Death Comes for the Fat Man

by Reginald Hill

  She regarded him with her mother’s wide-eyed candor, then before he could speak said, “I think Dad’s right. I didn’t like that man.”

  “You didn’t?” said Pascoe delighted at this unexpected support. “Why was that?”

  “Well, he smiled as he held the door open but I could tell he was really pissed off,” said Rosie. “I mean, a lot more pissed off than you’d be just because someone you’d come to visit wasn’t in his bed.”

  Do I reprimand her for saying pissed off—twice!—or let it go because she’s said it in support of my case? Pascoe asked himself.

  Ellie had no doubt.

  “Come on, my girl,” she said grimly. “We’ll get you home and on the way we’ll have a little heart-to-heart about your special relationship with the language of Shakespeare. Any idea how long you’ll be, Peter?”

  Truce offered and accepted. “Not long,” he promised. They kissed. Definitely accepted.

  She said softly, “Just in case you’re right, which I don’t admit, take care.”

  He watched them go. She was right. If he was right, he should perhaps take care.

  And of course the people he should take most care of weren’t lying in a hospital bed but walking away from him.

  At the door Ellie turned and called, “I forgot to ask. How’s Andy?”

  Pascoe looked at his daughter who smiled at him complicitly.

  He said, “No change there. Either.”

  14

  THE TANGLE O’ THE ISLES

  Andy Dalziel is on his way to Mairi’s wedding.

  Step we gaily on we go

  Heel for heel and toe for toe

  Proud to be a Yorkshireman, proud of all that his lovely Yorkshire mam had brought to his being, proud to belt out “On Ilkla Moor baht ’at” with the best of them, it has always been the music from his father’s side of the family that plucked at his heart strings and squeezed the tear out of his eye.

  Arm in arm and row on row

  All for Mairi’s wedding

  Who he is arm in arm with he is not certain, nor indeed whether in any strict sense the arms in question are arms at all, but the feelings of joy and lightness which the song inspires are real enough, and he’s never been a man to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Unless of course it’s donated by Greeks. Or Lancastrians.

  Over hill ways up and down

  Myrtle green and bracken brown…

  No real hills of course. No greens or browns. Just effortlessly floating on a highway of music as he recalled doing years ago, squashed in a corner of some tiny bothy with his Scottish cousins when big Uncle Hamish got his fiddle out.

  Plenty herring plenty meal

  Plenty peat tae fill her creel

  Peat. The sweet smoky reek of it. And better still when it’s coming off the surface of a golden pool set in a crystal tumbler…

  Plenty bonny bairns as weel…

  Now young Rosie Pascoe was a bonnie bairn and she’d grown into a bonnie lass and would, if God was kind, which so far he’d not been given any reason to doubt, turn out a stunning woman. And what was more important a kind and caring one.

  Cheeks as bright as rowans are…

  He’d always been able to depend on the kindness of women. Even his wife had been kind…in her way…Some women before they left cut up their husbands’ suits or poured their twenty-year-old single malts down the bog and substituted vinegar. His had left a note…Your dinner’s in the oven on the low burner…He’d gone to the kitchen and opened the oven.

  There it was, gently crisping.

  A plate of ham salad.

  It still makes him laugh all these years on.

  Women, women…perhaps it is their arms that he feels in his now…all those kind women…

  And one above all…

  The last? Who can say that?

  But a star…more than a star…

  Brighter far than any star

  Fairest of them all by far…

  Cap. Ms. Amanda Marvell. Mrs. the Hon. Rupert Pitt-Evenlode. Call her what you will. The sense of her presence sends him soaring even higher than the music.

  Over hill-ways up and down

  Myrtle green and bracken brown

  Past the shieling through the town

  All for the sake of…

  Cap.

  The music dies away but still he floats.

  But what’s this? The pace slackens to a crawl, the mood changes. Oh no!

  “The Flower of Scotland.”

