Bones and Silence

'But why pick Mr Dalziel as that channel?'

'Several reasons. She states some of them. Your beloved leader has a reputation as a hard man. She doesn't want to pick on a bleeding heart, she doesn't want to give pain. Above all, she wishes to be in control of her situation, and I'm sure she believes that she's writing to Dalziel to maintain this control.'

'You say she believes,' said Pascoe, frowning. 'You mean there's something else?'

'Very sharp,' applauded Pottle. 'Look at it this way: even the most random human choice usually has its reasons that reason does not perceive; in this case the obvious reason for writing to Mr Dalziel is the obvious reason! He is a detective, a chief of detectives. His job is to find things out, to track down fugitives, to rip the mask off those who would remain hidden and unidentified. See how frequently she refers to his function, his expertise. She is at the same time appealing for discovery and offering him a challenge, inviting him to play her game. Or perhaps take part in her gamble. You see, by invoking the law of chance she distances the act of personal decision.'

He paused. Pascoe said, 'So how do we take up this challenge?'

Pottle replied. 'That's your business, I'm afraid. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude. All I mean is that, while I hope I've been of some help, I suspect that in the end because of their addressee, any clues these letters contain will be such as your own professional expertise can best decipher.'

'Thanks for telling me to do my job,' smiled Pascoe.

'And now perhaps you'll leave me to do mine, unless there's anything else?'

'Now you mention it,' said Pascoe. 'And while we're talking about suicide . . .'

As succinctly as he could, he gave the facts of the Gail Swain case. Pottle listened without interrupting for the space of two cigarettes.

'Right,' he said when Pascoe finished. 'Let's start at the heart of the matter. Question: could Gail Swain have chosen to kill herself in this way on this occasion? Answer: why not? She would, of course, have had to be contemplating suicide for some time. You say she had no close friends in whom she might have confided. But rich Californians are conditioned to turn to poor psychiatrists in times of trouble, are they not? Cherchez le shrink. She vanished for a few days before turning up at Hambleton Road, you say. Perhaps she spent them on some Harley Street couch and then decided if she was going to be lying on her back she might as well get some pleasure out of it. But she likes to have with her at all times the means of opting out. With some people this means a bottle of pills. With her, a gun freak, it would naturally mean guns. But why that gun when she had other, less cumbersome weapons? I'd have been surprised if in these circumstances she hadn't gone for the biggest, the heaviest, the deadliest. For self-defence, you go for speed and ease of use. For self-destruction you want to be sure. As for the particular occasion, if in her depressed condition she believed the men in her life were the root of all evil, then the sudden appearance of both of them side by side could have provided an irresistible audience. Or it could even be that she herself contrived that audience. You say that the husband turned up as the result of an anonymous call from a woman? For some people disguising the voice is not difficult, especially with British Telecom's special distorting devices.'

Pascoe, who had been jotting down notes, smiled and said, 'What about the drug element?'

'An effect as much as a cause from the sound of it,' said Pottle. 'It can only lend strength to the suicide scenario. But from what you say, you have difficulty in that the Witch-Finder General Dalziel sees things very differently. I could easily supply you with a sketch of the paranoid personality which would explain all, but I don't want to upset your sense of loyalty. So let's ask, could he be right? In which case Swain and Waterson would have to be in cahoots, or one of them have such a grip over the other that he was forced to obey. You ask me why Waterson should vanish. I can think of so many reasons, from amnesia to insolvency, that speculation without more information is useless. More interesting is why Swain should choose to kill his wife in this way. A conspiracy removes mere sexual jealousy as a motive. It also suggests he knew in advance that she wasn't going straight to America. But it's all too complicated. If he wants rid of her merely to inherit her money, say, there are any number of domestic accidents which are relatively easy to contrive. Why take the risk of involving a third party at all? No, all the evidence suggests, particularly in the light of your own interesting little experiment, that Mr Dalziel is absolutely and comprehensively wrong. But I don't envy you the task of so persuading him!'

Pascoe laughed and said, 'Me neither. Thanks a lot.'

He stood up and winced. His leg tended to stiffen up if he forgot to keep it moving.

Pottle said, 'How is it, being back in harness?'

Pascoe had been treated at the Central and Pottle had visited his sick-bed on a couple of occasions.

'I'm not sure yet. Sometimes it's like I've never been away. Then the leg creaks. Or the mind.'

'You came close to death,' said Pottle. 'You shouldn't forget it.'

'I doubt if I'll do that,' said Pascoe wryly.

'I mean, don't try to forget it. For your own sake. Also, it could help you helping others. This Dark Lady of yours, for instance. You may know more about her kind of darkness than you imagine.'

Pascoe frowned at this uncomfortable thought.

He said, 'I do wonder, have we got a right to interfere?'

'Perhaps not,' said Pottle. 'But when someone challenges you to a game, you've got a right to play. And if you've got a right to play, you've got a right to win!'

CHAPTER THREE

There is a pleasure in keeping a secret, and an equal if opposite pleasure in passing one on. But there are few things more annoying than to find that the secret you have nursed in your bosom beyond reach of nudge or wink is common currency.

As Pascoe left the station that evening, George Broomfield fell into step beside him and said, 'Is it right then he's going to do it?'

He rolled his eyes expressively upwards. The mime was ambiguous but there was a quality or perhaps quantity of he which identified the man beyond reasonable doubt.

'A desk job, you mean? They'd have to nail him to it!' laughed Pascoe.

'No. I mean God. Haven't you heard the rumour? They say he's to be God in these Mysteries!'

Broomfield spoke with the hopeful incredulity of a curate who's just heard his bishop's been nicked in a brothel.

'Where'd you hear that?' asked Pascoe in amazement. It was only the previous Sunday that he'd lured Dalziel within Lorelei distance of Chung.

'It's all over. I got it from this lass who works in Mr Trimble's office. I was sure you'd have heard, being so close.'

'Sorry, George. Can't help you. Excuse me, there's someone over there I want a word with.'

He walked away, annoyed at what he'd heard and annoyed also that his abruptness might have fuelled the rumour. There was no real reason why he should speak with the young woman who'd just come out of the road leading to the still unusable official car park, but he had to go through the motions in case Broomfield was watching.

'Hello, Mrs Appleyard,' he said. 'How did Jane Eyre end up?'

'Like a guide dog, fetching and carrying for master. I thought you said it had a happy ending!'

'It's been a long time since I read it,' evaded Pascoe. 'I saw you at the Kemble the other night.'

'You were there? That figures. What do they say? Where there's booze there's bobbies.'

This slur provoked Pascoe to an untypical discourtesy.

'I hadn't got you down as a Bible-puncher,' he said.

'No? You know a lot about me, do you?'

'Only what you've volunteered. And I understood you to hint that you weren't in sympathy with your father's fundamentalism.'

'Is that what I said?' She paused as if examining the justice of his claim, then nodded and went on, 'Well, likely I did, cos I'm not.'

'Then why . . . ?'

'Because I couldn't let Mam go along alone. She believes the same as him. Leastways, she's long since given up trying to think any other way. But she's not built to go shouting the odds in public, she'd much rather sit quiet at home and be a bother to no one. I can't stop her going when he gives the command, but I can go along with her to make sure he doesn't push her too far.'

'I see. And the banner?'

'Oh, that. Mam was right, I were always good at that sort of thing. Could have gone to art school if . . . well, anyroad, I knew if I didn't do something half decent, Dad would likely turn up with a raggedy bit of hardboard with STUFF THE POPE scrawled on it in whitewash!'

Pascoe laughed, then asked, 'Did your father accept Chung's invitation?'

'Yes, he did. I went too. He'd have dragged Mam along else.'

This time her claim to the protection motive didn't ring quite true.

'And what happened?'

'She were great,' said the girl with simple admiration. 'She sat him down and just talked about these Mysteries, how there was nothing papish about them, how in fact they were the way ordinary folk took religion away from the priests and put it in their own language. She talked really straight, she didn't try to make him look ignorant or owt like that, and when he spoke, she really listened like what he said was important. She were really great.'

Pascoe smiled inwardly. No need to tell him what tunes the enchantress played.

'And did she have anything to say to you?' he asked.

'A bit. Dad had to get back here, and we chatted on a while longer. She asked if I'd like to do a poster for the Mysteries. I said I might.'

'Would your father approve?' he asked provocatively.

'What's that got to do with it? Anyroad, he went off happy enough,' she said with the scorn one convert often feels for another. 'And I'd best be off now. I just came to deliver the lads' wages and I've got a lot of shopping to do while Dad dishes them out.'

Pascoe frowned. 'Do they get paid in cash?'

'When they're not being paid in promises. What's it to you anyway?' she added aggressively as if compensating for her indiscretion.

'Young women picking up wage money from a bank make easy targets,' said Pascoe. 'What did you mean, promise?'

'Nowt. There was a cash-flow problem, but it's been sorted.'

Pascoe decided it was time for a little blunt poking, Dalziel-fashion.

'Because of Mrs Swain's death, you mean? But it'll be a while yet before her will can be proved.'

'Mebbe so. But the bank must reckon it's going to be OK.'

'And what do you reckon, Mrs Appleyard?' he asked.

'Nowt to do with me,’ she said indifferently. 'But he's walking around loose, isn't he, so it doesn't seem like you're going to charge him with anything serious.'

She was looking over his shoulder as she spoke and all her previous animation had left her face. Pascoe turned and saw that Stringer and Swain had come together out of the car park and were standing deep in conversation. Swain patted Stringer apparently reassuringly on the arm and walked away. Stringer watched him go, then turned to re-enter the car park. Only now did he spot his daughter.

He came towards them.

"Evening, Mr Stringer,' said Pascoe.

He got a nod in reply, then the man said to the girl, 'You ready, then? Let's be off. Can't expect your mam to take care of the boy all night too.'

So there was a child. And the husband?

She said, 'I told you. I've got some shopping to do.'

'Have you not done it yet? God, it must be grand being able to waste your life chatting at street corners.'

His hard blue-eyed stare left no doubt he included Pascoe in this censure.

His daughter said, 'I'll not be a minute,' and set off along the pavement.

'I gather I'll soon be able to have my parking spot back,' said Pascoe pleasantly.

'What? Oh aye. We're near on done.'

'And after that? Got anything lined up while the weather lasts?'

For some reason this seemed to irritate Stringer.

'I'm not a bloody brickie on the lump!' he said. 'I'm a partner.'

'Even so, you still need work to make profits.'

'We'll get by. What's it to do wi' you, anyroad?'

'Just polite sympathetic interest, Mr Stringer.'

'Police nosiness, you mean. And you can stuff your sympathy. I've always taken care of me own without any help.'

'I'm sure. You must be proud of your grandson. How old is he now?'

'Near on two,' said Stringer. 'He's a fair enough kiddie.'

Pascoe guessed this was as near a boast as the man could get.

'Takes after his grandad, does he?' he said, hoping to encourage the thaw. He certainly got instant heat.

'He'd better not take after his dad, that's for sure!'

'I'm sorry? His father ... is he ... ?'

'Is he what?' demanded Stringer.

'I don't know. Dead perhaps?'

'Dead? What the hell makes you say that?' said Stringer angrily.

'Mr Stringer,' said Pascoe acidly. 'Clearly you feel there is something undesirable about your son-in-law. If you care to explain what, perhaps I will be able to avoid giving you offence.'

Rather to his surprise, his appeal got a positive response, even if it was rather oblique.

'It's a sick world we live in,' said Stringer with the intonation of authority rather than opinion.

'It's certainly a curate's egg-shaped world,' agreed Pascoe. 'But in what particular respect do you detect this sickness?'

'Everything! If it wasn't so sick, why should God have sent things like Aids and drugs to punish the wicked?'

Pascoe groaned inwardly. He'd forgotten Stringer was something of a religious nut, and religious nuttiness was his one conversational no-go area.

'As punishments, they seem to get doled out pretty indiscriminately,' he suggested. 'But I suppose we all have our work to do, even God. I certainly have. Good night, Mr Stringer.'

But he was not to escape so easily. The builder grabbed his arm and said, 'You asked about my son-in-law, mister. Do you not want an answer?'

'No, really, I'm sorry. It's none of my business

'Aye, you're right there. But I'll tell you anyway,' said Stringer. 'And it'll mebbe stop you bothering other folk with nosey questions. This Tony Appleyard, he put my lass in the club three years back. I'd never heard of him till then. She were still at school, a really bright lass, she could have made something of herself, then this nasty little sod . . . Well, it had to be sorted. He wanted her to have an abortion, but that's murder in my book. And in hers too, I'm glad to say. So I had a quiet word with him. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. You come from a country family like me, you know that there's plenty of marriages start with getting caught, not getting wed, and most on 'em turn out all right in the end. They didn't want to get wed, mark you. Said it didn't matter these days, but I said it mattered to me and it mattered to God. And it'll matter to the kiddie when it gets older. So they got wed.'

He paused. Pascoe said, 'And did it work out?'

'Don't make me laugh!' instructed the man unnecessarily. 'That feckless bugger? A fitter he called himself. Fit for sod-all, that's what he were! He worked at Atlas Tayler's but he got laid off when the Yanks pulled out. I could have fixed him up with a labouring job in the firm, but oh no, he wanted his trade, he said. And in the end he set off south looking for work. Well, he found something, by all reports, making good money, at least good enough for him to live the life of Riley by himself with no thought of sending owt back for his wife and kiddie.'

'You mean he's not come back to see them?' said Pascoe.

'Come back? Why should a useless bastard like that come back unless it were to bring more trouble with him?' exclaimed Stringer. 'I even went looking for him not long back, but he must have got wind of it, for he'd moved on without any forwarding address. Well, I tell you, he'll not have moved far enough for me!'

'And what about Shirley?' asked Pascoe, taken aback by the force of the man's emotion. 'What does she feel about all this? How's it affected her?'

'If you'd known her a few years back, you'd not need to ask that,' said Stringer. 'Here, take a look.'

From his wallet he took a colour snapshot. It was a picture of Stringer and a girl of twelve or thirteen, sitting together at a small folding table under a striped canvas awning. They were both smiling widely at the camera. The girl wasn't beautiful, but she was fresh-faced, vital, carefree, and it took a long hard stare to discern in this child the lineaments of Shirley Appleyard.

Her father was much more recognizable, but the passing of those years had stamped a mark of pain and anger and bafflement on his features too.

'Lovely girl,' said Pascoe.

He didn't mean it to sound past tense, but that's how Stringer heard it.

'Yes, she were,' he said, half to himself. 'Lovely girl. Everyone said so. And she reckoned there was no one like her dad. Went everywhere with me, told me everything. Then it all started to change. Like milk going sour. Gradual at first, everything looks the same . . . but in the end, it's not to be hid! You got any kids, mister?'

'One. A girl.'

'Then you'll likely understand.'

Understand what? wondered Pascoe as he drove home. Stringer did not strike him as a man for whom a trouble shared was a trouble halved. But as he read Rosie her bedtime story, he found himself speculating how he would feel about anyone who mucked up his daughter's life, and he did not find much comfort in the speculation.

He went downstairs to find Ellie at the dining-room table surrounded by the files and papers she'd started gathering as a result of her election as Chung's unpaid PRO. They exchanged smiles, then he wandered into the lounge and poured himself a drink. He knew there was a chat show on the television he usually liked to watch but he couldn't be bothered to switch it on tonight. Suddenly Ellie slipped on to the arm of his chair and rested her elbow on his shoulder.

'You look glum,' she said. 'Something bothering you?'

'No. Just life.'

'In that case, stop worrying. In the end it cures itself, they tell me.'

'That's on the National Health,' he said. 'Some people go private and jump the queue.'

'I'm sorry? What's this? My mystery for tonight?'

'No. There's this woman, Gail Swain, blew her head off. At least that's how it looks to me. And there's this other woman who's been writing to Dalziel saying she's going to kill herself.'

'Good lord. You never mentioned this before.'

'No. Well, she stopped and it seemed to be all over, then she just started again,' he said lamely.

'I see. Why Dalziel? And if Dalziel, how you?'

'In extremis even atheists say their prayers. And it is a leader's privilege to delegate.'

Ellie laughed, then said, 'These letters, any chance of taking a peek?'

Pascoe hesitated before replying, 'I don't have them with me. I left them at work.'

It was true, but it was not the true reason for the hesitation and he guessed that Ellie sensed it. Prior to the case which left him with his still painful leg, he had confided without inhibition or censorship in Ellie. If asked then, he would have said he did it out of complete love, complete trust. But in the grey hospital hours he had found himself wondering if he hadn't simply been testing that trust and that love to destruction. Finally had come a time when they found themselves in public and private opposition and, retrospectively, he found himself identifying a certain perverse satisfaction in having reached a boundary. As he emerged from the greyness, so that identification had become far less positive. But it added an extra and sufficient weight to the pressures keeping partially closed what had once been totally open.

Ellie rose and yawned. 'No bother,' she said lightly. 'I've got enough on my plate without solving your cases for you.'

He followed her back into the dining-room, eager to minimize damage.

'How's the unpaid job?' he asked.

'Could be fun. But time-consuming. I'll never be nasty about PR men again.'

'Like to bet?' smiled Pascoe. 'Incidentally, you might like to do a bit of PR liaising with Chung on my behalf: Somehow word's got out that she's keen to cast Dalziel as God. Could you assure her my lips have been sealed? I don't want to end up in some oriental death-lock.'

'You could have fooled me,' said Ellie. 'But I shouldn't worry. Leaks from the Kemble are like leaks from the Cabinet. She-who-must-be-obeyed drills the holes.'

'Chung? But why?'

'It's called pressure, dear. What's the best way of getting Dalziel to do something?'

'I don't know. Bribery? Corruption? Telling him not to do it . . .'

'Well done! I've no doubt Chung will be trying all the other techniques and some we haven't thought of besides. But for him to be told not to do it, the people who tell him have got to know he's been asked, right?'

'This is all too clever for me. And how come Chung knew what buttons to press so quickly anyway . . . Oh no! Ellie, you haven't got yourself involved as psychological adviser as well as PR person, have you?'

She blushed beautifully. Normally he was a great admirer of his wife's blushes but admiration and trepidation were poor partners. If Dalziel were even to begin to suspect the collective guilt of the Pascoe household . . . The phone rang before he could launch into remonstrance. He picked it up nervously, certain it was going to be Dalziel. Instead he heard Wield's voice.

'Sorry to bother you, only there's been some trouble at the Rose and Crown in Bradgate. You know there's a floodlit match tonight? Well, some visitors got into a barney with some of City's supporters. Landlord tried to intervene and he's ended up in hospital. Thought you should know.'

It was a kindness. Normally the Sergeant wouldn't have bothered Pascoe with a pub brawl, but Dalziel had been making ever more abrasive noises about the lack of visible progress on the football hooligan front, and it would be well to be word-perfect on this incident.

'I'll wander down there,' said Pascoe. 'Super around, is he?'

'No. I gather Mr Trimble asked him to drop in for a chat earlier and he came out with a face like fat. Pulled the handle off the door when he shut it behind him, I hear tell. Any idea what's upset him?'

'I hope not, Wieldy,' said Pascoe fervently. 'I sincerely hope not!'

By the time Dalziel reached the Kemble, he was cooling down. Retaliation was after all the better part of rage. A wild swing could move a lot of air, but it took a carefully planted boot in the balls to bring tears to the eyes.

Nor was it simply a matter of personal esteem and self-satisfaction. Dan Trimble wasn't a bad sort of fellow, friendly, bright, and not ungenerous with his Glenmorangie. Mid-Yorkshire could have done a lot worse. But a Chief Constable had to understand that while he might indeed among constables be a chief, when it came to detective-superintendents, he was at best second among equals.

The man's first error had been to tell him bluntly that it was time he tied up the Swain case. He was being pressurized by Eden Thackeray, by the coroner's office, by the Press, and even by the Delgado Corporation's American lawyers who were concerned (a) to have the body released for interment in the family vault and (b) to have the circumstances of death cleared up so that the process of dealing with Gail Swain's will could be commenced, particularly as this involved a substantial block of Delgado shares recently inherited from her father.

‘I’ll be blunt, Andy,' said Trimble. 'I've given you plenty of rope, but it doesn't look as if you can hang Swain with it, does it? We have his statement and Waterson's statement which concur on the main issues -'

'Once I get my hands on Waterson, I'll change all that!' interrupted Dalziel.

