Midnight Fugue

furioso

PRELUDE

It is like waking.

Waking is odd. Sometimes sudden, like bursting through the surface of a pool after long minutes swimming under water. Light, air, sound, all in a terrifying triumphal confusion.

Sometimes so slow and gradual that there are stages when you still do not know if you wake or sleep.

He has been waking gradually.

That moment when he thought love and joy had brought him fully back to the waking world he now realizes was only a partial waking, the border country where dreams and reality meet and are still confused.

Such certainty of happiness, such a sense of renewal, of leaving the old far behind and striding forward joyously towards the new, had made him feel invulnerable, had led him to take the risk, which of course he did not see as a risk.

He sees it now.

As clearly as he sees the long straight road tapering downhill before him, empty except for the bright red car.

There is nothing in sight behind it. He has summoned it here to make sure it is alone. That piece of planning, of forethought, belongs to that old world he now knows he has to wake into. He hasn’t left it behind him. He’d been fooling himself to think there was any way he could ever do that.

The final act of waking will take place when he speaks into his phone.

He waits. And he waits. Then he waits some more.

He tells himself this long wait is necessary. He has to be absolutely sure nothing has followed the red car. But he knows in truth it has nothing to do with being secure, at least not in that sense. He needs to be confident that the barriers he has built to protect his new world are strong enough to resist all onslaughts from the old.

So still he waits.

Then finally, knowing if he does not speak now, he may never speak, he raises the phone to his lips and says, ‘Leave the car. Walk up the hill to the pub. Go to the car park.’

The late afternoon has an autumn chill at its edges. The car park has only a handful of cars in it, mostly parked near the entrance to the pub. His is parked in the corner furthest away. He is the only person out here.

He watches the blonde woman get out of the red car and start walking up the hill.

He puts his phone in his pocket and gets himself ready for the final waking.

17.55-18.15

‘Hello, Gina.’

‘Hello, Alex.’

This was the real, the final waking. Here they were, face to face, standing awkwardly, like a pair of youngsters uncertain where their first date is going to take them.

He made no attempt to touch her. A handshake would have been absurd, a kiss obscene. What would he say? What would for him be the most important thing to say?

He said, ‘Let’s sit in my car.’

She followed him to an old pale grey Astra in need of a good scrubbing. She remembered that when she used to complain about the condition of his vehicle, he’d grin and say, ‘Man in my line of work wants a car nobody takes notice of.’ She remembered…

She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. Once let memories take control and all the pain she had fought her way through seven years ago would come rushing in again, and she did not know if she had the strength to fight it a second time.

She got into the passenger seat, he got behind the wheel.

He looked straight ahead and said, ‘I came to see you…to see how things were.’

She turned her head to look at him. It was definitely him, but different. Concentrate on the differences, they would help anchor her in the here and now. Head shaven, nothing remaining of those light fair locks so easily ruffled by even the gentlest breeze. Face slightly fatter. Strange. She would have looked for it to be thinner. She knew hers was.

She said, ‘Last year.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were in the street…late one night…’

‘Very late. I’d arrived earlier in the evening. No one was in. I waited. I needed to see…how things were…’

‘And you saw me and Mick. You saw us embracing. You saw me take him into the house.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did that make you feel?’

He didn’t answer and she said impatiently, ‘It must have made you feel something.’

Interrogation. Take control, set the agenda. Mick had said that. Or was it Alex? Did it matter? Somehow it felt that it did.

He said, ‘It made me feel relieved. It confirmed who I was, where I was.’

He turned his head now and looked straight at her.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Not hurt me?’ she cried incredulously. ‘You disappeared. All those years without a sound. And suddenly you feel you don’t want to hurt me!’

He shook his head and said, ‘Back then, to start with I knew nothing, I was nothing. I didn’t think about hurting you because I didn’t know anything about you. Or about anything. Even when things started coming back, they had nothing to do with feelings. For a long time I was just a sackful of fragments trying to learn how best to reassemble itself.’

Take control, set the agenda. Well, that didn’t last long, she mocked herself.

‘Fragments?’ she echoed.

‘I was in pieces. I didn’t just run away and hide from you, Gina. I hid from myself. You have to believe that.’

‘Of course I believed that,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t let myself think you’d simply abandoned me without a word. I told myself it had to be something in your mind, or…’

‘Or?’

‘Or you were dead. I didn’t think that at first. It took me a long time to come round to that. But after so many years of nothing, that became the easiest thing to believe.’

‘So Mick was…’

‘A long time after I gave up on you. Not until I was sure you were never coming back. You know what made me sure? It was seeing you that night in the street. For a moment you were so real I knew you had to be an illusion. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, because seeing you, and Mick, made me realize that to me, the new me, you were an illusion too.’

She wanted to scream, But I was there! I hadn’t run away! You could have stepped out of the shadows and spoken to me, how the hell dare you say that I was an illusion too?

Instead she said, ‘And that’s why you were relieved. Because you decided I was…what? Unreal? Unimportant? What?’

‘You were with Mick. You’d moved on. You weren’t letting the past rule your life. We had nothing to give each other except pain. Better for both of us that we ceased to exist to each other.’

They sat in silence for a moment, their eyes averted, then she burst out, ‘So why are you here now, Alex? What’s going on? You say you decided we had nothing to give each other but pain. So why the hell are we sitting here now?’

He turned his head to meet her gaze once more.

‘Not to hurt you, believe me,’ he said. ‘I’m truly sorry…’

‘Forget it,’ she interrupted him. ‘Just tell me what happened, what’s happening, tell it straight. We’ll save the apologies and recriminations for later.’

He looked relieved and settled back in his seat.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Except telling it straight isn’t easy because of the gaps. All I can do is say what I know, or think I know. I was at home. Then I wasn’t at home, I didn’t know where home was, I didn’t know who I was, or rather I suppose I knew I didn’t want to know. Does that make sense? What I mean is, I knew I was lost, but I never felt an urge to go and ask anyone for help in finding me.’

‘That sounds more like hiding than lost,’ she said.

‘Maybe. I had a lot to hide from.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning Lucy’s death.’

Someone had to say it. She was glad it was him. She’d always thought of herself as the stronger one, but seven years on it was Alex who had the strength to say it. She’d have thought this mention of her daughter’s name would be the trigger to open the floodgates, but instead it seemed to give her the strength to maintain her control.

‘And not just that, though that was at the centre of everything,’ he went on. ‘Once I knew she was ill, everything shifted, perspectives changed, I changed, you changed too I daresay, though I was too absorbed in my own pain to really see that. I thought that you were strong, that you had the strength to be resigned, but I see now that all that was just a different way of dealing with the pain.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Alex, this corruption thing, were you guilty?’

He looked at her impatiently, as if this were a diversion from the important stuff.

‘Of course I was. You must have known that.’

She shook her head. Somehow this felt like the biggest shock of all, not because it was more important than anything else but because, amidst all the debris of their shattered lives, she’d always clung to the certainty of his innocence.

She said, ‘I thought…I thought…’

‘Come on!’ he said. ‘We needed the money. From the start we knew the good old NHS was only with us so far along the way. If we wanted the newest and the best treatment, we went looking for it, remember? Here, there, everywhere, chasing a hope. Hope doesn’t come cheap. Where did you think the money was coming from?’

‘You got a bank loan, you were applying for a mortgage on the house…’

‘The loan went nowhere, mean bastards. And they were making me jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops to get a mortgage, then Gidman made his offer. There it was: instant money, no strings attached. I wasn’t gong to refuse.’

‘No strings? Except your job!’

He laughed and said, ‘I can’t remember much, but one thing I do remember is how utterly unimportant the job seemed. Everything except Lucy was shadowy, unreal. The rest of the world was illusion. I could have seen it fall into ruin without a pang.’

‘And then?’

‘And then she died and I was left alone in this illusory world.’

‘Alone? You weren’t alone!’ she cried. ‘I was there.’

‘No. You were alone too in your own world. It was a world I wasn’t strong enough to join you in. I had nothing to stay for, everything to flee from.’

‘Including the internal investigation,’ she said, feeling a sudden urge to hurt him. ‘Might have been illusory, but I daresay the prospect of being jailed as a bent cop must have played a small part in your decision.’

He shook his head violently.

‘I told you, there wasn’t any decision. What I did had nothing to do with the threats, not the rat pack’s at the Yard, not Goldie Gidman’s either…’

‘He threatened you too, did he?’ she mocked. ‘What was he going to do? Beat you up? Break a few bones? Pain or prison? No wonder you ran!’

It was proving hard to stick to her own proposal that apologies and recriminations should be saved for later. In her heart she believed he had vanished because he had no choice, but all that pain he had caused her surely deserved some punishment?

