Death Comes for the Fat Man

2

If being in your friends’ thoughts is truly a form of survival, then Andy Dalziel needn’t have had any fears, for hardly a minute went by without someone somewhere in Mid-Yorkshire having occasion to think of him.

Some thought of him with affection, with tears, even with prayer. Others with a quiet satisfaction that one great obstacle to their hopes and dreams had been removed. The triggers of memory were many and varied. The drawing of a pint of beer, a simple turn of phrase, the distant slamming of a door, the shadow of a cloud drifting across a hillside, a dog lying in the sun and scratching itself contentedly.

And sometimes it was a situation that brought into the minds of those who knew him best one of those philosophical truths with which the Marcus Aurelius of Mid-Yorkshire from time to time condescended to improve their lives.

Such a maxim popped into Peter Pascoe’s mind on his return home that Friday evening.

According to the Great Sage Dalziel, the fifth rule of marriage was, Never give your wife a surprise she doesn’t know about.

“The first four rules,” he’d gone on to explain, “aren’t allowed to be writ down, else no man would ever get married.”

Pascoe had broken Rule Five by deciding to turn up at home unannounced. Alongside a conventional male fantasy of the possible delectable consequences of taking Ellie unawares, he had a good rational reason for his decision. There were things he needed to do in Mid-Yorkshire and he didn’t know how long they might take. To ring Ellie and say, “Hello, darling, I’ve got the rest of the day off so why don’t you slip into something comfortable like our bed, I’ll be back as soon as I can,” was one thing. To ring and say, “Hello, darling, I’ve got the rest of the day off but there’s stuff I want to do which I rate more important than heading straight home,” was quite another.

As his various diversions occupied several hours, his decision seemed quite a wise one as he pulled into his driveway shortly after six. The evening stretched out invitingly before him. There’d be only the two of them. Friday night was stopover night. Rosie and a couple of classmates were spending it with their friend Mandy Pulman whose mother, Jane, was taking them ice-skating in the morning, thus guaranteeing the long lie-in he was hoping would prove necessary.

He opened the front door quietly. Tig came to meet him. Happily he greeted everyone silently except for Rosie, and Pascoe rewarded his restraint with a pat on the head. The downstairs rooms were unoccupied but he heard a sound upstairs. This got better. Perhaps she was having a shower. Or taking a nap. His fantasy was in full flight now and he tiptoed up the stairs, anticipating melting into her dream as the rose blendeth its odor with the violet. Ahead was the bedroom door, ajar. Gently he pushed it open.

Ellie was sitting at her dressing table, applying lipstick. She saw him in the glass. Those rich dark eyes and those deep incarnadined lips rounded in surprise.

She said, “Oh shit.”

This wasn’t quite the greeting he’d hoped for, but creeping up on her had been pretty infantile, so he made allowances, which was easy as she looked gorgeous.

“Sorry,” he said. “Should have rung but here I am anyway.”

He went to her and they kissed. It was a pretty good kiss, but it didn’t feel like it was going anywhere.

He said, “Had a hard day, love?” he hoped sympathetically, as she pulled away and started repairing her makeup.

“Not really. Peter, it’s great to have you home, but I’ve just arranged to go out.”

“Oh,” he said. “Can’t you unarrange?”

“No, not really. Sorry, but this is big. They want me on Fidler’s Three. Tonight.”

Fidler’s Three was the current big hit television talk show. Each week its host, Joe Fidler, invited three guests to join him in a different venue to discuss matters of current interest before a participating audience. Fidler’s Three had two gimmicks that made it very popular. First, no politicians, journalists, or A-list personalities were permitted on the panel. Second, at the start of each show a list of debating clichés scrolled down the screen, starting with the old favorites-level playing field, at the end of the day, with great respect, hardworking families, etc.-then moving on to the latest arrivals. Guests undertook to make a donation of fifty pounds to a charity of Fidler’s choice each time they used any of these, a slip marked by a recorded voice crying, “Order! Order!” above a cacophony of zoo sounds, which was the signal for audience participation in the form of a barrage of multicolored Ping-Pong balls hurled at the offender.