Trimble looked at him doubtfully, then said, 'How close are you to finding him?'

'Very close,' lied Dalziel.

'I hope you're not bullshitting me, Andy,' said Trimble quietly. 'I like to back my men, but I'm getting bad vibrations here. Everything points to a verdict of suicide. The way I see it, the most serious charge on offer will be harassment against you if you don't wrap this thing up quickly. So be warned!'

That had been bad enough but worse had followed. Clearly relieved at having got the professional unpleasantness out of the way, and perhaps already congratulating himself on how easily he'd got his famous Yorkshire bear to do the Cornish Floral Dance, Trimble poured the whisky and said with a smile, 'Changing the subject, I had to laugh at lunch today. Someone said he'd heard that one of my officers was to play God in these Mysteries. I told him there was room for only one God in the Mid-Yorkshire Force, and like cleanliness, he was next to it! He assured me he'd had this on good authority, and I assured him on even better authority that if any of my officers proposed to bring the Force into disrepute by letting himself be wheeled round town on a carnival float in his nightgown, I'd be the first to know!'

Dalziel regarded him blankly, but behind the cold granite slab of his forehead bubbled a thermal spring of thought. He'd met Chung's invitation to be God with the great guffaw of derision it deserved, but she hadn't been put out, merely smiling and making a joke, and pouring more whisky with such a generous hand that he'd left her with the promise that he'd think about it.

Well, he'd thought, and guffawed again, and was seeing her this evening to drink more of her Scotch, and assure her firmly but suggestively that his ambitions were earthy rather than divine.

But now all of a sudden he was feeling there was something going off here that he didn't quite grasp.

He said, 'What you mean, sir, is, if someone wanted to do summat like that, you reckon you could ban him?'

'I'd hope it would never come to that, but oh yes, Andrew, never doubt it. I could and I would!'

So there he was, professionally and personally put in his place. He'd almost crushed his tumbler into a crystal ball and shown Trimble his future in it. But a wise man does bad by stealth, and so he had fled the field, leaving the Cornish pixie to his suppositious triumph.

A tumblerful of Chung's Highland Park took the last of the heat from his head, and when the sinuous Eurasian said, 'You seem a bit down, Andy. Anything bothering you?' he was able to laugh and reply, 'Nowt I can't sort out.'

A few moments later, however, rather to his surprise, he found himself telling her all about Trimble's interference in the Swain case, though he was careful to avoid any mention of names. It was a futile discretion, however, for after only a few sentences, Chung interrupted with, 'Hey, this is Phil Swain you're talking about, right? But I thought he must be right in the clear. I mean, he was at my party! I must say I was surprised to see him after what happened to his poor wife, she was on our Arts Committee.'

'You knew her well?' asked Dalziel, alert for new information.

'No, hardly at all. This great interest she's supposed to have had didn't show in practice. She only attended every second meeting. I reckon her membership was cosmetic, but fair do's, she was always ready to lead the way when we were touting for cash.'

'That must have pleased her husband,' sneered Dalziel. 'Did you ever hear her talk about him?'

'No. I saw them together a few times and they seemed all right. To tell the truth, it was him I felt sorry for. She always struck me as a bit of an up-and-down lady who expected people to dance to her moods.'

Dalziel frowned at this further witness to Gail Swain's volatility.

Chung said, 'You don't like Phil Swain much, do you?'

'I wouldn't say I don't like him,' said Dalziel. 'I hate the bastard's guts!'

'But he is in the clear, right?'

'Not while I'm breathing! What's your interest, luv?'

She hesitated, then said, 'Hell, look, I'd better come clean, Andy. I want you for God, no, don’t say anything yet. I chose you because you've got a kind of special aura. Well, Phil Swain's got an aura too, not for God I hasten to say, but I had put out some feelers, then this awful business about his wife happened and I thought that was that. But when he turned up at the party last Sunday, I got to wondering if he might like something to take his mind off things, you know, sort of occupational therapy . . . but it's you I really want, Andy, and if Phil taking part would really be an obstacle, seeing how you feel about him, well, I'll definitely cross him off my list, if only you'll say yes.'

She spoke hesitantly, uncertainly, but why did he get a feeling that every one of these words had been as carefully thought into place as the notes on a musical score? He had a sense for the second time this night of being none too gently manipulated, but there was a world of difference between Trimble's Cornish wrestling and this oriental massage.

'What was it you wanted the bugger for anyway?' he asked, accepting his cue.

'That's the thing that would make it so difficult, Andy,' said Chung, golden cat's eyes suddenly moon-orbed. 'I wanted him for Lucifer. He'd have to appear with you in the opening pageant so you could cast him down into hell.'

Dalziel began to laugh. At last oriental subtlety and CID technique were on the same wavelength. The end of all interrogation was to make the poor sod want to say what you wanted him to say!

'You know what, luv?' he said. 'You remind me of me!'

And Chung leaned forward so close that he couldn't get his glass to his lips, and murmured, 'I think I have finally found my God.'

part four

Mak: Now were time for a man that lacks what he would;To stalk privily unto a fold, And nimbly to work then, and be not too bold,For he might abuy the bargain, if it were toldAt the ending.Now were the time to reel;But he needs good counselThat fain would fare well,And has but little spending.

The Towneley Cycle:

'The Second Shepherds' Pageant'

February 28th

Dear Mr Dalziel,

Still here. Still resolved. I envy you your job. You may not be winning, but at least you spend your time doing something positive about human unhappiness. I look at my life and wonder how I got where I am. Is it in the stars? The genes? Or is there one decision which, changed, would have changed everything? Well, there's no way to test that, is there? What you see is what you've got. What the world sees is another matter. Perhaps I'm seeing you all wrong, as the world probably sees me all wrong. Perhaps beneath it all, you too are uncertain, confused, unhappy.

No! I can't, I won't believe it! Not Detective-Superintendent Dalziel! I'm not saying that you don't find it horrible that so many people get so brutally killed in this beautiful world of ours, but I'm pretty certain you feel it a blessing that you don't care for most of them! You would probably have thought Alnoth, whose feast day it is, was a nut to live as a hermit in the forest, but you'd have uprooted trees to track down the robbers who murdered him!

Well, that was a long time ago. Looking back, the easiest way to trace the progress of the human race is to follow the blood. Looking forward ... is there anything to look forward to? Yes, of course; there's the Mayor's Ball, dedicated this year to Death with Dignity. How fitting. Can I make it? Let me check my diary. Yes, I should still be around. What about you? I do hope you go. Who knows? Perhaps we could even dance the last waltz together!

CHAPTER ONE

March came in like a lamb though the forecasters, looking down at their print-outs and up at their rooks' nests, predicted its tail would wag with unprecedented ferocity.

Sergeant Wield, landed with the late shift, wasn't much bothered by the weather without, as long as he got a quiet night within, but at 10.30 his phone rang and a vaguely familiar voice said, 'You want Waterson, try the Sally.'

The line went dead. Wield got the station exchange.

'That call, was it for me by name or just for CID?'

'He asked for you, Sarge.'

Wield stood up and pulled his coat on. Weather had become a consideration. There was a mild and muggy night rubbing against his window-pane, but a trail that started in a nice warm pub could lead anywhere. Or nowhere.

The Pilgrim's Salvation stood against the old city wall in a quarter where decay had halted just short of disintegration, and desperate efforts were being made to revivify the mainly Victorian housing stock.

The Sally went back far beyond the nineteenth century, however. Sacred legend claimed that a famous sinner on pilgrimage to the cathedral had died here before he could claim forgiveness by reaching the holy shrine. Miraculously his abandoned staff had taken root beneath the city wall in testimony of God's unlimited mercy. A more profane provenance merely pointed out that this was the first inn the northern heathens reached on entering the city after their long and thirsty journey.

Five hundred years later it was still the haunt of sinners in search of all kinds of succour, but also, increasingly, of staider citizens in search of atmosphere. Which category Waterson might fall into was not yet Wield's concern. He had wasted far too much time on anonymous tips to lose more in idle speculation.

But tonight his time was not being wasted. As he approached the Sally its door opened, spilling light, music, and a quartet of pilgrims on to the pavement. Among them in the moment before the closing door cut off the light, he glimpsed his man. He had only seen him once before but Dalziel's heavy rebukes had stamped those features onto his soul.

Wield had halted and now he remained in the shadows. He hoped he wouldn't have to pluck Waterson from the bosom of his companions. Even if the acquaintance were casual, pub loyalties could be alcoholically strong. But if the man got into the blue Peugeot estate they were all standing round, he would have to take the chance.

He was going to be lucky. Two of the others got into the car, the third remained on the pavement a little longer talking to Waterson before getting into the driver's seat. Wield paused long enough to take the car's number as it passed him, then set out after Waterson who was walking briskly away in the opposite direction. He could simply have called out the man's name. There was after all no criminal charge involved here, so no reason for Waterson to run. But he'd kept his head down so successfully for almost two weeks that he clearly wasn't keen to renew acquaintance with the police, and if his vanity kept him as fit as it kept him fashionable, Wield didn't fancy a race. Time enough to close the gap when they reached busier streets.

Unfortunately Waterson's route was taking them away from the city centre through an old residential area, fairly upmarket sixty years ago but since declined to bedsit commerce within and sexual commerce without. A recent purge had temporarily frightened off the kerb crawlers and driven the pros centrewards, so tonight was quiet. Directly ahead was a small park called Kipling Gardens. Once this had been a well-known pick-up point for gays, but AIDS had cut down traffic here without the need of a police purge. Waterson walked briskly past the main gate. Ahead, the road turned down the further side of the park and Wield prepared to accelerate and make up a bit of ground once his quarry was out of sight. But just as he reached the corner, Waterson halted as if sensing a follower, and swung round. Fortunately Wield was just passing the park entrance and he sidestepped smartly into the shadow of the tall brick gateposts. Here he stood completely still, straining his ears for a renewal of Waterson's footsteps and wondering if he'd been spotted.

'Looking for someone, friend,' said a soft voice behind him.

Startled, he turned. A young man in a brass-studded leather jerkin was smiling at him out of the darkness. He didn't look much more than sixteen or seventeen. Wield smiled back and said, 'Some other time, son. I'm meeting a friend.'

It was a gentle dismissal, partly because he didn't want to risk attracting Waterson's attention but mainly because he had no desire to hassle this kid. But he paid dearly for it.

'Here, we've got ourselves one,' said the youth.

And suddenly the darkness behind him was crowded with figures, four, five, six, Wield didn't have time to count, for they were on him, swinging lengths of wood, branches they seemed to be, fresh ripped off trees in the park, less lethal than clubs or metal piping perhaps, but still heavy enough to rip and cut when wielded with such ferocity.

'Dirty fucking queer passing your fucking AIDS round decent people,' gasped the first youth between blows. This was a crazy irony. Wield's care and control had kept him clear of such situations all his life. Now he was being beaten up by mistake. So he thought later, but not now, for now all his thinking was concentrated on keeping on his feet. Once on the ground, the boots would start coming in and God knows what damage might be done.

He'd got his back to the gatepost and his arms were raised to shield his head. A vehicle went by, its headlights sliding over him like a searchlight in a prison camp. He heard it slow to a halt and thought for a moment rescue was coming. His attackers thought so too and hesitated. Then the engine revved noisily and the vehicle accelerated away.

Now the assault resumed with increased fury. His forehead was gashed and blood was streaming down his face. A concerted attack must drive him on to his knees, but fortunately they were coming at him in individual bursts, then springing back, like dogs attacking a badger, which though its situation is hopeless, still has the power to inflict a valedictory wound.

But what wound do they fear from me? Wield asked himself. No weapon, strength failing, covered in blood . . . then it came to him. The AIDS propaganda hadn't done much to still their stupid fears or increase their negligible tolerance, but it had driven home one lesson. The main danger of non-sexual infection came from blood. Hence their keenness to keep their distance as they destroyed him.

Throwing back his head he let out a scream of such ferocity that it momentarily stilled the assault, and into that fraction of silence he bellowed. 'You're right! I've got it! And this time tomorrow you'll all have it too!' And putting his hand to his gashed brow, he started to flick blood into their faces like a priest with an aspergillum.

For a moment it seemed as if their terror would be transformed into even greater violence, but as the first bough was raised to recommence the assault, Wield gasped, 'Sixty seconds you've got to wash it off. Don't you listen to the telly?'

His spurious statistic worked. One of the gang turned and ran into the park. There was a drinking fountain at its centre. The others realized where he was going and with one accord hurled their branches before Wield like palm leaves, and next moment he was alone.

He didn't wait for them to return from their laving, but staggered out of the gateway and across the street. There was no sign of Waterson. Not that Wield could have done much if the man had been standing next to him. It took all his strength to carry him to a house with a light on. Not even his warrant card could persuade the householder to undo the door chain but at least he rang the police, who came prepared to sort out a drunken brawler rather than succour a colleague in distress.

They drove him to the Infirmary where they jumped the long casualty queue with indifferent ease. A pretty Pakistani nurse had started cleaning him up when the cubicle curtain was drawn aside and a voice said, 'Oh my. What happened to you, Sergeant?'

Wield swivelled his eyes to look at Ellison Marwood.

'I got beat up,' he said.

'Anyone I know?' said Marwood, beginning to examine him.

'I doubt it,' said Wield, wincing as the West Indian's fingers probed. 'Are you the only doctor they've got here?'

'You want someone else, man?'

'No. I didn't mean that,' said Wield. 'All I meant . . .'

'Relax. If I really thought it was a racist crack, I would just have left you lying on this trolley for a couple of hours. No, you're just unlucky. If you'd got beaten up half an hour earlier, you'd have missed me. I've just come on. You're my first of the night, so at least I've got both eyes open.'

It took another hour to get Wield X-rayed and stitched. By the time it was done he felt rather worse than when he'd arrived, but Marwood assured him there were no fractures and that a day in bed with a good analgesic would see him fit for work.

'It would be easy to swing you a week in bed if you wanted, but you strike me as one of these grit-your-teeth and do-your-duty types.'

'Man who works twenty-four-hour shifts shouldn't mock dedication, Doctor,' said Wield. 'How's Mrs Waterson keeping?'

'Why do you ask?' said Marwood aggressively.

'Last time we talked, she seemed a bit tense.'

'Do you blame her?' demanded Marwood. 'Once you find Waterson and put him out of the way, she'll be all right, believe me.'

It was the verbal echo that did it . . . once you find Waterson . . . want to find Waterson . . .

'Why'd you ring me earlier tonight, Dr Marwood?' asked Wield casually.

'Ring you? What are you talking about?' said the doctor, but without a great deal of force or surprise.

'All incoming CID calls are taped,' lied Wield. 'It'd be easy to run a check.'

Marwood made no further denial. It was almost as if he were glad to drop the need for pretence. 'OK, it's a fair cop,' he said. 'I'm sorry I did it anonymously but that's the way you fellows work, isn't it? You don't care where the tip-off comes from as long as it's good.'

'This one was good,' agreed Wield. 'Trouble is, it didn't work out.'

'You let him get away, you mean? He didn't do this to you, did he? Not that little weed?'

'He looked pretty fit to me.'

'Physically maybe. But he'd not have the bottle to beat you up, not even if he threw one of his fits.'

'Fits?'

'He can get very aggressive at times. You'd think he was going to pull off one of your arms and start beating you over the head with it. But if you yell Boo! he goes running. He's all mouth, that one.'

'How did you know he was going to be in the Sally?' Wield asked.

'Information received,' said Marwood. 'An anonymous tip. Which I don't have on tape.'

He grinned as he spoke. Wield didn't grin back. It would have been painful and also people generally didn't notice.

He said, 'Mrs Waterson, I suppose.'

'Mrs Waterson's nothing to do with this.'

Marwood had stopped grinning.

'And I suppose she'd got nowt to do with it when Waterson threw his fit and you had to say boo to him.'

'Maybe she did, but so what?' Marwood visibly forced himself to relax. 'Look, man, it was no big deal. It was a hospital party. I danced with her a couple of times. I like her, she's a lovely dancer. He'd had a couple of drinks and he followed me to the gents and started in at me like he'd caught us screwing or something. I was really worried for a moment till he said something about niggers which got me so mad I started yelling back, then suddenly he was retreating so fast I don't think I'd have caught him on a bicycle. When I mentioned it to Pam, to Mrs Waterson, she said it happened all the time.'

'With people he got jealous of?'

'Oh no. He was usually too busy playing his own away games to get jealous. But these explosions could happen any place, any time. That's what lost him his job. He flew off the handle over something and yelled at his boss. It had happened before and he'd got away with it. He was good at his work and they made allowances for artistic temperament. But this time he went too far. So he blew up again, told them he'd go into business on his own account and walked out.'

'You must know Mrs Waterson pretty well for her to tell you all this.'

'Pretty well, but not as well as you're thinking, Sergeant. We're not lovers. She needs someone to talk to, someone to trust. And the only reason I'm telling you this is so you'll have no need to go bothering her with questions. She's going through a hard time and it wouldn't take much more pressure to make her crack.'

Wield sighed. Why did people imagine that vulnerability was a defence against police questioning, especially when a woman was dead and both the men involved in her death were roving free?

'You do know it's a violent death we're investigating?' he said.

'I thought it was some kind of accident. Or was it more than that? Is that why you want to talk to the bastard?'

'He's a witness, that's all,' said Wield, who saw no reason to make Marwood privy to all the other complications in the case. 'Now perhaps you'll tell me how you knew Waterson would be in that pub.'

Marwood shrugged and said, 'All right. It was Pam. I bumped into her as she was coming into the hospital earlier. She was upset, needed someone to spill it out to, and I was handy. She probably regrets it now.'

'Yes, she probably does,' said Wield ironically. 'So what did she say?'

'She told me that Waterson had rung her earlier and asked her to meet him in the Sally. He said he needed money and could she bring some. He turned up late so they didn't have much time to talk. In any case when she handed over what cash she could get together, he said it wasn't enough and looked set for one of his explosions so she got out quick.'

'Leaving Waterson inside?'

'Yes. And I thought things might be resolved by getting you round there to pick him up. All right, if you wanted to bang him up for a while, that wouldn't bother me either. But I seem to have underestimated your capacity to cock things up.'

'Yes, sir,' said Wield. 'Thanks for your call anyway.'

'Any time.' The doctor hesitated, then said, 'Look, I'd prefer Mrs Waterson didn't know it was me . . .'

Wield grimaced. For his part he felt the doctor deserved the promise of confidentiality, but there was no way of getting Dalziel to rubber stamp humanitarian gestures.

'We'll try to be discreet, sir,' he said. 'But she will have to be interviewed, you understand that?'

'I suppose so,' said Marwood unhappily. 'But it'll be you doing the questioning, will it? You'll keep her out of that fat bastard Dalziel's clutches?'

'No, sorry, can't guarantee that,' said Wield, shaking his head. The resulting pain was like an affirmation of his wisdom at not making that kind of promise. And affirmation even stronger was unsuspectedly close at hand.

The door opened and the pretty Pakistani looked in.

'Sorry, but there's someone out here . . .'

She was gently but irresistibly eased aside and over the threshold tripped the fat bastard himself. He looked from the nurse to Marwood and back again. Then, advancing on Wield, he said, 'Dr Livingstone, I presume? What in Christ's name have the natives been doing to you?'

CHAPTER TWO

From each according to his ability: to each according to his need.

Dalziel had once stated this as the basis of his allocation of CID duties during an investigation. Pascoe had not cared to inquire if its source was a conscious or unconscious irony. But the morning after Waterson's second vanishing act and Wield's first gay assault, he had to admit the fat man seemed to have got it just about right.

He, Dalziel, had undertaken to grill the landlord of the Pilgrim's Salvation, and it was a universally acknowledged fact that grilling was hot and thirsty work. Seymour had been despatched to see if his boyish charm could get more out of Pamela Waterson than the Superintendent had managed the previous night during an interview inhibited by the pressure of her duties and the presence of Ellison Marwood.

And he, Peter Pascoe, husband of a woman who was constantly urging upon him the need for more pulses and bran in his carnivorous diet, found himself in a health food shop.

