Pictures of Perfection

by Reginald Hill

  ‘If Sergeant Filmer says he’s missing, he ought to know,’ said Wield.

  ‘You reckon? Thing is, it’s the lad’s day off. He clocked off at noon yesterday and he’s not due back on till eight tomorrow morning. Only Filmer calls in at the police cottage first thing this morning – says there was a report he needed, but I reckon he just likes to stick his neb in, keep them on their toes – and there’s no one there.’

  ‘But it’s his day off.’

  ‘Makes no matter to Filmer. He uses his key to get inside, checks the bedroom, finds the bed’s not been slept in.’

  ‘So he got up early and made the bed. Or found somewhere better to sleep last night.’

  ‘Against the rules. You don’t sleep away from home without you inform your Section Office.’

  ‘You don’t ring up at midnight and say, “Hey, Sarge, I’ve struck lucky”, do you?’ said Wield.

  ‘My reaction, just. Not Filmer. He checks the wardrobe. If the lad did strike lucky, he went on the date wearing his uniform, ’cos it isn’t there. Next he checks the car. It’s alongside the cottage, badly parked, unlocked, with stains on the passenger seat.’

  ‘Bloodstains?’

  ‘Strawberry jam for owt I know,’ growled Dalziel. ‘Now Filmer’s right up in the air. Starts making what he calls discreet inquiries. I can hear him. I’ve lost a constable, anyone seen him?’

  ‘And had anyone?’

  ‘Not since yesterday afternoon. But first off he finds some old sod who reckons he saw our missing ploughboy about tea-time having a set-to with a Hells Angel …’

  ‘In uniform? Or out?’

  ‘In. So Filmer decides either there was an emergency which got him back in uniform, or mebbe this old boy who’s rising eighty and recovering from a stroke is a bit confused. He keeps on asking, and, lo and behold, he finds himself another witness in the village who also recalls having a bit of bother yesterday with a Hells Angel. Only he got closer and he gives a description which makes this bugger sound like a cross between King Kong and Rasputin. Now Filmer really panics. First off he radios in a right alarmist report to the Mother Superior, who naturally lobs the buck straight upstairs to Desperate Dan, who can’t find me ’cos I’m out doing some real police work, so he drops it like a steaming hot turd right into the lad’s lap. If I’d been around it’d have got slung back with interest. Let Uniformed take care of their own, say I!’

  ‘So what’s the state of play now, sir?’ asked Wield, who had no problem identifying the Mother Superior as Chief Superintendent Almond, the new Head of Uniformed Branch, while Desperate Dan was of course Chief Constable Daniel Trimble, and ‘the lad’ was Wield’s very good friend, Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe.

  ‘You know Peter. Always a soft touch. Though fair do’s, by the time he gets landed, yon daft bugger Filmer has decided that he can kill two birds with one stone by bringing in the ploughboy’s car for Forensic to check the stain, and the witness to look at our Family Album to try and spot King Kong.’

  ‘He put a witness in a car he wants Forensic to look at and drove him here?’ said Wield incredulously.

  ‘See what I mean? Pete decides he’d best go and tiptoe through the turnips himself, to see what damage has been done. Left me a note. He can be a wilful bugger when he wants.’

  Wield had a good face for hiding smiles, a capacity he used now.

  ‘And Filmer?’

  ‘He’s in here with his star witness turning pages. You have a word with him, Wieldy, come the old Sergeants’ Union, see if he’s got owt sensible to say. I seem to make him nervous, can’t think why.’

  Another smile was absorbed and Wield pushed open the door.

  The shining bald head of Sergeant Filmer was bent alongside the shining silver head of a man peering at a pageful of photographs.

  At the sound of the door, both heads turned.

  Filmer’s face registered relief as he recognized Wield.

  The witness’s face registered first surprise, then relief also.

  And Wield’s face for once allowed his feelings of disbelief, comprehension and dismay to be printed clear.

  ‘So you’ve got him!’ cried Edwin Digweed, the Enscombe bookseller. ‘Jolly good. Now perhaps you’ll admit I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that here was a face marked for villainy if ever I saw one.’

