To his horror, he saw her eyes fill. She doesn’t really believe he’s going to recover either, he thought.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the bag. “Good of you to come. You too, Rosie.”
The girl looked at her thoughtfully, then said, “I think he’d like the Scottish music now. ’Bye.”
In the corridor Pascoe said, “How did you know Cap had brought some Scottish music for Uncle Andy?”
“Didn’t she tell us?”
“No. Perhaps you saw the box.”
“That must have been it. I’m going to get Uncle Andy to teach me the sword dance when he comes home. He’s got some real claymores in his attic.”
This was true. Pascoe had seen them one night when he’d accompanied the Fat Man home for a nightcap after the enthusiastic celebration of a successful case. The nightcap had turned into a whole milliner’s shop, and something had been said which provoked Dalziel into giving a demonstration of his prowess. For ten minutes his stockinged feet had performed intricate and athletic steps between the gleaming blades of the crossed claymores without a single mistake. Finished, he had essayed a bow and toppled over across a substantial coffee table which he reduced to matchwood.
Maybe Rosie had overheard him describing the scene to Ellie.
They got directions to Hector’s ward from a nurse. As they approached, a man came from the opposite direction and began to open the door. He paused when the Pascoes halted, preparatory to following him into the room.
Through the half-open door they could see two beds, one with Hector’s unmistakable head, eyes closed, on the pillow, the other empty but looking as if it had been recently occupied.
“Damn,” said the man. “He must have gone to the dayroom. I’ll check it out.”
With a courteous smile he held the door open to allow them to pass, then closed it behind them.
They approached Hector’s bed. Sleep had smoothed his normal waking emotions of doubt and concern from the constable’s face and for a moment Pascoe saw him as he might have been if life hadn’t set such ambushes in his path.
Then the eyes opened, the old bewilderment returned, followed after a little while by recognition and an attempt thwarted by his long legs to stiffen to attention under the sheet.
“At ease,” said Pascoe. “Sorry to hear about your spot of bother, Hec. How are you doing?”
While the constable riffled his word hoard for a suitable response, Pascoe’s gaze drifted to the bedside locker. Its surface was bare except for a stub of pencil and a cheap writing pad. It stood in strong contrast with the locker by the other bed, its surface precariously crowded with a bowl of fruit, a vase of flowers, a box of chocolates and a pile of paperbacks. He recalled Hector’s appearance at his own sick bed with the custard tart and was annoyed at himself for coming empty-handed.
“Not so bad, sir,” said Hector.
“Good. Good. This is my daughter, Rosie. We’ve just been visiting Mr. Dalziel.”
Hector suddenly looked animated.
“How is he? Has he woken up?”
“Not yet, I’m afraid.”
The animation faded.
Pascoe tried to find something optimistic to say, but the words stuck in his throat.
Instead he asked, “So when can we expect you back, then?”
“Back?”
“At work. Everyone’s missing you.”
Not a lie, just an ambiguity.
“That’s nice,” said Hector. “I’m looking forward to getting back.”
“Good. But make sure you’re fit first. By all accounts it was a nasty knock you took. Have you remembered anything about the accident?”
“I thought maybe…I’m not sure…don’t think so, sir.”
This was a truly Hectorian answer.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get him. The milkman who found you gave a description of the car and it’s bound to have a dent in it.”
The door opened and a man in a dressing gown came in. He didn’t look pleased to see them and made straight for his bed.
As he climbed in, Pascoe called to him, “Did your friend find you all right?”
“What friend?”
“There was someone looking for you. He said he’d try the day room.”
“That’s where I’ve been so he can’t have tried very hard,” said the man indifferently.
He picked up a book and started to read.
Rosie said, “Is this supposed to be Brad Pitt?”
She’d picked up the writing pad and opened it.
Hector said, “No. It’s not him.”
“That’s all right then because it doesn’t look like him. The armor’s good though.”
Pascoe, knowing how sensitive Hector was about his drawing, said sharply, “Rosie, don’t be rude. You’ve no right to be looking at that anyway.”
They both looked at him in a faintly puzzled way and he realized that in fact there hadn’t been any rudeness intended nor any offense taken. It had been an exchange between children who feel no need to soften facts.
“It’s all right, sir,” said Hector.
“Well, if you don’t mind.”
He took the pad and looked at the drawing. It really was quite good. He could see why Rosie had thought of Brad Pitt. The chariot and the armored figure were strongly reminiscent of the movie Troy which he’d seen on television recently.
But it wasn’t the kind of film he’d ever let Rosie sit up to watch and when it came out a couple of years ago there was no way she’d been to see it. So how…?
One of her stopovers with friends, he thought grimly. On Friday night they’d caught the big action moment on Fidler’s Three. On other occasions where there was a DVD player built into the bedroom set, they’d probably dump the kiddie film and take a look at something “borrowed” from the parents’ collection. God knows what else Rosie had seen! He reminded himself to have a word with Ellie. Somehow his own well-honed interview techniques lost their edge when he tried to interrogate his daughter.
He gave her a promissory glower and asked, “This one of yours, Hec?”
“Yes,” said Hector defiantly, as if he’d been accused of something.
