Death Comes for the Fat Man

1

You told him I were dead and the bugger actually believed you?” said Andy Dalziel.

Peter and Ellie Pascoe were sitting at his bedside. A week had passed since his return to consciousness. At first his days consisted of short bouts of confused wakefulness interspersed with long periods of sleep, some natural, some drug induced. But by day three the waking periods were longer and less confused. On day six he was moved out of intensive care and on day seven he demanded a gill of Highland Park and six bacon butties, which some of the staff took to be evidence of incipient dementia. Happily John Sowden, who knew him of old, was able to assure his colleagues that what it actually demonstrated was that Dalziel had taken a large step on the road to recovery.

“But it’s a long road and precisely how far along it he will move is impossible to say,” Sowden warned Cap Marvell. “He is not a young man. Any return to work will only be possible after an extended period of convalescence. In fact, were he that way inclined, I could not see any problem about retirement on medical grounds…what?”

Cap, who’d let out a hoot of amusement, said, “Why don’t you suggest that to him, Doctor? But I’d have your crash team on alert.”

“No need for that,” Sowden assured her. “There’s no problem with his heart.”

Cap said, “I know that. I mean on alert for you.”

During this period there’d been a ban on visitors other than Cap, but that night she rang Pascoe to tell him that Dalziel was finally visitable.

“I’ve told him all I could about what’s been happening,” said Cap. “But he’s really keen to hear your own account, Peter.”

Which was a loose translation of, “I want to hear this from the horse’s arse.”

It was a shock to see him sitting up, and not a reassuring one. On his back, unmoving, and linked to life by tubes and wires, he had somehow remained himself. A beached whale maybe, but still Leviathan. Now sitting up, pale and frail, talking and moving with visible effort, he was more like a flounder, flapping its last on the deck.

But he still had strength enough to make it clear he wanted to know everything that had happened with regard to the Mill Street investigation, so, at first hesitantly then with accelerating flow, Pascoe told the story.

Dalziel’s weakness made him a better listener than he normally was. Perhaps even more surprisingly, Ellie scarcely interrupted at all. Peace had broken out between the Pascoes with his assurance that his flirtation with the murky world of CAT and all its works was definitely over. His transgression was forgiven, but not, he suspected, forgotten, and when he reached the point in his story at which he tricked Kentmore, he attempted to glissade over it, but the Fat Man was on it in a flash.

“You told him I were dead, and the bugger actually believed you?”

“Well, yes,” said Pascoe.

Dalziel shook his head incredulously. Pascoe caught Ellie’s eye to see if she shared his amusement that in this long twisty tale of death and deceit, the one thing the Fat Man found it hard to credit was that anyone could believe he was dead. She stayed stonyfaced. Forgiven he might be, but it was going to be a long time before she found anything about the deception amusing.

“You must have been bloody convincing,” said Dalziel accusingly.

“Well, actually, it was Wieldy who broke the news,” said Pascoe.

“I suppose he’s got the face for it,” said the Fat Man grudgingly. “So, on you go.”

The climax at the Marrside Grange Hotel Pascoe precised considerably, as he’d done when describing it to Ellie, not caring or, to be fair to himself, not able to explain to her why when Kilda started counting he hadn’t been the first person out of the door.

Tottie Sarhadi’s heroic role he did full justice to, however, watching Dalziel keenly to see if there were any reaction to the name, but nothing showed.

Maybe he was being diplomatic with Cap Marvell in the room. Not that there was much chance of Cap hearing anything. Dalziel was in a large comfortable room with all mod cons in the private patient wing of the Central. Pascoe guessed that Cap Marvell was picking up the bill. One of the world’s great organizers, she’d walked all over hospital regulations and installed herself in the room also. At present she was sitting at a table by the wall, earphones on, working at her laptop, probably organizing some direct action of doubtful legality, thought Pascoe as he brought his story to its conclusion with a fittingly upbeat flourish, implying that everything was neat and tidy.

