Deadheads

13

Andrew Dalziel was bored. His personal opinion was that if God had wanted policemen to attend conferences, He'd have fitted chairs on their backsides, and probably tongues as well.

Saturday, the opening day of the Conference, had been all right. There'd been old friends to greet, stories to exchange, drinks to be drunk. But after a Sabbath full of lectures and seminars, Dalziel was ready to join the Lord's Day Observance Society.

On Monday morning he had set out early from his hotel with a tattered old A-Z street map and found his way to Denbigh Square. He'd noted down Penelope Highsmith's address from Pascoe's file, not with any firm intention of doing anything about it, but more intuitively, in case he should feel like doing anything about it. Woodfall House proved to be a tall old building within hearing distance of Victoria Station. He studied the names under the glass panel on the portico, then turned away and headed for the Yard.

He was late, winning a couple of reproving glances. Lunch-time saw him back in Denbigh Square, but the entrance to Woodfall House only opened once and that was to admit an old man with a dog.

The reproving glances were black looks when he returned late for the afternoon session. An address on policing racially mixed communities given by a black Captain from Miami was followed by an open discussion. Dalziel joined in vigorously, doubting whether the American experience had much relevance in the UK.

'Over here,' he said, 'we're told that what we need is more blacks in the police force. Now, mebbe that's right for us, I don't know. But if it is, we'll have to use 'em differently from you lot, won't we? I mean, your police forces seem to be jammed full of blacks from what I see on the telly, but you still leave us standing for racial violence!'

There were chuckles from the groundlings, glowers from the brass. The American said, 'Excuse me, sir, but do you have much experience of racial tension in your particular area?'

'Only when there's a London team visiting,' said Dalziel. The chucklers laughed and the glowerers mouthed his name to each other and made notes.

As soon as the session finished, Dalziel was off before he could be caught. This time he was in luck. As he arrived in Denbigh Square, a taxi pulled up outside Woodfall House and a woman got out. Dalziel recognized her instantly. Mentally he'd been adding a decade and a half to his remembered image, but this tall elegant woman in clinging cords and a light cotton jacket seemed hardly to have changed at all. Even her irrepressibly curly hair was as richly black as ever. She chatted pleasantly with the taxi-driver as she paid him, then ran lightly up the steps.

Dalziel strolled slowly by, paused as though his attention had been caught by something and looked uncertainly at the woman unlocking the street door. She, attracted by his still presence, returned his gaze queryingly.

'Penny?' said Dalziel. 'It's never Penny Highsmith is it?'

'That's right,' said the woman. 'Who the hell are you?'

'Andy Dalziel,' he said. 'You probably don't recall. When you were living up in Yorkshire, you used to come down to the rugby club some Saturday nights. Andy Dalziel. We met at the rugby club.'

'Andy Dalziel? Oh God, I remember! You were a copper, weren't you? Andy Dalziel! Crikey, you've put on a bit of weight.'

'Just a bit,' said Dalziel advancing up the steps, smiling. 'You've hardly changed a bit, though. Soon as I saw you I thought, That's Penny Highsmith or her double. How're you doing?'

He extended his hand. She took it uncertainly and he shook hers energetically.

'Well, well,' he said, it's a small world. A small world.'

'Yes,' she said. 'I suppose it is.'

She stood with the key in the door, but she showed no inclination to invite him in. He remembered her as a generous, easy-going woman, but life in London was enough to rub the fine edge off anyone's sense of hospitality.

'I'm down here for a conference at the Yard,' he explained.

'The Yard?'

'Scotland Yard.'

'Oh, you're still a copper then. I thought they all retired at forty.'

'Not quite,' he said. 'And you. What're you doing?'

'Oh, this and that,' she said vaguely.

'Grand,' he beamed. 'Well, I'll tell 'em all at the club I saw you. I'd best be off. I'm just on my way back to my hotel. Usually there's a pot of tea going about now. Cheerioh then.'

He shook her hand again and turned away. If she didn’t call him back by the third step, he'd have to think again.

It was on the fourth step that she said, 'Look, if you've got a moment, why not come up and have a cuppa with me?'

'Now that's nice of you,' he said, turning. 'As long as it's no bother. That would be really nice.'

The flat was comfortable without being luxurious, the flat of an active woman who expected to spend more time out of it than in.

Dalziel relaxed in a deep armchair and watched Penny Highsmith bustling around making the tea. Minus her jacket, her generous figure showed to even greater advantage beneath a translucent silk blouse with a high collar which concealed any giveaway wrinkling of the neck. Certainly there was precious little else which put her in her mid-fifties rather than early forties. It wasn't fair, thought Dalziel. Men were supposed to age gracefully, but the same years which had merely rounded Penny's bust had positively billowed his belly.

Still, he wasn't here to seduce her, though once upon a time, once upon a time. .

There'd been a dance in the clubhouse. It had been the usual thrash with the beer as important as the dancing. He'd hardly moved away from the bar except to go to the Gents. It was as he returned from such a visit that he ran into Penny Highsmith coming out of the Ladies. Distantly a smoochy slow waltz had begun to play. He had danced her along the corridor, then through the door which led to the changing-rooms. There in the darkness in an atmosphere laced with the perfume of liniment and sweat they had embraced passionately and there had been little resistance to his investigating fumbles, till all at once a cry went up outside, 'Andy! Andy Dalziel. Where the hell is he? Andy! They want you back at the cop-shop, chop-chop!' He'd been willing to go on, but Penny had whispered, 'No, they'll be coming in here next. Later. There'll be another time.'

There never had been. The demands of his job had not only destroyed his marriage, he thought bitterly; they had destroyed a lot of his chances of a bit on the side too.