He didn’t react to her mockery but said quietly, ‘I felt threatened, certainly. Not long after the investigation started, I was opening the garage door one morning. A car pulled up at the gate and a woman got out and called to me. She said she’d heard the house was up for sale, I told her it wasn’t, and she looked up at the house and said it didn’t matter anyway, now she’d seen it, she thought the property looked as if it might be a fire hazard. She’d known a lot of houses like this go up in flames, everyone inside burnt to death, just because the owner was careless. She hoped I wasn’t a careless owner.’

‘You’re saying she was from Gidman?’

‘His name was never mentioned, but oh yes, I knew she was from Gidman. I felt angry, but there was a man sitting in the car, watching us. He didn’t look the kind of guy I wanted to see getting out of the car, so I said I wasn’t the careless type. I was just about past caring then, but you were still at home.’

‘So you were thinking of me?’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do now? Swoon with gratitude?’

‘I was almost at a point where I wasn’t thinking of anyone,’ he said. ‘What I did had nothing to do with you or anyone. I did it because I couldn’t help it. It was like teleporting in the space movies. I was there, I wasn’t there. I was now, I was years in the future.’

She felt drained. She didn’t know how long she’d be able to go on with this, couldn’t imagine where it was going to end. Her throat felt very dry. She coughed and glanced out of the window towards the pub.

She said, ‘I could do with a drink.’

‘Better we’re not seen together in there. They know me. Here-’

He produced a bottle of water from the glove compartment. She opened it and took a swig. It was lukewarm but it eased her throat and renewed her strength.

‘So that’s what took you away,’ she said. ‘What brought you back?’

‘Nothing. I mean, lots of things. I mean it wasn’t just a blinding revelation: Oh, I’m ex-DCI Alex Wolfe, I must have lost my memory. It was gradual, confused. You see, I was really settled in my new life, I had a job, I had friends.’

‘A job? Friends? Lucky you. What kind of job?’

‘Casual work, to start with. In fact I started here at the Lost Traveller.’

‘The what?’

‘It’s the name of the pub. I must have come here for a drink and seen the advert. Maybe it was the name that attracted me.’

‘Oh yes? Might have made more sense if it had been called the Running Man.’

That came out more sharply than she’d intended, but she’d been provoked by the hint of pathos in what he’d said.

His reaction was a faint smile, the first lightness she’d seen in his features.

He said, ‘Whatever, it helped me survive. I collected glasses and served behind the bar to start with. I was casual labour, money in hand, nothing in the books, so no questions to answer. Just as well, as I had no answers to give.’

‘You must have had a name. They must have called you something.’

‘Yes, they did ask me. I told them my name was Ed. Ed Muir. I’d no idea why, it just came into my head. For all I knew then it was my real name.’

She stared hard at him, looking for signs that he was mocking her, but found none as he went on: ‘Later, when it started coming back to me, I realized where it came from. Back about a year before I got put on Macavity, I was on the team investigating that Hackney benefits scam. Way it worked, someone in the local social security office had to be involved, so I was delegated to go along and sign on to try and get a lead. I needed a name, so I called myself Edwin Muir. Remember? That Scottish poet you were so fond of? I’d just bought you a fancy edition of his collected works for your birthday.’

She said very quietly, ‘I remember. You couldn’t see what I saw in him, right?’

‘That’s right, but his name stuck and it came in really useful. Not only when I was working casual, but later, when things started coming back to me. I’d started doing a bit in the kitchen at the pub. I always enjoyed cooking, remember?’

Suddenly she didn’t want to do any more shared memories, not at this level, not like a couple of old school friends who’d run into each other by chance.

She said, ‘So you became a cook, is that what you’re saying?’

‘To start with. And as I stopped being casual, I needed a real back story. That’s where Ed Muir came in handy. Way back then, I’d picked up a lot of tricks about how to manipulate social security. Turned out there were still some traces of Ed Muir on file from the Hackney op, so it wasn’t too hard for me to build up the identity, particularly as I wasn’t trying to get money out of them. In fact, they’ve probably got me in their books as a success story. Layabout turns the corner, gets a permanent job, starts contributing.’

Feeling his evident pleasure in his own smartness like a pain, she said abruptly, ‘Do you still work here, at this pub?’

‘No. Sometimes I come back to give a hand if they’ve anything big on. But I moved on. I’m in charge of a fair-sized catering operation now.’

He spoke with a quiet pride, but he didn’t offer any details.

She said dully, ‘So you got your memory back. And you decided you preferred your new life to your old one. Great.’

‘It wasn’t as simple as that,’ he urged. ‘At first, it didn’t feel like recovering my memory, more like losing my mind. Then I met someone…’

‘A woman, you mean.’

‘Yes. We got together. I suppose, for me anyway, at first it was as much for comfort and warmth as…anything. But then she got pregnant. That was a waking point. Not the final one, perhaps, but a huge lurch back to reality; two realities, the one I wanted, which was here, and the other one that I’d escaped from but knew I’d have to deal with if I was to take my second chance.’

‘Second chance?’ she said. ‘That how you saw it?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said seriously. ‘I’d lost everything. Now I was getting it all back. How else should I see it?’

This was too much. Second chance! In all the joy of moving into a steady relationship with Mick, she had never ever thought of it as a second chance, an opportunity to replace what she had lost. Seven years of watching and helping her daughter grow, how could they ever be replaced?

‘And me? What about my loss?’ she cried.

‘I told you,’ he said patiently. ‘I went back to check you out. I had to know what damage I’d caused. When I saw that you and Purdy…well, I knew that I couldn’t change what had happened, couldn’t offer any kind of reparation. All I would do if I showed myself was cause even more damage.’

‘That was a very handy conclusion to reach, wasn’t it?’ she sneered. ‘Gave you the excuse to do exactly what you wanted to do.’

‘That too,’ he agreed. ‘We’d both repaired ourselves, started new lives. It made sense not to risk shattering both of them again, didn’t it?’

‘Maybe. In which case, why are we sitting here?’ she demanded.

He shifted in his seat and she could feel his relief at this step away from what had bound them together in the past to what had brought them together in the present.

‘I know why I’m sitting here,’ he said. ‘I heard something breaking on the terrace at the Keldale and I looked up and found myself looking straight at you. The real question is, what are you doing here? This photo you mentioned, have you got it with you?’

‘No. I gave it to the police, to the man I was having lunch with. His name’s Dalziel. He’s head of the local CID.’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ he said. ‘And this was a picture of me in MY Life?’

‘Yes. In the crowd, during the royal visit last week.’

‘And that didn’t strike you as odd? You know I wouldn’t bother to cross the street to see a member of our clapped-out royal family.’

‘That was the old you. What do I know about the new model, this happy relaxed guy with a good job in the catering industry? Listen. It was definitely you in the picture.’

‘Looking like I look now?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was like you as you used to be.’

‘Anything else? Why did you choose to stay at the Keldale, for instance?’

‘There was a message with the photo. On Keldale notepaper. I thought it might signify something. I had nothing else.’

‘What did the message say?’

‘The General reviews his troops. Remember?’

‘Of course I remember,’ he said with a reminiscent smile that made her want to hit him.

‘But you’re saying you didn’t send the message or the photo?’ she said.

‘Why would I?’

‘Why would anyone?’ she snapped.

He stared at her gloomily for a moment, then said, ‘I can only think of one reason. I’ve been a fucking idiot.’

‘Why does that not surprise me? I’m sorry, I mean, how? What have you done?’

He took the water bottle from her and downed an inch.

‘I told you, there’s been a period-in fact, it’s only come to an end today-like when you wake up in the morning but you’re not really fully awake. I knew who I was again, but I wasn’t yet totally back in the real world. I can’t have been, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. But it seemed harmless. In fact it seemed stupid not to, like turning down a gift from the gods.’

‘What the hell are you talking about, Alex?’

‘I needed money. It seemed important to give her the best possible start, to show everyone how proud I was, to show God how grateful I was…’

‘Who? Who are you talking about?’

‘My daughter,’ he said. ‘I wanted to throw her a really splendid christening party.’

She looked at him with realization dawning, though perhaps the realization was that she had known this all along, but hadn’t wanted to admit it.

She said with a calmness that frightened her, ‘That’s why you were in the garden. The christening party. It was yours.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘For your daughter.’

‘Yes.’

‘What have you called her.’

‘Lucinda.’

That was when at last she started crying.

18.10-18.15

Peter Pascoe entered the Keldale at a speed just short of a run and shouldered aside a middle-aged woman at the reception desk.

The receptionist didn’t wait for him to speak but said, ‘Room number 36.’

Pascoe was on his way up the stairs before the displaced guest had time to finish saying, ‘What a rude man!’

Upstairs he saw the door marked 36 was open.

