Death Comes for the Fat Man

3

Pascoe’s first port of call on returning to town had been the Civic Center. In the Housing Office there he had talked to a woman called Deirdre Naylor whom he knew from the PTA at Rosie’s school. She had obtained for him details of the renting out of number 6 Mill Street to Crofts and Wills. He had bluffed Bloomfield into an admission, but that wasn’t worth the air it was spoken on without concrete evidence to back it up. Whether he’d ever reach a point where such evidence would be needed, he’d no idea, but it made sense to get it while he could, and in person, not by phone.

The rental had begun only five weeks before the explosion. He read through the correspondence and examined the contract.

“Didn’t strike anyone as strange that a Patents Agency should want office space in such a locality?” he said.

“Why?” she asked. “Not the kind of business that has people tramping in and out all day, I shouldn’t have thought. So they just wanted an address and somewhere cheap. Do you reckon they were up to something, Peter?”

He shook his head.

“Not really,” he said. “Just having a bit of bother tracking them down to check a couple of things out after the explosion.”

She looked at him doubtfully then said, “You could just have rung us.”

He gave her his most charming smile and said, “Just happened to be passing, so I thought I’d save the ratepayers a few bob.”

It didn’t sound all that convincing, but to his surprise she smiled back and it occurred to him that she might be imagining this was personal. A good-looking woman in her thirties, she was bringing up her boy alone, and with her extrovert manner and curvaceous figure, she was probably used to being a far from obscure object of desire.

“Can I take copies of this stuff?” he said.

“Of course you can. Always happy to cooperate with the Law,” she said. “How’s Ellie? Haven’t run into her at the PTA for a while. We usually have such a good crack.”

Mention of Ellie was good. It told him that while she didn’t object to a bit of friendly flirtation, he’d be out of his mind to imagine she’d dream of really getting involved. Which was a relief.

And also, just looking at things hypothetically of course, a touch disappointing.

From the Center he’d gone to the forensics lab where he’d talked to Tony Pollock, the technician who’d checked the Mill Street bullet. He showed him the CAT technicians’ report on the round recovered from the body in Mazraani’s flat. Pollock looked at it for a moment then said, “Am I authorized to see this?”

“If I’m authorized then you are too,” said Pascoe firmly.

Pollock grinned as if he saw right through this prevarication.

“Good enough for me,” he said. Privately he’d always regarded Pascoe as a bit of a prancing pony that it amused Dalziel to toss the odd sugar lump to. Now it was dawning on him that you didn’t run in harness with the Fat Man unless you could pull your weight. And punch it too.

Unasked, he did a quick comparison of the Manchester results with his own and confirmed that while the same make of gun had almost certainly been used, the rounds had come from different weapons.

“Something else I’d like you to take a look at,” said Pascoe.

He handed over the CAT analysis of the Mill Street explosive.

“Same authorization as before?” inquired Pollock mockingly.

“Definitely.”

As he read the stolen paper, the technician frowned.

“What?” said Pascoe.

“This stuff about the detonator, you’ll have read it?”

“I started but gave up when they abandoned standard English, which is why I’m asking you what it all means. I do know that the theory is, they were preparing a detonator and they’d got the timer wrong or something and blown themselves to bits.”

“Aye, but from what this lot says, it doesn’t look like a mechanical-timer device were being used here. They reckon it was a remote-control job using a telephone signal.”

“So?”

“Lot harder to go wrong. Would need someone to dial the number by accident after you’d got the thing set up. Why’d they be mucking about with detonators anyway when they’d not even got the hole dug in the viaduct if that was what they were after?”

“Conclusion?”

“They weren’t thinking of blowing up the viaduct, not when they were playing around with this. That would mebbe explain why CAT found traces of two types of Semtex.”

“There are different types?”

“Same stuff basically. Like ale. But different brewers produce different brews.”

Pascoe digested this then said, “So the man working on the detonator explosive got his personal supply from a different source.”

Pollock said, “I think you’re getting a bit confused about detonators, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Not in the least. In fact, you’re probably understating my condition. Words of one syllable might come in useful.”

“Right. In Mill Street there were a big lump of explosive and a little lump. The little lump was what this remote-control detonator were stuck into. You’re talking like you think the whole of the little lump were a detonator.”

“Didn’t it set the big lump off?”

“Oh yes. But that’s not to say that’s what it were meant to do. We’re calling it a little lump but that’s comparative. By itself it wouldn’t have wrecked the whole terrace but it would certainly have wrecked any room it went off in. As it happened, the room it went off in already contained the big lump, so the little lump acted as a detonator for the big lump, but that was likely accidental.”

Pascoe said, “In other words it was a separate bomb.”

“Aye, that’s probably the easiest way of thinking of it,” said Pollock.

“Using explosive differently sourced from what was in the big lump,” mused Pascoe. “Anything about the possible source?”

“Which one?”

“The little lump. From what I understand, they’re pretty certain they know the original source of the big lump because they’d intercepted a consignment of exactly the same type at the start of the year.”

Pollock sighed and said, “Think you’re getting confused again, Mr. Pascoe.”

“Am I?”

