Death Comes for the Fat Man

4

By the end of his second day in Manchester, Peter Pascoe had had enough.

During the initial video show and briefing, he’d felt he was on the front line. But on arrival at the Lubyanka early the next morning, he’d been directed to a stuffy cellar where two agents who, at first sight, looked young enough to be students on Work Experience had invited him to join them in trawling through Intelligence files in search of anything that might link to this self-styled new Order of Templar Knights.

By the end of the first day, he had reached several conclusions.

Firstly, his new colleagues were not quite as young as they looked, with the one called Tim (dark haired, medium build, with a round rather melancholy face) senior to the one called Rod (blond, blue-eyed, slim, with a fresh lively face which readily broke into a smile). Secondly, though apparently rather lighthearted in their approach to their work, in fact they took it very seriously. And thirdly, that however seriously Tim and Rod took it, from his point of view it was a complete waste of time.

The following morning he spent another hour in the cellar, then went in search of Glenister. When he announced his intention, Rod grinned at Tim and Tim frowned at Rod, but they gave him directions without comment. A couple of minutes later he was standing before a door with the superintendent’s name on it. There was no reply to his knock, so he tried the handle. It was locked. Frustration made him rattle it violently. Behind him he heard a dry cough. He turned. Lukasz Komorowski was standing there. In one hand he carried a plastic bottle, in the other a pair of scissors. Probably just about to give a seminar on how to kill an enemy agent using objects you’d find in the conventional kitchen.

“She is out,” said the man in his precise voice. “That is why her door is locked.”

Feeling foolish, Pascoe said, “So when will she be back?”

“Not till late afternoon, I would guess. She is in Nottingham. Crisis management.”

“You mean, the demonstrations?”

Fueled by the lurid tabloid stories about the Templars and their “execution” of Mazraani, there had been demonstrations and counterdemonstrations outside the courthouse where Michael Carradice, aka Abbas Asir, was being tried.

Komorowski said, “No, we do not do crowd control, Mr. Pascoe. The crisis is in the way the trial is progressing.”

“Things going badly, are they?” said Pascoe.

“Depends how you look at it,” said Komorowski. “From our point of view, very badly. From yours, however, perhaps not so bad?”

Shit! thought Pascoe, taken aback. These people…do they know everything?

When Carradice and his so-called gang had been arrested, Ellie had said, “Interesting. Mum’s mum was a Carradice and she came from Nottingham.”

“Oh God,” said Pascoe. “Don’t tell me we’re related to a major terrorist!”

“You’re always saying my relatives are dull,” said Ellie. “I’ll check with Mum.”

Pascoe had thereafter read the background articles on Carradice with some slight unease. Even without a personal connection, it was a story to make anyone uneasy.

After taking a degree in art history at Nottingham University, Michael Carradice had decided that backpacking round the world was a better option than finding a job. He set off in company with his girlfriend. Eight months later she returned alone, saying that Michael had grown increasingly weird during their trip, so weird that finally she’d packed up her bags one night while he slept and headed for the nearest airport.

Nothing was seen and little heard of Carradice for almost another year until he turned up at the British embassy in Jakarta, a convert to Islam, heavily bearded and calling himself Abbas Asir, and demanded that these changes of name and appearance be recorded in a new passport. The best the embassy could do was to offer him documentation sufficient to get him back to the UK where the Passport Office could more easily deal with his altered status. At this he became threateningly abusive. After he left, the interviewing official, foreseeing nothing but trouble from this source, had an unofficial word with a colleague in the Department of the Interior, and early the following morning, Carradice found himself picked up, declared undesirable, and out on a plane to the UK with a speed that immigration officials in London could only marvel at.

This got a bit of publicity, not all of it unsympathetic. Then Carradice had dropped out of the public eye for eighteen months, though it now appeared CAT had always had him in their sights. Their interest was formalized into Operation Marion. After many weeks of surveillance and undercover work, CAT felt the moment had come to strike. The house in Nottingham which Carradice shared with half a dozen other young Muslim men was raided, the inmates arrested, and a large amount of material removed, including, it was alleged, literature and chemicals relating to the manufacture of ricin.

