Dalziel 03 Ruling Passion

by Reginald Hill

  'No. This all local work?'

  They had moved into the craft section.

  'A lot of it. Fancy a basket for your wife? Or a horse brass?'

  'For my wife? Not very complimentary,' said Dalziel. He could see no sign of anything like the pendant Ellie had described. He began to poke among the ornaments displayed on a large wooden tray.

  'Very nice,' he said. 'But I'd like something for the neck. No, not a collar either. A whatsit.'

  'A pendant?' suggested Etherege. 'We have a couple here. A simple rather plain design, if you like that sort of thing.'

  'No. No,' said Dalziel. 'Something a bit more decorative than that.'

  'I'm sorry. We did have some rather nice ones with local stones in a ceramic setting, but, alas, they've all gone now,' answered Etherege. 'Such a pity.'

  He knows, thought Dalziel suddenly. The sod knows. He knows who I am and what I'm after. Shit! If he's that sharp, it's going to be difficult to touch him.

  He looked at his watch. It might be worthwhile getting a search warrant and really turning this place over. But he doubted it.

  Etherege was looking at his watch too.

  'Will you excuse me a moment?' he said. 'Feel free to poke around as much as you like.'

  Cheeky bastard, thought Dalziel, as he watched Etherege disappear into what looked like a small office behind the stamp display. He's probably gone off for his elevenses so I can convince myself there's nothing here.

  The thought of his usual mid-morning coffee and two doughnuts set his stomach rumbling. He'd even been reasonably successful these past few days in cutting down on the drink, and the cumulative effect was not one he could foresee himself becoming resigned to.

  He looked around the converted barn in frustrated distaste. His own tastes, so far as they could be called tastes, in living styles were what was generally known as old-fashioned. But that was because they had been formed by the material and moral aspirations of a working-class family in the 'twenties. This self-conscious pursuit of the aged was not something he understood. He liked the old oak table off which he ate his lonely breakfast (and precious little else since his wife had left him) because it was his and had been his parents'. Probably his grandparents' too; he had no idea how old it was. It didn't signify. But if he had to get another, it would be something new. This stuff was just secondhand. Evidence of your own family's use and misuse was one thing; other people's scars, scratches and grime was something quite different.

  No, there was nothing for him here, either professionally or personally. He turned to go, then on impulse went through the stamp section and pushed open the office door. He intended only to leave Etherege with some kind of thinly veiled threat. Dalziel was a man who did not like to feel mocked.

  The significance of what he saw when he opened the door took a moment to sink in. Etherege was sitting at a table with his jacket off and his left shirt-sleeve rolled up. In his right hand he held a hypodermic syringe. He looked up angrily at the intrusion.

  'Please wait outside,' he said sharply. Dalziel didn't move. 'It's all right,' said Etherege, still sharp, but mocking now as well. 'I'm not having a fix. It's merely my insulin shot.'

  'You're a diabetic,' said Dalziel, stepping into the room. 'Well, well, well.'

  He smiled broadly. This was the morning of the lucky break, after all. He had had things the wrong way round. Etherege wasn't merely the greedy fence. This was where the action was worked out in detail. It made much more sense.

  'Is it a crime?' asked Etherege. 'Better call a policeman.'

  He really did think he was sitting pretty, thought Dalziel. He believes we can't touch him. Perhaps we can't, but we'll have a bloody good try.

  He leaned over the antique-dealer and picked up the insulin pack which lay on the table.

  'You know, Mr Etherege,' he said, 'you shouldn't go around peeing in other people's kettles.'

  Etherege became absolutely still. It was almost possible to see his mind rushing to a realization of what Dalziel meant.

  'The world is full of diabetics,' he said with an effort at coolness. Dalziel noted the effort, and looking grim, he placed his hand heavily on the man's left shoulder.

  'Jonathan Etherege,' he intoned. 'I must ask you to accompany . . . Jesus!'

