‘It’s the kind of daft thing you might do,’ agreed Wield. ‘Especially if you’d had a good liquid lunch down at the Conservative Club, moaning with your mates about what an idle sod the British working man had become.’
Pascoe laughed and said, ‘You haven’t been talking to my wife by any chance? But it could be worth checking. This and the vicar’s are the ones which come closest to being “suspicious” deaths and the more we can disperse the suspicion, the sooner we can forget the whole business.’
‘How can you check something like that at this distance?’ queried Wield. ‘There’s no mention of booze in the inquest report, is there?’
‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘But in the circumstances – accident at home, wife greatly distressed, etcetera – the coroner might be inclined to muffle any hint that the deceased was stoned. It was Mr Wellington presiding, I see. You know him?’
This was in response to a small earth-tremor of Wield’s features.
‘He once bollocked me for being cheeky under his examination,’ said Wield.
‘Good. Then as you’re old friends, you can chat to him,’ said Pascoe.
He made a note on his desk pad.
‘Finally, the first two I looked at. Brian Bulmer who crashed his car after the office party last Christmas. Definitely booze there, I’m afraid. No one else involved, no witnesses. He seems to have lost control on black ice and hit a bollard. He was Perfecta’s financial director, remember? And at the beginning of May, Timothy Eagles, the chief accountant and Aldermann’s chief rival for elevation to the board, had a heart attack. He was found in a washroom by the night security guard doing his first rounds at eight P.M. He was dressed for going home. He’d said goodnight to his secretary who’d left dead on time, leaving him to sign a couple of letters. Presumably he then got ready, felt ill, either in the washroom or perhaps made his way there for a drink of water, collapsed and was unfortunately not discovered till too late for medical help.’
‘Aldermann was his assistant, wasn’t he?’ said Wield. ‘Using the same washroom?’
‘I believe so. Spell it out, Sergeant.’
Wield said, ‘Aldermann on his way home finds Eagles having his attack. Instead of calling for help, he closes the door and goes on his way.’
Pascoe whistled and quoted, ‘Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive officiously to keep alive. A bit cold-blooded! You’ve met him, what do you think? Could he do it?’
‘It’s easier than murder,’ said Wield.
‘Is it? I’m not sure. The strong human instinct is to help.’
‘You try telling that to old ladies who see people peeking out of their windows as they get mugged,’ said the sergeant. ‘They’d tell you about human instincts!’
Pascoe said, ‘I suppose so,’ and stared in irritation at the papers strewn across his desk. All this, as Dalziel would say, was neither owt nor nowt and it was beginning to get on his nerves. All he could do was keep digging till either something positive came up or the weight of negatives gave him the excuse to leave off. But all the time he dug he was aware of the danger of causing distress and creating talk without the justification of a result to show for it.
But there was no choice, really. Either you did the job or you didn’t. He began ticking off the next stages in his mind – talk to Masson, visit Capstick again, interview Christopher Burke’s widow, see Elgood – and let out a long deep sigh.
‘You all right, sir?’ asked Wield.
‘Bloody marvellous,’ said Pascoe. ‘It’s just that sometimes I get this awful feeling that if I’m not careful, I may turn into a policeman.’
3
BLACK BOY
(Shrub. Modern variety with an Old Rose Fragrance.
Purple shading, double flowers, high growing.)
Police Cadet Shaheed Singh too was beginning to have serious doubts about the wisdom of his choice of career.
His superiors were far from encouraging. He had not been surprised to find in his course-instructors that combination of hectoring sarcasm and patronizing familiarity which he remembered from his not too distant schooldays, but he’d looked for something different from the working cops he met on his four weeks’ attachment.
Well, he’d found it. Inspectors and sergeants of the uniform branch were not unhelpful but seemed to take it as axiomatic that he was thick and idle. As for the CID, Mr Dalziel terrified him, Sergeant Wield clearly hated him and even the amiable Mr Pascoe seemed to have developed some of Dalziel’s brusqueness in his superior’s absence.
