D&P21 - Good Morning, Midnight

by Reginald Hill

  He barked a disbelieving laugh and withdrew a couple of inches.

  “Acu-fucking-otically!”

  Also he dearly loved a tmesis.

  Slowly he straightened up and backed away, all the way round his desk, never taking his eyes off Pascoe even as he sat down and topped up his whisky tumbler and drained it dry.

  Then he slammed it on the desk surface with a crash that made Pascoe jump.

  “You think if she’d ever suggested some kind of tradeoff, I’d have listened for a second?” he said. “You think if she’d tried to blackmail me, I’d have put up with it for even half a second? I’ll tell you what she asked for, lad. Nothing! Not then, not ever. I rang her up the next day and tried to say thanks and she said, “Andy, I fried you some eggs and made you some toast. What’s to thank me for?” Next time I saw her, I tried to thank her again. She looked at me like I was raving. Not then, not ever, has she mentioned any of that stuff. Not a hint. Not even a bloody hint of a hint of you-owe-me-one. When Pal—old Pal, I mean—topped himself, I stepped in to take care of the case because of her, I don’t deny it. But I checked every bit of her story twice as close as I checked anyone else’s. And after she made that statement on the tape, I got Dave Thatcher to use his contacts over there to check out the American stuff. I felt ashamed doing it, but I bloody well did it all the same. It all checked out, right down the line. She’s true diamond, Pete, true bloody diamond, and anyone who tries to tell me different had better have an affidavit signed by Jesus Christ himself to back it up.”

  Does he know about her little adventures at the Golden Fleece? wondered Pascoe. Would it matter if he did? Should it matter?

  These were questions to tease a man out of thought. More importantly they seemed likely to be questions that could tease a man out of life if put in the wrong way, which was to say in the same room or even town, and without an armed guard of marine commandoes.

  He said, “Sorry, sir, didn’t mean to be offensive.”

  “Me neither, lad. I’m sorry too. It’s the smell of them funny buggers as does it. One sniff of them and I get edgy. What the hell interest can they have in this business, eh?”

  “I think you touched on that in your—ah—statement, sir. That stuff about Ashur-Proffitt and the Iran-Contra affair.”

  “That’s old history, done and dusted,” said Dalziel.

  “No, sir, stuff like that’s never done. On the surface things change—new treaties, yesterday’s enemies become today’s allies. But whatever the surface rules are, once you dig deep, they don’t apply. Down there it’s a whole different ball game—sanction breaking, illegal arms deals, out-of-date-drugs dumping—where only two things matter: profit and not getting caught. It’s like the domestic black economy where work gets done without troubling the tax man or the VAT office. Except this is on a much huger scale, and a lot of it has covert official approval, and its colour is red because it’s paid for in human lives.”

  He came to a halt, somewhat surprised at the passion with which he’d been talking.

  “You been reading Ellie’s e-mails again?” said Dalziel.

  “No, sir,” said Pascoe wearily. “Just the newspapers and between the lines. I’d have thought 9/11 might have changed things a bit. In fact I’m sure it has. But there are always plenty of people who’d be looking to turn a fast buck even if they saw the four horsemen of the apocalypse galloping across the sky. You say you never heard from Linda Steele again?”

  “No, not a dicky. Kept on coming across bits and pieces she’d left around the house and it were funny, despite what she’d done, or tried to do, I’d feel I really missed her. But she never showed her face here again, nor back home so far as Dave Thatcher could trace. But, like I say, she were a bright lass, bright enough to know there was little future in going back home to tell her creepy boss she’d screwed up. So I’d guess she did what she’d told me she’d done in the first place: quietly resigned and went off somewhere exotic to start a new career.”

  “And you never found out exactly how Kay got the negatives back?”

  “Not from her, but I could guess. Who else? Would hardly be Kay, would it? No, she must’ve told Kafka what Linda was up to and he sorted it out. I didn’t ask questions, I were just glad to be off the hook.”

  “You never wondered if something unpleasant might have happened to her then?”

