‘Andy Dalziel,’ he said. ‘You probably don’t recall. When you were living up in Yorkshire, you used to come down to the rugby club some Saturday nights. Andy Dalziel. We met at the rugby club.’
‘Andy Dalziel? Oh God, I remember! You were a copper, weren’t you? Andy Dalziel! Crikey, you’ve put on a bit of weight.’
‘Just a bit,’ said Dalziel advancing up the steps, smiling. ‘You’ve hardly changed a bit, though. Soon as I saw you I thought, that’s Penny Highsmith or her double. How’re you doing?’
He extended his hand. She took it uncertainly and he shook hers energetically.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘It’s a small world. A small world.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is.’
She stood with the key in the door, but she showed no inclination to invite him in. He remembered her as a generous, easy-going woman, but life in London was enough to rub the fine edge off anyone’s sense of hospitality.
‘I’m down here for a conference at the Yard,’ he explained.
‘The Yard?’
‘Scotland Yard.’
‘Oh, you’re still a copper then. I thought they all retired at forty.’
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘And you. What’re you doing?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ she said vaguely.
‘Grand,’ he beamed. ‘Well, I’ll tell ’em all at the club I saw you. I’d best be off. I’m just on my way back to my hotel. Usually there’s a pot of tea going about now. Cheerioh then.’
He shook her hand again and turned away. If she didn’t call him back by the third step, he’d have to think again.
It was on the fourth step that she said, ‘Look, if you’ve got a moment, why not come up and have a cuppa with me?’
‘Now that’s nice of you,’ he said, turning. ‘As long as it’s no bother. That would be really nice.’
The flat was comfortable without being luxurious, the flat of an active woman who expected to spend more time out of it than in.
Dalziel relaxed in a deep armchair and watched Penny Highsmith bustling around making the tea. Minus her jacket, her generous figure showed to even greater advantage beneath a translucent silk blouse with a high collar which concealed any giveaway wrinkling of the neck. Certainly there was precious little else which put her in her mid-fifties rather than early forties. It wasn’t fair, thought Dalziel. Men were supposed to age gracefully, but the same years which had merely rounded Penny’s bust had positively billowed his belly.
Still, he wasn’t here to seduce her, though once upon a time, once upon a time …
There’d been a dance in the clubhouse. It had been the usual thrash with the beer as important as the dancing. He’d hardly moved away from the bar except to go to the Gents. It was as he returned from such a visit that he ran into Penny Highsmith coming out of the Ladies. Distantly a smoochy slow waltz had begun to play. He had danced her along the corridor, then through the door which led to the changing-rooms. There in the darkness in an atmosphere laced with the perfume of liniment and sweat they had embraced passionately and there had been little resistance to his investigating fumbles, till all at once a cry went up outside, ‘Andy! Andy Dalziel. Where the hell is he? Andy! They want you back at the cop-shop, chop-chop!’ He’d been willing to go on, but Penny had whispered, ‘No, they’ll be coming in here next. Later. There’ll be another time.’
There never had been. The demands of his job had not only destroyed his marriage, he thought bitterly; they had destroyed a lot of his chances of a bit on the side too.
‘Here. You once nearly screwed me in the changing-room, didn’t you?’
Her voice, intersecting so neatly with his thoughts, made him start guiltily as though he’d been thinking aloud.
She put a tray down before him and sat on a low pouffé beside his chair.
‘Sorry. Did I shock you?’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you could shock cops.’
She grinned at him. The grin brought her back completely as she’d been then. Lively, easy-going but with a mind of her own, capable, independent, pleasure-loving, undemanding herself and refusing to be tied down by others. And very, very attractive.
‘Not shocked,’ he said. ‘Just regretful. By God, you’ve weathered well, Penny Highsmith!’
‘You’ve filled out,’ she said. ‘And the booze and the late nights have left a few high-tide marks I can see. But you still look basically the same, Andy Dalziel. Hard, fast, and brutish!’
She laughed to take the sting out of her comment. Dalziel laughed too. He felt it as a compliment.