But the Fat Man, who had always been able to spot a loose thread on a Black Watch kilt at fifty yards said, “So let’s get things straight. We’ve definitely got the buggers who put me in this sodding bed?”

“Yes. The Kentmores.”

“Grand. I hope they lock ’em up and throw away the key.”

Pascoe nodded agreement. It wasn’t the time or place to let out a hint of the growing ambiguity of his own feelings about the Kentmores. They had murdered three men in Mill Street, they had almost killed Dalziel, and it was only the intervention of kismet in the person of Tottie Sarhadi that had prevented Kilda from further slaughter.

Yet when he thought of the two of them what came into his mind were images of Kilda, pale as a waif child and still unconscious, vanishing into the ambulance, and of Maurice’s stricken face as he received the deceitful news of Dalziel’s death. Bound together on a wheel of fire. Now permanently bound there. It was a hard way to come to the truth of poetry.

“And this mad SAS bugger, Youngman. You say you’ve got him, but I’ve not heard any mention of him on the news.”

“CAT have taken charge of him.”

“How’d you let that happen? You collared the bugger, didn’t you? When I had a prisoner, no bugger took him off me ’less I gave the go-ahead.”

Pascoe winced at the unjustness of it all.

By the time he was done at Marrside, Youngman had been whisked away to the Lube where the mysterious Bernard was doubtless already airbrushing him out of the picture. There was nothing of substance to link him to the Mazraani beheading. As for the attempt on Hector, all they really had there was Hector’s jaguar sketch…! Which left the Kentmores. And how willing would they be to testify against the man who’d helped Christopher in his dying moments?

Without Youngman, Pascoe could see no way of getting to Kewley-Hodge. And the galloping major was the only possible line of contact to St. Bernard.

Pascoe couldn’t even be sure he’d actually met the Templar mole during his time at the Lube. But a copper has to go with what he’s got and those he thought of as the likely suspects had all turned up at the Marrside Grange Hotel within the space of a few minutes, Sandy Glenister and Dave Freeman in one car, Bernie Bloomfield and Lukasz Komorowski separately. Whether they’d all come from the Lubyanka, or whether they’d been dragged from their weekend recreation he did not know.

They sat in the hotel office and listened to Pascoe’s account of events.

“Pete, you’re a very lucky man,” said Glenister when he finished.

“Yes, you are,” said Bloomfield. “Didn’t Napoleon try to surround himself with lucky men? I’m not sure if you deserve congratulation or reduction to the ranks, Peter.”

“It is like gardening, the only thing that counts is results,” said Komorowski. “This could hardly have worked out better.”

“Except perhaps,” said Freeman reflectively, “if Pete and Mrs. Sarhadi had got out of the room with the others and Mrs. Kentmore had blown up herself and the Sheikh…”

To Pascoe this sounded a cynicism too far but when he looked at the other three, he saw that they were all examining the proposition and finding much to agree with.

“Jesus!” he said in disgust. “If that’s what you want, why not just send out one of your own terminators and get the job done, nice and tidy?”

“I think you have been reading too many thrillers, Peter,” said Bloomfield. “We are not in the terminating business, as you put it. On the other hand, Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive officiously to keep alive.”

He smiled but Pascoe ignored the attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

“Officiously keeping people alive was part of a policeman’s job last time I looked,” he said. “As for thrillers, it was reading Youngman’s books that put me on to the Kentmores. Maybe you people at CAT should do a bit more reading.”

Freeman raised his eyebrows and looked at Bloomfield as if anticipating a sharp riposte, but it was Komorowski’s quiet pedantic voice that spoke next.

“For me, I think things have turned out well. We have smashed this Templar gang and we can put the fact that you were instrumental in saving Al-Hijazi’s life to good use, Mr. Pascoe. Most important of all, this time you have escaped injury. I say well done.”

“Quite right, Lukasz,” said Bloomfield. “Well done, Peter. Now let’s get out of here before the Press become intrusive. We’ll finish Peter’s debriefing back at the Lube.”

They had started moving to the door when Pascoe said, “No.”

The movement stopped.