  He leapt back, sending a chair, a card-index and an electric kettle crashing to the floor, and gazed at his wrist. Dangling grotesquely from it was the hypodermic which Etherege had thrust violently upwards. The sight made him nauseous and quite unfit to deal with the attack that followed. Etherege's knee caught him in the stomach and drove him back into the sharp edge of a filing cabinet. Memories of the potential - and realized - violence of the man they had so long been looking for mingled fragmentarily with black shapes of pain which were trying to join together and bring complete obscurity.

  There were a few seconds' respite, enough for sight impressions to return, albeit blurred and wavy. Etherege, he realized, hadn't given up the good work by any means. He had merely been casting around for something to kill him with. The answer to his problem was a large pot dog. A King Charles spaniel. Staffordshire-ware. Seven pounds a pair. Dalziel's grandmother had had a couple till the young Andrew had taken the head off one with a cricket ball. His mind threw up the absurd thought that this might be its mate come to exact a terrible vengeance.

  Later he said that he was given strength by the thought of the amusement it would give his enemies to hear he'd been done to death with a china dog. Now it was just the instinct for survival. He drove himself forward under the descending dog, wrapped his arms around the dealer and grappled him to the floor. For a moment he thought that his mere weight superiority was going to be enough to keep him there, but Etherege's outstretched hands came into contact with the electric kettle and he brought it crashing round into the side of Dalziel's head. Stunned, he could not prevent himself from being rolled over, but Etherege's first kick acted as a restorative and when the man drove his foot a second time towards Dalziel's ribcage, the fat man caught him by the ankle and pulled him off balance. He fell backwards through the open door into the shop.

  They both rose at the same time and as they looked at each other they knew that their roles had reversed. Through Dalziel's being a tide of terrible anger was running fast and free, driving out the aches and pains. Casually he pulled out from his wrist the remains of the hypodermic and dropped them to the floor.

  'Now, Mr bloody Etherege,' he said, and stepped forward.

  Etherege turned and ran, but his over-filled shop hindered rapid movement. The ceramic display-case went crashing down as he blundered past. A grandfather clock by Barraclough fell into Dalziel's path and chimed its last as the fat man trod carelessly on the disembowelled works.

  Etherege, realizing he could not make the door, took to the heights, bounding desperately across chairs and tables, cabinets and bureaux. The late Victorians took it well, but much damage was inflicted on earlier pieces, especially when Dalziel followed.

  His simple unambiguous aim now was to hurt Etherege. He did not know where this incredibly violent desire stemmed from, nor did he care to investigate. It was as if the repressed violence of three decades in the police force had finally asserted its right to exist.

  Etherege knew it and the knowledge made him incredibly agile. As Dalziel cumbersomely surmounted a mahogany dresser, the dealer skipped lightly across a set of genuine fake Chippendale dining-chairs and made for the door which opened as he reached it. A man and woman stood there, blocking the exit and gazing in amazement at the scene before them. Etherege perforce hesitated and next moment Dalziel was on him.

  He pushed him across a table and began driving blows into his body and face. The man offered no defence, hardly seemed to be conscious.

  'Look here,' said the newly arrived customer, stepping forward, but stepping more rapidly back when he saw Dalziel's expression.

  Something deep inside, however, was telling him he must stop. This was wrong. He had never lost his
temper like this in his life.

  There was a disturbance behind him and someone seized him by the shoulder.

  'Get the police!' said a man's voice and he felt himself being pulled back from Etherege.

  The fury came back. He turned and saw an indignant-looking man in his late thirties. Dalziel did not care for the look or the touch of him. He balled his fist and smacked into the stranger's face with all the strength he could muster.

  Chapter 5

  The first thing Pascoe did on reaching Brookside Cottage this time was to search the place. Lounge, dining-room and scorch-marked kitchen; then upstairs through the bedrooms, bathroom and junk-room. When he was satisfied that he was alone, he returned to the lounge and began to run his eye along the bookshelves. What he wanted wasn't there, and he turned away in disappointment and stood thoughtfully looking around.

  'The bureau!' he said aloud. It was a nice piece of furniture and when he found it was locked he felt some compunction about breaking into it. But one thing he had learned from Dalziel was that once you launched yourself on a course of action, you followed it through with force and determination to no matter how bitter an end.