As he rushed towards it, the thought occurred that he was doing exactly what he’d tried to tell Dalziel not to do. But he did it all the same.

A figure stooping by the bed straightened up, alerted by the sound of Pascoe’s entry. For a moment his imagination put a shotgun into the man’s hands. Then he saw it was DC Seymour and he was holding a laptop.

‘Oh hello, sir,’ said Seymour. ‘The Super’s through there.’

He nodded towards a door connecting this room to the next.

Pascoe went through.

‘What kept you?’ grunted the Fat Man, shaking the contents of a drawer on to the floor, then stirring the scattered underwear with his toe.

‘For Christ’s sake, Andy, what are you doing here?’

‘What’s it look like? Trying to spot owt that’ll tell me where these scrotes have gone. How about you, Pete? You following me, or what?’

‘I’m trying to stop you getting yourself killed.’

‘Nice of you. Apart from that, got anything new to share with me?’

‘Nothing important,’ snapped the DCI. ‘Just that Novello’s out of danger, if that’s of any interest to you.’

He was immediately sorry for his shortness as the Fat Man sank on to the bed as if his legs had lost the strength to hold him.

‘Thank Christ for that!’ he said with a religious fervour that could hardly have been matched by an archbishop. ‘I were starting to think…thank Christ for that.’

It was only now that Pascoe realized just how heavily the sense of his responsibility for Novello’s plight had been weighing on his boss.

‘So what have you found?’ he said, trying to turn the subject.

‘Bugger all, so far,’ said Dalziel.

The phone rang.

He picked it up, listened, said, ‘You’re a star,’ and dropped the receiver back on its rest.

‘That were that bonny lass on reception. Think she fancies me. I got her to check if these Delays were in. Aye, don’t look surprised, did you think I was going to smash the door down single-handed? When no one replied I asked her to check the car-park video, see if she could spot the Delays going out. I just missed the bastards!’ He smashed his left fist into his right palm in frustration. ‘They must have gone out of the car park minutes afore I turned in. They were likely around when we were here before, Pete. If only I hadn’t waited till I were sure…’

He stood up, his strength restored.

‘We’ll need to put out a call,’ he said. ‘Nowt yet on Gina’s car, is there?’

‘No. Sorry,’ said Pascoe. ‘She could be halfway back to London by now.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Dalziel. ‘Them two didn’t take off out of here to go for a little sightseeing run.’

‘Sir, I think you should look at this,’ said Seymour from the doorway.

They went through into the next room.

‘Found this laptop stuck under the bed,’ said Seymour. ‘Thought it was just plugged in to recharge the batteries. But there’s this…’

He turned it so they could see a map-diagram with a pulsing green spot.

‘That what I think it is?’ said Dalziel.

‘It looks like a tracking bug,’ said Pascoe.

‘And it’s not moving. Jesus, Pete, I bet it’s in her car, and she’s parked somewhere,’ cried the Fat Man.

‘Andy, you’re guessing,’ said Pascoe. ‘Let’s work out where it is and I’ll get a patrol car to take a look…’

But he might as well have been talking to the trees. Dalziel was peering close at the screen.

‘Got it!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘That’s the north road, and yon’s that unclassified road that leads nowhere but a few farms and the Lost Traveller. Was a time when you really needed to be lost to call in there, but it were a good pint last time I was in. So she’s about a quarter mile down the hill beyond. Come on, we can be there in twenty minutes if we move!’

‘No, Andy!’ commanded Pascoe with all the stern authority he could muster. ‘Think about it. If your theory is correct-and very possibly it’s not-then there could be an armed and dangerous man out there. I’ve got an ARU on standby, I’ll whistle them up and we’ll all take a look together.’

‘You wha’?’ cried the Fat Man. ‘There’s a bastard out there who put my girl in hospital and he’s likely looking to do the same to yon lass Gina who came up here looking for my help, and you want me to sit on my thumbs while you follow procedure? You do what you want; you’ll know where to find me.’

‘Listen, Andy,’ said Pascoe seriously, ‘I can’t let you do this. It’s just a matter of minutes…’

‘Minutes might be all we’ve got,’ said Dalziel. ‘And, Pete, what’s all this letting business? There’ll likely come a time and place when you can tell me what to do, but it’s not here and it’s not yet. I’m off. You coming or staying?’

Seymour, who had been watching this confrontation of giants with fascinated interest, mentally noting every phrase and inflexion for the historical record, now focused all his attention on Pascoe. Was this the moment when Spartacus threw off his chains? When Fletcher Christian put Captain Bligh in the longboat and set him adrift?

In the event the outcome was rather lacking in drama.

Pascoe shook his head, like a man waking from a dream, smiled wryly, even rather sadly, and said, ‘Oh, all right then. But if you get me killed, I’m not going to be the one who tells Ellie! Dennis, ring Sergeant Wield, tell him what’s going off and where, and get that ARU moving quick!’

‘And then,’ as Seymour was later to tell his enthralled audience, ‘they went running off down the corridor like a couple of big kids on their way to a party!’

18.15-18.30

Once Gina Wolfe started crying, it felt as if she could never stop.

Alex Wolfe had made no effort to comfort her, just sat there, watching patiently.

That told her more than anything he’d said that for him the past was dead. She wasn’t even a ghost, just a complication that threatened to damage his new life. While the barriers she had created between herself and the past had proved paper-thin, he had found a way to turn that pain into part of a process, the first chance which, though ending in disaster, left you better prepared to grasp the second if and when it came along.

It was this realization that finally dried the physical tears, though inside she felt as if she might be crying forever.

She began to repair her face in the rear-view mirror, taking her time as she tried to adjust to this new-found perspective. She had to try to match his apparent objectivity. If they could both walk away from this safe and sound, well and good. But if only one of them could survive, then she had to be pragmatic. This stranger and his family were nothing to her.

She said, ‘Well, Ed, what was this stupid thing you did?’

Using his new name was a signal to herself of what she felt was their new relationship. He showed no reaction.

He said, ‘When I went on Gidman’s payroll, I set up an online account for the money to be paid into. Not in my own name, of course, and not using my own PC at home. Funny, as stuff started coming back to me, the details of that account and the passwords and everything, they came back bright and clear while other stuff about my actual life before I became Ed Muir was still hazy and fragmented.’

‘Perhaps it says something about your priorities,’ she couldn’t resist saying.

He took her seriously and replied, ‘Yes, I think so too. The money was for Lucy’s treatment. That was always my priority. That was why I made no effort to use the account other than to establish it was still active. Spending Lucy’s money on clothes, or booze, or living expenses, it didn’t feel right.’

How could he talk about her so calmly? she asked herself.

Because, the answer came, he now had Lucinda.

She thought about what he’d been willing to do for the sake of his first daughter. What lengths might he now be willing to go to in the interests of his second?

‘Then we had Lucinda. Naturally we got to talking about the christening. Ali didn’t really want to go over the top…’

‘Ali?’

‘My partner. Doesn’t earn a fortune. She’s a clarinettist with the Mid-Yorkshire Sinfonietta, and does a bit of tutoring too.’

‘A music teacher. Like me.’

He looked surprised, as if the correspondence hadn’t previously struck him.

‘Yes, that’s right. Don’t make anything of it. She’s very different. Small, talks a lot, quite bouncy.’

‘That’s supposed to make me feel better, that she’s different?’

‘No. I wasn’t trying to make you feel anything. Just telling you. I mean, I know all about Mick, and I’m not going to get my head in a knot because, apart from being a cop, he’s completely different from me.’

He was right, she thought. Mick was older and in physical build, in taste, in outlook, in everything very different from Alex. Was that significant?

She put it aside for later examination and said, ‘You were saying about the christening…’

‘Was I? Oh yes. Me, I get a decent screw, but nowhere near enough to push the boat out the way I wanted to. Like I said earlier, it just seemed important somehow to make the christening an occasion to remember. And then I thought of that account. The way I saw things, it seemed perfectly fitting to use it to celebrate Lucinda’s day. I wouldn’t take a penny more than I needed for the christening, I thought. I had my heart set on the Keldale, they do these things so well. I got a price from them and paid in advance by transferring the exact sum direct from this account. It did cross my mind that activity after seven years lying dormant might attract attention, but it seemed a very small risk. It wasn’t as if I was clearing the account out, and the money wasn’t coming direct to me, it was going straight to the Keldale. Anyway, I was old news, who’d be interested in me after all this time?’

He shook his head as if in disbelief at his own naïvety.

‘And who is interested in you, Ed?’

He said, ‘Goldie Gidman, of course. He’s the one who knew about the account. The rat pack never got anywhere near it, I’m sure. I knew enough about the way these things are investigated to make sure I covered all my tracks. But Gidman must have put a watch on that account the day I disappeared. And he’d leave an alarm set. He always was a very careful man, Goldie. Hated loose ends. That’s why it was so hard to lay a finger on him. He didn’t really need to have me on his payroll. It was just an extra precaution.’