The clue which had drawn him here was the car number Wield had noted. A computer check revealed the owner of the blue Peugeot estate to be a Mr Harold Park of 27a String Lane. This was an off-city-centre street whose buildings were listed as being of architectural interest, though it was hard to imagine to whom. There was no visible 27a but 27 was a single-fronted, grimy-windowed shop called Food For Thought, sole prop. Gordon Govan. Pascoe entered and found himself at the end of a short queue of three monks being served by a shadowy figure with an accent like Billy Connolly with a bad cold. Finally the brown-robed figures left, lugging several hundred-weight of assorted seeds and grasses. Pascoe could only hope they bred budgies. He stepped up to the counter and the accent was joined by a pair of bright blue eyes and a tangle of gingery beard.

'Mr Govan, is it?' said Pascoe. 'Excuse me, but I'm looking for 27a.'

'Is that so?' mused the Scot, rolling non-existent r's.

'It is indeed. A Mr Harold Park.'

'You don't say?'

Pascoe sighed and produced his warrant card.

'The polis, is it? You should have said. I get some really weird characters in here.'

'Like monks?'

'Och, the wee brownies, you mean? Aye, we do a lot of business with the religious communities. They say it's in the Bible, but I reckon that stuff damps the libido, and that'd be a kind of advantage in their situation, I'm thinking. You know, a bit of roughage is cheaper than a bit of rough. Paul's Epistle to the Aberdonians.'

This threw an entirely new light on Ellie's leguminous evangelism. Pascoe switched it off and said, 'Mr Park? Can you help?'

'Aye. 27a's a wee flat above the shop. You reach it up the entry round the side. But he's no' there just now. He's a traveller, you see. Sometimes a whole week or more goes by without sight nor sound of him.'

'What's his line?'

'Veterinary products, I'm thinking. Pills for poodles, that kind of thing. Can I take a message?'

'You can ask him to contact me when he gets back. Here's my card. But I'll probably call back again anyway.'

'Aye, you'd be wise to do that,' said Govan, accompanying him to the door. 'Some people don't rush to help the polis, know what I mean? Me, I like to keep a good relationship going. Never know when we might need each other, eh? Man, I hope you've not far to your car. It looks like coming on rain. Or worse.'

It was indeed a cold snarling sort of day and in the east beyond the just visible cathedral tower a swelling bank of cloud threatened the snow this mild winter had so far spared them.

Pascoe turned up his collar and said, 'I'm almost parked in the close. Nearest I could get, the Lane's so narrow.'

'Och, man, you should have come round the back. There's loading yards behind all these shops, did you not know that?'

Of course he knew. He'd been a cop too long in this town not to know its ins and outs. He just hadn't thought, that was all. Or rather he'd thought like a citizen instead of a policeman. Perhaps it wasn't just his leg that had needed a repair job.

He was scurrying along the pavement, head down in anticipation of the oncoming storm, and once again it was ordinary citizen Pascoe in charge, not DI Pascoe, for he was totally unaware of the pursuer at his heels till the attack was launched.

He felt his arm seized from behind. He began to turn, defensive reflexes lumbering into life, but it was too late. A hand caught at the nape of his neck, his head was dragged back, and the main assault was launched at his unprotected face. He felt a soft warm moistness against his mouth, and just as he registered what was happening and started to enjoy it, contact was broken and Chung said, 'Now that's for being a good boy, Pete, honey.'

'What do I get for being a bad boy?' gasped Pascoe.

'We'll have to debate that with Ellie,' laughed Chung. 'But not in the street where we may frighten the natives.'

Several of the natives were already looking at them with undisguised interest. Pascoe couldn't blame them. It wasn't often that you saw a defenceless policeman being sexually assaulted in Mid-Yorkshire.

He said, 'OK, what have I done?'

'We got him, Pete! He's said he'll do it. Hallelujah! I've found my God!'

'He's really said he'll do it?' said Pascoe incredulously.

'I had to work on him a bit,' she grinned. 'But yes, I've hooked the big one. And I just wanted to say thank you, Pete. Without you, I couldn't even have got started.'

'Oh no,' said Pascoe emphatically. 'It was nothing to do with me!'

'Don't be modest, sweetie.'

Chung sank a little in Pascoe's admiration. A director of the top rank ought to be able to tell the difference between modesty and blind terror.

'Walk with me a ways,' said Chung, her grip on his arm brooking no denial. 'I'm on my way to the close to break the news to the Canon. Seems he may have got some silly notion he was up for the part and we don't want him sulking, do we?'

After a few paces her need to use her arms when talking gave him his release but he didn't try to escape. There was in her company such an overflow of vitality that a man would need to be a very dull clod to want to evade that warm aureole.

She was talking about her plans for the Mysteries and after a while Pascoe managed to distance himself sufficiently from her infectious enthusiasm to say, 'Chung, what I don't really get is why you're so keen on these plays. I should have thought they embodied just about every ism that ever got up your nose. I can see how you can direct Shakespeare to get your own ideas across, but surely this stuff is pretty intractable?'

She punched him. It may have been intended as a playful blow but the ribs that received it felt like they could now fit into a thirty-six jacket instead of his normal forty-two.

'So that's how you see me, huh? A preachy polemicist? Well, maybe, but that's not where I start, Pete. The play's the thing, the conscience-catching comes a long way second. This is where it all began, these are the roots, the modern European theatre starts here -'

'I thought the Greeks -' interrupted Pascoe foolishly.

'Same sort of thing, but it died and had to start all over again, this time with our society, our psychology, our meterology, our gods; and we can tune in at a stage far earlier in evolutionary terms than Greek classical drama.'

'You sound very . . . Euro-minded,' said Pascoe cautiously.

'What dat you say, my man?' mocked Chung. 'Don't let the slanty eyes fool you, my boy. My daddy brought my mummy back from Malaya with him and this little girl was brought up in would you believe Birmingham?'

She laughed joyously at the idea. Why it should seem so incongruous Pascoe wasn't sure, but he found himself laughing too.

By now they had passed his car park and were at the entrance to the close. Pascoe halted and said firmly, 'I am not going any further. You can spike your Canon without my moral support.'

'Hey, if I need a policeman, I'll blow my whistle,' said Chung. 'But don't go. Come into the cathedral with me, let me show you something.'

Once more he was whirled along, this time out of the chill winter air into the chiller a seasonal atmosphere of the great church. It was empty except for a couple of shadowy figures, which Pascoe hoped were human, gliding along a side aisle. His agnosticism was not proof against the humbling power of these vibrant spaces but Chung's flame burnt bright enough to meet whatever occupied them on level terms. She led him to the choir and made him stoop to look at the woodcarvings beneath the misericords. They consisted of figures, some individual, some in small groups, but all finely differentiated, of men at their trades and at their play. Here were tanners, tinkers, herds and hunters; here were men playing pipes and tabors, shawms and citoles; here were dancers, dicers, tumblers and mummers.

'The guy who carved these knew those people, he'd seen them, he knew they were as important and everlasting as anything else in this place. I'm not doing any prissy historical reconstruction, Pete. I'm plugging into the continuum. Come on, there's some more in the Pliny Chapel.'

But when they reached the chapel they found it was occupied. Named after Sir William de Pliny, whose tomb stood here, topped by a full-size brass effigy of himself and his wife, with a small dog at their feet, this tiny chapel was set aside for private prayer. Standing at the foot of the tomb with her head bowed was a woman. Pascoe paused on the threshold but Chung went straight in. For a second he thought this was crass insensitivity, then she spoke and he realized it was quite the opposite.

'Mrs Horncastle, are you all right?'

He didn't recognize the woman till she looked up. But in the brief moment before she re-organized her features to a social smile, he recognized Chung was right to be concerned.

'Miss Chung. How are you?' she said.

'I'm fine. Like I say, how are you?'

'Oh, don't worry about me. Really I'm fine too.'

'You looked upset,' said Chung bluntly.

'Did I? Perhaps I did. It's silly. Don't laugh, but it's the dog.'

'The dog?'

'Yes.' She set her hand on the little brass dog's head and stroked it.

'I used to have a dog very like this, a little terrier, Sandy, I called him. He got on Eustace's nerves. Well, he could be naughty, I suppose. And whenever he wanted a walk, he used to jump up and lick my face, then run to the door and leap up at the handle as if he were trying to open it. Sometimes he scratched the paint and Eustace became really furious. But it was only paint, wasn't it?'

'I'd say so,' said Chung gravely. 'What happened to Sandy?'

'He died. He somehow got out by himself and wandered out of the close into the main road and got knocked over. People said I should get another, but Eustace said I would be foolish to risk getting so upset again over a dumb beast so I never did. I'd often noticed how like Sandy the Pliny dog was - at least I thought so, though Eustace said I was imagining the resemblance. But they were alike.'

Suddenly she laughed and said, 'Do you have dreams, Miss Chung?'

'You mean, like ambitions?'

'Oh no. I gave those up long ago. I mean dreams, while you're asleep. I expect you do. Who doesn't? They mean nothing. Well, I had a dream, only I've had it two or three times and repetition suggests significance, doesn't it? I dreamt I woke up but couldn't move and after a while I realized that I was made of brass, like Lady de Pliny here, lying on top of our tomb with a brass Eustace by my side. And even though I was brass, it was so cold, so bitterly cold, I could feel my whole being contracting with the chill of it, and I wanted to scream out in agony, only I couldn't, being brass. Then I felt a movement against my legs, and on and on, higher and higher, till suddenly there was the touch of something warm and moist on my face and I realized the little dog at my feet was licking me. Gradually the warmth of his tongue began to spread through my body till finally I was able to move. What pain those first movements cost me! I was like an old arthritic woman, tottery, weak, uncertain. I looked around and my little strength failed again. I wasn't just on a tomb, I was in a tomb, surrounded by solid walls running with damp and unbroken except by a huge metal door. It had a handle, but even when I crawled across to the door and pulled myself up by the handle, putting my full weight on it, I couldn't feel the slightest movement. Full of despair, all I could think of was to stagger back to my plinth and lie down again alongside Eustace, this time for ever. But when I set off back, the dog rushed by me and began leaping up at the handle, just like Sandy used to when he wanted to go for a walk. Of course, at home he could never reach it and even if he could, he could never have turned it. There I stood by my brass husband, watching the poor little beast leaping higher and higher, but always in vain, and do you know, I felt sorrier for him than I did for myself. So I determined to stagger back to the door and have one more try, when suddenly he gave a mighty bound and his teeth caught around the handle and for a moment he hung there, feet scrabbling at the door, and he looked so pathetic I could have wept. Then slowly the handle began to move. I couldn't believe it. Lower and lower he pulled it, lower and lower. Then there was a loud grating noise and the door swung slowly open, and through it I could see a sunlit lawn and hear birds singing. And Sandy let go and dropped to the ground and stood outside in the sunlight, barking at me to join him.

'Now wasn't that a silly dream, Miss Chung? A silly woman's dream?'

She tried for the bright tone of one who is amused at her own absurdity but Chung did not respond in kind.

'Oh no, Mrs Horncastle,' she said. 'I don't see anything silly in it. Nothing at all.'

She put her arm round the woman's shoulders as she spoke and Pascoe, who had been edging further and further back as the story progressed, turned and hurried from the gloomy cathedral alone and felt a quite illogical relief to find himself out in the chill winter daylight once again.

In fact it wasn't just the contrast which made the day seem brighter. Winter had threatened to deceive once more, and a pallid sun was giving the storm clouds a pewter lining. Dan Trimble would be pleased. A couple more days of decent weather should see the car park and garage complex completed well within its funding schedule. And it would be nice to be able to park near the rear door again instead of across the street.

The builders were hard at it erecting the small gatehouse modern security concerns made almost obligatory. It would be annoying to be checked in and out of your own backyard, but better than the risk of some madman driving in at will with a truckload of Semtex. He glimpsed Arnie Stringer but there was no sign of Swain though he'd noticed him on arrival that morning. Perhaps now his financial problems were likely to be over, he didn't feel the need to soil his own hands for more than a couple of hours each day.

As he passed the desk, Sergeant Broomfield looked up and said, 'Any luck?'

'Not yet. Any word on the yobboes who did Wieldy?'

'Nothing. But talking of yobboes, the Post has been at us about that barney in the Rose and Crown. They're doing a feature evidently. You can guess the sort of thing. The football might be lousy, but City supporters are after promotion to the hooligans' first division.'

'Shit. That's just putting ideas into their tiny minds,' groaned Pascoe. The landlord of the Rose and Crown was still in hospital with a serious eye injury. The eyes of all the potential witnesses seemed to have been damaged also for no two of them gave corresponding descriptions of any of the brawlers.

'Seymour back yet?' he asked.

'Don't be silly. It's only ten-fifteen. Send young Dennis into a nurses' home and you can't really expect him to surface for at least twenty-four hours! The Super's back though.'

'How'd he look?'

'Not happy. I asked him if he'd had any luck at the Sally and he said the landlord was as helpful as a knitted noddy, and his ale was lousy too.'

'Bad as that! I'll let him alone for a bit, I think.'

'He's got company anyway,' said Broomfield.

'Oh? Who?'

The sergeant shrugged and said, 'Who knows? He was on the desk when they turned up.'

He nodded towards the inner office where PC Hector sat, his head bowed over a typewriter with the rapt concentration of a chimpanzee wondering how best to start Hamlet.

Pascoe sighed and went on his way.

He was mildly curious as to the identity of Dalziel's visitors, though it wasn't an itch that required immediate scratching. But as he reached the CID floor he heard the cry of a wounded mastodon. His expert ear identified its root emotion as rage. Normal procedure was to lock yourself in a cupboard until you knew its object, but for once feeling safe, he indulged his curiosity by tapping at the Superintendent's door, sticking his head inside and asking, 'Did you call, sir?'

The mystery of the visitors was solved. They were Philip Swain and Eden Thackeray. The solicitor smiled at him. Swain, who looked pale and haggard, ignored him. And Dalziel snarled, 'No, I bloody didn't, but now you're here, you'd best come in. I'd like a witness if, as seems bloody likely, I'm about to be slandered!'

'Please, please,' said Thackeray suavely. There can be no slander because there are no accusations. To clear the air, let me say at the outset that we do not dispute that my client gave his statement voluntarily, there was no question of coercion, and everything was done according to the rules.'

'Thank you very much,' growled Dalziel.

'Now all he wants to do, voluntarily, without coercion, and strictly following the rules, is modify that statement slightly,' continued the solicitor.

'Is that all?' said Dalziel with heavy sarcasm.

‘I have here copies of his revised statement. Perhaps I should read it to you so that any problems of comprehension or interpretation may be ironed out.'

The solicitor put on a pair of hornrimmed spectacles and coughed drily behind his hand. It was clear to Pascoe that besides serving his client's needs, he was really enjoying himself.

He began to speak.

'I should stress in preamble that the statement is exactly as Mr Swain dictated it, free from my own or anyone else's emendation or intervention.'

He coughed once more and began reading.

"'When Superintendent Dalziel brought me to the station on the night Gail died, I think I was in a state of shock. Everything felt so unreal, distant, unimportant. Everything except Gail's death, that is. This state of shock continued for some time after that night but it wasn't till I went to see my doctor on Mr Thackeray's advice that it was diagnosed.

'"I shall always feel I bear some guilt for Gail's death. Somehow I must have failed her. And perhaps if I hadn't rushed round to Waterson's house that night, things could have been worked out. Whatever the truth of the matter, I now see that in my first statement these feelings warped my judgement and my memory to the point where I wanted to assume total guilt, even stretching beyond the moral and psychological to the physical, and claim that my hand was actually on the gun when it went off. Now I can recollect and more importantly admit what really happened.

'"When Gail started waving the gun around, it was Waterson not me who made a grab at it. Perhaps he felt threatened, perhaps his sole concern was to prevent her from doing herself harm. I don't know. All I know is that the gun went off and Waterson seemed to go to pieces. He staggered away from Gail with the gun in his hand. I took it from him for fear he might inadvertently fire it again and cause further harm. He collapsed against the wall and I remained where I was, clearly in a state of shock, till Mr Dalziel arrived.

'"I am not attempting to evade responsibility by modifying my original statement, merely to record the exact truth, for I now see this must be the first step in my attempt to come to terms with my loss, my grief, my guilt."'

Thackeray stopped reading and said, 'That is my client's revised and movingly frank statement, which I am sure you will accept in the spirit in which it is offered.'

Dalziel, who had listened like a country squire at a Lenten sermon, yawned widely and said, 'Aye, I think I can promise that much.'

'Thank you,' said Thackeray. 'No doubt the other witness, Mr Waterson, will confirm this version of events in his statement when it becomes available.'

Oh, you cunning old devil! Pascoe thought admiringly. Somehow you've got wind of Waterson's statement, or perhaps you've simply made an inspired guess. Here was an adversary truly worthy of Dalziel!

'We're still trying to locate Mr Waterson,’ said Dalziel evasively.

'Strange what heavy weather you're making of it,' said Thackeray. 'And I fail to see why Mr Waterson's absence, however motivated, should further delay an early settlement of this matter. Common humanity cries out for the inquest to be resumed and the remains to be released to next-of-kin. My client has suffered too much already.'

'Not at our hands,' said Dalziel. 'You said yourself, everything were by the book.'

'Indeed it was,' agreed the solicitor. 'Nothing was missed. Except perhaps a few opportunities. For instance, when you called in your doctor to look at Mr Waterson on the night of the accident, you didn't ask him to examine Mr Swain too.'

'No need. Waterson were a nervous wreck. Mr Swain here were fine. He looked a sight better than he does now, if you don't mind me saying.'

Swain, who hadn't opened his mouth since Pascoe arrived, glared angrily at Dalziel but Thackeray patted his arm soothingly and said, 'Yes, I recall you mention in your own statement how calm and collected Mr Swain appeared to be. And you stressed this again the following day when we first discussed the case. I got the impression then that you were drawing inferences from your observation which were not to my client's advantage.'

'I just state the facts as I see 'em, nowt more.'

'Of course. What you didn't see was the possibility that this apparent control of my client's emotions might in fact be symptomatic of the shock which has since been diagnosed and whose delayed and more obvious physical manifestations are, as you have just observed, only now becoming visible. What a pity with a doctor on the spot that night that you didn't . . .'

'He were examined the next day,' interrupted Dalziel.

'Indeed,' said Thackeray. 'But we must ask ourselves, Superintendent, what were the instructions you gave the examining doctor on that occasion. Incidentally, my acceptance that things were done according to the rules on Tuesday night does not of course extend to include that examination on Wednesday afternoon. Where consent is obtained by deception, there is no legality.'

Dalziel was slumped low in his chair, a posture which pushed his embonpoint into corrugations along whose valley bottoms beneath his shirt his fingers scraped glacially. He was beginning to look defeated. It was not an edifying sight.

'If you want to tell the world I had Mr Swain examined because his missus were a junkie, go ahead,' he snapped. 'Seems to me all this fine talk amounts to is instead of one statement from your client, we've got two. More the merrier, say I.'

It was an untypically feeble counter, underlined by Thackeray's formally polite appreciative chuckle.

'That's it,' he said. 'Let's think of them as rough draft and fair copy. It's so easy to get things wrong the first time, isn't it? You of all people should understand that, Mr Dalziel.'

'Eh?'

'Your own statement, I mean. Don't look so alarmed. I haven't been burgling your office. I was talking to Mr Trimble about another matter, and I happened to mention my concern at these delays, and in particular at the distress it must be causing Mrs Delgado who is too ill to travel and who is naturally impatient for her child's body to be released to the States for burial. And Mr Trimble, though sympathetic, told me that where witnesses clashed, and one of them was a senior police officer, he must obviously place a strong reliance on that man's version of things.'

'That was nice of him,' said Dalziel savagely.

'Indeed. I drew the assumption that it must be yourself he was referring to, and I wonder now whether you might not care to take a long look at the detail of your own statement. No one is perfect. I'm sure your own vast experience contains many instances of a highly trained observer proving to have been deceived.'

Dalziel shot Pascoe a glance of promissory malice. Surely he can't think I've been talking to Eden about my little experiment!

Thackeray had risen and stood with his hand on Swain's shoulder as he spoke. Now he exerted a gentle pressure and the man rose.

'That's good,' said Dalziel. 'You can hardly see the strings!'

'I'm sorry?' said Thackeray with dangerous mildness.

Pascoe tried to telepath a warning to his chief. This was a lost battle. Nothing to do but keep your head down and regroup. Pointless to stand up in the trenches and hurl clods at the triumphant tanks.

But Dalziel wanted a medal more than his supper.

'I just meant, funny thing, this shock. Takes away the power of speech, does it, unless someone else writes the lines?'

