An April Shroud dap-4

by Reginald Hill

  Pascoe leaned over to Ellie who sat opposite.

  'I was wrong,' he bellowed. 'I think I shall enjoy this.'

  Behind him someone was beating a tin plate and a strangely familiar voice was shouting, 'My lords and ladies, pray be silent for the entry of the first course.'

  No one took much notice except Ellie who ignored Pascoe's words and stared over his shoulder with an expression of pantomimic incredulity.

  'Peter,' she said. 'You'll never believe this.'

  Slowly Pascoe turned. What he saw came as such a shock he had to use the townswoman's thigh as a support.

  'My God!' he said.

  Standing at the far end of the hall clad in a green velvet gown and wearing a floppy blue cap embellished with a peacock's feather was Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.

  Pascoe laughed so much he couldn't drink his Baronial Brose and was still having difficulty by the time he reached the Cavalier's Capon. The townswoman fortunately put this down to her own rib-tickling conversation. Only Ellie understood his amusement, though after an initial outburst she no longer seemed to share it.

  'What's he doing, Peter?' she asked under cover of an outbreak of screams as some wit, immediately imitated, demonstrated the Tudor method of chicken-bone disposal.

  'God knows,' said Pascoe. 'But he hasn't spotted me yet. Here!'

  He beckoned to a bearded youth in a jester's outfit who was going round taking flash photographs at fifty pence a time.

  'Right, man. Grab hold of the little lady and smile.'

  'No, no. Not me,' said Pascoe. 'I'd like a picture of him. The portly gent in the green nightie.'

  'No, Peter!' protested Ellie. But the photographer after a quizzical raising of the eyebrows had moved away.

  'Andy, baby, you've got fans,' said Uniff.

  'What?'

  'Guy over there wants a pic. So make with the medieval merriment. Say cheese.'

  'Shit,' said Dalziel as he followed the direction indicated by the jerk of Uniff s head.

  'What the hell are you doing here?' he growled into Pascoe's ear a couple of minutes later.

  'Just having a lot of fun,' grinned Pascoe, on whom the mead was having a greater effect than anticipated.

  'It's about time you had a piss,' said Dalziel. He nodded sternly at Ellie and moved away.

  'Everything going OK, Andy?' asked Bonnie whom he met outside the door.

  'Fine,' he said. 'What are you doing?'

  'I just stepped out of the kitchen for a quick drag. It's red hot in there.'

  Dalziel could believe it. It was a close, humid night with wreaths of mist rising from the unmoving lake.

  'Back to it, I suppose,' said Bonnie. She rested her hand on his arm for a moment and raised her face to his.

  As he kissed her the door to the hall opened and someone came out.

  'See you later,' said Bonnie and moved away.

  'Hello, hello, hello,' said Pascoe.

  'You'd best sober up before you say summat you'll be sorry for,' said Dalziel grimly. 'Let's go outside.'

  They stood together in the cobbled yard hardly able to see each other in the dim light which forced its way out of the Banqueting Hall through the stained plastic windows. Noise escaped more successfully and the overall effect was rather like overhearing an orgy in a church. Pascoe took a deep breath and tried to think of something inoffensive to say.

  'Having a nice holiday, sir?' was the best he could manage.'

  'Grand,' said Dalziel, and then repeated the word with a note of surprise in his voice.

  It was in many ways true, he realized. Certainly in this past week he had been almost totally immersed in getting the restaurant into operation. After the initial reaction to his involvement, they had settled down quickly into a remarkably good team. There were various kinds of expertise present in Lake House but what Dalziel had had to offer was momentum. He got things moving and kept them moving, generally by brute force.

  The hard work involved served a double function. It distracted his attention from both the past and the future. The Dalziel whose nights were filled with doubt and sorrow had retreated into some limbo with that other Dalziel whose constabulary soul would shortly have to go marching on.