“Aye. What you say’s right enough, but it’s the little lump whose provenance they know all about. They’re still working on the big lump.”

Pascoe’s mind was racing. Was this significant or was he simply desperate to find significance? Wield’s conversation with his nice lad had been interrupted by the superintendent before he could reveal that there’d been two types of Semtex involved at Mill Street, and Glenister had not thought fit to share this information with the sergeant in their subsequent cosy cooperative chats. Arranged like that, it looked significant, but he’d spent too many hours in court to trust appearances.

He said casually, “If you had access to a big lump of Semtex, how easy would it be to slice off a little lump without drawing attention?”

“Depends on how big and how little and how much attention was being paid.”

“But the actual slicing, any problems there?”

“No. It’s pretty inert stuff.”

Pollock was now regarding Pascoe with grave suspicion.

In an effort to put him at ease, Pascoe said, “So, getting back to the report, what you’re saying is, the bomb that went off, the small lump with the detonator in it, was made from Semtex of exactly the same type as a shipment the security forces had intercepted a few months earlier?”

He could tell his effort at reassurance had met with only limited success.

Pollock chewed this over for a moment then said, “No. I’m saying nowt.”

“I mean, the report is saying it?”

Pollock smiled. Not a friendly smile but the faintly mocking smile of a hard-nosed Yorkshireman who’s listened to your sales pitch and isn’t going to buy.

He took out a large gray handkerchief and carefully wiped round the edges of the sheets of paper. Then, still holding them in the cloth, he handed them back to Pascoe.

“Report? What report, sir?” he said.

Pascoe had lived in Yorkshire long enough to know the end of a lane when he saw one.

“You must have misheard me,” he said. “Who mentioned a report? But thanks for your help anyway.”

“Don’t follow you,” said Pollock, who’d retrieved the bullet analysis and was busy giving that the handkerchief treatment too. “You’ve asked me nowt and I’ve told you nowt. And I’ll thank you not to tell any bugger different, Mr. Pascoe, else I might have to resort to words of one syllable again. Now I’ve got work to do.”

He turned and left.

He’s right, thought Pascoe, feeling reproached. You shouldn’t get other people involved in your mess unless they knew what they were getting into. Which, as he still had little idea what he himself might be getting into, was rather hard to explain.

It was now he rang the Central to check that Mary Goodrich was around. On reaching the hospital, he parked in the space allocated to the Senior Gynecological Consultant who he knew would be on or about the ninth green at this time on a Friday.

He found Goodrich in her office and was greeted by the welcoming smile which was the response of most young women to Pascoe in the boyish-charm mode which came so naturally to him. But the moment he mentioned Wield’s visit, her face blanked over and she said, “Wield? Oh yes, the ugly one. Yes, he did call, but things were so hectic…in fact, I’m still up to my eyes, so unless it’s urgent…”

She was trying to usher him through the door. Not so long ago it might have worked, but now the only effect was that Pascoe felt himself inflating into Mid-Yorkshire’s version of the Incredible Hulk.

He stood before her planted as firm as a full-grown tree and said heavily, “All right, luv, so you’re too busy to talk to the police about the Mill Street corpses? In that case, it’ll be a doddle dealing with the gents of the Press when they come looking for the medical spokesman who’s the source of the information they’re shortly going to get.”

“Is that some sort of threat?” she said wonderingly.

Pascoe held up his forefinger.

“Is that a finger?” he replied.

He could tell she was thrown by his manner and trying to reconcile it with the gently amiable Pascoe she’d encountered previously.

“So what kind of information might that be?”

“Information about the mouth-box contents and about the disposition of the corpses’ limbs,” he said.

That got her interest.

She said, “If you know so much, why do you need to come here bullying me?”

Sensitive to the justified accusation, he said, “Look, I’m sorry about that, but I’ve just got the outline, what I need are the details. OK, I’m pretty sure you’ve been advised not to discuss the matter with anyone else, but that hardly applies to me, does it?”

He saw at once he’d made a mistake.

When the CAT people warned her off, they’d probably been very precise. Talk to no one, and no one included everyone in Mid-Yorkshire CID. The consequence of disobedience had been made clear. She was young, her career was just taking off. Step out of line here and the whole fascinating area of Home Office-sponsored forensic pathology would be closed to her. At best she might be allowed to confirm that corpses from the geriatric ward hadn’t received a helping hand in passing though death’s door.

She believed the CAT people in their threats. By relaxing his manner, all he’d done was confirm her instinct that he didn’t have it in him to carry his threat through.

He took out his mobile and dialed.

“Give me Sammy Ruddlesdin, will you? Thanks, I’ll hold.”

He said to Goodrich, “You know Sammy? The News’s ace reporter. Loves a good story, especially one he can sell on to the nationals.”

“So what’s the story you’ve got for him?” she said, still unimpressed.

“Mill Street bombings. Examination of the corpses. Findings concealed. Was there more going on here than a simple accident among some cack-handed terrorists?”

“Sounds a good story,” she said.

“It gets better when I tell him I got the basic facts from the only person to examine the bodies before the Security Services whisked them away,” he said.

“And I’ll deny it,” she said spiritedly. “Why believe you and not me?”

