An April Shroud

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Poor sprout,’ said Louisa. ‘I told you no good would come of it.’

  ‘But you couldn’t foresee this!’ protested Tillotson.

  ‘Not precisely. But I could foresee something, which is more than you could do. It takes you all the time to foresee past your stupid pointed nose!’ snapped Louisa.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lou,’ said Tillotson. ‘All Hank did was fix Nigel up with a bit of sex. My God, I sometimes wish he’d fix me up.’

  The fist came snaking out in the same fierce, uninhibited punch as before. Tillotson, in whom familiarity seemed to have bred faster reflexes, managed to duck and take the blow on his temple. Even so he staggered a pace backwards and the girl had gone by the time he recovered. Dalziel wisely avoided involvement this time.

  ‘Why did she punch you in the Lady Hamilton?’ he asked. It was a question that somehow he had never got round to asking.

  ‘Much the same thing,’ answered Tillotson, gingerly touching his head in search of a wound. ‘She said it was disgusting, especially as Conrad, her step-father, had been having it off with Mrs Greave too. I told her I didn’t blame him, I wouldn’t mind myself, and bang! I was knocked flat.’

  ‘You mean you knew? You all knew? About Nigel and Conrad and Annie? Then you must have suspected what had happened when Annie’s body was found?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Tillotson. ‘You didn’t have to be a detective to work that out. Nigel will be all right, won’t he? He’s only a boy. I say, we made a hell of a lot of cash tonight. We’ve just been counting it up in the kitchen. Shall I show you the figures?’

  ‘Go away!’ said Dalziel. ‘Just go away.’

  He went upstairs to pack. In the hall he passed Ellie who glowered at him inimically from the shadowy corner she was sitting in. They did not speak.

  Before going to his own room he went along the landing and tapped at Hereward’s door. There was no answer and he peered inside. The old man’s head lay on the pillow, still majestic in repose. He breathed deeply and regularly. It was good to see him looking so peaceful, thought Dalziel, approaching the bed.

  ‘I’m sorry about all this, Herrie,’ he said. Apologies were easy to the sleeping and the dead. He turned to leave but, as he did so, the old man’s eyelids flickered and his thin tenor piped almost inaudibly.

  ‘Oh the life of the spirit’s a very fine thing

  But you can’t be a monk without flogging your ring.’

  Then the regular ebb and flow of his breathing resumed.

  Downstairs with his case, Dalziel found Pascoe and Ellie waiting for him. Bonnie had left with Balderstone, Pascoe told him.

  ‘Did she say anything?’ asked Dalziel pointlessly.

  ‘No.’

  In the car on their way to Orburn the trio sat in silence for the first five miles. It was Ellie who broke it.

  ‘I suppose we should congratulate you,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘What for?’ asked Dalziel.

  ‘Coming through with flying colours. All these temptations to act like a human being and you still managed to be true to yourself. The patron saint of policemen must be proud of you. You’ve told the truth and shamed the devil!’

  ‘Aye,’ grunted Dalziel. ‘I’m glad to see marriage has mellowed you.’

  He pressed viciously on the accelerator and the car leapt forward. Pascoe, sitting in the back, rammed his knees into the back of Ellie’s seat, partly as a safety precaution and partly as a warning. His married life was going to require many such warnings, he told himself. He didn’t rate his chances of being a Chief Constable by forty very highly.

  ‘There are still some things I don’t understand,’ he said in what Ellie called his let’s-change-the-subject tone of voice.

  ‘Me too,’ said Ellie.

  Pascoe ignored her and ploughed on.

  ‘This business of Nigel running away and then coming back and hiding round the house. I mean, why do it? You’re not telling me his mother didn’t know.’

  ‘No,’ said Dalziel. ‘Old Herrie didn’t at first, though. We almost got ourselves drowned looking for the lad, so Bonnie faked a phone call from him saying he was safe and sound. Quick thinking, that. Someone rang, Spinx I think, and she must have pressed down the rest and pretended she was talking to Nigel.’

  He spoke admiringly.

