'A cottage. Nice. Well, I take your point, Mr Cowley, but it still must have been a fairly important matter.'
'Not very. It needed a quick decision, that was all.'
'A business matter?'
'Of course.'
'Routine, but urgent? Timewise, I mean.'
'That's it. You've got it. Now, please, Sergeant, could we get on?'
'Of course. Just another minute, sir.'
Another minute spread to ten. Pascoe could not really say why he was trying to niggle this man, except that his air of chronic impatience seemed to invite such treatment, just as some people look so self-effacing and humble, it is difficult not to tread on them.
But after ten minutes, all Pascoe had was the mixture as before, and Cowley's annoyance was reaching legitimately large proportions. At last Pascoe beat a strategic retreat, feeling he had wasted his time. Despite this, he wasted another fifteen minutes sitting in his car thirty yards up the road until Cowley too came out accompanied by a grey-haired, stocky man in an old tweed suit. Pascoe had never seen him before. It didn't seem very likely he would ever see him again. He glanced at his notebook which held the names and addresses of Lewis and Cowley's two secretary/typists. Doubtless they would be enjoying their unexpected day off, perhaps a little worried about the job now with half their employers dead.
He shut the notebook with a snap and leaned his head hard against the cool glass of the windscreen. It was so easy. So easy to forget what a death could mean to other people. For all he knew, there could have been a close relationship between Lewis and his secretary. Sexual perhaps; such things were commonplace. Or perhaps she just liked him, admired him, shared jokes with him. What did it matter? What did matter was that he, Detective-Sergeant Peter Pascoe, should not so easily brutalize in his mind people he had not met.
He glanced at his book once more. Marjory Clayton, 13 Woodview Drive. Not far from old Sturgeon's place, if his geography were right. He ought to look in and have a word with Sturgeon while he was out that way.
But first things first. He let in the clutch and set off for Woodview Drive.
Sturgeon had been heading steadily south for the past half-hour. He knew he wasn't going fast enough, but his right foot seemed weightless, not able to cope with the job of depressing the accelerator. Ferrybridge and its great cooling towers, the Age of Industry's version of Stonehenge, had moved slowly by a few minutes earlier. The Doncaster bypass was not far ahead, and then the road would split, giving a choice between the Al and the Ml, two great alimentary tracts via which the north voided its products into London.
London still had a sinful sound to him. True, in his sixty-eight years he had been there a couple of dozen times, perhaps more; but always it was the first time he recalled, and his old grandmother who had never been farther south than Newark sewing his purse to his woollen vest as a precaution against pickpockets.
But now the days of such precautions were by. He smiled at the double irony of the thought and glanced at his watch. Mavis, his wife, would be getting home soon. She was rarely late back from shopping because she did not like to leave the cats. Though of course she would not think the house would be empty. But it wouldn't perturb her, not Mavis. Not at first. She'd set about making his tea with swift, deft, long-practised movement. He owed her much. She'd married beneath her, so her relatives had said or plainly hinted. There'd been a bit of brass there. But he'd never taken any; he had shown them; by his own efforts with his own hands. He had shown them.
It had started raining, a fine misty rain out of which a slow lorry suddenly appeared ahead, snapping him back to the present. He swung out sharply to overtake. Behind him a blue van, breaking the speed-limit on the outside lane, bore down on him relentlessly, flashing its lights.
He stamped on the accelerator now, finding his strength. The Rover leapt forward, the loose seat-belt buckle swinging noisily against the door. In a few seconds his speed had doubled.
It was all a question of timing really. He suddenly felt optimistic. It was the right thing to do, there was no alternative. The thing was to do it right. He opened his mouth in triumphant song. The road glistened damply.
Behind him, the driver of the blue van watched in disbelieving horror the beginnings of the skid. This couldn't be happening just because he had flashed his lights. It couldn't be!
The road here was slightly raised above the level of the surrounding countryside. The car slid gracefully off the hard surface, struck the grass-verge, then flipped sideways and over down the embankment.