He smiled a smile he’d learned from Dalziel.

“Because I’m an honest upstanding cop that Sammy’s known for a long long time and from whom he’s never had an iota of dud information. Because we sometimes have a drink together and we trust each other. Because you’ve only been here two minutes and you’re young and you’re a woman. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what Sammy believes, does it? Your friends in Security-was it a nice young chap called Freeman, by the way? — they’ll have no problem believing the story because it will give them me as well as you, and they’ll be only too delighted to get me by the short and hairies. They’ll just fuck your career up as an afterthought.”

She was regarding him with bewildered loathing.

“But if they can harm you as well, then why…?”

“Why?” he interrupted. “Because whatever happened in Mill Street has left someone very important to me lying in a coma and God knows if he’s ever going to come out of it, and I’m not going to rest till I find out why. Not the probable story, or the official story, but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the fucking truth. Sammy, hi. Peter Pascoe here. Yeah, I’m fine. Listen, Sammy, can you hold on just a second?”

He pressed the phone to his chest and looked at Mary Goodrich.

She said, “So what do you want to know?”

Once she’d made up her mind to talk, she gave the facts in a detailed, orderly manner that Edgar Wield would have approved of.

Two of the bodies had been completely blown apart by the explosion and the fragments roasted by the fire till not much was left but bone. She reckoned it would take days of slow and detailed examination to get any meaningful results from them. The vagaries of blast are such, however, that one body had more or less held together though it had suffered equally from the heat of the fire. This was where Goodrich had concentrated her attention in the couple of hours she had before the CAT removal men arrived. In particular she’d started making notes on the jaw because she reckoned that dental identification was going to be the best bet. All her notes had been removed, but she recalled being surprised by the amount of ash in the mouth cavity.

“Why should that surprise you?” inquired Pascoe. “I reckon I had to be hosed down when they got me to hospital and I wasn’t in the middle of it.”

“It was the nature of this ash,” she said. “Tongue, plate, all the soft-tissue stuff had been burnt off or melted down. But mixed in with the fatty residue you’d expect, there was this fine ash. Like you might get if you burned cloth. And there was a fragment of what looked like thread between one of the incisors and the canine next to it.”

“What makes you think it was the remains of cloth?” he asked.

“I’ve examined fire victims before,” she said.

“But never found anything like this in their mouths?”

“No.”

“The thread you found in the teeth, what happened to it?”

“I handed it over to your friends,” she snapped. “Why not ask them?”

He ignored this and said, “So what about the disposition of the limbs?”

“In most cases when a body is recovered from a serious fire, there is a characteristic fetal configuration of the torso and limbs. You’ve probably seen it. In this case, though the legs had come up toward the chest in the typical manner, the arms for some reason hadn’t come forward but seem to have remained behind the back.”

“You mean, as if there’d been something preventing the natural forward movement? As if the arms had been tied behind the back, for instance? With a gag in the mouth producing the cloth ash?”

“That’s your area of expertise, not mine,” she said. But he could tell that she’d made the speculation.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“Apart from go screw yourself? No.”

It would have been nice to let her have the last word, but for her sake as well as his own, he couldn’t do that. She was mad now. Mad enough maybe to open her mouth to someone who might open their mouth to someone…

For both their sakes, he needed to remind her of what Wield had told him.

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.

He took a step toward her.

“Then hear this,” he said. “You were warned before to keep quiet. I’m warning you again. This time I’d listen.”

As he left her office, he felt powerful, positive. But within half a dozen steps he felt so guilty that it was all he could do to stop himself from turning round to apologize.

Even now, sitting in his own living room, the memory made him feel bad. Hectoring bright young women didn’t come easy to him.

Hectoring…

He let himself be diverted by the word.

How had Hector, the great hero, the personification of Trojan nobility, declined by the seventeenth century into a contemptuous term for a swaggering bully? Was it the same in any other language, or was it only the English with their tabloid instinct to look for feet of clay who deconstructed old heroes thus?

Not that a swaggering bully was the term’s lowest deep, not in Mid-Yorkshire anyway. He tried to imagine a confrontation between Prince Hector in all his pomp and Constable Hector in all his pathos. It would have made stepping in front of a car seem like a friendly embrace! Ultimately, however, it was the pathetic constable not the proud prince he might have to use to buttress the still flimsy hypothesis he was erecting on the ruin of the Mill Street terrace.

Don’t do Hector down, he reproved himself. Somehow whenever the earth stopped shaking and the dust settled, Hector was still there. Maybe someone up there liked him enough to steer him clear of harm. After all, Homer tells us that the Olympians all had their favorites whom they did their best to protect. He recalled enviously how Paris, who started it all, having lost a titanic battle with the vengeful Menelaus, had found himself lying at the cuckold’s mercy, till suddenly Aphrodite whirled him away from the battlefield and deposited him alongside his gorgeous mistress in his own scented bedroom.

So it was with Troy very much in his mind that Pascoe fell asleep on the sofa, but he did not dream of battles. Instead his punning subconscious placed him on the sinking Titanic from which he looked shoreward to where Helen, looking very like Ellie, stood topless on one of the towers of Ilium.