Swain looked ready to retort angrily, but Thackeray was swift with a palliative misunderstanding.

'If you're referring to my client's decision to take part in the forthcoming production of the Mystery Plays, certainly this has been recommended as a useful therapy. Role-playing has an honourable history in psychological rehabilitation and what better way of coming to terms with guilt than exploring the greatest guilt of all?'

Pascoe was agog at the implication of this. Could Swain really have a part in Chung's production? And if so . . . but Thackeray hadn't finished.

'I hear you too are planning to tread the boards, Superintendent?' he said pleasantly.

'That's right.'

'As God, I gather? I hope you also might find the experience therapeutic. But I hope even more that your evident willingness to share a stage with Mr Swain signals an end to harassment and an early wrapping up of this tragic affair. Good day.'

He left. Swain followed, but paused at the door and said, with no expression on his face or in his voice to hint whether he was being mocking or conciliatory, 'See you at rehearsal.' Then he too was gone.

Dalziel opened a drawer in his desk, took out a bottle and a glass, poured an unhealthy measure and drank long and deep.

'Well, come on,' he said. 'When you look like that, you've either got piles or you're chewing on a serious thought. Spit it out!'

'No, it's nothing,' said Pascoe. 'Except that, well, it's an odd business, this . . .'

'You've noticed that, have you? Well, thank God we promoted you. Man as sharp as that deserves to go right to the top!'

The unfairness of Dalziel's picking on an easy target after his recent mauling by Thackeray did not surprise Pascoe, but it stung him.

'But there's no reason why it should be seen as a sinister oddness,' he continued briskly. 'In fact, it's all far too daft for planning. Couldn't it be that what we've got here is quite simply what both Swain and Waterson say - and what with very little adjustment you partially witnessed - a suicide, or at worst a tragic accident?'

'You think I'm getting obsessed, is that it?'

'No,' lied Pascoe. 'In fact, very likely you're thinking on these lines already. Like Mr Thackeray said, you wouldn't have agreed to taking part in Chung's Mysteries with Swain if you'd still been after him. Would you?'

'Mebbe not,' said Dalziel. 'I'm not sure, lad, and that's the truth of it. Every bugger seems to know more than me and be two or three steps ahead of me just now. Almost like we've got a mole.'

Oh God, thought Pascoe, thinking of his part and Ellie's part in feeding Dalziel to Chung. But more worrying even than this was the sight of his notoriously invulnerable chief in doubt and disarray.

As if sensing Pascoe's concern, Dalziel tried for a confident smile and said, 'But not to worry, eh? I'm to be God Allbloodymighty, and by God, one way or another I'll send Swain down to hell and make old Eden jump out of his dusty briefs before I'm done with him.'

It wasn't bad as a cry of defiance, but it seemed to Pascoe that he'd got his lines wrong. It wasn't God but the fallen angels who went in for cries of defiance which might rise to, but could never disturb, the real Allbloodymighty sitting on his crystal throne.

CHAPTER THREE

Perhaps the great secret of Dennis Seymour's likeability was that he didn't work at it. He was Juan rather than Giovanni, his charm was intuitive not calculated, and its rewards came more as surprises than triumphs.

Having committed himself to his beautiful Bernadette, he was genuinely reluctant to put himself in the way of other offers. Not that he ever sought them, but it was incredible what a sympathetic interrogation could lead to. Recently a 'friend' in the Force had hinted to Bernadette that her fiancé was CID's sexual stormtrooper and this hadn't gone down too well, so Seymour adopted his coldest, most official manner when he called on Pamela Waterson.

To start with she replied in kind, indeed was almost hostile; Seymour wouldn't have minded if she'd stayed this way, but he couldn't help being genuinely sympathetic when she told him she was too tired to put up with much questioning, and she couldn't help responding to his genuine sympathy. After fifteen minutes they were sitting on a sofa, drinking coffee and capping each other's awful-job anecdotes.

'What really gets up my nose is being me,' she said finally after a long recital of plaints.

'Sorry?'

'What I mean is, I don't have to put up with all this crap. Overworked, understaffed, poorly paid, lousy facilities, being told I'm a selfless angel when I do my job, and a selfish shit when I moan about it; I could walk away from all this, you know. Head for the private sector tomorrow, get everything I want. Or go abroad and get twice as much as I need. Only, because I'm me, I won't do it, I can't do it. It's crazy, isn't it? Like sitting in a prison cell with only two ways out, a door to comfortable freedom or a window with a thousand-foot drop to bare rock, and knowing you can never take the door.'

'You're sure about that?' said Seymour.

'Of course I'm sure! I've just said it, haven't I?' she said angrily.

'No, what I mean is, there's usually more than two ways out of things.'

'Is that so? Name me another two,' she challenged.

'All right,' grinned Seymour. 'What would happen if you threw a bedpan at the Chief Health Officer?'

'I'd get sacked.'

'That's one. And what would happen if you got pregnant?'

'At the moment I think they'd call the poor little blighter Jesus,' she said sadly.

'It'd make two whatever they called him. Do you fancy a family, luv?'

'I took it for granted when I got married,' she said. 'I'm a Catholic, you see. Not good, but still Catholic. He had other ideas. I took the easy line and went along. No, that's not fair. I went along because that's what I wanted then. Now I wish . . . but it's too late . . .'

'It's definitely over between you then? You'll get divorced?'

She shook her head. 'No divorce,' she said. 'I'm still that much of a Catholic. But yes, it's definitely over. Oh, I still fancy him, I suppose. That funny-looking fellow who came the first time likely told you he caught us cuddling. Not that it meant anything. There's nothing so comfortable as a cuddle when you're tired and depressed.'

She glanced at Seymour thoughtfully as she spoke and he took a long draught of air from his empty coffee cup.

'You see,' she resumed, 'I didn't leave him because I found out he was different after we married. Rather, it was because he was more like himself than I realized.'

'Eh?' said Seymour.

She smiled and said, 'Does sound daft, doesn't it? What I mean is, before we married, I knew he talked big but got easily scared; I knew he was crazy about natural blondes with long legs. But none of it mattered. Knowing how frightened he got just seemed to make us closer, and I believed I could steer him clear of situations which might make him blow up. As for blondes with long legs, well, I was one, wasn't I? So what happened? Nothing, except that I found that to prove how unscared he was, he could get himself involved in stupid things. And I couldn't be around all the time to stop him blowing up. And his love of willowy blondes didn't stop with me. Like I say, I can't put the blame on not knowing what he was like!'

'What kind of stupid things did he get himself involved in?' wondered Seymour.

'Things like trying to set up on his own. I mean, you're mad to be self-employed when no one in his right senses would work for you in the first place!'

'But you still like him? So when he rang and asked you to meet him, you went?'

'Of course. Why not?' she demanded.

'You knew the police wanted him to help in a serious inquiry,' said Seymour as sternly as he could manage.

'Oh, that,' she said dismissively. 'You'll find him in the end. This business is just a silly tragic accident, right? It'd probably all be cleared up by now if he hadn't run off.'

'Very probably. So why'd he run?'

'I don't know. Because it made him feel important, likely.'

'Is that what he told you when you met?' said Seymour.

'No. I asked him about it, naturally, but he just got all mysterious, and that was one of the games I stopped playing with him very early on.'

'So what else did you talk about?'

'I can't remember all of it. Just the bad bits when he started getting excited. That's the trouble with Greg, the good bits are lovely, he can be charming, amusing, marvellous to be with ninety per cent of the time, but once you've had a taste of the other ten per cent, that's what you remember.'

'So tell me about the bad bits at the Sally,' said Seymour.

'Well, there were two. When I gave him Mr Swain's message -'

'Mr Swain?'

'Yes. He rang me a few days ago and asked if Greg had been in touch. When I said no, he said if I did hear from him, would I let him know?'

'So you told Mr Swain Greg had made contact?'

'Yes, and he said would I ask Greg to get in touch with him?'

'And what did Greg say when you told him this?'

'That was when he started getting excited, and it wasn't till I convinced him I'd not let on to Mr Swain where we were meeting that he calmed down. He said to tell Mr Swain not to worry, he'd definitely be hearing from him.'

'And has Swain rung you since last night?'

'Not that I know of.'

'Fine. Now what else upset your husband? You said there were two.'

'Yes. That was when he asked me for money. He said he was hard up and couldn't get to a bank. I gave him what I'd brought with me. About forty pounds, it was all I could manage. He told me it wasn't enough, he needed a lot more than that, and began to get very excited. God, he was trying to keep out of sight and he still couldn't control himself!'

She shook her head in exasperation, but there was still affection there too. There had to be something very attractive about this lunatic!

'So what happened?'

'I did the only thing possible to defuse things. I left.'

'And your husband?'

'When I looked back he was heading for the bar with my money.'

'And would this explosion transfer itself to somebody else?'

'Oh no. If he was by himself he might sit in a corner muttering for a while. But in a pub, he'd be all charm and good cheer in a couple of moments once I was away. That's always been the unfair thing about Greg. He comes out of these bouts fine, it's those around him who are fond of him that have things mucked up for them.'

She was close to tears. Seymour squeezed her hand, then hastily let it go. He tried to make his next question unambiguously official.

'Mrs Waterson,' he said. 'It's in everyone's interest for us to find Greg. Did he give any hint where he was staying? Until we talk with him, we can't wrap this thing up, you see. Has he got any close friends who might be putting him up?'

'If he has, they'll have blonde hair and long legs,' she said. 'Do I sound bitter? Well, perhaps I am, but not jealous bitter. Just that, well, it's sometimes a hell of a job making sense out of life, and this kind of stuff doesn't help. Are you married?'

'Me? No,' said Seymour uneasily. 'Heavily engaged, though.'

It felt a good time to retreat. He began to rise.

'One-way traffic, is it?' she said. 'Sorry. Look, sit down. Relax. Have some more coffee.'

'I can't,' said Seymour. 'I've got work to do.'

'Isn't that what you're doing here? Look, I'm enjoying talking to you. All right, so you're a cop, but it makes a change from nurses and doctors, believe me. And you're not like the others I've met. The ugly one, he was all right but I couldn't feel easy with him. And Mr Dalziel, he gave the impression he'd just keep going till he got everything sorted out the way he wanted. That must be a great way to feel. Anyway, with him looking after the shop, what's your hurry?'

If she'd smiled seductively at him, Seymour would have been off at the double. But she just regarded him very seriously, very calmly, and though he had been aware from the start of her long legs and lissom figure, he now saw for the first time how truly beautiful she was, and simultaneously glimpsed the real depth of unhappiness beneath the revealed discontent.

Reluctantly, telling himself it was duty's call he was answering, he began to sit down again when the flat bell rang.

'I'll get it,' he said. There was an outside chance it might be Waterson, and he didn't want to give him a start.

But the face which glowered hostilely at him was black.

'Dr Marwood,' said Pamela Waterson behind him.

'I just thought I'd look in to see you were all right,' said the doctor. 'Don't let these fellows wear you out.'

'I'd say it's the hospital that wears her out,' retorted Seymour.

'Would you now? Who are you?'

'Detective-Constable Seymour.'

'Constable? It's been sergeants and superintendents up till now. Does a constable mean we're getting near the bottom of the barrel?'

A rude riposte flared in Seymour's mind but he damped it down.

'I'm just doing my job, sir,' he said woodenly. 'And for the time being I've finished it. Thank you for answering my questions, Mrs Waterson, and for the coffee. Excuse me, sir.'

He pushed past Marwood. Behind him as he descended the stairs he heard a brief exchange, then the door closing. But to his surprise, Marwood wasn't on the inside of it. Footsteps came slapping down the concrete stair behind him and as he reached the vestibule of the nurses' home, Marwood's voice called, 'Constable. Mr Seymour. Hang on a minute.'

He stopped and turned.

'Yes, sir,' he said.

'Look, I was rude up there. I'm sorry.'

'Were you, sir? I didn't notice.'

'Balls. You almost gave me a mouthful. What stopped you? Me being a doctor or me being a black?'

The question was asked in as casually non-aggressive a fashion as it could be, but Seymour spotted it’s have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife quality and responded deftly, 'Me being a policeman, sir.'

Marwood laughed and said, 'I see you all come from the same mould in Mid-Yorkshire. You may look completely different, but inside you're all pretty sharp.'

Compliments now. The apology might have been due, but this meant he was after something. Giving or taking? wondered Seymour.

'I get worried about Mrs Waterson,' said the doctor as they strolled towards the car park together. 'She's been under a lot of pressure lately.'

Seymour unlocked the door of his car without answering. If Marwood had more to say, he'd say it.

He got in the car, closed the door, wound down the window and waited.

After a moment, the doctor said, 'Seems to me you people are making a real meal out of getting hold of that man of hers.'

'Doing our best, sir. The Super doesn't like getting the dogs out for a low-key inquiry.'

This was the merest zephyr of a provocation but Marwood felt it.

'Low-key? That woman back there's a nervous wreck and you call it low-key!'

'I'm sorry for Mrs Waterson's domestic problems, sir, but honestly I don't see that they're anything to do with us. We just want to talk to her husband to sort a few things out, then hopefully we can turn him loose to get his marriage straight. I get the impression they're still genuinely fond of each other.'

And this was provocation at gale force.

'Hey, listen, man, there's no way that marriage can ever be straight. He's unbalanced. More, he's a crook. Is that what it takes to get you people off your arses and going full pelt? He's a crook!'

'And what kind of crook is he, sir?' asked Seymour with what he hoped was just enough incredulity to push Marwood over the starting line. For now he guessed that the doctor's dilemma was not being able to get what he wanted unless he gave what he did not want to give.

Probably what he wanted was for Waterson to be put right out of the picture. But for some reason he felt this would put him out of the picture too.

And at last the explanation came.

'He's the kind of crook who asks his wife to steal drugs for him from the hospital!' grated Marwood. 'Now I haven't told you that. If you tell anyone I've told you that, especially Mrs Waterson, I'll deny it. But it's the truth. Now will you get the dogs out and put the useless shit behind bars where he belongs?'

CHAPTER FOUR

Initially, Seymour's report did little to rouse Dalziel's spirits.

'Drugs again,' he said. 'Shit. And did she do it?'

'Dr Marwood says not. I don't think he'd have told me about it if she had. It's Waterson he wants to get at, not her.'

'Sounds to me very like it's her he wants to get at,' said Dalziel salaciously. 'And what does she say?'

'I didn't ask her, sir,' said Seymour. 'I thought it best to get back here. Also if I'd gone straight back to her room, she'd have known it was the doctor who told me.'

'Give me strength,' said Dalziel. 'Did your mummy tell you always follow doctor's orders, or what? Listen, son, we're not a caring profession, we're a catching profession. It's crime you should worry about, not some black bugger's sensibilities.'

'I don't think his colour is terribly relevant,' interposed Pascoe.

'No? What if he's a yardie boss out to grab the Yorkie bar concession? What are you grinning at, Seymour? Why don't you browse through your Moriarty and see how many offences he's committed? For starters, the sod knew a crime had been attempted, but he kept it to himself. And why did she tell him, anyway? Could be she wanted to oblige hubby and the easiest way to get at the real happy stuff was to screw a doctor. Mebbe Marwood's running scared with all this police interest in the Infirmary so he's trying to get his retaliation in first. Mebbe Waterson's the Mid-Yorks drug king and Mrs Swain was his customer as well as his tart. Didn't any of this cross your mind?'

Seymour, wilting under the assault, said bravely, 'I don't believe that about Marwood and Mrs Waterson. She's really unhappy, I think, and he's genuinely worried about her because he, well, because he's in love with her.'

'Oh aye?' said Dalziel in disgust. 'Forget Moriarty. Bugger off back to your Mills and Boon.'

Seymour, uncertain whether this was his dismissal, looked to Pascoe who jerked his head towards the door. As he went out, the Chief Inspector caught his eye and drooped his lid in the suspicion of a wink.

'You were a bit hard on the boy,' said Pascoe after the door had shut.

'You reckon? You rate him, don't you? Needs stiffening up if you ask me.'

'You make him a bit nervous, that's all,' said Pascoe.

'Me?' said Dalziel in amazement. 'Bloody hell.

Now I've heard everything. Only thing that's making Seymour nervous is getting used to the rhythm method likely. Young Bernadette's clean, by the way.'

'Clean?' said Pascoe, scandalized. 'What do you mean? AIDS? And how . . . ?'

'Don't be daft. No, you weren't around, were you? When he got himself engaged and it dawned on me this thing wasn't going to burn itself out, I passed Miss McCrystal's details on to Special Branch. Well, it wouldn't help his career if it turned out his in-laws were card-carrying Provos, would it? But it was OK. They looked at the family up, down and sideways, and though they'll sing "The Wearing o' the Green" with the worst of them, it's Guinness talk not gun talk.'

'I'm sure Seymour will be delighted to have Special Branch's approval,' said Pascoe stonily.

'Oh, they don't approve. In their eyes, any Irish connection's a bad connection, but I told 'em to sod off and get back to scratching John McCormack records. So, what do you make of this stuff your protégé’s brought back?'

'I don't know. I haven't met Mrs Waterson or this doctor. Seymour obviously thought they were straight. What did you make of them?'

'I only saw 'em briefly, I was more concerned with checking Wieldy was all right. This Marwood, that's twice he's tried to drop Waterson in it. Twice he's double-crossed the woman by breaking her confidence.'

'All's fair in love and war.'

'Aye, but which is this?'

'You weren't serious about him being a drug-pusher, were you?' said Pascoe.

'Because he's a doctor, you mean? So were Pritchard and Palmer and Crippen and Cream! You have a look at him, Peter. And do a bit of straight talking with the woman. You should have gone yourself in the first place. Seymour's too susceptible. One thing in his report makes sense, though. Here where the woman said if Waterson was staying with a friend, she'd have long legs and blonde hair. She could be right. Let's try to get a line on his love-life before Mrs Swain, shall we?'

'He's beginning to look a lot better bet as the pusher, isn't he?' said Pascoe.

'You reckon? Why?'

Pascoe started ticking off arguments on his fingers.

'One, Mrs Swain was a user and Swain seems in the clear on that. Two, he tried to get his wife to supply hospital dope. Three, it would explain his reluctance to put himself under a spotlight by answering questions about the shooting, even though it was . . . looks like an accident.'

He stood before Dalziel with his three fingers raised like a primary teacher's visual aid. The fat man reached out and took hold of his forefinger.

'Nice,' he said, 'except that, one, he volunteered a statement when he could have kept stumm and pleaded shock which in his case seemed a lot more likely than with Swain. Two, his up and down behaviour makes him sound more like a user than a pusher, though I know the two aren't exclusive. And three, he was touching his wife for a few quid last night, and I've not come across many poor pushers.'

With each argument he forced one of Pascoe's fingers back into his palm, leaving him with a clenched fist and wondering where he could best use it.

Then Dalziel laughed and said, 'But you may well be right, Peter. One thing, accident or not, we've got plenty of reason now to go full pelt after Mr Gregory bloody Waterson!'

'Yes, sir,' said Pascoe, glad to see that the dullness which had descended on his chief as a result of Eden Thackeray's visit seemed to be lightening. 'One other thing, though, about those letters . . .'

'Not those bloody letters again! I wish I'd just burnt the things. You mustn't let yourself be distracted from the real work, lad. I want you back down at the Infirmary really leaning on Mrs Waterson, and I don't mean feeling her up like young Seymour! So don't hang about. It's not long to opening time and we've done bugger-all yet. Thank God Wieldy will be back tomorrow. Have you seen him yet? Sixteen stitches he had on his face last night, and I tell you, you could hardly notice the difference. If anything, it was a slight improvement!'

His laughter followed Pascoe down the corridor.

Perhaps after all there were worse things than the dullness of defeat.

Pamela Waterson was not pleased to be disturbed by her second policeman that morning, but when she heard what Pascoe had to say, her resentment turned to something more guarded, less readable.

'Who told you this?' she asked quietly.

Pascoe shrugged and watched her trying to work out either the informer or her response to the information.

'Yes, it's true,' she said finally. 'A few weeks back, before our final split, he asked me if I could steal some drugs. I said no. End of story.'

'You didn't mention this to my colleagues.'

'Why should I? There wasn't any crime, was there?'

'Come on, Mrs Waterson. He wasn't asking you for aspirin for his headache, was he? Did he specify?'

'No. He didn't get the chance. It was the last straw for me. One of the last straws. I choked him off, told him we were through and left.'

