Death Comes for the Fat Man

9

As they advanced toward the front door, Pascoe was wondering how to indicate to Rod that he should stay outside and see what his charms could winkle out of the woman.

He needn’t have worried.

The woman came forward to take the horse’s reins. Rod moved quickly toward the stable door saying, “Let me give you a hand there.”

“You any good at rubbing down horses?” asked the woman in an upper-class voice.

“No, but I’m a terribly quick learner,” said Rod with a grin.

You are indeed, thought Pascoe as he followed the man in the chair through the main entrance.

“That’s a clever bit of kit you’ve got back there,” he said.

“Yes, I’m quite pleased with it,” answered Kewley-Hodge. “I got the technology from our bomb-squad remote-control units but the original idea came from the Middle Ages. Knights’ armor became so heavy that they had to use hoists to get them into the saddle, and of course their mounts were very like our shire horses, chosen for strength rather than speed. Modern movies which show knights charging at each other as if they were in a two-furlong race at Kempton are quite misleading. To the modern eye, a real joust would probably look as if it had been filmed in slow motion. But I mustn’t knock Hollywood, not when I go jogging around like Charlton Heston at the end of El Cid.”

He glanced up at Pascoe and smiled, as though inviting him to share a joke. The hall they were in was well this side of baronial but it was large enough to accommodate two suits of armor which stood in opposing corners.

“The proof of the pudding,” murmured Pascoe.

“In two ways,” said Kewley-Hodge. “The one on the left is twelfth-century European and weighs about fifty pounds. The one on the right, if you look closely, has a great deal more leather about it, and the metal is much thinner. It weighs less than half as much. That was brought back from the second crusade by one of my ancestors. The Crusaders found out the hard way that heavy armor and slow horses were no competition for smaller, faster Saracen mounts ridden by men carrying so much less weight in metal, especially in the desert heat. The smarter ones adapted. The slower ones died.”

“Fascinating,” said Pascoe. “You are a military historian, are you, sir?”

“A historian of survival, perhaps,” said Kewley-Hodge. “Through here.”

He sent his chair toward an inner door that opened ahead of him, presumably at the breaking of a magic eye. Pascoe followed him into a medium-size sitting room, sparsely furnished, with no pictures on the walls and a fireplace in black slate, which gaped like a back door to hell. On the broad mantelshelf rested a packet of cigarettes, a lighter, and an ashtray. Pascoe calculated the height and worked out that if the fags belonged to his host, the man would need to summon a servant every time he wanted a smoke. Perhaps he was trying to give it up.

“Coffee, Mr. Pascoe? Or something stronger?”

He looked down at the man in the wheelchair and recalled his feelings when he’d looked up at the man on horseback. Was that the way Kewley-Hodge felt a dozen times a day as people loomed over him?

And was his reference to El Cid a reminder that, even dead, the body of the Spaniard bound to his saddle had the power to strike terror into the hearts of the Moors?

“No thanks,” said Pascoe, lowering himself gingerly into a leather armchair which turned out to be more yielding than its appearance promised. “I don’t want to take up more of your time than necessary.”

“Be my guest. Time is a commodity I’m not short of. So how can I help you?”

“I believe that during your military service you knew a man called Young. Sergeant John Young, known as Jonty?”

“Now like me a plain mister, and making a name as a popular author. John T. Youngman. Yes, I remember him.”

“How well did you know him, may I ask?”

“Very well indeed. I’d say we were as close as you can get without being bent.”

Pascoe let his surprise show.

“Despite the fact that you were an officer and he was an NCO?”

“I think you’re confusing class and rank, Mr. Pascoe. David Stirling, the regiment’s founder, stated categorically that in the SAS there should be no distinction of class. All ranks belong to one company. It makes good sense because it means good soldiering. I leaned heavily on Jonty, and I like to be sure that what I’m leaning on isn’t going to give.”

“I see. And he was clearly dedicated to you. In every sense.”

Kewley-Hodge smiled appreciatively and said, “Yes, that tickled me somewhat. So what has Jonty done to arouse your interest, Mr. Pascoe? Inciting racial hatred, is it?”

