Death Comes for the Fat Man

6

For the next five minutes Peter Pascoe exercised the greatest degree of control he had ever called upon.

He did nothing.

Every instinct screamed at him to react. The loudest and most lunatic scream urged him to jump into his car and start driving north. Pointless! It would take an hour even breaking every speed limit.

Nearly as loud and on the surface more sensible was the scream telling him to grab the phone and start ringing. Ellie’s mobile first, then the TV station, then Middlesbrough police, then his own CID office, then…

What stopped him was the certainty that Ellie, knowing he was watching, would ring him as soon as she could. He didn’t even dare risk using his mobile in case that was the button she hit. As for ringing her mobile, she’d have it switched off because of the broadcast, and when it got switched on again, it would be to ring him.

He knew this beyond all doubt, but it wasn’t a comfort. It meant if she didn’t ring, she couldn’t.

Five minutes, he told himself. He’d give her five minutes.

He sat there staring at the screen.

An announcer appeared. She began to apologize for the break in transmission as if it had been caused by a simple power failure. Why was she smiling faintly? he wondered. Perhaps she hated Joe Fidler and hoped he’d been shot in the mouth. Then her face became serious and she said they were going over to the newsroom for an update on the body-in-the-reservoir story that had broken earlier. The picture changed to some kind of lake with a rubber dinghy floating in it. An announcer was saying, “Police have not yet confirmed the rumor that the body has been identified as that of…”

Impatiently Pascoe switched the set off. There was only one story he wanted to hear about. Surely that was five minutes now? He checked his watch, Only four! It felt like an hour. He watched the second hand sweep round and started to count down.

Twenty…nineteen…eighteen…

Of course if she didn’t ring it meant nothing……fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…

She could be simply too preoccupied taking care of someone……ten…nine…eight…

Or her battery could be flat……six…five…four…

Or she’d left her phone in the make-up room……three…two…one…

She was dead.

He knew it with a certainty beyond the reach of logic.

She wasn’t ringing because she couldn’t ring because she was lying sprawled on the floor of the TV studio with the lifeblood oozing out of her body.

The sense of loss was so huge, so stifling of all his senses, that he didn’t realize for some little time that the phone was ringing.

He snatched it up.

“Peter?”

“Oh Jesus. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Nothing to worry about, really.”

“You’re not dead…sorry…I’m babbling…I thought you might be…you’re not hurt at all, are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. One of the first things they taught me at nursery school. Really, love, I’m fine.”

“Thank God. What about the others?”

“All fine, no problem. It was just a sort of air pistol, one of those gas-powered things. She got one pellet off, hit Joe Fidler in that tight-stretched crotch, very poetic. He says he’s OK, which is just as well, as I couldn’t see anyone rushing to offer first aid.”

“And you’re really all right? God, when I saw you getting up with your Superwoman look on…”

“No need to have worried. Before I could get to my phone booth, Maurice had done the deed. Real action-man stuff. No, I shouldn’t mock, he was very brave. Fast too. If it hadn’t been for him, Kal would have got the pellet straight in the face. Listen, love. Would you ring Jane just in case she was watching, or worse still, letting Rosie watch ’cos I was on.”

“Good thinking,” said Pascoe. “I take it that’s the end of the show now?”

“For me, certainly. Not before time either. Now I know exactly how Ffion got me on. I can see her on her mobile now. She’s probably selling my story to the tabloids. You might like to retain a good homicide brief. I’ll be back soon as I can. Love you. ’Bye.”

“Love you too. ’Bye.”

He rang off. His mobile was ringing.

It was Wield.

“Pete, I were watching Fidler’s Three…”

“Ellie’s fine,” said Pascoe. “She just rang to tell me.”

“That’s grand,” said Wield. “I waited a few minutes before ringing ’cos I knew you’d want the lines free.”

That was Wield, a mind for all seasons. In Pascoe’s opinion he was one of the best cops in Mid-Yorkshire, if not in the whole country. Sticking at sergeant had been his own choice, at first because he didn’t want his gayness to become a promotion issue, and latterly, since setting up home with Edwin Digweed, because he had no desire to take any step which might disturb his domestic happiness.

In an unprejudiced society, he’d have been Commissioner by now, thought Pascoe.

He relayed Ellie’s account of events.

“God knows what was bugging this woman,” he concluded. “Thank God she could only lay her hands on an air pistol.”

“I’ve a mate in the Middlesbrough mob,” said Wield. “I’ll give him a ring later when they’ve had time to get things sorted. As for the pistol, don’t underestimate them. Close range, one of them gas guns can put a pellet through your eye right into your brain. In fact, if it hits soft tissue anywhere, it can do real damage.”

