Death Comes for the Fat Man

by Reginald Hill

  The following day, Pascoe was back at work.

  Ellie, as omnivident as Wield had feared, did not take long to find out about the expedition to Mill Street.

  She’d been too deeply immersed in her writing to pay much heed when Pascoe and Tig returned from their walk. A swim in the river had removed all the ashy evidence from the dog’s coat and Ellie’s creative absorption had given Pascoe plenty of time to brush the telltale dust from his shoes and turn-ups. But when she came down from Parnassus to find him in the garage, carefully sawing a bolus of melted plastic in half, her suspicions were instantly roused and a very little application of that wifely knife, deep questioning, soon probed the truth out of him almost at the same time as he probed a small lump of impacted metal out of the plastic.

  “Wait till I see Edgar!” she threatened, her anger evidenced by her use of the sergeant’s first name instead of the usual Wieldy.

  “Not his fault,” said Pascoe loyally. “I’m his superior officer. I ordered him.”

  “Hah!” said Ellie, conveying her low estimate of the authority of orders from such a tainted source. Then, sensing that her husband was less concerned about her wrath at the discovery of his perfidy than he ought to be, she said, “So what have you got there?”

  “I would say it’s probably a bullet,” said Pascoe, holding the distorted sphere of metal to the light. “From a gun.”

  “I know where bullets come from.”

  “I’m sure you do. But this is a rather special gun. It’s invisible to a CAT’s eye, you see. Of course, it might just be a metal spool in a cassette, melted by the heat.”

  She detected that this rider owed more to superstition than to doubt.

  “So what does it mean?” she said.

  “I’ve no idea. But it could prove something which in the past only the most fanciful of speculators have even dared hint the possibility of. Hector might have got something right. What’s for tea?”

  Next morning he was up at his normal time. Ellie, like a master tactician knew when protest was pointless and fed him his breakfast without comment, except to say as he kissed her good-bye, “Pete, you’re not going to do anything silly, are you?”

  “Good Lord, no,” he said. “This could be evidence. I’ll hand it over to Glenister.”

  But not, he added silently to himself, before I’ve made sure it really is evidence!

  Which was why his first call was not at the Station but at the Police Laboratory, where he made it monosyllabically clear to Tony Pollock, the head technician, that he didn’t want it done soon, he wanted it done now.

  As a lifelong Leeds United supporter, Pollock was well equipped to deal with whatever crap life could hurl, but even he remarked to his assistant, “With that fat bastard in a coma I thought we might get a bit of peace and quiet from CID.”

  “Aye,” said the assistant. Adding, not unimpressed, “Never would have thought the DCI knew words like that.”

  The result was what Pascoe had hoped for, what he’d expected.

  He found Sandy Glenister once more sitting behind Dalziel’s desk.

  “Peter!” she said with the warm smile. “I wondered if we’d see you today. Dave mentioned seeing you in Mill Street and he thought you looked really well.”

  “Yes, I’m feeling much better,” said Pascoe. “Look, something a bit odd. My dog was rooting around in the debris…”

  He contrived to suggest that Tig had carried the melted plastic all the way home and chewed the bullet out of it.

  “Interesting,” said Glenister. “Probably nothing, but if you leave it with me, I’ll have our people check it out at the lab.”

  “Been there, done that, got the report,” said Pascoe. “Definitely a bullet. In fact, almost certainly a nine-millimeter Nato parabellum, possibly fired from a Beretta semiautomatic pistol, ninety-two series.”

  He opened his briefcase, took out the evidence bag containing the bullet and the envelope containing the lab analysis, and set them neatly on the desk before her.

  She looked down at them but didn’t touch them.

  “I see,” she said slowly. “Well, you have hit the ground running, haven’t you? So what do you make of it?”

  She hadn’t invited him to sit but he did so now while it was still a matter of choice rather than a necessity caused by his dicky knee.

  “It’s obvious. A gun was fired, Hector heard the shot, the round finished up in one of the videocassettes. The big question is, what happened to the gun?”