At the constable level, while he had a friendly, jokey relationship with most of the PCs, he found their instinctive if unmalicious racism very trying. Even George Wedderburn, with whom he spent most mornings sorting out the traffic at the market roundabout, had taken to using him as a kind of personal servant.
‘Here, young Shady,’ he’d said this morning, glancing at his watch, ‘it’s slackening off. You cut along, get me twenty Park Drive and a Mirror, and get the teas set up in the Caff, OK? And no sloping off for a bit of how’s-your-father!’
This jocular injunction dated from his lateness the morning he had visited the car park. After Wedderburn had got over his annoyance, he had affected to believe that Singh’s halting explanation was a cover-up for an amorous rendezvous. Constable Grainger, still smarting from Singh’s jokes about his weight, had knowledge-ably opined, ‘Aye, they can’t do without it, these darkies. They’re at it all the time where they come from. It’s the heat, tha’ knows, and them loin-cloths.’
A sociologist would have seen this as a classic manifestation of the white man’s feeling of cultural superiority and sexual inferiority, but Singh had just grinned and gone on his way, secretly wishing that these allegations about his active sex life were even partially true.
As he came out of the tobacconist’s with Wedderburn’s paper and cigarettes and began to cross the market place, he encountered two more reasons for self doubt.
The first was a young man with very long hair, wearing faded jeans and a grubby T-shirt printed with a clenched fist and pinned with CND and Stuff-The-Tories badges. He was handing out pamphlets headlined Police Brutality – The Facts. He looked at Singh’s uniform and bared his teeth in a defiant sneer as the boy passed.
On the other side of the market place, Singh met another young man. This one had very short hair and was wearing faded jeans and a grubby T-shirt on which was printed a large Union Jack. He was handing out pamphlets headlined Immigration – The Facts. He looked at Singh’s face and bared his teeth in a contemptuous sneer as he passed.
The Market Caff with its steamed-up windows and inadequate fan, which seemed to act on the bacon fat odours and loud Yorkshire breath which filled the air as an electric whisk acts on cream, thickening the mixture rather than dispersing it, loomed ahead like a sanctuary this morning. But before he could pass through the door and inhale its turgid incense, he felt his arm seized.
‘Hello, Shady. You all right?’
Singh turned and found himself facing Mick Feaver. He viewed him with grave suspicion.
‘I’m all right. What do you want, Mick?’ he asked brusquely.
‘Just a word.’
It dawned on Singh that far from being menacing, Feaver looked as if he could do with some comfort himself. His usual uncertain expression was exaggerated to the point of extra anxiety, though perhaps this was partly due to the physical underlining given by a bruised cheek and a split lip.
Someone came out of the Caff, and through the open door, Singh ascertained that PC Wedderburn had not yet arrived.
‘I’m just going to have a mug of tea,’ he said. ‘Fancy one?’
He didn’t wait for an answer but went into the Caff. At the counter, he found Feaver close behind. He ordered three mugs of tea and Wedderburn’s usual chocolate wafer bar.
‘Fetch them two,’ he instructed, and picking up one mug and the wafer bar he went in search of a seat.
Mrs Pascoe was here again, he noted, with her
baby. He wondered if Mrs Aldermann was coming too and whether she would recognize Mick Feaver as one of the youths in the car park. But it was too late, or too soon, to worry. Mrs Pascoe spotted him and gave him a friendly smile. The only two empty chairs in the place seemed to be at her table, but fortunately a group of market workers began to extract themselves grumbling from a distant corner and he was able to divert to the vacant seats.
Mick Feaver didn’t seem disposed to open the conversation and though Singh’s natural inclination was to outlast his silence, he guessed that anything the lad was likely to say would have to be said before Wedderburn arrived.
He indicated the third mug and the chocolate wafer and said, ‘He’ll be along just now.’
‘Yes,’ said Feaver. ‘Look, Shady, thanks for saying what you did at the nick yesterday.’
‘Saying what I did?’ said Singh in puzzlement.
‘Yeah. That copper, not the ugly one, the other, he said someone had put in a good word for us and I knew it could only be you.’
‘Oh aye,’ said Singh. ‘Well, that’s all right.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen, is it?’ pursued Feaver.