  The lock yielded easily to the knife borrowed from the kitchen. He nodded in satisfaction as be picked up the book and pushed back on the writing-paper ledge. Quickly he thumbed through it and nodded again. It was always nice to be right. He'd learned that from Dalziel too. Or perhaps what the fat man had said was that it was nice to be always right. He was an egotistical bastard. But Pascoe wished he were here now.

  He sat down for a while and applied his mind to the problem. It wasn't a problem at all really, he finally admitted. The facts as he saw them suggested a theory. It was a theory. It was a theory he could easily test. It would also be easy to pick up the phone and ring Backhouse, but that wasn't the way. Not this time.

  With a sigh he rose and went out into the garden. He stood beside the sundial for a moment and looked down. The carpet in the dining-room still had the dark, disfiguring stains on it, but out here rain and dew and sunlight and the cycle of growth had left no trace on the thrusting green shoots.

  His shadow was on the dial and he stood aside to see where the point of the gnomon fell, but an edge of white cloud trailed across the sun momentarily and he did not wait until it cleared. Instead he went down to the stream and with little difficulty leapt across it into Pelman's woods. The water was slow-moving and not very deep, but beautifully clear for all that. Long water-grasses wavered in it, pointing downstream, and he followed their directions. For twenty or thirty yards it was possible to walk parallel with the stream, but then the trees began to close in on either side, and the tangle of briar and whin forced him either to move farther out into the woods or to descend the banks of the stream itself. Unhesitatingly he chose the latter.

  At first he attempted to stay dry-shod by treading carefully along a narrow margin, but this soon disappeared and after the first immersion of his feet he bothered no more but trod boldly on.

  Soon the end of his journey was in sight, the ridge of land which carried the track up from the road to Pelman's house. The culvert which carried the stream under the track was visible as a dark semi-circle above the water's surface which sparkled in even the few rays of sunshine penetrating the vault of trees.

  Pascoe stopped about thirty yards away. A tremendous lethargy seemed to have gripped his leg-muscles, as though the stream had bathed his feet in some slow poison. The woods were full of noises which asserted themselves now that the splashing of his progress down the stream had ceased. Birds called sharply, musically, warningly, languorously; leaves rustled in the breeze, still a rich sound though the parchment edge of autumn was beginning to be heard; a bee murmured by; and somewhere in front of him he heard, or imagined he heard, the buzzing of many flies.

  Then came a sound he hadn't imagined. Something moved among the trees to his left. He crouched low against the bank and remembered walking up the lane to Culpepper's, hearing the Passage of his pursuer through the night.

  Cautiously he raised his head above the level of the bank and glimpsed a figure moving slowly towards the stream. Too quick a glimpse for identification, but long enough to recognize the object the man carried before him, carefully, like in a Holy Day procession.

  A shotgun.

  Pascoe began to move. It was foolish. It was bound to cause noise. But it was beyond him to lie quietly against the bank while the gun-bearer approached. After a few steps, he realized that even the little care he was exercising was just a waste of time. The noise he was making sounded tremendous, like a herd of cows splashing through a ford. He began to run in real earnest.

  'Who's there?' called a voice.

  He had to get out of the water-course. The trees on the voice's side were thinner, but he didn't fancy clambering up there. Instead he tore at the sallows which grew like a fence on the other side and pulled himself up.

  'Stop!' commanded the voice.

  If, thought Pascoe, if once I can get a few nice trees between me and him, if once I can head him down to the road, if once I can get back to the village, that'll be it; no lone investigations for me, I swear it, God, make a bargain, please, if once . . .

  Behind him the shotgun spoke, a curiously undramatic noise, something whipped along the side of his head, he turned and slid slowly back down the bank into the water.

  On the opposite bank, about thirty yards upstream, the smoking gun in his hands, was Angus Pelman.

  Was that one barrel of two? wondered Pascoe. Will he have to reload?

