Bones and Silence

REGINALD HILL

BONES AND SILENCE

A Dalziel and Pascoe novel

We insist, it seems, on living. Then again, indifference descends. The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams: rubs features from faces. People might walk through me . . . We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.

VIRGINIA WOOLF, The Waves

part one

God: First when I wrought this world so wide, Wood and wind and waters wan, Heaven and hell was not to hide, With herbs and grass thus I began. In endless bliss to be and bide And to my likeness made I man, Lord and sire on ilka side Of all middle earth I made him then.

A woman also with him wrought I, All in law to lead their life, I bade them wax and multiply, To fulfil this world, without strife. Sithen have men wrought so woefully And sin is now reigning so rife, That me repents and rues forthy That ever I made either man or wife.

The York Cycle of Mystery Plays:

'The Building of the Ark'

January 1st

Dear Mr Dalziel,

You don't know me. Why should you? Sometimes I think I don't know myself. I was walking through the market place just before Christmas when suddenly I stopped dead. People bumped into me but it didn't matter. You see, I was twelve again, walking across a field near Melrose Abbey, carefully balancing a jug of milk I'd just got from the farm, and ahead of me I could see our tent and our car and my father shaving himself in the wing mirror and my mother stooping over the camp stove, and I could smell bacon frying. It was such a good smell I started thinking about the lovely taste that went with it, and I suppose I started to walk a bit quicker. Next thing, I caught my toe in a tussock of grass, stumbled, and the milk went everywhere. I thought it was the end of the world but they just laughed and made a joke of it and gave me a huge plateful of bacon and eggs and tomatoes and mushrooms, and in the end it almost seemed they loved me more for spilling the milk than fetching it safely.

So there I was, standing like an idiot, blocking the pavement, while inside I was twelve again and feeling so loved and protected. And why?

Because I was passing the Market Caff and the extractor fan was blasting the smell of frying bacon into the cool morning air.

So how can I say I know myself when a simple smell can shift me so far in time and space?

But I know you. No, how arrogant that sounds after what I've just written. What I mean is I've had you pointed out to me. And I've listened to what people say about you. And a lot of it, in fact most of it, wasn't very complimentary, but this isn't an abusive letter so I won't offend you by repeating it. But even your worst detractors had to admit you were good at your job and you weren't afraid of finding out the truth. Oh, and you didn't suffer fools gladly.

Well, this is one fool you won't have to suffer much of. You see, the reason I'm writing to you is I'm going to kill myself.

I don't mean straightaway. Some time soon, though, certainly in the next twelve months. It's a sort of New Year Resolution. But in the meantime I want someone to talk to. Clearly anyone I know personally is out of the question. Also doctors, psychiatrists, all the professional helpers. You see, this isn't the famous cry for help. My mind's made up. It's just a question of fixing a date. But I've discovered in myself a strange compulsion to talk about it, to drop hints, to wink and nod. Now that's too dangerous a game to play with friends. What I think I need is a controlled outlet for all my ramblings. And you 've been elected.

I'm sorry. It's a big burden to lay on anyone. But one other thing which came out of what people say about you is that my letters will be just like any other case. You might find them irritating but you won't lose any sleep over them!

I hope I've got you right. The last thing I want to do is to cause pain to a stranger - especially knowing as I do that the last thing I will do is cause pain to my friends.

Happy New Year!

CHAPTER ONE

'I still don't see why she shot herself,’ said Peter Pascoe obstinately.

'Because she was bored. Because she was trapped,' said Ellie Pascoe.

Pascoe used his stick to test the consistency of the chaise-longue over the side of which the dead woman's magnificently ruined head had dangled thirty minutes earlier. It was as hard as it looked, but his leg was aching and he sat down with a sigh of relief which he turned into a yawn as he felt his wife's sharp eyes upon him. He knew she distrusted his claims to be fit enough to go back to work tomorrow. He would have gone back today only Ellie had pointed out with some acerbity that February 15th was his birthday, and she wasn't about to give the police the chance to ruin this one as they had the last half-dozen.

So it had been another day of rest and a series of birthday treats - breakfast in bed, an early gourmet dinner, front row stalls at the Kemble Theatre's acclaimed production of Hedda Gabler, all rounded off with after-show drinks on the stage, provided by Eileen Chung, the Kemble's Director.

'But people don't do such things,’ Pascoe now asserted with Yorkshire orotundity.

Ellie looked ready to argue but he went on confidentially, 'I can smell a rotting fish when I see one, lass,' and belatedly she recognized his parody of his CID boss, Andy Dalziel.

She began to smile and Pascoe smiled back.

'You two look happy,' said Eileen Chung, approaching with a new bottle of wine. 'Which is odd, considering you paid good money to be harrowed.'

'Oh, we're harrowed all right, only Peter's worst instincts tell him Hedda was murdered.'

'And how right you are, Pete, honey,' said Chung, easing her seventy-five inches of golden beauty on to the chaise-longue beside him. 'That's exactly what I wanted to get across. Let me fill your glass.'

Peter glanced round the stage. The rest of the Kemble team seemed to be taking their leave. He began to ease himself up, saying, 'I think we should be on our way . . .' but Chung drew him down again and said, 'Why the rush?'

'No rush,' he said. 'I'm not back at the rushing stage yet.'

'You've got a very distinguished limp,' she said. 'And I just love the stick.'

'He's embarrassed by the stick,' said Ellie, sitting at his other side so that he felt pleasantly squeezed. 'I suspect he feels it detracts from his macho image.'

'Pete. Baby!' said Chung, putting her hand on his knee and looking deep into his eyes. 'What's a stick but a phallic symbol? You want a bigger one maybe? I'll look in our props cupboard. And think of all the wild, wild men who've been lame. There was Oedipus, now he was a real motherfucker. And Byron. God, even his own sister wasn't safe -'

'Unhappily Peter is both an orphan and an only child,' interrupted Ellie.

'Aw shit. Pete, I'm sorry. I didn't know. But there's plenty of others without the family hang-ups. The Devil, for instance. Now he was lame.'

And Peter Pascoe, up to this moment more than content to accept this heavy-handed ribbing as a fair price for the privilege of being sandwiched between Ellie whom he loved, and Chung whom he lusted after, knew that he was betrayed.

He began to rise but Chung was already on her feet, her face alight with a let's-do-the-show-in- the-barn glow.

'The Devil,' she throbbed. 'Now there's an idea. Pete, honey, give me a profile. Fan-tastic. And with the limp, per-fection! Ellie, you know him best. Could he do it? Or could he do it?'

'He's got many diabolic qualities,' admitted Ellie.

This had gone far enough. There were some advantages to having a stick. He brought it down savagely on Hedda Gabler's coffee table, which he could do with a clear conscience as it belonged to him. Chung collected props like old Queen Mary collected antiques - she admired them into gifts. But she wasn't going to make a gift out of him.

Ellie was much to blame, but not as much as himself. He'd forgotten the golden rule - any friend of Ellie's was guilty until proven innocent, and probably longer. He'd been as suspicious as Ellie had been enthusiastic when the newly appointed Director of the Civil Theatre had clarioned her commitment to socially significant drama. But her beauty and charisma had made a rapid conquest of him. Her paymasters, the Borough Council, were less easy targets. Their stuff was brass not flesh and there was much concern lest they had taken a lefty viper to their righteous bosoms. But when her Private Lives (transplanted to Skegness and Huddersfield) had been a box office success surpassed only by her Gondoliers of the Grand Union Canal, the city fathers, realizing their clouds of doubt had brass linings, had relaxed and drifted with the cash-flow.

But it was her latest project aimed at God as well as Mammon which should have set his storm warning flashing.

Chung had proposed a huge outdoor production of the Mediaeval Mysteries. It was to be an eclectic version, though with a jingoistic concentration on the York and Wakefield cycles, it would run for seven days in early summer, and all the Powers that Were looked upon the project and saw that it was good. The clergy approved because it would make religion 'relevant', the Chamber of Commerce because it would pack the town with tourists, the Community Leaders because it would revitalize cultural identity by employing vast numbers of locals as performers, and the City Council because the locals wouldn't expect to be paid. Some mutterings about idolatry and blasphemy came from a few inerrantist outposts, but these were drowned in the great surge of approval.

At first it was assumed that Chung would cast her resident company in the main speaking parts, perhaps importing a middling magnitude telly star to give some commercial clout to Jesus, but here she took everyone by surprise.

'No way,' she told Ellie. 'My gang are going to be planted deep in the crowd scenes. That's where you need the professional stiffening in this kind of caper. Stars I can create!' So the great hunt had started. Every amateur thespian in the area started sending press-cuttings to the Kemble. Aged Jack Points, stripling King Lears, Lady Macbeths of the Dales, infant prodigies, Freds 'n' Gingers, Olivier lookalikes, Gielgud soundalikes, Monroe mouealikes, Streep stripalikes, the good, the bad, and the unbelievable were ready to stride and strut, fume and fret, leap and lounge, mouth and mumble, emote and expire before Chung's most seeing eye.

But for the most of them, their rehearsals were in vain. Chung saw to it that all their cuttings were returned with thanks, for she knew how precious are the records of praise, but the accompanying message was, why don't you go and get lost in the crowd scenes? For Chung had not been wasting her short time in this city. She was gregarious, went everywhere, forgot nothing. Those who met her were charmed, shocked, intrigued, revolted, amused, amazed, entranced, entramelled, but never indifferent. And though many would have loved it, few realized they had already been on Chung's casting couch. By the time she broached the Mysteries project, her mental cast list was almost complete.

Her intimates had been invited to help in snaring the more unwilling victims. Pascoe had been vastly amused when Ellie let drop some hilarious hints of Chung's remorseless quest, never for one moment suspecting that he might be himself a target!

But now his defences were fully aroused. He swung his stick at the coffee table again.

'No!' he cried. 'I won't do it!'

The women looked at each other with barely concealed amusement.

'Do what, honey?' asked Chung with solicitous innocence.

It was time to be clear beyond even the muddying powers of these practised pond-stirrers.

He said slowly, 'I am not going to be the Devil in your Mysteries. Not now. Not ever. No way.'

He examined his statement carefully. It seemed pretty limpid.

Now the women were looking at each other in amazement.

'But, Peter, of course you're not! Where did you get that idea from?' said Chung with the wide-eyed surprise of one who suspects this is no longer Kansas.

'Peter, for heaven's sake, what's got into you?' demanded Ellie with the exasperation of a wife being shown up in front of her friends.

It was time for continued firmness. He heard himself saying, 'But you were talking about my limp . . . and the Devil being lame . . . and me fitting the part..’

'Just a gag. Pete. What do you take me for? Hell, with luck, by the time the show goes on you'll hardly be limping at all. I mean, you're going back to work tomorrow, aren't you? Do you think I'd take the piss out of anyone who was really disabled? Besides, you're far too nice and amiable. The man I've got in mind looks as proud and prickly as Lucifer, not your type at all!'

He had a feeling that, though not yet quite sure what the wrong was, he was sinking deeper and deeper in it. But that didn't matter. He needed to be absolutely clear that this was no set-up.

'And you definitely do not want me now, nor ever will want me, to perform an acting role in this or any of your dramatic productions?'

'Pete, I swear it, hand on heart.'

She performed the oath very solemnly, then observing the direction of his gaze, squeezed her left breast voluptuously and laughed.

'Happy now, Pete?' she asked.

'Chung, I'm sorry, it's this long convalescence all plastered up. You know, like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, you start getting paranoiac.'

'I forgive, I forgive.' Then she added in alarm, 'Hey, but you're not backing off altogether! Pete, you promised the first thing you did when you got back to work would be to get yourself seconded to my "Mysteries" committee to make sure we get full cooperation with traffic and parking and security, all that shit!'

'Of course I will,' said Pascoe expansively. 'Anything I can do to help, short of acting - well short of acting - you know you've only got to ask.'

'Anything, eh?' said Chung reflectively. A tiny grin twitched Ellie's lips, like a Venetian gnat landing in your Campari soda. And it occurred to Pascoe that in Rear Window James Stewart hadn't been paranoiac, he'd been the one who saw things clearly.

'Anything within my . . .' he began. But it was like a trainee para opting for ground crew after he'd stepped out of the plane.

'There is one small problem you're well placed to help me with,' said Chung.

'What's that?' he asked, not because he wanted to, but because the script demanded it.

'It's nothing, really. It's just that, you know this party I'm having next Sunday, sort of combined thank-you and publicity launch for the Mystery project?'

Pascoe, who knew about it because Ellie had told him they were going, nodded.

'Well, the thing is, Pete, I sent an invite to your boss, the famous Superintendent Dalziel. It's about time the two biggest names in town got together. Only he hasn't replied.'

'He's not that keen on formal social occasions,' said Pascoe, who knew that the constable who sorted Dalziel's mail had strict instructions to file all invitations that smelled of civic tedium or arty-farty ennui in a large plastic rubbish bag.

'Well, OK, but I'd really like him to be here, Pete. Could you possibly use your influence to get him to come?'

There was something fishy here. No one could be that keen to get Dalziel to a drinks party. It was like a farmer wanting to lure a fox into his hen coop.

'Why?' said Pascoe, suspecting it might be wiser to throw a faint and get carried out rather than pursue the matter further. 'Why do you want Dalziel? There's more to this than just a social gesture, isn't there?'

'You're too sharp for me, Pete,' said Chung admiringly. 'You're dead right. Thing is, I want to audition him. You see, honey, with all I've heard about him from you, and from Ellie, and from everyone, I think Andy Dalziel might be just about perfect for God!'

And Pascoe had to sit down again suddenly or else he might just have fainted anyway.

CHAPTER TWO

At roughly the same time as this annunciation of his projected apotheosis, Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was being sick into a bucket.

Between retchings, his mind sought first causes. He counted, and quickly discounted, the six pints of bitter chased by six double whiskies in the Black Bull; scrutinized closely but finally acquitted the Toad-in-the-Hole and Spotted Dick washed down with a bottle of Beaujolais in the Borough Club for Professional Gentlemen; and finally indicted, examined, and condemned a glass of mineral water accepted unthinkingly when one of the pickled onions served with his cheese had gone down the wrong way.

It had probably been French. If so, that put his judgement beyond appeal. They boasted on their bottle that the stuff was untreated, this from a nation whose treated water could fell a healthy horse.

The retching seemed to have stopped. It occurred to him that unless he had also consumed two pairs of socks and a string vest at the Gents, the bucket had not been empty. He raised his eyes and looked around the kitchen. He hadn’t switched on the light, but even in darkness it looked in dire need of redecoration. This was the house he'd moved into when he got married and never found time or energy to move out of. On that very kitchen table he'd found his wife's last letter. It said Your dinner is keeping warm in the oven. He'd been mildly surprised to discover it was a ham salad. But it wasn't till next morning, when an insistent knocking roused him from the spare bed which he occupied with reluctant altruism whenever he got home later than 3.00 A.M., that he began to suspect something was wrong. Insistent knockings were a wife's responsibility. He found her bed unslept in, descended, found downstairs equally empty, opened the door and was presented with a telegram. It had been unambiguous in its statement of cause and effect, but it had been its form as much as its content which had convinced Dalziel this was the end. She'd found it easier to let strangers read these words than say them to his face!

Everyone had assumed he would sell the house and find a flat, but inertia had compounded cussedness and he'd never bothered. So now as his gaze slipped to the uncurtained window, it was a totally familiar view that he looked out upon - a small backyard which not even moonlight could beautify, bounded by a brick wall in need of pointing, containing a wooden gate in need of painting, which let into the back lane running between Dalziel's street and the rear entrances of a street of similar housing whose frequent chimneys castellated the steely night sky.

Only there was something different to look at tonight. A bedroom light went on in the house immediately behind his. A few moments later the curtains were flung aside and a naked woman stood framed in the square of golden light. Dalziel watched with interest. If this were hallucination, the Frogs might be on to something after all. Then as if to prove her reality, the woman pushed the window open and leaned out into the night, taking deep breaths of wintry air which made her small but far from negligible breasts rise and subside most entertainingly.

It seemed to Dalziel that as she'd been courteous enough to remove one barrier of glass, he could hardly do less than dispose of the other.

He moved swiftly to the back door, opened it gently, and stepped out into the night. But his speed was vain. Movement had broken the spell and the gorgeous vision was fled.

'Serves me bloody right,' growled Dalziel to himself. 'Acting like a kid that's never clapped eyes on a tit before.'

He turned away to re-enter his house but something made him turn again almost immediately. Suddenly from soft porn it was all action movie on the golden screen ... a man moving . . . something in his hand . . . another man ... a sound as explosive as a cough too long suppressed during a pianissimo . . . and without conscious thought,

Dalziel was off and running, cursing with increasing fervour and foulness as he crashed from one pile of household detritus to another.

His gate was unlocked. The gate of the house behind wasn't, but he went through it as though it was. He was too close now to see up into the first-floor room. It occurred to him as he charged towards the kitchen door that he might be about to meet a gunman equally anxious to get out. On the other hand there might be people inside as yet unshot, whom his approach could keep that way. Not that the debate was anything but abstract, as if an incendiary dropped on Dresden should somehow start considering the morality of tactical bombing as it fell.

The kitchen door flew open at a touch. He assumed the lay-out would be similar to his own house, which it was, saving him the bother of demolishing walls as he rushed through the entrance hall and up the stairs. There was still no sign of life, no noise, no movement. The door of the room he was heading for was ajar, spilling light on to the landing. Now at last he slowed down. If there had been sounds of violence within he would have entered violently, but there was no point in being provocative.

He tapped gently at the door and pushed it fully open.

There were three people in the room. One of them, a tall man in his thirties wearing a dark blue blazer with a brocaded badge on the pocket, was standing by the window. In his right hand was a smoking revolver. It was pointing in the general direction of a younger man in a black sweater crouched against the wall, squeezing his pallid terrified face between his hands. Also present was a naked woman sprawled across a bed. Dalziel paid these last two little attention. The young man looked to have lost the use of his legs and the woman had clearly lost the use of everything. He concentrated on the man with the gun.

'Good evening, sir,' said Dalziel genially. 'I'm a police officer. Is there somewhere we can sit down and have a little chat?'

He advanced slowly as he spoke, his face aglow with that deceptive warmth which, like a hot chestnut in your lap, can pass at first for sensuous delight. But before he got quite within scorching distance, the gun arm moved and the muzzle came round till it was pointing at Dalziel's midriff.

He was no gun expert but he had experience enough to recognize a large-calibre revolver and to know what it would do to flesh at this range.

He halted. Suddenly the debate had moved from the abstract to the actual. He turned his attention from the weapon to its wielder and to his surprise recognized him, though he had to bang shut his mental criminal files to get a name. There was a connection with the police but it wasn't professional. Not till now.

'How do, Mr Swain,' he said. 'It is Mr Swain, the builder, isn't it?'

'Yes,' said the man, his eyes focusing properly on Dalziel for the first time. That's right. Do I know you?'

'You may have seen me, sir,' said Dalziel genially. 'As I've seen you a couple of times. It's your firm that's extending the garages behind the police station, isn't it?'

'Yes. That's right.'

'Detective-Superintendent Dalziel.' He held out his hand, took a small step forward. Instantly the gun was thrust closer to his gut. And in the split second before launching what might have been, one way or another, a fatal attack, he realized it was not being aimed but offered.

'Thank you,' he said, taking the barrel gently between two huge fingers and wrapping the weapon in a frayed khaki handkerchief like a small gonfalon.

The transfer of the weapon released the younger man's tongue. He screamed, 'She's dead! She's dead! It's your fault, you bastard! You killed her!'

'Oh God,' said Swain. 'She was trying to kill herself... I had to stop her, Waterson . . . the gun went off. . . Waterson, you saw what happened. . . are you sure she's dead?'

Dalziel glanced at the man called Waterson, but cataplexy seemed to have reasserted its hold. He turned his attention to the woman. She had been shot at very close range. The gun he judged had been held under her chin. It was a powerful weapon, no doubt about that. The bullet had destroyed much of her face, removed the top of her head and still had force enough to blow a considerable hole in the ceiling. The last oozings of blood and brains dripped quietly from her long blonde hair to the carpeted floor.

'Oh yes,' said Dalziel. 'She's dead all right.'

Interestingly his stomach was feeling much calmer now. Could it be the running that had done it? Mebbe he should take up jogging. On second thoughts, it would be simpler just to avoid mineral water in future.