She hadn't asked Pascoe to sit down. People often thought that keeping a cop standing got rid of him quicker. It didn't. He leaned against the back of a chair and studied the woman. She looked calm and controlled, the kind of face you would want to see from your vulnerable hospital bed. But he could sense something beneath it - what was it Seymour had said? - she was very unhappy; yes, that was it, but more too; last straws were still being loaded on her, he suspected. He knew from experience that physical suffering makes you selfish, but there were kinds of mental and spiritual suffering in which the woes of others beat on you like hammer blows, and in that state a nurse might easily feel each death, each decline, in her ward as a personal defeat.

He said, 'Is your husband an addict, Mrs Waterson?'

She said, 'He doesn't inject, didn't anyway, I'd have known when we were together. Hash, yes. Who doesn't? Amphetamines sometimes, and I don't doubt if there's coke to be sniffed, he'll sniff it. But I'd not have called him an addict.'

She sounded defensive. Both Wield and Seymour had felt that her feelings for her estranged husband were ambivalent. Being a Catholic provided acceptable reasons for avoiding a divorce. Even God was sometimes usable.

'When he asked you to steal the drugs, did you understand they were for his personal use?'

'Yes, of course. What else? Oh hell, you're not wondering if he's a dealer, are you? For God's sake, he can't organize his own life, let alone a drug ring! If you gave him an hour glass, it'd lose time. If he was pushing the stuff himself, he'd have it on tap and he wouldn't be hard up, would he?'

She was echoing Dalziel's logic. Pascoe smiled ruefully at finding himself on the receiving end of the same put-down twice in an hour.

Then, resuming his most serious expression, he said, 'Your husband's hard up, you say? Didn't he get any severance pay when he left his job?'

'As a matter of fact he did. He wasn't entitled as he walked out of his own accord, but they gave him a generous ex gratia payment, I suppose because they liked him. Couldn't stick him, but they liked him.' She laughed humourlessly. 'Like me.'

'So where's that gone?'

'God knows. That studio conversion he had done in the attic must have cost. He couldn't work in the spare room, not Greg. Always the grandiose ideas. Had to have his own studio . . .'

Her voice tailed off. Pascoe followed her train of thought ... if Greg hadn't got Swain to build his studio, he'd not have met Gail Swain and she wouldn't be dead and Greg wouldn't be . . .

What the hell was Waterson doing?

He said, 'All right, so you can't see your husband as a pusher. But try this. If someone your husband wanted to impress found themselves short of whatever turned them on, wouldn't he like to project himself as Jack the Lad, Mr Fixit, the man with the best connections?'

She explored her hollowed cheeks with her fingertips, deep blue eyes directed at without being focused on his face. Then she gave a parody of a smile and said softly, 'I thought you said you didn't know my husband.'

'You think I'm right, then?'

'That's the way he is. Especially with the blondes.'

Whatever she said, in the Irish stew of reasons for leaving her husband, sexual jealousy was the red meat. It made the next question easier.

He said, very brisk and businesslike, 'We'd like to talk with anyone who may have had a relationship with your husband. Discreetly as we can, of course. We wouldn't want other families getting hurt.'

He felt a pang of shame at his slyness in offering her at the same time a conscience-salver and an incentive. Which weighed the stronger he couldn't guess, but she replied without hesitation, 'Christine Coombes. Beverley King.'

'Only two?' he said, recognizing his Dalzielesque crassness even as he spoke.

'Two I'm certain of,' she said without apparent resentment. 'Lots of strong suspicions but I'm not turning you loose on suspicions.'

So that was her conscience taken care of. He asked, 'This certainty . . . ?'

'Mrs Coombes I found letters from. Miss King, I caught him in the stirrups.'

'Good lord. I mean, I'm sorry. Is there anything else you can tell me? Addresses, say?'

'No idea. King works at Greg's old firm and Chris Coombes is married to Peter Coombes, the personnel director, so you can see he didn't mind doing it on his own doorstep, almost literally in King's case.'

She had been standing stiff and erect during all this interview. Now her leg muscles seemed to lose their strength, she staggered slightly and sat down.

Pascoe said, 'Are you all right, Mrs Waterson?'

'Fine. Look, why don't you sit down, I've been very rude . . .'

He looked at her uneasily. He preferred her strength.

'No, thanks, I really have to be on my way and I think I've taken up enough of your time anyway. Thanks for your help. I hope this all works out for you somehow. Don't get up. I'll let myself out.'

He left guiltily. On the stairs he met a nurse coming up. He stopped her and said, 'You know Mrs Waterson? She looks a bit under the weather to me. If you could just look in casually in a couple of minutes, see she's all right . . . thank you.'

He went on his way feeling slightly better, but not much.

CHAPTER FIVE

Andrew Dalziel, despite what his friends said, was no paranoiac. He did not believe himself to be infallibly perfect or unjustly persecuted. His great strength was that he walked away from his mistakes like a horse from its droppings, and as he himself once remarked, if you leave crap on people's carpets, you've got to expect a bit of persecution.

But when he believed himself right, he did not readily accept evidence that he might be wrong, not while there was any stone left unturned.

Gail Swain was, of course, the keystone, but there wasn't much future in turning a corpse. Philip Swain was for the moment safely bastioned by the formidable Eden Thackeray and it would take a pickaxe to turn him. Gregory Waterson sounded as if he could be turned by a strong ant, but they had to find the useless bugger first. Which left very few candidates for up-ending.

After Pascoe's departure, he took another look at a memo he had received that morning. If Pascoe could have seen it, he would have realized just how desperate Dalziel was getting for this was from the Central Police Computer which he usually regarded with all the enthusiasm of Ned Ludd for a stocking-frame. It read: SAS PERSONNEL RECORDS NOT ACCESSIBLE WITHOUT MOD AUTHORIZATION BUT SEARCH OF ARMY RECORDS REVEALS CPL

MITCHELL, GARY, BORN CONSETT NORTHUMBERLAND 8.6.59 ENLISTED CATERING CORPS 1977, DISCHARGED 1983, NO CRIMINAL RECORD.

Beggars couldn't be choosers, he told himself. And with a bovine belch which reminded him how close it was to lunch-time, he rose and went to do a bit of stone-twisting at the Mid-Yorkshire Gun Club.

The club clearly did good midday business as anxious executives got rid of their morning tensions. A distant fusillade from some indoor range punctured the air as he waited in a small and militarily tidy office. After a few minutes a tall athletic-looking man came in. He had earmuffs round his neck, an irritated expression on his face, and a broken revolver in his hand which he laid carefully on top of a filing cabinet.

'I'm Mitchell,' he said, sitting on a swivel chair, crossing his legs on his desk and scratching his designer stubble. 'Hope this won't take too long. I said everything I had to say to your errand boy couple of weeks back.'

Dalziel said solicitously, 'Nasty thing, that acne. Still, they say you get rid of it when you grow up. Was that why you gave up the cooking?'

The fingers stopped scratching, thought of becoming a fist, decided against it.

'What do you want, Superintendent is it?'

'Detective-Superintendent Dalziel. But sir will do, Corporal. All I want's some facts. You were screwing Mrs Swain, right?'

'No!'

'But you tried your hand?'

'I asked her to have a drink with me a couple of times. She said yes, but she made it clear that was as far as it went. She was that kind of chick, you know, all up front.'

'Pardon?' said Dalziel, inserting a huge little finger into his ear and wagging it around. 'Didn't quite get that.'

Mitchell ignored the provocation and said, 'All we ever did was talk, nothing more.'

'What did you talk about?'

'Guns. Shooting,' said Mitchell vaguely.

'Piss off, noddy,' said Dalziel. 'Don't tell me you didn't talk about your fascinating life and hard times.'

'Why should I?'

'Because a corny would-be stud like you would imagine that was the way to turn her on. Get her rabbiting on about her troubles and next thing you could be doing some real rabbiting under the table. Isn't that how it works? So tell me about it.'

'About my life and hard times?' said Mitchell, trying hard to eyeball Dalziel in this battle of words.

'I'd rather read a ketchup bottle,' said Dalziel. 'What did she say to you?'

'Listen, you fat slob, I've had enough of this. There's some very important people use this club . . .'

Mitchell was now pure Geordie. Dalziel leaned forward and grasped his knee in a crocodile grip.

'Aye,' he said softly. 'And how will these important people like it when their club's closed down 'cos its corporal cook rangemaster doesn't have the sense to observe regulations? I've spotted at least three you're in breach of already, and that's without looking. Once I really start poking about I doubt if you'd get a licence to run a fairground stall.'

'You're bluffing,' said Mitchell. 'This place is run by the book.'

'Aye, but it's me shouting the odds,' grinned Dalziel. 'What's up anyway, lad? She's dead, remember. She's not going to sue for breach of confidence!'

Mitchell hesitated. He's wondering how far I'll really go if he doesn't give me something, thought Dalziel. He wandered across to the cabinet and picked up the revolver. There were a couple of rounds in the cylinder. He closed it, cocked it, squeezed the trigger. There was a loud explosion and the ceiling light shattered. Mitchell moved with tremendous speed. The athletic part of his image at least was no fraud, and glass shards were still pattering to the floor as he grabbed the gun from Dalziel's hand.

'Jesus! Are you crazy?' he demanded, white-faced.

'Me?' said Dalziel indignantly. 'Leaving loaded weapons lying around in public, that's crazy!'

Mitchell went back to his desk, unlocked a drawer, dropped the gun inside, and relocked it. He regarded Dalziel with undisguised amazement.

'I can't believe in you,' he said. 'Who do you think you are? Wyatt Earp?'

'It's not me who goes poncing round like a Yankee film star,' said Dalziel comfortably. 'Now, you were telling me about Mrs Swain.'

It was little enough to shoot up a man's ceiling for. At most, it confirmed what Dalziel knew or had deduced from other sources.

Gail Swain had grown confidential over drinks a couple of times. Dalziel guessed that after Mitchell had made his sexual play and been put pretty firmly in his place, Gail had been happy to keep him dangling as a devotee cum confidant. She didn't seem to get on well enough with other women to have made any close friends in England, so perhaps she needed a Mitchell in her life. After Atlas Tayler closed, she'd complained with more incomprehension than bitterness about Swain's refusal to take the post Delgado's offered in the States at three times his British salary. But real resentment had started creeping in when Swain's building business hadn't got off the ground and he started canvassing auld acquaintance for new jobs.

'She didn't like that, and I think Swain tried to cut it down to a minimum because of this, but when she came back from her father's funeral, everything changed.'

'Why?'

'Two reasons,' said Mitchell. 'First she came back with an even better job offer for her husband. I don't think she could believe that he would refuse again.'

'And the second reason?'

'She was rotten rich! I don't know how much, millions maybe. She'd not been short before, but now it was dropping off her and Swain could see no reason why she shouldn't invest in his building company in a big way. She didn't see it like that and told him not a penny would he see till he was settled in LA. That's when he started up badgering his old mates again. He knew this really got up her nose and reckoned he could bounce her into coughing up the cash rather than suffer the embarrassment of being married to a notorious cadger. To tell the truth she was a hell of a snob, and he knew it.'

'But it didn't work?'

'Hell, no. Snob she might be, but she had true grit,' said Mitchell, who having decided that Dalziel was not to be denied was now relaxing into his role. 'The trouble as I saw it, was that those two were just on completely different wavelengths. She couldn't see why he wasn't jumping at the chance to go and live in sunny California. But he'd obviously really got the hump with Delgado's for closing down Atlas Tayler like they did. Also I don't think she could really grasp that he actually preferred being his own boss here in Yorkshire!'

'She told you this?'

'Most of it. She got really pissed one night, she was so upset. I don't know what Swain was playing at. I'd have gone like a shot.'

'But you never got invited,' observed Dalziel.

'No. She was a one-man woman, till the divorce courts got to work anyway. Even though her one man was a fulltime loser!'

Dalziel smiled grimly. This wanker really did think he was the bee's knees. If a lass didn't fancy a bit on the side with him she didn't fancy it with anyone!

'You don't like Philip Swain?' he said.

'Missing a chance like that, he has to be a real asshole!' said Mitchell. 'Not that I knew him all that well personally. Like I told the other cop, he was never a member. But I remember his brother, he was a member, and no, I didn't much care for him either. Christ, the way he talked you'd have thought that Moscow Farm was a palace and the Swains were royalty!'

'Tom Swain, would that be? The one who shot himself?'

'That's right. Look, Superintendent, if that's all, I really should get back to my members. You'll keep my name out of things, won't you? I don't want the ladies round here to get the idea I'm the kind who kisses and tells!'

His macho image was back on full beam.

Dalziel said negligently, 'Don't see why not. After all, you've told me next to nowt I didn't know already.'

When they've coughed, give 'em a hard slap between the shoulder-blades, telling 'em it's all useless crap, and you never know what last little gobbet they'll spit out.

'Oh? Then you'll know that Tom Swain tried to touch Gail for money to save the farm.'

'Gail? Surely it would be his brother he turned to?'

'Philip didn't have money. Only his salary and that wasn't enough to keep his wife in Gucci knickers. No, Tom went to the source and she turned him down flat.'

'She told you this?'

'Indirectly. Also I heard him trying to put the bite on her one night here at the club. She didn't like that and really choked him off. Next day, bang! No wonder she felt guilty. That's why she helped Philip get Moscow Farm back into shape, of course. Guilt. He could have milked it for ever if the silly twit hadn't decided he'd rather be poor in this hole than rolling in it in LA.'

'But why should she feel so guilty?' wondered Dalziel. 'I mean, Tom Swain must have tried to borrow money from everyone. Why should her refusal be seen as the one that pushed him over?'

'Well, he pointed a pretty steady finger, I'd say. All right, so they said he probably picked it because it was the one most certain to do the job, but it was clear as a farewell note to me.'

'What the hell are you talking about, laddie?' demanded Dalziel. 'Picked what?'

Mitchell looked at him for a moment, then let out a bellow of triumphant laughter.

'You don't know, do you? I know it wasn't made anything of at the inquest, but you'd think you blighters would keep full notes somewhere. Let me lighten your darkness, Mr Dalziel. The gun Tom Swain used to blow his head off was his sister-in-law's Colt Python!'

CHAPTER SIX

Peter Coombes was thin and dark with an ascetic mien more suited to a Jesuit mission than a modern personnel office, and an intense, unblinking gaze which made Pascoe feel uneasily that his thoughts were showing. It didn't help to find that when he broke the eye contact, over the other's shoulder he was looking at a framed photograph of a beautiful blonde woman lying on a lawn with a collie and two young children.

Coombes glanced round, as though indeed catching something of Pascoe's thought, and said proudly, 'My family. And I don't exclude the dog. Do you have children, Mr Pascoe?'

'One. A girl. No dog,' said Pascoe.

'Yes. I suppose in your line of work,' said Coombes, mysteriously incomplete, leaving Pascoe to work out whether policing unfitted you for dog-ownership or more than one act of procreation.

'It's about your Mr Waterson,' said Pascoe, accepting Coombes's gestured invitation to sit in an easy chair by a coffee table. Presumably the hard chair in front of Coombes's desk was reserved for another class of interviewee.

'Not our Mr Waterson, not any more,' corrected Coombes. 'Is there any chance of being told what this is all about?'

'I'm sorry. All I can say is, this has nothing to do with your firm, except in so far as Mr Waterson was once employed here. You have a Miss King on your staff, I believe? Beverley King?'

It had seemed good thinking to kill two birds with one stone. Coombes was the obvious man to consult about personnel, and it gave Pascoe a chance to assess how things were in the Coombes household. If Christine Coombes were still living in the family house with her husband, two children and a dog, it didn't seem likely she'd have Waterson concealed in the potting-shed.

'Wrong again, I'm afraid,' said Coombes. 'Yes, we did have a Miss King working for us. No, we don't any more.'

'Really? When did she leave?' asked Pascoe, alert.

To his disappointment, the reply was, 'A few weeks ago. I can easily check. Would I be right in guessing your interest in Miss King is connected with your inquiries about Mr Waterson?'

He was obviously as careful as the priest he resembled.

Pascoe said bluntly, 'You knew she and Mr Waterson were having an affair?'

'Indeed,' he said gravely.

'How did you know?'

'I caught them in a compromising situation in the office one lunch-time.’

‘What did you do?'

'I invited them to see me later that day.'

'Together?' said Pascoe, surprised.

'Of course not. Greg - Mr Waterson - and I had a friendly chat. I assured him I was not sitting in moral judgement but had to insist for the sake of the firm's reputation and the smooth running of office life, he carried on his love-life outside the premises.'

'And what was his reaction?'

'He seemed amused,' said Coombes. 'In fact he laughed out loud. He said he'd do his best, but I couldn't understand why he found it all so entertaining.'

He fixed his eyes earnestly on Pascoe and Pascoe willed himself not to let his own slip past the man once more to the photograph of his wife lying on the lawn.

'Did you take the same line with Miss King?' he asked.

'Hardly.'

'Oh? Why not?'

'Miss King had only been with us a couple of months. She had not made a good impression.'

'What exactly was her job?' interrupted Pascoe.

'We took her on as a typist. She had word-processing and computing skills and we had hopes we might be able to use her in these fields as vacancies occurred, but to be quite frank, her time-keeping, attention to detail and general attitude were such as to have made this most unlikely.'

'How come she applied for a typist's job with these qualifications?'

'She didn't so much apply as present herself,' said Coombes. 'She'd worked in London for Chester Belcourt, our parent company. A note from one of their directors said she'd had some personal problems which might be eased by a return to Yorkshire and if there was anything we could do to help her with employment it would be a kindness to her and a favour to him.'

'Return, you say? She's local, then?'

'Monksley. Do you know it?'

Monksley was a small village on the northern moors, rather isolated without the compensation of being picturesque.

'Vaguely,' said Pascoe. 'Is that where she's living?'

'We did have an address there to start with, I believe, but after she joined us, she moved into town in a manner of speaking.'

'What manner was that?' inquired Pascoe.

'She rented a boat, called Bluebell, would you believe? One of those tubs moored along Bulmer's Wharf,' he said with distaste. 'I'm sure you know them.'

Pascoe smiled. The old warehouses once serviced by Bulmer's Wharf had been demolished and a small estate of maisonettes erected on the site. The contractors, eager to maximize their return, had also rented out moorings along the wharf. It may not have been their intention that people should set up in more or less permanent residence there, but this was what had happened and eventually, inevitably, tensions had developed between the property-owning land-lubbers and the generally more raffish boat-people. A few months earlier these had exploded into accusations that one or more of the boats had been used as a bawdy house. Investigation had revealed little more than a penchant for uninhibited parties on the part of a couple of girl tenants, but there had passed permanently into middle-class mythology this fantasy of a fleet of floating brothels, each richly appointed as Cleopatra's barge, where lovers kept stroke to the tune of flutes.

'I don't know them personally,' said Pascoe. 'But I see you do. What happened at your interview with Miss King, Mr Coombes?'

'Nothing pleasant, I assure you. I tried to speak to her rationally but she entered full of defiance and moved very rapidly through insolence to abuse. To cut a long story short, she resigned.'

'Walked out, you mean.'

'Indeed. This led to another unpleasant scene, this time with Mr Waterson who accused me of sacking her. I urged him to check his facts, but he walked out too.'

'Was this the occasion of his leaving the firm permanently?'

'Not immediately. We had become fairly inured to Gregory Waterson's explosions here. They were regarded by some as outbursts of temperament. But a few days later he really went over the top at a meeting with our managing director when there was a client present. All this business of Miss King came out once more and I gather he was personally abusive towards me and eventually to our managing director, and the client. Enough's enough. He seemed really amazed when he was told that this was the end. The directors were generous, more generous than they needed to have been in view of the circumstances. I doubt if there's an industrial tribunal in the land that would have awarded him a penny.'

It struck Pascoe that Coombes was in sympathy with this hardness rather than his directors' generosity and he wondered what hints of Waterson's liaison with his wife had reached the man's ears. No doubt Waterson's final outburst had left no stone unthrown. But he couldn't feel too much sympathy for a man whose reaction to an office affair was to pontificate at the girl and have a friendly chat with the man.

He stood up and said, 'If I could have Miss King's address. In Monksley as well as Bulmer's Wharf. And I'd also like the name of the director of Chester Belcourt who recommended her to you.'

There was no real need for this. He asked merely as a sign of his distaste and he saw that Coombes took the message. Pascoe guessed that next time he came to this office, if there was a next time, it would be the hard seat in front of the desk for him.