Simultaneously across the city another ten Muslims were arrested. The news headlines were full of the terrorist plot that could have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Nottingham’s citizens by poison in the water supply.

Sensitivity to the libel laws made most papers tone down their rhetoric as the cases against the alleged conspirators began to fold. Only the Voice refused to back off, declaring that dangerous men were being set free not because they were innocent but because our antiquated English law has more loopholes in it than a crocheted cardie.

Finally Carradice was the only one sent for trial. It was at this point that Ellie had come back to Pascoe and said, “I was right. Mum says yes, these are Gran’s Carradices. But not to worry. They’re so far removed, they might as well be Chinese. Mum says the last time she had contact with any of them was when I was thirteen and a carload of them called in as they were passing, and I was given a baby to hold, and he peed all over me. Mum thinks he was called Mick. Funny if it was him.”

“Pissing cousins not kissing cousins, then,” said Pascoe.

So distant a connection was hardly a connection at all, he told himself, but he took great care not to let any hint of it reach his colleagues’ ears. Police humor can be heavy and abrasive. Andy Dalziel was the greatest danger. He had a nose for little secrets, which could have earned him a fortune as a scandal-sheet journalist.

But now Pascoe was realizing that even the Fat Man was a mere tyro alongside the CAT people.

He took a deep breath and forced a smile. With his shabby schoolmaster appearance and manner, Komorowski was a man it would be easy to disregard. Easy but foolish. Pascoe was still in the process of filling in the complex su-doku of CAT’s power structure, but he had a strong suspicion that this man was far from a cipher.

He said, “You know what they say about choosing friends and relatives.”

“Indeed.”

The man seemed to want to add something but was having difficulty finding the words.

Finally he said, “It wasn’t my intention to offend you or show how clever we are by mentioning the relationship, Mr. Pascoe.”

“That’s all right then.”

“I just thought it might ease your mind. Stop you worrying if we knew, and whether it made any difference if we did.”

“Difference to what?” said Pascoe, a little off balance but still suspicious.

“To our degree of trust in you. Absolute trust requires absolute knowledge.”

“And I’ve passed the test?”

“Absolutely.” Now Komorowski smiled. The smile was like a shaft of sunshine lighting up a distant valley. It revealed the young man he once had been. Smooth out the creased leathery skin, add a mop of jet black hair, and what you had was a very attractive piece of goods with the added allure of just a whiff of Eastern European exoticism.

Pity about the dirty fingernails.

His gaze must have dropped for now Komorowski held up his bottle and scissors.

“My other job,” he said. “The building is surprisingly full of plant life, some of which I confess I have introduced myself, a couple of window boxes, and you may have noticed the trough in the foyer. Also many people bring in houseplants to add a little color, then forget about them. It’s the British way. So I’ve appointed myself head gardener to the Lubyanka.”

“Good lord,” said Pascoe, feeling ashamed of his prissy thoughts about personal hygiene when all that the man’s hands displayed was a love of good honest earth. “I hope they pay you well.”

“The job takes me away from my own lovely garden for far too much of the time,” said Komorowski. “This is a small compensation. Il faut cultiver and all that. Anything I can ever do to assist you, Mr. Pascoe, just ask.”

Pascoe watched him walk away.

A friend, he thought. I’ve found a friend. I think.

He returned to the cellar where his new colleagues greeted him once more without comment and for the rest of the day he worked steadily, conscientiously, and unfruitfully through the files. Perhaps this truly was important work. He didn’t know. And he didn’t care. It wasn’t providing him with any good reason for giving up the comforts of home.

Midway through the afternoon, there was a diversion. The phone rang. Rod answered it. What he heard made him look serious for a moment. He said. “Good Lord. Right. On it already.”

He put the phone down and said, “Someone’s tried to off Sheikh Ibrahim.”

Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Hijazi was imam of a Bradford mosque who ever since the 7–7 bombings had been a regular tabloid target. He had long been known for his extreme views, and though he never openly condoned the actions of terrorist groups, he never condemned them either. He had a band of devoted followers, mostly young men, at his mosque. Several of them had been investigated under suspicion of complicity in terrorist acts, but the nearest any had come to a formal charge was when one of them had been arrested in Pakistan and subsequently vanished into American custody. Al-Hijazi was personable and articulate and so far had displayed great dexterity in staying just the right side of all the laws, old and new, under which the tabloids howled for his head. His reaction of measured outrage to the Mazraani killing had been expressed in terms which were perfectly reasonable and perfectly calculated to send the right-wing press into a spasm of apoplectic indignation.

“What happened?” demanded Pascoe, excited at the possibility of there being some real police work here for him to get his teeth into.

In fact the story turned out to be almost dull.

The Sheikh had left the mosque after the zuhr, or midday prayer, to keep an appointment in Huddersfield some twenty miles away. As the car eased its way into the traffic flow on a nearby main road, the passengers heard a sharp crack, as though a passing vehicle had thrown up a stone which had hit the side. The driver hadn’t stopped, but when they reached their destination, he had checked the paintwork for damage. What he found was a small hole punched through the cover of one of the rear lights. And closer examination revealed a bullet lodged inside.

“We’ll get a look at it eventually but first reports from Bradford suggest it’s from a small caliber pistol, fired at almost the limit of its range,” concluded the young man.

“Not the kind of weapon you’d expect a well-organized assassination team to use at a distance,” said Pascoe. “Any claim being made? By these Templars, for instance?”

“Not a sound so far,” said Rod cheerfully. “But it’s early days. Meanwhile, just in case there is any connection, they want us to put the details into our search profile.”

So, thought Pascoe. No excitement, just another layer of dull futility.

At five thirty he was back at Glenister’s door but found it still locked.

Frustrated he turned away and saw the superintendent coming through the door at the far end of the corridor, deep in conversation with Freeman.

When she noticed him she didn’t look delighted, but she summoned up a smile as she approached and greeted him.

Close up he could see that she looked worn out but he stamped hard on the little flutter of sympathy.

“Can I have a word, ma’am?” he said, formally.

“I’m a bit stretched, laddie,” she said. “Could it wait till morning?”

“No,” he said. “It could not.”

Freeman gave him a get-you look.

“A few seconds then. Dave, I’ll be with you shortly.”

She unlocked her door and he followed her into the office. She didn’t sit down herself, nor invite him to sit.

“So how can I help you, Peter?” she asked.

“You can find me something useful to do,” he retorted.

“But you are doing something extremely useful…”

He snorted. His wife was a very good snorter, Dalziel could snort for Denmark, even Wield who rarely let any uncensored emotion escape had been known to aspirate expressively, but the snort hadn’t figured much in the sonic range of a man sometimes referred to by his fat boss as Pussyfoot Pascoe, the Tightrope Dancer.

Now, however, it emerged as if he’d been a snorter from birth, equine rather than porcine in nature it was true, but powerful and unambiguous for all that.

“Useful? I’ve spent time more usefully reading Martin Amis,” he sneered. “If you really want to marginalize me, why don’t you just send me to the seaside and ask me to count grains of sand?”

Glenister looked concerned.

“Peter, I’m sorry, but in fact that’s what a lot of our work here feels like. You get used to it. The first five years are usually the worst.”

She gave the sweet maternal smile she could have sold to a Renaissance artist sketching his next Madonna and Child. He responded with the this-is-no-laughing-matter-these-are-my-feelings-you’re-crap-ping-on grimace he’d learned from his daughter.

Freeman stuck his head round the door. The bastard had probably been listening.

“Sandy, Bernie’s just buzzed me. He’s waiting…”

“On my way. Sorry, Peter,” said Glenister, urging him through the door. “I’d like to talk more, but when master calls. Tell you what, you look a bit tired. We mustn’t forget what you went through. Why don’t you take tomorrow morning off, have a lie-in, take a stroll around, see the sights. Let’s meet for a sandwich at the Mozart, one o’clock, and then we can work out how best to put that mighty brain to work, eh?”