  “Something …? What are you trying to say, Pete? Something unpleasant like something fatal, you mean? For Godsake this is Mid-Yorkshire not the Middle East. Any road, people don’t get killed on my patch without me hearing something. And Kay might turn a blind eye to a bit of illegality but she’d never stand by and let another woman get hurt, that I’m sure of. No, Linda’s sitting somewhere as we speak, comfortable and warm, with a smile on her face and a glass in her hand, and ever I met her, I’d say give us a kiss and let’s down a noggin for the sake of auld lang syne.”

  If you want blind faith, convert a cynic, thought Pascoe.

  He said brusquely, “OK, sir. Where do we go from here?”

  “It’s your case,” said Dalziel. “All I would say is, try and remember just what the case is about. Did Pal Maciver kill himself, that’s what. Nowt else. If he did, all this other crap’s irrelevant.”

  “Do you still think he did, sir?” asked Pascoe, wondering if this were the time to admit that he too was starting to come round to this way of thinking.

  “I’ve heard nowt so far to suggest different. And I’m beginning to think we won’t hear owt either, not unless we try a bit of table tapping and make direct contact with the dead!”

  With perfect timing there came a rap at the door.

  “Oh hell,” said Dalziel. “Talk of the devil.”

  And Pascoe turned and found himself staring Death in the face.

  Happily the face in this instance belonged to Arnold Gentry, Head of the Forensic Lab, of whom it was alleged that once he had fallen asleep in a hospital waiting room and woken on a slab just in time to grasp the pathologist’s wrist before he made his first incision. Police wit prefers the path most trodden, and naturally his cadaverous appearance had won him the sobriquet Dr Death.

  “Andy,” he said. “And Peter. So there is life in CID.”

  “Oh aye? And how’d you recognize it, Arnold?” said Dalziel.

  “By its rudeness mainly. What I am trying to convey is that there seems very little sign out there. But to my business. Some interesting things have come up as a result of our further examination of the Moscow House material and as I was passing on my way to an appointment, I thought I would show how sensitive we were to Peter’s plea of urgency by conveying the findings myself.”

  “Don’t think we’re not appreciative,” said Dalziel unpersuasively. “So what’ve you got, apart from the verbal runs?”

  From his briefcase Gentry produced a plastic file which he laid before the Fat Man.

  “I’ll read this on the bog later,” said Dalziel impatiently. “Just give us the gist.”

  “If you insist, though all this talking does dry the throat,” said Gentry, his eye fixed on the bottle of Highland Park.

  “Jesus,” groaned Dalziel.

  He produced another tumbler, poured a generous measure and topped up his own. Pascoe shook his head.

  Dalziel raised his glass to his lips.

  “I’d say slainte, only it seems a bit of a waste in thy case, Arnold,” he said. “OK, get on with it.”

  “Following the DCI’s strict instructions, the SOCO team had despatched to us everything they could remove from the room including, I should point out, several hundred rather dusty volumes which I would rather not waste my staff’s precious time on.”

  “I didn’t mean them to remove the books, except to facilitate their search,” apologized Pascoe.

  “Then they must have taken your instructions over literally. The portrait of the mountaineering gent, did you want us to look at that also?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Good. We
did, however, examine a coil of rope that showed no signs of ever having been used to hang or even whip anyone. There was also an ice axe which, interestingly, beneath the dust and rust did have some faint residual traces of blood. But they had clearly been there far too long to have any connection with the present investigation and are presumably a relict of some occasion on which our intrepid mountaineer hit his thumb instead of a piton.”

  “For crying out loud,” exploded Dalziel. “If you’ve got owt to say, Arnold, say it, even if it’s only goodbye!”

  “I see you are impatient for the nitty-gritty, Andrew. Very well. First the lock. We noted that it had been recently and liberally lubricated with a high-grade lubricant with the effect that the turning of a key in it would meet with minimal resistance. Further, we found adhering to the lubricant some traces of ash, as we did on the key itself …”

  “Not surprising,” interrupted Dalziel, “seeing the dead man had lit a little bonfire in his waste bin afore he topped himself.”