  ‘Yes. But why?’ pressed Pascoe. ‘And why did Annie Greave ring Spinx? What was she going to tell him? And what really happened to Spinx? You said you thought he might have been lugged around in the punt? What does Balderstone think?’

  ‘You know me,’ said Dalziel. ‘I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else how to run their case.’

  Jesus wept! thought Pascoe. He’d tell God how to run heaven if he got the chance.

  ‘And I still don’t understand why Hereward really decided to invest in the business,’ he went on.

  ‘Pressure,’ said Dalziel. ‘You heard Charley Tillotson. I bet they all knew what was going on. I wouldn’t be surprised if Big Brother Bertie hadn’t threatened to shop Nigel if Herrie didn’t shell out.’

  ‘Happy families,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘God, you two are so smug and superior!’ exploded Ellie. ‘They’re people, some nice, some nasty.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘But you don’t let the distinction bother you?’ she demanded.

  He didn’t reply and they completed the journey in silence.

  ‘See you on Monday morning, sir,’ said Pascoe as they parted outside his father-in-law’s house.

  ‘Good night,’ said Dalziel and drove away.

  ‘Ellie,’ said Pascoe. ‘Why don’t you practise what you preach some time?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that you might try to understand rather than just judge.’

  She slammed the front gate so hard that a light went on in her parents’ bedroom. Pascoe smiled. It was a small sign of remorse. Slowly, thinking about Dalziel, he followed her up the garden path.

  Dalziel had been in bed an hour when the phone rang. He answered it instantly.

  ‘I’ve just got back from the police station,’ said Bonnie. ‘The night porter at the Lady Hamilton didn’t sound pleased at being woken.’

  ‘Sod him,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Andy,’ she said finally. ‘Will they find out?’

  ‘About Conrad? I don’t know.’

  ‘Anchor are going to pay up, did I tell you?’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Yes. Andy, why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Because I don’t know anything. Not for certain.’

  It was true. He did not know for certain that the Propananol tablets in the bathroom cabinet had been prescribed to Conrad Fielding for his heart condition, though he did know for certain that no mention of the condition had been made to Anchor Insurance. All Conrad had to do to get the life cover required by the finance house for a short-term loan was to sign a declaration that he was in perfect health and give the address of his local doctor. The tablets had been obtained in London, where no doubt the diagnosis had been obtained also.

  Nor did Dalziel know for certain that Conrad had had an attack while up the ladder in the Banqueting Hall. Nor that Nigel had found him and fetched his mother. Nor that Bonnie, realizing that death from a long-established heart condition would invalidate the insurance policy, had taken the still running drill and held it to her husband’s chest. Perhaps it had caught him as he fell, perhaps that was what gave her the idea. In any case, Dalziel knew none of these things for certain. But, if true, they explained much. They explained why, once she discovered he was a policeman, she wanted to keep Nigel out of his way. They explained why Mrs Greave, who could have seen Conrad taking his pills on one of the occasions he slept with her, had felt her knowledge might be worth money to Spinx.

  This was all reasonable supposition.

  But some things Dalziel did know for certain. He h
ad seen the pathologist’s report on Conrad Fielding’s post mortem examination. The doctor had had no inducement to examine the tattered remains of the man’s heart for any damage other than that caused by the drill. Told of a suspected heart condition, he might indeed have been able to find traces. But it wouldn’t have mattered.

  For beyond any doubt, Conrad Fielding had died from the cause stated. When the drill plunged into his heart, he was still alive.

  Bonnie could not have known that, Dalziel assured himself. She had believed that the physical effect of mutilating a dead man was the same as a live one. Her crime (if there were a crime) had been an attempt to obtain insurance money fraudulently.

  But he could never be certain of this without becoming certain of all the other things he did not care to know.

  ‘When will we see you again, Andy?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m a busy man.’

  ‘Lots of crime in Yorkshire,’ she said with an effort at lightness.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But you’ve got business interests here.’

  ‘Happen Bertie would be pleased to buy me out.’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ she said.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Well then. We’ll be in touch.’