‘A precaution that became a liability when the rat pack started investigating you.’

‘That’s right. Then after all these years suddenly the account becomes active. All he’s got is a payment to the Keldale Hotel. So what does he do? My guess is he’d send someone up here to see if they could pick up my trail. There was an attempt to break into the Keldale office last weekend. I read about it in the paper. The manager going on about how pleased he was with their new state-of-the-art security system, installed on police advice. Wouldn’t surprise me if that was down to Goldie, seeing if he could find what the payment was for. And when it failed, he thought, What do you need to lure a hunted animal out of hiding? Answer, a tethered goat.’

She said, ‘Is that what I am? A tethered goat?’

‘I’m afraid so. His people would have to be careful. The way Goldie would see it, if I got the slightest whiff he was on my trail, I’d be over the hill and far away. On the other hand, I’d probably react very differently to the appearance of my wife on the scene. Incidentally, are you still my wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Mainly because for a long time I was hoping you’d come back,’ she said. ‘And then when I stopped believing that was a possibility, it seemed less complicated to hang on till I could become an official widow.’

‘Of course. Seven years, presumption of death, then you’d be entitled to everything, not just a divorcee’s share. Good thinking. Mick help you there, did he?’

‘No. Mick’s not mercenary, he would have preferred me divorced so we could marry straight away,’ she retorted defensively.

For some reason this made him smile momentarily.

She went on, ‘So you’re saying Gidman arranged to have your face put into that photo and have it sent to me? Meaning he had a photo of you. Why didn’t his people just flash it round the hotel?’

‘Two reasons,’ he said promptly. ‘One was it would be an old photo. I doubt if anyone would recognize me.’

‘I recognized you,’ she said.

‘Gidman’s people have never been my lover,’ he said.

There was no regret, no vestige of affection in his tone, confirming her sense that nothing remained of their old relationship.

‘The other reason?’ she said.

‘Because they wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves by making overt enquiries in case they couldn’t get rid of me quietly and they triggered a murder investigation. You, on the other hand, could flash the photo wherever you wanted. Stick it on lampposts, get it in the paper. They hoped someone might put you on to me. Or better still that I’d see it and make contact, and you’d lead them to me.’

‘That’s why you kept me sitting halfway up the hill so long,’ she said. ‘So you could make sure I wasn’t being followed.’

‘You’ve got it,’ he said.

‘And if they had followed me…you said murder investigation. You don’t really think they’d try to kill you?’ she said incredulously. ‘For God’s sake, this is Yorkshire, not New York!’

He laughed and said, ‘You don’t imagine Goldie has gone to all this trouble because he’s been missing my lively conversation, do you? He sees me as a real danger.’

‘But why? What could you do? Stand up in court and allege that seven years ago you were taking bribes to keep Gidman informed of the progress of a police investigation? Could you even prove that the money in this account came from him?’

He shrugged and said, ‘Money always leaves a trail, as I’m finding out. But that’s not the point. There’s a big bag of shit with Goldie’s name on it sitting around at the Yard. It’s mainly rumours and allegations and the CPS won’t touch it with a bargepole. But once get him in the dock, and anything goes. That was what Macavity was all about, putting together a case, any kind of case, that would get Gidman on the sharp end of a prosecution. And we might even have got there if I hadn’t kept him ahead of the game.’

‘That was seven years ago. He’s had another seven years to make himself safe.’

‘Of course he has. And I’m sure the kind of lawyers he can afford would tear my evidence to shreds. So not much chance of a conviction. But that bag of shit would have been emptied on the courtroom floor and the stink would stick to him for ever. Once he wouldn’t have cared. But from what I read, another ten years or so, and Goldie could be visiting Downing Street to see my son, the Prime Minister. I could put an end to all that. The Tories would never forgive someone who’d tracked stinking estuary mud across their lovely royal blue carpet.’

Listening to him she was reminded of the bright, sharp-minded young cop he’d been before their daughter’s illness began to darken all aspects of their life. He could sum up situations in a flash, analyse possibilities, assess odds.

And he was passionate for justice.

Had that changed?

‘So what are you going to do? Come forward and offer to testify?’

He exploded a laugh that was more like a bark, and not a friendly one.

‘Don’t be silly. I told you, I’ve got a second chance, a new life. Do you think I’m going to put it at risk by stepping back into the old one? You too, Gina. You’ve moved on, put all that dark stuff behind you. You wouldn’t want to put your new life at risk either, would you?’

All that dark stuff… she wanted to scream at him that she knew now that all that dark stuff was part of her being forever. There was no space behind her she could ever put it.

She said, ‘This isn’t about me. Look, Ed…Alex…I know it would be much harder for you…’

That laugh again.

‘You’re right there. It wouldn’t just be Goldie who ended up on trial. I’m sure they’d promise all kinds of leniency in return for my testimony, but the public don’t like to see a bent cop going free. Trust me, Gina: it would be hard for you too-harder than you think. No, when you leave here, what you have to do is drive home, forget you ever saw me. You just decided what you were doing was pointless, someone’s idea of a joke. You’ll be safe at home.’

Again the implications of his words took a moment to sink in.

‘Safe? Why wouldn’t I be safe here?’

‘Because when the tiger comes out of the jungle and the shooting starts, no one gives a fuck about the staked goat. They’d prefer not to involve you, of course. Much better for me to have a fatal accident, or simply vanish without trace. But if the choice was between risking losing me and blowing us both away right here, they wouldn’t think twice.’

She stared at him for a long moment then said, ‘I think you’re trying to frighten me. Like Mick when I talked to him earlier.’

He laughed and said, ‘Good old Mick, he’ll see the big picture. Think about it. If you’re not scared of Gidman, what about the press? I’m sure you had a taste of what those guys can get up to when I went awol. Imagine what a feast they’d make of this lot if they got a sniff of it. They’d tear you to pieces. Just think of the stories they’d make up. Wouldn’t do much for Mick’s career. As for you, I doubt if a parent anywhere would want to let her precious offspring take music lessons from a scarlet woman. So forget all of this, Gina. Go home. This hasn’t happened. I don’t exist any more.’

‘You’re right,’ she said quietly. ‘I thought I recognized you. I was wrong.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Tell that to the fat cop. You made a mistake. That’s your story. Stick to it and you’ll be fine.’

‘Even with Mick? You want me to lie to Mick too?’

‘Oh no,’ he said, with a smile closely related to his canine laugh. ‘No secrets between lovers. In fact, I may give dear old Mick a ring myself to put him in the picture, so it wouldn’t look good if you kept quiet, would it? You’ll have his mobile number in your phone, I expect.’

‘I’ve left it in the car,’ she said. ‘But I can remember the number.’

She recited it and he copied it into his phone.

‘Always a good memory,’ he said admiringly. ‘Ali’s the same. Must be all that music buzzing around in your heads. A real talent, memory. Except sometimes it’s a real pain.’

He reached over and opened her door. His arm brushed against her breast. After seven years, that’s the nearest we’ve come to intimate contact, she thought.

‘Goodbye, Gina,’ he said.

‘But what are you going to do? They won’t stop looking, will they?’

‘They might. You never know. Things change.’

‘For a man who thinks there’s a hitman after him, you don’t sound all that worried.’

‘You’re thinking of Alex Wolfe. He’d have been worried. I don’t think I’ve got anything to worry about if you keep your mouth shut. Goodbye.’

He sounded slightly impatient now.

She said, ‘Just one more thing. That general and the plucky little trooper game, did you ever tell anyone about it?’

‘I don’t think so. You?’

‘No.’

‘Never mind. One of those things, eh? A lucky guess.’

She got out of the car then stopped to take what she imagined might be one last look at him.

She said, ‘Goodbye, Edwin Muir. I pack your stars into my purse, and bid you, bid you so farewell.’

He stared back at her uncomprehendingly. Why should he understand when she hardly understood herself?

He didn’t say goodbye for a third time, just looked at her till finally she got out of the car. She closed the door behind her, firmly but trying not to slam it. She didn’t want him to think she was leaving him in anger. Not that it would have mattered. Through the window she saw he had taken out his mobile and was dialling a number. For a second she thought he must be ringing Mick. Then someone answered and she saw a smile spread across his face as he started talking. It wasn’t the guarded knowing smile he’d flashed as they spoke. This was a smile that turned him once more into the young man she remembered, the man she’d married.

He was, she guessed, talking to his new partner. Ali, the music teacher. The mother of Lucinda.