Bloomfield turned and said, “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t work for CAT anymore, remember? Any further questions you want to ask, you’ll find me back home in Mid-Yorkshire. In the company of people I trust.”

“Now you’ve lost me, I’m afraid,” said Bloomfield, his face a landscape of lugubrious uncertainty.

“I very much doubt that, Commander,” said Pascoe crisply. “To say we’ve smashed the Templars is at the very least premature. How many more are there? The one called Archimbaud certainly. And the group who murdered Carradice. Is Youngman going to give you a list of names? I wouldn’t hold my breath. And finally, Commander, it must have struck you by now that the Templars couldn’t have functioned without considerable help from someone in CAT. St. Bernard, I believe his code name is. Like yours. Not that I’m casting aspersions. It could be any of you. Or, worse, all of you. Me, I’m heading back to Kansas. I’ve got an angry wife and a sick friend there.”

And he’d walked out.

As he drove away, the words of Bacon came into his mind. A man who has wife and children and a pension scheme should be very careful who he gives the finger to.

Complete openness was the best road to survival, he decided.

He’d written a detailed account of his activities, conclusions, and suspicions since the Mill Street explosion, and made three copies, one of which he’d given to Dan Trimble, one he’d sent to CAT, and the third he’d put into the hands of his solicitor.

Maybe he was being neurotic but sometimes neurotic felt good.

It also felt good to be talking to Andy Dalziel again, even if the old sod seemed inclined to blame him personally for the problems he foresaw in making charges stick.

“I’m sorry, Andy,” he said finally. “Though it hurts me to say it, there’s nothing more I can do.”

“It doesn’t hurt me to hear it,” said Ellie. “The further removed you are from those people, the better. Andy, we want you back on your feet soon as possible. Since you’ve been in here he’s bounced from one lot of trouble to another.”

“Never you worry, luv,” said Dalziel. “Couple of weeks and I’ll be right as rain. Then Youngman and yon Kewley-Hodge wanker had better look out.”

There was the sound of a chair being pushed back. Cap Marvell had removed her headphones in time to catch Dalziel’s last remarks.

“Right as rain?” she said scornfully. “Andy, if in a couple of weeks you’ve reached the stage where you can wipe your own bum, you’ll be doing well.”

The Pascoes grinned. Cap Marvell had a line in upper-class coarseness which was more than a match for the Fat Man’s vernacular bawdry.

Cap went on, “This Kewley-Hodge you mentioned, would he be one of the Derbyshire Kewley-Hodges, or Kewleys as were?”

“That’s right,” said Pascoe. “Of Kewley Castle, near Hathersage. You know the family?”

“If they live in a sodding castle, of course she’d know the family,” said Dalziel, clearly stung by the bum-wiping comment. “Had to have an op to get the silver spoon out of her mouth when she took up with me. On private insurance, of course.”

They were made for each other, these two, thought Pascoe.

“Not really,” said Cap, ignoring the Fat Man, which was another of her rare talents. “But Edie Hodge, whose name got tagged onto theirs, was at St. Dot’s when I was there.”

“St. Dot’s?”

“St. Dorothy’s Academy, near Matlock.”

“I think we used to play them at rugger,” said Dalziel.

“She must have been a lot older than you,” said Pascoe.

Cap laughed and said, “Ellie, you’ve trained your husband well. Yes, but only a couple of years. Of course that makes a lot of difference at that age, but she was a legend in her own lunch hour. Our answer to Lady Chatterley.”

“That sounds interesting,” said Pascoe, recalling Hot Rod’s assurance that Edie was a very sexy lady.

“It was. Kitbag-that’s Dame Kitty Bagnold, our head-caught her bonking in the potting shed with the college gardener. Or rather with his son and assistant who was, I recall, quite dishy. Sex-on-a-shovel we used to call him.”

“Bloody male hamster wouldn’t be safe in them places,” muttered Dalziel.

“So what happened?” asked Pascoe.

“Boy vanished. I think his dad sent him out on other jobs thereafter. As for Edie, it was pack your bags and never darken this doorstep again.”