  Glenister sat back and steepled her fingers against her nose. Then she opened her hands and put them behind her head, the movement raising her pompion breasts in a manner which Pascoe had to make an effort not to find distracting.

  She smiled at him and said, “Perhaps the big question should be left till we’ve looked at the wee ones. Firstly I’ll need to get our CAT experts to confirm the findings of your local technicians. No reflection on their ability, you understand, but we’ve all got our specialisms…Having established it is a bullet, I will want them to look at this piece of plastic you say it came out of. You still have it, I take it?”

  “Yes, it’s at home.”

  “So you didn’t take it to your lab? Perhaps as well. Our people prefer to start from scratch without having to contend with any damage earlier less subtle attempts at examination might have made.”

  Pascoe thought of the rusty clamp in his garage and the rather blunt hacksaw he’d used to get the bullet out.

  “And if they confirm it’s a bullet in a melted videocassette…?” he asked.

  “Then we must ask how and when it got there. There may be no way of confirming it was fired from a gun on those premises on the same day as the explosion…”

  “It fits with what Hector heard!”

  “Oh aye. Hector!” she said mockingly.

  Pascoe again found himself reacting to this knee-jerk dismissal of the constable.

  He said, “Look, just because Hector’s pre-digital doesn’t mean he doesn’t function. He’s managed to identify one of the men he saw, hasn’t he? OK, description wise he’s no great shakes, but find the right picture and he could still pick out the other.”

  His fervor seemed to impress Glenister.

  “You know your own men best, Peter,” she said. “All right. Let’s say he did hear a gunshot and that this is indeed the bullet that was fired. This brings us to what you call the big question. Where’s the gun? Well, you’ve supplied one answer, you and your dog.”

  “You mean it might have been missed?”

  “This was,” said Glenister, lowering her hands to touch the evidence bag. “We sifted the debris thoroughly, of course, but what we were looking for were indications of the nature of the explosion, the kinds of explosive used, their possible source. Plus, of course, body parts, remnants of clothing, etcetera that could help identify the men killed. If there were a gun at or near the center of the explosion, it could simply have disintegrated and its fragments been distorted unrecognizably by the subsequent heat.”

  “Unrecognizably? Not very likely, is it?” exclaimed Pascoe. “Not unless your people aren’t as finicky as we like to be in Yorkshire.”

  “Peter,” she said gently. “You’ve done well, but before you slag off the efforts of others, don’t forget it was a stroke of sheer luck that put you on this track. I’ll find where the council are dumping the debris and make my people go over it again. OK?”

  Before he could respond, the door was pushed open and Freeman said, “Sorry, didn’t know you had company. Sandy, we need to speak.”

  Glenister gave a little frown. Maybe she objected to Freeman’s rather peremptory tone in the presence of a native. Who was it held the whip hand in this weird twilight zone the CAT people inhabited? Pascoe wondered.

  She said, “Can it wait a moment, Dave?”

  “No.”

  Well, that was certainly the sound of a whip crack, thought Pascoe.

  Glenister said, “Peter, let’s continue this l
ater, all right?”

  “Why not? I’ll see if I can fit you in,” he said. “Dave, good to see you again.”

  He left, closing the door firmly behind him and resisting a strong temptation to press his ear to the woodwork.

  Instead he went to see Wield and put him in the picture about the bullet.

  His reaction was familiar.

  “So Hector could’ve been right. Had to happen! What’s Sandy going to do?”

  “Fuck knows,” said Pascoe. “Get her own examination done, then probably kick the whole thing into touch if it doesn’t fit her agenda.”

  “Pete, you’ve got to wait and see,” protested Wield. “Like I told you yesterday, she really seems to be treading on eggshells to make sure we don’t feel sidelined.”

  “You reckon? Well, I think pretty soon you’re going to hear a great deal of crunching underfoot. Something’s happened, and us being on the need-to-know list is even less likely than Hector getting things right. And if you’d care to bet on that, I’ll just run home and get the deeds of the house!”