  “Certainly it would have been easy to explain any traces on the key thus,” said Gentry. “But with the key inserted, the ash therefrom would hardly have penetrated the lock. Analysis reveals that the internal ash traces, and some of the traces on the key also, derive from a source other than the fire in the waste bin.”

  “Where’s this leading us?” demanded Dalziel.

  “It leads us to the gramophone,” said Gentry. “The only ash traces we found on its exterior were clearly from the waste bin. But when we dismantled the machine we found twisted round the turntable spindle a length of thread. High-quality thread, thin but very strong, the loose end of which shows signs of having been severed by flame.”

  “Tell me you’re not telling me what you’re telling me,” growled Dalziel.

  “I tell you nothing,” said Gentry. “I merely present the facts. Though I should add we are conducting various experiments in the lab and it does seem possible that if a thread had been tied to the turntable spindle then passed out through the power-cable aperture, wrapped round the head of the key, and fed through the keyhole, and if the key were placed in the lock on the inside then turned almost to the point where the bolt was engaged, then when a record was played on the player and the slack taken up by the spindle, sufficient pressure could be exerted to turn the key and lock the door. Of course, the player could be turned on from the outside simply by using the mains switch.”

  “Oh-oh, me brain’s beginning to hurt,” moaned Dalziel, taking a long analgesic pull at his scotch.

  Gentry followed suit, draining his glass.

  “Nice scotch,” he said hopefully. But something in the Fat Man’s gaze told him he was reaching too far and he went hurriedly on. “The thread or a substantial part of it having been soaked in some form of accelerant—ordinary lighter fuel would do the trick—all the perpetrator would have to do would be to listen at the door on the landing till they heard the lock click then set a light to the loose end of the thread dangling from the keyhole. The flame would run through the lock, and burn round the key head, at which point the length of thread running to the spindle would be free and the record would resume playing.”

  “And you’re saying this is what happened?” demanded Dalziel.

  “Certainly not. Like I say, we simply present our findings and offer any hypotheses that seem germane. But we leave conclusions to CID. The rest of our findings, analysis of the ash in the waste bin, et cetera, you will find in the file.”

  He stood up, then said, “Oh, and one thing more. The SOCO team faxed through a palm print for us to check against the one found on the door. It looks a good match. This second version they found in the lounge in which I gather an accouchement took place the same night as the suicide. What extraordinarily interesting lives you lead in CID! You see what this means. Someone who was in that lounge had also been up on the landing, crouching outside the study door.”

  “Could have been one of our lot,” said Dalziel. “Or just old prints. The house is up for sale, there must have been people shown round.”

  Gentry smiled, like a pirate ship breaking out its colours. The bastard’s saving the best—or worst—till last, thought Dalziel.

  “Not one of your lot,” he corrected. “DCI Pascoe, meticulous as ever, had made sure we had all their prints for comparison. You will be interested to hear, Peter, that the sheet of paper you left with us a little earlier today held exactly the same palm print. Presumably you know whose that is, so that’s one mystery solved.”

  Pascoe avoided Dalziel’s accusing stare by pretending to lick the last drops from his tumbler with his tongue. He felt he might be going to need them.

  Gentry went to the door, opened it, then turned back.

  “I nearly forgot. You’ll recall there was a partial, not the deceased’s, on the study key. Not really significant forensically speaking as there aren’t enough points of comparison to put before a court. But, for what it’s worth, it also seems to match a print we found on your sheet of paper, Peter. Thank you for the drink, Andy. Now I really must dash to my appointment.”

  “Aye, bugger off to Samarra,” snarled Dalziel after him. “Well, Pete, you who don’t have secrets, are you going to tell me what the hell all that was about?”

  “It sounded to me as if Gentry was suggesting the possibility that someone went to considerable trouble to fix things to create the illusion that Maciver locked himself in the study then shot himself,” said Pascoe.

  “Aye, that much I got. What I’m talking about is these prints.”

  “Ah. Those. Yes, they seem to suggest that whoever it was that set up this rather Heath Robinson apparatus to make it appear like suicide inadvertently left a partial on the key. Then, as they knelt outside to light the thread running to the gramophone after they’d heard the lock click shut, they leaned against the door with the palm of their hand.”