“It’s very good, though I don’t recall many cats pulling chariots in the movie.”
“It’s not a cat, silly,” said Rosie. “It’s a jaguar.”
“Is that so? I bow to your superior knowledge,” said Pascoe.
Apart from the weirdness of the beast between the shafts, there was something else about the picture…
He said, “The charioteer, if it’s not Brad Pitt…”
“It looks like the man at the door,” said Rosie, putting into words what he found almost too far-fetched to admit, let alone say.
But now it had been said, there was no doubt about it. The face staring out beneath the funny helmet was the man who’d been opening the ward door when they arrived.
He said, “What made you draw this picture, Hec?”
The constable’s eyes showed the beginnings of panic and Pascoe went on reassuringly, “It’s just that it’s so good, it’s almost like it was drawn from life. Could be really useful to someone in our line of work.”
The inclusion of Hector in the DCI’s line of work did the trick.
The panic faded and Hector said, “It was a face in my mind…someone in a sort of dream.”
“That’s really interesting.”
He wanted to lean forward closer and urge Hector to talk about his dream, but he guessed that too much pressure might be counter-productive.
He leaned back in his chair and said, “Isn’t that interesting, Rosie. You have some funny dreams too, don’t you? I bet you’d like to hear what Hec was dreaming about.”
Was it his imagination or did she look at him with a cool amusement that said clearer than words, OK, if I do this, does that get me off the hook about watching Troy?
It must have been his imagination. No child could be as super-subtle as that, not even Ellie’s daughter. Coul
d she?
She said, “I sometimes dream about playing the clarinet in a really big orchestra, and I’m doing a solo, and the conductor’s someone really famous like Simon Rattle who I saw when Mum took me to Leeds once and in my dream it looks just like him. What did you dream about, Hec?”
Hesitantly, Hector began to tell her about his dream, making the point several times that it wasn’t like an ordinary dream because he seemed to still have it when he was awake.
Pascoe thought, This is crazy. A man in a chariot pulled by a jaguar who deliberately runs him down…the milkman seeing a big car, maybe a Jag pulling away at high speed…I rest my case, m’lud. Court collapses in helpless laughter.
He stood up and took the writing pad to the other patient, covering the distracting jaguar with his thumb.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Do you recognize this man?”
The man raised his eyes from his book, said, “Yes,” and went back to his reading.
This should have been a relief. Why the hell should Hector’s subconscious mind be any more reliable than his conscious? And it was a relief insomuch as Pascoe, still smarting from Wield’s demolition of his hypothetical construction last night, shuddered at the thought that he might have tried out this latest theory on any of his colleagues.
And yet it was disappointing too. No man likes to see his fantasy, no matter how far-fetched, destroyed.
He began to turn away, then because he was famous for, as Dalziel put it, liking his eyes crossed and his teas dotted, he said, “And were you expecting him to visit you today?”
The patient looked at him with irritation.
“Eh?” he said.
“Your friend, the one who was looking for you, were you expecting to see him today?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“This man, the one in the drawing, the one you said you recognized, isn’t he your friend?”
“What’s up with you, mate? Yes, I recognize him. No, he’s not a friend. Hang about…”
He leaned over to his locker and pulled a book from the bottom of the pile of paperbacks.
“There,” he said, thrusting it into Pascoe’s hand. “That’s the fucker. Now can I get on with my reading?”
The book was called Blood on the Sand and subtitled A novel of the Iraq Wars. Its author was John T. Youngman, formerly, so Pascoe discovered when he turned the book over, of the SAS. He also noticed the publisher was Hedley-Case, the same as Ellie’s, but what really drew his eye was the photograph of the author beneath the blurb.
It wasn’t very big, passport size at most, but it was undoubtedly a picture of both the man at the door and Hector’s charioteer.
13
NO CHANGE
Pascoe moved fast.
No doubt Wield, and everyone else, would have rational explanations for all this, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
He called up Hospital Security and got a man posted outside Hector’s room.
“No one in unless they’re known to you,” he commanded. “Especially not this chap.”
He showed the photo on the back of the book he’d confiscated from the grumpy patient whose name was Mills and who was in the Central for a hemorrhoidectomy, which perhaps explained his grumpiness.
Compared with the jacket photo, Hector’s drawing gave a rather clearer picture of the man’s features, but Pascoe felt the armor and the jaguar might be a distraction.
“I’ll get one of our officers stationed here as soon as possible,” he told the security guard. “Till then, don’t budge.”
Two of the other three Security men on duty he set to checking waiting rooms and public areas just in case Youngman was still on the premises. The third he dispatched to the car park to take note of any Jaguars left there. But Pascoe had a feeling that his man was long gone.
He rang through to the Station and found Paddy Ireland on duty. When he inquired about spare bodies, the inspector began Uniformed’s standard moan about shortage of manpower and deep cuts in the overtime budget till Pascoe silenced him with, “Paddy, remember you got your knickers in a twist about Mill Street? Well, you were right then, I humbly admit it, and I apologize. But I’m right now.”
“In that case, I’ll see what I can do,” said Ireland.