  A man who had left a garden hammock to get blown up on an English Bank Holiday should have learned to distrust certainties.

  Fortunately Wield didn’t take the bet. Fifteen minutes later Pascoe got a summons to the CAT Ops Room. When he arrived he was met by men coming out carrying computer equipment. Inside he found Glenister talking animatedly into the scrambler phone. As he approached she finished speaking and handed the receiver to one of her men, who unplugged the phone and put it into a box.

  “You’re moving out?” said Pascoe.

  “Yes, we’re on our way. Wouldn’t have been long anyway, we were just about done here, but something’s happened. What do you know about Said Mazraani?”

  “Just what I’ve seen and read. Lebanese academic, teaches at Manchester, good looking, talks well, dresses smart, claims high-level contacts throughout the Middle East. In other words, all the right qualifications for getting on the talking-head shows whenever they want an apparently rational Muslim extremist viewpoint. What the papers called the acceptable face of terrorism until he blotted his copybook with Paxman.”

  This had been the previous month, after the kidnapping and videoed execution of an English businessman called Stanley Coker. Mazraani had been trotted out to give an insight into the motives and mind-set of the kidnappers, a group calling themselves the Sword of the Prophet. He prefaced his remarks with a fulsome expression of sympathy for the dead man’s family, which he repeated when asked if he unreservedly condemned the killing. “Very nice of you,” said Paxman. “But do you condemn the killing?” Again the verbiage, again the question. And again, and again. And never a direct answer came.

  Next day the papers went to town, led as always by the People’s Voice.

  The People’s Voice, the youngest and fastest-growing of the tabloids, was in fact not so much the voice of the people as the rant of the slightly pissed know-it-all in the saloon bar who isn’t fooled by government statements, legal verdicts, historical analyses, or forensic evidence, but knows what he knows, and knows he’s right!

  The Voice headline screamed:

  BEHEADING HOSTAGES IS OK!

  (SO LONG AS IT’S DONE IN THE BEST OF POSSIBLE TASTE)

  “That’s the one,” said Glenister. “Well, barring miracles, he’s done his last talking-head show. For the past two days there’s been a rumor that Al Jazeera received a tape showing an execution, a beheading. But not a western hostage this time. A Muslim.”

  “So? In Iraq they’ve shown little compunction about killing their own.” Then it came to him what she was saying. “You don’t mean…”

  “This morning the BBC, ITV, and Sky all received copies of what is presumably the same tape. Yes, it’s definitely Mazraani. He hadn’t been seen in any of his usual haunts for several days. We sent a team to visit his flat in Manchester. They were told to be discreet but there was already enough of a smell to bother the neighbors. He was in there, him and his head, quite close but not touching. Plus another man not known to us.”

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Pascoe. “Was he beheaded too?”

  “No. Shot. They want me back over there now. Mazraani was on my worksheet.”

  “This sounds like big trouble,” said Pascoe.

  “More than you can imagine,” she said grimly.

  “Well, thanks for bringing me up to date…” he began.

  “That’s not why I sent for you,” she interrupted. “It will be in the papers anyway. Al Jazeera have said they’re going to broadcast today. No, what I wanted to say, Peter, was I’ve asked Dan Trimble if I can take you with us. He says fine, if you feel up to it.”

  Pascoe was gobsmacked and made no attempt to hide it.

  “But why…?” he managed.

  “Peter, I can’t be certain but I’ve got a feeling there might be some link with what happened here. Being as involved as you are usually means that judgments get blurred, corners cut. But from what I’ve seen, I get the impression it’s just tightened your focus, heightened your responses. If there are any connections, could be you’re the one most likely to sniff them out. So what do you say? Couple of days can’t hurt, and you’ll only be an hour or so’s drive away.”

  Pascoe hesitated, finding this hard to take in. He was given breathing space by the appearance of Freeman, who gave Glenister a file and Pascoe a flicker of those cold eyes before disappearing.

  “You say you’ve cleared this with the Chief?” he said. “What about your bosses?”