* * *

Bulmer's Wharf proved a double disappointment, being more like an aquatic Wimpey Estate than a floating Street of a Thousand Pleasures. Also, where Bluebell should have been was a gap. A middle-aged woman nursing a sullen baby on the boat next door confirmed that Beverley King had lived there till three maybe four weeks ago when Bluebell had moved off without warning or explanation. She thought she recognized Waterson as a frequent visitor from Pascoe's description but could offer no further help, except her expert nautical opinion that Bluebell's only remaining ambitions were submarine and any voyage of more than a few miles would probably see them realized.

Frustrated, Pascoe left. His route back to the station took him along String Lane. He'd forgotten about Harold Park, but as he approached Food For Thought, he noticed a grimy Peugeot estate parked outside with Govan, the bearded Scot, talking to someone through its window. Pascoe couldn't see the number, but it was worth checking.

As he drew near, the Peugeot's indicator started winking as it tried to force its way back into the stream of traffic. Pascoe halted alongside and leaned across to open his window. The Peugeot driver did the same. He had a round red farmer's face which looked fertile ground for rustic jollity but was presently tarred with indignation.

'What's your problem, mate?' he demanded.

'Mr Park?'

'Who's asking?'

Taking this as affirmative, Pascoe introduced himself.

‘I called earlier. I wonder if we could have a word. It won't take long,' said Pascoe with a reassuring smile. Behind him someone tooted impatiently. He went forward another twenty yards and found a spot to park illegally. Then he got out and walked back to where Park was now standing on the pavement talking to Govan, the shop-keeper. Jollity had resumed its rightful place and the man greeted him effusively, 'Sorry about that, Mr Pascoe. Thought you were some half-baked twit wanted to leave his car there while he popped in to Mr Govan's for a bag of ginseng. As a matter of fact I was just on my way to look you up. Mr Govan said you'd called and as I'm a bird of rare passage so to speak, I thought I'd better check it out.'

It wasn't a local nor any kind of northern accent. Pascoe thought he detected a West Country burr overlaid with something closer to London.

'That was very good citizenly of you, Mr Park,' he replied.

'Self-interest. I don't want to have a heart attack because you decide to flag me down on the motorway,' he said with a hearty laugh. 'Step inside out of the weather.'

Pascoe found himself ushered into a narrow and smelly passage alongside the shop and through a flaking door. Here Park paused to empty a box stuffed full of what looked like junk mail before leading the way up a flight of creaking and uncarpeted stairs and through another door which decoratively was the twin of that below.

After all this squalor, the flat was a pleasant surprise. A single large living-room, with kitchenette and shower-room off, it was freshly decorated and comfortably appointed.

‘This is nice,' said Pascoe.

'Isn't it,' said Park proudly. 'I like to leave it scruffy outside. I'm away such a lot, the less attractive it looks to the criminal fraternity the better. Am I right or am I right, Mr Pascoe?'

'Very wise. I gather you're a traveller, Mr Park.'

'That's right. Veterinary products. It's pretty specialized so a small patch is no use to me. When I've got something good to sell, I've got to push it as wide as I can if I'm to live as well as I like, so draw a line south of the Wash and north of Carlisle, that's my area. Can I get you a cup of tea?'

He went into the kitchenette without waiting for an answer. Pascoe picked up an ornately carved rosewood box from the table, opened it and studied its contents. Two safety-pins, a button and a china thimble. After a moment he sensed he was being studied in his turn. Looking up, he saw Park smiling at him from the kitchenette.

'Sorry,' he said closing the box. 'Habit.'

That's all right. You look at whatever you like, my son. I've got some nice stuff. Morocco, that's where that box came from. I always like to bring something nice back from abroad. Poke around the cupboards. God knows what you'll find.'

Pascoe didn't accept the invitation but he did walk around the room peering at some rather pleasant water-colours of local scenery. There was only one window and it overlooked the back yards and loading areas of the String Lane shops. Immediately below he spotted Mr Govan's ginger mop. The Scot was closing the rear door of a small blue van. He then walked round to the driver's door, halted, looked down, and swung his foot at the front wheel. It was impossible to hear what he was saying, but the mime was so perfect that Pascoe had no difficulty in imagining the rich Scots oaths that greeted his discovery of the flat tyre.

'Sugar?'

'No, thanks,' he said turning. He sat down in a comfortable white leather chair and sipped the excellent tea which Park offered him.

'Now what can I do for the police?' said the traveller.

'Last night I believe you were drinking at the Pilgrim's Salvation,' said Pascoe.

'That's right. But not too much,' said Park defensively.

'I'm pleased to hear it. Do you use the Sally a lot, Mr Park?'

'Occasionally. No more than three or four other pubs.'

'And was there any special reason you chose it last night?'

'No. I just fancied a drink and the Sally popped into my mind.'

'So you weren't meeting anyone there?'

'No. What's this all about, Mr Pascoe? You're getting me worried.'

'No need,' smiled Pascoe. 'The two men who got into your car with you when you left, who were they?'

Park looked at him in amazement, with a pink edge of indignation.

'What is this?' he demanded. 'Am I being watched or something?'

'Nothing like that,' said Pascoe. 'The men?'

'I don't know, do I? I was leaving and I said, anyone want a lift towards the centre? and these two chaps said thanks very much.'

'You always offer complete strangers lifts?'

'I didn't say they were complete strangers, did I? We'd got talking, half a dozen of us, chewing the fat the way you do in a pub. These two, one was called Bob and the other Geoff. I dropped 'em off together at the corner of the market place. You're not telling me they were wrong 'uns, are you? I can't believe it!'

Pascoe shook his head slightly and said, 'There was another man with you outside the pub. He didn't get in the car but walked off by himself.'

'Oh, him. What was his name? Glen, I think. He joined in the chat and left the same time I did. I offered him a lift but he said no, he was going in the other direction. Is it him you're interested in?'

'Possibly. When he left you outside, you didn't get any hint of where precisely he might be heading?'

Park thought a while then shook his head.

'No, sorry. Who is he anyway? What's he done?'

'Nothing, except prove rather elusive,' said Pascoe, rising. 'Thanks very much for your time, Mr Park.'

Down on the pavement a pasty-faced girl with lank brown hair was rattling the handle of the shop door. Govan had shut up early, it seemed. Pity. The girl looked much in need of health food.

He started his car and edged out into String Lane. He should at least have felt some satisfaction at removing one more query from his list, but his mind was ill at ease. Park had a powerful personality. It was easy to see he'd make a good salesman. But the further you got away from him, the more his jollity, his amiability, his plausibility, began to seem a surface. His uncollected mail showed he hadn't been up to his flat, so he must have just arrived back in String Lane when Pascoe spotted him. Govan, like a good citizen, had told him instantly that the police wanted to talk to him, and Park, like an even better citizen, had set off for the police station without even getting out of his car . . . were ever two such good citizens gathered before in one place? Then up the stairs, the easy chit-chat, the making of tea, the invitation to poke around his cupboards . . . while down below, Govan had shut up shop in the middle of market day and was loading something into his van . . .

He was at the end of String Lane. He turned left and left again into a narrow, almost tunnel-like entry which if his geometry was right ought to open up into the service area behind the shops. It did. And there was the blue van, jacked up with a wheel leaning against its side. The rear doors were open and Govan stood there, in his hands a cardboard box which he was handing to Harold Park.

Pascoe got out of his car, stooping to pick up his walking stick which lay alongside the front seat. He used it as little as possible, but there were still occasions when it came in useful.

The two men looked at him as if he were a pantomime demon, popped up from a trap. Park was the first to recover.

'Hello, again,' he said, beaming. 'Forget something? Me too. I'd asked Mr Govan to store these samples for me and I'd almost gone off without 'em.'

He held out the box for inspection. The black lettering on it read Romany Rye Veterinary Products 24 x 500 grams Flea Powder.

'How interesting. I'll try some of that on my pussy,' said Pascoe, reaching for the box. He saw the age-old debate argued out on Park's face: fight or run. Saw the ballots cast. And as the salesman with a nimbleness which belied his bulk turned and headed for the open rear door, Pascoe used his own casting vote by hooking his walking stick around the man's left ankle.

He hit the rough ground with a crash which made Pascoe wince with empathized pain. Behind him he heard movement and turned to ward off any proposed attack. But Govan too had voted for flight. Pascoe watched with interest as he leapt into his van and started the engine. It would have been a splendid racing start, rear tyres screaming as they burnt rubber in search of traction. As it was, the jack collapsed, the front bumper ploughed into the ground, and the only screaming that was to be heard was the Scot's as his face collided with the windscreen.

Pascoe sighed, returned to his car and unhooked his radio mike. 'Assistance, please,' he said. 'Rear of Food For Thought, the health food store on String Lane. One car will be enough. But we'd better have an ambulance.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was Andrew Dalziel's proud boast that he could go anywhere and receive the same welcome. Only the words sometimes varied.

'What the hell do you want?' demanded Philip Swain. 'Haven't we seen enough of each other for one day?'

'I thought you were keen to start rehearsing the Mysteries,’ said Dalziel, smiling like a turnip lantern. 'Can I come in?'

'You can wait there till I ring Thackeray,’ growled Swain. He turned and retreated to a wall phone.

Dalziel stood obediently on the doorstep, still smiling. Two things he'd done between his pint and pie at the Black Bull and coming out to Currthwaite. First he'd rung Messrs Thackeray, etc. and ascertained that old Eden was out at a client conference in Harrogate. Secondly he had checked the inquest record on Tom Swain.

Mitchell was right. The gun had indeed been his sister-in-law's Python which he had borrowed from the club armoury, allegedly to test its power on the range. It had been Philip Swain who discovered his brother's body out in the barn, a site selected, according to Tom's farewell letter, because he did not wish to taint any room in the farmhouse with distressing memories. This letter had seemed to be the most businesslike document the elder Swain had prepared during his disastrous tutelage of the farm. In it he carefully catalogued his debts, separating them into prospective, imminent, immediate, overdue and subjudice. Perhaps his intention was a definitive assessment of the situation before opting for this most final of solutions. If so, his plan had been incontrovertibly confirmed. The grand total was vast. Most of it was still to pay off after Philip Swain inherited, and Dalziel had come to sympathize with Gail Swain. She must have had to dig deep even before the physical refurbishment of the place began. No wonder she broke the pitcher when her husband came back to the well after his building firm ran into trouble.

Swain hung the phone up angrily. Dalziel continued to smile. Now it was decision time for the builder: follow Thackeray's advice and refuse to talk until the lawyer was available, or show how little he had to fear by letting the policeman in?

A firm believer in his own maxim, never offer a choice unless you don't mind which choice is made, Dalziel said with lively interest, 'Why's it called Moscow Farm, Mr Swain? I mean, a place this old must go back before us ignorant buggers up here in Yorkshire had ever heard of Moscow. How old is it, anyway?'

It was hard not to answer two questions on a subject so dear to Swain's heart.

He said, 'Seventeenth-century, most of the present building. But there's bits of the mediaeval walls still in situ, and records show there was a settlement here before Domesday.'

'And Moscow?'

'The name's changed a couple of times, usually after it passed out of the family's hands for a while. Beginning of the last century we lost it and one of my ancestors went off to do a bit of soldiering in Europe. A mercenary. Five years later he turned up rich enough to buy it back. He changed the name to Moscow. The story was that he somehow made his cash during Napoleon's retreat, though it was never clear whose side he was officially on.'

'How the hell do you make money out of something like that?' wondered Dalziel, genuinely curious now.

'Looting the poor bastards who froze to death, I expect,' said Swain. 'As you may have heard, it's an old family tradition that anything's permissible when it comes to the farm.'

He spoke sardonically, clearly intending to let Dalziel see he knew what the fat man was up to, but the gibe faded into surprise as he became aware of his surroundings. Somehow as they talked he and Dalziel had moved from the doorstep to the sitting-room and the fat man was now sitting at his ease in a broad old-fashioned wing chair.

'What the devil is it you want?' exploded Swain.

Dalziel's expression became earnest.

'First I want to say I'm sorry we seem to have got off on the wrong foot, Mr Swain. Now I've got a clear picture of what really happened, I'd like to start over again, so that, like Mr Thackeray said, we can get this all cleared up and you can enjoy your sorrow in private.'

'I'll drink to that,' said Swain, regaining some of his equilibrium.

'Now that's a grand idea. Scotch'll be lovely.'

Swain looked a little put out to be taken so literally, but he fetched Dalziel a reasonably large Scotch with a reasonably good grace.

'That's better,' said Dalziel. 'Nippy out. Looks like we're getting the real winter at last. You'll have been glad it kept off so long.'

'Will I?'

'Because of the car park job, I mean. Can't be much fun laying bricks in a blizzard. But no work, no pay, eh?'

'Dan Trimble wanted it done as soon as possible,' said Swain, inserting the familiarity casually. 'And the long term weather forecast was good.'

'But not the short term financial forecast? Still, no worries now, not once all them lovely dollars drop into your account.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' demanded Swain, angry again, but this time in control of his anger.

'Whoah!' exclaimed Dalziel. 'Don't get mad. I thought that was all behind us. I'm not meaning to be offensive, Mr Swain. You'll get your wife's brass, that's only right, that's the way she wanted it, else why make your wills the way you did?'

'What do you know about our wills?' asked Swain.

In fact Dalziel knew very little except what he'd guessed, but he saw no reason not to sow a little discord between Swain and his lawyer.

'You mustn't blame anyone,' he said. 'There's nowt confidential about a will. Question some people might ask though is, if your missus had managed to get back to the States, would she have changed it?'

'Changed it? Why?'

'In my experience, wives aren't bothered much about benefiting their husbands after giving them the old heave-ho!' sneered Dalziel.

But Swain was out of reach of his provocation now.

'Who says Gail was leaving me?' he asked quietly.

'Come on, Mr Swain. Stands to reason, doesn't it? She wanted you to take up a post with the family firm in California, you wanted her to pump money into your business here. She gives you an ultimatum, then shacks up with her boyfriend. Any chance of a drop more of this? It's a Glenlivet, isn't it?'

It was the need of thinking space rather than hospitality which took Swain back to the drinks cupboard, but Dalziel didn't mind. His gratitude was all to God for making some men clever enough to squeeze whisky out of barleycorn, and himself clever enough to squeeze it out of a stone.

'You seem to have been very busy sticking your nose into my affairs, Dalziel,' said the builder grimly.

'Your wife's affairs. Sorry, I didn't mean . . . but now you've brought the subject up, did she have a lot of affairs, Mr Swain, or was Waterson a one-off?'

'I don't know! How the hell should I know? Waterson was the first that I knew of and it came as a great shock to me!'

'Aye, so you said. But you didn't live in each other's pockets, did you? You had your interests, she had hers. Like this Arts Committee. And the Gun Club. Must've spent a lot of time there, made some close friends, especially when she were on the team.'

Swain's grimness dissolved into a harsh laugh.

'Mitchell, you mean? For heaven's sake, man, Gail grew up surrounded by real Hollywood studs. You don't think she was going to find that pathetic imitation anything but amusing, do you?'

'There's all kinds of amusement,' probed Dalziel.

Swain took a long pull at his whisky. To drown a resurgence of rage? If so, the Scotch proved a good palliative, for his response was measured and reasonable.

'OK, look, I don't know. I was deceived once, so why not a dozen times?'

He should have let his anger speak. It would have rung truer than this rueful acceptance of possible cuckoldry, thought Dalziel. Or was he, as Pascoe clearly thought, letting prejudice colour all his responses to Swain? He felt a sudden uncharacteristic flood of self-doubt. OK, so the man had plenty of motive for killing his wife, but most men did, and vice versa. Might it not after all have been simply a happy accident that just when he must have thought all was lost, Gail had turned out not to be in Los Angeles changing her will, but in Hambleton Road, killing herself?

He looked at Swain and thought, No! Swains don't have that sort of luck! In fact from what he'd learned of the family, they seemed to suffer from congenital bad luck. What they did have, some of them, was a certain capacity for grabbing at straws, for plucking their own salvation out of other people's disaster.

Sod all the contradictions and contra-evidence! Sod pious Pascoe and his clever little experiments! In Dalziel's book of certainties Swain had killed his wife, and Dalziel had as good as seen him do it! The flood of self-doubt had parted and he was safely through it, but there was still a long trek to the Promised Land.

He said, 'A man needs to be busy himself to be deceived, Mr Swain.'

'My work did keep me occupied, yes.'

'I mean . . . you know . . . busy.'

Dalziel made a pumping motion with his forearm and said, 'Sauce for the goose, eh? Of course, it's different for a man.'

He gave his vilest leer. He had little hope of coaxing a confidence from the man but he might bludgeon a brag. If (and why not?) Swain were having a bit on the side, that would strengthen his motivation, and it might be worth giving this not improbable she a good shaking to see what came out of her. Between the sheets was the non-Catholic's confessional.

'Is it? How the hell would you know?'

Swain was answering his words not his thoughts, but it was just as offensive. Oh, I shall have you, my lad, promised Dalziel.

He changed tack and said, very serious, 'All I'm saying, sir, is, if there is a lady, better to tell us now rather than risk us stumbling on her unawares and mebbe causing embarrassment. I can promise maximum discretion. We'd just want to see her for purposes of elimination. Like you wanted to see Mrs Swain at Hambleton Road. For purposes of elimination.'

He spoke with the sweet reasonableness of a hard left politician proposing revolution, and vastly enjoyed the millisec in which Swain reacted to tone before registering content.

For another longer moment he thought he had triggered the expected explosion but from somewhere deep down in himself Swain drew up reserves of control.

'Thackeray warned me about you,’ he said. 'But he didn't tell me the half. Well, I'll tell you what, Mr Dalziel. You provoke away all you like. I've got nothing to hide. The only games I'll play with you will be on Eileen Chung's stage. I suppose that was your clever little idea too? Well, I'm calling your bluff, Dalziel. It may please your ego to play God to my Lucifer, but wrap you up though Chung might, it'll be plain to everyone you're still a fat slob!'

There it was. The anger burning through.

'And you, Mr Swain?' said Dalziel softly. 'What'll people see in you?'

Swain laughed, back in charge.

'All the mirth that is made is marked in me!' he said. 'You see, I've started learning my lines already. I hope you can keep up, Superintendent. Now, good day.'

'Good day to you too,' said Dalziel pleasantly. 'And thanks for your time.'

He left the room, closing the door firmly behind him. He had noticed an extension phone on a table in the sitting-room. He went to the wall phone in the hall and gently lifted the receiver. Swain was dialling. The number was ringing. He waited.

A woman's voice spoke and for a second he felt a frisson of self-congratulatory delight. Then the words registered.

'Thackeray, Amberson, Mellor and Thackeray, can I help you?'

Shit,' said Dalziel, replacing the receiver. Like so many things, it worked more often on the television screen than it did in life.

He left but not by the front door. Pascoe had reported something about a secretary who had an office out back. Who knows? Perhaps Swain was conventional enough to be banging his secretary. Or perhaps she was nosey enough to listen in to his telephone calls.

Outside he ran nimbly up the steps leading to the office, paused to get his breath, then entered with a suddenness intended to be impressive.

The girl behind the desk glanced up from her book but gave little sign of being impressed. Her silence forced him to speak.

'Mrs Appleyard?' he said. 'Detective-Superintendent Dalziel.'

'Yes?'

'You don't seem surprised.'

'You've told me who I am and who you are, both of which I knew. What's to be surprised over?'

Dalziel examined this and found it pleasingly pragmatic.

'Mind if I ask you a few questions?' he said.

She returned her attention to her book without replying.

Dalziel scratched his armpit and wondered how best to proceed.

'Mr Swain a good boss, is he?' he essayed.

'He's all right,' she said without looking up.

'How'd he get on with his missus?'

She put her book down and examined him in a way which made him feel on sale. She was a plain, ordinary-looking girl but her cool brown eyes had a disconcerting steadiness.

'You want me to help you. Why?'

'Well, it's everyone's duty to help the police, isn't it? I mean, how else can we fight crime?'

Even to his own ears his platitudes lacked conviction.

She said, 'That's not what I meant. Why should I help you?'

The pronouns were emphasized. He considered his answer carefully. He had the feeling there were several wrong answers but only one right one.

He said, 'Because mebbe I could help you.'

This seemed to amuse her momentarily, then she became serious again.