Fidler himself was a personable young man who’d been a New Labor MP till “the sheer meaningless gab of it” had driven him to resign and spend more time with his money by becoming a TV personality. He claimed that the only qualification needed by his guests was that they should be articulate and opinionated, but usually there turned out to be some kind of linking theme to his choice.

“A bit short notice, isn’t it?” said Pascoe.

“Well, it’s Ffion, actually,” said Ellie.

“Ah.”

Ffion Lyke-Evans was the Press Officer in charge of the publicity for Ellie’s novel. Pascoe had met her at a signing in Leeds. Delayed, he’d entered the almost empty store twenty minutes late. Seeing Ellie’s solitary figure sitting alongside a wall of unsold books, her desperate eyes giving the lie to her insouciant smile, he might have stolen quietly away if a seductive Welsh voice hadn’t lilted into his ear, “Hello, sir. Come for the signing, have you? It’s a lovely book, you won’t be able to put it down.”

She talked a good book, Pascoe had to admit. She was young and attractive, with long black hair, huge dark eyes, lips to suck men’s souls with, and a winningly mischievous smile. Once Pascoe identified himself, she offered him twenty-five convincing reasons for the absence of punters. Pascoe was unpersuaded but noticed that Ellie, the archskeptic, hung on every spellbinding word uttered by the Welsh witch.

Her faith had been blunted a little by the subsequent silence of all branches of the literary media, but still, if invited to share a joke at Ffion’s expense, she would insist the girl knew her job. And, despite his ingrained skepticism, Pascoe, whenever he spoke to Ffion always found himself momentarily infected by her merry optimism.

Today it seemed all Ffion’s skills had been put to the test. She had contrived to get one of her authors domiciled in the northeast onto Fidler’s Three and had made the long journey north to smooth his path and calm his nerves. Then just as she arrived in Middlesbrough, her mobile rang and she was told he couldn’t make it, having been summoned to the sickbed of a near and dear relative.

Faced with the prospect of Joe Fidler’s fury and the loss of her own credibility, she’d thought quickly. First she rang Ellie and explained the situation. Ellie’s first novel launch hadn’t been her finest hour, she admitted, which was why, she went on with scarcely a breath, she’d been really excited at this God-given chance to make up for past failings by offering Fidler Ellie’s name.

“Not tentatively,” she told Ellie. “TV doesn’t do tentative. I told them you’re wise, witty, and wacky, opinionated, assertive, and articulate, and that you are a definite rising star, the next George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie…”

“Agatha Christie?” queried Ellie indignantly.

“I could see they hadn’t heard of the others,” said Ffion. “So they’re not surprised they haven’t heard of you! But they’re desperate to have you. So can you come?”

“Try to stop me!”

“Great. Grab a taxi and get yourself up here pronto! See you!”

Ffion Lyke-Evans broke the connection and punched in Joe Fidler’s mobile number. She didn’t think she’d been dishonest. In her job a simple temporal reorganization was a long way from a lie. What would have been stupid was to sell Ellie to Joe and then discover she was on holiday. Of course if Fidler said, “No way!” she’d have to ring Ellie back and invent a reason for disappointing her, but dealing with authors’ disappointments was the first thing they taught you at publicist school. Anyway she was sure that she had the arguments to persuade Fidler to accept Ellie as a substitute.

“Hi, Joe,” she said. “It’s Ffion. Listen, I’ve got some rather bad news and some incredibly good news…”

And Peter Pascoe, cynical though he was about anything connected with the media, could not bring himself to voice any doubts when he saw that Ellie regarded this as incredibly good news too.

“So I can’t ring back and tell Ffion I can’t do it after all, can I?” she concluded.

“No, of course not,” he agreed. “Who are the other guests, by the way?”

“No idea. No one knows who the three are going to be till showtime, not the audience, not even the guests. Which is good. No one will know I was a second choice!”

“And they’d find it hard to believe anyway,” he said gallantly.

She mouthed him a kiss.

“Thank you kindly,” she said. “It’s really great to know you’ll be here when I get back. By the way, did you hear about Hector?”

“No. What’s he done now? Got the Nobel Prize for brain surgery?”

“Not funny. The poor sod got knocked over this morning. Hit and run. Wieldy told me this afternoon when he rang to see how I was. He’s OK, though.”

She told him the story.