“What makes you say that, sir?”

“Well, I don’t imagine they send Chief Inspectors to deal with a traffic offense.”

“I meant, do you have any reason for thinking that inciting racial hatred is a crime more likely to be committed by Youngman than, say, burglary? Or rape? Or peculation?”

“Now let me see. Burglary? No, that wouldn’t be Jonty’s cup of tea. I could see him as a pirate or a highwayman, maybe, but crawling in through a kitchen window to steal the candlesticks, no way. Rape? He always seemed to be able to get his wicked way with the ladies without needing to resort either to violence or indeed to paying hard cash. I once asked him his secret. He said letting them see you want them more than anyone’s ever wanted them before, and making no promises. I tried it and got my face slapped, so there has to be something else. As for peculation, what the hell’s that?”

“Embezzlement,” said Pascoe.

“Is that so? Interesting. Add an s and it becomes the legal and acceptable basis of most activity in the City. What a flimsy divide there is between crime and respectability, Chief Inspector.”

“So, not Youngman’s bag then? But incitement to racial hatred might be?”

“Sometimes it’s possible for a soldier to develop some kind of respect for the people he’s fighting against. And of course it helps a great deal if he’s got a great deal of respect for the people he’s defending. Out in the Gulf, Sergeant Young I fear had neither. He hated the enemy with an absolute hatred which permitted no quarter. And he despised the local citizenry we were supposed to be there to protect. I have heard him say that there was nothing in the whole Arab world worth shedding one drop of a British soldier’s blood to preserve. So, yes, I imagine, if he still holds this point of view, and if he were foolish enough to promulgate it in the wrong company, he could well lay himself open to the charge of inciting racial hatred.”

Pascoe shifted on his chair. The cushion had flattened to deceive, drawing him down through its yielding softness to a bed of sharp-edged rocks.

He said, “If he still holds this point of view? You haven’t seen him then since he left the Service and started writing?”

“Good lord, yes, several times,” said Kewley-Hodge. “Whenever he’s in these parts, he drops in. We chat about old times. But either he’s mellowed or he doesn’t feel it necessary to trot out his old views, perhaps because he assumes that my present condition means I must automatically share them.”

“And do you?” asked Pascoe softly.

“Is that a trick question?” asked Kewley-Hodge, smiling. “Have you got a blank space on your warrant waiting to slip my name in?”

“Hardly, sir. And I have no witness anyway.” Pascoe smiled back.

“That’s true. Wonder what’s become of your sidekick. Working his charms on Mama, I would guess.”

“That was your mother?” said Pascoe, unable to conceal his surprise.

“Yes,” said Kewley-Hodge, amused. “Sorry, I didn’t introduce you, did I? But she likes to keep her roles separate, the chatelaine and the maternal. I’m sure your young man will bring out the motherly side. She bakes a mean seedcake. I hope he gets a slice for his trouble.”

“I hope so too.”

So the woman was that Edith Hodge whose money had kept the Kewleys solvent. She must have given birth young. Even making allowances for the aging effect of pain, there couldn’t be more than twenty years at the very most between them.

He said, “Now, you were going to explain your views on Muslim extremists, sir?”

“Well, I go along to the village church about once a month and I try to get in the forgiving vein, sometimes I even get close, but you know when everyone else stands up and walks out at the end of the service, somehow the forgiving vein dries up and I hate the bastards who did this to me as much as ever. We go out to these places to help, but in the end who are we helping? We talk about extremists, but given the chance they’re all bloody extremists. Look at what’s happened in Iraq since we gave them back their miserable country. Where were all these brave freedom fighters, these suicide bombers, these well-armed resistance groups when Saddam was in power? Skulking in their caves, of course, because they didn’t dare take up arms against a tyrant who’d give them back ten blows for every one they struck, who’d make sure that every suicide martyr was accompanied to his reward by a couple of hundred of his friends and family. Suddenly they’ve found their courage, have they? The courage to murder their rescuers! I piss on such courage! The lesson of history is that people get the dictators they deserve. We should have left them to rot until they came begging for help, then left them to rot a little longer.”