'What happens now, Superintendent?' asked Swain in a low voice.

Dalziel turned back to him and studied his pale narrow face. It occurred to him he didn't like the man, that on the couple of occasions he'd noticed him around the car park with his ginger-polled partner, he'd felt they were a right matching pair of Doctor Fells.

There are few things more pleasant than the coincidence of prejudice and duty.

'Impatient are we, sunshine?' he said amicably. 'What happens now is, you're nicked!'

part two

Adam: Alas what have I done? For shame! Ill counsel, woe worth thee! Ah Eve, thou art to blame; To this enticed thou me.

The York Cycle:

'The Fall of Man'

February 14th

Dear Mr Dalziel,

I want to say I'm sorry. I was wrong to try to involve a stranger in my problems, even someone whose job it is to track down wrongdoers. So please accept this apology and forget I ever wrote.

In case you're wondering, this doesn't mean I've changed my mind, only that next time I feel in need of an untroubled and untroubling confidant, I'll ring the Speaking Clock! That might not be such a bad idea either. Time's the great enemy. You look back and you can just about see the last time you were happy. And you look ahead and you can't even imagine the next time. You try to see the point of it all in a world so full of self-inflicted pain, and all you can see are the pointless moments piling up behind you. Perhaps counting them is the point. Perhaps the best thing I can do with time is to sit listening to the Speaking Clock, counting off the seconds till I reach the magic number where the counting finally stops.

I'm growing morbid and I don't want to leave you with a nasty taste, though I'm sure a pint of beer would wash it away. I'm writing this on St Valentine's Day, the feast of lovers. You probably won't get it till St Julianna's day. All I know about her was she specialized in being a virgin and had a long chat with the Devil! Which do you prefer? Silly question. You may be a bit different from other men but you can't be all that different! So forget Julianna. And forget me too.

Your valedictory Valentine

CHAPTER ONE

Peter Pascoe's return to work was not the triumphal progress of his fantasies. First he found his parking spot occupied by a heap of sand. For a fraction of time too short to be measured but long enough to excoriate a nerve or two, he read a symbolic message here. But his mind had already registered that the whole of this side of the car park was rendered unusable by a scatter of breeze blocks, hard core, cement bags, and a concrete mixer.

Behind him a horn peeped impatiently. It was an old blue pick-up, squatting low on its axles. Pascoe got out of his car and viewed the scene before him. Once there had been a wall here separating the police car park from the old garden which had somehow clung on behind the neighbouring coroner's court. There'd been a tiny lawn, a tangle of shrubbery, and a weary chestnut which used to lean over the wall and drop sticky exudations on any vehicle rash enough to park beneath. Now all was gone and out of a desert of new concrete reared a range of unfinished buildings.

The pick-up's peep became a blast. Pascoe walked towards it. The window wound down and a gingerhead, grizzling at the tips, emerged above a legend reading SWAIN & STRINGER Builders, Moscow Farm, Currthwaite. Tel. 33809.

'Come on,' said the ginger pate, 'some of us have got work to do.'

'Is that right? I'm Inspector Pascoe. It's Mr Swain, is it?'

'No, it's not,' said the man, manifestly unimpressed by Pascoe's rank. 'I'm Arnie Stringer.'

'What's going on here, Mr Stringer?'

'New inspection garages. Where've you been?' demanded the man.

'Away,' said Pascoe. 'Not the best time of year to be working outside.'

It had been unseasonably mild for a couple of weeks but there was still a nip in the air.

'If bobbies with nowt better to do don't hold us back talking, we'll mebbe get finished afore the snow comes.'

Mr Stringer was obviously a graduate of the same charm school as Dalziel.

It was nice to be back.

Retreating to the public car park, Pascoe entered via the main door like any ordinary citizen. The desk area was deserted except for a single figure who observed Pascoe's entry with nervous alarm. Pascoe sighed deeply. While he hadn't really expected the Chief Constable to greet him with the Police Medal as journalists jostled and colleagues clapped, he couldn't help feeling that three months' absence to mend a leg shattered in pursuit of duty and a murderous miner deserved a welcome livelier than this.

'Hello, Hector,’ he said.

Police Constable Hector was one of Mid-Yorkshire's most reliable men. He always got it wrong. He had been everything by turns - beat bobby, community cop, schools' liaison officer, collator's clerk - and nothing long. Now here he was on the desk.

'Morning, sir,' said Hector with a facial spasm possibly aimed at bright alertness, but probably a simple reaction to the taste of the felt-tipped pen which he licked as he spoke. 'How can we help you?'

Pascoe looked despairingly into that slack, purple-stained mouth and wondered once more about his pension rights. In the first few weeks of convalescence he had talked seriously about retirement, partly because at that stage he didn't believe the surgeon's prognosis of almost complete recovery, but also because it seemed to him in those long grey hospital nights that his very marriage depended on getting out of the police. He even reached the stage where he started broaching the matter to Ellie, not as a marriage-saver, of course, but as a natural consequence of his injury. She had listened with a calmness he took for approval till one day she had cut across his babble of green civilian fields with, 'I never slept with him, you know that, don't you?'

It was not a moment for looking blank and asking, 'Who?'

'I never thought you did,’ he said.

'Oh. Why?' She sounded piqued.

'Because you'd have told me.'

She considered this, then replied, 'Yes, I would, wouldn't I? It's a grave disadvantage in a relationship, you know, not being trusted to lie.'

They were talking about a young miner who had been killed in the accident which crippled Pascoe and with whom Ellie had had a close and complex relationship.

'But that's not the point anyway,' said Pascoe. 'We ended up on different sides. I don't want that.'

'I don't think we did,' she said. 'On different flanks of the same side, perhaps. But not different sides.'

'That's almost worse,' he said. 'I can't even see you face to face.'

'You want me face to face, then stop whingeing about pensions and start working on that leg.'

Dalziel had come visiting shortly after.

'Ellie tells me you're thinking of retiring,' he said.

'Does she?'

'Don't look so bloody betrayed else they'll give you an enema! She doesn't want you to.'

'She said that to you?'

Dalziel filled his mouth with a bunch of grapes. Was this what Bacchus had really looked like? AA ought to get a picture.

'Of course she bloody didn't,' said Dalziel juicily.

'But she'd not have mentioned it else, stands to reason. Got any chocolates?'

'No. About Ellie, I thought. . .' He tailed off, not wanting a heart to heart with Dalziel. About many things, yes, but not about his marriage.

'You thought she'd be dying to get you out of the Force? Bloody right, she'd love it! But not because of her. She wants you to see the light for yourself, lad. They all do. It's not enough for them to be loved, they've got to be bloody right as well! Your mates too mean to bring you chocolates, is that it?'

'They're fattening,' said Pascoe, loyal to Ellie's embargo.

'Pity. I like chocolate. So drop this daft idea, eh? Get the years in first. And you've got that promotion coming up, they're just dragging their feet till they're sure you won't be dragging yours. Now I'd best be off and finger a few collars. Oh, I nearly forgot. Brought you a bottle of Lucozade.'

He winked as he put it on the bedside locker. The first bottle he'd left, Pascoe had taken at face value and nearly choked when a long swig had revealed pure Scotch.

This time he drank slowly, reflectively. But the only decision he reached after another grey night was that on your back was no place for making decisions.

Now here he was on his feet, thinking that on your back might not be such a bad place after all.

'Constable Hector,' he said in a low voice. 'I work here. DI Pascoe, remember?'

In Hector's memory a minute was a long time, three months an eternity.

He's going to ask for identification, thought Pascoe. But happily at that moment, Sergeant Broomfield, chief custodian of the desk, appeared.

'Mr Pascoe, good to see you back,' he said, offering his hand.

'Thanks, George,' said Pascoe with almost tearful gratitude. 'I thought I might have been forgotten.'

'No chance. Hey, have you heard about Mr Dalziel, though? Got himself a killer, single-handed, last night. He says that round here they're so certain of getting caught, they've taken to inviting CID to be present! He doesn't get any better!'

Chuckling, the sergeant retired to the nether regions while Pascoe, conscious still of Hector's baffled gaze, made his way upstairs. He had brought his stick, deciding after some debate that it was foolish to abandon it before he felt ready. But as he climbed the stairs he realized he was exaggerating its use. The reason was not far to seek. I'm reminding people I'm a wounded hero! he told himself in amazement. Because there wasn't a reception committee, and because Fat Andy has somehow contrived to upstage me, I'm flaunting my scars.

Disgusted, he shouldered the stick and tried to run lightly up the last couple of stairs, slipped and almost fell. A strong hand grasped his arm and supported him.

'I expect you'd like another three months away from here,' said Detective-Sergeant Wield. 'But there's got to be easier ways. Welcome home.'

Wield had the kind of face which must have thronged the eastern gate of Paradise after the eviction, but in those harsh features Pascoe read real concern and welcome.

'Thanks, Wieldy. I was just trying to prove how fit I am.'

'Well, if you fancy a miracle cure, come and touch God's robe. You heard about his little coup last night?'

'I got a hint from Broomfield.'

'You'll get more than a hint up here.'

Dalziel was on the phone but he waved them in expansively.

'Couldn't take the risk of hanging about, sir,' he was saying. 'He might have been away or we could've ended up with one of them hostage situations, tying up men and traffic with reporters and the SAS crawling all over the place!'

He made them both sound like rodents.

'Thank you, sir. Ten o'clock? That'll suit me fine. And I'll make sure them buggers carry on working regardless!'

He replaced the receiver.

'Good morning, sir,' said Pascoe. 'I gather congratulations are in order.'

'I believe they are,' said Dalziel complacently. 'Though Desperate Dan's got mixed feelings. Doesn't know whether to pat my back or stab it. Either way he'll need a box to stand on!'

He was referring to Dan Trimble, Chief Constable, who, though small by police standards, was not a dwarf.

'Mixed feelings? Why?'

'Being out of practice at detective work, lad, you likely didn't notice it's like a bomb site down there.' Dalziel had risen and was looking out of his window. 'That's Dan's personal project. Part of his grand modernization plan. Rumour is he set the coroner up with a rent boy to get him to part with his garden. And he probably had to flog his own ring to get those tight bastards at County Hall to allocate the money. Trouble is, if the work's not finished in March, the money is! That's why Dan was all set to give me a kiss and a police medal till he heard who it was I'd nicked.'

'And who was it, sir?' asked Pascoe.

'Swain. Philip Swain. Chap whose building firm's doing the work down there. Or not as the case may be.'

He opened the window, leaned out and shouted, 'Hey! What are you buggers on? A slow motion replay? If King Cheops had had you lot, we'd be looking at the first bungalow pyramid.'

He closed the window and said, 'Got to keep 'em at it. At least till I've got my hands on Dan's congratulation Glenmorangie. He wants to see you too, Peter. Nine-thirty sharp.'

'Oh yes?' said Pascoe, hope and unease stirring simultaneously.

'That's right. By God, it's good to see you back! We've been snowed under these last few weeks. I've dumped a few things on your desk just to ease you back in again.'

Pascoe's heart sank. Dalziel's few was anyone else's avalanche.

'What exactly did happen last night,’ he asked by way of diversion.

'Nowt much. I happened to see this chap, Swain, blowing his wife's head off next door, so I went in and disarmed him and brought 'em both back here . . .'

'Both? You brought the body as well?'

'Don't be daft. There were this other chap there, name of Waterson, it's his house. He were scared shitless, could hardly move or talk. The quack took one look at him, shot him full of something and got him admitted to the Infirmary. Me and Swain had a little chat, he told a lot of lies, and an hour later I was enjoying the sleep of the just. That's how neat and tidy we've been doing things since you've been away, lad, but no doubt now you're back, you'll start complicating things again.'

'I'll try not to, but I'm still a bit vague as to what precisely happened. This fellow Swain . . .'

'Nasty bit of work. Just the type to top his missus,' said Dalziel.

'You've had other dealings with him?'

'No. Only ever seen him twice before but some people you can sum up in a second,’ said Dalziel solemnly. 'I gave him plenty of rope and he's just about hanged himself, I reckon. Take a look at his statement and you'll see what I mean.'

He pushed a photocopied sheet across the desk and Pascoe began to read.

I make this statement of my own free will. I have been told I need not say anything unless I wish to do so, and that whatever I say may be given in evidence. Signed: Philip Swain.

My name is Philip Keith Swain. I live at Moscow Farm, Currthwaite, Mid-Yorkshire. I am a partner in the firm of Building Contractors known as Swain and Stringer, working from the same address. I am thirty-eight years old.

A short while ago my company was engaged by Gregory Waterson of 18 Hambleton Road to convert his loft into a draughtsman's studio. During the course of this work, he visited my premises on several occasions. These visits brought him into contact with my wife, Gail. I saw that they had become very friendly but any suspicions I might have had that the relationship went further I put out of my mind for two reasons. The first was that I simply did not want to risk a confrontation with Gail. For some time she had been behaving in an increasingly irrational fashion, bouts of deep depression alternating with moods of almost manic liveliness. When she was down, she talked sometimes of killing herself, more specifically of blowing her head off. I wanted her to see a doctor but, being American by birth, she had always refused to have anything to do with English doctors whom she regarded as mediaeval in both equipment and attitude. She did however promise to see an American doctor as soon as she returned to the States. And this was the other reason I made no comment about Waterson. I knew Gail was going back to California in the near future.

Early last summer her father had died. She was very close to him and I think it was from this date that her bouts of depression set in. The news that her mother's health had gone into a rapid decline since Gail had returned to England after her father's funeral made matters worse. I think she had blamed her mother for her father's death and had not been careful to conceal her feelings, and now she was feeling guilty herself. These are necessarily amateur observations. All I knew for certain was that her mental state was far from stable, but everything pointed to nothing but good coming from her return to Los Angeles with the opportunity this would afford for sorting things out with her mother and also for consulting her family physician.

She was due to leave on Sunday February 8th. I had offered to drive her down to Heathrow, but despite the mild weather, she said she was worried about bad road conditions and she would go by train. She refused my offer to accompany her, saying she knew how much work I had on my plate, and then, when I persisted, demanding angrily if I didn't think her capable of making a simple train journey alone. At this point I desisted and in fact went to work on the Sunday morning to take advantage of the continuing good weather, and thus did not even see her out of the house. I was therefore relieved when she rang me the following day, ostensibly from Los Angeles, to say she'd arrived safely.

I heard nothing further from her but a woman rang up a couple of times and asked to speak to her. When I told her Gail was out of the country, she made a sort of disbelieving sound and rang off. Then earlier tonight she rang again. I'm certain it was the same woman, she sounded young, with a Yorkshire accent though not very strong. She asked me if I still believed Gail was in America. I said yes, of course. And she went on to say that I was wrong and if I wanted to see Gail I ought to go round to 18 Hambleton Road. Then she rang off.

I immediately rang Gail's mother in LA. I got through to the housekeeper-cum-nurse that Mrs Delgado, my mother-in-law, had taken on since her illness. She said Gail had never arrived but had sent a cable to say she was stopping off to see some friends on the East Coast and would get in touch as soon as she knew when she'd definitely arrive. No one was surprised as Gail was notoriously impulsive. I made light of the matter and advised the nurse not to mention my call to Mrs Delgado as I didn't want her to worry. But I myself was very worried and the only thing I could think of to do was go round to Hambleton Road.

I arrived at 10.30. There were lights on but Mr Waterson took a long time to answer the door. When he saw who it was, at first he looked shocked. Then he said, 'You know, don't you?' And as soon as he said that, I did.

The odd thing was I didn't get angry, perhaps because I got the feeling he was almost relieved to see me. He said, 'You'd better come in.' I said, 'Where is she?' He said, 'She's upstairs. But don't go rushing up there. She's in a very strange mood.' I asked what he meant and he said she had been drinking heavily and was talking about killing herself. I said something like, 'So she's putting you through that hoop too? Tough luck.' And he said, 'You mean you've seen her like this before? That's a relief. But that gun scared the shit out of me. Is it really loaded?'

Now this mention of a gun did really upset me. I knew Gail had guns, of course, but I thought they were safely locked up at the Mid-Yorks Gun Club where she was a member. When Waterson saw my reaction, he began to look really worried again. That was an odd thing. We should have been at each other's throats, I suppose. Instead we were, temporarily at least, united by our concern for Gail.

We went up together. Perhaps this was a mistake, for when Gail saw us, she began laughing and she gabbled something about all the useless men in her life sticking together, and the only good one she'd ever known being dead. She was drunk and naked, sitting on the bed. She had this revolver in her hands. I asked her to give it to me. She laughed again and held it with the muzzle pressed against her chin. I told her not to be silly. It wasn't the wisest thing to say, but I couldn't think of anything else. And she just laughed higher and higher and I thought I saw her finger tightening on the trigger. And that's when I jumped forward to grab at the gun.

What happened then I can't say precisely, except that the gun went off and then I was standing there holding it, and Gail was lying with her head blown to pieces across the bed, and some time after, I don't know how long, Mr Dalziel came into the room.

This dreadful accident has devastated my life. I loved my wife. I am sure that it was her dreadful feelings of guilt and unhappiness after her father's death that drove her to seek solace in infidelity. And I know that despite everything, we could have worked things out.

Signed: Philip Swain.

'Well,' said Dalziel. 'What do you reckon to that?'

'I don't know,’ said Pascoe slowly. 'It's . . . odd.'

'Of course it's bloody odd. Fairy tales usually are! What he still hasn't twigged is I saw him with the gun in his hand before I heard the shot. Once we get Mr Gregory Waterson's version, it'll be two to one, and then I'll make the bugger squirm!'

This simple scenario did little to assuage Pascoe's sense of oddness. But he didn't want to seem to be muddying Dalziel's triumph so he held his peace and tried for a congratulatory smile. It lacked conviction, however, for Dalziel said, 'You've not changed, have you, lad? In fact, all them weeks lying in bed playing with yourself have likely set you back. What you need is some good solid meat to get your stomach settled. I've got just the thing. Football hooligans.'

He regarded Pascoe complacently and received in return a look of surprise. The big clubs in West and South Yorkshire had their share of maniac supporters, but City, Mid-Yorkshire's only league side, rattling around the lower divisions for years, rarely attracted serious home-grown trouble.

'I've not read about any bother,' said Pascoe. 'And anyway crowd control's uniformed's business.'

'Murder isn't,' said Dalziel grimly. 'Saturday before last, young lad vanished travelling back to Peterborough from a visit to his girlfriend in London. They found him next morning with a broken neck at the bottom of an embankment near Huntingdon.'

'Sad, but what's it to do with us?'

'Hold your horses. City were playing in North London that day and it seems there were a lot of complaints about bevvied-up City supporters on the train the dead lad would have caught from King's Cross.'

'But you said he'd been visiting his girl, not attending a match. Why should he get picked on?'

'Colour of his eyes'd be provocation enough for some of these morons,' declared Dalziel. 'But it was more likely the colour of his scarf. Royal blue, which some bright spark in Cambridgeshire spotted was the colour of City's opponents that afternoon. Could be nowt, but there's been one or two hints lately that our local loonies are keen to get organized like the big boys, so this could be a good excuse to bang a few heads together before they get properly started, right?'

'I suppose so,' said Pascoe reluctantly. It didn't sound a very attractive assignment. He glanced at Wield in search of sympathy, but Dalziel took it as an attempt to pass the buck.

'No use trying to delegate, lad. The sergeant here's going to be busy. How's your bedside manner, Wieldy? Christ, the sight of you coming through the door would get me back on my feet pretty damn quick! Why don't you get yourself off down to the Infirmary and take this shrinking violet Waterson's statement so that I can spoil Mr lying bastard Swain's lunch? No, better still, I’ll leave it till after lunch and give him indigestion. No reason why we should miss opening time at the Black Bull, is there? Not when it's celebration drinks all round!'

'You mean you're in the chair because of this collar?' asked Pascoe, trying not to sound surprised.

'Don't be daft,' said Dalziel, who was not notorious for treating his staff. 'I'll let Desperate Dan supply the booze for that. No, it's you who'll be in the chair. Peter, unless you crap on the Chief's carpet when he calls you in.'

Wield caught on before Pascoe and shook his hand, grinning broadly and saying, 'Well done, sir!' Dalziel followed suit.

'One thing but,' he said. 'When you give Ellie the glad tidings, point out it'll be a couple of years before it makes any difference to your pension. Now sod off and start earning your Chief Inspector's pay!'