  He put the receiver down without saying good night and let his great grey head relax on the pillow. Thoughts flitted madly through his mind. He lay there waiting for their mad whirling dance to exhaust itself. In the end, as always, the last to fade was a policeman’s thought. What had been the circumstances in which Bonnie’s first husband had drowned in the lake – and how much insurance did he have?

  He didn’t want to know that either. He felt exhausted but reluctant to sleep. With a sigh he turned over on his side, reached out to the bedside table, picked up The Last Days of Pompeii and opened it at his place.

  If you enjoyed An April Shroud, read the next book in the Dalziel & Pascoe series

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  Read on for the first chapter now.

  Chapter 1

  All right. All right! gasped Pascoe in his agony. It’s June the sixth and it’s Normandy. The British Second Army under Montgomery will make its beachheads between Arromanches and Ouistreham while the Yanks hit the Cotentin peninsula. Then …

  ‘That’ll do. Rinse. Just the filling to go in now. Thank you, Alison.’

  He took the grey paste his assistant had prepared and began to fill the cavity. There wasn’t much, Pascoe observed gloomily. The drilling couldn’t have taken more than half a minute.

  ‘What did I get this time?’ asked Shorter, when he’d finished.

  ‘The lot. You could have had the key to Monty’s thunderbox if I’d got it.’

  ‘I obviously missed my calling,’ said Shorter. ‘Still, it’s nice to share at least one of my patients’ fantasies. I often wonder what’s going on behind the blank stares. Alison, you can push off to lunch now, love. Back sharp at two, though. It’s crazy afternoon.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Pascoe, standing up and fastening his shirt collar which he had always undone surreptitiously till he got on more familiar terms with Shorter.

  ‘Kids,’ said Shorter. ‘All ages. With mum and without. I don’t know which is worse. Peter, can you spare a moment?’

  Pascoe glanced at his watch.

  ‘As long as you’re not going to tell me I’ve got pyorrhoea.’

  ‘It’s all those dirty words you use,’ said Shorter. ‘Come into the office and have a mouthwash.’

  Pascoe followed him across the vestibule of the old terraced house which had been converted into a surgery. The spring sunshine still had to pass through a stained-glass panel on the front door and it threw warm gules like bloodstains on to the cracked tiled floor.

  There were three of them in the practice: MacCrystal, the senior partner, so senior he was almost invisible; Ms Lacewing, early twenties, newly qualified, an advanced thinker; and Shorter himself. He was in his late thirties but it didn’t show except at the neck. His hair was thick and black and he was as lean and muscular as a fit twenty-year-old. Pascoe who was a handful of years younger indulged his resentment at the other man’s youthfulness by never mentioning it. Over the long period during which he had been a patient, a pleasant first name relationship had developed between the men. They had shared their fantasy fears about each other’s professions and Pascoe’s revelation of his Gestapo-torture confessions under the drill had given them a running joke, though it had not yet run them closer together than sharing a table if they met in a pub or restaurant.

  Perhaps, thought Pascoe as he watched Shorter pouring a stiff gin and tonic, perhaps he’s going to invite me and Ellie to his twenty-first party. Or sell us a ticket to the dentists’ ball. Or ask me to fix a parking ticket.

  And then the afterthought: what a lovely friend I make!

  He took his drink and waited before sipping it, as though that would commit him to something.

  ‘You ever go to see blue films?’ asked Shorter.

  ‘Ah,’ said Pascoe, taken aback. ‘Yes. I’ve seen some. But officially.’

  ‘What? Oh, I get you. No, I don’t mean the real hard porn stuff that breaks the law. Above the counter porn’s what I mean. Rugby club night out stuff.’

  ‘The Naughty Vicar of Wakefield. That kind of thing?’

  ‘That’s it, sort of.’

  ‘No, I can’t say I’m an enthusiast. My wife’s always moaning they seem to show nothing else nowadays. Stops her going to see the good cultural stuff like Deep Throat.’