  ‘You what?’ said Dalziel, who had followed Wield into the room.

  ‘Is it Harold Bendish that’s missing?’ asked Wield.

  ‘That’s right. What’s this old bugger on about?’

  The old bugger looked ready to be offended, but as Wield advanced towards him, fear took over and he retreated till his legs caught the lip of the table and he could go no further.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, someone!’ he cried. ‘Shouldn’t this man be under restraint?’

  ‘It’s all right, sir,’ said Wield soothingly. ‘There’s been a mistake. I’m a detective.’

  ‘What?’ Digweed looked from Wield to Filmer, saw no denial there, looked back to Wield, recovered both his balance and his aplomb, and said, very Lady Bracknellish, ‘A detective? You? That does indeed sound like a very great mistake. I still find it hard to believe. Superintendent …?’

  ‘This is Detective-Sergeant Wield, one of my officers,’ said Dalziel in a dangerous voice. ‘Will someone tell me what’s going off here?’

  ‘I was in Enscombe yesterday, sir,’ said Wield. ‘I met Mr Digweed, briefly. Then a bit later on, I …’

  ‘You assaulted Constable Bendish!’ interposed Digweed. ‘Excellent. To preserve your cover, isn’t that the term? I presume that extraordinary costume you had on was some form of cover?’

  ‘I spoke with Bendish, sir,’ said Wield stolidly, addressing himself to Dalziel.

  ‘Oh aye? And what did you say?’

  Wield glanced doubtfully at Digweed, who said, ‘Yes, yes, of course. From being so vital a witness I have to be dragged from my place of business – which incidentally will be doing no business at all while I’m away – I have become an intrusive member of the general public who must on no account be allowed to overhear high-level police discussion. Excuse me, gentlemen, I shall return home where I will spend more of my valuable time penning a strong letter of complaint. You do, I presume, employ at least one token literate to read such letters? Never mind. I’ll put it on tape also. Now I give you good day.’

  He strode out. It was a rather good, very English sort of exit.

  Dalziel jerked his head at Filmer, who went in apologetic pursuit.

  Then the Fat Man turned to Wield and fixed him with a gaze which would have frozen a Gorgon.

  ‘Right, sunshine,’ he said with dreadful softness. ‘Now you can tell me what you were doing in fancy dress beating up PC Bendish!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘If I am a wild beast, I cannot help it.’

  Less than an hour’s sensible driving from Mid-Yorkshire Police HQ, Enscombe is not remote by modern standards. But as the road began to narrow and the valley sides to steepen, Peter Pascoe felt a disproportionate sense of remoteness.

  Everywhere there were signs of man’s presence – the walls built out of stones painfully cleared from the green pastures alongside the shining river, the sheep grazing between them, the whitewashed farmhouses, the road itself – but nowhere was there anything to persuade of man’s permanence. Good old heartless, witless nature seemed lurking everywhere, ready to rush back in the minute man dropped his guard.

  Then he rounded a bend and beheld a Vision of Beauty.

  He skidded to a halt and walked back to take a closer look. Beyond a pair of elegant wrought-iron gates set in the thickest thorn hedge he’d ever seen, a gravelled drive arrowed across a daffodilled lawn to a distant house which, though partially hidden by topiaried shrubs, looked as foreign to Yorkshire as a Pearly Queen in Barnsley market. No sturdy bield this, using Nature’s materials to resist nature’s onslaughts. Here was Art, naked and unashamed. Built of red, no, almost pink brick, with
hipped gables, battered chimney breasts, and a turquoise slated roof along which the creamy ridge tiles seemed to have been piped by a pâtissier, it stood as bold and as bright as a Gay Rights demonstrator outside a rugby league ground.

  He approached to stand near the gates which were themselves worthy of close study. Into the flowing scrolled design were woven the word SCARLETTS and the initials J.H. He reached out a hand to caress the sinuous curves.

  Next moment a black shape like a young bullock flung itself against the gates, setting the metal rattling and Pascoe staggering back in terror, which was just as well, as a set of teeth like a rip saw sliced the air where his fingers had been.