CHAPTER TWO

Detective-Sergeant Wield parked his car in the visitors' car park and set off up the long pathway to the Infirmary. The oldest of the city's hospitals, it had been built in the days when visitors were regarded as a nuisance even greater than patients and had to prove their fitness by walking a couple of furlongs before they reached the entrance. As recompense, the old red brick glowed in the February sun and a goldheart ivy embraced it as lovingly as any stately home. Also the path ran between flowerbeds white with snowdrops. Spotting a broken stalk, Wield stopped and picked the tiny flower and carefully inserted it in his button-hole.

What a saucy fellow you're becoming! he mocked himself. You'll be advertising for friends in the Police Gazette next.

His lips pursed in an almost inaudible whistling as he strode along but inside he was smiling broadly and singing Bunthorne's song from Patience:. . as you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediaeval hand . . .'

His merry mood lasted along the first straight mile of corridor but by the time he reached his destined ward, the sights, sounds and smells of the place had silenced his inner carolling.

There was no one at the sister's desk and he went into the open ward.

'Mr Waterson? First door on your left,' said a weary nurse who looked as if she should be occupying the bed she was making.

Wield pushed open the door indicated and went in.

It occurred to him instantly that Waterson must have private medical insurance. A nurse in a ward sister's uniform was leaning over him. Their mouths were locked together and his hands were inside her starched blouse, roaming freely. No way did you get this on the National Health.

Wield coughed. The nurse reacted conventionally, doing the full guilty thing surprised bit, jumping backwards while her fingers scrabbled at her blouse buttons and blood flushed her pale and rather beautiful face like peach sauce over vanilla ice. The man, however, grinned amiably and said, 'Good morning, Doctor.'

'It is Mr Waterson, isn't it?' said Wield doubtfully.

'That's right.'

Wield produced his warrant card.

'Good lord. It's the fuzz, dear. I expect you've come for a statement? It's all ready. They wake you at sparrow fart in these places, you know, so I've had hours to compose.'

He thrust a single sheet of foolscap bearing the Local Health Authority's letter-head into Wield's hand.

The woman meanwhile had reassembled herself into the pattern of a brisk efficient ward sister.

'If you'll excuse me,' she said. 'I'll look in later.'

'Nice, isn't she?' said Waterson complacently as the nurse left.

Wield examined the man neutrally. He was approaching thirty, perhaps had even passed it. Nature had tossed youthful good looks into his cradle, and nurture in the form of an artistic hairdresser, an aesthetic dentist and possibly an expensive dermatologist, had made sure the gift wasn't wasted.

'The sister is an old friend?' he ventured. Waterson smiled. There was charm here too.

'Wash your mind out, Sergeant,' he said. 'That was no sister, that was my wife!'

Deciding this was a conundrum best postponed, Wield looked at the statement. It consisted of a single very long paragraph written in a minute but beautiful hand. It wasn't easy to read but one thing was very quickly clear. It was a lot closer to Swain's version of events than to Dalziel's!

Wield began to read it through a second time.

Gail Swain and I became lovers about a month ago. It was difficult to see as much of each other as we would have liked, so when Gail came up with a plan for us to have a longer period together I was delighted. She was going back to America on a visit to see her mother and she rearranged things so that she wouldn't need to get there till much later than she'd told her husband. I wanted to fix up a hotel somewhere but she said no, she would come to me as soon as she could and she preferred to stay with me in town. I think the idea of stopping so close to her home excited her in some way. She turned up at my house in Hambleton Road last Thursday. I know she had allegedly left for America on the Sunday but what she had been doing in the meantime she never said. She was in a rather strange mood when she arrived and though things went well enough at first, by the time the weekend was over I was seriously worried. She never left the house but stayed inside all the time, drinking heavily, watching television, playing records, and talking wildly. Sexually she made increasingly bizarre demands upon me, not I felt for her own physical satisfaction so much as my humiliation. When I suggested she ought to be thinking about leaving, she became abusive and said things like, they would need to carry her out of there for all the neighbours to see. Last night she was the worst I had seen her. When I tried to reason with her, she produced this gun and said something about this being the only thing that spoke any sense. I know nothing about guns so I had no idea if it was real or loaded or anything. She aimed it at me and said it would be nice to have some company when she went. Just then the doorbell went and when I went downstairs to answer it, I found it was Philip Swain, her husband. I was naturally taken aback but also in a strange way I was quite relieved to have someone else to share the responsibility with. It just all came spilling out how worried I was and it must have got across as genuine, for instead of throwing a jealous fit, he came upstairs to see for himself. As soon as she saw us together, she became quite hysterical. She was laughing madly and screaming abuse and waving the gun, first at us, then at herself. I went towards her to pacify her and she put the gun under her chin and said if I came any closer she would kill herself. I was still uncertain whether the gun was real or not but I could see that she was in such a state she was likely to press the trigger unawares so I made a dive at her. Next thing the gun went off and there was blood and flesh and bone everywhere. I'm afraid I just collapsed and after that everything was a blur until I awoke this morning and found myself in the Infirmary. I can see now that Gail was a highly disturbed woman and was always capable of doing damage to herself or others. But I blame myself entirely for what happened last night. If I had acted differently and called for professional help instead of trying to disarm her myself, perhaps none of this would have happened.

Signed: Gregory Waterson.

After his second reading, Wield stood in silence for a while.

'What's the matter?' said Waterson. 'Not the right format? Get it typed up any which way you like, Sergeant, and I'll sign it.'

Gathering his wits, Wield said, 'No, sir, it's fine. Will you excuse me?'

He went out. A ward sister had appeared at the desk, a stout woman with a smile of great sweetness which switched on as he approached and identified himself.

'I met Mrs Waterson a moment ago,' he said. 'Is she not on this ward?'

'No. Women's surgery. Did you want her?'

'No. At least not now. I'd like a telephone, if I could.'

'In my office, just down there.'

'Thanks. Any idea when Mr Waterson will be discharged?'

'You'll need to ask Dr Marwood. Shall I get him? He's just down the ward.'

'Yes, please.'

He went into the tiny office and dialled. He identified himself to the switchboard operator and asked to be put through to Dalziel. A moment later Pascoe answered the phone.

'That you, Wieldy? Look, the Super's in with the Chief. Anything I can do to help?'

Quickly Wield filled him in.

'Oh dear,' said Pascoe. 'No wonder you sounded relieved to get me.'

'It's not quite the same story as Swain's,' said Wield, in search of a silver lining.

'No. But it's a bloody sight closer to it than Fat Andy's version,' said Pascoe.

'You don't think he could have got it wrong?'

'Are you going to tell him that?'

'I'm only a sergeant. Chief Inspectors get the danger money,' said Wield. 'Went all right, did it, your big moment? Corks popping and such?'

'I got a cup of instant coffee. Is Waterson fit enough to come down here for a bit of close questioning?'

'He looks in rude health to me but I'm just going to check with the doctor.'

As Wield replaced the receiver, the door opened and a black man in a white coat came in. He was in his late twenties, with a hairline further back and a waistline further forward than they ought to be.

'Marwood,' he said. 'You the one wanting to know if Waterson's fit to go? The answer's yes. Sooner the better.'

This sounded like something more than a medical opinion.

'Thank you, Doctor,' said Wield. 'Were you on when he was admitted?'

'No, but I've seen the notes. Shock; sedation. Well, the sedation's worn off. Never lasts long with his type. Same with shock, I'd say.'

'His type?'

'Volatile,' said the doctor. 'At least that's one way of putting it.'

Wield said, 'Do you know Mr Waterson, sir? I mean, not just as a patient?'

'We've met. His wife works here.'

'And it was through her . . . ?'

'Staff parties, that sort of thing. He turned up a couple of times.'

'And how did he strike you?' asked Wield.

'Did I take to him, you mean? No way! He struck me as an opinionated little shit, and crypto-racist with it. I wasn't surprised when she left him.'

'Left him?'

'You didn't know?' Marwood laughed. 'If I try to operate without knowing my patient's a haemophiliac, I get struck off. But you guys just muddle through and no one gives a damn! What's he done anyway?'

'Just helping us, sir,' said Wield, wondering how Marwood would have reacted to the scene he had interrupted minutes earlier. 'How long have they been separated?'

'Not long. She moved into a room in our nurses' annexe. Excuse me.'

A bleeper had started up in his pocket. He switched it off and picked up the phone.

'Right,' he said after a moment. Replacing the receiver, he said, 'I've got to go. Listen, medically, Waterson's fit to go. But personally and off the record, I'd say the guy should be put out to pasture at the funny farm.'

He left. Wield pondered what he had heard for a while. Clearly Marwood felt about Waterson as Dalziel felt about Swain. Such strong antipathies bred bias and clouded the judgement. Wield knew all about bias, hoped he would speak out against it if necessary. But for the moment all that he was required to do was deliver Waterson safe into Dalziel's eager hands.

He went back to the small side ward.

It was empty.

Suddenly his heart felt in need of intensive care. He went out to the nurse's station. The plump sister gave him her smile.

'Where's Mr Waterson, sister?' he asked.

'Is he not in his bed?'

'No. ‘He might be in the lavvy. Or perhaps he's gone to have a shower.'

'You didn't see him? Have you been here all the time, since we talked, I mean?'

He must have sounded accusatory.

'Of course I haven't. I went off to fetch Dr Marwood to see you, didn't I?' she retorted.

'Where's the lavatory? And the shower?'

The lavatory was the nearer. It was empty. But in the shower Wield found a pair of pyjamas draped over a cubicle.

Either Waterson was wandering around naked, or . . .

He returned to the sister.

'What would happen to his clothes when he was admitted?'

'They'd be folded and put in his bedside locker,' she said.

The locker was empty.

'Shit,' said Wield. Only a few months earlier during the case on which Pascoe had hurt his leg, a suspect had made his escape from a hospital bed and Dalziel had rated the officer responsible a couple of points lower than PC Hector. But no reasonable person could have anticipated that a mere witness who'd volunteered a statement would do a bunk!

Then Dalziel's features flashed upon Wield's inward eye and reason slept.

'Oh shit,' he said again. Something made him glance down at his lapel. The tiny snowdrop had already wilted and died. He took it out and crushed it in his hand. Then with wandering steps and slow he made his way back to the telephone.

CHAPTER THREE

The Reverend Eustace Horncastle was a precise man. It was through exactitude rather than excellence that he had risen to the minor eminence of minor canon, so when he said to his wife, 'The woman is pagan,' she knew the word was not lightly chosen.

Nevertheless she dared a show of opposition.

'Surely she is merely exuberant, dramatic, full of life,' she said with the wistful envy of one who knew that whatever she herself had once been full of had seeped away years since.

'Pagan,' repeated the Canon with an emphasis which in a lesser man might almost have been relish.

Looking at the object of their discussion who was striding vigorously across the Market Square ahead of them, Dorothy Horncastle could not muster a second wave of disagreement. Eileen Chung's silver lurex snood was a nod in the direction of religiosity, and there was perhaps something cope-like in the purple striped poncho draped round her shoulders. But devil-detection begins at the feet, and those zodiac-printed moccasins with leather thongs biting into golden calves each separately sufficient to seduce a Chosen People, were a dead giveaway. Here was essence of pagan. If you could have bottled it, the Canon's wife might have bought some.

The clerical couple were almost at a canter to keep up with those endless legs, so when Chung stopped suddenly there was a small collision.

'Whoa, Canon,' said Chung amiably.

'A canon indeed, but little woe,' said Horncastle to his wife's amazement. He rarely aimed at wit and when he did was more likely to try a Ciceronian trope than plunge into a Shakespearean pun. A suspicion formed in Dorothy's mind, to be brushed away like a naughty thought at Communion, that her husband might have invited her presence this morning not simply to represent the views of the laity (his phrase), but because he felt the need of a chaperone!

There had been one full meeting of the Mysteries committee which had been as long as an uncut Hamlet and not nearly as jolly. The combined verbosity of a city councillor, a union leader, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, a mediaeval historian, a journalist and Canon Horncastle, had defeated even Chung's directorial expertise and she had resolved thereafter to pick them off singly as she had picked them on singly in the first place. The diocese contained many worldlier, merrier clerics who would have given half their tithes to be religious advisers on such a project, but Chung's homework had told her Horncastle was the man. Heir apparent to the senescent Dean, he was the key figure in the Cathedral Chapter on matters relating to sacred sites and buildings, and the Bishop was said to respect his views highly, which her interpreter assured her was Anglican for being shit-scared of him.

'I thought this might be a good site for one of the pageants,' said Chung. 'The sun will be coming round behind the Corn Market at that time of day and it'll light up the wagon like a spot.'

'If the weather is clement,' said the Canon.

'I'll rely on your good offices for that,' laughed Chung.

Dorothy Horncastle waited for her husband's expected rebuke at this meteorological blasphemy but it didn't come. Instead something horribly like a simper touched his narrow lips. The unbelievable notion rose again that perhaps he really did need protection! Not sexually, for the frost in those loins was surely proof against the most torrid touch, but there were other temptations in this pagan's armoury. She'd been mildly puzzled when at breakfast this morning Eustace had started reminiscing about his seminary triumph in the chorus line of Samson Agonistes. If Lucifer could fall, why not a minor canon?

It was time for a dutiful wife to come to the rescue.

She said, 'Won't the market stallholders object to their customers being turned into an audience?'

Horncastle turned his cold gaze upon her, no simper now deflecting the straight line of those lips.

'Monday is not a market day in normal circumstances, I think you'll find. When it happens also to be a Bank Holiday, it seems more than ever unlikely that there should be any commercial activity, wouldn't you say, my dear?'

The heavy sarcasm, though hardly novel, still had power to bruise. Chung, sensitive to drama, stepped in swiftly.

'Hasn't he told you that we finalized our timetable at the meeting, Mrs Horncastle? That's a man for you, thinks we're all psychic! Well, we're going for the first week in June, which has the feast of Corpus Christi in it, that's the traditional time when these Mysteries were performed, and also this year it happens to be the week of the Spring Bank Holiday which means we can use the holiday Monday for our grand opening procession without getting snarled up with all the usual commercial traffic. So, this way everyone's happy, Church, holiday-makers, shop-keepers, historians and traffic cops!'

'It must be gratifying to make so many people happy,' said Dorothy Horncastle, smiling wanly.

She's really rather pretty, thought Chung. Ten minutes with the Leichner box, an auburn wig to match those eyes, plus a rich red gown with a fret of mourning black lace at the throat, and she'd make a perfectly presentable Olivia. Instead, unmade-up, her fine features skeletally honed by the biting wind, her hair invisible under a shapeless wool hat and her body unguessable under a shapeless tweed coat, she looked like a Village Thespians' shot at Mother Courage.

They moved on, entering the narrow skein of mediaeval streets which curled around the cathedral. Chung modified her pace so that she came between the Horncastles and modified her tone also, talking earnestly of her desire to recapture those days when the spiritual and temporal were inextricably intertwined and the Church was the one true centre of civic life. At the same time her eyes were taking in every detail of the winding cobbled ways flanked by close-crowded shops and houses whose timbered gables often threatened to meet overhead. And through her mind's eye, heavily screened so that not the slightest verbal hint should slip out to give the Canon pause, ran pictures brimming with colour and excitement of the great pageant wagons rumbling over the cobbles, heralded by music and dancers and trailing a long wash of jugglers, tumblers, fire-eaters, fools, flagellants, giants, dwarves, dancing bears, merry monks, cut-price pardoners, knights on horseback, Saracens in chains, nubile Nubians ... At about this point in his solo session, her university mediaevalist had demurred but she had silenced him with a cry of, 'Shit, man! This show's for your person-in-the-street. Ask yourself, do they want it authentic, or do they want it fun?' And then had won his cooperation by squeezing him well above the knee and laughing, 'OK. So maybe we'll hold the Nubians. That make you happy?' And, as she squeezed again, he could not but agree that it did.

And now they came into the cathedral close and everything changed. Little of the mediaeval had survived the 'modernization' of the eighteenth century when Wyatt the Destroyer's internal restorations had been mirrored and magnified in a ruthless external clean-up of what even antiquarians had had to admit was an ecclesiastical slum. A fourteenth-century deanery had been spared because the eighteenth-century dean had simply refused to move his large family, and a row of Jacobean almshouses had presented a similar logistical problem. Between these and a scattering of other survivals had sprung up new buildings in styles ranging from neo-classic domestic, through romantic picturesque to Victorian Gothic; and by one of those coincidences quite beyond the wit of architects and planners, the result was a delightful and harmonious meld. Nothing was here to provoke a Prince.

The close was entered through a granite gateway in a sandstone wall, and though the old wooden gates had long since vanished, there was still a sense of being admitted, of passing from the hectic and neurotic atmosphere of modern life into a balmier, more restful air.

Chung made a mental note to get the gateway measured. She wanted her procession to be fun, and she didn't want it to end in farce with a pageant firmly wedged between the pillars. She had hold of the Canon's arm now to steer him along her reconnoitred route while at the same time permitting him to imagine that it was his expertise which was showing her the best way. This was not easy as the best way could hardly be said to involve the cathedral close at all, since Charter Park, the proposed site for the daily performance of the Mystery Plays, lay as far to the west of the market place as the cathedral lay to the east. Chung had justified her diversion on ecclesiastical grounds. The grand opening procession must be seen to embrace the sacred as well as the profane.

Her real reason, however, was that she had no intention of staging her production in the Park, which was broad and flat and bounded by a main road and a canalized river, providing a choice between a static background of gloomy warehouses or a moving one of double-decker buses.

Her chosen site was much closer at hand. On the far side of the cathedral and belonging to it stretched an expanse of green and pleasant land, dotted with old trees and sinking down in a shallow valley before swelling up once more to a natural vallum where remnants of the city's mediaeval walls could still be seen. More substantial than these stood the ruins of St Bega's Abbey from which had come much of the impetus and, after its closure, some of the material to enlarge the small Anglo-Norman cathedral into a huge Gothic edifice which could hold its own against any in the land.

This was the setting Chung lusted after.

They had arrived at the great building itself. She paused and craned her neck to take in the soaring bulk of the lantern tower.

'It's incredible,' she said. 'How did they do all this without machines?'

'They had something better. They had God,' said the Canon.

It was a good feed. She looked at him appraisingly and said, 'And that's all you need? I think I'm getting close to finding mine. Canon, would it be possible to climb the tower to get a bird's eye view of things?'

Horncastle hesitated but his wife inadvertently came to Chung's aid. Pointing across the road to a tall gabled house as narrow and forbidding as the Canon himself, she said, 'I thought as we were so near home, a cup of coffee perhaps . . .'

'Dorothy,' said the Canon testily, 'I have pledged myself to advise Miss Chung this morning. In an hour's time I have an important luncheon appointment at the Palace. I hardly feel that taking coffee in my own parlour would be a fruitful way of filling the intervening period. If you would follow me, Miss Chung.'

He headed into the cathedral. Chung smiled apologetically at his wife and said, 'Another time, huh?' before following.

It was a wearisome climb up a steep, dark, spiral staircase, but worth every ounce of sweat. The city lay stretched beneath them like an illuminated plan, and there was little to interrupt the eye's flight to the distant green and blue horizons. The only contender in terms of height was the narrow tower which had tumesced out of the old redbrick university in the expansive sixties, and though it flashed back the light of the cold wintry sun most defiantly, its glass and concrete hardly gave promise of another six centuries of such defiance.

Chung moved from side to side, removing her snood to let the chill wind unravel her long black hair. The Canon stood and watched her delight with proprietorial pleasure. Dorothy Horncastle emerged a few moments later from the narrow oak door and stood unnoticed.

Chung came to rest by the eastern parapet and looked down towards the dwarfed ruins of the old abbey. Horncastle came and joined her.

'It's magnificent,' she said sincerely.

'Yes. I pride myself that we have a setting and outlook dramatic enough to stand comparison with any in the country,' said the Canon complacently.

'A dramatic setting?' said Chung, eagle-eyed for an entree. 'Yes, I see what you mean. You must be a classicist, Canon. That fold of ground there, the Greeks would have had to turn it into an amphitheatre. And the ruins, what a backcloth! No chance of transferring them to Charter Park for the Mysteries, I suppose?'

'If it were feasible, you should have them,’ replied the Canon, quite happy to hypothesize the impossible in return for Chung's smile.