She felt all the pain of loss again as she hadn’t felt it for years. Not that it had ever truly gone away, she realized now. There were things that had the power to obliviate the pain for a while. Music. Sex. But like a ground bass, it ran beneath all the variations of life, good and bad. Perhaps it was a necessary part of living. Perhaps humans needed a loss that felt worse than death to make the inevitability of their own death bearable.

But she would not wish this pain on anyone. She certainly did not want to have it dragged into the public domain once more. She recalled how intrusive the press had been in the aftermath of Alex’s disappearance.

What Alex had told her about the threat from Goldie Gidman was hard to credit, it smacked too much of a TV thriller. But anything touching on the financier and his MP son would certainly be big news, and the thought of being besieged by journalists, midnight phone calls, cameras and mikes being thrust into her face whenever she emerged, her image appearing in newspapers and news items all over the country, was a horror worse than the threat of death.

No, though her own pain was not something she would wish on anyone, she was sure that if she had the chance to take the kind of pain journalists specialized in and turn it on them, she would not hesitate.

Alex was right. At least in this they were in accord. Silence was her refuge. She resolved that nothing would make her admit to the meeting and exchange that had just taken place. Nothing.

She set off down the hill towards her car.

18.05-18.15

Gwyn Jones’s progress north had been slower than anticipated.

He’d stopped at the first service station on the motorway to ring Beanie. The conversation had gone pretty well, he told himself complacently. She had sounded really sympathetic as he span his tale of his grandmother’s illness and the dutiful son heading back to the land of his fathers to take his place at the old lady’s bedside. Then he’d bought himself a coffee and a sandwich to make up for his missed lunch, tried Gareth again without any luck, and rejoined the thickening traffic only to be held up by an accident a few miles ahead.

The next ten miles took over half an hour, but once clear he’d made reasonable time and now he was definitely up north, passing through what had formerly been known as the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire where King Arthur lined up his coal-face knights to tilt against the great tyrant Thatcher.

A Welshman on a left-wing paper ought to have felt a frisson of fraternal nostalgia as he traversed this holy landscape, but Jones hardly spared it a thought or a glance.

He’d fed the Loudwater Villas details into his sat-nav. For most of the journey it had had nothing to do but tell him to keep going straight on. Finally it instructed him to turn off the motorway and soon the directions were coming thick and fast as he entered an urban environment.

The streets were pretty empty, not surprising at this time on a Sunday, but he indulged in a complacent sneer at this evidence that he was deep into the provinces.

In a few hundred yards he was warned he would need to turn right on to a road running alongside a river. Here was the turning and there was the river. Loudwater Villas should be in view in half a minute.

Ahead he saw flashing lights and some vehicles pulled on to the verge, among them a van bearing the logo of Mid-Yorkshire TV. Beyond them there seemed to be a barrier across the road. As he slowed, figures came alongside the car, some with cameras. A flashbulb directly into his face almost blinded him, forcing him to stop some yards short of the barrier. He wound down the window and swore at the cameraman. A woman thrust a microphone through the window and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, MYTV. Can you tell us who you are and why you’re here?’

He said, ‘No, I bloody can’t. Get that thing out of my fucking face.’

He pushed the mike away forcefully and a man’s face replaced the woman’s. It was a lean, weathered face with bright probing eyes that were scanning the contents of the car as if committing them to memory.

‘Sammy Ruddlesdin,’ said the man. ‘Mid-Yorkshire News. Sorry to bother you, sir…’

There was a pause as the man focused more closely on Jones’s face.

Then he said in a lower voice, ‘Don’t I know you?’

‘I doubt it. What the hell’s going on here?’

‘Just a little local murder. I’m sure I’ve seen your face somewhere. You’re press, aren’t you? Don’t be shy. National, is it? Listen, you want local colour, I’m your man.’

He was being ambushed by reporters! The irony of the situation might have been amusing, but the man’s words had roused emotions that left no room for amusement.

‘What do you mean, murder? Who’s been murdered?’

‘That’s what we’re all trying to find out,’ said Ruddlesdin. ‘Look, if you’re not here after the story, what the hell are you here for?’

He didn’t answer but climbed out of the car and went up to the barrier with the media pack in close attendance.

A uniformed policeman confronted him.

‘Can I help, sir?’

‘Not in front of this lot you can’t,’ said Jones, who knew that every word he spoke was being recorded by those nearest him.

The policeman took his point and led him behind the barrier. Even here he took care to keep his back firmly directed towards the press pack and dropped his voice so that the policeman had to lean close to catch his words.

‘Yes, I need to get into Loudwater Villas. I’m visiting my brother.’

‘Your brother, sir?’ said the man, looking at a list in his hand. ‘Can I have the name and flat number please?’

‘It won’t be on your list. He’s staying with a friend. Alun Watkins, number 39.’

The man looked at him with new interest.

‘And your name, sir?’

‘Jones. Gwyn Jones.’

‘Could you hold on here a tick, sir?’

The officer turned his back on the journalists and spoke into his personal radio. After listening for a moment he turned around and said, ‘If you’d like to bring your car forward, sir, I’ll raise the barrier.’

Ruddlesdin, who’d clearly got close enough to hear this last remark, fell into step beside him as he returned to his car.

‘You must have clout,’ he said admiringly. ‘Else you’re very clever. Any chance of a lift?’

Jones ignored him. There was a tight feeling in his stomach as if he’d eaten something so bad his digestive juices didn’t even want to get to grips with it.

He got into his car and edged forward. The reporters were still taking photos. He found he hated them so much he could gladly have run them down.

As the barrier slowly rose, the passenger door opened and a young man slipped in beside him.

‘Get the fuck out of here!’ he yelled, thinking it was another journalist.

But the man was holding a police warrant card before his face.

‘DC Bowler, sir,’ he said. ‘If you just drive towards the caravan there and park alongside.’

‘What’s all the fuss about?’ Gwyn said as he drove slowly forward. ‘I’m just visiting my brother, and he’s only staying here, he’s not a resident. Have you come across him? He’s a lot like me, people say, only eight years younger. Have you seen him?’

It was as if by talking about Gareth he could create the cheeky young sod’s physical presence.

‘And his name’s Jones, is it, sir?’

‘That’s right. Gareth Jones. Not surprising as Jones is my name too.’

‘Yes, sir. Are you Gwyn Jones of the Messenger, sir?’

He said, ‘Yes, I am,’ hoping that the young cop would say, ‘Thought I recognized you. Good try, mate,’ then tell him to drive the car back to the barrier.

Instead he just nodded as if this confirmed something he already knew.

‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘Just park here, sir. Now if you come with me, DS Wield will fill you in.’

He climbed slowly out of the car. He felt he was getting very close to a place he didn’t wish to arrive at. He looked back towards the distant barrier and found himself longing to be on the far side of it, one of the assembled pack, chatting, joking, smoking, drinking, passing the boring hours that any decent reporter knows have to be put in if they are to get a decent story to put out.

Then in a sudden fit of revulsion he told himself savagely that all that interested those bastards were bloody facts to grab their readers, saccharined with ‘human interest’ to make the readers feel less guilty about enjoying the gore.

‘This way, sir,’ urged DC Bowler, with an encouraging smile.

He was a nice-looking boy, with a fresh, open face, not at all the kind of messenger you’d expect to bring you bitter words to hear and bitter tears to shed.

Perhaps I’ve got it wrong, thought Jones as he walked towards the caravan. Perhaps this sense of ill-bodement clutching my heart is just some atavistic throw-back, as meaningless as those claims to foreknowledge always made by Great Aunt Blodwen twenty-four hours after any disaster.

Then at the top of the steps leading up into the caravan a very different kind of man appeared, this one with a face as ill-omened as Scrooge’s door-knocker.

And as if in confirmation of this sudden downward lurch of his spirits, a voice cried, ‘Gwyn, oh Gwyn boy! This is terrible, truly terrible!’

He turned his head in the direction of what he presumed was Loudwater Villas and saw a man running towards him, his face contorted unrecognizably. But Gwyn Jones recognized him.

So did Edgar Wield, standing on the caravan steps. Where the hell did he come from? This is getting to be a habit!

‘Bowler, grab him!’ he yelled.

But it was too late for any useful grabbing.

As Bowler intercepted and folded Alun Watkins in his arms, he was already close enough for his haggard, tear-stained face to be clearly visible. And now Gwyn Jones came at last to understand that though words could not create another’s physical presence, they could certainly take it away forever.

‘Gwyn, bach, he’s dead!’ cried Watkins in a voice powerful enough to carry all the way down to the straining ears at the barrier. ‘He’s dead. I’m so so sorry. Dear Gareth’s dead!’

18.33-18.35

In the gathering dusk it seemed further back to her car than Gina remembered and it was with some relief that she finally reached it. As she opened the door, she saw a car speeding down the hill towards her. For a second she thought perhaps Alex had decided there were still things to say. Then she saw it was a blue VW Golf, not the dirty grey Astra.