  Or perhaps not. He had always been a liver in the present, never one of those who tried to take the golden moment and beat it out thinly to cover more ground. But just as his mind in the past months had gradually started to plague him with visions of vacant futurity, so in these last few days, unbidden and almost undetected, an insidious optimism had begun to rise in his subconscious like curls of mist on the lake. He still woke early but now Bonnie was by his side. As one who had long opined in many a Yorkshire club and pub that there were nowt wrong with most discontented and unhappy women (e.g. all female politicians, jockeys, journalists, etc.) that couldn't be cured by application of a healthy well-endowed man, he should not have been surprised to find the therapy reversible. He was not a man given to self-analysis, however, but he knew that a future with Bonnie felt a much better prospect than a future without her.

  Now here was Pascoe to remind him of the realities of his life starting next Monday morning.

  'Something going on here, is there, sir?' enquired Pascoe.

  Before Dalziel could reply the door into the yard opened again and another figure emerged and joined them.

  'Evening, sir,' he said.

  'Hello, Cross,' said Dalziel. 'Bowls Club enjoying themselves?'

  'Yes, thanks. Sorry if I'm interrupting. I thought you might be with Mr Balderstone, but he can't have arrived yet.'

  He looked with open interest at Pascoe. Dalziel introduced them, then said, 'Look, I'd best get back inside. I'm supposed to be working and we're a bit short-handed. Cross, would you fill in Mr Pascoe here before he pees himself out of curiosity.'

  He turned abruptly and left them.

  'Smoke, sir?' asked Cross.

  'No, thanks,' said Pascoe. 'Just tell me all.'

  Briefly Cross outlined the course of events as he knew it which had resulted in Dalziel's involvement in Lake House.

  Pascoe listened avidly and when Cross finished his relation he said. 'Yes. Good. That's the police evidence bit and very nicely done too. But what about the rest?'

  'Sir?'

  'Look, Sergeant. I know Mr Dalziel well. Fair enough, if he sniffs out some dirty business, whether he's on holiday or no, he'll worry away at it. But it'd take more than you've told me to get him to invest money with a gang of people he suspects to be crooks and to go around dressed up like Henry the Eighth's butler.'

  Cross considered carefully before replying.

  'Well, sir. I think he feels a bit protective towards Mrs Fielding. In a way by staying on he's looking after her interests.'

  'Mrs Fielding? The big good-looking woman behind the bar? Ah yes, I saw them together just before.'

  Pascoe grinned broadly for a moment, then loyalty wiped his amusement from his face.

  'Now, this fellow Butt?' he enquired.

  'Due back from Brazil today, sir. The police over there were asked to keep an eye on him, just in case he showed any signs of slipping away. But it was felt best to leave him alone till we had him back on British soil.'

  'A bit dangerous, isn't it? If it's not down to him, then the trail will be damned cold,' said Pascoe.

  'Not really, sir,' said Cross politely. 'If Butt didn't do it, then the trail leads right back here. They went over his car with a fine-tooth comb. Annie Greave was in his boot all right, there's no doubt about it. And Butt has probably spent the last hour explaining how she got there. Mr Balderstone, Chief Inspector Balderstone, was going to contact Mr Dalziel as soon as he heard anything. I thought he might be here by now.'

  So, thought Pascoe. Dalziel is hanging on here in the hope that this guy Butt will cough everything and life at Lake House can go on undisturbed.

  How deep is he in? he wondered uneasily. He had not liked the way Cross now and then seemed to be lining the fat ma
n up with the Lake House gang rather than with the forces of law and order.

  Yet it was Dalziel who had stirred things up, he reassured himself. He couldn't believe that he would ever have anything to do with suppression of evidence. Though, of course, technically there was nothing illegal in the suppression of theory. But the Dalziel who had been his mentor these many years would not indulge in such hair-splitting.

  'We'd better go back inside,' said Pascoe. 'Our wives will be getting worried.'

  'I've been married fifteen years,' said Cross. 'After the first ten, policemen's wives stop getting worried. They start getting angry instead. Come on.'

  But inside the building they encountered Dalziel once more. He looked anxious and uncertain, expressions which Pascoe had observed on his face as rarely as smiles on an undertaker's.

  'Balderstone just rang,' he said without preliminaries. 'The plane arrived, but no Butt.'

  'What?' exclaimed Cross.

  'He was taken ill at the airport, it seems. Ambulance took him to hospital in Rio.'