‘You went away,’ he said. ‘One moment there, next gone.’
‘It wasn’t quite as quick as that,’ she said. ‘I was always going to go. Yorkshire was all right, but I missed being down here. I only went up for a few weeks to look after my Aunt Florence in the first place. Then she died and I got the house and the money. Well, I got it eventually. And by the time all that was settled, my boy was at school. He liked it there. I suppose we’d led a rather unsettling life before that. Anyway it seemed a shame to disturb him, so I settled down to it for a few years. But a few years was more than enough, begging your pardon. Help yourself to tea. I’m not very domesticated, I’m afraid.’
Dalziel obeyed, restricting himself to his dietary two heaped spoonfuls of sugar.
‘You never married then?’ he said.
‘No. Why should I?’
‘Good-looking lass like you, you must’ve had offers,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes.’ She grinned. ‘When you stop getting offers you know the auction’s ended. Then it’s going, going, gone! No, I always liked my independence. Most people do, you know, only they’re not certain they can manage it. I was lucky that way. I had Patrick young and I brought him up by myself, so I learned all about being independent. It was hard at times, but it was a lesson worth learning.’
‘Patrick. That’s your boy?’ said Dalziel, sipping his tea.
‘Boy! He’s been fully grown longer than I care to think.’
‘Still living up our way, is he? Or did he move too?’
‘No, he’s still in the old house,’ said Penny. ‘He’s really crazy about that place, always has been. I think it’d take dynamite to shift him.’
‘Do you get up there to see him at all?’
‘Not much,’ said Penny. She eyed him shrewdly and added, ‘Why so interested?’
Dalziel usually preferred frontal attack to creeping about the bushes but he sensed that he was going to do more good by stealth here than by confrontation.
He winked lecherously and said, ‘Just wondering if you’d fancy a sentimental rendezvous in yon changing-room, that’s all.’
She let out a good honest laugh. That was another thing he’d liked about her. She wasn’t one of your parakeet screechers.
‘No,’ she resumed. ‘I’m never up long enough for that. Just the odd weekend, see the kids. He’s married now, Patrick. He married a vicar’s daughter, ultra-respectable you see, to make up for his wicked old mama! She’s a nice girl. I’m made very welcome, but a couple of nights is enough. I don’t know how I stuck it in that great barn of a place for so long.’
‘Is it that big?’
She considered.
‘Not really, I suppose. Half a dozen bedrooms. Absurd for just two people, and it’d need quite a family to fill it. But there’s nothing outside. Just that huge bloody garden. Garden! More like a park. And when you get out of that you’re in fields and woods and things. It must be a good mile to the next house.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t sell it,’ said Dalziel, pouring himself more tea.
‘Oh, I did. Well, nearly. I did the right thing, timed it nicely so that Patrick would have finished his “O” levels. That seemed a good time to make the break. He was talking about going into accountancy and it seemed to me he could carry on his studies as easily down here as up there. But it didn’t work out.’
She glanced at her watch. Dalziel, untypically
sensitive, weighed up the merits of carrying on now or trying to resume later. The latter was a gamble. If she turned him down, it’d be difficult to resume this oblique interrogation here and now without looking very suspicious. On the other hand, the easing effect of a few drinks might work wonders. And he discovered in himself a genuine desire to see Penny Highsmith again at a personal level.
‘I’m holding you back,’ he said, levering himself out of the chair. ‘I was wondering if I could see you again. It’d be grand to have a proper crack, and besides, us country bumpkins need someone to show us round the bright lights and make sure we don’t get ripped off.’
‘Ripped off? You?’ she mocked. ‘It’d be like ripping off concrete paving!’
‘I’m all soft underneath,’ he grinned. ‘Well?’
She hesitated.
‘Look, I’m tied up tonight,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m pretty busy all this week.’
Shit, he thought. I should’ve sat tight.
‘But I can manage Friday if that’s any good?’