  “They’re fine with it.”

  He found himself reluctant to accept the unanimity of this vote of confidence.

  “And Freeman? I bet he jumped for joy.”

  “Not the jumping kind,” she said with a smile. “Though in fact it was Dave who put the idea in my head. You’ve made a big impression there.”

  This got zanier.

  He said, “I’ll need to talk to…people…”

  “Your wife? She struck me as a sensible woman. I’ll have a word if you like, assure her I’ll take good care of you.”

  Pascoe smiled.

  “No, I’ll take care of that,” he said.

  “That’s a yes then. Good. Go and get packed.”

  As Pascoe moved away he wondered what Glenister would have said if he’d told her that what really worried him was the prospect of admitting to Wield that he’d got it absolutely wrong.

  The sergeant didn’t gloat. That wasn’t his thing, but he surprised Pascoe by saying, “Pete, watch your back out there.”

  “Watch my back? It’s Manchester I’m going to, Wieldy, not Marrakesh.”

  “So? There’s funny buggers in Manchester too,” said Wield. “You take care.”

  PART THREE

  Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr’d

  By thwarting signs, and braves

  The freshening wind and blackening waves.

  And then the tempest strikes him; and between

  The lightning bursts is seen

  Only a driving wreck,

  And the pale master on his spar-strew-deck

  With anguish’d face and flying hair

  Grasping the rudder hard,

  Still bent to make some port he knows not where,

  Still standing for some false, impossible shore.

  —MATTHEW ARNOLD,

  “A SUMMER NIGHT”

  1

  LUBYANKA

  Manchester is monumental in a way that no other northern town quite manages. You can feel it flexing its muscles and saying, I’m a big city, better step aside. The building which housed CAT had all the family traits. It was solid granite, its tall façade as unyielding as a hanging judge’s face. Carved into a massive block alongside a main entrance that wouldn’t have disgraced a crusader’s castle were the words THE SEMPITERNAL BUILDING.

  “Tempting fate a bit, aren’t you?” said Pascoe as he and Glenister approached.

  She laughed and said, “Not us. It was a Victorian insuranc
e company. Went bust during the great crash, so they paid for their hubris. It’s been used for lots of things since then. We took it over three years ago. Most of your new colleagues refer to it as the Lubyanka, the Lube for short. Whether that’s tempting fate or not we’ve yet to see.”

  They went into a wide foyer that looked conventional enough until you noticed that further progress could only be made through security gates with metal detectors, X-ray screening, and large men in attendance. There were almost certainly cameras in operation too, thought Pascoe, though he couldn’t spot them. Perhaps they were hidden among the summer blooms that filled what looked like an old horse trough standing incongruously at the foyer’s center.

  At the reception desk, Pascoe was issued a security tag with a complex fastening device.

  “Don’t take it off till you’re leaving,” said Glenister. “They’re self-alarmed the minute you pass through the gate. Removal anywhere but the desk sets bells ringing.”

  “Why would I want to take it off?”

  “Why indeed? It’s to stop anyone taking it off you.”

  She said it without her customary smile. Necessary precaution or just self-inflating paranoia? wondered Pascoe.

  They went straight into a room with twenty chairs set in four rows of five before a large TV screen. Pascoe and Glenister took seats in the second row. He glanced round to see Freeman in the row behind. Was this indicative of a pecking order? And if so, did they peck from the front as in a theater or from the rear as in a cinema?

  As if in answer, the man sitting directly in front turned round and smiled at him. Pascoe recognized him instantly. His name was Bernie Bloomfield, his rank was Commander, and the last time Pascoe saw him, he’d been giving a lecture on criminal demography at an Interpol conference. If he hadn’t pursued a police career, he might well have filled the gap left by that most sadly missed of British actors, Alastair Sim.

  “Peter, good to see you again,” said Bloomfield.

  For a moment Pascoe was flattered, then he remembered his security label.

  “You too, sir,” he said. “Didn’t realize you were in charge here.”