'Pity,' she sighed. 'That tatty park could surely do with something to match the material. But you'll be doing wonders enough if you can get us permission to route the procession through the close. I gather the Bishop is none too keen.'

'Indeed? I can assure you that whatever route we decide on today will be the route you take,' said Horncastle sharply.

'You can? That's great,' exclaimed Chung at full glow. 'But your other idea, about the ruins, that would take a real miracle, huh?'

There it was. A temptation on a tower. If he followed the best precedents, the Canon would scornfully deny ever having had any such idea about the ruins. Or he might compromise, and still take it as a joke about transferring the ruins to Charter Park. Or he might be vain enough to let himself be manipulated into accepting parenthood of a proposal to use St Bega's as the main Mysteries site, and with parenthood, responsibility.

Then she looked into his hard unblinking eyes and knew she had made a mistake. He was a bright man within his limits, and she had seen only the limits and forgotten the brightness.

She smiled, acknowledging defeat, and said, 'But it's a great route. Thanks for your help.'

And submission proved the key. The Canon said, 'I think I might rise to the occasional miracle, in a purely dramatic sense, of course.'

'You mean you think you could really swing it for us to use St Bega's?'

'It would require the approval of the Chapter but that would be something of a formality once the Bishop and I showed the way. Would you like me to attempt the miracle, as you call it?'

There was the scent of a bargain here which made Chung momentarily uneasy. But clerics should know better than to do deals with pagans.

She said, 'It would be truly marvellous.'

'In that case I shall speak to his lordship at luncheon today. Now let us descend. Permit me to lead the way. The stairs are steep and there is danger here for the unvigilant.'

Oh, you're so right, baby, thought Chung as he stepped through the doorway with exaggerated care. She looked round in search of Mrs Horncastle. She was standing in the furthermost corner of the tower leaning out over the parapet. Like Chung, she had removed her headgear, revealing a tumult of chestnut hair which seemed to dance exuberantly at its release from the confines of the woollen hat. There was even some colour in the hollow cheeks now, and a brightness in the eyes as they stared into the space which divided her from the crawling dots below.

'Mrs Horncastle, we're going now. Are you all right? Mrs Horncastle!'

'What? Oh yes. Yes, of course. So sorry.'

She was like a woman waking from a dream. She looked at the hat in her hand as if uncertain how it got there. Then she pulled it down over her rebellious hair and hurried across the roof and through the staircase door.

The darkness swallowed her.

For a moment Chung paused as if reluctant to leave this pale winter sunlight. Then, with a sigh which had nothing theatrical about it, she followed the Horncastles into the gloom.

CHAPTER FOUR

'Mr Swain, I'd like to take you over your statement again,' said Dalziel with the effulgent smile of a man who wants to sell a used Lada.

Swain glanced at his watch with the air of a man who has two minutes to spare and has started counting. Sharp-featured, deep-eyed and black-haired, he was quite striking in a Mephistophelean kind of way. And his rather supercilious appearance was matched by the voice which said, 'I thought I'd already been as clear as I could without supplying a video, Superintendent.'

Dalziel smiled wolfishly. Pascoe guessed he was thinking: Oh, but you did, my lad! But this was no time to be seeing Swain through Dalziel's indisputably prejudiced eyes. Pascoe was more interested to find the oddities he had detected when reading the statement confirmed by his first meeting with the man. Stereotyping was of course a fascist device for perpetuating class divisions but Pascoe found himself unable to avoid a prejudice which provided your paradigmatic jobbing builder with Stringer's cloth cap, baggy trousers and vernacular speech forms, rather than Swain's Daks blazer, Cartier watch, and upper-class phonemes.

Dalziel said, 'Last night when you wrote your statement, you were naturally upset. Who wouldn't be? Man kills his wife, he's got a right to be upset. I'd just like to be sure you got things down like you really wanted. Here, take a look, tell me if there's owt you want to change.'

He pushed a photocopy of Swain's statement across the table. Swain said softly, 'A man who kills his wife? I think either I must have misheard or you must have misread, Superintendent.'

'Sorry, sir. Slip of the tongue,' said Dalziel unconvincingly. 'Though you do say as it was mebbe your efforts to get the gun off her that . . . anyroad, you just read through what you wrote and let me know if it's right.'

Swain ran his eyes down the sheets. When he finished he sighed and said, 'It's like a nightmare, all confused. I'm amazed I could have written this so clearly, but, yes, it's the most sense I can make out of the fragments. Would you like me to sign it again?'

'No need,' said the fat man. 'Signing a cheque twice won't stop it bouncing. If it's going to bounce, I mean. Anyroad, there's notes been taken, so all this is on the record.'

Wield was taking the notes. Pascoe had been invited along to observe. What the tactics were likely to be he could only guess. Dalziel's response to the news of Waterson's statement and subsequent disappearance had been stoic to the point of catalepsy, encouraging his colleagues to move in his vicinity like off-piste skiers. But his abandonment of the idea of leaving Swain to sweat till after lunch showed how seriously he was taking things.

'This wife of yours, did she make a habit of carrying guns around with her, Mr Swain?' inquired Dalziel.

'Of course not. At least, not to my knowledge.'

'Not to your knowledge, eh? And I dare say you would've noticed if she'd started slipping three pounds of Colt Python down her cleavage, wouldn't you?'

'Of what?'

'Colt Python, weighs forty-four ounces unloaded, overall length eleven and a quarter inches, fires the .357 Magnum cartridge,' said Dalziel quoting the lab's preliminary weapon report.

'Was that what it was?' said Swain. 'I've no interest in guns.'

'So you'd never seen this one before?'

'Never.'

'Is that so? You did know she was a member of a gun club, didn't you?' said Dalziel.

'Of course I did.'

'And you never noticed any of her weapons about the house? They have to be kept under lock and key, Mr Swain, in a proper cabinet. You mean to tell me that a pro builder like you never noticed this interesting extension to your wife's wardrobe?'

Dalziel's sneers were as subtle as birdshit down a windscreen. Swain said wearily, 'The guns weren't kept in the house, except on the odd occasion she'd been shooting in some competition at another club and needed to store one overnight. That's the only reason we had the secure cabinet put in. Otherwise they were kept in the club armoury.'

Dalziel looked nonplussed for a moment.

'When was the last time she had a gun at home, then?' he asked.

'A couple of years ago, I'd say,' said Swain. 'She gave up competition shooting, you see, so there was never any reason to remove them from the club.'

'And you aren't a member of this club?'

'No. I told you. I hate guns, ever since . . . well, I've always hated them. And I was right, wasn't I?'

His voice rose to something not far short of a shout. Dalziel regarded him speculatively for a while, then he turned on a sympathetic smile, his face lighting up like the Ministry of Love.

'I'm glad you feel like that about guns, Mr Swain. My sentiments entirely. I gather there's a very different attitude to gun-ownership in the States.'

He made the States sound like somewhere beyond Alpha Centauri.

'I believe so,' said Swain. He put his hand to his brow as if to massage a headache. Then he asked in a low voice, 'Has my mother-in-law, Mrs Delgado, been told?'

‘I expect so,' said Dalziel negligently. 'Leastways we told the Los Angeles police. She's sick, you say?'

'Yes. She's pretty well bedridden now. The most optimistic prognosis is a year, perhaps eighteen months.'

'So your missus would be planning a long trip mebbe.'

'It was open-ended. Naturally, if the end looked imminent, Gail would have stayed.'

'So that's why she took most of her clothes?'

'What? Oh yes, of course. You've been poking around the house.'

'Not me personally. One of my officers. Routine. But he did say it looked like there'd been a good clear-out.'

'If you'd ever seen what Gail packed for a weekend in the country, you'd not be surprised at that, Superintendent,' said Swain sadly.

'Oh aye, I know what you mean,' said Dalziel with a rueful shake of his head to express male solidarity. 'How long do you reckon she'd have stayed in Hambleton Road, Mr Swain?'

'How the hell should I know? You'd better ask Waterson that.'

'I shall. Make a note to ask Mr Waterson when you see him, Sergeant Wield,' said Dalziel.

Pascoe felt Wield wince beneath his totem-pole impassivity. The Sergeant had set all the systems at top pressure to track down Waterson, but so far there'd been no trace. Wield had spoken briefly to the wife before leaving the hospital. She had denied any knowledge of her husband's intentions or whereabouts, and agreed to make herself available for a longer interview at the end of her shift.

Dalziel leaned forward and said, 'Talking of Waterson, what do you reckon to him, Mr Swain? Setting aside the fact he were knocking off your wife.'

Swain looked at him in amazement and Pascoe tensed his muscles to intervene. Then Swain shook his head and said, 'I'd heard about you, Dalziel, but no one got close to the reality.'

Dalziel looked modestly pleased and said, 'Well, like they say, only God can make a tree. So? Waterson?'

'I don't know. He seemed all right. Lively. Pretty bright. Not a good payer, but who is these days?'

'I hope you'll not have any bother when you finish our car park and garages,' said Dalziel righteously. 'Had to twist his arm a bit, did you?'

'I had to bill him a few times and give him a couple of phone calls.'

'No solicitor's letters delivered by a pair of brickies with a German Shepherd?'

'You've been attending too many trials,' said Swain. 'If anything, I went more than usually easy with Waterson. I felt some sympathy with him. He was like me a couple of years back, trying to set up by himself after he'd been made redundant, and I know how careful you've got to be with the money then. Also I gather his wife left him. There's ironic for you! I felt sorry for the bastard because his wife had left him and she probably did it because she found he was screwing around with mine!'

'Mebbe so. You met her, did you?'

'Mrs Waterson? Only once. The day the job started. I got the distinct impression that was the first she knew of it. I never saw her again but I'm not around all the time. Arnie Stringer, my partner, usually takes care of on-site supervision.'

'Does he now? Now that is good news, Mr Swain.'

'What do you mean?'

'Nowt, except it's a comfort to know your men will be able to get on with our garages while we've got you banged up in here,' said Dalziel cheerfully.

It was not the worst of his provocations but it was the one that hit the button. Swain shot to his feet and shouted, 'You great lump of blubber, I've had enough of this. I don't have to sit here listening to your loutish maunderings. Can't you get it into your thick skull, she was my wife, and she's dead, and I blame myself. . . she's dead, and I blame . . .'

As rapidly as he had risen, he slumped in his chair again, pressed his face into his hands and his whole body went into a spasm of almost silent sobbing.

Dalziel viewed the scene with the detachment of a first-night critic, belched, stood up and said, 'I don't know about you lot, but my belly feels like me throat's been slit. Lunch.'

Outside he said, 'He's good. Best free show since Crippen broke down at his wife's funeral.'

'That's a bit hard,' protested Pascoe. 'He's got good cause to be upset.'

'You mean, because I'm on to his nasty game?' growled Dalziel.

Pascoe grimaced and said, 'Look, sir, with this statement of Waterson's in the files ... I know there's a bit of difference, but with two of them on more or less the same lines...’

'Aye, it is odd, that,' said Dalziel deliberately misunderstanding. 'Wieldy, you've had the rare privilege of seeing both these buggers while they're compos mentis. How do you read it? Any chance of 'em being a pair of poofs cooking up this Irish stew between 'em?'

Was the question more or less offensive for being addressed to a gay? And did it make any difference that Wield had received a measure of protection from Dalziel when others were ready to ladle on the persecution with generous hand?

Wield said, 'I'd say no, they're not gay. Though they're not always easy to spot, are they? Incidentally, I ran them both through the computer just in case no one else heard your instructions last night, sir.'

Is he being cheeky? wondered Dalziel, who was notorious for his distrust of any form of intelligence that couldn't sup ale. 'Man who lets a key witness go missing should think twice before he's cheeky. All right, lad, what did the Mighty Wurlitzer say?'

'Nothing known about Swain,’ said Wield. 'But Waterson lost his driving licence last week.'

'Oh, great,' mocked Dalziel. 'That changes everything, that does.'

'What did he do, Wieldy?' asked Pascoe defensively.

'Nowt really. He'd totted up penalty points pretty regularly for motor offences, but a couple of weeks back he got flashed because one of his rear lights was on the blink and he took off like a jet. They picked him up later all apologetic, thought he'd probably be drunk, but he was well inside the limit. So they did him for speeding and that put him over the top.'

'For crying out loud!' said Dalziel in exasperation. 'Can't either of you contribute owt useful? Peter, what do you reckon to these two?'

'I've not met Waterson,’ Pascoe pointed out. 'But he sounds . . . wayward.'

'Wayward, eh?' said Dalziel. 'I'll make a note. And Swain? Does he sound wayward too?'

'No, but he sounds a very odd kind of small-time builder.'

'What? Too educated, you mean? You'd best not let yourself be heard talking like that at home else you'll be washing your mouth out with carbolic. But I know what you mean. He's a very odd kind of fellow all round. Has to be if he thinks he can get the better of me! But we're wasting good drinking time. We'll have to postpone your celebration, but...’

‘There's still an hour,’ said Pascoe.

'Aye, but Wieldy here won't be with us, will you, Sergeant? He's got another hospital appointment, if he doesn't manage to lose this one too. You and me though, Peter, we'll have a jar and go over these two statements with a fine-tooth comb.'

‘Three statements,' said Pascoe, crossing his fingers and trying to cross his toes.

'Three? What do you mean - three?'

Wield took a small step towards the window as if contemplating hurling himself through it when hostilities broke out.

'There's Swain's,' Dalziel went on. 'And there's Waterson's. What other bugger's made a statement that needs looking at?'

Pascoe wondered if the window were wide enough for a double defenestration.

He took a deep breath and thought that no matter what they paid chief inspectors, it wasn't enough.

'Yours,' he said. 'Sir.'

CHAPTER FIVE

The nurses' annexe at the Infirmary was a nineteen-sixties purpose-built block situated about a furlong from the main building and linked to it by what had once been a pleasant tree-lined walk. Pleasant, that is, in summer and daylight. A series of late-night assaults a decade before had made protection more important than pleasance, and now the pathway was flanked by more lamp standards than trees and corridored in high tensile steel link-fencing.

Wield found Pamela Waterson's room on the third floor. When she opened the door she regarded him blankly for a second, then said, 'Oh, it's you,' and turned away.

He followed her into the room where she flopped wearily into a chair. Her long blonde hair was loose now, its bright tresses about her face accentuating the dark shadows under her eyes.

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I can see you're very tired.'

'You don't have to be a detective to work that out,' she answered bitterly. 'I was tired when I came off my last shift two hours late because my relief had a car accident. Then I only managed an hour's sleep before I was due on again -'

'Why was that?' interrupted Wield.

'Nothing special,' she said, lighting her third cigarette since his arrival. 'Life goes on, all the ordinary tedious things that take a few minutes when you're on top of them. Shopping, paying bills, washing, ironing -'

'Do you have a family, Mrs Waterson?' he interrupted again.

'Do I look like I have a family?' she said, gesturing around.

Presumably she simply meant that a bedsitter in a nurses' block was not a place to bring up a family, but Wield seized the opportunity for an open examination of the room.

There was little to be learned from the mainly institutional furniture. On the wall above the bed there was a little wooden crucifix; on another wall above a small bookcase hung a charcoal sketch of a female head whose laughing vitality delayed identification with the weary woman before him. He let his gaze fall to the books. Pascoe laid great store on books as revealers of personality. Mrs Waterson's choice ran mainly to biography and her taste was wide. There were a couple of Royals, Charles and Earl Mountbatten; several showbiz, including Monroe, Garland, the Beatles and Olivier; one political, Lloyd George; and a scattering of literary, ranging from Byron and Shelley through Emily Bronte and Oscar Wilde to Sylvia Plath and Simone de Beauvoir.

Looking for the meaning of her own life in other people's patterns was the way Pascoe would probably see it. Dalziel on the other hand would say, 'Sod the books! Poke about behind them, see what she's hiding!'

Wield knew all about hiding, knew also that we hide far less than we think. For years he had hidden his true sexual identity behind the dust jacket of a straight, middle-of-the-road, unemotional cop. But when he finally decided to come out, no delicate glowing butterfly emerged. He was still the same old lumpy green caterpillar nibbling systematically at the leaf till the holes joined up and he could see clear to the other side.

He returned now to his nibbling and pointed at the crucifix.

'You're a Catholic, are you, Mrs Waterson?'

'What? Oh, I see. And that means I should be producing every year like a brood mare?'

'I didn't say that. But there could be kids who stayed with their dad or went to gran when the bust-up happened.'

'Well, there weren't. And what do you know about my bust-up? Who've you been talking to? Some tittle-tattle at the hospital? God, if they worked as hard as I do, they'd have no time to gossip!'

She spoke with a fervour which brought colour to her wan cheeks. Wield, who had been trying to apportion the turmoil he discerned here between concern for her work and other causes possibly linked to his investigation, pushed a large emotional counter towards the job.

'Do you like being a nurse?' he asked with deliberate fatuity.

'Like? You mean, is it a vocation? Or, do I go around the wards singing?'

'Bit of both, I suppose. I mean, you must be good at it. How old are you, twenty-six, twenty-seven? And you're a ward sister already.'

She laughed and lit another cigarette.

'I'm twenty-four, Sergeant, and when I came here three years ago, they said I looked sixteen. And as for being a sister, I'm that because these days nurses are coming in in dribs and leaving in droves. Me, I reckon I didn't have half the experience necessary for it, and sometimes when I'm alone on the ward in the middle of the night and it's all quiet except for the odd groan and fart, and I can hardly keep my eyes open, I get to thinking that if something happens, some life or death emergency, I'm the one who'll be making the decisions till they rouse some poor bloody doctor who can probably hardly keep his eyes open either. Then I start shaking, partly with fear and partly with anger, at the sheer unfairness of expecting me to do the job at all.'

How relevant was all this? wondered Wield. It might have something to do with the case in terms of the break-up of the Waterson marriage. Or it might be a deliberate tactic of diversion. But this he doubted. There was too much genuine passion not to mention desperation for this outburst to be tactical.

It was time to get back to the point.

'So,' he said, 'when you came on shift today you were told your husband had been admitted.'

'Not straight away,' she said. 'Not for a couple of hours. It was Dr Marwood who told me.'

'What was your reaction?'

'Well, I wanted to know if he was all right, naturally. And when Ellison . . . Dr Marwood said it was just some kind of nervous tension and he'd been sedated but seemed fine this morning, I got worried in case it had something to do with me.'

'Would that have surprised you?'

She thought about this, then said, 'Yes, it would. He could get very emotional, Greg, you know, fly off the handle, have a fit of what they'd call hysterics in a woman. But it was always at something specific. Often it was completely illogical, but there had to be something, not just sitting at home brooding about things that had happened. And in any case, I doubt if he did much brooding about what had happened to us.'

'What had happened to you, Mrs Waterson?' asked Wield.

'I don't see that that has anything to do with you,' she retorted. 'Look, what you're here for is to find if I can help you track down Greg, right? Well, I can't. I walked out on him three weeks ago and till this morning I'd not seen him since.'

'Mrs Waterson, when I arrived this morning, you didn't look like, well, like a woman separated from her husband.'

'Because I was letting him kiss me and feel me up?'

'That's right.'

She smiled and drew on her cigarette, both with visible effort.

'Sergeant, I went to see him in my break. I was exhausted. You can't imagine what a relief it was to talk to someone who wasn't talking to me professionally. And when he got hold of me, well, at least he wasn't grabbing at me to complain about a pain or ask for a bedpan. It was nice and soothing when he started stroking me, like a massage. Oh yes, when you arrived I probably looked as if I was ready to get into bed with him, and I was. But not to make love, just to sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep . . .'

She leaned back and closed her eyes. Wield felt very sorry for her but not so sorry that he was going to return to Dalziel with questions unasked.

He said, 'What did you and your husband talk about this morning?'

She opened her eyes with difficulty and looked at him blankly.

'What did he say about the reasons for him being there?' he pressed.

'What makes you think he said anything?' she evaded.

'Well, so far you've not asked me a single question about it, luv,' he said. 'And that sounds like a lack of curiosity which could be a record.'

'You're not daft,' she said wearily. 'All right. He told me everything. He'd written it all down. Did he not show it to you? Why'd that fat bobby, Dalziel, not come himself?'

That fat bobby. Wield liked it. But Waterson hadn't mentioned Dalziel in his written statement. Significant?

'Do you know Mr Dalziel?' he asked.

