‘What did Walt want?’ asked someone after Sandra had been lying in the grass for ten minutes.
‘When?’
‘When you came over just now.’
‘Nothing. I don’t know. Just to talk. You know what she is.’
‘No, I don’t really,’ said the youth who had asked the question. ‘She’s never bothered me. I don’t get invited on the Tour of the Abbeys trip.’
There was a general laugh. Miss Disney’s annual long week-end among the ruins of Yorkshire’s abbeys with a group of specially selected girls was the subject of a great deal of scurrilous folklore.
‘Poor you,’ said Stuart Cockshut. ‘Where’s that fat bastard off to?’
They watched Dalziel and Pascoe heading towards the dunes.
‘I hope he keeps walking and drowns.’
‘You don’t like him, Stuart?’
‘I don’t like policemen, period. And this one’s out of the original mould. Thick as pig-shit and twice as nasty.’
‘Stuart love,’ said Franny who was lying on his back chewing a daisy, ‘you are far too positive for a politician. You are as clear and uncomplicated as a pane of glass. Yon Dalziel saw through you at a glance. I have no doubt he has a file thicker than Miss Disney on your many misdemeanours. And probably knows better than you the membership and background of these odd little societies you belong to. You must dirty the window a little, keep the inside polished but let rain-drops and bird-crap stop others from looking in.’
‘He doesn’t know what’ll happen at the meeting tonight,’ snarled Stuart, angry at the reproof.
Franny sat up.
‘But surely no one knows that? Isn’t that one of the mysterious joys of the democratic process? Well now, everyone seems to be heading for the beach.’
The others peered through the grass at Halfdane and the two female lecturers.
‘Perhaps there’s an orgy going on,’ said someone.
‘Oh, I took my organ to an orgy, but nobody asked me to play,’ sang Franny softly.
‘Anyone fancy a walk down there?’ said Sandra. ‘To see what’s on?’
They looked at Franny who lay down once more and resumed his daisy-chewing again.
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I’m enjoying the cricket far too much to drag myself away. If someone will substitute a smoke for this flower, I’ll be perfectly content.’
There was a pause. He lay with his eyes closed till he felt the thin cylinder of paper put to his lips. He inhaled deeply.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if anyone else wants to go, don’t let me keep you.’
No one moved. Only a breeze touched the grass and died with the touch.
Pascoe was sweating as much as Dalziel by the time he caught up with him.
‘Where’re we going?’ he asked.
‘Fallowfield. Look,’ said Dalziel, waving Jessup’s papers at him. ‘He was here, being interviewed. The day Girling probably got killed. How’s that for coincidence? Just like the coincidence that he had a date to see the girl he wasn’t really sleeping with the night she got killed. That’s another coincidence, eh?’
‘It might be,’ said Pascoe, cautiously.
‘We’re just going to ask,’ said Dalziel, as though answering a warning. ‘There’s no harm in asking, is there?’
‘No, sir,’ said Pascoe, a little breathlessly. The previous night must have taken more out of him than he’d imagined.
The sea was now in sight. They were off course a little and had to bear to the right to get a line on the little row of cottages where Fallowfield lived.
There was no sign of life in or near any of the buildings, though there were quite a few people on the beach. The sea was absolutely still and there was a soft blue haze on it, drawn up by the sun, like something invented by a Hollywood colour technician. Those bathing in the shallow waters seemed distant, enchanted, their voices and laughter overheard from another world.
There was nothing distant or enchanted about Dalziel’s knock on the door.
He paused a second, scarcely long enough for anyone within to recover from the shock, thought Pascoe, and then hammered away again.
There was no sound from inside.
‘Have a look along the beach. See if he’s there,’ ordered Dalziel, making his way round to the little cobbled yard behind the cottages.
Pascoe had only gone about twenty yards, walking awkwardly on the soft sand, when he heard his name called. Turning, he saw Dalziel standing in the open front door of the cottage. Quickly he retraced his steps.