  ‘I know. Well, I’m not an enthusiast either, you understand, but the other night, well, I was having a drink with a couple of friends and one of them’s a member of the Calliope Club …’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Pascoe, frowning. ‘I know the Calli. That’s not quite the same as your local Gaumont, is it? You’ve got to be a member and they show stuff there which is a bit more controversial than your Naughty Vicars or your Danish Dentists. Sorry!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Shorter. ‘But it’s legal, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes. As long as they don’t overstep the mark. But without knowing what you’re going to tell me, Jack, you ought to know there’s a lot of pressure to close the place. Well, you will know that anyway if you read the local rag. So have a think before you tell me anything that could involve your mates or even you.’

  Which just about defines the bounds of our friendship, thought Pascoe. Someone who was closer, I might listen to and keep it to myself; someone not so close, I’d listen and act. Shorter gets the warning. So now it’s up to him.

  ‘No,’ said Shorter. ‘It’s nothing to do with the Club or its members, not really. Look, we went along to the show. There were two films, one a straightforward orgy job and the other, well, it was one of these sex and violence things. Droit de Seigneur they called it. Nice simple story line. Beautiful girl kidnapped on wedding night by local loony squire. Lots of nasty things done to her in a dungeon, ending with her being beaten almost to death just before hubbie arrives with rescue party. The squire then gets a taste of his own medicine. Happy ending.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Pascoe. ‘Then it’s off for a curry and chips?’

  ‘Something like that. Only, well, it’s daft, and I hardly like to bother anyone. But it’s been bothering me.’

  Pascoe looked at his watch again and finished his drink.

  ‘You think it went too far?’ he said. ‘One for the vice squad. Well, I’ll mention it, Jack. Thanks for the drink, and the tooth.’

  ‘No,’ said Shorter. ‘I’ve seen worse. Only in this one, I think the girl really did get beaten up.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘In the dungeon. The squire goes berserk. He’s got these metal gauntlets on, from a suit of armour. And a helmet too. Nothing else. It was quite funny for a bit. Then he starts beating her. I forget the exact sequence but in the end it goes into slow motion; they always do, this fist hammer
s into her face, her mouth’s open – she’s screaming, naturally – and you see her teeth break. One thing I know about is teeth. I could swear those teeth really did break.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Pascoe. ‘I’d better have another of these. You’re saying that … I mean, for God’s sake, a mailed fist! How’d she look at the end of the film? I’ve heard that the show must go on, but this is ridiculous!’

  ‘She looked fine,’ said Shorter. ‘But they don’t need to take the shots in the order you see them, do they?’

  ‘Just testing you,’ said Pascoe. ‘But you must admit it seems daft! I mean, you’ve no doubt the rest of the nastiness was all faked?’

  ‘Not much. Not that they don’t do sword wounds and whip lashes very well. But I’ve never seen a real sword wound or whip lash! Teeth I know. Let me explain. The usual thing in a film would be, someone flings a punch to the jaw, head jerks back, punch misses of course, on the sound track someone hammers a mallet into a cabbage, the guy on the screen spits out a mouthful of plastic teeth, shakes his head, and wades back into the fight.’

  ‘And that’s unrealistic?’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Shorter. ‘With a bare fist it’s unrealistic, with a metal glove it’s impossible. No, what would really happen would be dislocation, probably fracture of the jaw. The lips and cheeks would splatter and the teeth be pushed through. A fine haze of blood and saliva would issue from the mouth and nose. You could mock it up, I suppose, but you’d need an actress with a double-jointed face.’

  ‘And this is what you say happened in this film.’

  ‘It was a flash,’ said Shorter. ‘Just a couple of seconds.’

  ‘Anybody else say anything?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Shorter. ‘Not that I heard.’

  ‘I see,’ said Pascoe, frowning. ‘Now, why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Why?’ Shorter sounded surprised. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Look, as far as I’m concerned they can mock up anything they like in the film studios. If they can find an audience, let them have it. I’ll watch cowboys being shot and nuns being raped, and rubber sharks biting off rubber legs, and I’ll blame only myself for paying the ticket money. No, I’ll go further though I know our Ms Lacewing would pump my balls full of novocaine if she could hear me! It doesn’t all have to be fake. If some poor scrubber finds the best way to pay the rent is to let herself be screwed in front of the cameras, then I won’t lose much sleep over that. But this was something else. This was assault. In fact the way her head jerked sideways, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up as murder.’