By the time the van-driver halted and made his way to the car, everything was quite, quite still.
The royal-blue Mini-Cooper, backed deep into a tunnel of hawthorn and briar, was still too. The small boy approached it carefully. He had been observing it just as carefully from his hiding-place for. the past ten minutes. At last he was satisfied that it was just as unoccupied as it had been the first time he noticed it two days earlier.
The boy had very good reason for not wishing to be observed. Of all the places his kill-joy parents proscribed, this was placed under their most severe proscription. To be found here would be to risk the most dreadful punishments. The reason lay fifteen yards or so behind him where the sheer walls of the old clay-pit, rimmed now with a double thickness of barbed-wire, fell fifty feet to the opaque waters below.
He'd reached the car and peered in. It was, as expected, empty. But the key was in the ignition which meant that whoever owned it might not be far away. Yet he was certain its position had not changed since he first spotted it. All in all, it was worth taking the risk of looking inside.
Disappointingly it contained little of interest. A sheet of paper had been left on the passenger seat with a lot of writing on it. But he couldn't make a great deal of sense of it.
Rain spattered on the windscreen. It was time to go. He walked back towards the clay-pit and through the gap in the wire to peer down once more at the water. If the rain really got going again, would the surface of the water ever reach the top? It was an interesting speculation, but the growing co-operation of the rain-clouds made him cut it short and retreat. It was a useful gap, this. Eventually someone would notice and repair it, but not many people came this way.
Like the car, it was his secret for the moment.
Wet but happy, he began to make his way home to the village.
Chapter 5
There was a police-car outside Sturgeon's house when Pascoe arrived.
Marjory Clayton had not been much help. Aged about twenty, she was a plain girl, rather anaemic in complexion and wearing a shapeless cardigan which looked as if it had been woven round a sack of potatoes. She seemed genuinely upset at her employer's death and Pascoe treated her gently. Monday had been her half-day and she had been nowhere near the office after midday. Nothing unusual had occurred during the morning. In fact practically nothing at all. No customers, few calls. Business, it seemed, was very, very slack. No, she had not known that Mr Lewis was returning from Scotland that afternoon, though it didn't surprise her. He spent a lot of time up there and seemed quite happy to drive back and forth at fairly frequent intervals.
The other secretary, Jane Collinwood, lived at the far side of town. She would have to wait till later. It was beginning to feel like a wasted day.
But the scene that met him when he stepped through the open front door of Sturgeon's house drove his own troubles out of his mind. Mavis Sturgeon, aged from a sprightly sixty to a parchment like ninety, was being helped into her coat by an awkward-looking constable. She was clearly in a state of shock and showed no sign of recognition.
'What's up?'
'Are you a friend, sir?' asked the constable hopefully.
'I'm a detective-sergeant, son. Come on, what's happened?'
'It's Mr Sturgeon, Sergeant. There's been an accident, and I was sent..’
'Yes.' Pascoe put his arm round the woman's shoulders. 'Have you sent for a doctor?'
'Well, no. She wouldn't… she j
ust insisted on going straight to the hospital,' the constable answered helplessly.
'For God's sake, man! She's in no state, can't you see?'
Pascoe's anger drained quickly away. Being a messenger of death and disaster was no job for a young man. He pointed at the leather-bound address book by the telephone in the hallway.
'You'll find her doctor's number in that, probably. It's Andrews, I think. Ring him. Tell him to get out here at once. Then go next door, dig out a neighbour and bring her round.'
'Please, I must go to Edgar,' said Mrs Sturgeon piteously.
'Yes, love. Soon. Come and sit down a moment,' answered Pascoe, leading her gently into the lounge.
'He's been so worried lately. So worried. He wouldn't tell me why. I should have been harder. I should have tried harder.'
She began to weep and the trio of cats which had been viewing the scene suspiciously from the darkest corner of the room now advanced, mewing piteously, and jumped up on her knees. She buried her fingers in their fur, crying still.
A few minutes later the constable arrived with a neighbour, a sensible middle-aged woman who took control with the brisk efficiency of a Women's Institute president. Pascoe retired to the hall and spoke to the constable.