He thought rapidly. This was the last night of the conference. There was a farewell banquet which meant lots of tedious speeches. The guest of honour was some superannuated judge talking about modern interpretations of the law. God, he’d wasted more time in his job listening to them boring old farts rambling on than he’d had hot dinners, and a combination of both didn’t appeal.
‘That’ll be grand,’ he said. ‘Eight o’clock suit? Right. And why don’t you book us in somewhere nice and cosy to eat to start with? If you leave it to me, you’ll likely end up in a chippy!’
At the door he paused. One more question, perhaps his last. It’d be easy enough for her to change her mind on mature reflection and leave a message for him at the Yard, cancelling the date.
‘You never said why you didn’t sell that house,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you find a buyer?’
‘No, it wasn’t that. I found a buyer all right. It was all settled bar the exchange of contracts.’
‘And?’ prompted Dalziel.
‘He died,’ said Penelope Highsmith.
14
NEMESIS
(Dwarf pompom. Small flowers, purply-crimson with coppery shadings, clustered on strong young shoots.)
‘We have to know their names,’ said Wield.
Singh’s face twisted into a dark mask of distress.
‘But why?’ he said. ‘When I spoke to you yesterday, you didn’t ask. And I told ’em it had nowt to do with scratching them cars.’
‘It’s an offence,’ insisted Wield.
‘I know it’s an offence, but I thought you were just interested in her in the Polo, Mrs Aldermann.’
‘It’s not up to you to decide who we’re interested in,’ snapped Wield. ‘You just administer the law, obey orders and keep your nose clean, that’s what’s up to you.’
Why does he hate me so much? wondered Singh unhappily. When he had confessed his bit of detection work the previous day, he thought there had been a flicker of approval or at least interest in the sergeant’s eyes. But now there was nothing, just that intimidating indifference which could only be a cover for dislike.
Wield stared blankly at the youth and wished to hell that the interview were over. From the moment he first laid eyes on the boy, he’d resolved to have as little to do with him as possible. Normally it would have been a resolution easy to keep as cadets usually only made a superficial contact with CID work. But fate and Dalziel and Pascoe had decided otherwise. And the more he saw of Singh, the more his first response was confirmed. He loved him. No! His mind baulked at the word. He was attracted, infatuated … he didn’t know what he was. He only knew it was dangerous.
It was almost a year since the long affair which he’d begun to believe was permanent had come to an end. Separation had killed it, not for him but for his friend whose job had taken him a hundred miles away. Wield on his motor-bike had made light of the distance and his irregular and uncertain hours had seemed to justify that he was usually the one who made the journey. Later he had analysed that perhaps he had preferred to make the journey, perhaps even preferred that there was a journey to make, because it kept his job and life in such very distinct compartments. But the other man had needed proximity. The affair had withered and died.
There had been a period of reappraisal. Bitterness and self-disgust had brought him close to the point of throwing discretion to the winds and coming out into the open. But he had pulled up short, as always. The price of openness was his job. He knew all about his legal rights and all about modern liberated attitudes, but he also knew that as far as Mid-Yorkshire CID went, his career would be at an end. What else did he have at the moment? Nothing. He did his job, pursued his conventional social life such as it was, worked for his next police examination, watched television and sought imaginative release in his one literary passion, the novels of H. Rider Haggard, particularly those featuring the ugly little hunter, Alan Quartermain, who always seemed to be surrounded by strikingly handsome young men. He didn’t think of it as sublimation for he didn’t think in such terms. Ultimately he felt in perfect control of his life; in an emotional limbo, yes – but in control.
One day there would be someone else. Wield was certain of that. But he was not a man for rapid or temporary attachments. One day there would be someone; someone his equal in age and maturity; someone his equal in discretion.
And now the horror of finding his emotions assaulted by the simple sight of a mere boy! And for it to happen at the very centre of that area of his life he kept most separate from his deepest emotions signalled the gravest danger.
So now here he was once again playing the hard-nosed cop, and not even certain why. Pascoe had spoken to Dalziel on the telephone the previous evening and this morning had announced that the youths had to be brought in.