'I've seen him, naturally. He doesn't bother much with curtains. And everyone roundabout talks about him. He's what you call a character, I suppose.'

'I suppose he is,' said Wield. 'Did you believe your husband's statement, Mrs Waterson?'

'Of course, no problem. Things fall apart around him, always have done. Give him a pencil and he'll draw you a near-on perfect circle. But I've known him cut his finger spreading butter and he can break a cup just stirring his tea. Put him and a gun in the same room and someone's almost bound to get hurt. Story of his life.'

She yawned widely. He wasn't going to be able to keep this interview going much longer. There were more ways of escape than decamping.

'Did you know he was having an affair with Mrs Swain?' he asked.

'Not specifically,' she said, standing up and moving slowly towards the narrow bed which occupied one corner of the room. 'But I know all about her, all that matters, I mean.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means she'd be slim, with long legs, good figure, blonde hair. Names don't matter. I sometimes doubt if Greg knows their names. He's like a little boy in a sweet shop. He just points at the lemon popsicles, and because he's such a charming little boy, he usually gets what he's pointing at.'

As she spoke, she loosened her skirt, stepped out of it, and began to unbutton her blouse. There was nothing seductive or suggestive in the action even if Wield had been seducible or suggestible in that direction. She was on automatic pilot, preparing for crash down. Wield did notice, however, that she fitted her husband's blueprint very well.

'Was it because of the women you left him?' he asked.

'No,' she replied. 'Not just the women.'

'What, then?' he asked, wondering if sleep or her answer would break the tape first. It was a close-run thing.

'. . . it was like . . . going home ... to another shift . . . and it was always . . . Saturday night . . . on casualty . . .' she said. Then she slipped onto the bed with one arm still in her blouse and was instantly asleep.

Wield stood looking at her for a while. His two exemplars came into his mind. First he did what Pascoe would have done, eased her arm out of the blouse sleeve and folded the duvet gently over her body.

Then he did what Dalziel would have done and started to search the room.

CHAPTER SIX

Down at the Black Bull, Dalziel was trying to change the subject.

'Did you have a look at them letters?' he interrupted.

'Which letters?' said Pascoe.

'From that barmy woman. I put 'em on your desk. Surely you've had time to read a couple of letters?'

Pascoe sighed, recalling the small alp of files which had reared out of his in-tray that morning. In fact he had read the letters, if only for their relative lack of bulk.

'Yes, I saw them. Very interesting. Now about your statement

Having grasped the nettle, and also having paid for the first two rounds despite the official postponement of his celebration, Pascoe was determined not to let go.

'I just said what I saw, lad.'

'Which was Swain holding the gun. Then Waterson making a grab for him. Then the gun went off?'

'I heard the gun going off, didn't see it,' corrected Dalziel. 'Now, about them letters, I'd like your opinion, you being such a clever sod.'

'Yes, sir. You're sure about the sequence?'

'Of course I'm bloody sure!'

'Then Waterson must be covering up for Swain?'

'See? I was right. You are a clever sod,' said Dalziel, finishing his second pint. 'All we've got to do is find the bugger, kick some sense into him, and I get to stay flavour of the month. Now, these letters

Pascoe gave up. For the time being.

'What's your interest, sir?' he asked. 'She says she'll not be writing again.'

'She'll write again, never fear,' growled Dalziel. 'Then she'll top herself, and I don't want any bugger saying we did bugger-all. So get something down on paper, pass the buck to social services, the Samaritans, anyone so long as we look squeaky clean to the coroner. Here come our hot pies. I'll have another pint to wash the taste away when you're ready.'

'I thought it was a rise in salary I was getting,' said Pascoe, nursing his half full glass. 'I didn't realize it was an entertainment allowance.'

Dalziel thought this so funny he choked on his pie and, his own glass being empty, he finished Pascoe's.

'That's better,' he gasped. 'And I see you're ready now, so how about them drinks?'

It's pinpricks not principles that engender treason. As Pascoe put the foaming pint before his chief he said casually, 'Talking of free booze, there'll be some going on Sunday evening if you're interested. A little reception at the Kemble in connection with these Mystery Plays they're putting on in the summer. Ellie's a mate of Eileen Chung's and she said they're keen to have some police liaison. These theatricals pour the plonk like there's no tomorrow and I don't see why those blighters in traffic should enjoy all the freebies, so I've fixed for us to get invited.'

'Good thinking, lad. They can come in later and do the work! Chung, eh? I've seen her and I've heard a lot about her but we've never actually met. I'd like that. I think the arts deserve every thinking citizen's support.'

He squinted over his glass to catch Pascoe's reaction, then he added, 'And I've always been partial to a bit of dusky chuff,' and laughed so much he started coughing again.

Back at the station the laughter stopped when Dalziel found the full post-mortem report on Gail Swain on his desk. It confirmed the cause of death as massive brain damage from the .357 Magnum cartridge which had been recovered from Waterson's converted attic after bursting its way through from the bedroom below. Blood alcohol was present at the level of 155 milligrams per 100 millilitres, which meant, as Dalziel observed, that she was well pissed. Remains of what the pathologist designated as an exotic meal, probably Chinese or Indian, were found in her stomach. She was a heavy smoker, had had her appendix removed, had sustained a fracture of her left tibia not less than three years before, had had no children, and had had sex a couple of hours before her death.

She was also a heroin user.

Dalziel threw back his head and bellowed, 'Seymour!'

Thirty seconds later a broad-shouldered redhead peered anxiously through the door. Detective-Constable Dennis Seymour's ear was not refined enough to distinguish furioso from simple fortissimo so he always anticipated the worst.

'Had a good poke around Swain's house, did you?' said Dalziel.

'Yes, sir. Report's on your desk, sir.'

'I've read it. It's not a bad report far as it goes. But I couldn't see owt in it about drugs.'

'Drugs?' Seymour's good-looking face went rigid with alarm. 'I wasn't told to look for drugs, sir.'

'You weren't told to look for Barbary apes either, but I dare say if you'd found a pair fornicating on the kitchen floor, you might have mentioned them!'

'What I meant, sir, was I saw no sign of drugs.'

'Oh aye? Checked every bottle in the bathroom cabinet, did we? Stuck your finger in every tin and jar in the kitchen and had a lick?'

Seymour shook his head. He looked so contrite that Dalziel, who was not above admitting an injustice once it had served its turn, said, 'Not your fault, lad. You weren't told. Though the way to get on is to do things you're not told, as long as they’re not things you've been told not to, except if you know for sure they need doing. Ask Mr Pascoe to step in here a moment, will you?'

With the mingled relief and bafflement of a supplicant leaving the sibyl's cave, Seymour departed. Dalziel picked up the phone and spoke to Sergeant Broomfield on the desk below.

'Get the quack along here, will you, George? I want him to give Swain a going-over for drug abuse.'

'Yes, sir. What if he don't want to be gone over, sir?'

'Tell him it's routine. A pre-release examination just so he can't come back with accusations about brutality. He hasn't fallen off a chair or accidentally banged his head against someone's boot, has he?'

'No, sir. Very well behaved. One thing, though: he's asked to contact his solicitor.'

'Taken his time, hasn't he? He got the chance last night, it's in the record. Which crook acts for him?'

'Mr Eden Thackeray.'

'Old Eden? Shit. Get the quack quick as you can, George.'

He put the phone down and looked up at Pascoe who'd just come in.

'What's this about drugs, sir?'

'Seymour been blubbing? I had high hopes of him once, but I reckon he's not been the same since he started screwing that Irish waitress. Sap your strength, the Irish do. I'd pump bromide into their potatoes. Take a look at this.'

He tossed the PM report over the desk.

'Take Seymour back to Swain's house and see what you can find. I doubt it'll be much, though. He didn't look to me like a user. A night in the cells and it'd have started to show. Also he'd have been a lot keener to contact his brief to get him out. As for her, if she set out to screw her way back to LA, she's not likely to have left a cache of scag under the floorboards. But there may be traces. And if he knew, then maybe he can point us at the pusher.'

'Right, sir,' said Pascoe. 'By the way, these letters you were so concerned about. I thought I'd -'

'Sod the bloody letters,' said Dalziel irritably. 'We're here to sort out crooks, not piss around with hysterics! I'm surprised at you for wanting to waste my time!'

Half an hour later Pascoe drove into Currthwaite, a village in danger of being annexed into a suburb, albeit a pretty plush suburb. On the town side the invasion was practically complete with the old rolling parkland now dotted with a range of well fortified high-class executive dwellings. Even when he entered the village proper between a Norman church in mellow York stone and a blockhouse chapel in angry brick, the High Street cottages were signalling their surrender with window-boxes without and Sanderson curtains within, and everywhere he looked he saw the green wellied conquerors marching their labradors in a non-stop victory parade.

Moscow Farm at the far end of the village showed signs of having fallen to the same attack. Snow-cemed, window-boxed, double-glazed, burglar-alarmed, sauna'd, showered, and centrally heated, it bore as much relation to an old working farmhouse as Washington Heights to Wuthering Heights. But when he looked out of the french window at the rear, Pascoe saw there had been an active resistance movement, for the old farmyard after being prettied into a patio had regressed into a builder's yard.

'I bet the rest of the village don't much like it,' said Seymour. 'Not with the kind of prices they're asking round here.'

'You're into the property market, are you?' asked Pascoe.

'Want to be. I got engaged.'

'Congratulations. To Bernadette, I take it?'

Bernadette McCrystal was the Irish waitress whose debilitating influence Dalziel so deplored. Pascoe had met and liked her, though he doubted if marrying her was going to herald halcyon weather in Seymour's voyage through life.

'Of course,' said Seymour a touch indignantly.

'I'll buy you a drink. Now let's get on.'

Ninety minutes later to Seymour's undisguised relief they had found nothing.

'I didn't fancy going back to the Super with a barrowload of coke.'

'Still time,' observed Pascoe. 'Out there is where they'll keep the barrows. I'll take a look. I'd like a word with his secretary anyway. You take one more look round here.'

He went out into the yard. It was enclosed on two sides by wings of old agricultural buildings, stables, barns and byres, which, red-tiled and white-painted, had something of an almost Mediterranean look in the thin February sunlight. It was a delusion soon shattered as he stepped out into the chilly air.

The firm's business office was in what must once have been a hayloft above the byre which was now used as a garage. It was reached by a flight of external stairs which Pascoe would not have fancied in icy weather.

He knocked at the door and went in. Behind a desk reading a paperback whose cover promised a bodice-ripper but whose title claimed Jane Eyre, sat a young woman he knew to be Swain's secretary. She had emerged briefly on their arrival, but on spotting Seymour whom she'd met on his first visit, she had retreated to Mr Rochester.

'Hello,' said Pascoe. 'Busy?'

She rested her book against the typewriter on her desk and said, 'Can I help you?'

She was rather square-featured and plumply built, had straight brown hair, almost shoulder length, wore no discernible make-up and spoke in a husky contralto voice with a strong local accent.

Pascoe picked up the book and examined the illustration which showed a terrified young woman whose bodice was undoubtedly ripped fleeing from a burning house in whose doorway stood a Munster-like figure.

'I don't remember that bit,' he said.

'Makes you want to read the book,' she explained. 'More than them bloody teachers ever did.'

It was a point, perhaps two.

He put the book down on the typewriter and looked around. He found he was shivering slightly. The house had been warm and he'd taken off his topcoat, but here, despite a double-barred electric wall heater, the atmosphere was still dank and chilly. The woman at the desk on second inspection proved to be less plump than he'd thought. She had insulated herself with at least two sweaters and a cardigan.

'It's a bit nippy in here,' he said, touching the whitewashed wall. The stones were probably three feet thick and colder on the inside than on the out. 'With all that room in the house, you'd have thought Mr Swain would have had his office in there rather than out here.'

'Mrs Swain wouldn't have it,' said the woman.

'Did he tell you that?'

She considered.

'No,' she said.

'How do you know, then?'

She considered once more, then said indifferently, 'Don't know, but I know.'

Pascoe sorted this out. Surprisingly it made sense.

'How long have you been working here, Miss . . . I'm sorry . . . ?'

'Shirley Appleyard. And it's Mrs.'

'Sorry. You look so young,' he said with full flarch. It was like shining a torch into a black hole.

'I'm nineteen,' she said. 'I've been here two years.'

'Do you like it?'

She shrugged and said, 'It's a job. Better than nowt, these days.'

'Yes, they're hard to come by,' said Pascoe, switching to the sympathetic concerned approach. 'You did well, there was probably a lot of competition.'

'No,' she said. 'I got it because me dad's Mr Swain's partner.'

'Mr Stringer, you mean? That's handy,' said Pascoe.

'You mean I should give thanks to God for being so lucky? Don't worry, I get told that at least twice a day and three times on Sundays.'

She spoke with a dull indifference worse than resentment. Pascoe, as always curious beyond professional need, said, 'I met your father this morning. He seemed a little out of sorts . . .'

'You mean he didn't strike you as being full of Christian charity?' she said with an ironic grimace. 'He's not that kind of Christian. Didn't you notice the chapel over from the church as you came through the village? Red brick. That's Dad. All the way through.'

Pascoe smiled and said, 'You live in the village still? With your parents?'

'Aye. Holly Cottage. That's it you can see at the corner of the field.'

Pascoe looked out of the window. Visible through the open end of the yard was a small cottage about fifty yards away.

'You've not far to come,' he said. 'Your husband lives there too, does he?'

'He's away working, if it's any of your business,' she retorted with sudden anger. 'And what's all this to do with Mrs Swain getting shot?'

'Shot? Now where did you hear that?' wondered Pascoe. The media so far hadn't got past the general story of a shooting in Hambleton Road, and he was reluctant to think that Seymour had been indiscreet on his earlier visit.

'Dad rang up this morning to say there'd been some bother, something about Mrs Swain and a shooting, he didn't seem very clear, but he was just ringing to tell me to say nowt if anyone got on to me at work and started asking questions about the Swains.'

'Excluding the police, of course,' smiled Pascoe.

'He didn't say that,' she answered without returning his smile. 'So she has been shot, then? Dead?'

Pascoe said carefully, 'There has been a shooting, yes. And yes, I'm afraid Mrs Swain is dead. And I hope, despite your father, you'll feel able to answer a couple of questions, Mrs Appleyard.'

'Such as?'

'Such as, what did you reckon to Mrs Swain?' said Pascoe.

'She were all right,' said Shirley Appleyard. 'Bit stuck up, but always polite enough when we met.'

'She seemed a nice-looking woman from her photos,' said Pascoe. He was thinking of the wedding album they'd found in the house, and trying not to think of the bloody ruin on the official police pictures.

'Not bad,' said the girl. 'And she knew how to make the best of herself. Clothes and jewels and make-up, I mean. Nothing flashy, but you could tell just by looking it cost an arm and a leg.'

The labels in the clothes brought from Hambleton Road confirmed this. And there'd been an engagement ring and a matching pendant which, if the stones were real, must have cost a few thousand at the least.

'When did you last see her?' he asked.

'Week last Friday. I bumped into her in the yard. She said ta-ra.'

'Just that?'

'She didn't actually say ta-ra,' said the girl impatiently. 'It were something like, we'd likely not see each other before she went off that weekend, so goodbye.'

'I thought she was just going on a trip. Didn't that sound a bit final to you, as if she didn't think she'd be coming back?'

'Mebbe,' said Shirley Appleyard. 'Or mebbe she just didn't expect to find me here when she came back.'

'Oh? Why's that?'

'Business weren't good. Once this job for you lot's done, there's nowt else on the books. So it could be she reckoned the whole thing would have folded by then.'

'But she had money, didn't she?' prompted Pascoe.

'Oh aye, but not to pour into this sort of thing.' She gestured at the yard. 'She were generous enough by all accounts with things like art and music, wildlife and restoration funds, you know, all the posh sort of things where you meet the top people. I don't think she'd have been sorry to stop being a builder's wife.'

'Well, she's managed that,' said Pascoe. 'Did she strike you as a moody kind of person: you know, on top of the world sometimes, then down in the dumps a bit later?'

His effort to put the question casually failed completely.

'Drugs, you mean,' said the girl. 'Is that what you're looking for?'

Pascoe thought of reading the Riot Act, of lying through his teeth, then decided that neither of these courses was going to get him anywhere.

'Would it surprise you?' he asked.

'Why should it?' she asked. 'People'll do owt for a bit of pleasure these days. But Mrs Swain, I'd not have said she was more up and down than most, though with her money, she'd be able to afford a steady enough supply for it not to show, wouldn't she?'

It was a reasonable answer. The more he talked to this girl, the more he felt the need for a sharp mental reprimand. On first sight he'd been ready to categorize her as being as lumpy mentally as she looked physically. Now he realized he'd been very wrong on both counts.

He said, 'From what you say, Mrs Swain wouldn't have much to do with the day-to-day running of the business?'

'Nowt at all.'

He went on, 'Might she bump into any of your customers, though?'

'Not in a big room she wouldn't. There were never that many.'

Pascoe laughed out loud and this natural response was far more effective than his earlier hackneyed attempt at charm, for the girl gave him her first smile.

'A Mr Gregory Waterson, for instance?' he went on. 'Do you know if she ever met him?'

'Him who had the studio conversion? Oh yes, she met him.'

'You saw them together?'

'He came here a couple of times about the job. Once neither Mr Swain nor Dad were around, but he met Mrs Swain in the yard and went into the house with her.'

'Oh?'

'Not what you're thinking,' she said. 'Not that I reckon he didn't try his hand.'

'What makes you say that?'

'I'd been roughing out some figures for him and I went to the house myself to give him them and I got the impression he'd been coming on strong and Mrs Swain had told him where to get off.'

'I see. Did you get the impression he'd persist?'

'Oh aye. Thought he were God's gift.'

'But you didn't agree with his estimate?'

She shrugged. 'Funny kind of gift for God to make, I'd say.'

'But a matter of taste perhaps? Would Mrs Swain perhaps be more interested than she let herself show at first?'

'How should I know that?' she asked scornfully.

'Sorry,' repeated Pascoe. 'But as an observer, how would you say things were generally between the Swains?'

Again she shrugged.

'It was a marriage,' she said. 'Anything's possible.'

Pascoe laughed and said, 'That's a touch cynical, isn't it? If you don't believe in the power of true love, I think you've got the wrong book.'

She picked up her discarded Jane Eyre.

'You mean it ends happy?' she said. She sounded disappointed.

'Afraid so. You'll need to try men for unhappy endings,' said Pascoe with gentle mockery. 'Try Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Or Anna Karenina. Now they're really miserable!'

He grinned as he spoke and was rewarded with a second faint smile.

'What's the rest of this building used for?' he asked.

'Down below, you mean? That was the old byre and stables, I think. Now it's used for garages and to store stuff they don't like to leave out in the wet.'

'Is it open? I'd like to take a look.'

'It'll be locked. Dad doesn't trust anybody.'

She picked up a bunch of keys, rose and led the way down the outside stair. She was right. All the doors were padlocked. She stood and watched as Pascoe poked around in a desultory fashion. He had little hope that he was going to find a barrowful of dope out here, and if it were hidden by the thimbleful, it would take a trained dog to sniff it out.

Finished, he walked out into the yard again.

'Same kind of stuff over there?' he asked, looking at the barn on the far side.

'No. That's empty.'

'Better have a glance all the same.'

Again she was right. The stone floor was swept clean. He looked up into the rafters, screwing his eyes up against the darkness. He thought he saw a movement. There were certainly patches of darker darkness against the dull grey of the slates.

'Bats,' said the girl.

'What?'

'Bats. Pipistrelles, I think they call them.'

He took an involuntary step backwards. Dark places he'd never cared much for, even less since his experience down the mine. And the creatures of darkness, in particular bats, made him shudder. Ellie, in whom he detected a definite green shift in recent months, had become a member of a local Bat Preservation Group. Had she opted for whales or wild orchids, he could have gone along with her in passion, perhaps even in person; but while intellectually one hundred per cent in favour of the rights of bats, the thought of actually touching them filled him with horror.

'It's all right. They're hibernating,' said Shirley Appleyard.

Ashamed of being detected in this unmanly behaviour, Pascoe said brusquely, 'Why's this place not used for anything?'

'Don't know. There was some talk of Mrs Swain turning it into an indoor shooting gallery.'

'And what happened?'

'Came to nowt. Mebbe because of the bats. You can't disturb them, you know. Or mebbe Mr Swain didn't like the idea because of his brother.'