  Dear God! What a doleful dirge. He has always been persuaded that the only thing keeping Scottish rugby from World Cup glory is their pre-match anthem. How can those fine young men be expected to march forward to fight the auld enemy with this turgid tune clogging their feet? It makes “God Save the Queen” sound like a cavalry charge!

  But at last it drags its weary weight to a close.

  And now thank God he’s out of the mire again and soaring high once more as the pipes and drums explode into the song which is his signature tune at the Police Christmas Party.

  Sure by Tummel and Loch Rannock and Lochaber I will go

  By heather tracks wi’ heaven in their wiles

  If it’s thinking’ in your inner hairt the braggart’s in my step,

  You’ve never smelt the tangle o’ the Isles.

  Here’s the truth of it. Though his feet have always been firmly planted in the rich earth of his native Yorkshire and on the hard pavements of its great cities, the heart is forever Highland.

  And when a man is hovering between this world and the next, it takes a music as seductive as that of the far Cuillins to pull him away, though whether its call is to heaven or to earth Andy Dalziel as yet cannot and indeed does not care to know.

  15

  A SHOT IN THE DARK

  As far as Peter Pascoe was concerned, you could take heather tracks and stick them up your reeking lum.

  There was heather beneath his feet now and he was being bitten to death. OK, Scotland didn’t begin officially for another dozen miles but nobody had bothered to tell this to the midges that were assailing his face with a Caledonian ferocity. Perhaps their native reiving instincts had been alerted by the rancid smell of the CAT camouflage makeup that Glenister had insisted he smear on his cheekbones and brow.

  It was her suggestion too that he should wear a flak jacket. No, suggestion was the wrong word. The jacket had been a sine qua non of his inclusion in the raid.

  Pascoe was confident that both jacket and camouflage were unnecessary.

  If, as he suspected, the Templars had a mole in CAT, then the chances of John T. Youngman being inside the small white cottage the CAT hit squad was presently surrounding were nil.

  Glenister was full of bounce, in strong contrast to her rather weary and harassed demeanor the last time he’d seen her at the Lubyanka. The prospect of crawling around in the dark in pursuit of a dangerous suspect seemed to have perked her up. Pascoe had seen plenty of male officers turned on by the prospect of physical danger, but never a woman.

  Perhaps he ought to get out more.

  Though if this was what getting out entailed, perhaps not.

  The reaction to Trimble’s phone call had been swift.

  First Freeman had turned up at the hospital.

  In reply to Pascoe’s, “You must have been close,” he had given that irritating enigmatic smile. Then he’d asked a few questions, very sharp and pertinent Pascoe had to admit, before interviewing Hector. What he got out of that he didn’t reveal. Finally he had approved all the measures Pascoe had taken and vanished with the charioteer sketch.

  At no point had he hinted a doubt of Pascoe’s interpretation of events.

  Despite this, even with every possible precaution in place, an irrational fear that the moment he left, orders would be given countermanding all he’d done made it hard for Pascoe to leave. It took an anxious, irritated phone call from Ellie wondering if he was the only police officer on call that weekend to give him the
impetus to head for home.

  Ellie did her best to make the evening as normal as possible and Pascoe did his best to respond. He tried to conceal his restlessness, but he knew he wasn’t being very successful and it was a relief when about eight o’clock, the phone rang. Somehow they both knew it was to do with the case.

  Ellie answered it.

  “I’ll get him,” she said.

  Handing the phone to Pascoe she said, “Ms. Sinister,” loudly enough to be heard at the far end of the line.

  “You’ve been at it again, laddie. Go on like this and you’ll put us all out of work.”

  This sounded like a sort of compliment.

  “What’s happening?” he said.

  “We’ve got a possible location for Youngman and we’re going to try and pick him up tonight. Want to come along? Thinking is, you’ve earned it.”

  Earned the right to leave his home and family in the middle of the night to go chasing around after a suspected killer! What would they reward him with if he did something really amazing? Two weeks undercover work in Afghanistan?