“I know,” said Pascoe. “But I reckon Ellie would still have had a go even if it had been a Kalashnikov. Fortunately that guy Kentmore seems to have been on the ball. I reckon I owe him a drink…sorry, Wieldy, got to go. The house phone’s ringing.”

It was Jane Pulman.

“Peter, has Ellie been on the television tonight?”

“Yes, she has, but she’s OK…” then with sudden alarm, “Why are you asking? Is it Rosie?”

He’d guessed right. The four girls were in a bedroom that had a TV set in it. They’d been allowed to watch a video, then Jane had looked in to make sure the set was off and the girls in bed.

“But you know kids,” she said. “They must have switched it on again, spotted Ellie, then something happened, something with a gun, right?”

The girls had tried to convince themselves that it was just part of the show, like the Ping-Pong balls, but Rosie had been so agitated that in the end, Mandy, Jane’s daughter, had decided to put her hand up and admit to her mother they’d been watching, and ask for reassurance.

“Let me talk to her,” said Pascoe. “No, better still, I’ll get Ellie to ring and talk to her.”

He put the phone down, and rang Ellie’s mobile.

“Hi, Pete,” she said, sounding rather breathless. “It’s chaos here. Place is full of cops and reporters. I wish I’d twisted your arm to come. Maurice has got his sister-in-law here and Kal has got Jamila, his fiancée. Lovely girl, you probably saw her on the box. They’ve stuck us all together in this side room where we’ve got to wait till we’ve made our statements. Fortunately it’s the same room they had the preshow refreshments in so we’re not short of booze and snacks. God knows when I’ll get away…”

He interrupted her to explain why he was ringing.

“I’d better ring Jane straightaway before the battery goes in my mobile,” she said. “See you later, love. Don’t know when, but no need to worry, I’m being well looked after. ’Bye!”

He switched the TV back on to catch the news and was irrationally put out to find that the incident on Fidler’s Three rated only third place behind the body in the reservoir story and a plane crash in Canada. But as he began to take in the details of the reservoir story, his attention was fully engaged.

Though there was still no official confirmation, observers were absolutely definite that the dead man was Michael Carradice, aka Abbas Asir, found not guilty a few hours earlier on terrorism charges. And now a leak from the police said it was suspected he’d died of ricin poisoning.

“Shit!” said Pascoe.

This was tragic. It might also be trouble. With Carradice’s acquittal, he’d hoped that Ellie’s connection with the man could remain a sleeping dog. But now, especially if this turned out to be a Templar killing, the press would be all over it.

He returned his attention to the news, which had moved on to the Canadian air disaster with the inevitable speculation about possible terrorist involvement. In this case it seemed most unlikely, but it didn’t stop the “experts” from stirring the pot.

Then at last it was the incident on the Fidler show. By comparison with the preceding items this was presented in a straightforward, factual way with very little comment and a surprisingly small amount of film footage.

I’m on the wrong channel! Pascoe told himself.

Over the past couple of decades the great British public, once so phlegmatic and passive, had learned that fortitude might be the virtue of adversity but it doesn’t get you money in the bank. Now many thousands who might have difficulty spelling the words psychological trauma had no problem understanding its value. A twenty-first-century Dunkirk would see the lines of rescued men heading first not for home or hospital but to their lawyers’ offices, there to be reunited with their loved ones already queuing up to make a claim for compensation.

The channel’s lawyers would have advised, Play this down or you’ll play the eventual bill up!

But their rivals would have no such inhibition.

He switched to another news program and found he was right.

But along with a lack of inhibition, there was also a lack of footage, though to some extent they turned this to their advantage, giving the impression through the words of eyewitnesses of something close to the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Despite his superior knowledge, that was what it felt like to Pascoe too.

The next couple of hours dragged by. He tried to get through to Ellie again but either her phone was switched off or the battery had gone. Presumably she was on her way home now, otherwise he was sure she’d have found some way of letting him know.

When his phone rang he snatched it up, certain it would be Ellie, but it was Wield’s voice he heard.

“Is Ellie back yet?” he asked.

“No, but she should be on her way.”

“Good. Thought you might like an update on what I’ve got out of my chum in Middlesbrough. They’ve got the whole thing on tape. Cameras kept rolling even after they cut off transmission. That guy Kentmore was the hero of the hour, moved like lightning, got himself between Sarhadi and the gun, then disarmed the woman. And of course he didn’t know it wasn’t a real pistol. So a real hero.”

“For which, much thanks. What do we know about the woman?”

“Only son worked in London. Got caught in one of the tube bombings. Died in hospital three months later. Since then anyone east of Spurn Head has been her perceived enemy. Also she’s a Voice reader.”