  ‘Down, boy!’ growled a harsh female voice, and a woman appeared from behind the thorn hedge.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ gasped Pascoe. ‘That thing ought to be muzzled!’

  ‘Muzzle’s no use for keeping off trespassers,’ said the woman. She was grey-haired, of indeterminate age, with a hooked nose and unrelenting eyes.

  ‘I wasn’t trespassing,’ said Pascoe indignantly.

  ‘You were touching,’ she said. ‘What’s your business, mister?’

  ‘I was just admiring the house.’

  ‘Admiring comes afore coveting,’ she grated. ‘I dare say you was admiring last night as well. Just bugger off or I’ll mebbe let Fop out for a run.’

  Fop! If he couldn’t get her under the Fighting Dog legislation, he could certainly have her under the Trades Descriptions Act. But at the moment he could see little alternative to a dignified retreat.

  He was moving away when a metallic aubergine cabriolet turned off the road and stopped in front of the gate. The driver stood up and peered over the screen at him. He was at the turn of forty with a mobile, sensual face beneath an aureole of Titian hair. He wore a cordovan jacket which matched his car and round his neck was wound a shot silk scarf just long enough when he drove at speed to give him something of Isadora Duncan’s panache without risking sharing her fate.

  In fact the first general impression Pascoe got was of a man who judged his effects carefully.

  The second impression was that he knew him from somewhere.

  ‘And what, pray, may your business be?’

  The voice was light, educated, and redolent of the complacency of one who knows that if things of beauty are a joy forever, he’s OK, mate.

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ said Pascoe, taking the question literally. ‘DCI Pascoe, Mid-Yorks CID.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said the man, leaping lightly (yet with a weighty awareness of his light leaping) out of the car. ‘You chaps are taking this seriously. I’m impressed.’

  Pascoe took the proffered hand but not the allusion. The shake was firm, warm, dry, and just the right length.

  ‘As you doubtless know, I’m Justin Halavant. Bayle, the gates.’

  Bayle! The woman’s name was as apt as the dog’s wasn’t! As for the man’s, this confirmed his sense of recognition. This was Justin Halavant who edited the Post’s Arts Page and frequently hosted TV’s North Light Show.

  ‘Leave your car,’ suggested Halavant as the gates rolled open. ‘Hop into mine.’

  Pascoe, feeling Fop’s hungry eye upon him, hopped, and Halavant sent the car shooting up the drive at a speed which suggested he might be intending to enter without bothering to get out.

  Happily, a deftly controlled skid brought them to a halt parallel to the façade. Pascoe, determined to show no reaction to these automotive histrionics, climbed out and said, ‘Some house! But not exactly the vernacular tradition, is it?’

  ‘Hardly,’ smiled Halavant. ‘My great-grandfather had it built, partly to disoblige certain of his neighbours, partly to open up this part of darkest Yorkshire to the new light of taste. Basically it’s a Morris design with a few exuberances added by the architect who was a rather wayward pupil of Butterfield’s.’

  ‘Butterfield? He did the parsonage at Hensall, didn’t he?’

  ‘You know about such things? Come inside and let me give you the quick tour.’

  He led the way through a series of rooms so full of goodies that Pascoe began to feel as he often did in great museums that the total somehow came to less than the sum of the parts. The saving trick he had discovered was to focus on a single item and absorb all it had to offer, otherwise Art became Everest, bloody hard work, and essayed merely because it was there.

  He paused in a long drawing-room, blanked his mind, and trawled his gaze around the paintings which crowded the walls. It snagged on a small portrait whose narrow oval frame perfectly echoed the face of its subject. She was a young woman, not beautiful but full of character, with deep brown eyes, a rather long nose, and glowing skin tones. She met his gaze directly but demurely, yet he got a sense of fun, as though laughter were tugging at those modest lips, and wasn’t there just a hint that her left eyelid was drooping in a cheeky wink? He looked closer and the impression was gone.

  ‘This is nice,’ he said. ‘Does she have a name?’

  ‘Probably, I don’t recall. Some ancestor, eighteenth-century, of course,’ said Halavant vaguely. ‘Are you specially interested in portraits, Inspector?’