‘I got in through the back,’ said the fat man, adding sardonically in response to Pascoe’s unasked question, ‘the door was open.’
He went back into the house. Pascoe followed.
The front door opened into the main living-room, probably a draughty arrangement during the winter gales. But Pascoe’s mind dwelt for a split second only on design problems. He blinked at the translation from bright sunlight to the shadowy interior then stared wide-eyed around him.
The place was a shambles.
The floor was covered with torn paper, most of it, as far as he could tell, pages ripped from the books which had once lined the shelves along one side of the fireplace. Mingled with the paper were the innards of cushions, pillows, chairs; flock, feathers and horse-hair lay inches deep in many places. There was a strong smell of spirits, and, lined neatly on the old dresser, Pascoe saw the empty bottles. Someone had carefully poured their contents down on to the general mess below. The walls also had been defaced. Scribbled over them was a variety of obscene drawings, mostly outrageous caricatures of a penis, being attacked by a knife or scissors, with a selection of accompanying slogans, equally simple and direct. Their common burden seemed to be that Fallowfield was a bastard pig who co-habited with his own mother.
No matter how often you saw it, it was always a shock to see a room reduced to this kind of chaos, but Pascoe quickly recovered and stood stock-still, not wanting to disturb anything till he had taken it all in. Dalziel stood quietly by his side.
Impressions began to form.
This shambles was not the kind created by a struggle. Indeed far from it, Pascoe decided. This was a very quiet kind of wrecking. So far as he could see, nothing had been broken, no glass anyway. The empty bottles had been put safely down, the small glass-fronted cabinet from which they had probably been taken was intact, as were the glasses it contained. The old plates which lined the big old-fashioned dresser were undisturbed. A grandmother clock stood in a corner. The face had been opened and the hands torn off, but no glass broken. Nowhere had anything large or heavy been overturned.
Dalziel spoke his thoughts.
‘They took their time, didn’t they? Took their time and did it quietly. You could have come to the door and knocked and not known anyone was in here.’
‘Perhaps we did,’ suggested Pascoe.
‘I hope not,’ said Dalziel gloomily. ‘Nearly all the buggers likely to have done it were sitting back there watching the cricket.’
‘It looks recent, though.’
‘I presume it bloody well is recent! It’s not the kind of decor you choose to live with for a long time, is it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Right. Let’s have a good look around. But tread carefully.’
Pascoe felt rather slighted that Dalziel needed to give the instruction. The fat man caught his expression.
‘I mean, watch where you tread. Literally. They often crap or piddle all over the place when they make this kind of mess.’
Pascoe trod carefully but it turned out there was no need. The cottage was not large - living-room, kitchen, lavatory, shower, one bedroom and a box-room. The damage was restricted almost entirely to the living-room. Even those things belonging elsewhere which had been damaged - like the pillows and some clothing from the bedroom - had been taken downstairs first. There was a drawing in the lavatory - rather more care had been taken this time, but the theme was the same as below - and on the shower f
loor a tumbler had been shattered, whether by accident or malicious design it was hard to say.
As he stood looking out of the back window, Pascoe saw Halfdane coming over the dunes, making for the beach, with Ellie and Marion Cargo. All three had towels bundled under their arms and were obviously going swimming.
Swiftly he moved downstairs, out of the back door, and intercepted them.
‘Hello,’ said Halfdane cheerily. ‘Well met by sunlight! Come and join us, do.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Pascoe, smiling at Ellie. ‘But duty and modesty forbid. Look, I’m sorry to hold you up, but I just wanted to ask if you’d met anyone making their way back to the college?’
They looked at each other, then shook their heads.
‘Sorry,’ said Halfdane. ‘Anyway we couldn’t have been far behind you. Why do you ask?’
‘It’s not important,’ said Pascoe casually. He saw Ellie roll her eyes with exaggerated exasperation, but surprisingly it was Marion Cargo who made the usual complaint.