‘What about?’
‘About scratching them cars.’
‘Oh no,’ said Singh who had received his assurance, albeit in what he regarded as a typically grudging fashion, from Sergeant Wield.
‘We both admitted it. That Pascoe fellow said we both admitted it. He stressed it, like. Both of us, not just one.’
Singh listened to the protesting tone and began to get some feel of what this was about.
‘That’s right,’ he agreed again.
‘That wanker, Marsh, he told the others it were just me. He said it were me as blew the whistle on all of them.’
‘Aye, that’s Jonty,’ said Singh philosophically. ‘Always liked to look big.’
His philosophy was not infectious and Feaver said angrily, ‘Big mouth, that’s what’s big about him. He’s been saying things about you as well. He says you’re dead friendly when you’re chatting to your old mates but then you go straight down the nick and tell ’em everything you’ve heard.’
‘Is that what he says?’ said Singh.
Feaver was obviously disappointed in the reaction and said viciously, ‘The black pig, that’s what he calls you. The black pig.’
Singh sipped his tea. It was strong and rather tannic, nothing like the delicate infusions which his mother would be serving up at regular intervals during the day to his father in the shop. His father was a gentle but strong-minded man who took family obedience as his natural right and Singh had no quarrel with that. But something in him, or perhaps something outside of him in his Western environment, had resisted the idea of being a lifelong underling, which was what helping in the shop would entail, so he had joined the police cadets. To turn back now would be difficult, almost impossible. But as he sat here in this miasmic atmosphere and learned how short a step it had been from ‘old Shady Singh’ to ‘the black pig’, he yearned to be in his father’s shop, receiving meticulous instructions on the best method of stacking tins on the long shelves.
‘You put ’em right, though, Mick?’ he said. ‘About what really happened.’
‘That’s a laugh,’ said Feaver, fingering his cut lip. ‘This is what I got when I saw them wankers last night. You’re all right, but. They daren’t touch you.’
His tone was envious, accusing, scornful. It left Singh no route back to their old, casual, uncomplicated school-days friendship.
‘Do you want to make a complaint,’ he said formally.
‘No, what good’d that do?’ said Feaver surlily.
What good indeed? wondered Singh. Over Feaver’s shoulder he saw Mrs Pascoe who had been glancing impatiently at her watch rise suddenly and organize the baby into her papoose basket. She caught his eye, smiled a farewell, and made for the door. As she passed through it, Singh glimpsed the solid frame of George Wedderburn talking to some old acquaintance on one of the open vegetable stalls facing the Caff.
‘My mate’s on his way,’ he said. ‘He’ll be here in half a minute.’
‘It’s Jonty Marsh,’ said Feaver in a sudden rush. ‘You know how he’s always going on about his brother, Arthur, what a hard case he is and all that?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’
‘Well, a week back, while I was still knocking around with that lot, Jimmy Bright said something about Arthur, like, what’s he doing now? something like that. And Jonty said, keeping busy, but like, he meant more. And Jimmy said, you mean he’s nicking stuff like before? And Jonty said no, that lark’s for kids like you; you know, sounding big again. And it got up Jimmy’s nose and he said, well, he got nicked doing kid’s stuff, didn’t he? So how’s he managing to do something really clever all by himself? And Jonty got narked and said there was a few of them in it and it was big operations they did, not just breaking kitchen windows and nicking a few transistors, but big houses with good stuff they needed a van to cart away.’
He paused and Singh looked into his tea mug because he couldn’t look at Mick Feaver, this weak, uncertain but basically good-humoured lad whom they’d all tended to protect a bit, and who was now his first grass. His silence worked where words might not have done, for after one deep breath, Feaver took the final large step, from the general to the particular.
‘He said that Arthur had invited him on the next job. He said they were short-handed because there’d been a bit of an accident. Jimmy said it was all a load of crap, anyone could say that, and next time there was a big job say they’d been on it. So Jonty said all right, it was the first weekend in July and if Jimmy could read the papers, he’d read all about it. The first weekend in July and the house was called Rosemont.’