  He said, “Yes.”

  “Good. Knew you’d be up for it. Thing is, it’s a bit distant. He’s got a cottage up in Northumberland, near the Kielder reservoir. Can you make Hexham by ten o’clock?”

  “Yes,” said Pascoe, not bothering to try and work it out.

  “Great. Here’s a grid reference.”

  She gave it only once.

  “Fine. If you’re not there by ten we won’t wait.” A pause, then she laughed softly and said, “It’s about ten miles north of Hexham along the B road to Bellingham. Me, I’m an old-fashioned A to Z lassie.”

  He told Ellie where he was going because there wasn’t any point in lying.

  “Why?” she said with genuine amazement. “It’s not your patch. It’s not your kind of work. And if you’re right, and he’s been warned off, there’s not a cat in hell’s chance of this Youngman fellow being there anyway. So why?”

  He said, “Because they want me there, and I want them to go on wanting me around till I get some answers. Also it might give me the chance to poke around in Youngman’s stuff before it all gets classified and locked up somewhere out of reach.”

  He went and got changed before she could pick his response to pieces.

  When he reappeared, Rosie, who’d been on her way to bed when the phone rang and who’d naturally used the distraction to snatch an extra half hour said, “Are you going bird-watching, Dad?”

  Pascoe glanced down. He’d put on his heavy walking boots and hiking trousers and had his binocular case draped round his neck.

  “Not if I can help it, darling,” he said, smiling.

  “When could you last help anything, Pete?” said Ellie.

  “I’m just doing what I get paid for,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. No one’s paying you to think you’re Superman!”

  It wasn’t a note to part on but there was no choice. Even with light Sunday-night traffic, he was going to have to move fast to keep his rendezvous.

  It was almost ten as he passed through Hexham. The sun had just set and there was still plenty of residual light. Before he left he’d marked the grid reference carefully on his map. He had it in his head that the CAT hit squad would have pulled off the road and set up camouflage and he was determined he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of seeing him drive by.

  He needn’t have worried. As he approached the rendezvous point, he saw a car parked at the roadside with Sandy Glenister leaning against the boot, smoking a cigarette and talking to Freeman.

  She gave him a welcoming wave as he drew in behind them.

  As he went to join them, he saw that she was wearing slacks and sneakers, whereas Freeman was dressed in a sharp Italian suit and what looked like handmade shoes.

  His eyes ran down to Pascoe’s hiking boots and he twitched an eyebrow.

  “Hi, Pete. Good timing,” said Glenister. “Lovely evening, eh? I really like it round here. Gorgeous countryside and not too many tourists. Pity we didn’t hang on to it after giving your lot a kicking at Otterburn. Let’s hope we’re not in for another moonlit battle.”

  “Any reason to think we might be?” said Pascoe.

  “He seems to fancy himself as a hard man, this Jonty Youngman,” she said. “I’ll fill you in as we drive. Leave your car here, we’ll go the rest of the way in Dave’s.”

  “So Youngman’s cottage isn’t close?” said Pascoe as he climbed in the back of the other car.

  Glenister twisted round in her seat and said, “Pete, you don’t really think our hit squad would arrange to meet you within a couple of miles of a target, do you? They’d be worried you’d get lost and end up knocking at Youngman’s door to ask for directions.”

  “Well, I’m glad not to have worried them,” said Pascoe coldly.

  She laughed and lit another cigarette as Freeman sent the car racing along the narrow road.

  “Not just that,” she said. “They didn’t want to stop alongside a public road. Even round here where there’s more foxes per square mile than people, half a dozen men in black with hard hats and assault rifles might draw attention.”

  She puffed out a jet of smoke which Pascoe waved away.

  “Run out of Smarties?” he said.

  “No, but there are times, after sex, before action, in serious midge country, when My Lady Nicotine’s charms are still irresistible. So, Peter, that was some sharp work you did at the hospital. And seems you were right about Constable Hector. There’s more to him than meets the eye. That other thing he said—a bit funny, but not a darkie, was it?—maybe we should get him to do a drawing. Always listen to the man on the spot, eh?”

