn't possible for the truck to turn towards the track until the car was clear of the undergrowth. Therefore it came straight towards him. For a frightening second he thought it wasn't going to stop, but the driver began to spin the wheel round a good twenty feet away. In any case, it could hardly come through the small gap in the wire.
One of the truck's wheels lost its grip on the soft ground momentarily and began to spin. Foolishly the driver revved up and the next minute both were spinning wildly.
Half-wit, thought Backhouse, staggering slightly for some reason. Fainting fit? he wondered. The first warnings of a stroke? It was frightening, as if the ground were moving under him.
'Superintendent!' yelled Crowther.
Backhouse, still surprised, stepped towards him, then turned his step into a leap, as beyond all dispute the ground moved.
Crowther seized him by the hand and dragged him violently away from the quarry. Quite unnecessary, Backhouse thought, as he turned and looked back. It was a goood two seconds before a long section of earth, including the bit on which he had been standing, slid undramatically out of sight into the depths below. It was difficult to see any difference. If it hadn't been for the posts supporting the wire leaning drunkenly out into space it would have been impossible to detect that anything had happened.
'Get this thing out of here before it causes any more damage!' commanded Backhouse, pointing at the truck.
'If he's under that little pile, sir, he'll be hard to find,' said Crowther.
'We'll find him, never fear,' said Backhouse. 'If he was buried under a mountain, we'd find him.'
'Hello! Peter?' said Ellie uncertainly, standing at the open front door.
'Hello, love,' said Pascoe, stepping into the hall-way. 'Come on in.'
Ellie entered, still looking puzzled, and followed him into a comfortable sitting-room furnished in a period-less old-fashioned style.
'What are you doing here?' she asked. 'Or more important, what are we doing here? This isn't a subtle way of setting the scene for a marriage-proposal, is it? Because if this is your idea of home, I refuse!'
'It's not bad,' protested Pascoe. 'Very cosy.'
'So it's cosy! It also reeks of a-woman's-place-is-in-the-home. You've got a very Victorian paterfamilias l
ook about you.'
'There are worse fates,' said Pascoe.
'What are we doing here, Peter?'
'Looking for cats. Or rather a cat. I've got the other two locked in the kitchen. Let me explain.'
'I wish you would.'
Pascoe had called to see Mavis Sturgeon in hospital. She was confined to bed, but much more alert now. Her main concern had naturally been for her husband, but she seemed ready to accept assurances that he was all right, but too weak to be visited even had she been fit. Pascoe had delicately probed to see if there were anything she could tell him, but the names of Cowley and Atkinson meant nothing to her. Lewis she had read about in the paper and she had an idea he was a member of the Liberal Club which Edgar had belonged to for more than forty years. She confirmed that her husband had been withdrawn and irritable for the past week or more, following a period of unexplained high spirits and excitement.
'I was worried about his retirement at first,' she said. 'He missed the business a lot. But then he seemed to come round, start taking an interest in things. I thought that ... I thought . . .'
She blinked back tears. Pascoe intervened swiftly.
'Do you know where he might have been going today?' he asked.
'No. That's what makes it so odd. He'd no reason at all to be on that road. I've never liked that road, never. Always accidents, always something.'
Pascoe had risen to go, making an automatic promise to do anything he could to help and being surprised to find himself instantly put to the test.
'It's her cats. The neighbours will feed them, she knows, but she'd be happier if they went into their usual kennels. So I said I'd take them. And as it's no job for a singlehanded man, I left the message for you.'
'Thanks a lot.'
'Why did you ring me earlier?' asked Pascoe casually.
'Oh, nothing. I just felt like a chat,' she replied.
Dalziel 03 Ruling Passion Page 13