He was finished. The door opened and Wedderburn came in. Mick Feaver stood up and Singh raised his eyes till they met the boy’s gaze.
‘See you,’ he said abruptly and turned and left, pushing by George Wedderburn violently enough to make the big policeman glare after him.
‘Mate of yours?’ he said, sitting himself in the chair vacated by Feaver.
‘That’s right,’ said Singh, looking at the closed door. ‘Just an old mate, that’s all.’
4
BLUSH RAMBLER
(Climber. Very vigorous, flowers profuse in summer but little thereafter, blush pink, large-headed, resistant to weather but not to mildew.)
Pascoe approached the offices of Masson, Masson, Grey and Coatbridge, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths, with no great expectation of success. It was a sad fact that the Law’s guardians and the Law’s practitioners generally regarded each other with a great deal of mutual suspicion. Only the readiness with which Mr Edgar Masson had agreed to see him gave him any hope at all.
The reason for this readiness became apparent in the course of a chat with a very friendly Irish receptionist. Old Mr Edgar, she revealed, was the senior partner, and officially retired, but still retaining his office which he occupied most mornings, constantly devising new schemes to defeat the evasive tactics of his younger partners.
‘He’s just lonely, the poor old soul,’ said Irish. ‘You’d think they could have left him a bit of business to occupy himself with, but it’s not like it used to be, is it? When you’re old now, you just get pushed aside to make way for the young men. I like the old man myself. Many an hour we talk together, but that’s no credit to me. The poor old devil would talk to anyone who’d listen, anyone at all. He’s not at all particular. Why don’t you just go straight on up?’
So Pascoe went on up, hoping to be treated as anyone at all. He was not disappointed, the only trouble being that Mr Masson, who turned out to be a completely bald, completely round and completely rubicund seventy-five-year-old, seemed inclined to talk about anything at all. He was a living proof of the seductive power of verbal association, shooting off tangentially along new lines of thought suggested to him in mid-paragraph, even mid-sentence, as if terrified that his life might
end with things yet unspoken. The way to deal with this, Pascoe learned by trial and error, was to ignore all irrelevancies and use key phrases like Florence Aldermann and Penelope Highsmith as verbal sheepdogs to drive him back in the required direction.
After twenty minutes Pascoe had learned that there had been a will leaving the majority of Mrs Aldermann’s estate to be divided equally between the RSPCA and the Church Missionary Society, with small legacies for various individuals including her niece, Penelope Highsmith. A few days before her death, she had summoned Mr Masson to Rosemont to discuss with him a radical revision of the will which would increase her niece’s portion to some forty per cent, mainly at the expense of the RSPCA. This alteration was to be dependent upon the satisfactory conclusion of negotiations with Penny Highsmith for her to stay on at Rosemont as a sort of companion-cum-housekeeper. Nothing definite had been decided on, Mr Masson had left after what were (Pascoe did not doubt) lengthy discussions, with the understanding that Mrs Aldermann would be in touch in a few days. The old lady had retained the will.
Before she could make the promised contact, she had died.
‘In her rose-garden, it appears,’ said Mr Masson. ‘They say that gardening is a soothing and healthy pastime for old and young alike. I have not found it so. There was a case I recall in which a man sued the manufacturers of a patent garden fork which obviated, so it claimed, the risk of lumber strain …’
‘Mrs Aldermann,’ interposed Pascoe hastily. ‘Her will. Her niece.’
‘The will was not to be found,’ said Masson, who always returned to the path as if he’d never strayed off it. ‘Her niece, Mrs Highsmith (Miss Highsmith in truth, but such a nice woman, such a nice woman), said she’d never seen it. She also said she was still thinking over her aunt’s offer, but I knew Mrs Aldermann, I knew her well. It wouldn’t cross her mind that her invitation could be rejected. No, that had not been a possibility seriously considered when she spoke to me about the will. So it seemed quite clear to me that, certain of her niece’s agreement, she had destroyed the old will in anticipation of drafting a new one when we met again in a couple of days’ time. Yes, that’s what must have happened.’
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