‘Come on, lad,’ said Wield. ‘Don’t muck about. These lads need to be questioned by someone who knows what he’s at.’
‘But that’s all?’ said Singh, looking for a crumb of comfort. ‘Just more questioning about what they saw? You’re not going to do them for damaging the car?’
It would have been easy for Wield to say no. But he was far from sure it was true, not if they copped an admission. And in any case the boy had to learn to face up to that shift in the centre of balance of loyalties that took place when you joined the Force.
And finally it might teach him to duck out of sight when he saw Wield coming, which would cool things down all round.
‘There’s no saying what Mr Pascoe’ll decide,’ he said heavily. But touched beyond bearing by the boy’s unconcealable worry, he heard himself adding, ‘But it’d need an admission before there was any chance of a case, and they’ll likely know better than that if they watch a lot of telly, won’t they?’
Singh’s face cleared slightly.
‘I only know two of them by name,’ he said. ‘They were mates of mine at school. Mick Feaver and Jonty, that’s John, Marsh.’
‘Feaver and Marsh,’ said Pascoe. ‘Anything known.’
‘Nothing on Feaver. A bit of juvenile stuff on Marsh, nothing serious. But his family’s always been a bit on the wild side, and you’ll likely know one of his older brothers, Arthur.’
‘Arthur Marsh. Rings a bell. Fill me in.’
Wield, anticipating the questions, produced a file.
‘Lots of juvenile stuff again. Then got done for nicking things from houses where he’d been called in as a TV repair man. Sacked from his job, suspended sentence, started breaking in and nicking the TV sets themselves. Sent down for eighteen months. Out, another repair job, firm went bust, redundant, dole, six months ago he got done for an unemployment fiddle, claiming full benefit when he was doing a bit of work on the side.’
Wield ran his eye down the sheet and grinned.
‘He had a bit of bad luck there,’ he said. ‘He was doing a bit of labouring work, helping lay a lawn for a fellow who turned out to be someone important at the Social Security office.
He sees Arthur and his mates getting down to work that morning, then later the same day he spots him in a queue for benefit!’
‘Tough,’ said Pascoe. ‘What did he get?’
‘Fined,’ said Wield. ‘Likely he’ll claim supplementary benefit to pay for it.’
‘This confirms what young Singh thought,’ Pascoe said. ‘Marsh’ll be the harder nut. Let’s see him first, leave Feaver to stew a bit.’
‘Right,’ said Wield. ‘Interview room?’
‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘Bring him up here. And don’t mention his brother or anything like that. Let’s follow the road Cadet Singh opened up and get him believing he’s got us believing he’s just a good citizen, right?’
A few minutes later, Jonty Marsh strutted in, cocky but watchful.
‘Sit down, Mr Marsh,’ said Pascoe. ‘Thank you for coming.’
Over the next couple of minutes, Pascoe carefully fed the youth’s cockiness by playing up the important witness angle till eventually the watchfulness had almost faded away.
Wield sat quietly by, admiring Pascoe’s technique, while the Inspector took the youth through the events in the car park up to the moment when Daphne Aldermann got out of her car. Then by the flicker of an eye, he invited Wield to take over. Wield wasn’t quite sure why, but he continued along the obvious lines, pressing Marsh about the car that Mrs Aldermann had got into. Marsh affirmed it was a BMW, but under Wield’s probing rather sulkily admitted that he wasn’t sure and was merely echoing Mick Feaver’s certainty. But he now did recall that it was a dark blue car and confirmed what he had told Singh, that it had tinted glass windows.
When he had taken the questioning as far as the disappearance of the dark blue BMW, he paused and Pascoe produced a packet of cigarettes, and offered the youth one.
‘That’s good, Jonty,’ he said approvingly. ‘All right if I call you Jonty? First rate. I wish all our witnesses were as clear. So, to get it straight, you can positively identify the green VW Polo that the woman got out of as the same Polo that got scratched?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Marsh puffing at his cigarette. ‘Definitely.’
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