  'Very convenient,' observed Cross. 'That seems to wrap it up, I'd say. It looks as if we'll have to do it the hard way from now on in. I don't suppose they'll be asking for volunteers to spend a couple of days in Rio chatting him up, will they, sir?'

  Dalziel didn't answer but turned away and disappeared towards the kitchens. Cross shrugged at Pascoe and the two men re-entered the Banqueting Hall.

  'Thought you'd got lost,' observed Ellie's father.

  'There was a queue for the loo,' lied Pascoe as he attempted to squeeze back on to the bench beside the townswoman whose thighs seemed to have settled and spread like wedges of ripe Brie.

  'You missed the Sir Toby's Syllabub,' observed Ellie.

  'I don't think I did, really,' said Pascoe.

  They had now reached the stage in the evening when the historical was at war with the nostalgic – a war it could not hope to win. The bearded photographer had reappeared armed with a guitar and though the mead-sodden audience were happy enough to listen to one verse of 'Drink to Me Only', further than that they would not go. The guitarist read their mood and gauged their taste perfectly, and soon the composition rafters were ringing with such fine medieval songs as 'Bless 'em All', 'She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain', and 'The Rose of Tralee'.

  After some thirty minutes of this, during which time the tables were cleared completely (a pre-empting of the souvenir hunters in which Pascoe thought he detected Dalziel's hand), the guitarist announced that coffee was available and the bar would be open until ten-thirty. Clearly authenticity stopped at the licensing authorities.

  Ellie and Pascoe sat fast while all around them their fellow diners scrambled for the exit.

  'They'll be able to charge a quid a drink from now till closing time,' observed Pascoe. 'That should please Dalziel.'

  'Why?'

  'He's a shareholder.'

  Quickly he passed on all he had learned that night. Ellie whistled speculatively when he finished.

  'What's she like?' she asked.

  'Who?'

  'This woman, Bonnie Fielding is it?'

  'I don't know, do I? I've only seen her distantly. Your dad thinks she overcharges.'

  'Let's hope she doesn't overcharge big Andy,' said Ellie. 'Come on, let's take a look.'

  'He can look after himself, you know,' said Pascoe, rising to follow her.

  'Huh!' she snorted.

  'What's that mean?' he asked as they squeezed through the crowd towards the bar.

  'It means that the way he was babbling on at our wedding reception, he was ripe for plucking. He no longer deems his soul immortal. I've seen the symptoms developing. You getting married was the last straw.'

  'Bollocks!'

  'Well, one of them,' emended Ellie in the face of this forceful argument. 'I don't mean he fancies you. And I don't think he objects to me like he used to. But he's unsettled. I mean, wasn't it a bit odd that he should take his first holiday in God knows how long at the same time as your honeymoon?'

  'No wonder you can't flog your novel!' said Pascoe.

  They had finally reached the bar at which all hands seemed to be manning the pumps, or rather taps, optics and bottle openers. Dalziel was among them. Pascoe watched his technique for a while with interest. He poured the drinks with swift efficiency then charged eighty pence for a round of two, one pound forty for three, one ninety for four and three pounds for anything over. It seemed to be generally acceptable. Pascoe studied the list of prices, took from his pocket the exact amount required for two scotches, ordered them from an old man in a black doublet and passed over the money.

  'That's Hereward Fielding,' whispered Ellie.

  'Who?'

  'The poet. I knew he lived locally, but I didn't link him with this lot.'

  Somewhere behind the bar, a phone rang. The big woman who Pascoe supposed was Bonnie Fielding retreated to answer it.

  'It's for you, Andy,' she called a moment later.

  Dalziel was a long time on the phone and though the bar service went on as efficiently as ever, Pascoe sensed an awareness among the servers of what was going on in the background. Finally Dalziel reappeared and beckoned to Bonnie and the two disappeared from sight.

  'Let's try to find somewhere less crowded,' suggested Ellie.

  Again Pascoe followed her, but he protested when she opened a door marked ' Staff and led him through.

  'Friends of the proprietor,' she grinned.

  'Can't you read?' demanded a most unfriendly voice. A stout youth had appeared at the other end of the corridor they were in and was glowering at them.

  'We're friends of Mr Dalziel,' said Ellie firmly.