'His brother?'

'The one who used to own this place. Tom Swain.'

It rang a faint bell.

'Didn't he . . . ?'

'Shot himself a few years back. In here,' said the girl, deadpan.

'In here? Not very lucky with guns, the Swains, are they?'

The girl didn't reply. Pascoe looked around the barn. Bats and a ghost. He couldn't blame Swain for objecting to his wife's proposal.

He said, 'It looks as if someone's got some plan for it now.'

'Because it's been cleared out?' The girl shrugged. 'There was nothing but a load of rusty old farm stuff here. Mr Swain got rid of it a couple of weeks back.'

'So he is planning to use it?'

'Mebbe. I think he were more interested in the money he got for the scrap.'

'Really?' said Pascoe, alert to this hint of financial problems. 'Money a bit short, is it?'

'You'd need to ask Mr Swain or my dad about that,' said the girl.

'Sorry. I'm not going behind their backs, but you did mention the scrap,' he said conciliatorily.

'Yes, I did,' she admitted. 'It were just that it amused me at the time.'

She looked the kind of person who might well treasure up anything which proved a source of amusement.

'What was funny about it?' he asked.

'Just the name of the dealer, that was all. They called him Swindles.'

'Joe Swindles?' said Pascoe.

'That's right. You know him? That figures.'

It was true that the police and Joe Swindles were long acquainted, but the old boy had gone for some years now without overstepping the mark, and in fairness Pascoe said, 'Just socially. There's nothing against him.'

'Too clever, is he?'

Pascoe laughed, then stopped as he was sure he heard a respondent squeaking from up in the rafters.

He said, 'Well, that'll do, I think,' and stepped out into the sunlight.

The girl took this as her dismissal and went back up the stairway to her office without saying anything more.

He watched her, frowning, then went back into the house.

Seymour was on his knees in the kitchen with his head in the electric oven.

'If you're trying to kill yourself,' said Pascoe, 'I'd opt for gas. If not, then pack up. I'll just ring in, then we're on our way to the gun club.'

He dialled the station and got through to Wield.

'Is he in?' he asked.

'Eden Thackeray's turned up to see Swain,' said the Sergeant. 'The Super's taken him upstairs for a chat and a drink.'

'Will he be long?'

'Depends,' said Wield. 'You know he fixed up for Swain to be checked out for drugs? Well, the doctor's been held up on some emergency and the Super won't be wanting to let old Eden at his client before he's been given the once over. Is it anything important?'

'Just a negative on drugs at Moscow,’ said Pascoe. 'But the business doesn't look too healthy financially. Send him a note in, will you? How'd you get on?'

Wield gave him a brief account of his interview with Mrs Waterson. As he listened Pascoe flicked through the pages of the wedding album which he'd laid on the table by the phone. Shirley Appleyard had been a little ungenerous. Certainly at the time she was married, Gail Swain had been rather more than all right. He paused at an all-female group photograph by the side of a palm-fringed swimming pool. Even among those tanned and cosseted women she stood out, slim, radiant, her fair hair glowing like a candle flame.

But as he drove away from Moscow Farm a few moments later it was an image of a stocky, unkempt, pale-faced woman reading Jane Eyre that he took with him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

'Philip Swain is an interesting, not to say complex character,' said Eden Thackeray. 'I'm surprised you were not previously acquainted, Andrew.'

'We were. He's the jobbing builder mucking up our car park,' said Dalziel.

'I mean socially. As twin luminaries in our great social galaxy, I would have expected your orbits to cross before now.'

Dalziel grinned. He enjoyed Thackeray's gentle piss taking in much the same way as the solicitor enjoyed his more gamesome assaults. Superficially everything about the two men was different, but it was mainly a difference of style. Beneath his bland exterior, the senior partner of Messrs Thackeray, Amberson, Mellor and Thackeray was as sharp, ruthless, and even anarchic as Dalziel himself.

'They've crossed now,' said the fat man. 'And they used to build gibbets at crossroads. So why's he interesting, apart from having shot his missus?'

'Andrew, please. A slip of the tongue, I realize, but you really should be more careful.'

'I'm the most careful bugger you'll meet in a summer day at Scarborough Fair,' said Dalziel.

But he smiled as he spoke. Information came before provocation. He had said nothing yet about the content of his own witness statement. On the other hand, to balance matters, he hadn't mentioned Waterson's either, nor the latter's defection.

'Mrs Swain's suicide is part of a long tragic history for that family,' resumed Thackeray. 'He's a Swain of Currthwaite, you knew that, of course?'

'I know he lives out there. I thought he'd be just another townie with a daft American wife playing at country living.'

'Not entirely unjust,' admitted Thackeray, holding his glass to the light to admire the crystal facets and also, apparently fortuitously, to point its emptiness. Dalziel groaned satirically and refilled it with the twelve-year-old Islay he'd dug out of his desk on the lawyer's arrival.

'How kind. Yes, Swain is by education and, I suspect, inclination, a townie. But there have been Swains at Currthwaite since Elizabeth's day. Minor country gentry rather than good yeoman stock, I'd say. Indeed, they have usually appeared if not reluctant, certainly rather feckless farmers. But with a great sense of loyalty to the place. They were forever getting into debt, and on many occasions even lost the farm, but somehow they always contrived to get it back. Their saving grace has been that, despite the fact that few of them have shown any talent for safe investment and hum-drum business, there is a consistently recurring strain of ingenuity and opportunism which has hitherto pulled them back from the brink of complete disaster.'

'Good con-men, that's what you mean?' said Dalziel.

Thackeray sighed and said, 'What I mean is what I say, Andrew. To continue, Philip is the product of the family's last period of prosperity in the post-war years.'

'Spiv time,' grunted Dalziel. 'Sorry. Go on.'

'His elder brother, Tom, was naturally in line for the farm, and Philip was packed off to college to read business studies. It was a superstitious rather than a sensible choice. Philip's bent was entirely practical and something like engineering would have made much more sense, but I think his father hoped that by laying him on the altar of commerce, he might at last appease Mammon and usher in a long period of prosperity for the Swains.'

'You don't half talk pretty,' said Dalziel, topping up their glasses. 'Is that how you get to charge so much?'

'It helps. Where was I? Oh yes. Philip did all right, nothing spectacular, but family influence helped him to a job locally with Atlas Tayler who you may recall were successfully making the transition from old electrics to new electronics in the seventies. He was still playing his promising young executive role there five years later when they got taken over by the American company, Delgado International, who were keen to establish a European base.'

'Delgado. Hey, he called his mother-in-law Mrs Delgado.'

'Perhaps because that's her name, Andrew,' said Thackeray kindly. 'Yes, he married into the family, albeit a cadet branch. He and Gail met when the Americans ferried a group of their new staff out to head office in Los Angeles on a re-orientation course. They fell in love. No doubt the family looked him over, decided there was no harm in adding a bit of family loyalty to the financial ties binding Atlas Tayler to them, and gave their approval. So it was back here after the honeymoon and onward and upward in his executive career. Meanwhile, back at Moscow Farm, his father had died and brother Tom was making a real pig's ear of running things. It was hard to lose money when the EEC were practically paying farmers to grow less, but Tom was the worst kind of Swain.'

'I doubt it,' growled Dalziel.

'For heaven's sake, Andrew, I'm telling you all this so you will understand what a decent and reliable citizen my client is,' snapped Thackeray.

'Oh aye? I thought you were just spinning things out till the bottle was empty,' said Dalziel. 'Also, it doesn't say much for the family lawyer letting all these Swains get so deep in trouble.'

'I'm very conscious of that. But there's a secretive streak about them when it comes to money matters,' said the lawyer, frowning. 'I doubt if even Philip knew just how bad things were with the farm, though I know he'd been putting what funds he could afford at Tom's disposal for some time. But finally it all got too much for the poor man and one day he went into the barn and blew his brains out. That's why even you should realize what a devastating effect this new tragedy will have had upon my client.'

'Aye, it must be a bit rough,' said Dalziel with spurious sympathy. 'So that's how Phil got his hands on Moscow, was it?'

'Yes, but it was an inheritance more troublesome than covetable. Everything that could be mortgaged was, and all the buildings had fallen into a sad state of disrepair. There was no way that Philip's salary could take care of things, but happily his wife had a not inconsiderable dot and was sufficiently taken by the notion of family roots to pour out dollars with a liberal hand till Moscow Farm became a place fit for a Californian to live in. I suspect that was the happiest time of their marriage. She got a real kick out of interior decorating, by plastic card of course, while he enjoyed himself even more by planning and helping with the restructuring.'

'What about farming?'

'His practical bent didn't extend to things that mooed or needed planting. But he hung onto the land. A wise move, when you see what has happened since between the village and the town. To this government, a Green Belt is a martial arts qualification needed for survival in the Cabinet. Once the land to the east is all gone, there'll be planning permission for the asking on Moscow's acres to the west, and prices will rocket.'

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'So we've got Philip Swain with a good job, his family home all refurbished, and lots of valuable development land in the foreseeable future. How come he ends up as a small builder with cash-flow problems?'

Thackeray sipped his whisky and wondered why Dalziel was being so blatant. The phone rang on the fat man's desk. He picked it up, listened, said, 'You're sure? Shit. All right, stick him in two. I'll be down shortly.'

'Bad news?'

'Depends how you look at it. So what happened when Delgado decided to back out of Britain?' Dalziel asked.

'You recall that?'

'Aye. Five hundred lost jobs was still making headlines two years ago,' growled Dalziel. 'And wasn't there a lot of flak about a Yankee con-trick?'

'Indeed. Delgado's certainly played their cards very close to the chest. Right up to the announcement of closure, everyone thought they were in fact planning to expand their UK investment instead of relocating it in the cheaper pastures of Spain. There were rumours of a takeover bid for a company in Milton Keynes. Of course it could never be proved that Delgado's started them deliberately, but certainly they were up and away before the unions knew what had hit them.'

'But not Swain?'

'No. Philip took his redundancy money like the rest of them. He had the usual Swain longing to be master of Moscow and his own life. Like a good Thatcherite, he decided to create his own small business. He chose building, partly because he believed he'd discovered a constructive talent in himself while putting the farm to rights. And partly because of Arnold Stringer.'

'That's the big gingery chap who's Swain's foreman?'

'Swain's partner,' corrected Thackeray. 'Also his childhood playmate. There have been Stringers in Currthwaite as long as Swains, peasant stock as opposed to gentlemen farmers, of course, and chapel rather than church, but such divisions were never urged upon the young. Indeed, according to local folklore, a Swain cuckoo has from time to time slipped into the Stringer nest. Whatever the truth, the two boys went happily to the village school together. Later of course their paths diverged. Stringer was a farm worker at Moscow at fifteen, decided there was no future in it when he got married at eighteen, took a job on a building site, and eventually set up on his own in a small way. And that's how he stayed. It's clear he wasn't cut out to be one of Mrs T's success stories. He still lives in one of the few Moscow farm cottages still standing and it was natural that when Philip took over he should push the basic re-building work his way. It was equally natural that when Philip started looking for an entree into the construction business, he should opt for energizing his old schoolmate's firm. Stringer's trade expertise, Swain's social contacts, it was potentially a winning combination.'

'You approved?' said Dalziel.

'I felt there were worse ways for him to invest his lump sum,' said Thackeray carefully. 'He is a Swain, after all, and I was fearful he might just pour his redundancy pay-off down some empty gold mine.'

'And since then?' said Dalziel refilling their glasses.

'Since then, what?'

'Well, this winning combination hasn't exactly been bothering Wimpey's, has it? As far as I can make out, doing our car park and garages is the biggest job they've ever had. And like I say, my lad, Pascoe, reckons there's not a lot of money in the bank. Though likely things'll be different now his missus has been sent off?'

'Andrew,' said the lawyer warningly.

'Just thinking aloud,' said Dalziel. 'Another thing strikes me. Situated like he was, married into the family and all, he must have been a right useless wanker for Delgado's to turn him off like a factory hand.'

'That is where you're wrong,' said Thackeray. 'I happen to know that Swain was offered a top executive post with an excellent salary at head office in Los Angeles.'

'But he couldn't bear to leave sunny Currthwaite, is that it?'

'Partly, yes,' said the lawyer seriously. 'But there was something else which may help you understand the quality of the man. Because they did not trust his native loyalties, Philip was not made privy to Delgado's plans. When news of the closure came out, he was enraged.'

'Was he now? Aye, he struck me as a good actor too.'

'This was no act, believe me,' urged Thackeray. 'You ask the unions involved. There's not one of them will hear a bad word against Swain.'

'So you're telling me Swain jacked in his sinecure with Delgado's as an act of solidarity with his downtrodden comrades?' said Dalziel.

'Andrew, I'm not telling you anything,' said Thackeray, suddenly aware how far he'd let himself be led in discussing his client's background. 'I'm merely passing the time of day till whatever obstacle lies in the way of my immediate interview with my client is removed. With another kind of officer I might by now have grown suspicious. But if one member of the Gentlemen's Club cannot trust another, what is the world coming to? Incidentally, talking of the Gents, I gather you have not yet taken up your allocation of Ball tickets, so I have brought them along. They are in great demand so any you do not want for your own guests will be easily disposable. It's twenty-five pounds the double ticket, so that will be two hundred and fifty pounds.'

'Christ,' said Dalziel. 'When we were lads, you could go to a good hop, with a guaranteed jump after, if it weren't raining, all for one and six. And she paid for her own.'

'That was a long time ago, long enough for the present good cause to seem not unattractive, perhaps. Think of it as an investment.'

Dalziel glared at him balefully as he wrote a cheque. The Gents were sponsoring the Mayor's Spring Charity Ball which this year was in aid of the local Hospice Appeal fund. He tossed the cheque over the table and said, 'I'll just go and see what's holding things up.'

'Take your time,' said Thackeray, reaching for the Islay.

Dalziel went down to No. 2 interview room feeling irritated. Things weren't going smoothly. First of all the police doctor's late arrival had necessitated keeping Thackeray occupied, a tactic which had so far cost him two hundred and fifty pounds and a deal of malt. Then had come Pascoe's message that Moscow Farm was clean. And finally he'd just been told on the phone that the doctor could find no signs of addiction, physical or psychological, on Swain.

The builder was looking weary but still in control. Dalziel, aware of Thackeray's imminence, came straight to the point.

'How long had your wife been a drug addict, Mr Swain?'

Swain made no effort at shock or indignation but shook his head and said, 'So this is what this has all been about?'

'You knew about her habit, then?'

'She was my wife, for God's sake. How couldn't I know? All right, she had a problem but she'd kicked it.'

'That's not what the pathologist says.'

'You mean she was snorting again? No, I didn't know.'

'Snorting? No, lad, not snorting. She'd got more perforations than a sheet of stamps,' exaggerated Dalziel.

His reaction was startling. He stared at Dalziel incredulously and cried, 'You what? Injecting, you mean? Oh Christ! The bastard!'

And as he spoke these words he smashed his left fist hard into his right palm, you could see the knuckle prints. This was genuine beyond histrionics. But who was he thumping? wondered Dalziel.

'This bastard, who is he?' he asked gently. 'Do you mean Waterson?'

'What? No. Of course not. He's not the type. There's no way it could be him.' He didn't sound very convincing.

'Supplying the drugs, you mean?'

'Yes. That's the bastard I want.'

'Oh aye? Bit late for revenge, isn't it? I mean, she’s snuffed it now, with a bit of help from her friends.'

Swain looked at him with real hatred.

'Where's my lawyer?' he demanded. 'Why haven't I seen my lawyer?'

'Because last night you didn't want to disturb his beauty sleep,' said Dalziel. 'Who was your wife's doctor, Mr Swain? Perhaps he knows more about her problems than you seem to.'

Swain didn't rise to this bait but said, 'Dr Herbert, same as me. But she never went near him. He'd have said. Nothing unprofessional, but we've known each other a long time.'

'Nod and a wink, eh?' said Dalziel, nodding and winking most grotesquely. 'But she must have seen someone when she broke her leg.'

'Sorry. Can't help you,' said Swain.

'You mean your wife breaks her leg and you don't know who's treating her? Christ, it's a wonder she didn't blow your head off!'

Swain took a deep breath.

'I don't have to stand this, Dalziel,' he said quietly. 'I realize if you get me to take a swing at you, then you'd really have something to hit me with. Well, I won't give you that satisfaction. I want to see my lawyer. Now!'

Dalziel said, 'Your wife's dead, Mr Swain. Why should I need owt else to hit you with? I'll get Mr Thackeray now. I reckon you need him.'

At the door he paused and said, 'You never did finish telling me about that doctor

Swain sighed and said, 'She had a skiing accident in Vermont. I wasn't there. But I'm sure, being Americans, there'll be records. If it's important.'

'Important?' said Dalziel. 'Can't imagine where you got that idea.'

He went back to his room. Thackeray rose as he entered.

'He's all yours,' said Dalziel. 'Might be a bit upset. We've just been talking about his wife's drug habit.'

If he'd expected any shock/horror response from the lawyer, he was disappointed.

Thackeray sighed and said, 'Andrew, I know how much your job means to you, but I hope you will not let it obscure your basic humanitarianism. No one expects you to wear kid gloves, but it would help us all if during the course of your investigation you remembered that my client has suffered a deep and grievous loss.'

Dalziel scratched his thigh, picked up the malt whisky bottle, held it up to the light.

'Looks like he's not the only one,' he said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Rangemaster at the Mid-Yorks Gun Club was properly macho, his shag of curly black hair echoed in designer stubble along the jaw and in designer thatch at the open neck of his lumberjack's shirt. Below, he tapered to narrow hips and a pair of faded jeans so unambiguously tight, it was clear he was carrying no concealed weapons. He affected a mid-Atlantic baritone which occasionally let him down, or rather up, into a Geordie squeak. His name was Mitchell but he invited them to join everyone in calling him Mitch.

'Tell me, Mr Mitchell,' said Pascoe, 'is Rangemaster a usual title for someone in your position?'

'Don't know that it is,' he answered. 'Sounds good though, don't it?'

'Do it? Perhaps you could give us a job description?'

His fears that he might have got hold of some fantasizing handyman were allayed as Mitchell gave him an outline of the club's set-up and his role in it. He was in fact the resident steward, coach and adviser on all matters pertaining to arms, qualified by a five-year stint in the Army (nudges and winks towards the SAS) followed by a one-year polymanagement course. He had a half share in the club, the other half belonging to a local businessman who was a shooting enthusiast. By the time he'd finished talking, it was clear that perhaps eighty per cent of his self-presentation was a sales ploy, which left twenty per cent as self-image.

But image and accent vanished together when told of Gail Swain's death.

'Oh no. Man, that's really terrible,' he said, sitting down. 'She were a real canny lass. Gail dead! I canna believe it.'

'It's true, I'm afraid,' said Pascoe.

'How'd it happen? What was it? An accident?'

'It seems possible,’ he said carefully. 'What I'm here about is her guns. She kept them here, I believe.'

'Oh yes. All the time. Well, nearly. There might have been an odd time when she took one home, if she'd been away at a competition, say. But why're you interested ... it wasn't a shooting accident, was it?'

'I'm afraid a gun was involved,' said Pascoe. 'What weapons did she own?'

'She had a Beretta .25, a Hammerli match target pistol, a Colt Python and a Harrington and Richardson Sidekick,' he replied without hesitation.

'Quite an armoury. And where would these be kept?'

For answer Mitchell took them through into another room and pointed at a metal door.

'You won't find anything like that outside a bank,’ he said proudly. 'No one gets in here, I tell you.'

He unlocked the door to reveal a range of padlocked gun cabinets.

'I'm glad to hear it,' said Pascoe, who privately saw no reason why gun enthusiasts shouldn't try out both their accuracy and their fantasies with spring-loaded weapons that fired ping-pong balls. 'And how do the members get hold of their weapons?'

'They tell me what they want and I fetch them out,' said Mitchell.

'How often did Mrs Swain use the club?'

'She used to be a real regular but not so much lately.'

'And Mr Swain?'

'He wasn't a member, but he sometimes came to functions with his wife. He knew a lot of people, of course. The Swains are an old local family.'

'That matters?'

'We're very democratic, but the old country families who've been used to guns from early on are our founder members, so to speak. I'd say it mattered to Gail, being a Swain.'

'Did she have any special friends?'