He fell silent. He was breathing hard. Had he let himself be carried away further than he intended? Somehow Pascoe doubted it. This was a man who felt so secure behind whatever armor he’d built for himself that he had no compunction about speaking his mind.

Which might mean that he had no involvement with the Templars.

Or perhaps that he was so certain of his rightness, he didn’t give a damn about being caught. In fact, he might even look forward to sitting in his wheelchair in the Bailey, defying a jury not to admit they felt some sympathy for him.

Pascoe said, “When did you last see Sergeant Young?”

“I believe it was in February. He was doing a promotional tour and when he got to Sheffield, he popped along to pay me a visit.”

“Did he stay the night?” asked Pascoe.

“Yes, he did. I recall asking him if he wouldn’t be missed. I gather these publishers like to keep their writers to a pretty tight schedule. He laughed and said his minder would cover for him, that’s what she got paid for.”

“And did he give you any hint that he might be involved in any activity which might reflect his extreme views on the Middle Eastern situation?”

Kewley-Hodge leaned forward and said, “Good Lord, is this what this is all about? Not just inciting racial hatred but doing something about it? You think he could be mixed up with these Templars the papers are going on about, don’t you?”

“If I did, would you be surprised, Mr. Kewley-Hodge?”

“Not in the slightest,” said the man without pausing for thought. “Skulking in the background, urging others to act was never Jonty’s way. My problem on ops was stopping him from always putting himself in the most dangerous position.”

“Seems to me these Templars are doing a deal of skulking,” said Pascoe dryly.

“I don’t think so. Skulking is not the same as using local cover and subterfuge to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy.”

“Not much chance of that when you’re in the UK and murdering the enemy piecemeal,” said Pascoe.

“I think you’re missing the point, Mr. Pascoe. The people getting killed are criminals who have been condemned to death by every court of natural justice in the land. In this case, it’s people like yourself trying to interfere with the process who are the enemy these Templars need to evade.”

“Would that mean it’s OK to injure us then?”

“Of course not. But, alas, one of the many perils of modern warfare is friendly fire. If you’re in the zone, you need to be very careful indeed.”

“I’ll remember that, sir. So to return to my question, has Youngman, that is to say, ex-Sergeant Young, ever said anything directly or indirectly that would indicate he is actively involved with the Templars?”

This time Kewley-Hodge did give himself time to think. He pressed a button that sent his chair rolling forward till it came to a halt alongside the fireplace. Then suddenly the seat of the chair began to rise, at the same time pivoting at its front edge, while the chair back moved forward to form a vertical with it. And from being a man in a wheelchair, Kewley-Hodge became a country gent, standing against his fireplace, lighting a cigarette.

He had his right elbow fixed firmly on the mantel, and there was, Pascoe noticed, a narrow supporting ledge that had emerged at buttock height in the wheelchair’s vertical face, like a monk’s misericord, but the physical effort needed to maintain the pose must have been immense. Yet as he now smiled down upon the seated Pascoe, he gave out nothing but an impression of negligent ease

“Can’t say he did, Chief Inspector. And of course I’ve no idea whether or not he’s involved with these people. But if it turns out he is, then I say good luck to him! And I think you’ll find there are many thousands of our fellow citizens who are saying exactly the same.”

Pascoe stood up abruptly. Dalziel, he thought, would probably have offered his hand to see if the bugger would fall over.

He said, “Thank you for your cooperation, sir. I’ll leave my card if I may. I’d appreciate it if you could give me a ring should Mr. Youngman get in touch with you.”

“Of course,” said Kewley-Hodge. “Could you see yourself out? Have a look around first, if you want. Not much to see by way of ornament but the house itself is not without interest to a student of vernacular architecture. And you might bump into your good-looking young assistant if he’s survived Mama’s ministrations.”

He spoke with a faint hint of mockery, as if to say he knew exactly what Rod was up to.

“Let’s hope he’s saved me a slice of seedcake,” said Pascoe.