  But it didn't matter. For gloriously, wonderfully, there were other voices in the woods and Backhouse appeared behind Pelman, and Ellie came leaping into the water towards him with love and terror in her face.

  Curiously, he did not feel too bad till they told him that he had been hit by a small branch splintered from a tree by the shotgun blast. It was then he recalled what he was doing here.

  'If you go on up to the culvert,' he told Backhouse slowly and clearly, 'and look inside, I think you'll find Colin's body.'

  Then he knelt on the soft cushion of rich leaf mould and was very sick.

  'You know,' said Dr Hardisty, 'dressing your wounds is becoming a habit.'

  'Yes,' said Pascoe.

  'I'm normally a very discreet kind of man, minding my own business,' continued the doctor. 'But do you mind me, on this occasion asking what the hell's going on?'

  They were back at the Crowthers'. Pascoe had not the least desire to talk further to the doctor, and he shot an appealing glance at Ellie who politely but firmly took the man to the door.

  'You did that well,' Pascoe said.

  'I know,' she said.

  They spoke no more for a while. They had stayed in the woods until one of Backhouse's men armed with a torch had penetrated the dark barrel of the culvert. When his shout of mingled discovery and aversion had reached them, they had gone away and let themselves be driven back to the village.

  'How did you know?' asked Ellie finally.

  'I began to wonder. There were lots of things, lots of "ifs". If Colin didn't commit suicide, then someone wanted us to think he did. If someone wanted that, then presumably it was to direct suspicion from the real murderer. If it was worth planting the car and the note, then Colin must be dead. If Colin was dead, then his body must be hidden somewhere. And so on. Today when you said that those quotations came from Eloisa to Abelard I was suddenly certain. It was one of Colin's gags. Rather, it was going to be. You didn't see the bedroom, did you?'

  'No,' said Ellie.

  Briefly Pascoe described it, the pillow decoration, the sign.

  'He'd been going to add something else. And with his passion for aptness, he picked on Pope's poem. I found a complete Pope in the bureau. All the lines in the so-called suicide note had been marked. Just listen to the stuff! Soft intercourse. I come, I come! He best can paint 'em who can feel'em most. Not the outpourings of despair, but all lovely dirty double meanings! Probably t
hey did it together, Rose and Colin; Timmy and Carlo too. But he never got any further than jotting a few things down.'

  'Why?'

  'Oh, nothing dramatic. Dinner perhaps. Or they got a bit drunk. Something. Later of course, it happened.'

  She was trembling, he realized. He stood up, felt dizzy for a second, then crossed to her and put his arms around her.

  'But why, Peter?' she demanded. 'Why?'

  'Perhaps Pelman will tell us that,' he answered.

  'You might have been killed too,' she said.

  'Perhaps. But I had to go up that stream. I kept on remembering that fellow, Bell, going on and on about the water, about something polluting the stream. He said things had suddenly got much worse in the past few days. And I thought of the heat and the time it takes for . . . well, it filled my mind and I had to see.'

  He laughed uneasily and without humour.

  'You know, in a way, I'm glad I was interrupted before I reached the culvert.'

  'I'm glad Pelman was interrupted before he reached you,' said Ellie. 'Backhouse asked where you were after the inquest and seemed very keen to get after you. He must have suspected something.'

  'What happened at the inquest, by the way?' inquired Pascoe.

  'What?' said Ellie. 'Of course, you won't have heard. They brought a verdict of murder against Colin.'

  Sometime later Pascoe was standing looking down at the water-ravaged face of Colin Hopkins. Curiously he felt very little, as if the day's events had been successfully cathartic.

  'Yes,' he replied to Backhouse's question. 'Yes. I can identify him. Colin Hopkins.'

  'Fine,' said Backhouse, and the concealing sheet was drawn over the face once more.

  'This makes French look a little foolish,' said Pascoe as they left the mortuary. He felt the need to nurture his normality with a little idle chatter. Something was over. His interest now would be professional. And distant. He was ready to go home.

  'Yes,' said Backhouse. He was rather withdrawn, even for him. Pascoe felt there was something he wanted to say, but was equally certain that it was not going to be said.