'Not in the club. She was a bit of a loner, really. I know she liked to do the right things for someone in her position, sit on committees, that sort of thing, but maybe she didn't feel certain enough how things worked to risk getting too close to anyone. It can't be easy being a rich Yank round here.'

There was no trace of irony in his voice.

'But her husband didn't feel it incumbent on him to join?'

'Oh no. He's one on his own too. But there have been Swains in the club, I mean real Swains. His brother Tom . . . but you'll know about him.'

Pascoe nodded with the air of a man who knows everything. Seymour, he noted approvingly, had vanished. His amiable smile beneath a shock of unruly red hair was a delicate picklock of confidences, especially female. If there was tittle to be tattled, Seymour was your man.

He said, 'And which of Mrs Swain's weapons are still here?'

Mitchell said, 'None. She took them all away last time I saw her.'

'And you let her?' said Pascoe. 'You didn't express surprise? You said yourself the only time she ever took a weapon home was when she was shooting away in a competition. How often would that be?'

'Didn't apply any longer in Gail's case,' said Mitchell. 'She hadn't done any competition shooting in nearly two years. But obviously she wanted them this time because she was going home. Her mother's ill.'

'She must have made other visits to the States. Long visits. Last year, for instance,' said Pascoe, recollecting Swain's statement. 'Didn't her father die?'

'Yes. She was away for a couple of months.'

'And did she take any of her guns then?'

'No. Perhaps this time she wanted to do some shooting over there. Not much opportunity at a funeral, is there? OK, she could easily get replacements in the States. It's like buying bars of chocolate over there. But you get into a special relationship with your own pieces. And of course the Hammerli was specially tailored to her hand.'

Pascoe had a feeling that Mitchell could have told him more, but whether it would have been pertinent, whether indeed it would have been factual or merely idle gossip, he couldn't guess. At the moment a too aggressive interrogation would merely serve to feed that gossip.

'One more question,' said Pascoe. 'If Mrs Swain wanted to carry one of her weapons around with her - because she felt in need of personal protection, say - which would she be most likely to have chosen?'

'The Beretta probably, or the Sidekick,' Mitchell answered promptly.

'Why?'

'Well, she wouldn't choose the Python, not unless she was planning to blow somebody away. It's big and it's heavy and it takes the .357 Magnum cartridge which is a danger to people in the next room if you happen to miss. The Hammerli on the other hand is a specialized weapon, OK for punching holes in a target but not much else. It takes one .22 rimfire cartridge at a time and it's got a hair trigger, not the kind of thing you carry in your pocket. Why do you ask?'

'The curiosity of an idle mind,' smiled Pascoe.

He took a last look at the array of dully gleaming guns in their padlocked cabinets.

'See anything you fancy?' inquired Mitchell. 'We've always room for law officers at the MYGC.'

'I was just wondering how many rifles make a good ploughshare,' said Pascoe. And went in search of Seymour.

He found the redhead in conclave with a wizened woman of indeterminate years. The wide amiable smile had vanished but not before it had been all too effective if Pascoe read truly the desperate grimace which greeted his appearance.

With difficulty breaking free from a grip like the mummy's hand, Seymour stood up, took a brief farewell, and followed his chief out to the car park.

'Bernadette would not like it,' said Pascoe judiciously.

'Bernadette wouldn't believe it,' said Seymour. 'I'm not sure I do.'

'What did she say to you?'

'I said, why was the place so empty. I expected to hear people banging away all over the shop. And she said they didn't open till evenings on a Tuesday, but as for banging away, we could soon alter that if I liked

'Seymour, you'll die of an over-active double entendre one of these days,' sighed Pascoe. 'But I'm not interested in your foreplay. I meant, what did she say that might interest us?'

'Her name's Mrs Martin. Babs to her friends. She's in charge of the kitchen,' said Seymour. 'There's a hatch from the kitchen into the members' lounge. I doubt if there's much said in there that she doesn't hear.'

They got into Pascoe's car. He started the engine and pointed it back towards the centre of town.

'And?' he said.

'Mrs Swain was always around till about eighteen months ago. Since then she's dropped out of all team and social events and when she did come, it was purely to fire off a few rounds and usually at the quietest time of the day.'

'Damn. Mitchell said she'd dropped out of the competition team and I forgot to ask him why,' said Pascoe, annoyed.

'No need to ask Mitchell when you've got Babs,' said Seymour. 'It seems that after Swain started his own building firm, he was so keen to make a go of it, he wasn't averse to canvassing old chums for jobs. Meaning anything from grouting a gazebo to getting them to use their influence to swing a small council contract his way. Babs says from what she overheard it was the general opinion that Gail Swain was highly embarrassed by this. Before, she'd come across as the high-powered Californian jet-setter injecting a bit of glam into a staid old Yorkshire family. Now she was just the wife of a small builder pestering his mates for hand-outs.'

'And did his mates mind?'

'From what Babs says, they rather admired Swain for his cheek. As for his wife, they were mainly amused to see her taken down a peg. Evidently she was a better shot than most of them and didn't mind letting them know.'

'So she decided to duck out rather than brazen it out? Well, well. I think we should offer your friend Babs a job in CID!'

They drove on in silence for a while.

'Sir,' said Seymour. 'Does any of this really matter? I mean, we know what happened, more or less. And we know how it happened, more or less.'

'The little more, and how much it is,' said Pascoe. 'The little less, and what worlds away.'

'Pardon?' said Seymour, thinking he sometimes preferred Dalziel's brutal directness to Pascoe's gentle obliquities. And when they had the Super's preferred guilty candidate banged up in the cells, that was quite enough to satisfy an ambitious young constable who could see no promotion points in proving Dalziel wrong.

But all that changed when they reached the station.

As they pulled into the car park, a metallic blue BMW pulled out. Both cars halted to give the other right of way and in the front seat of the BMW Pascoe recognized Eden Thackeray driving and by his side Philip Swain.

Thackeray waved, both in recognition and thanks, then drove on.

'Christ,' said Seymour, twisting in his seat. 'That was Swain. He's getting away!'

'Aided and abetted by one of the town's leading lawyers?' said Pascoe. 'Or do you think Swain has a gun made out of moulded bread dough and stained with boot blacking pressed into his side? In which case, Dennis, which would you prefer - to undertake the high speed car chase or to rush inside and untie Mr Dalziel?'

'My mother used to say something sarcastic about sarcasm,' muttered Seymour.

'Mine too,' laughed Pascoe. 'So let's both go in and untie the Super, shall we?'

part three

God: Of all the mights I have made most next after me,I make thee as master and mirror of my might;I bield thee here bainly, in bliss for to be, I name thee for Lucifer, as bearer of light.

The York Cycle:

'The Creation'

February 19th

Dear Mr Dalziel,

So I've changed my mind again! There's so much in the world I'd like to change but my mind's the only bit I can get at. I mean I've changed my mind about writing to you, not about killing myself. That's the only sure thing in my life. If I didn't have that to look forward to, I think I'd just curl up and die. (Joke.)

You must be thinking I'm really unstable, chopping and changing like this. The trouble is things have been happening fast, things to stretch me out, and I got to thinking: I don't need to put up with this; why not do it now? I came very close, believe me. But I want it to be something properly planned, a choice, not a whim.

Afterwards, though, I found myself desperate to talk to someone. I came close several times. A friendly word, a sympathetic smile, and I was ready to confide all! But in my mind, I kept on hearing your voice calling my name, which of course you don't know, and I knew I had to get back to you. You see, others would want to stop me, but all you'll be interested in is whether I'm proposing to commit a crime. Well, I'm not. It used to be a crime, but not any more. So you've got no reason to waste public money in using your famous expertise to find me. With you I'm quite safe. It's like having my personal confessor. Except I don't want absolution, just an unshockable ear! Incidentally, as far as I know, no saint has bagged this day so I dedicate it to you, though you may need to pull off a miracle to satisfy the powers that be that you've earned it! Here endeth today's confession.

CHAPTER ONE

'Peter, for God's sake!' gasped Ellie Pascoe as they ran their third amber. 'Are you trying to kill us?'

'We're late,' said Pascoe.

'For picking up Fat Andy? What's to hurry? And I don't see why you said you'd pick him up anyway.'

'Three reasons. One: we promised Chung we'd get him there and this guarantees it.'

'Why are you so concerned about pleasing Chung when it's Andy who's your chum?' she inquired with one of those elenctic U-turns that so often left Pascoe facing the wrong way.

'Come on! You were in on the arm-twisting!' he accused.

'That was before I knew it was going to cost us fifty quid,' said Ellie. 'Let the sod get a taxi with his rake-off!'

Pascoe, uncomfortable in his role of Judas goat leading Dalziel towards Godhead, had been easy meat when the fat man had started touting his tickets to the Mayor's Ball. 'It's for a good cause,' he'd protested to Ellie. 'It's conspicuous charity,' she'd retorted. 'If all those fascist ego-trippers just gave the ticket money to the Hospice Fund, plus what they'll probably spend on new outfits, booze, getting there, etc., we could all have two beds to die in!'

'Second reason,' said Pascoe. 'You've never actually penetrated the monster's lair. Now's your chance!'

When Dalziel returned hospitality, he took you to a pub or a restaurant. Ellie could not deny her often expressed curiosity about his unimaginable home life.

'All right,' she said. 'That's two. So let's hear the third.'

'If two are good enough, that's a majority,' he said evasively.

'Don't be smart, Peter. It doesn't sit right on a Chief Inspector. What's three?'

'In a minute. We're almost there.'

Suddenly he gave a loud double blast on his horn, causing Ellie to jump.

'What was that for?' she demanded.

Thought I saw a cat,' he said vaguely, turning left, then left again almost immediately.

'Are we lost?'

'No. Here it is.' He pulled up and got out, looking at his watch.

'We've plenty of time,' said Ellie. 'Is this really it? I was expecting something a little more gothic.'

'You really ought to watch more old movies. When he's abroad, all he needs is a coffin full of earth from his native Transylvania.'

Dalziel flung open the door at the first ring of the bell. He was immaculate in white shirt, red and green striped tie, and a suit of superb cut in a high quality charcoal grey worsted. For an unhappy moment Pascoe thought that he was ready for an immediate departure, then he noticed he was barefooted.

'Ellie, what fettle?' he said heartily. 'It's been a long time.'

'Hello, Andy,' she replied. 'You're looking very smart.'

'The suit, you mean? Man with a good suit can go anywhere, isn't that what they say? Come away in. Take your coat off, Ellie, so you'll feel the benefit. By God, you don't look so bad yourself. Just wait till I get you up at the Mayor's Ball. We'll show these young 'uns a thing or two!'

Pascoe blew his nose violently in a vain effort to smother his snort of laughter at this coetaneous assumption. Ellie glared at him and Dalziel said, 'Help yourselves to booze. I'll not be long.'

The room they were left in was small and square and contained a three-piece suite in uncut moquette; a fourteen-inch television; a glass-fronted cabinet with a Queen Anne style tea service; a Victorian commode; a marble fireplace polished to look like plastic; a mantel bearing a stopped carriage clock, two brass candlesticks, three brass monkeys, and a chipped ashtray inscribed A Present from Bridlington; above the fireplace hung a round mirror in need of resilvering which interrupted the flight of three china ducks across a sky-blue wallpaper trellissed with pink dog-roses.

'It's like a BBC set for a fifties play,’ said Ellie, running a finger delicately along the mantel. It came up dustless.

'He probably has a woman who comes in and does,' said Pascoe.

'Just like you, eh? Where's this booze he told us to help ourselves to?'

Pascoe opened the commode. It was packed full of glasses and bottles, all whisky, some single malts, some blended. He poured from one picked at random and handed a glass to Ellie. Then he glanced at his watch again.

'Peter, settle down. It's an informal do, it doesn't matter what time we get there within reason.'

'Lad getting impatient, is he?' said Dalziel, coming into the room. 'He's quite right, though. When the booze is free, don't be backward about coming forward.'

'All right if you're not driving,' said Pascoe. 'In fact, start as I mean to go on, could you put a spot of water in this, sir?'

He handed his glass to Dalziel, who wore the expression of a priest asked by a communicant for a little salt on his wafer. Then, shaking his head sadly, he left the room.

'Dilution does not affect blood alcohol level,' Ellie began to lecture, but her audience was in the process of following his host out of the room.

'Come to make sure I drown it?' growled Dalziel at the kitchen sink.

'Just a drop,' said Pascoe placatingly. 'So this is where you were that night?'

'What?' Oh aye.'

'And you were in the dark?' Pascoe flicked the light switch up and down a couple of times, leaving it off.

'That's right.'

'You never said what you were doing. I mean, do you spend a lot of time just standing here in the dark?'

'I do what I bloody well like in my own house.'

'Yes, of course. My God. What's that?' exclaimed Pascoe.

In the first floor of the house immediately behind a light had come on in a room with the curtains open. A man stood before the open window, brandishing something in his right hand.

'Bloody hell!' said Dalziel. 'What the fuck's going on?'

Pascoe opened the kitchen door and both men pressed out into the yard. A second man appeared. There seemed to be a brief struggle and he was pushed away.

'Come on,' said Dalziel, setting off down the yard. Distantly Pascoe heard a muffled bang and he went after the fat man, cursing as he hit obstacles that Dalziel seemed able to plough through.

Out of the gate, across the alley, into the garden of the house on Hambleton Road; the back door was unlocked; through the kitchen, up the stairs; Pascoe's leg was aching badly and it was all he could do to keep up, but he was close behind as the Super burst into the bedroom.

A man in a dark blue blazer with a starting pistol in his hand stood by the window. Another man in a black roll neck sweater crouched by the wall. And on the bed, imperturbable as ever, sat Sergeant Wield.

Dalziel spun round to face Pascoe.

'What's this, lad?' he said softly. 'Games evening, is it?'

Pascoe smiled wanly. In the five days since Swain's release, nothing had happened. Dalziel was unrelenting in his belief that Swain was involved in his wife's death far beyond the admission of moral responsibility made in his statement. While not denying a strong intuitive antipathy for the man, he claimed his conviction was based firmly on the evidence of his own eyes. The fact that Waterson's statement in so far as it differed from Swain's tended to place even less blame at his door didn't impress Dalziel in the least. Give him ten minutes with Waterson, he said, and he'd soon alter that. But, perhaps fortunately, Waterson had managed to disappear without trace, and the daily sight of Swain supervising the car park extension was clearly such an irritant that Pascoe had begun to fear his superior might say or do something more than normally outrageous.

Thus it had seemed a good idea to see if he could provoke bit of self-doubt in the fat man by staging this 'reconstruction'.

Now all at once it didn't seem like such a good idea after all.

'Just a bit of reconstruction, sir, to get timings right,' he said brightly.

'Reconstruction? Then you ought to do it properly. I didn't see any tart flashing her tits in the moonlight.'

'No. Sorry, sir. Short on tarts. But in other respects, how was it?'

Dalziel looked at him with speculation edging anger out of his eyes. Then he let his gaze drift from the man with the gun to the man by the wall.

'You want me to say that Constable Clark there with the gun was the man I saw first, don't you? But I don't think he was. I think it was the other way round, it was Billings I saw first and they've switched the gun. Right?'

'Sorry, sir. But no, it was Clark.'

'But it was me you saw with him, not Billings,' said Wield.

Dalziel stared at the sergeant, who was wearing a dark grey leather bomber jacket.

'And it wasn't a gun Clark was carrying but this.'

Pascoe picked up a pipe from the bed.

'Clever,' said Dalziel. 'But neither Swain nor Waterson smoke pipes, do they? And I still heard the gun go off after I saw Swain holding it.'

Pascoe thought: This is one step forward, two back! He said, 'Like tonight?'

'Aye, the same sequence.'

'Yes, sir. Only they fired the starting pistol before Clark appeared at the window. The bang we heard afterwards was Dennis Seymour with a paper bag in the garden shed.'

There was a long and dreadful silence.

'All right, you buggers,' said Dalziel finally. 'So you reckon you've proved I'm as unreliable as any other witness, eh? Well, prove away, but I know what I know. This was your idea, was it, Peter? I always had you down as clever but I never had you down as unkind. No need to make a fool of people when all you've got to do is ask.'

Oh Christ, thought Pascoe. Vicious anger he'd been prepared for but not pained reproach.

He said, 'I'm sorry, sir, but I thought the element of surprise

'Oh, it's a surprise right enough, Peter. I'll remember you like surprises. And I'll tell you another thing you got wrong.'

He swung to face Wield.

'That tart on the bed even with her face shot off was a bloody sight prettier than him!'

He left, banging the door behind him.

Wield looked at Pascoe, then began to smile.

'Thought we'd really upset him there,' he said.

'Me, too,' said Pascoe. 'But I'll tell you what. I'm not going to stand near the edge of any station platforms for a bit!'

By the time they got to the Kemble, Dalziel's good humour was almost completely restored by Ellie's sympathetic hearing of 'the daft tricks that clever bugger she'd married had been up to'. But the truce was rudely shattered when they entered the theatre foyer and the first person they saw was Philip Swain.

'What's this? Have you got me here for more games, Peter?' snarled Dalziel, stopping dead.

Pascoe, with cause enough for guilt at entrapping the fat man, could only stutter a most unconvincing denial which Dalziel brushed aside as he advanced towards Swain and demanded, 'What the hell are you doing here?'

Swain, who had paused at the cloakroom to remove an elegant overcoat, lost none of his composure.

'Superintendent, good evening,' he said. 'What am I doing here? My wife was something of a patron of the drama and I feel I owe it to her memory to keep up that support. More to the point, what are you doing here? I shouldn't have thought it was your scene.'

He let his gaze drift across a poster advertising Hedda Gabler, which had just finished, to one advertising a post-London one-woman show based on Virginia Woolf which was opening next day, then back to Dalziel.

'Oh, I like a bit of good acting as well as the next man,' said Dalziel.

'What on earth is all this about?' Ellie whispered in Pascoe's ear.

That's this guy Swain Dalziel's so het up about.'

'Oh, Peter, you didn't arrange for him to be here, did you?' she said in a tone of indignation which, considering the conspiracy she and Chung had embroiled him in, took Pascoe's breath away.

Swain moved away up the stairs to the bar area where the party was being held and the Pascoes joined Dalziel to hand their topcoats in. He glowered at Pascoe and said, 'Is that it for the evening, lad? Or is Desperate Dan waiting up there to tell me I've been busted back to the beat?'

'Ha-ha,' laughed Pascoe inanely. Ellie dug her elbow in his ribs and led Dalziel forward to where at the head of the stairway Chung was receiving her guests.

'Ellie, darling, glad you could come. And Pete, honey, you too. And who is this? Is this he, the one, the only? O brave new world that has such creatures in it!'

'How do, missus,' said Dalziel. 'By God, you're a big 'un!'

'I love him already,' said Chung. 'Andy, may I call you Andy? You haven't got a drink. There's plonk for the herd, but you don't look like a plonk man. Won't you join me at the bar?'

'Depends on the price of admission,' said Dalziel, heavily jocular.

'Only your soul,' she said. 'But you get to drink Highland Park. Incidentally they've got spirit glasses like eggcups here. Can you make do with a half-pint tumbler?'

'I can mebbe force myself,' said Dalziel.

'Putty in her hands,' said Ellie as Dalziel was led away.

'She'll need big hands, that's a lot of putty,' said Pascoe. 'She seems to have been well briefed, though. I wonder who her mole can be?'

Ellie said defensively, 'It's common knowledge he likes his Highland Park.'

'Try telling that to the judge! I notice it doesn't seem to be common knowledge that I too would not object to a spot of the Highland Park.'

'Better stick to the Highland Spring,' Ellie advised. 'Remember, it's your turn to drive home. That fellow Swain certainly seems to know everybody.'

Pascoe followed her gaze. Swain was talking very much at home with a group among whom Pascoe recognized the President of the Chamber of Commerce, the Council Leader, and their wives.

'Old family,' he said, echoing the awful Mitch.

'Do you think he killed his wife?' asked Ellie.

'There's no hard evidence,' said Pascoe. 'In fact no evidence at all except what Andy says he saw.'

'Which you were trying to explode earlier? Well, I'd say he looks to me the type who might well have killed his wife, but he's quite dishy in a dangerous kind of way. Poor chap, I feel quite sorry for him.'

Pascoe sighed and said mildly, 'I should have thought you might have targeted your sorrow on the wife.'