'You reckon? All right, I want to find my husband.'

Straight down to bargaining, thought Dalziel admiringly. With him not even knowing whether she had owt to bargain with!

He said, 'Lost him, have you?'

She explained briefly, clearly, like Wield making a report.

'His name's Tony Appleyard. We got married three years back when we found I were pregnant. Then he got made redundant and after a while he got so fed up, he went down south to look for work. He were a fitter by trade but he ended up in London, Brent it were, labouring on the lump till he got something better. He wrote and sent money when he could, at first anyway. He was living in this place with a lot of other men, lodging-house he called it but it sounded like a doss house. I used to write regular, but his answers got less and less frequent. Christmas I thought he might come back but there was only a card for the kiddie. I got so I was thinking of going down there to see for myself, but Dad said he'd go. He went in the middle of January. At the house they told him Tony had moved out a week before and not left a forwarding address. I've been in touch with the police down there and up here, the uniformed lot, I mean. They all said it was nowt to do with them. What a grown man did was up to him as long as it wasn't a crime and leaving your wife and kid evidently isn't. But I reckon they could find him if they wanted. If you wanted.'

Dalziel said gently, 'Why do you want to find him, love? Court order for maintenance won't do much good unless he's got a regular job.'

'Mebbe that's why he's moved on,' said the woman. 'Mebbe he's shacking up with someone else. Don't worry, I've thought of every possibility. And mebbe it's just all got too much for him and he's on the road feeling as down and desperate as I do sometimes. I need to know, Mr Dalziel, so I can work out what's best to do. Will you help?'

Dalziel considered. Scratching his corrugated neck he said, 'Chief Inspector Pascoe spoke with you the other day. Why'd you not ask him?'

She half-smiled and said, 'He were more interested in what I was reading. I read to get away from things. You look to me more interested in the things I'm getting away from.'

Dalziel smiled back.

'I shouldn't underestimate Mr Pascoe,' he said. But he felt flattered all the same.

'All right,' he said. 'You're on. No promises but it shouldn't be difficult. I may need to ask your dad about his trip down there in case he can help.'

He saw her expression and laughed. 'Doesn't much like the lad, does he? Not to worry. I won't let on about our arrangement. I'll say it's a social security inquiry or some such thing. Now, what can you tell me?'

'You ask the questions, I'll answer,' she said.

'Fair enough. How do you reckon Mr and Mrs Swain got on?'

She considered then said, 'All right. At first anyway.'

'At first?'

'When I first came to work here after Mr Swain had come in with Dad. I don't think it had dawned on her then how serious he was about running his own business, I mean.'

'And when it did?'

'She got more and more irritated. They had rows, mainly about going to America and money. I could hear them yelling in the house. She thought the business was useless. He said his roots were here, there was no way he was going to give up Moscow Farm to work for a gang of crooks like Delgado.'

'And she didn't show any sympathy?'

'No. She said the way he was going he'd have to give it up anyway when he went bankrupt. She said her family weren't crooks, just good efficient businessmen. She asked him where he got off criticizing her family when all that his had ever been good for was losing money and blowing their brains out.'

'And what did Mr Swain say to that?'

'He said, very quiet, that they'd always been able to get the farm back at no matter what cost. Well, he'd got it back and he wasn't going to let it go.'

'Tell me, lass,' said Dalziel in his friendliest tone. 'If he said this very quiet and they were in the house and you were out here, how come you managed to hear?'

'The outside bog freezes up in winter so sometimes I've got to go inside,' she said, meeting his gaze steadily.

'Fair enough. Do you know a man called Waterson, luv?'

'I wouldn't say I know him. He was a customer.'

'What did you make of him?'

'Fancied himself.'

'Did you fancy him?'

'No way.'

'Why not?'

She considered. 'For a start I could tell he didn't fancy me.'

That makes a difference?'

'Dealing with them that does is bad enough without chasing after them as don't,’ she said grimly.

Dalziel grinned. He liked her more and more.

'What about Mrs Swain. Did he fancy her?'

'I told Mr Pascoe that,' she said. 'He tried it on, but I thought she gave him the brush-off.'

'Would it surprise you if she'd taken up with him later?'

'No. I didn't know her well enough to be surprised.'

This was reasonable but not very helpful. Dalziel picked up another line and asked, 'How did Mr Swain get on with Mr Waterson?'

'Not very well.'

He waited for her to expand, but after a few moments she returned her gaze to her book. It was unnerving. She'd made a bargain to answer his questions, but they had to be asked first.

'How do you know?' he asked.

'I saw them quarrelling in the yard.'

'Could you hear what they were saying?' he asked, looking out of the window.

'No. Anyway, after a bit they went into the house.'

He hesitated, baffled. Every end a blank. What were Swain and Waterson rowing about? Had Swain begun to suspect something earlier than he claimed? And what different light could it throw on the events at Hambleton Road if he had?

He must have somehow contrived to look pathetic, for she took pity on him and said in an exasperated tone, 'Do you not want to know what it was about?'

'You said you couldn't hear.'

'I didn't need to. It was about Mr Waterson's account. It hadn't been settled despite me sending reminders. The last one threatened the court.'

'Was it for much?'

'Enough. Mr Swain were having trouble with his overdraft and needed every penny he could get.'

'So how did it end up?'

'They went into the house and Mr Waterson gave Mr Swain a cheque.'

'How do you know?'

'Because Mr Swain came out to me later and handed over the cheque and told me to pay it into the business account.'

There it was. Not a jealous confrontation but a business squabble. All he had to do was ask.

He said, 'So Mr Swain were really strapped for cash till he got this cheque?'

She laughed, full-throated, musical, a sound to draw a man's eyes back after they'd registered and dismissed the square features, the lifeless hair.

'He were still strapped,' she said. 'It came back a week later. Returned to drawer. No funds.'

'It bounced? What happened then?'

She said, 'I gave it to Mr Swain. He said he'd see to it.'

'And did he?'

'Not that I know of. There was nowt in our last statement.'

It could mean a lot, it could mean nowt. Dalziel stored it away and glanced at his watch. He'd been here too long. If Swain caught him now he might get suspicious of this lovely lass and that'd be a shame. Who knows what other answers she might be able to give if Dalziel could only work out the questions?

He said, 'I'll be off now, luv, but I'll be in touch.'

He meant with more questions but when she replied, 'How long?' he saw she didn't. A bargain was a bargain. He thought and said, 'Week at the outside. If you're sure. Sometimes no news is good news.'

'You reckon?' she said, picking up her book once more. This time he glimpsed its title. Anna Karenina. Dalziel's reading was not extensive. Fiction-wise, it was restricted almost entirely to Bulwer Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii which he'd stolen from his honeymoon hotel and read circularly as if it were Finnegans Wake. But Anna Karenina he knew because of the Garbo movie. He'd been more concerned with copping a feel from the buxom lass by his side than watching the elegant shadow on the screen, but he did remember it hadn't been a bundle of laughs.

He said, 'Careful you don't read your brain into train oil, like my old mam always used to say.'

She didn't look up but said, 'Mine says I'll read my life away. I say, why not?'

'There's no answer to that,' said Dalziel as he left.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The station seemed full of solicitors on Dalziel's return, all crying police brutality. A headcount revealed that in fact there were only two, but they had enough sound and fury for a Labour Party Conference. Having ascertained that he was not the object of their wrath and that they had no connection with Messrs Thackeray, etc., Dalziel let himself be filled in by Sergeant Broomfield.

Upstairs in CID he found Pascoe eagerly awaiting his return.

'What's going on, Peter?' the fat man demanded. 'Here's me desperate to establish good community relations and you can't even take a witness statement without assault and battery.'

Pascoe didn't even bother to smile but said impatiently, 'I've just had the lab report on the veterinary samples I recovered from Harry Park. Four of the flea powder cartons contained heroin. That's two thousand grams.'

'What? Why didn't you say, lad? Let's go and kick shit out of the bugger!'

'Talking of shit, we searched Govan's shop and guess what we found down among the lentils?'

'Better and better. What have you done?'

'Everything, I think. Photos, prints, etc. are being faxed everywhere. Drug Squad, Customs have all been put in the picture. Everyone's moving at a hundred miles an hour trying to get as far back along Park's trail as possible before news spreads that we've picked him up.'

'And Park himself?'

'Quiet as the grave. He's scared. And not of us.'

'We'll see about that,' said Dalziel, reaching for the phone.

'Sir,' said Pascoe warningly. 'I really think this one's out of our hands. We've just been asked to keep him on ice till the Drug Squad decides how to play it.'

'He's in our cell, isn't he?' said Dalziel. 'All I want to ask him about is our friend, Waterson. Case in hand, possible unlawful killing, no one can complain about that. And you can fill me in while they're bringing him up.'

Pascoe gave a succinct account of everything that had happened that day and ten minutes later they were sitting opposite Harold Park in an interview room.

Pascoe was expecting Dalziel to attempt to be more frightening than the masters Park so clearly feared, and he wondered uneasily how far the fat man would go. But Dalziel, not for the first time, surprised him.

'Harold Park, isn't it?' he said, smiling. 'How are they treating you, Harry? Have you had something to eat? Coffee? Tea? Smoke?'

'Thanks,' said Park, accepting a cigarette.

'Only tobacco, I'm afraid,' said Dalziel as he lit it.

'That's all I take.'

'Oh, you don't practise what you push, then?' laughed Dalziel. 'Wise man. But you do have a problem, though, I can see that. Drugs are big money and big money has long arms and if you start grassing, one of them long arms can reach right inside the nick and tear your balls off, right? I'm sympathetic. That's why I'm not going to ask you to say anything at all about your set-up. There's others coming as'll do that, but not me. All I want from you is one little minnow, and it's nowt to do with drugs. Just tell me all about Gregory Waterson.'

'Waterson? Why's everyone interested in that wanker?' said Park with what sounded like genuine curiosity. Then sudden suspicion darkened his face. 'Was it him who put you on to me?'

'Don't be stupid,' sighed Dalziel. 'I - could lie and say yes so that you'd get mad and spill all you know about him, but that's not the way I play, Harry. Mr Pascoe here was genuine when he came round to ask you about Waterson. It was just bad luck the way things worked out. If Mr Govan had kept his van in better nick . . .'

'That Scotch idiot! I'll see he gets his.'

'Your privilege, Harry. Meanwhile: Mr Waterson . . .?'

'And what do I get out of it?'

'My gratitude, Harry. That's worth a million to anyone in your shoes. It'll be me who'll be there in court when you're asking for bail, remember that, Harry,' Dalziel lied easily.

'Bail? They'd never give me bail,' said Park. But there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

'They might, if the police weren't all that convincing in opposing it,' said Dalziel, tapping the side of his nose significantly.

Pascoe groaned inwardly at this combination of shaky morality and awful acting. Park considered, shrugged and said, 'All right. I'll tell you what I know. But only you.' He cast an unfriendly eye on Pascoe. 'I'm not making any admissions, you understand that? This has all been a complete misunderstanding.'

'Of course it has,' said Dalziel unctuously. 'Mr Pascoe, why not take a little walk, see if you can rustle up some tea for me and Mr Park. With doughnuts. I like a doughnut and Mr Park I'm sure has a lot in common with me.'

Pascoe left, not without relief. Ten minutes later he returned, bearing a tray with two cups of tea and a plateful of doughnuts. Dalziel took one and bit massively. Sugar glistened on his lips and raspberry jam trickled down his chin.

'Lovely,' he said. 'I sometimes think I'd as lief have a doughnut as a woman. One bang's like any other, but every time you sink your teeth into a doughnut's like the very first time. Now I hope you feel the same, Harry, 'cos where you’re going, there's not much choice, and you only get doughnuts every second Sunday.'

Downing a cup of scalding tea, he led the way out.

'Well?' said Pascoe as they walked along the corridor.

'It's like we thought,' said Dalziel. 'Park's a middleman between the big-time dealers and the small-time pushers. It was Govan that Waterson dealt with, very small time to start with, a few ounces of grass now and then, but eventually getting a bit harder, and when he started asking for more than he needed to feed a personal habit, Govan mentioned him to Park. They met and had a chat in the Sally. Park says he was impressed with Waterson at first. Very laid back, and he gave the impression he had lots of well-heeled contacts. Me, I've just seen Waterson as a snivelling wreck but from what everyone else says, when he's on top of things, he can be very impressive. It took our Harry a wee while to suss out that he was just another wanker who liked to talk big in front of his mates and fancy women. He began to get suspicious when Waterson just seemed to want to go on buying little nibbles, to sample the merchandise, he said. When Park told him to put up some real money or back off, Waterson became all indignant and sure enough he came up with an order worth several thou. What's more, he actually produced the money on time and took delivery at the end of January. No wonder the stupid sod couldn't pay Swain's bill!'

'But what about the profit on pushing the stuff? It should have been five times his investment, minimum.'

'Park knows nowt about that. All he knows is when he next saw Waterson only a week later he was ready to treat him as a serious customer till he realized he was back to buying a few fixes at a time. He was in such a state that at first Park reckoned they must be for himself. But it came out they were for some bird. He wanted to pay the wholesale price rather than the street price and he tried to lean on Park a bit by hinting that if his girl didn't get fixed up, she might start talking. Park wasn't explicit but he seems to have made it clear that if this bird started singing, it'd be Greg who got his neck pulled! After that he didn't see him again till last night, and that was by chance, at least on Park's part. He was in the Sally, having a social drink, he says - and I'm to be Queen of the May, I said - when Waterson came wandering over, all smiles, very much man-of-the-world. He'd had a couple of drinks and was talking expansively of doing some real big business with Park. Harry got out of the place as quickly as possible with his chums, before, as he put it, Waterson's gob could drop him in the shite.'

Pascoe frowned and said, 'I'd have thought he'd have wanted to give Waterson a stiff warning, perhaps even a lesson.'

Dalziel smiled and said, 'And so he did, my boy. But not there in front of witnesses, and not straight after, when he and Waterson had been seen leaving the pub together. No, the lesson was planned for this morning, a couple of Park's mates, mebbe the big lads you saw last night, going round to talk to him while Harry was safely chatting to a vet somewhere in Halifax.'

'Then he got Waterson's address?'

'Of course he got his bloody address. Where the hell do you think we're going?'

He led the way to his car parked on a double yellow just outside the car park. The gatehouse was finished and now the final area of concrete was being laid across the entrance with Arnie Stringer supervising the work.

'Nearly done, are you?' bellowed Dalziel.

'Aye. Tomorrow we'll clear up and that's it.'

'Not before time. More tea-breaks than the Queen Mother, you lot. I'd like a word about your son-in-law, Tony Appleyard, some time.'

Stringer looked as if the Angel Gabriel had just announced his pregnancy over a tannoy. He came as close as he could without treading wet concrete.

'What about him?' he grated.

'Don't take on. Social Security inquiry, uniformed's job really, but as I was out at Moscow today I said I'd ask your girl, and she said she'd no idea where he was, but you'd gone south in January to look for him.'

'Did she now? Then likely she told you I didn't find him.'

'That's right. I just wondered if you got any clue where he might have gone?'

'Do you not think I'd have gone after him if I had?' demanded Stringer.

'Come on, Arnie. It sticks out a mile you didn't much like the lad,' said Dalziel insinuatingly. 'Can't blame you, getting your lass into trouble like that, then buggering off south. In your shoes, even if I did find him, I might be tempted to squeeze his goolies and tell him to stay down there among the yuppies. You can tell me, man. It'll go no further.'

Pascoe could see what the fat man was doing. There was little chance that Stringer was going to accept a genuine invitation to confide, so Dalziel was couching his pseudo-invitation in terms calculated to get under the other's skin. It certainly worked.

'No wonder the country's falling apart with things like you in charge of the law,' sneered Stringer. 'Seems like none of you have owt better to do than stand around here sticking your noses into other people's private business. There's drug-pushers out there, and muggers, and football hooligans, and child-molesters, and all the hordes of Gideon, and what are you two doing about it?'

'Well, thanks for the warning,' said Dalziel gravely. 'Watch your back for prowling Sodomites!'

He walked away with Pascoe at his heel.

'What was all that about?' he asked as he put on his seat-belt.

'Private business,' said Dalziel. 'Talking of football hooligans, I've not heard of many arrests. Throwing buggers off trains in Cambridgeshire's one thing. Duffing up landlords on my patch is getting serious!'

'Come on,' said Pascoe indignantly. 'I've had the lads doing what they can but that's not much. The only way you get anywhere with something like this is getting an undercover team into the gangs. That's a big operation, and the way things have gone in court recently, it's damned hard to get a result.'

'I only asked, lad. No need to get touchy,' said Dalziel. 'I've noticed you've been very sensitive since you got back. Still taking the tablets, are you?'

Pascoe did not rise to the provocation but asked brightly, 'Am I allowed to know where we're going, sir?'

'Messing about on a boat, lad. Hope you don't get seasick.'

'Not the Bluebell?' said Pascoe in disappointment. 'I told you I went down to Bulmer's Wharf and it wasn't there. Didn't you listen?'

'Aye. Thing is, you didn't ask hard enough or look far enough. Get that map out of the glove compartment. Now follow the cut out of town about half a mile north. It goes under an unclassified road near a place called Badger Farm, right?

That's where we'll find the Bluebell, Chief Inspector. And once aboard the lugger, Mr Gregory fucking Waterson is mine!'

Dalziel was half right. After no more than two misdirections they found the bridge, humped high to give maximum clearance to the canal traffic beneath. Evening was drawing on fast, the last rays of a cold-eyed sun turning the water into a mockery of a yellow-brick road and the black furrows of the huge field bordering the canal into a desolate seascape. The tow-path was puddled and muddy here, the bank crumbling and overgrown. The only sign of habitation was Badger Farm a couple of furlongs away, black against the skyline with a narrow skein of smoke rising from a lanky chimney stack as though its owner were burning one stick at a time.

It was not a place of obvious attraction to the pleasure craft which were the canal's main users these days, but moored almost under the bridge was a dilapidated boat on whose bow it was just possible to discern the word Bluebell.

But there Dalziel's Tightness ended. Even to the landsman's eye the boat had the look of a deserted and vandalized house, and when Pascoe scrambled awkwardly on board, he realized quickly he had been right in both particulars.

'Jesus Christ,' said Dalziel, who had followed him with shame-making nimbleness.

Everything in the tiny cabin that could be broken had been broken. Smashed crockery lay among torn clothes and splintered wood from the destroyed bunk. A pair of waist-length waders, gashed with a knife, had been laid like a corpse across the debris and the contents of a chemical lavatory emptied over the lot.

'Harry Park's lesson?' wondered Pascoe.

'Aye. But where are Waterson and this Beverley King, that's the question?'

Pascoe looked over the side into the black water. The canal ran straight and dark and deep here.

'I don't think so,' said Dalziel at his side.

'No,' said Pascoe. 'On the other hand . . .'

'We'll have to look.' Dalziel sighed and leaned his head back to scratch beneath his chin. High above, a trio of unidentifiable birds beat silently across the darkening sky. He shuddered gelatinously.

'Cold, sir?' asked Pascoe.

'No, lad. It's just that I prefer my ceilings no more than four feet over my head and preferably nicely browned with nicotine. Come on. Let's get back to civilization before the vampire bats come out to play!'

CHAPTER NINE

Seal-like, the police frogmen disported themselves in the canal's murky waters by the corpse light of a grey dawn. A broken wheelbarrow they brought up, a tractor tyre and half a scythe, plus sundry tins, jars, bottles, boxes, all suggestive of a systematic dumping of household detritus from the bridge. But the nearest they came to bodies was a fertilizer bag containing six drowned kittens.

The tenant of Badger Farm turned out to be as stingy with words as he was with fuel till Dalziel's threat of RSPCA and Environmental Health inspectors touched a lingual nerve. Then he recalled noting Bluebell's arrival some four weeks earlier. He kept a close eye on it for a while, suspicious that it should remain so long in such an unattractive mooring. But once assured that its sole occupants were a man and a woman with no kids, no dogs, and no desire to trespass on his land and bother him for milk, eggs or fresh water, he'd lost interest. He was a man of no curiosity and less sympathy. He remarked that he'd spotted the man wading around in the canal a couple of times with what he assumed was a fishing rod . . . 'though what the stupid sod was looking to catch, God alone knows. There's been no fish in that cut since the First War.'

'You likely pointed this out?' said Dalziel.