“Working-class employee gets off scot free, rich fee-paying pupil is sent down the road. Bet the Tory tabloids loved that!” said Ellie, hoping to steer the conversation into more general areas, away from anything no matter how distantly connected with CAT.

It didn’t work.

Cap said, “Kitbag must have decided that good gardeners were harder to come by than rich kids and Edie only had a couple of terms to go anyway. She was a real school heroine till she ruined her image a couple of months later by marrying Alexander Kewley.”

“What was wrong with that?” asked Pascoe.

“For a start he was nearly thirty years older than she was and it wasn’t as if he were stinking rich or had a title or anything. He was a trustee of the school and he’d show up at Speech Day and Founder’s Day and Sports Day, especially at Sports Day. Wherever young flesh was being flashed, there would Alexander the Great be also. He was always chatting up Edie-I think he knew her father-and she’d do her cock-teasing thing. But no one imagined she would ever let him get closer than teasing distance.”

“So why did she do it?” wondered Pascoe.

Why is he always so fucking curious? Ellie asked herself.

Cap smiled reminiscently and went on, “Maybe so she could turn up at the next Founder’s Day with doting hubby and gurgling infant and queen it over Kitbag. I remember at one point Edie gave her the baby to hold while she tucked into the buffet, and the brat immediately filled his nappy.”

There was a loud snore from the bed. Dalziel was pretending to have gone to sleep. Or perhaps the poor old sod wasn’t pretending.

Ellie saw her chance and said softly, “Peter, I think perhaps we ought to go.”

“Yes, of course.”

Cap pressed a button to lower the bed’s backrest. Supine, he looked even paler and frailer. They moved quietly to the door. Cap followed them into the corridor.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “Bring Rosie next time. He’s very keen to see her.”

“We practically had to lock her up to stop her coming today,” said Ellie. “But we thought, best leave it till we saw how he looked. How do you think he’s doing, Cap?”

“Fine,” said Cap. “But not half as fine as he wants to pretend. It’s going to be a long haul to get him back to where he was, and you know Andy, he’s a one-mighty-leap man. But don’t worry, we’ll get him there eventually.”

Her breezy confidence was reassuring, and Pascoe needed to be reassured. While there’d been flashes of the old Dalziel, what had been disturbingly constant was the sense of change, his fear that something had happened inside to dilute the Fat Man’s essence, perhaps that something was broken beyond repair.

He tried to dislodge the distressing notion from his mind by returning to the niggle provoked by what Cap had told them.

“Why do you think Alexander Kewley agreed to change his name?” he asked.

“Don’t know. Maybe because he was seriously strapped for cash and the Hodges had it dripping out of their ears,” said Cap.

“That makes it sound like a deal,” said Pascoe.

Ellie said, trying not very successfully to hide her irritation, “Stop being a cop!”

Cap said, “I’m still in touch with old Kitbag. Could ask her about Edie Hodge if you like.”

Ellie gave him her Gorgon glare and Pascoe began to mutter, “No really, don’t bother,” when a thin reedy voice called from within the room, bringing to all their minds memories of past Dalzielesque summonses that could drown all church bells within an acre.

Cap pushed open the door and went back inside.

Ellie said, “Peter, you are going to leave it alone, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course I am. Honest. Normal service resumed. I promised, didn’t I?”

She looked at him distrustingly but before she could respond, Cap reappeared.

“He woke up and realized you’d gone and he says there’s something he wanted to say to you, Peter. Do you mind?”

“Of course not.”

As the door closed behind Pascoe, Cap looked at Ellie curiously and said, “You two OK, are you?”

“Yes. Fine,” said Ellie shortly. Then she added, because she disliked prevarication, and Cap though not close was a friend, “He promised me all this business with CAT was behind him. He’s lucky to have got out of it as lightly as he did. I just think that he ought to give it a rest and settle back into things here.”

“It was Andy who wanted to hear all about it,” said Cap.

“That’s what Peter said, but I can tell, it’s stirred it all up again.”