He watched her as she hurried away down the corridor. He felt excluded. Not that there was any reason he should be included in what was presumably a debriefing on the Carradice trial, or a briefing on the Sheikh Ibrahim assassination attempt, but at the moment the building felt like it was full of doors which were firmly shut against him.

Then it occurred to him that there was one door not firmly shut. Glenister had forgotten to lock her office.

If they were going to treat him as a sort of licensed intruder, maybe it was time to start acting like one.

The corridor was empty. He pushed open the door and went back inside.

He had no idea what he hoped to find. Maybe some file or memo relating to himself and what they were really doing with him here. But what he was really doing was obeying another of Dalziel’s dicta, whatever chances the good Lord gives you, take ’em, and ask questions later!

He recalled once being shown into Dan Trimble’s office with Dalziel. The Chief would be along in a minute, his secretary had assured them. The second the door closed behind her, Dalziel had started opening desk drawers. Catching sight of Pascoe’s disapproving expression, the Fat Man had grinned and recited, “‘How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour.’ Hello, what have we here?”

All he’d had was a bottle of twelve-year-old Glen Morangie, from which he’d taken a generous slug before his early warning sensors had sent him back to his chair, ready to greet Trimble with a broad smile of welcome a few seconds later.

I could do with a drink, thought Pascoe.

He started on the desk drawers. There were only three, two shallow, one deep. The deep one was locked. The shallow ones produced nothing more interesting than a selection of pencils and some chocolate biscuits. Smarties were never going to be enough for a woman of her build, specially with the promised demise of the blue ones.

He looked at the deep drawer. In for a penny, in for a pound. From his wallet he extracted a small leather envelope containing various slim pieces of metal. Many CID officers carried such a piece of kit, which had usually been offered in evidence during a burglary case and then somehow had not returned to the police store. So far the most felonious use Pascoe had put it to was removing a wheel clamp one dark and stormy night when there wasn’t a taxi to be had for two hours.

Compared to a clamp, this lock was a doddle.

The drawer despite its depth contained only a slim plastic file, but this turned out to be potential treasure. Across the cover in Glenister’s bold hand were scrawled the words Mill Street. There were about a dozen sheets inside, paper clipped together in five or six sections. No time for more than a glance now. Every second he stayed here put him in danger of discovery. For all he knew, given the paranoid nature of the establishment, he was already being filmed!

He selected two sections of two sheets, one containing the explosive analysis report that not even the electronic legerdemain of Edgar Wield had been able to extract, while the other had something to do with the examination of the bodies taken from number 3.

He took the sheets to the fax machine standing by the wall and ran them through the copy facility. Then after carefully using his handkerchief to wipe his prints off everything he’d touched, he replaced the file, relocked the drawer, and made his escape.

As he deposited his security badge at the desk in the foyer and headed for the exit, he felt as if he were trailing visible clouds of guilt. He didn’t relax till he reached his hotel room. Even here his sense of safety might be delusive. It was, after all, CAT who’d booked him in. But at least, he told himself as he plucked a bottle of Beck’s from the minibar and settled down in the deep soft armchair, they weren’t penny-pinching.

It took little more than a glance at the explosive analysis to convince him he’d need a friendly technical eye to make any sense out of it.

He turned to the second pair of sheets.

This was more accessible. It contained everything about cause of death and identification factors that he’d heard verbatim from Glenister in her briefings. But there were references to other findings and their attendant hypotheses which, after a while, he realized must have been contained in a separate report. So far as he could make out, it had something to do with position of limbs and examination of mouth cavities.