It slowed to a halt as it reached her. A woman was driving. The man in the passenger seat spoke through the open window.

‘Having trouble, darling?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You sure?’ said the woman, leaning across.

‘No. I just fancied a bit of air so I had a little stroll,’ said Gina.

It was kind of these people to be concerned, but she was not in the mood for kindness. She wanted to be left to herself in the private space of her car, to sit there till the darkness cloaked her completely, and to let flow all the still-unshed tears.

She turned to her open car door.

The man and woman exchanged glances, the woman nodded as if confirming a decision, and they both got out.

Even when the man grasped her arm Gina couldn’t believe that this was anything more than a really irritating excess of good Samaritanism. But when the woman opened the back door of the Golf and the man began to push her towards it, her mind did a somersault that brought all of Alex’s warnings about the expendability of staked goats to the surface.

She tried to wrench herself free. All that happened was she felt her arm forced up between her shoulder blades and her head cracked against the frame of the door as she was forced into the VW. She screamed. The man slid in beside her, the door slammed shut, the car set off. She screamed again.

The man slapped her face.

She stopped screaming.

The man said, ‘That’s better, darling. Any more noise from you and I’ll break your jaw.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Vince,’ said the woman. ‘How’s she going to talk then? Let’s find somewhere quiet, then she can scream all she likes.’

18.35-18.50

When Maggie Pinchbeck turned off the narrow country road to come to a halt before the high gates of Windrush House, the grey Jaguar that had been following her for the last half-mile turned too.

Maggie wound down her window so that the camera could get a better view of her face in the gathering dusk.

A voice she recognized as Milton Slingsby’s said, ‘Hi, Miss Pinchbeck.’

Then the camera adjusted, presumably to look at the car behind hers. Its driver decided to make life easier and got out and advanced till he was peering right up into the lens.

He was a tall imposing figure, in his forties, with a heavy jaw that looked as if it hadn’t seen a razor for a couple of days and a shock of vigorous brown hair, beginning to be tipped with silver.

He glared aggressively at the camera, but didn’t need to give his name as Slingsby said, ‘Mick, hi! It’s Sling. Long time no see!’

A short pause, then the gates swung open.

Maggie drove carefully up the gravelled drive, recalling Dave’s warning about his father’s pride in his lawns. She got the impression that if the man behind hadn’t been constrained by her pace, he wouldn’t have given a damn.

Outside the house she parked alongside Dave’s Audi with the Jag on the other side.

I’m in the wrong business, she thought as she got out of her dusty Corsa.

The Jag driver nodded at her but made no attempt at introduction or conversation as they went up the steps together. Milton Slingsby opened the door. He gave Maggie a bright smile. But the other arrival he greeted with a cry of, ‘Hi, Mick, how’re you doing?’ and a high-five.

‘Sling,’ said the man without any respondent enthusiasm.

Dave the Third came down the stairs as they entered the reception hall. He looked preoccupied.

‘Hi, Maggie,’ he said. Then he turned his attention to the Jag driver and said unenthusiastically, ‘Who’s this?’

Sling said, ‘It’s OK, Dave. This is Mick Purdy, come to see your pappy.’

Dave the Third frowned for a moment then managed a small official smile.

‘Of course! It’s Commander Purdy, isn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh,’ grunted Purdy ungraciously.

‘You gave evidence to a Select Committee I was on. Sorry I didn’t recognize you straight off. You were in uniform then, I think.’

‘Well, we know you lot like a bit of pantomime,’ said Purdy.

Mick Purdy, thought Maggie. Commander Mick Purdy. Who had interviewed a woman called Delay about an assault allegation against Goldie Gidman. Who had been a friend and colleague of the missing DI Wolfe. Who was now in a relationship with Gina Wolfe. Who was here to see Goldie Gidman. And who didn’t feel the need or wasn’t in the mood to be polite to Dave the Third MP.

She waited for her employer to express some curiosity about the purpose of Purdy’s visit, but he just said, ‘My father’s busy with my mother just now, but he’ll be free in a moment. Sling, show the commander into the lounge.’

The policeman nodded brusquely and followed Slingsby into a room off the hall.

Now Dave the Third turned to her and said, ‘Maggie, I’ve got you here on a wild-goose chase, I’m afraid. My mother got a phone call about twenty minutes ago. Her sister, Belle, the one in Broadstairs, has had a stroke. It sounds serious and Mammy wants to get there straight away. She’s just packing a few things, then I’m going to drive her down.’

‘No problem,’ said Maggie. ‘Keep me posted, and I’ll take care of things if you feel you ought to stay down there.’

‘Yes,’ said Gidman. ‘I know I can rely on you for that. But can I ask you a really big favour, Maggie? Mammy’s really upset at the thought of leaving Goldie on his own. It’s Dean’s night off, and when Dean has a night off, it really is a night, he won’t show till breakfast. I know Sling will be here, but he’s not all that reliable these days, so I wondered…’

He looks really uncomfortable to be asking me a favour, she thought. Have I made our relationship that impersonal?

She said, ‘You’d like me to spend the night here, make sure Goldie gets properly fed and watered?’

‘Yes, please. To tell the truth, he’s not all that domesticated and, between the two of them, I think they’re quite capable of setting the house on fire! Ma would be really chuffed if you’ll stay. You know how high she rates you.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘No problem.’

‘Maggie, you’re a star,’ he said with a warmth that faintly embarrassed her, mainly because it seemed so genuine.

Flo Gidman came bustling down the stairs, an old leather grip in her hand.

She registered Maggie, said, ‘Hello, dearie,’ then to her son, ‘David, I’m ready, we ought to be on our way. I’ve said cheerio to your father, he says he’ll manage, but I do wish Dean was here. Doesn’t everything happen at the worst possible time, Maggie?’

She was saved from answering by Dave, who said, ‘Mammy, I’ve got some good news, Maggie here says she’ll stay the night and make sure Pappy’s properly taken care of.’

‘Oh, Maggie, will you?’ cried Flo. ‘That would be such a relief, you’ve no idea. It’s not that Goldie’s helpless, it’s just that he doesn’t bother. Unless there’s someone here to keep him right, he’ll sit up half the night in front of that telly, eating nothing but crisps and drinking rum. Like I say, he’s not helpless, just hopeless.’

‘Don’t worry, Flo, I’ll take care of him.’

‘Lovely. He likes a glass of warm milk with a shot of rum by his bed, and when I’m not there he usually takes one sleeping pill to help him get off. Just the one. They’re in the tea caddy in the kitchen. He hates tea so he never looks in there. But don’t let him talk you into giving him more than one. And don’t let him take the rum bottle to bed with him. And make certain he don’t smuggle a cigar in. I had a smoke alarm fixed right over the bed, but he’s quite capable of switching it off when he’s left to himself.’

‘Mammy, you can’t expect Maggie to be able to boss Pappy around like you do!’ protested Dave.

‘Why not? She gets the practice keeping you in line, don’t she?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Maggie. ‘And I hope your sister’s OK.’

‘That’s in God’s hands. I’m more grateful than I can say, dearie.’

She folded Maggie in her arms and gave her a succulent kiss on the cheek.

Then she said, ‘Come on, Dave, I’ll just tell your pa that Maggie’s going to take care of him, then we’re off. I don’t want to get there and find poor Belle’s gone because of your dawdling.’

She went out. Dave the Third gave Maggie a wry grin then said, ‘Oh, one thing more, you’d better know how to work the gate controls. Not that anyone’s likely to come calling tonight, but sometimes Sling goes walkabout and it could be embarrassing if there’s no one around.’

She followed him into a control room located to the left of the main entrance. She’d only glimpsed it through the open door on previous visits and now she was surprised to see how roomy it was. Perhaps the stark décor made it seem bigger. It certainly clashed with the rather self-consciously retro ambience of the rest of the house. The only furniture was a single office chair in front of a control panel. There was no window and the illumination came from a bank of TV screens filling most of one wall. Only two of them were active. One showed the area outside the front door, the other the main gate.

‘You can talk to anyone at the gate by pressing this switch,’ said Dave. ‘And these two buttons open and shut the gates. OK?’

‘Yes. All these other screens…?’

‘No need to bother with those unless an alarm sounds. Then you can bring up the perimeter walls and if necessary the house interior, though I shouldn’t think they’ll ever be needed. The alarm system links directly to the police and there’s enough razor wire on the perimeter wall to shave a woolly mammoth.’

‘David! Are you going to take all night? Get a move on or I’ll drive this thing myself!’

The yell came from outside.

He grinned at her again. Sometimes she could see why he was such a successful womanizer.

He said, ‘Open the gate, will you, then shut it behind me? I’ll ring you later.’