'Yes, Sarge, pretty serious, I believe. He was still alive when they got him to hospital, but at that age…'
'Do you know how it happened?'
'No. Not the faintest. Nothing else involved, that's all I know.'
'And he was down the Al?'
'Nearly at Doncaster. That's where they've taken him.'
Pascoe turned to the phone, first making sure the lounge door was firmly shut. He had to wait a few moments for the operator to answer and his eyes ran over the opened telephone book. One number caught his eye. A Lochart number, but the name next to it meant nothing.
Finally the operator replied and with compensatory swiftness put him through to the Doncaster Royal Infirmary. He identified himself and inquired after Sturgeon. The old man was very ill, he was told. Face cut, ribs broken, left kneecap shattered, no serious internal injuries as far as they knew yet, but he had lost a great deal of blood and was in a serious condition. Anyone wanting to see him might be well advised to move as quickly as possible.
'Thanks,' said Pascoe, putting down the phone.
Hospital, doctors; blood, violence, death.
'It's a hell of way to make a living,' he said to the fresh-faced constable. 'You'll hang on here till the doctor comes?'
'Yes, Sarge. You going now?'
'There's work to do,' said Pascoe.
Dalziel had decided to skip tea, partly as a result of Grainger's suggestion that he should try to lose a pound or two and partly because the medical examination had taken the edge off his usually ferocious appetite. He had left samples of just about everything extractable or removable from his body. It had made him very conscious of himself as a scaffolding of bone with flesh, blood and gut packed into the interstices. The thought of ham sandwiches or sausage rolls had no immediate appeal. But neither his mind nor his body could find anything wrong with the thought of a large stiff scotch (pure malt, drunk with a large dash of gusto) and accordingly he settled down in his room with the aforesaid medication and tried to think about the work in hand.
He was disturbed to find how little it interested him. When a man had devoted his life to something – even, some might say, destroyed it for that something – the least that something could do in return was not bore him.
The telephone rang. It was the duty sergeant.
'Sorry to bother you, sir, but I was just wondering if you knew when Sergeant Pascoe would be back. I know he's out doing something for you and…'
'I am not Pascoe's bloody keeper! Nor am I a bloody answering service. What do you want him for?'
'It's not me, sir. It's the young lady, Miss Soper, the one who was with him, at the week-end, you know. And she's very insistent on getting in touch with him, so I thought in the circumstances I would ask…'
Heart. There's a nasty outbreak of heart about this bloody place, thought Dalziel. The usual symptoms. Swellings of sympathy, failure of the proprieties. He drank the rest of his whisky.
'Put her through to me,' he said on impulse.
'Hello?'
'Hello, Miss Soper. Dalziel here.'
'Oh.'
'Sergeant Pascoe's not here at present, but I hope to be seeing him later. Was it urgent?'
'No. No, not really.'
'Forgive me asking, Miss Soper, but is it a private matter? Or is it police business?'
'I didn't realize you drew a distinction, Superintendent.'
That's better, thought Dalziel. That's the authentic liberal radical left-wing pinko Dalziel-hating note.
'If it's police business, Miss Soper, I'm sure the sergeant would want you to tell me.'
'What kind of police business had you in mind?'
Dalziel poured himself another scotch with his free hand.
'You are linked with a current inquiry, Miss Soper. Please accept my sincere condolences on what happened at the week-end. It must have been very trying for you.'
'Oh yes. I was very tried. Very tried indeed.'
Dalziel sighed and drank deeply.
'But, please, if any pertinent information should come your way, think carefully before you burden Pascoe with the weight of it. It's wrong to put overmuch strain on a man's loyalties. Wrong for everyone.'
'Let's chuck the circumlocutions, shall we? What're you trying to say, Superintendent?'