‘If you people never say what it is you really want to know, how do you expect anyone to co-operate?’
‘Us people?’ said Pascoe looking over his shoulder as though in search of them. ‘Oh, you mean me? Never’s a bit strong to someone you’ve only met twice, isn’t it, Miss Cargo?’
He pulled himself up. It was foolish to let these people get up his nose. These people! There, he was doing it now. It was just that, somehow, a shared background and many shared interests seemed to separate rather than bring them closer. He might have ended up like them if … if what? If there hadn’t been something in him which made it necessary to be a policeman.
In any case, as a policeman he could be conciliatory and seek information at the same time.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said with his best smile. ‘I just wanted a word with Mr Fallowfield, that’s all, and as he’s not at home, I wondered if I might have missed him in the dunes. You haven’t seen anything of him today, have you?’
Again the exchange of glances and the shaking of heads.
‘In that case, I’ll go back and wait a bit,’ he said. ‘Have a nice swim.’
He smiled once more. Ellie rolled her eyes again, but this time in a mock amazement at his performance which invited him to be amused with her. He grinned warmly. Marion remained impassive.
He had only gone a few steps when Halfdane overtook him.
‘By the way, Sergeant, I wanted to have a quick word with you.’
‘Yes?’ said Pascoe, rather brusquely he realized as he saw Halfdane’s eyes narrow.
But, Christ! why did he have to be grateful just because people condescended to talk to him?
‘It’s probably nothing. I would have mentioned it to your superintendent, but his manner’s a bit off-putting.’
Suddenly Pascoe was fed up.
‘What is it you want to tell me? Sir?’
‘There’s a lot I could tell you,’ said Halfdane ironically, ‘but I really wanted to ask you something. In a case like this, a serious case I mean, if some minor breach of the law comes to light incidentally, while you’re pursuing the important enquiry, what do you do?’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Pascoe woodenly.
‘I think you do.’
‘We don’t make bargains. And we don’t make judgments.’
‘No? But you pay informants, don’t you?’
Pascoe shook his head, not in denial but in sheer impatience.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got information, it’s your civic duty to pass it on, no matter what it is.’
‘Get knotted,’ said Halfdane, turning back to where the two women waited.
Pascoe did not wait to hear more but set off smartly back to the cottage.
‘Well?’ said Dalziel.
‘They’ve seen no one.’
‘There’s none so blind,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’m beginning to think they’re all in a gigantic conspiracy.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Pascoe, trying (unsuccessfully he was sure) not to let his chief see his own annoyance at the encounter. ‘Still; where’s Fallowfield? That’s the big question.’
‘It’s bigger than you think,’ said Dalziel. ‘Come and see what I’ve found.’
He led the way into the bedroom where he had obviously done a fairly comprehensive search.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing into a suitcase which lay open on the bed.
In it were a flowered mini-skirt; some underwear; a pair of sandals.
Pascoe looked at the superintendent who nodded.
‘They fit the description,’ he said. ‘I’d lay good money they’re Anita Sewell’s.’
Pascoe snapped the case shut.
‘I’ll check it out,’ he said.
‘Hold on a minute!’ said Dalziel. ‘It’ll keep. No, you keep on sniffing around here for a bit. See if you can do a bit of detecting for a change. You should be well up on the psychological stuff. Well, tell me what kind of person would tear up a place like this? And what kind of person would have a place like this to tear up?’
‘All right,’ said Pascoe cautiously, uncertain how serious Dalziel was.
He went back downstairs to the living-room. Behind him he heard the bed creak protestingly.
Dalziel was a great believer in taking rest when and where you got the chance. Pascoe was always ready to recognize the wisdom of others. He turned the slashed cushion of the deepest armchair upside down, gathered up an armful of paper from the floor and sat down.
Something about the drawings which defaced the walls caught his attention first. Some had been done in some kind of chalk. Bright yellow. There had been no sign of it during the search. He made a mental note to look more closely.