He gave her a kiss on the cheek, not as warmly moist as his mother’s, but more than a simple peck. That was a first too.

He left. She waited till she heard the Audi start up then pressed the button that opened the gate. A few moments later the car appeared on the TV screen. As it went through the gateway, Dave’s arm came out of the driver’s window and waved a clenched fist farewell.

She pressed the close button. It was easy to categorize people, she thought. This was a side of her employer she hadn’t seen enough of. With the right guidance, maybe he could make it all the way. The UK’s first mixed-race prime minister. And he had the qualities to make a good if not a great one. With the right guidance.

Her shift of feeling about Dave made her feel suddenly guilty at the dark suspicions about Goldie that today’s events had sent fuguing around her mind once more. If the combined efforts of Scotland Yard, the left-wing media, and Tory Central Office hadn’t been able to lay anything on Gidman, then he really did have to be clean, didn’t he?

Her phone rang. The display said Number withheld but she recognized instantly the voice that said, ‘That you, Maggie?’

‘Yes, Beanie,’ she said.

She listened as the Bitch talked. After a few seconds she sat down on the chair in front of the control panel.

‘Listen, hon, don’t know why I’m doing this, except maybe you ought to know and also ’cos I gotta talk to someone about it. I’ve just had a call from Gwyn. I was ready to chew his balls off over lying to me, and banging that Huntley child and all, but I could tell something was wrong soon as I heard him. My ma used to tell me, never tell lies ’cos you never know when they’ll come true. Gwyn said he had to deal with a family crisis. Well, he’s really got one now. That kid brother of his, the one he was going to see up in Yorkshire, he’s been murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ echoed Maggie incredulously. ‘How? Why?’

‘Shot in the face. And some cop woman who was there got put into hospital too. I don’t know what’s going on, but if it’s anything to do with that stuff we were talking about, I thought you ought to know.’

‘Do you have any more details?’ demanded Maggie. ‘Have they got anyone for it?’

‘He’d have said if they had. He’s really shook up. Never known him like this. He’s even going on about the intrusive fucking press! Listen, hon, I’ve told you all I know, but you’ve heard nothing from me. And one thing more, that’s you and me squared off, OK? Take care.’

The line went dead.

For another minute Maggie Pinchbeck didn’t move.

Then she got up and went into the hallway just in time to see Sling leading Purdy upstairs, presumably for his meeting with Goldie.

The commander looked like a man with something important on his mind. She knew how he felt.

She watched them out of sight then went back into the control room.

18.20-18.48

As the old Rover sped north out of the city, Dalziel told Pascoe about his conversation with Purdy.

‘Tried to hide it at first, but he’s really worried,’ said the Fat Man.

‘Why wouldn’t he be? With his girlfriend missing and these Delays on the loose, that would worry anyone.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Dalziel.

Pascoe frowned and said warningly, ‘Andy, is there something else here, something to do with Purdy? I thought we agreed. No more secrets.’

You agreed, thought the Fat Man. It’s me as makes the rules, remember?

But he didn’t say it aloud. There would be a time for such reminders. Also it was good to have it confirmed just how fine-tuned his deputy’s sensors were.

He said, ‘I’m not keeping anything secret ’cos I really don’t know anything. Remember, I’ve not seen Purdy for ten years and we weren’t much more than drinking buddies back then. So the way this thing’s panning out, I’m not taking owt for granted.’

‘You think he might be more than romantically involved?’

‘Romantically involved? You been at the Barbara Cartland again? I’ve no idea, Pete. There’s one thing, but. That stuff in the note Gina got about the plucky little trooper and the general. Two ways that might have got into circulation. One is the guy boasting in his cups to an old mate, the other is the girl reminiscing in her bed to a new mate. Mick Purdy fits both bills.’

They drove in silence for a while. Then Dalziel’s phone rang. It was lying on the dashboard.

He said, ‘Could you get that, else I might have to arrest myself.’

Pascoe picked up the phone and bellowed, ‘What?’ in a fair parody of the Fat Man’s telephone style. His reward was a verbal assault that made him wince.

He held it away from his ear and said, ‘I think it’s your old chum Chief Constable Glendower, who seems to believe your mother had intercourse with a sow that was badly infected with both foot and mouth disease and swine fever.’

Dalziel laughed and said, ‘Pass it here.’

Pascoe frowned and compromised by holding it up to his boss’s ear.

The abusive rant was unabated. Dalziel listened with a widening grin on his face.

‘Hooky, Hooky,’ he interrupted finally. ‘You should be careful, man of your age. Back seats are for teenagers. You’ll give yourself a hernia if you’re not careful. Nay, don’t start up again. Just listen, will you? You know a journalist called Gareth Jones?’

There was a pause. Then Glendower’s voice, more controlled now, said, ‘Yes, I know a muckraker of that name.’

Pascoe, hearing the reference to Gareth Jones, leaned close so that he could catch the caller’s words.

‘And would it surprise you if it turned out he were doing a surveillance job on you while you were enjoying your romantic weekend?’

‘What? The little shit!’ Glendower’s voice was now very alarmed. ‘What’s going on, Andy?’

Dalziel spelled things out with brutal economy.

When he’d finished, Glendower, his tone changed yet again, said, ‘Oh Christ. And it’s definitely Gareth Jones who’s dead, is it?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Poor bastard.’

‘He wasn’t looking to do you any favours, Hooky.’

‘I know that. But he was just a kid. All right, he got on my wick, always hanging around my office, asking cheeky questions, making innuendos. Deserved to have his arse kicked, fair enough. But not this.’

‘Aye well, does you credit, Hooky,’ said Dalziel. ‘But it’s time to look out for yourself. Listen, I’m ahead of the game right now, but my DCI-him you met in the car park-he’s a bright lad, he’ll have to be told.’

He glanced across at Pascoe and winked.

‘But he’s not a blabbermouth,’ he continued. ‘And I’ll do what I can to screw things down at the Keldale. Bit like you, eh? All right, sorry, no time to be frivolous. Listen, Hooky, there’s bound to be some bugger who knows what young Jones were up to, so I doubt you’re going to be able to keep the lid on this. But you can mebbe do a bit of damage limitation, right?’

There was a silence.

‘Yes, Andy. You’re right. Damage limitation it is,’ said Glendower finally. ‘Thanks, mate. Sorry I blew my top. I thought you were just having a laugh at my expense.’

‘Nay, Hooky, if us old stagers can’t look out for each other, who will? Listen, first thing I’d do is take a close look at your staff. You did the hotel booking and everything from your office, I suppose?’

‘Yes. Well, I wasn’t going to do it from home,’ said Glendower defensively.

‘Very considerate of you. But it means some bugger at work has probably been checking out your computer and phone and feeding this young reporter tit-bits. I’d look for someone who goes to chapel three times on a Sunday, sings in the choir, and reckons Sodom and Gomorrah are villages in Shropshire. But I expect you’ve got a lot of them.’

‘Oh yes, but I reckon I know which one it is,’ said Glendower vengefully. ‘And with luck I’ll have time to get the bugger sorted before I’m clearing my desk.’

‘Nay, Hooky, it needn’t come to that. A man’s entitled to a private life. Unless you’ve been charging your naughties to expenses. You’ve not been doing that, have you? Tell me you’ve not been doing that.’

‘There may have been some overlaps,’ said Glendower reluctantly.

‘Oh, Hooky, Hooky. First rule of the game is pay for your own naughties else you really will end up paying for them. Listen, I’ve got to go. Got a murder case to investigate, remember?’

‘Of course you have. Best of luck with that. I hope you catch the bugger. And, Andy, thanks again. Like I say, I thought that…well I thought some pretty uncharitable things…sorry. I’ll not forget this.’

‘Good luck, Hooky,’ said Dalziel. ‘By the by, signing in for your mucky weekend as Mr and Mrs Rowan Williams-loved it!’

He glanced at Pascoe again, looking to share a smile, but the DCI’s face could have belonged to a Scottish Nationalist at the Glasgow Empire listening to an English comic telling kilt jokes on a Saturday night.

‘So that’s how you guessed the dead man might be a Welsh journalist,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ said the Fat Man. ‘Remember that bint in the white Mondeo? I clocked it had the same registration letters as Hooky’s tank. So I checked if there were a wedding on at the Keldale over the weekend. There weren’t. And when I saw there was no Glendower in the registration book, just a Mr and Mrs Rowan Williams, I rang our Control and put out a call on Hooky here and in Lancs. Guessed he’d be heading west.’

‘You wanted to warn him,’ said Pascoe accusingly.

‘Aye. Why not?’ said Dalziel. ‘I’d do the same for you, and hope you would for me.’

‘Maybe,’ said Pascoe. ‘But this is really going to turn a spotlight on us. The press will love it. Top cop’s dirty weekend gets teenage reporter killed. Jesus.’