  “I know that, I’ve worked all that out too. How to see the fucking obvious is the first lesson they learn you at superintendents” school. It’s the name I want, the fucking name.”

  Pascoe said, “I think you’ve probably worked that out too, sir. We’ll need to take her prints properly to get absolute confirmation, but this, plus what Novello found out from the Avenue girls, makes it pretty clear Kay Kafka was in Moscow House at or about the time Maciver died.”

  Dalziel nodded.

  “Then we’d best talk to her,” he said.

  “We?” said Pascoe.

  “It’s your case, Pete. But it’s been my call. If I’ve got it wrong, do you not think I’m entitled to be around to see for myself?”

  Pascoe nodded.

  “That sounds fair. Do you want to do it now?”

  The Fat Man looked at his watch.

  “No. Cap’s due back tonight, if she’s not been arrested, that is. She’s been away on one of her demo’s. Don’t ask me what, sometimes she tells me, sometimes she doesn’t, and it’s the times she doesn’t that worry me most.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Pascoe. “When then, sir?”

  “First thing tomorrow. And it’ll give us time to think a bit. There’s a lot going off here we need to think about, Peter. That OK by you?”

  Pascoe hesitated. His instinct was to head straight out to Cothersley. On the other hand, it was Friday night and he and Ellie were due at a school concert where Rosie would be playing the clarinet in public for the first time. It was his private opinion that his daughter’s playing should be an experience reserved for consenting adults in a large empty desert, but while admitting he understood little about the complexities of the female mind, he understood enough not to even hint a hint of this.

  Mistaking the cause of the hesitation, Dalziel said, “She’s not going anywhere, lad, not with them new babbies gurgling away in the maternity ward. And if you’re worried I’m going to be ringing her, forget it. I’ll be too busy discussing American foreign policy or summat with Cap.”

  “That what you call it these days?” said Pascoe, sm
iling. “I assume this means that my twenty-four-hour deadline has been expunged?”

  “Aye. Wiped out like someone’s peed on it from a great height,” said Dalziel. “Like I’m beginning to feel someone has.”

  “Till tomorrow then,” said Pascoe. “See you here at nine?”

  “Suits me,” said Dalziel with an affectation of indifference that didn’t quite come off.

  Pascoe went in search of Wield and found him at his desk behind a mountain of paper.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Edwin’s book-dealing chums have their big thrash tonight. Thought I’d take the chance to get the department records in sight of the millennium.”

  “Not invited then?”

  “In-house only. You’ve got to be two hundred years old and leather bound. Something you want, Pete?”

  “Maybe. But it could turn out even more boring than paperwork and probably less productive.”

  “Try me,” said Wield, pushing his paper mountain aside.

  22 • walking on water

  As the last drinkers began to drift away from the Dog and Duck, St Cuthbert’s clock struck eleven.

  It was a rather splendid chime, fit for a cathedral or a town hall, the old Cothersleyans used to boast. A man a mile or more away, tending a sick beast in the dead of night or ploughing a heavy field in heavy mist, need never be uncertain of the right time with Cothersley clock to set him true. But one man’s boast is another man’s burden and a couple of years earlier after petition from light-sleeping incomers, outvoting the native opposition by five to one, the quarters had been silenced between the hours of ten in the evening and seven in the morning. The objectors would have been glad to silence the hours too, but David Upshott (it was the first big test of his ministry) had offered this compromise, saying that anyone who could not get to sleep within an hour ought to consult his doctor or his conscience.

  Dolly Upshott, rather to the surprise of the pub regulars who weren’t used to seeing her so late and alone, had come in at ten, ordered a large vodka and tonic and sat in a corner, nursing her drink and her mobile phone. She had replied politely but shortly to attempts at conversation and shown no desire to have company at her table. So the regulars had returned their attention to the less edifying but more entertaining sight of Sue-Lynn Maciver, who was more than happy to share the sorrows of her new widowhood with anyone who cared to buy her a drink.