  For the first time it occurred to Pascoe that perhaps it was because someone had listened to his loyal defense of Hector that the Templars had decided not to take risks but to get rid of him.

  He pushed the idea aside and asked, “What do we know about Youngman?”

  “Apart from his military record, not a great deal,” she said. “Ex-SAS. Rank sergeant. Real name is Young, known as Jonty, so not much change to John T. Youngman. Served in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Not the most popular member of the unit, kept himself to himself, but was noted for his reliability and efficiency. Marked down for advancement till an incident in Iraq when several prisoners were blown up in unexplained circumstances put a question mark on his record. Left the army in 2005. He’d already got Hedley-Case, the publishers, interested in his first book, Death in the Desert. There’s been one more since that came out, Blood on the Sand I think it’s called, and I gather there’s another in the pipeline. You read any of his stuff?”

  Pascoe shook his head.

  “Me neither, but Dave’s had a glance through them. What did you think, Dave?”

  “Interesting,” said Freeman. “Claims to be faction, real stories rejigged to give a strong narrative thread, and with some names and details altered for security reasons. Makes it hard for the War Office or anyone else to raise objections without tacitly agreeing that they recognize the individuals or incidents described. Clever, really.”

  “So he’s a clever arrogant murderous bastard,” said Pascoe.

  “You’ve taken against him, I see.”

  “I take against any bastard who goes around trying to kill my officers,” growled Pascoe. “These books of his, are they big sellers?”

  “Moderately so,” said Glenister. “But the Hedley-Case website says they’ve got high hopes for a breakthrough with the next one. The bastards will be delighted when they get a whiff that we might be taking a professional interest. Man writes about the Gulf Wars then the Security Services go after him, you can see how that plays in terms of free publicity.”

  “You don’t seem very concerned.”

  “It’s business, laddie. And when it comes to my turn to write my memoirs, it’s always nice to know how the publishing mind works. Maybe I should have a word with your wife. Nice bit of publicity s
he got on the box the other night. She’s OK, is she?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “I was sure she would be. Struck me as a tough lady.”

  Her mobile sounded. She listened, said, “On our way. Ten minutes tops.”

  Just under the ten, Freeman slowed from the steady fifty mph he’d been doing and bumped off the road along a rutted track between soaring pine trees. After a couple of hundred yards, he came to a halt alongside a large black van with the Forestry Commission logo on the side. He killed the lights.

  Glenister said, “Stay here,” and got out.

  It took Pascoe’s eyes a little while to adjust, but when they did, he realized that even here among the crowding trees some residual light from the long summer day still managed to filter through. He looked for signs of life but couldn’t see any. Then a figure detached itself from the bole of a tree. Clad in black combats and carrying a short-barreled weapon, he looked like something out of an action movie.

  What the hell am I doing here? Pascoe asked himself.

  Glenister and the man talked. Pascoe managed to pick out another couple of armed figures crouched among the trees. Glenister came back to the car.

  “We’re about a mile from the cottage,” she said. “Gordon, the team leader, has sent a couple of men ahead to reconnoitre. So let’s get ourselves kitted out, Peter.”

  He got out of the car. Freeman didn’t move.

  “You not coming?” asked Pascoe.

  “I’ve not been invited to the party,” said Freeman. “So I don’t need to wear the fancy dress.”

  He gave that smile again as he spoke. He didn’t look put out at missing the fun.

  Perhaps, thought Pascoe, because like me he knows there’s no chance of finding anyone at home in the cottage.

  Glenister led him to the van, and that’s where the nonsense with the face paint and the flak jacket began.

  The superintendent grunted as she squeezed herself into her jacket.

  “No one’s bothered to update our equipment buyers on equal opportunity legislation,” she said. “These things just don’t take big tits into account.”