A car with Alan Maycock and Joker Jennison in it appeared on the scene within ten minutes. Jennison said, “Got another fireworks display laid on for us, sir?” Maycock kicked him violently on the ankle and said, “Mr. Ireland says he’ll try and get another couple of bodies along in the next half hour.”
Pascoe said, “Thank you for that, Alan. And for the kick,” and put them to work.
He was grateful to Ireland but didn’t doubt he’d cover his own back, so it was no surprise when Chief Constable Dan Trimble showed up a quarter of an hour later, looking like a man who’d been snatched unwillingly from the bosom of his family.
“Peter, what’s going on?” he demanded. “Paddy Ireland says you think someone might be trying to kill Hector. Why in the name of God should anyone want to do that?”
Paddy’s told him what I think, thought Pascoe. But he wants to make me say it myself, and then he can bollock me for not ringing him straightaway.
Trimble listened without comment till Pascoe concluded, “I think that Hector’s accident wasn’t an accident, but someone deliberately ran him down for fear he might be able to identify the man he saw in the video shop on Mill Street. And I think the same man came here today to try and have a second bite at the cherry.”
Now the Chief spoke.
“I thought I made it clear that I was to be kept apprised of anything that could have a connection with the Mill Street explosion,” he said coldly.
“Yes, sir. And I was going to ring you just as soon as I got things sorted on the ground here. When an officer’s at risk, practicalities come before protocol, that’s what Mr. Dalziel always says.”
In fact, he couldn’t recall Fat Andy ever saying any such thing, but if he hadn’t, it was only because it was too sodding obvious to need saying.
It certainly gave Trimble pause.
“Right, then. Let’s hear about these practicalities.”
Pascoe filled him in on what he’d done, concluding, “I did a quick check with the ward staff. A couple of them recall seeing the man around the ward earlier, and one of them spotted him sitting in the dayroom reading a paper, about an hour ago.”
“I haven’t had much truck with hired assassins. Is that normal behavior?” interrupted Trimble.
“He’s not going to go around with a homburg pulled down over his eyes, carrying a violin case,” said Pascoe with some irritation. “Mr. Mills, that’s Hector’s roommate, recalls the door to their room being opened earlier this morning. Someone looked in—he didn’t see who it was—then went away. I think it was Youngman. When he realized that Hector had someone else in the same room, he went and waited quietly in the dayroom till he saw Mr. Mills come in. Then he headed back to the ward, only to find myself and Rosie arriving to visit Hector at the same time. He probably kept an eye on things till he saw Mr. Mills return and realized that this wasn’t really his day. Like I said, I’ve got Security looking for him, but I reckon he’s gone. But he could come back.”
If he’d had to give a rating to his report, it would have been Beta minus at best. He’d started with a heavy handicap. In Mid-Yorkshire anything with Hector at its center needed a supporting affidavit from the angel Gabriel. And he couldn’t blame the Chief for looking shell-shocked when he heard about the constable’s vision, nor for his uncontrollable twitch when the charioteer sketch was produced as supporting evidence.
But Trimble was a man who liked to give his officers leeway. Anyone with Andy Dalziel under his command soon learned that the likely alternative was to find yourself high and dry on a sandbank.
He said, “All right. Leave someone on watch here. I don’t suppose you’ve had time to contact Superintendent Glenister yet, though of course you were going t
o ring her immediately after you rang me?”
“That’s right, sir,” said Pascoe.
“Good. Well, just as Mr. Ireland saved you the trouble of contacting me, I’ll extend the same courtesy with regard to CAT.”
Meaning you don’t trust me to do anything about it for the next couple of hours, thought Pascoe.
But Trimble was wrong. Locally Pascoe knew all the shortcuts and short circuits. He’d been well taught. Getting after Youngman outside Mid-Yorkshire, where he guessed the search would have to begin, was another matter. Dalziel might have been able to manage it. He had strings to pull whose far ends were tied to some very strange places. But for Pascoe that kind of network was still being woven.
In any case the quickest way to show CAT you didn’t trust them was to act like you didn’t trust them, and he wanted a far better hand before he made that play.
“Peter!”
He turned to see Ellie coming toward him with Rosie.
He’d got one of the nurses to look after her. He’d suggested taking her to the hospital crèche at first but this had evoked such a furious response that he’d changed it to the canteen and offered as placation a tenner for refreshment.
Then he’d rung Ellie, said there was a bit of an emergency, and asked if she could come and pick the girl up.
Ellie as always had responded to the word emergency without question.
But now she was here, she expected to hear what was going on.
Her response echoed Trimble’s.
“Someone wants to kill Hector?” she said incredulously. “But why?”
She listened to his theory with the kind of expression Galileo probably saw on the face of his Chief Inquisitor.
“Pete, for heaven’s sake, this is Quentin Tarantino stuff. I mean…Hector!”
“All right,” he said testily. “One way to check is, I’ll cancel the guard on Hector’s room and if he gets killed, then I was right!”
“Now you’re being silly.”
He glowered at her, then turned his attention to his daughter, intending to short-circuit the discussion before it became a row by asking for his change. How much refreshment could a girl ingest in forty minutes?
Death Comes for the Fat Man Page 21