When its fellow tabloids fell into line behind the Bradford News’s pro-Sarhadi campaign, it was inevitable that the Voice should break ranks.

Coincidence? Maybe not! had been its headline over a photo of an under-fifteen soccer team with Sarhadi and Raza, heads ringed, standing next to each other. Once teammates, always teammates? it went on. No smoke without fire? And upon this flimsy base it built a provable case which needs to be answered!

When complaints were made to the Press Council, the Voice hid behind its question marks and offered a single-sentence apology in small type above the small ads.

“So it’s just some poor deranged woman looking for someone to blame, that it?” said Pascoe.

“Looks like it. There could be a question of how she got on the front row. All three of the panel said they’d noticed her looking a bit agitated from the start. Fidler said he noticed nothing, but one of his producers admitted they check the audience out on CCTV before the show and decide who’s going to sit at the front.”

“So if you’re a bit wild-eyed and foaming at the mouth, you get put within striking distance of the panel? Nice. They ought to sack that bastard!”

“Don’t be daft, Pete. Tonight’s do has probably doubled his ratings. Give my love to Ellie. We still on for tomorrow evening?”

“Yeah. Cheers!”

He put the phone down, opened another beer, and settled down once more to wait.

All logic told him Ellie was fine, but it was still a huge relief finally to hear her key in the front door.

He rushed into the hall to greet her.

As he folded her passionately in his arms, over her shoulder he saw she wasn’t alone. A man and a woman stood behind her on the threshold, making a big thing of examining the elegant Pompon de Paris climbing up the porch pillar.

The man he recognized as Maurice Kentmore, Ellie’s fellow panelist. The woman was familiar but it took him a second to realize it was the woman who’d been sitting next to Sarhadi’s fiancée. In the flesh she looked even more striking. Emaciation merely underlined her elegant facial bone structure and made her dark eyes seem huge. Against the blackness of her cropped hair the pallor of her skin seemed to glow.

“Peter, this is Maurice Kentmore,” said Ellie as she broke away. “And Kilda.”

“Maurice’s sister-in-law,” said the woman, offering her hand. Her voice had the faintest hint of an Irish accent. Her grip was firm, her palm dry but chilly.

“There wasn’t a car booked for me because I was a last-minute job,” explained Ellie, “and getting a taxi in Middlesbrough on a Friday night’s like getting a plumber on Christmas Day. Then Maurice offered a lift, even though it’s well out of his way.”

“Glad to help,” said Kentmore. “Now, it’s late, so perhaps we should leave you…”

“Don’t be silly. A drink’s the least we can offer you,” said Ellie.

“Yes, please come in,” urged Pascoe with an enthusiasm overegged by his private hope that they’d insist on being on their way.

“Well, just for a minute then,” said Kentmore.

As Pascoe ushered them in, he said to Ellie, “You got through to Rosie?”

“Yes, she was really worried. We spoke till my battery gave out. I convinced her I wasn’t dead, but not much more. She says she’s coming home in the morning.”

“But I thought Jane was taking the whole gang of them ice-skating.”

“Not our daughter. She’s a real doubting Thomas, won’t be happy till she sees for herself I’m not in a wheelchair. Sorry, Maurice. The joys of family life, eh?”

“It’s understandable that she’s concerned,” said Kentmore.

“Drinks?” said Pascoe.

Kentmore and Ellie had scotches. The woman had a vodka on the rocks, grimacing when he offered her tonic. Pascoe had another lager.

He said, “Quite a night.”

“Not what I was expecting, and I don’t just mean the lady with the gun,” said Kentmore. “I made it quite clear when they invited me that my brother’s death was a no-go area. I gather Ellie got ambushed too.”

“Bloody right, I did,” said Ellie. “Ffion even pretended to have completely forgotten Pete was a cop when I reminded her that I didn’t answer questions on his job.”

Kilda glanced at Pascoe and raised her thin black eyebrows.

“Good to see naïveté isn’t a gender thing, eh, Peter?” she murmured shaking her glass to produce the tinkle of ice undulled by liquid.

He returned her smile and refilled her glass. When he looked at Ellie he saw, unsurprised, that she didn’t take kindly to being called naïve, even when she definitely had been. Or maybe, he told himself smugly, she just didn’t care to see him exchanging smiles with a sexy young woman, which Kilda in her skinny and bony way definitely was.

Kentmore said, “I read about the explosion. Good to see you didn’t take any long-term damage, Peter, but Ellie was saying your boss is still very ill.”

“Yes,” said Pascoe, more brusquely than he intended.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to intrude,” said the man, finishing his drink. “Think we should be moving.”