'Nay! Let folk find out their own errors, that's my way.'

It seemed a not unattractive philosophy, so Dalziel did not tell the farmer that he'd set the RSPCA and Environmental Health people onto him anyway.

Harry Park, given another sniff at the carrot of possible bail, came up with the address of an associate who might possibly have called on Waterson the morning after the meeting in the Sally. This man denied everything till Dalziel made him an offer he couldn't refuse, which Pascoe, who had come to recognize the signs, only just managed not to hear. Then he admitted he and his mate, Park's companions in the Sally, had called on Waterson with a view to persuading him that his sole hope of a happy future was total amnesia and he'd better not forget it. Finding the boat deserted, they had left a message to this effect.

'It's pretty clear what happened,' said Pascoe. 'Waterson must have spotted Wieldy that night, headed back to the boat, rousted out Beverley King and made off into the wild blue yonder.'

'You reckon?' said Dalziel. 'Likely you're right. Check out her parents' house in Monksley. Waterson doesn't sound the type to saddle himself with a woman once she'd stopped being useful and mebbe the lass has headed for home by herself.'

She hadn’t. Her parents who applied the epithet god-fearing to themselves five times in as many minutes, said they hadn't seen their daughter since the second Sunday in February when they'd had what sounded like the usual quarrel about money and lifestyle. The Kings showed some natural concern, though not a lot, and expressed the opinion that her sojourn in London had left her irremediably tainted. Recalling what Peter Coombes had said to him about her return north, Pascoe caused inquiry to be made at Chester Belcourt. The reply came very promptly, mainly because within thirty minutes of the Met ringing the firm to ask if someone could give them any information about Miss King, a middle-aged director with a wife and three children in Sevenoaks was round at the local station offering to cooperate fully in return for the utmost discretion. That he had been screwing Beverley King on a regular basis he did not seem to find at all reprehensible. Moral revulsion only appeared in his tone when he described his shock at finding her shooting up in a hotel bathroom prior to one of their sessions. Ultimately he had come to believe that it was in the best interests of both the girl and the company if she returned to the bosom of her family in the North. The sincerity of this belief was underlined by the large personal severance payment he made her and by his carefully worded letter of recommendation for future employment in Mid-Yorkshire.

'So. Another druggie,’ said Pascoe. 'Waterson seems to collect them.'

'If you bed down with foxes you'll end up with fleas,’ declared Dalziel, managing to make it sound like an old country saw, though Pascoe had his doubts. 'But it don't take us much further forward.'

'It's another piece in the puzzle, sir,' said Pascoe with a noble attempt at optimism.

Wield provided one more piece on his return the following day. Despite Dalziel's slanderous allegations, he looked terrible and Pascoe tried to urge him back to bed. They settled on a compromise which kept the sergeant safely seated at his desk, catching up with routine paperwork. There was no keeping his mind at rest, however, and half way through the morning he came into Pascoe's room.

'I got to thinking,' he said. 'Waterson's file, I studied it pretty closely, seeing it was me that lost him in the first place. I've been looking at the update and something struck me. That time he got done for taking off when the patrol car flashed him to stop, that was January thirtieth. Park doesn't give an exact date for that big deal he did with him, but he says it was the end of January. Suppose it was the same day?'

'Explain,' said Pascoe.

'He's driving home with a parcel full of dope. We flash him. He panics - that sounds in character. They pick him up half an hour later. He's all apologetic. He's also here.'

He pointed at a location to the north of the city on Pascoe's wall map.

'And he was flashed here, about two miles away. Now the car lads reported he took off along the bypass, so let's suppose he cut off here, took this fork, see where it'd take him?'

'Past Badger Farm,' said Pascoe.

'Right. He stops on the bridge. He's really on the boil. No lights in sight, but he doesn't know the moment when they'll appear, and they've probably got his number anyway. So what does a man who loses control like Waterson do now?'

'Tosses his parcel over the parapet into the canal, you mean? Why not just hide it in a ditch?'

'That'd be the sensible thing to do, but he's not got much talent for doing sensible things, has he?' said Wield. 'And a couple of days later Bluebell moves from Bulmer's Wharf to the bridge near Badger Farm.'

'And Waterson spends a lot of time wading around with a pole! Wieldy, you could be a genius. Let's see if we can find out!'

He picked up the phone and dialled.

'Joe, it's Peter Pascoe. All that rubbish your lads trawled up yesterday, what happened to it?'

He listened, replaced the receiver.

'We're in luck. They wanted to dump it back in the cut but Joe's got an environmental conscience and he made them stick it in rubbish bags and leave it at the farm for the bin man to collect.'

'We'd best get a move on, then,' said Wield, rising.

'I thought we'd agreed you were staying indoors today?'

'Not if I'm going to be a genius,' said Wield. 'You know what he thinks of geniuses.'

Pascoe laughed.

'All right. But don't blame me if you catch typhoid.'

Half an hour later, watched by the puzzled and suspicious tenant of Badger Farm, they began emptying the plastic rubbish bags. What precisely they were looking for Pascoe didn't know, but he saw it almost at once. A cardboard cylinder on whose water-stained and faded label he could just make out the words Romany Rye Veterinary Products.

He opened it. Inside was a sealed plastic lining protecting about 500 grams of white powder. He pulled it open and tasted it gingerly.

'No wonder fleas hop so high,' he said.

They found three other containers and the frogmen were re-summoned to check for more. Wield wore his genius status modestly till Dalziel appeared to remind him modesty was no defence.

'So now we know why he got the lass to move the boat down here,' he growled. 'So what? It still doesn't move us much further forward.'

'It gives us a lot more clout in getting resources allocated to finding them,' protested Pascoe.

Dalziel shook his head more in sorrow than in anger. Had he taught this boy nothing? You didn't leave some faceless twat to decide what was important. You made up your own mind, and resources were then allocated not on the basis of argued priorities but by gentle vibrations sent out across a web of owed favours, or if that failed, by a not so gentle rattling of cupboarded skeletons. Appleyard, for instance, wouldn't even register on a scale of official priorities. But there was a Chief Superintendent in the Met who'd never have made it past constable if Dalziel hadn't lied him out of a gross indecency charge after a rugby team booze-up a couple of decades before. And there was a Mid-Yorks DHSS chief whose wife had tried to carve her own exit out of the car park after Ladies Night at the Gents. He did not doubt he would be able to deliver the errant husband to Shirley Appleyard within the promised week.

As for Waterson, no need to call in favours here and even less to throw up road blocks and alert airports! Flushed out of his lair, short of cash, and with a deprived druggy in tow, how could a man with his track record avoid drawing attention to himself? A week was too long for him. Dalziel gave him three days, four at the most.

Eight days later both his certainties were beginning to feel slightly worn, and when Dan Trimble summoned him, he knew he was like a batsman walking out, unhelmeted and boxless, to face the West Indian attack.

It started with a head-high bouncer.

'Tell me, Andy,' said the Chief Constable. 'Is there any reason I should keep on being showered with shit because I won't close the Swain case?'

'Once I get hold of Waterson . . .'

'Waterson! You're no nearer finding him, are you? And even if you do and he sticks to his statement, he's going to be no use whatsoever to you, is he? Well, is he!'

The best answer Dalziel could manage was a neutral grunt. He'd played the drug connection for all it was worth to keep the Swain case open, suggesting that Swain could have used it to blackmail Waterson into a conspiracy. No one was convinced. Even Swain's laughter when Dalziel put the thesis to him had rung genuine and Thackeray had made yet another sonorous complaint of harassment to the Chief Constable.

'So we're where we were at the beginning,' said Trimble heavily. 'All right, Andy, I'll spell it out. I'm informing the coroner that the Swain inquest can be reopened. I do not doubt what the verdict will be. And that will be the end of it, Andy. No more harassment of Mr Swain. Do you understand me? And in the meantime you will do and say nothing which Eden Thackeray can interpret as even hinting a suspicion that Philip Swain might have been responsible for his wife's death.'

Dalziel said, 'I'm not sure what -' but Trimble cut right across him.

'Andy, you'd better hear this and hear it well. In matters recreational, you may choose to ignore my advice and go ahead and make a fool of yourself. I don't like it, but I'm not going to match your foolishness by making a public spectacle of myself in openly trying to forbid you.'

He paused to draw in breath. For a small man he was pretty impressive, admitted Dalziel.

He resumed. 'But I'm not giving you advice here. As your superior I'm giving you a direct order. And I assure you, failure to obey my direct orders will result in instant suspension. Is that understood?'

'Yes, sir. Suspension, sir. By what, sir?'

Trimble smiled sadly.

'By the book, Andy. Which, though you may not believe it, can be a lot more painful than by the balls. That will be all for now.'

So. Dismissed from the presence without a sniff of the Caledonian nectar.

'Right, sir. Thank you,' said Dalziel, rising. 'Going to the ball, sir?'

It was the night of the Mayor's Hospice Appeal Ball.

'Indeed I am,' said Trimble. 'A man in my position can hardly afford to miss what I gather is the county's premier social occasion. And you?'

'Oh aye. They let the lower orders in too,' said Dalziel. 'I'll save you a dance mebbe.'

'How kind,' murmured Trimble. 'I'm sure that you'll do a lovely Dashing White Sergeant. Especially if you don't take care.'

It was the ultimate degradation. Yorked by a Cornishman! No point in even bothering to look at the umpire. Slowly, sadly, Dalziel walked away.

CHAPTER TEN

Trimble was right. Despite the competing claims of the Liberal Club's Barn dance, the Rugby Club's Barbecue, and the Federation of Working Men's Clubs' Festival of Brass, the Mayor's Hospice Appeal Ball was Mid-Yorkshire's most scintillating social occasion.

Nobody with pretensions to rank, power, charitable works, social concern or high fashion could afford to be absent.

True, to underline its democratic appeal, the tickets stated Dress Optional, and Peter Pascoe, unable to resist his wife's anti-elitist arguments, had come along in his charcoal grey flannel suit, only to be dazzled on all sides by frothy shirt fronts, bow ties like butterflies, and cummerbunds of every colour in the TV test-card. Nor were his drab feathers smoothed by his awareness that Ellie's egalitarian principles had not prevented her from investing in an off-the-shoulder and just-on-the-bosom blue silk gown in a style which Princess Di had made fashionable only a week before.

But even Ellie was upstaged by Dalziel's entrance. Immaculate in a d.j. of the latest cut, with heliographic shoes, and diamond studs glinting like ice in his snow-white shirt, he was a fitting foil for his companion. Though in truth she needed no foil. It was Chung, the Occident in her birth suppressed and the Orient given full sway. She wore a cheong-sam in green and yellow silk around which a bejewelled dragon caressed her sinuous body. The split up the side started at her ankle and seemed as if it went on for ever. At every stride, strong men gasped, and strong women ground their teeth in blase smiles.

'Down, boy,' Ellie murmured in Pascoe's ear.

He grinned, divided in admiration between Chung's beauty and Dalziel's aplomb as he blew a kiss to the Lady Mayor and called out cheerfully, 'What fettle, Joe?' to the Lord Bishop, before settling himself and his partner at a table shared with Trimble and Eden Thackeray among others.

'Now that's what I call an odd couple,' said one of Ellie's politico-academic chums who made up the eight-place table, Ellie having pre-conditioned an evening free from constabulary conversation. 'Beauty and the Beast aren't in it!'

'Not odd at all,' corrected someone else. 'After all, where there's pork, you generally find crackling.'

There was a noise like the thud of a toe against a shin and the speaker let out a cry of pain. The age of diplomacy was not dead, thought Pascoe. Then he caught Ellie's eye and saw her lid droop in a conspiratorial wink and knew that the kick had after all been punitive not cautionary. He smiled back but he could fight his own battles. Turning to the kicked man whose Ph.D. thesis on medieval crop rotation he knew had just been referred for the second time, he said, 'Those gardening notes you've been working on, got anyone interested yet?'

Academics are naturally cannibalistic and this taste of their own blood put the rest of the table in the best of humours and the evening thereafter went with a bang. Everything was as it should be on such a splendid public occasion. The drink prices were exorbitant, the band played like a committee, and the buffet was as glorious to the sight as it was tasteless to the palate.

Midway through the evening, there was a charity auction of items donated by various 'personalities'. Bidding was particularly brisk for a Yorkshire cap presented by the county's greatest post-war cricketer, but silence fell after a voice jumped the offer from £550 to a thousand.

'No advance?' inquired the auctioneer. 'Then sold to Mr Philip Swain!'

Pascoe followed his gesture and for the first time saw Swain. Whatever Dalziel's threats and Picardy's hopes, locally his credit must once more be good. He looked relaxed and at his ease as he accepted the congratulations of those at his table. Pascoe could put names to most of them except one young woman, good-looking in a heavy-featured way, who looked familiar but defied identification till he spotted Arnie Stringer beside her. It was Shirley Appleyard. She didn't look as if she were enjoying herself very much. As he watched, she rose and moved across the ballroom till she reached Dalziel's table. She caught Dalziel's attention, he got up and moved aside with her a little way, they talked, then both went back to their seats.

'Very interesting,' Pascoe said half to himself.

'What?' said Ellie.

'What some people will pay for a second-hand hat,' he answered vaguely.

'Second-head, you mean, surely,' said a would- be wit.

'Which would you prefer, a second head or a second cock?' interposed another.

'Depends if you're buying or selling.'

They could spin skeins of this pedantic waggery. Pascoe excused himself and went to the loo. As he came out, he walked into a very English low-voiced, high-keyed scene. A woman, whom he recognized as Mrs Horncastle, must have just emerged from the Ladies to find her husband waiting to intercept her.

'But it's so early,' she was protesting. 'And you agreed yourself it was a good cause.'

'I'm not sure if the end altogether justifies the means,' said the Canon. 'In any case, I feel we have done our duty. Our presence will have been noted.'

'So will our departure,' she replied. 'I can't possibly leave without saying goodbye to the people on our table.'

'I have made the farewells for both of us,' said the Canon.

At this point he became aware of Pascoe's presence and glared at him indignantly. Pascoe smiled back and said, 'Good evening, Canon, Mrs Horncastle. It's going rather well, I think. Perhaps we can have a dance later, Mrs Horncastle.'

She smiled pallidly and he left them to their synod.

Back in the ballroom the dancing had started again and the first thing he saw was Dalziel doing a nifty quickstep with Chung. The second was Ellie in the close clutches of the mediaeval vegetable man. Before he could analyse what he felt about either of these conjunctions, a bleeper went off. It said much for the atonality of the band that at first no one noticed. Then all eyes focused on a stationary couple, one of whom was fishing angrily through his pockets. It was Dr Ellison Marwood, and his partner was Pamela Waterson. The bleeper was found and switched off. He spoke apologetically to the woman. Pascoe walked over to them and said, 'Duty calling, Dr Marwood? I know the feeling. Don't worry about Mrs Waterson. I'll take over while you find a phone.'

'You' re too kind,' said Marwood satirically. 'I'll get back soon as I can, Pam. Sorry.'

She came into his arms and danced lifelessly till the quickstep ended. A ripple of applause was enough to send the band off into a tango.

'Do you?' said Pascoe.

'Not if I can help it. You haven't found him, then?'

'No. You haven't heard anything, I suppose?'

'No. I don't think I will. I think he's dead.'

'Good lord, no need to talk like that,' said Pascoe, genuinely shocked. 'He'll turn up just now, believe me.'

'I don't think so,' she said. She spoke without emotion but, as last time he spoke to her, he got that sense of black despair not far beneath the surface.

Could it be the kind of despair which would make her write letters to a stranger? He hadn't forgotten the letter-writer's hints that she would be here tonight, but it had hardly seemed worth exercising his mind on. There were getting on for two hundred women here, all wearing their most public faces. What hope of penetrating to the pain beneath that cosmetic finery?

Now here was someone who didn't, or couldn't, keep it hidden. Would a direct question surprise an honest answer? And how would he know? To ask would be to warn. Better to watch and ward.

He escorted her back to her table which seemed mainly medical. When he returned to his own, he found Ellie had just abandoned the fray, limping heavily. The vegetable man was most apologetic, but there was a glint in his eye which made Pascoe wonder if after all he had identified the toe which cracked his shin.

On the dance floor Dalziel and Chung swept from side to side in what should have been a parody of a Valentino tango but somehow wasn't. As if inspired by their togetherness the band was playing almost in tune.

'It's like the last night of the Titanic,' someone opined above the swelling music.

'Or the Waterloo ball,’ suggested another.

They could be right, thought Pascoe. Except that the silent icebergs and the blazing cannon were not external but had probably been brought right into the middle of this merry rout in the minds and the hearts of some of the revellers. Oh Christ. Two glasses of anti-freeze and his mind was turning purple!

He felt Ellie's gaze on him.

'Penny for them?' she said.

'I was just wondering if you'd ever play football again,' he said.

The tango ended and the band stuttered into an old-fashioned waltz.

'Try me,' said Ellie, rising.

They did a couple of circuits without talking. Then Pascoe felt a tap on his shoulder.

'Excuse me,' said Dalziel, a gigolo grin scimitaring his face. 'Man with a wooden leg can't be satisfying a lovely mover like this.'

'Fuck off,' said Pascoe amiably.

They waltzed away. Ellie's arms were round his neck pulling him close.

'That's the nicest thing I've heard tonight,' she said. 'I love you.’ ‘Me too.'

'So why don't we practise what you preach?'

'Eh?'

'I mean fuck off.'

They stole away without fuss. How simple life could be sometimes, thought Pascoe. All you had to do was walk away from the Titanic.

As long as you were aware, of course, that you might be stumbling into the Battle of Waterloo.

part five

Lucifer: Me needs not of noy for to neven, All wealth in my wield have I wielding; Above yet shall I be bielding, On height in the highest of heaven.

There shall I set myself full seemly to sight, To receive my reverence through right of renown;I shall be like unto him that is highest on height.Oh, what I am dearworth and deft - oh deuce! all goes down!

The York Cycle:

The Fall of the Angels'

April 3rd

Dear Mr Dalziel,

It's been a long time, more than a month. Did you think I'd given up the idea? Or perhaps simply gone off quietly and done it? I don't suppose you'd much care which as long as I was out of your hair! Don't think I'm complaining. It was your likely indifference I chose you for in the first place, remember? The last thing I want is for the Great Detective to actually set about tracking me down! Of course, even though I'm beneath your notice, you might fob me off on to one of your underlings. That bothers me a bit. I shouldn't like to think that someone who actually cares might end up picking up the pieces, particularly if I opted for something messy like jumping under a train. Now what put that idea into my head? Perhaps because it's St Pancras' day? Wrong St Pancras, I think, so no need to send your minions rushing off to the station!

I'm rambling. Sorry. Just because it's a ramshackle meaningless world we live in doesn't mean we should give up control of our own thoughts. What I'm saying is I don't want to add to all the misery on offer, so keep me clear of the sensitive plants if you can.

It was good to see you enjoying yourself at the ball last month, by the way, even though you didn't ask me to dance! The Hospice Fund must have done well. I felt so unselfish, knowing I couldn't personally benefit from it. And at the same time I felt like standing up and saying, no need to waste your money, I can teach you how to die! But that would have been a dead giveaway, wouldn't it? And I mustn't make life easy for you. Though come to think of it, it might be nice if I could. I owe you something for laying all my troubles on you like this. It would really please me if I could compensate for dropping one insoluble problem in your lap by helping you out with another. The coroner wasn't very kind to you the other day, was he? And by all accounts you weren't very happy with him. Naturally I can hardly hope to succeed where the Great Detective has failed, but I promise I'll keep my ears open.

It will give me something useful to do during the countdown.

CHAPTER ONE

It had been a mistake to play God.

Especially when you'd solved the old paradox: if God created everything, who created God?

The answer was Chung. And Chung the creator was very different from Chung the malt whisky drinker, or Chung the last tangoist.

Rehearsals at ground level had been demanding enough both of time and energy. But it was his first sight of a pageant wagon that brought matters to a head.

'I'm not going up that,' proclaimed Dalziel. 'Not even if you fit me with crampons.'

That was a narrow ladder up the back of a triple decker stage mounted on a flat-car. The lower deck represented hell, the middle earth, and the upper heaven. And over the upper deck, perched amid polystyrene clouds, was a tiny platform for the maker unmade, the mover unmoved, God Almighty, Andrew Dalziel.

'Come on, Andy,' said Chung. 'The frame's really secure. And there's a safety harness.'