'Oh, her. I think I remember her vaguely now I come to think of it. She must have been the one who came to a couple of Arts Committees. American. Pushy. Capitalist. Neurotic. Always bound for a bad end.'

The Resistance always saved its most unremitting hate for collaborators, Pascoe reminded himself.

He said, 'I still don't see why you feel sorry for him.'

'Well, whether he killed her or not, he's here not because he wants to be, but to brazen it out, isn't he? Perhaps he even got word Fat Andy might be here. Either way, he's jumping from a great height on all the nasty rumours that must be running around. But he can't be enjoying it.'

The trouble with Ellie was that there was always a mad logic behind her apparently most irrational assertions.

Pascoe spent the next half-hour mingling, but finally his leg began to ache and he made the fatal error of seeking support and respite in a corner. Within two minutes he found himself trapped there by two of the most boring men he'd ever met. One was Professor Unstone, an opinionated mediaevalist who used his bloated belly to ram home arguments; the other was Canon Horncastle, pale, bespectacled, his flesh honed almost to the bone by sanctity, but no less assertive in debate. Pascoe, feeling he could contribute little to their discussion of the social significance of the Mysteries, twice attempted exodus and was thwarted first by the mediaeval belly then by the clerical elbow. Their only point of accord seemed to occur whenever they glanced towards the bar where the granite of Dalziel's and the gold of Chung's foreheads still formed an excluding arch over the Highland Park. Then, quite clearly across the disputants' features he saw written in letters of fire and letters of ice the same emotion - resentment.

'I thought Chung would be making a speech,' he managed to slip into one of these pregnant pauses.

'I dare say she will, once her attention ceases to be so rudely monopolized,' said the Canon sharply.

'Who is that creature she's talking to, anyway?' asked the Professor. 'I didn't know they featured Sumo wrestling at the Kemble.'

This was a bit rich coming from the only man in the room who could have offered Dalziel the best of three falls.

'That,' said Pascoe, 'is Superintendent Andrew Dalziel, my boss, who will be glad to know that academic objectivity and Christian charity are still alive and well in the world. Excuse me.'

The belly and the elbows parted like the Red Sea and he moved away to join Ellie who was deep in conversation with a middle-aged, somewhat drab-looking woman in a tweed suit and sensible shoes.

'Hello,' said Ellie. 'Enjoying yourself?'

'I've just been squeezed between the two dullest men imaginable,' he said. 'And I'm much in need of light relief.'

'Yes, we noticed you in the corner,' said Ellie rather too brightly. 'Dorothy, this is my husband, Peter. Peter, this is Dorothy Horncastle.'

'Hello,' said Pascoe, not registering for a second. But Ellie left no doubt.

'Canon Horncastle's wife,' she said. 'Excuse me. I really must have a word with Councillor Wood about the coffee machine at the Unemployed Centre.'

It may have been intended as a tactful removal of her witness to Pascoe's embarrassment but all he felt was deserted.

'What I meant was not being into the mediaeval period myself, I couldn't really follow the ins and outs of a highly specialized discussion though I've no doubt that of itself...’

He stuttered to a stop under Dorothy Horncastle's gaze. It wasn't, he thought, a sophisticated coolness under-pinned by amusement at his embarrassment, but a genuine disinterest in his slighting of her husband.

'You're a policeman, I gather,' she said.

'Yes. CID.'

'One of Mr Dalziel's men?'

'That's right. You know the Superintendent?'

'Only by reputation,' she said. 'Is he an old friend of Miss Chung's?'

'No, though you'd think so, wouldn't you?' smiled Pascoe, looking to where the tete-a-tete was just being broken up by the irrepressible assault of the Press in the form of Sammy Ruddlesdin of the Evening Post.

'He has the reputation of being a man of surprising insight,’ said Dorothy Horncastle.

'Does he? I mean, yes, I suppose he does. Would you like to meet him?'

She considered, then smiled as if at some inner joke.

'Perhaps later,' she said.

Chung had left Dalziel to Ruddlesdin and was making her way towards them. She didn't stop, however, but said in passing, 'Hi, Dorothy. Pete,' and gave him a long-lashed wink and an almost imperceptible thumbs-up, before joining the mediaeval disputants. Unstone became a quivering jelly of delight, bowing over her hand to plant a reechy kiss. Even the gelid Canon, though making no attempt at a physical salute, thawed visibly in the solar energy of Chung's presence. Pascoe realized that Mrs Horncastle was watching the scene with great intensity. She could hardly be experiencing jealousy, could she?

He said, 'Well, Chung seems to have stopped them arguing, which is more than I could.'

'He thinks he's God,' she said.

'I'm sorry?'

'My husband thinks he's God.'

Pascoe re-examined the man in the light of this suggestion. He had to admit that, though on short acquaintance he had characterized the Canon as prissy, pratty, and priggish, he had stopped well short of paranoid.

'Is there any particular way in which he puts this belief to the test?' he inquired. 'I mean, miracles, levitation, that sort of thing?'

'What?' Suddenly the woman smiled away a decade. 'Oh no. I don't mean he is mentally deluded, Mr Pascoe. He simply believes that Miss Chung is going to ask him to be God in the Mysteries.'

'That's a relief,' said Pascoe, returning her smile. 'Though I fear he may prove to be deluded after all.'

It was a slip of the tongue he couldn't even blame on booze and she was on to it in a trice.

'Why do you say that? Has she got someone else for the part?'

'I don't know,' hedged Pascoe. 'I just heard a rumour she had someone else in mind.'

'Who?'

Certainly no word passed Pascoe's lips and he would have sworn that his face remained a blank, but somehow this surprisingly acute lady read his secret there, for suddenly she said, 'Mr Dalziel? You mean Mr Dalziel, don't you? Why, he's just perfect!' And let out a peal of such joyous laughter that her husband turned to glower at her as though she'd started singing a drunken ditty.

Chung seized the moment to detach herself from the sacred and profane pair and head back to the bar, onto which willing hands hoisted her when she requested quite unnecessary assistance.

She didn't need to call for quiet. Her seventy-five inches of perfectly proportioned beauty would have stopped people looking at the Boy David.

'No long speech,’ she said. 'I've got myself a team of doers, not debaters, and because of your efforts, every obstacle has been overcome, and now it's all systems go and I can promise you that in just over three months' time, this city is going to see the greatest dramatic event mounted here for nigh on four centuries!'

Everyone applauded enthusiastically. Pascoe guessed that a large majority of those present had done even less than himself to further the project. But Chung had the power to make everyone feel good.

'The main casting is practically complete,' she went on. 'But I'm not going to publish this just yet. These aren't professional actors but private people with their own lives to pursue. I want to work with them individually for a while before introducing them to the media. As well as their lines, perhaps I can teach them a few survival techniques!

'One thing that has changed is the performance site. The Council generously offered us Charter Park for the duration, but I didn't feel good about taking over the city's largest and most popular green space, particularly during a holiday week. Then I got an offer I couldn't refuse because it was a suggestion of sheer genius. The man who made it won't thank me for revealing his name. In his line of work, doing good by stealth is considered the virtue, but I'm afraid he's going to find, now he's got mixed up with show business folk, that it's hiding your light that's considered the sin. So put your hands together for the man who not only spotted that the best site for our performances dramatically, historically, and atmospherically, was the ruins of St Bega's Abbey in the lee of our great cathedral, but also got us permission to use it. Canon Eustace Horncastle!'

The Canon looked genuinely distressed as his fellow guests began to applaud. Pascoe noticed his wife did not join in but her defection seemed more than compensated for by a sudden swell of noise from the entrance to the bar. It took a second or two to register that this after all was not a spontaneous overflow of applause. A man and two women had entered the bar. One of the women was hidden behind a placard on which was printed THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN. The other two intruders were chanting, 'Anti-Christ! Sabbath-breakers!' more or less in unison, with a curious mixture of religious fervour and English embarrassment at creating a scene.

Slowly the clapping faded away till only the chanting remained. The woman, middle-aged with an anxious, washed-out face, soon gave up under the puzzled scrutiny of the assembled guests but the man kept the burden going with harsh insistence. Dark-suited, white-shirted, black-tied, he looked familiar. Then it came to Pascoe - this was Arnie Stringer, Swain's building partner, hitherto only seen in a cloth cap and overalls.

'Shouldn't you intervene?' wondered Mrs Horncastle.

'Senior officer on the scene makes the decisions,' said Pascoe smugly.

And sure enough, there was Dalziel, glass in hand, beginning to move from the bar. Whether his purpose was honeyed diplomacy or cracking of heads was not to be revealed, for Chung leaned forward, rested her hand on his shoulder and jumped lightly to the ground.

She walked forward to the intruders and stood smiling at them till even Stringer's voice faded.

'Hello,' she said. 'I'm Eileen Chung. This is my party. You're very welcome.'

For a second they looked nonplussed, then the woman said with nervous force, 'Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy! Exodus 20, verse 8.'

'I hope there's nothing unholy going on here,' said Chung. 'And wasn't the sabbath made for man, not man for the sabbath, Mark 2, verse 27?'

The woman looked ready to collapse under this unexpected counterblow, but suddenly Arnie Stringer intervened.

'It's not what's going off here that's the trouble,' he said. 'It's these plays.'

'You don't like the plays?' said Chung.

'I'll not object to a good play in its rightful place but that's here, in a theatre, not out in the street and on consecrated ground,' he said. 'Especially not when there's going to be papish processions and men pretending to be God and Jesus. I find that offensive, missus. And there's a lot more like me.'

'We tried to consult every aspect of local opinion,' said Chung.

'Oh aye? You consulted him -' a finger stabbed at the Canon - 'whose bosses want to sell out to Rome. And him -' the President of the Chamber of Commerce - 'who'd sell his own grannie if he could get a good price. And him -' the Head of the Community Project Group - 'who reckons charity begins in the Indian Ocean and equality's about being black. And him -' the local NUM boss - 'who's spent so long acting as a worker, no wonder he feels at home in a place like this. And him -' Dalziel - 'who sups so much of that stuff, he probably thinks he's still in the Middle Ages anyway. Oh aye, you asked all them, missus, knowing the answer you'd get. But you didn't ask me what I thought. Nor a lot like me either.'

It was a statement not without force and dignity, and Pascoe could see Chung was professionally impressed. Poor sod, he thought. He'll end up as St Peter if he's not careful!

'I'm sorry,' said Chung. 'Let's remedy that. Not now though, as I've my guests to look after. Why not stay and join us in some refreshment. Plenty of soft drinks going, I prefer them myself. No? OK, some other time. Hey, I love the banner. Who did the lettering?'

The banner-bearer lowered it and to Pascoe's surprise revealed herself as Shirley Appleyard. She hadn't struck him as being much in tune with her father's religious beliefs.

'I did,' she said.

The two women examined each other with undisguised curiosity.

'It's really very striking,' said Chung. 'Such strength, such directness.'

'She were always good at art,' declared the older woman with a pride that could only derive from parenthood.

'We've not come here to chit-chat about art,' growled Stringer.

'Of course not,' said Chung. 'Look, I'd really love to talk, I mean it. I'll be here tomorrow lunch-time, why not come then? I'm sure there's nothing separating us that a frank and free exchange of views won't clear.'

As she spoke Chung was drawing the protesters with her towards the stairway. They passed quite close to Swain, who raised his glass with what might have been an ironic smile to Stringer as he passed. Then the little group vanished down the stairs and behind them the silence was swept away by a wave of excited speculation.

'Isn't she marvellous?' said Pascoe, and when Mrs Horncastle didn't at once reply, he added with a votary's vigour, 'Don't you agree?'

'I'm sorry. Of course I agree. I was just detecting in myself a disturbing strain of envy! Yes, of course she's marvellous, and how marvellous it must feel to be so complete, so at one with yourself.'

Chung returned, cutting off congratulation by resuming her speech, though this time she kept her feet on the ground. She said pretty thank-you's to a lot more people and by the time she had finished, the interruption was almost forgotten.

Half an hour later the party was breaking up. Swain had left immediately Chung had finished. Pascoe, who had been keeping a professional eye on him, had noticed that when not actively engaged in talking or, more often, listening, he looked haggard and weary. How else should he look in the circumstances, no matter which set of circumstances applied?

Ellie came up to him and said, 'Message from the Almighty. He won't be needing his chariot of fire again tonight. I think he's got himself a date with a bottle of Highland Park.'

'Well, well. First round to Chung. Can she pull it off?'

Ellie shuddered and said, 'I don't think she'd go that far.'

'I don't know. She certainly let the bloat Unstone paddle her palm and chew his way up her ulna.'

'Peter!'

'There goes your dirty mind again. I still reckon she’s boxing outside her weight. She'll find him a lot harder to sort out than a bunch of Prod militants.'

Ellie smiled, then said, 'She's got me helping too, you know.'

'What as? Double agent?'

The gibe came out sharper than he intended but she ignored it and said, 'No. Sort of PR, liaising with the Press, that sort of thing.'

'That's great,' said Pascoe with compensatory enthusiasm. 'She's got herself a bargain.'

'I'll say. She's not paying anything.'

'At twenty thou per annum, she'd still have a bargain,' said Pascoe firmly and Ellie smiled her pleasure.

'Let's go home,' she said.

'Good thinking. But not empty-handed. This is the way to the props room, isn't it? Well, I've delivered Dalziel and I'm not leaving here without my reward. I don't mind Hedda Gabler blowing her brains out over my coffee table but I draw the line at Virginia bloody Woolf!'

'I think you'll find she drowned herself,' laughed Ellie.

'Then I thank God we don't have a goldfish pond. But let's grab the table anyway before Chung gets ideas about a rustic bridge!'

They went out together arm in arm. Dalziel and Chung watched them go.

'Nice people,' said Chung.

'I'll drink to that,' said Dalziel.

'Will they make it, do you think?'

'It'll take a miracle,' said Dalziel.

'Why do you say that?' she asked almost angrily.

'Because young Peter there can make it all the way to the top. But she won't want him there because her let-out at the moment is she can still blame all the police fuck-ups on the scum-bags running things. So if he gets there, she won't stay. And if he doesn't get there, he'll know who to blame.'

'That's pretty damn cynical,' she protested.

'Realistic. And I did say it'd take a miracle. What's a nice lass like you doing with these Mysteries if you don't believe in the God of miracles?'

'Now it's funny you should say that, Andy,' said Eileen Chung.

CHAPTER TWO

On the Friday after Chung's party, Pascoe went to the police lab to collect a report on Dalziel's letters. The arrival of a third as forecast by the fat man had spurred him to action. The originals had come here and copies had gone to Dr Pottle at the Central Hospital Psychiatric Unit.

The Head of the Forensic Examination Unit was called Gentry. A small parchment-faced man who looked as if he might have recently been excavated from the Valley of the Kings, he was nicknamed with constabulary subtlety Dr Death. But he ran a tight tomb, and though the report was short, Pascoe did not doubt that it was comprehensive.

The letters had been typed on a Tippa portable, made in Holland by the Adler company. There was an alignment problem with the capital P. The typist was competent and probably trained, certainly not merely two-fingered. The paper used was Size A5, pale blue, of a brand available in any stationery shop. It had been rubbed clear of all fingerprints. The stamps had been moistened with water, not spittle, and the envelopes were self-sealing. The letters had all been posted in town but at different times of day.

Next stop was the Central Hospital. Pascoe knocked at a door marked Dr Pottle, and a voice shouted, 'In!' like a short-tempered owner addressing a recalcitrant dog.

Pascoe entered. A small man with an Einstein moustache and his head wreathed in tobacco smoke regarded him over an untidy desk.

'It's you,' he said ungraciously. 'Are you always so prompt?'

'That depends what it tells you about me,' said Pascoe, who had grown used to Pottle's little ways at the same time as he'd come to respect his insights on the occasions he acted as police consultant.

Pottle pulled at his cigarette and said smokily, 'It tells me you've got nothing better to do or else you'd have no compunction about keeping me waiting. Let's see. Your letters are here somewhere if they haven't been stolen. I get some very strange people in this room and I don't mean patients. No. Here they are.'

He unearthed the photocopies Pascoe had supplied him with, shook some ash off them and began to scan them as if for the first time. Pascoe was not deceived. Pottle offered a sense of disorder, a feeling that things around him were in such a constant state of flux that you could safely toss anything you liked into the maelstrom. 'A psychiatrist must be either God or the Devil, Lord of Hosts or King of Chaos. God doesn't need forty fags a day, so that limits my options,' he'd once confided. But even his confidences were lead-ons, as Pascoe had realized fifteen minutes later when he found himself talking about his ambivalent attitudes to the police.

'You've got trouble here,’ Pottle said after a moment. 'What do you want - close reasoning or quick conclusions? Or need I ask?'

'I look forward to following your close reasoning in your written report,’ said Pascoe. 'But to be going on with...’

'Right.' He lit a cigarette from the one he was smoking and stubbed the butt out in a huge but overflowing ashtray. His raggedy moustache was dyed yellow with nicotine. Pascoe hoped he didn't drink a lot of soup.

'Gender,’ he began. 'Six to four on it's a woman so I'll refer to she but without prejudice. As with Shakespeare's Dark Lady, ours may turn out to be a fellow, though I doubt it. Age is equally indefinite. Upper cut-off, fiftyish; lower cut-off, fifteenish. OK so far, Mr Pascoe?'

'Er, yes, thank you,' said Pascoe.

'Why do you say yes, thanks when you're looking yes, but? I bet you'd got this one pegged as a middle-aged woman straight off, am I right?'

Pascoe grinned sheepishly and nodded.

'Stereotyping may help catch petty criminals,' said Pottle, 'but it's no use here. Assuming our Dark Lady is a lady, I can find no evidence of a menopausal syndrome, nor any of a mind which thinks itself old. The lower age limit is merely that of potential maturation. Now can I go on?'

'Please do,' said Pascoe, trying to set his face into a Wield-like mask.

'OK. Our Dark Lady is intelligent and literate, these things are self-evident. But you should rid yourself of any prejudice that this means she is highly educated and middle-class. This may well be true but it does not follow from anything I can see in these letters. Nor does her evident acquaintance with hagiology necessarily predicate religiosity, though I would guess there might be a Catholic or High Anglican background. Or even a reaction against a hard-line Nonconformist upbringing. I can't go much further forward as far as what we might call the external profile is concerned. Nothing on job, marital status, politics, preferred soap powder, et cetera. Not much help for an identification parade, is it?'

'It'd stretch a long way,' agreed Pascoe. 'But the internal profile . . . ?'

'Have you had much to do with suicides, Mr Pascoe?' asked Pottle.

'As a young cop, I picked up the pieces a couple of times, once almost literally. A chap stepped in front of a train . . . And a lot of car accidents seemed to me inexplicable without some degree of intent. Since I've been in CID, there've been at least two suicides I can think of in connection with cases I've been working on.'

'So you've had more practical experience than most. What about the theory? You did social studies at university, didn't you?'

'I had a nodding acquaintance with Durkheim, but more in terms of methodology than subject.'

'Durkheim,’ said Pottle dismissively. 'I thought even sociologists found him pretty irrelevant other than historically nowadays.'

'I did read some more modern stuff,’ said Pascoe defensively.

'Since you joined the police?' asked Pottle. 'No? Too busy picking up the pieces to be bothered with the theories, I suppose.'

'The reason I'm here is that in this case I don't want there to be any pieces to pick up,' declared Pascoe angrily. And then he grew angrier with himself for letting Pottle get under his skin.

'So you want me to tell you if our not impossible she is serious about killing herself? And if I say she is, what then? As she herself says, it's not a crime. Hardly a police problem.'

Pascoe was well aware of how Dalziel would probably react if he found out the hours and resources that were being spent on the letters. Yet it had been Dalziel who drew his attention to the problem in the first place, Dalziel who'd been so certain the third letter would come.

He said, 'It would be a crime not to do anything, I think.'

Pottle suddenly grinned.

'You're quite right. So let us proceed. My reading is that yes, she's undoubtedly serious. It's a commonplace of prospective suicides that they send out strong hints of their intention. Partly these are simply the spontaneous overflow of naturally strong emotion as the moment of this most final of acts approaches. Partly they are a warning, an appeal for interference. And partly they are a solacing game, or even a responsibility-shifting gamble. From her own admission, our Dark Lady is bright enough to understand much of this and to have chosen a single channel for all these urges to self-betrayal.'