“No, look, have another drink,” said Pascoe, pushing the bottle forward as he recalled that not only had this guy also been through a traumatic experience, but his intervention had probably stopped Ellie from flinging herself on the gun-toting woman. “I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that there’s nothing to tell. Andy, that’s my boss, is in a coma. Nobody knows if he’ll come out of it, or if he does, what condition he’ll be in.”

He thought he spoke calmly but Kilda reached across to him and gently squeezed his hand. Kentmore poured himself more whisky, which he drank as if he needed it. As if in sympathy the woman helped herself to another large vodka.

Ellie said, “I wonder what drove that poor woman to do something so crazy.”

“Some close personal loss, I’d guess,” said Kilda. “It drives different people to different things.”

She spoke dispassionately, you might almost have said uncaringly, if you didn’t know about her own loss, thought Pascoe. What had it driven her to? Drink, was the obvious answer.

He said, “Yes, you’re right.”

He saw no problem in passing on what Wield had told him about the woman, confident that every detail of her life would be splashed across the papers tomorrow.

When he finished, Kentmore nodded and said, “Yes, I noticed her earlier and thought she looked a bit disturbed. Didn’t expect a gun, though.”

Ellie said, “If Fidler wanted a panel with some strong personal slant on the terrorism question, maybe the bastard got his researchers to make sure some of the audience were affected too.”

“I’d put money on it,” said Pascoe.

“It’s terrible using people like that,” said Kentmore angrily.

“I did try to warn you about shows like Fidler’s,” murmured Kilda, whose glass seemed to be filling itself.

“Yes, you did,” said Kentmore, frowning. “But I was foolish enough to believe my views on agriculture were enough to make me primetime television fodder. Silly me. Ellie, Peter, I think we should be heading off. Many thanks for your hospitality.”

He hesitated, then took a card out of his wallet and set it down on the table.

“Look, it would be nice to keep in touch, if you like, that is. In fact, as I was telling Ellie earlier, doing a bit of touting for custom, it’s our local village fete tomorrow…”

“Yes,” said Pascoe, seeing where he was heading. “I heard Fidler giving it a plug. Weather forecast sounds good. I hope you have a lovely day.”

But Kentmore was not to be diverted.

“They always have it on one of my fields,” he went on. “From what you were saying, your little girl’s going to miss out on her skating treat. I know it’s not the same, but the organizers always go out of their way to give the kiddies a good time. So, just a thought, we’re no distance really, Haresyke, just the far side of Harrogate. If you felt like a breath of country air…”

“What a nice idea,” said Ellie. “We might just do that, mightn’t we, Peter?”

She spoke with a degree of enthusiasm which seemed to go beyond politeness.

“Yes. Sounds great,” he said.

His own effort at enthusiasm must have fallen short, because Kilda Kentmore grinned slyly at him, then finished her drink and leaned forward to brush her ice-chilled lips against his cheek, murmuring, “Thanks for the drink. Good night, Ellie.”

Ellie shook Kentmore’s hand and said, “Thanks for the lift, and everything.”

“My pleasure. Good night.”

“Well, you seem to have made a hit there,” said Ellie after their guests had left.

“He seemed a nice enough guy,” said Pascoe.

“I wasn’t talking about the guy, but Miss Stolichnaya. Weird relationship.”

“You find a nice guy taking care of his dead brother’s widow weird?”

“Still taking care a couple of years on I find weird. But you’re right, he is rather nice. For a land-owning, Tory-voting, peasant-oppressing country squire, that is. Maybe it would be fun to drive down and take a look at him in his natural milieu, what do you think? And at lean and thirsty Kilda too, of course.”

“Kilda,” said Pascoe. “Interesting name. Rings a bell.”

“She is, or was, a fashion photographer. Dropped out after she lost her husband, I gather. But maybe you recall it from a few years back when you were drooling over the lingerie adverts in the glossy mags.”

“Could be. But isn’t there a saint called Kilda?”

“Wrong,” said Ellie one of whose less attractive traits was combining snippets of esoteric knowledge with a love of being right. “True, it’s the name of a barren, windswept island in the Outer Hebrides whence all life has fled, but in fact there never was an actual saint called Kilda. So a sort of pseudosaint. Fits in most respects so far as I can see.”

Women beware women, thought Pascoe. Time to move on. But subtly.

“Talking of lean mean women,” he said, “how did things end between you and F-Fiona? Did you pull one of her two f-faces off?”

“Don’t be silly. I offered her a deal. Either I strangled her there and then or she undertook to get my next book the biggest exposure since Harry Potter.”

“I presume she’s still breathing? I think you’ll do very well in the media business, love. You’ve got the right twisted mind for it.”

“You reckon? So how would your nice straight mind react if I said let’s take this bottle of scotch upstairs and finish it in bed?”

Pascoe stood up and said, “I feel a twist coming on.”