'I'm trying to suggest,' said Dalziel, his voice rising in spite of himself, 'that if for instance the man, Hopkins, should get in touch with you, it's your plain duty to inform the authorities. It would be wrong, and stupid, and bloody selfish to tell Pascoe and then try to get him to conceal the information. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Miss Soper. Not that you ought to need to be told, you're supposed to be so damn clever. Pascoe's a good lad, he's got a fine career in front of him if no one starts screwing him up. You stick to giving him soldiers' comforts in the night and leave him to do the job he's paid for. That's what I'm trying to tell you.'
He stopped and listened, waiting for a verbal explosion in reply or the sound of the phone being hammered down. Instead of either, he heard a soft rhythmic sound like a broken humming. It might have been either weeping or laughter.
'Miss Soper?' he said. 'Miss Soper.'
The line went dead.
He poured another inch of whisky. As usual, he had been right, he thought, staring down into the glass. This outbreak of heart was spreading widely. It was going to be difficult to avoid the contagion.
'Hello, Eric, or little by little,' said Angus Pelman, smiling through the Land-Rover window at the very damp boy on the grass verge.
Eric Bell was unamused by the facetious form of address. He hadn't been amused the first time he'd heard it and since then had found no reason to adjust his reaction.
'Hello, Mr Pelman,' he said politely. The man after all was a friend of his parents, though the word 'friend' seemed to have a rather odd meaning in the adult world. His mother and father always seemed delighted with Mr Pelman's company, made much of him, plied him with drink. But after his departure, the things they said about him though not always comprehensible were clearly far from complimentary.
'You'd better get in,' said Pelman. 'Though you couldn't get much wetter.'
Eric climbed in.
'No school today?' asked Pelman.
'No. The teachers are having a meeting.'
'Oh? With the holidays they get, you'd think they could meet in their own time. Don't you think so, Eric?'
Eric didn't bother to answer, ignoring his number one dictum, it pays to be polite to adults. He was going to pay the price he realized almost immediately.
'Was that you I saw earlier going up Poplar Ridge?' said Pelman casually.
'Up Poplar Ridge?'
'That's right.'
'It might have been.'
'Oh. There's not a great deal up there, is there?'
'Not much.’
‘No,’ said Pelman. 'Except the clay-pit.'
Eric fixed his eyes on the rain-pustuled glass in front of him. The windscreen-wiper was defunct on the passenger side and could only flick spasmodically like the broken wing of a shot bird.
His mind worked quickly. He saw no reason at all to trust Pelman. He hadn't laughed at his jokes, which is the biggest of anti-male sins. Therefore Pelman was almost certain to put the idea of the pit in his mother's mind. And that would be that. When it came to extracting information, Chinese inquisitors were mere unsubtle blockheads by comparison with his mother.
The best hope was to create a diversion.
'Yes,' he said. 'The clay-pit is up there. But that wasn't why I went. I went to look at the car.'
'The car?'
'Yes. There's a car up there. I went to see if it was still there.'
'What kind of car?' asked Pelman, slowing down.
'A blue car. A Mini.'
The Land-Rover came to a gentle halt by the roadside. Pelman peered closely at the boy.
'A blue Mini, Eric. Did you find it, or did somebody tell you about it?'
Eric thought quickly. It sounded better for him if he'd merely gone to investigate someone else's report, he decided.
'Someone told me,' he said, adding virtuously, 'I wouldn't have gone up there.'
'That's very interesting,’ said Pelman, setting the Land-Rover in motion again. 'Then we'd better tell somebody else, hadn't we?'
On the surface, Jane Collinwood was even more upset at the loss of her employer than her fellow secretary had been, but Pascoe suspected she was thoroughly enjoying the thrill of being so closely connected with a real life murder. She was a pretty girl, except for rather crooked teeth, not much more than seventeen, and full of the careless vigour of youth which overflowed even into the little bouts of weeping she thought the fitting punctuation of her speech.
He asked the obvious questions without much hope. Anything odd she'd noticed? Any reason to think someone might want to hurt Lewis? Everything she replied discouraged him more and more in his theory that there might have been something personal in this killing. Dalziel was right, as always. The house-breaker had been disturbed and lashed out in panic. Tough on Lewis.
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