“Ellie,” said Cap gently. “One thing I’ve learned since I partnered up with Andy is we need to be linked together by a long and loose rope.”

“Peter’s not Andy.”

“Of course he isn’t. But the rope linking them is in some ways a lot shorter and tighter than ours.”

The two women found things to look at in the empty corridor. They knew they were in a minefield where even a cautious step might end in an explosion, and so they stood in a silence waiting for rescue.

There was a saving silence too at Dalziel’s bedside. To Pascoe it seemed that the Fat Man had gone to sleep again, and he felt relieved, suspecting that anything that was said now was merely going to confirm his worst fears.

He began to turn away.

A sound from the bed stopped him and he leaned over the still figure.

The lips moved a fraction, letting out scarcely enough breath to stir a feather. Pascoe thought he heard his name on the breath.

He said, “Yes?”

“Peter, is that you?”

This was marginally stronger but not so strong it would have done more than tremble a candle flame.

“Yes, Andy, it’s me.”

The Fat Man’s eyes opened. The pupils seemed cloudy and unfocused.

He said, “Peter.”

“Yes.”

His left hand moved. Pascoe instinctively patted it and felt his fingers seized in a grip weaker than he recalled his daughter’s when first he’d held her.

“Pete, mate, I thought you’d gone.”

“No, Andy, still here,” said Pascoe, thinking, Mate! Oh Jesus, this was bad.

“Something I need to…Cap told me…back in Mill Street when I got blown up…”

The voice failed. Were those tears in his eyes? Oh shit, this was very bad!

“It’s OK, Andy,” he said. “You rest now. We’ll talk about it later, OK?”

“No…need to do it now…in case…you know. In case. Cap said…if it weren’t for you I’d likely have…she said you saved me, Pete…you saved me…”

His voice choked, as if the emotion were too much for his depleted strength.

“I can’t recall much about it now, Andy,” said Pascoe, eager to get out of here before the Fat Man said something so cloyingly sentimental it would clog up their relationship forever. But the grip on his fingers was too strong now for him to break away without it being quite clear that that was what he was doing.

“…and what I want to say, Pete…”

The voice was getting fainter again, the eyes had closed. Perhaps the poor bastard’s debility was going to save him! He leaned forward closer to catch the soft-spoken words.

“…what I want to say is…”

And the eyes snapped open and stared straight into Pascoe’s, bright and tearless.

“Just because tha gave me the kiss of life doesn’t mean we’re bloody engaged!”

Now the great mouth opened wide to let out a bellow of laughter so strong Pascoe felt himself blasted upright.

“You rotten bugger,” he said. “Oh you rotten bugger!”

Grinning broadly he made for the door.

The two women, attracted by the sudden outburst within, greeted him anxiously.

“Is he all right?” asked Ellie.

“I’m afraid so,” said Pascoe. “Well, look who’s here.”

Along the corridor, moving on a pair of crutches with a strange crablike motion, came Hector. Tucked into the neck of his T-shirt was a bunch of lilies whose pollen had redistributed itself generously across his gaunt features, giving him the appearance of a man who had just died of some rare form of jaundice.

“How’re you doing, Hec?” inquired Pascoe.

“Fine, thank you, sir. How’s Mr. Dalziel? Can I go in to see him?”

Cap had begun to say, “No, he’s resting…” when Pascoe stepped in front of her and opened the door.

“Mr. Dalziel’s fine,” he said. “And he’d love to see you. In you go, Hec.”

The constable hopped sideways through the door which Pascoe closed gently after him. There was a moment’s silence then came a crash, presumably as Hector dropped one of his crutches in order to extract his bouquet, then a dull thud, presumably as he fell across the bed, followed by a great cry of shock or rage or pain.

“Why did you let Hector in?” asked Ellie curiously as they left the hospital.

“Why not?” asked Pascoe gaily. “After all, in a way it was them two that started it all. Only fitting that they should bring it to an end, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” agreed Ellie, returning his smile. “The end. Only fitting. Now let’s go home.”