'Here. You once nearly screwed me in the changing-room, didn't you?'

Her voice, intersecting so neatly with his thoughts, made him start guiltily as though he'd been thinking aloud.

She put a tray down before him and sat on a low pouffé beside his chair.

'Sorry. Did I shock you?' she said. 'I didn't know you could shock cops.'

She grinned at him. The grin brought her back completely as she'd been then. Lively, easy-going but with a mind of her own, capable, independent, pleasure-loving, undemanding herself and refusing to be tied down by others. And very, very attractive.

'Not shocked,' he said. 'Just regretful. By God, you've weathered well, Penny Highsmith!'

'You've filled out,' she said. 'And the booze and the late nights have left a few high-tide marks I can see. But you still look basically the same, Andy Dalziel. Hard, fast, and brutish!'

She laughed to take the sting out of her comment. Dalziel laughed too. He felt it as a compliment.

'You went away,' he said. 'One moment there, next gone.'

'It wasn't quite as quick as that,' she said. 'I was always going to go. Yorkshire was all right, but I missed being down here. I only went up for a few weeks to look after my Aunt Florence in the first place. Then she died and I got the house and the money. Well, I got it eventually. And by the time all that was settled, my boy was at school. He liked it there. I suppose we'd led a rather unsettling life before that. Anyway it seemed a shame to disturb him, so I settled down to it for a few years. But a few years was more than enough, begging your pardon. Help yourself to tea. I'm not very domesticated, I'm afraid.'

Dalziel obeyed, restricting himself to his dietary two heaped spoonfuls of sugar.

'You never married then?' he said.

'No. Why should I?'

'Good-looking lass like you, you must've had offers,' he said.

'Oh, yes.' She grinned. 'When you stop getting offers you know the auction's ended. Then it's going, going, gone! No, I always liked my independence. Most people do, you know, only they're not certain they can manage it. I was lucky that way. I had Patrick young and I brought him up by myself, so I learned all about being independent. It was hard at times, but it was a lesson worth learning.'

'Patrick. That's your boy?' said Dalziel, sipping his tea.

'Boy! He's been fully grown longer than I care to think.'

'Still living up our way, is he? Or did he move too?'

'No, he's still in the old house,' said Penny. 'He's really crazy about that place, always has been. I think it'd take dynamite to shift him.'

'Do you get up there to see him at all?'

'Not much,' said Penny. She eyed him shrewdly and added, 'Why so interested?'

Dalziel usually preferred frontal attack to creeping about the bushes but he sensed that he was going to do more good by stealth here than by confrontation.

He winked lecherously and said, 'Just wondering if you'd fancy a sentimental rendezvous in yon changing-room, that's all.'

She let out a good honest laugh. That was another thing he'd liked about her. She wasn't one of your parakeet screechers.

'No,' she resumed. 'I'm never up long enough for that. Just the odd weekend, see the kids. He's married now, Patrick. He married a vicar's daughter, ultra-respectable you see, to make up for his wicked old mama! She's a nice girl. I'm made very welcome, but a couple of nights is enough. I don't know how I stuck it in that great barn of a place for so long.'

'Is it that big?'

She considered.

'Not really, I suppose. Half a dozen bedrooms. Absurd for just two people, and it'd need quite a family to fill it. But there's nothing outside. Just that huge bloody garden. Garden! More like a park. And when you get out of that you're in fields and woods and things. It must be a good mile to the next house.'

'I'm surprised you didn't sell it,' said Dalziel, pouring himself more tea.

'Oh, I did. Well, nearly. I did the right thing, timed it nicely so that Patrick would have finished his "O" levels. That seemed a good time to make the break. He was talking about going into accountancy and it seemed to me he could carry on his studies as easily down here as up there. But it didn't work out.'

She glanced at her watch. Dalziel, untypically sensitive, weighed up the merits of carrying on now or trying to resume later. The latter was a gamble. If she turned him down, it'd be difficult to resume this oblique interrogation here and now without looking very suspicious. On the other hand, the easing effect of a few drinks might work wonders. And he discovered in himself a genuine desire to see Penny Highsmith again at a personal level.

‘I’m holding you back,' he said, levering himself out of the chair. 'I was wondering if I could see you again. It'd be grand to have a proper crack, and besides, us country bumpkins need someone to show us round the bright lights and make sure we don't get ripped off.'

'Ripped off? You!' she mocked. 'It'd be like ripping off concrete paving!'

'I'm all soft underneath,' he grinned. 'Well?'

She hesitated.

'Look, I'm tied up tonight,' she said, in fact, I'm pretty busy all this week.'

Shit, he thought. I should've sat tight.

'But I can manage Friday if that's any good?'

He thought rapidly. This was the last night of the conference. There was a farewell banquet which meant lots of tedious speeches. The guest of honour was some superannuated judge talking about modern interpretations of the law. God, he'd wasted more time in his job listening to them boring old farts rambling on than he'd had hot dinners, and a combination of both didn't appeal.

'That'll be grand,' he said. 'Eight o'clock suit? Right. And why don't you book us in somewhere nice and cosy to eat to start with? If you leave it to me, you'll likely end up in a chippy!'

At the door he paused. One more question, perhaps his last. It'd be easy enough for her to change her mind on mature reflection and leave a message for him at the Yard, cancelling the date.

'You never said why you didn't sell that house,' he said. 'Couldn't you find a buyer?'

'No, it wasn't that. I found a buyer all right. It was all settled bar the exchange of contracts.'

'And?' prompted Dalziel.

'He died,' said Penelope Highsmith.