“Poor bastard,” said Pascoe. “If I’d known, I could have looked in on him earlier.”

“Earlier?”

“Yes,” said Pascoe, mentally kicking himself. “I called in at the hospital to see how Andy was.”

It was, like the best lies, only half a lie. He had certainly called at the hospital but his inquiry about the Fat Man had been an afterthought made on the internal phone.

Ellie, though susceptible to her press officer’s blandishments, had been a detective’s wife long enough to have developed a sensor for evasions.

“Funny no one mentioned Hector,” she said.

“I was hardly there a moment,” he said. “I was in a hurry to get home, remember?”

Oh you’ll pay for this in the next life, he thought. In fact, as the doorbell rang, he acknowledged he was paying for it now.

“That will be my taxi,” said Ellie. “Just think what that’s going to cost the bastards. They must really want me! Listen, Pete, it’s just struck me, why not come along? I’m sure they can find you a seat in the audience.”

Pascoe thought about it then shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’ve done enough traveling for one day and I’m pretty bushed. I’ll just sit here and watch a bit of telly. I expect I’ll fall asleep. There’s never anything interesting to see on a Friday night, is there?”

She gave him a hard jab in the ribs.

“Don’t wait up,” she said. “I can always wake you if I want anything. Which I wouldn’t be surprised if I do.”

“I’ll take that as a promise,” he said.

They smiled at each other lovingly. Then Pascoe spoiled it by saying, “Ellie, be careful if Fidler tries to get you talking about the terrorist threat, that kind of thing…”

“Because of my connection with you, you mean?” said Ellie. “Pete, why can’t you get it into your head that in most people’s eyes I’m not defined by the fact that I’m married to a cop? They value me for what I am, what I do. And I made it quite clear to Ffion when my novel came out that I didn’t want any reference to the fact that you were a cop. OK, she may have hyped me up a bit to get me on the show, but it’s Eleanor Soper the novelist they’re interested in, not Ellie Pascoe the demure little policeman’s wife!”

“Hey, when do I get to meet her?” said Pascoe. “Sorry. You’re dead right, of course. It was a silly thing to say. Put it down to resentment at not being able to get any closer to you than ten million other people this evening.”

“Ten million? Is that all?” said Ellie. “Ciao!”

She was smiling again, so that was all right.

And he’d deserved the reproach, thought Pascoe as he watched the taxi pull away. He was just going to have to get used to having a celebrity wife. Eventually.

Back in the house, Pascoe made himself a sandwich, opened a can of lager, and sat down in front of the telly. There was still an hour and a half to go before Fidler’s Three.

He picked up the phone and rang Wield.

“Hi, it’s me,” he said. “I’m home.”

Briefly he explained, then said, “Ellie told me about Hector. What happened?”

“Sounds like he did his usual trick of stepping off a pavement without looking.”

“Yes. Hard to blame the driver.”

“You can blame the bastard for not stopping,” said Wield. “A milkman found Hector unconscious.”

“How did he know? Sorry. Ellie says he’s OK though.”

“Yes, if it had been serious, I’d have rung you. He’s bruised and battered but mostly unbroken. They were worried about brain damage-don’t say a thing-but eventually they realized that what they’d got was normal and unhooked him from all the life-support stuff. Can’t recall a thing, of course. The milkman saw a car pulling away, black he thinks, powerful, maybe a Jag. Paddy’s had his boys doing house to house in case anyone heard or saw owt. Anyway, are you back with us for good, do you think, or have you made yourself indispensable in Manchester?”

“Who knows?” said Pascoe. He would have liked to talk over things with Wield but found he was too paranoiac to trust his own home phone.

He said, “Let’s meet for a jar tomorrow, Wieldy. The Feathers, early evening, suit you? Meanwhile don’t forget to tune in to Fidler’s Three.”

“Wouldn’t miss Ellie for worlds,” said Wield.

If I’d got home an hour earlier, there wouldn’t have been anything to miss, thought Pascoe glumly.

He opened his briefcase and took out the slim file in which he was recording his very unofficial investigation into the Mill Street explosion. He started making notes of his afternoon’s work in an effort to assess whether it got anywhere close to being worth the loss of his wife’s company.

He wasn’t betting on it.