  'Are you? Well, I'm sorry, but we don't let our staff socialize during business hours,' said the youth pompously.

  'You're Bertie Fielding?' asked Pascoe.

  'Yes. Why do you ask?'

  'No reason. Someone described you to me, that's all.'

  Fat and nasty had been Cross's words. To another auditor he might have used the same words of Dalziel, thought Pascoe.

  'You might tell Mr Dalziel I'd like to see him,' continued Pascoe, resolved not to retreat before this creature. 'Inspector Pascoe.'

  'Not another!' groaned Bertie. 'What do you do? Breed from mud?'

  But he went all the same and a moment later Dalziel emerged from the bar. He shook Ellie's hand formally.

  'Nice to see you,' he said.

  'Hi,' she answered.

  'Come on through,' said Dalziel. 'I'll be glad to take the weight off my feet.'

  They followed him into the main house. He moved around, observed Pascoe, with the familiarity of the inmate.

  'We'll go in here,' said Dalziel. 'It's the old boy's sitting-room, but every bugger uses it.'

  'Cosy,' said Ellie. 'You seem to be enjoying your holiday.'

  'Aye,' he grunted looking at her ironically. 'He'll have told you everything, I suppose?'

  'I wouldn't know that,' said Ellie. 'He may be holding something back.'

  'He's daft if he doesn't,' said Dalziel. 'The practice'll come in useful later.'

  'If I may interrupt this curiously oblique conversation,' said Pascoe. 'Look, sir, is this private business or a case? I mean, I don't want to stick my nose in…'

  'Why not?'

  'Because if it's private, it's private, and I've no right to interfere,' said Pascoe steadily. 'Unless requested, of course. But if it's a case…'

  'Cross gave you a run-down, didn't he?' said Dalziel. 'How'd it look to you?'

  'It looked like you were dancing on a tightrope, sir,' said Pascoe. 'With a high wind blowing up.'

  'Did it? Well, I'll tell you what, Inspector, I'll just put you right in the picture, you and your missus both, and we'll see what the combined might of two university educations can make of it.'

  Dalziel lit a cigarette. He looked, thought Pascoe, a bit like Cardinal Wolsey might have looked in a private moment, worn down by, rather than relaxed from, the cares of o
ffice.

  'There's a possibility that this man Butt may have given Annie Greave a lift from Lake House, fallen out with her somewhere along the road home, killed her and dumped her body in Epping Forest. We mustn't discount this.'

  'But you don't believe it?' said Pascoe.

  'I wouldn't say that,' Dalziel answered. 'There's another possibility though. Only one other, really. Annie Greave was killed here and hidden in the boot of Butt's car. Butt didn't find her till he was nearly home. He stopped for a drink and a sandwich just before closing time at a pub just off the A1 at Baldock. They back-tracked him there. Perhaps he opened the boot for some reason when he came out of the pub. There was Annie's body. Now he'd be very bothered. I mean, Christ, who wouldn't? But he'd be particularly bothered. First he was half-cut. He'd got stoned here to start with. I bet he hadn't got much idea how he'd driven to Baldock! So he didn't fancy talking to the police in that state.

  'And second, he was off to Brazil in the morning. A big job, lots of prestige. Now, you and me, we know a hundred reporters who'd just love to get so close to a murder enquiry. But not Butt. At best, if he rang the police it'd mean cancelling his Brazil trip. At worst, it could mean a lot more. For all we know he was so stoned that he couldn't positively remember that he hadn't given this woman a lift and perhaps even killed her! Remember, he hadn't seen Annie Greave up here, so he had no direct link in his mind with Lake House.

  'So the stupid sod, half pissed still, does the obvious stupid thing. Drives to Epping, scrapes a bit of a hole, drops Annie in it, covers her up, and goes home. Next morning he flies off to Brazil.'

  'Well, it's a theory,' said Pascoe dubiously. 'It is only a theory, isn't it, sir?'

  Dalziel ignored him.

  'There was another person died here last night,' he said. 'Spinx, an insurance claims investigator. It looks like an accident. It looks to me less like an accident if Annie died here at the same time.'

  'The old police text,' observed Ellie. 'Wherever two or three die together, there shall Old Bill be also.'