  ‘No. She just caught my eye. That serious, rather solemn posing expression, yet you get a sense she’s amused, almost on the brink of a wink, so to speak.’

  ‘What?’ Halavant came to stand alongside him. ‘Yes … yes … perhaps …’

  He turned away abruptly and said, ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t offer you any hospitality, but having just got back, I have things to do … so if we could get this business sorted …’

  Clearly the tour was over. Time to be a policeman again.

  ‘What business would that be, sir?’ said Pascoe courteously.

  ‘The false alarm last night, of course.’

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me about it, sir.’

  ‘What can I tell you that you don’t know?’ he said in some irritation, tugging at an old-fashioned bell-pull by the fireplace. ‘I rang Mrs Bayle last night to confirm what time I’d be back today, and she filled me in … ah, Mrs Bayle. This incident last night. Tell us what happened.’

  The woman, who had appeared with silent speed and, to Pascoe’s relief, without Fop, said, ‘Bell rang at nine o’clock. I looked through the peephole and when I saw it were him, I opened the door …’

  ‘Him?’ interjected Pascoe.

  ‘Him. The constable. Mr Bendish.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Pascoe noncommittally, but he felt Halavant’s curious gaze on him and guessed he was beginning to suspect something odd here.

  Mrs Bayle took the ‘ah’ as an instruction to proceed.

  ‘I asked what he wanted and he said there’d been a report of a man hanging about, looking suspicious, and had I noticed anything. I said no I hadn’t and good night. But he said he’d better take a look inside just to be sure as it were more than his job was worth, and likely mine too, if Mr Halavant came back and found something missing, and he’d been on the doorstep.’

  This sudden flood of words was, Pascoe guessed, a pre-emptive justification of having allowed someone across the threshold in her master’s absence.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘He took a look around. Everything were in order, so he left.’

  ‘And you yourself felt no cause for concern?’

  She hesitated and said, ‘Well, after he’d gone, I thought mebbe I heard summat outside, more like a nightbird than owt to worry about, but I sent Fop out for a run just in case.’

  Pascoe shuddered at the thought and Halavant came in with, ‘And naturally there was nothing. And if there had been, my extremely expensive, police-recommended state-of-the-art security system would have alerted the neighbourhood. Mr Pascoe, forgive me but I get a distinct impression that most of what you’ve just heard is new to you. Now why should that be?’

  It was time to come clean, or at least a little less muddied.

  ‘You’re right, sir,’ he said. ‘To tell the truth, I only stoppe
d to admire your lovely house, and things just went on from there.’

  Halavant smiled and said, ‘I wondered why such a senior officer was spending time on a false alarm. Are you in fact in the area on business …?’

  ‘I’m on my way to Enscombe to have a word with Constable Bendish, so no doubt I’ll get the full story then,’ said Pascoe, seeing no reason to fuel rumour. ‘You know him, do you, sir? Settled in all right, has he? Old village communities can be difficult.’

  ‘I think you’ll find Enscombe pretty unique,’ said Halavant ambiguously, as well as solecistically. ‘If your visit is in any sense an efficiency check, I would say from what I know of the young man that his devotion to duty has been puritanical, and his eye for the depth of a tyre tread is phenomenal.’

  As he spoke he had been gently urging Pascoe to the front door. Pascoe’s mind was full of interesting speculations, but as the door opened and he looked down the long length of unprotected driveway to the distant gates, they were all swept aside by the single basic question: was Fop loose?

  He tried to find a way to phrase it that wouldn’t make him sound like a quivering wimp, but the door clunked solidly shut before he could speak.

  He set off at high speed, grew ashamed, forced himself to stop and admire a blossoming pear, then strolled to the safety of his car with studied ease.

  Once seated and driving, normal service was renewed and all the speculations came flooding back. A puritanical devotion to duty, Halavant said. All the evidence certainly pointed that way. He came off duty at twelve noon yesterday. Twice since then – once when remonstrating with the Hells Angel, and again last night at Scarletts – he had been seen in uniform doing his job. Curious.