Other drawings and pieces of writing had been done more primitively by scoring the plaster with a sharp-edged object. The brass candlestick on the mantelshelf? He stood up and looked more closely. The corners of the square base were scratched and smeared with powdered plaster.
Perhaps the chalk had just run out. It had been laid on pretty thickly.
He sat down again and began looking at the papers he held. It was a disappointing task at first. The only sheets which were not out of books were typewritten lecture notes, or at least so he assumed from the subject-matter. The books from which the majority of the pages had been ripped were again mainly text-books, easily identifiable as the pages had merely been torn whole from their covers. But here and there he noticed were smaller fragments of pages, some reduced almost to confetti, and he began to fit some of these together to see why they had been given special treatment.
It wasn’t an easy task and after a few minutes he chucked the whole lot on the floor in annoyance and began to do what he ought to have done in the first place - look for book covers.
It didn’t take long to sort out the odd ones - or rather the non-biological ones, for they were not particularly odd in themselves. Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, Leary’s Politics of Ecstasy, Professor Thorndike’s History of Magic and Experimental Science (only three volumes out of eight), Aleister Crowley’s Magic in Theory and Practice and the same writer’s translation of Eliphas Levi’s The Key of the Mysteries, Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (particularly badly damaged - Pascoe could find no piece of a page larger than a postage stamp), Eros and Evil by R. E. Masters; the covers from these and a score of others on related topics Pascoe stacked in the space he cleared on the floor in front of him. He heard the stairs creak and Dalziel appeared in the doorway.
His eyebrows went up when he saw what Pascoe had been doing.
‘Pornography?’ he said hopefully.
‘No, sir,’ said Pascoe with a poorly muffled groan.
‘No?’ said Dalziel, poking around. ‘Still, it’s odd, isn’t it? A bit bent.’
‘I’ve read most of them myself,’ said Pascoe challengingly.
‘Still, you thought it was worth picking out this lot specially,’ said Dalziel mildly. Pascoe found he didn’t have a reply.
‘Anything else?’ Dalziel went on. ‘Good. Let’s get things moving. First thing is, where’s Fallowfield? Failing that, who did this lot? Perhaps he’ll know where Fallowfield is.’
‘Unless it was Fallowfield himself,’ suggested Pascoe. Dalziel looked unimpressed.
‘To confuse the picture, I mean, while he makes off,’ the sergeant added.
‘But why make off at all? And he was a bit careless leaving those clothes lying around, wasn’t he?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Still not happy?’ said Dalziel sympathetically.
‘Yes. That is, well, I don’t know, sir. There’s something..’
‘Perhaps it’s the fact that two people did the wrecking that bothers you,’ Dalziel went on, the sympathy oozing out now.
Oh God, thought Pascoe. I’ve missed something. I should have known as soon as he started sounding pleasant!
‘You noticed the drawings, of course?’
‘Why, yes. You mean some are done in chalk, others scratched?’
‘Partly that. But have another look. It’s not just the instrument, it’s the style.’
Pascoe looked. It might be true, though he had reservations. One piece of graffiti looked much like another to him.
‘So there were two,’ he said neutrally.
‘But the question is, lad, together or apart?
Anyway, we mustn’t stand around here when there’s work to be done. I’ll get these clothes back to the college. You have a go at the neighbours, though I doubt they’ll be any use.’
‘They don’t seem to be in,’ said Pascoe.
Dalziel looked at him pityingly.
‘Of course they’re not in. Only fools and policemen are inside on a day like this. Walk down the beach a bit, they’re probably not far. And, Sergeant …’
‘Sir?’
‘Don’t let all that sunburnt flesh take your mind off the job.’
Even with the jacket of his lightweight suit slung casually over his shoulder, Pascoe felt very much overdressed as he furrowed his way through the soft sand towards the sea.
An Advancement of Learning Page 15