The thought that this too might have been in the plastic file made him annoyed for not taking more time to check while he had the chance. At least he’d been clever enough to instruct Wield to have a quiet chat first with Jim Lipton, the CFO, then with Mary Goodrich, the pathologist at Mid-Yorkshire Central into whose care the burnt corpses had been placed for a short while before CAT whisked them away. Pity that the Head of the Path Department, “Troll” Longbottom, had been away on vacation. Troll was an old mate of Dalziel’s and the personal link would have made him cooperative. Goodrich was new in the job. Her appointment as Longbottom’s assistant was her first big career step, leaving her very susceptible to the kinds of pressure CAT had probably exerted upon her.

On the other hand, Edgar Wield had a definite way with women. Andy Dalziel had no problem analyzing it.

He’s bent as a lavatory brush, he’s got a face like that battered old teddy bear most women love more than their kids, and he could sell a fish a bicycle.

Pascoe smiled at the memory as he helped himself to another Beck’s. Yes, Wieldy would get to the bottom of things. He’d warned the sergeant not to ring till evening. In the Lubyanka, walls had ears. But any moment now…

His phone rang. He checked the caller display. He was right.

“Wieldy,” he said. “You come upon your hour, bearing good news, I hope.”

“Don’t know about that,” said the sergeant. “I spoke to Jim Lipton like you said.”

Wield filled him in on his conversation with the CFO.

“Excellent,” said Pascoe. “If you got as much out of Goodrich, I may have to pay the bribe and make you a lord.”

Wield, happy to hear his friend sounding so like his old self, wished he could continue the good work, but there was no point prevaricating.

He said, “Sorry. Got nowt there. Turned up unannounced like you suggested. She didn’t look busy but soon as she got a whiff what I were talking about, she suddenly became far too busy to talk. When I pressed her, I got a reminder that I was nowt but a sergeant and mebbe ought to have a word with my superiors afore I bothered her again.”

“Stuck-up cow!” said Pascoe. “And I thought she was OK the only time I met her.”

“Nay, Pete,” said Wield. “I reckon she’s running scared. She’s been seriously warned off talking about the Mill Street bodies.”

“Yeah? I’d have liked to see them warn Troll Longbottom off. He’d have got so mad, he’d have called a press conference.”

“Maybe. But being mad only lasts till bedtime. Being scared is what’s waiting for you when you wake up alone in the middle of the night.”

There was a personal note here that Pascoe on another occasion might have wanted to examine more closely, but at the moment he had no time for distractions. At least this confirmed his reading of the CAT report. There really was something to hide.

“So, anything else, Wieldy?” he said.

“Not really. No change on Andy. And I saw Ellie this morning. We bumped into each other and had a coffee.”

“Bumped like a real shunt or like on the dodgems?” said Pascoe suspiciously.

“I think she was glad to have a chat,” said Wield. “I reckon she’s worried about you. We all are. Pete, where the hell is all this going?”

“I’m just earning my pay, Wieldy. Which incidentally wouldn’t run to staying in this place. I’ve got a bathroom here bigger than our sitting room!”

Wield, recognizing this as a cutoff, said, “Listen, Pete, don’t get too used to the high life. We’ve got Ernie Ogilby sitting in Andy’s office. If you could solve crimes by studying traffic flow, we’d have the best clear-up rate in the UK!”

“Inspector French solved a lot by studying train timetables,” said Pascoe.

“French? Don’t know him. What’s his patch?”

“The past,” said Pascoe. “They did things differently there. Cheers.”

He put the phone down, wondering what had brought Inspector French into his mind. It was years since he’d read any of the books.

He went downstairs and enjoyed his excellent dinner. He didn’t mind dining alone in a restaurant. There was an infinity of entertainment to be derived from working out the relationships between and backstories of the other diners.

Afterward he took a turn round the block then went up to his room, climbed into his emperor-sized bed, imagined what it would be like if Ellie were there to explore it with him, rang her and shared his imaginings, remarked but did not remark upon the fact that she didn’t mention her meeting with Wield, then switched on the TV and watched one of those English-heritage movies which drifts like a slow cloud across a summer landscape till at some point indistinguishable from any other point he mingled with the movie and fell fast asleep.