‘It’s not Hooky’s fault,’ protested Dalziel. ‘Any more than it’s my fault for getting him bumped off that table. Any more than it’s your fault for not checking up on me yesterday like you promised Cap you would.’

Pascoe looked at him in alarm and puzzlement.

‘Did she tell you that she’d asked me?’

‘No, but I’d lay money on it she did. You were too busy, though. Right?’

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact. But I don’t see what on earth this has to do with anything.’

Dalziel thought of explaining that if he hadn’t spent such a miserable Saturday he might not have woken on Sunday thinking it must be Monday…but it didn’t seem worth the effort.

He said, ‘All I mean is, if there’s only one guy this is all down to, I reckon it has to be yon Tory milch-cow, Goldie Gidman.’

Before Pascoe could deconstruct this, his phone rang.

He said, ‘Hi, Wieldy,’ listened, said, ‘OK. I’ll let you know what we find,’ and switched off. Dalziel wasn’t surprised. A Wield call to give information was inevitably compact and comprehensive.

Pascoe said, ‘Gwyn Jones has turned up. That idiot Watkins managed to give him the bad news before Wieldy could get to him. He’s gone from being shattered to screaming that it’s all down to Goldie Gidman and why aren’t we sticking red-hot needles under his nails to get him to talk?’

‘Don’t often agree with a journalist, but maybe he’s got something,’ said Dalziel. ‘Here we go!’

He swung across the carriageway to a fanfare of horns from the oncoming traffic and turned eastward down a narrow unclassified road.

‘You’re sure this is right?’ said Pascoe a few minutes later, after he’d recovered his composure sufficiently to speak without a tremolo.

‘When I were a young cop, you had to do the Mid-Yorkshire Knowledge,’ said Dalziel. ‘Find your way to every pub within twenty miles of the town centre. There. Told you.’

Ahead they saw a roadside pub with a sign swinging in the evening breeze. On the sign was painted a dejected-looking figure sitting at the foot of a bald hill.

‘The Lost Traveller,’ Pascoe read. ‘After Blake, do you think?’

‘As in, “I’ve lost me way, send for Sexton Blake,” you mean?’ said Dalziel.

Pursuit of this interesting literary divagation was prevented by the sight of a red car parked at the bottom of the steep hill that fell away from the pub.

Dalziel pulled in to the side and dug up a pair of binoculars from the clutter on the back seat.

‘No sign of life,’ he said.

He let the car roll down the hill and braked a few yards short of the Nissan.

The two detectives got out and approached cautiously.

The car was unlocked and empty, a mobile phone sat in its holder.

They looked at each other then went round to the rear.

Pascoe opened the boot and they both let out a sigh of relief when they saw nothing but luggage.

Dalziel headed back to his car while Pascoe got on the phone to Wield and told him what was happening. As they spoke, his eyes were on the Fat Man who was studying a map. Suddenly he nodded, hurled the map unfolded into the back of the car and called, ‘Right, come on!’

‘Where? Why? Andy, we should wait here. The ARU will be here in a couple of minutes…’

The Fat Man ignored him and bellowed in the general direction of the phone, ‘Wieldy, tell ’em to follow us. Straight on down past the red car, T-junction, turn left, quarter mile on right, small quarry.’

When the flow turns into a tsunami, you’ve no choice but to go with it.

‘Wieldy, you get that?’ said Pascoe.

‘Think they likely got it in Shetland,’ said Wield.

The car was moving already as Pascoe scrambled in.

‘Andy, where are we going?’ he gasped.

‘The sort of nice quiet spot a pair of psychos might take a woman to ask her some personal questions,’ said Dalziel, leaning his considerable weight on the accelerator. In a less solid car, his foot might well have gone through the floor and hit the road.

‘We can’t know for sure the Delays have got her, and even if they have, they’re certainly not going to hang around here,’ protested Pascoe.

‘Wrong,’ said Dalziel. ‘They’ll be in a hurry, no time for subtlety. It’ll be water-boarding from the start, or if they’re short of water, they’ll slap her around a bit to show they’re serious, then stick a gun up her jaxy and start counting down from ten.’

Pascoe still looked dubious.

‘You don’t even know what direction they went in,’ he said.

‘They didn’t drive back, else we’d have seen them. No, this is where they’ll be, mark my words.’

He spoke with all the oracular authority of his prime, that long period during which his judgments, though often cloudily mysterious, almost inevitably turned out to be correct, a period that some posited had come to an end when he walked with godlike certainty straight into the blast of a terrorist explosion.

Pascoe felt the man’s old power, but he also recalled the moment not long before when his legs had given way on hearing the news of Novello’s recovery. That burden of responsibility had clearly weighed heavy. Was he now feeling the same sense of having let the Wolfe woman down? And was it himself he was trying to reassure by this assertion of confidence in what at best had to be a fairly wild guess?

The next few minutes would tell.

And which would be worse? Dalziel proved wrong and the quarry empty?

Or Dalziel proved right and the two unarmed policemen confronted by a killer with a shotgun?

Though perhaps, thought Pascoe with a kind of hysterical merriment as they approached the T-junction with no perceptible diminution of speed, perhaps the fat bastard’s driving will kill us both first!

18.45-18.52

I’m not thinking straight, thought Fleur Delay. Too much pressure, too many pills.

The laptop had shown the Nissan standing still on an unclassified road.

A rendezvous, she’d decided. If they got there in time, they’d find the Wolfes sitting together in the car, talking. Or maybe in his car. When they separated, follow him and grab him. She didn’t want any truck with the woman. Disappearing a guy who has already disappeared was no problem. Disappearing the blonde was going to raise complications.

Then they’d driven past the Lost Traveller over the brow of the hill, and a couple of hundred yards ahead of them there she was, just reaching her car.

Fleur had worked things out instantly.

She’d met Wolfe at the pub. They’d talked and separated. She’d walked back to her car, he’d driven off in his. They’d probably crossed with him as they drove towards the pub. She tried to remember the cars they’d passed after they left the arterial. There’d been two, maybe three. A year ago she’d have remembered details, but not today.

Anyway, it was too late and she had to decide what to do next.

Following the blonde was an option, but not an attractive one. If she’d just been talking to Wolfe, she was hardly likely to lead them back to him now.

As she braked alongside the Nissan she said to Vince, ‘We take her.’

There had seemed no choice.

But now, looking at the terrified woman as she lay on the ground before them, Fleur knew she’d somehow reached a very wrong place.

Soon as Vince had shot the young journalist and laid out the policewoman, she should have followed her instinct and got out, to hell with The Man!

Her whole strategy, not just on this assignment but ever since the day she got the fatal diagnosis, had been based on a false premise.

Head for Spain, get Vince settled there before she died, and he’d be safe from The Man.

Maybe.

But there was nowhere in the world she could put Vince where he’d be safe from himself.

She looked at him now, standing astride the blonde, his sawn-off held in one hand, waiting for his sister’s instructions.

She’d driven a couple of miles from where they’d snatched Gina Wolfe, looking for somewhere quiet and secluded to stop. At the T-junction she’d turned left. Right would take them south. Back towards suburban spillage from the city. North would be lonelier, emptier.

She was right. Half a mile on, she’d spotted a small quarry, not much more than a slice dug out of a hillside by some farmer looking for hard-core, its upper edge visible from the road but with enough of a scattering of scrubby trees at the lower level to hide a car from passing eyes. In the dusky light, it was a desolate spot, fit for foul deeds.

Fleur stooped over the blonde and looked into the woman’s fear-dilated pupils.

‘All we want to know is where we’ll find him,’ she said. ‘Tell us that and…’

She paused… and we’ll take you back to your car and let you go… No, this was a bright woman, she wasn’t going to believe that.

‘…and no harm will come to you, I promise.’

Pretty feeble, but it might provide enough straw for a terrified woman to grasp at.

The dark blue eyes moved from hers to the shotgun barrel and back again.

‘I don’t know where he is,’ gasped Gina. ‘Yes, he rang me, or someone saying it was him, and he told me where to go, but when I got here, nothing happened. So after a while I walked up to the pub just on the off-chance he might be there, but he wasn’t, so I went back to the car…’

‘Vince,’ said Fleur.

Her brother raised his right foot and stamped down hard on the blonde’s left hand.

She screamed in pain.

‘Look,’ said Fleur, ‘the more you make us hurt you, the harder it’s going to be to let you go. I mean, once you can’t move around by yourself and drive your car, what the hell are we going to do with you? All I want is to talk with Wolfe, find out what his plans are. If he’s going to keep his head down and you’re going to keep your mouth shut, then we’re sorted.’

There were tears in the blue eyes now, and Gina Wolfe’s voice trembled, but her words showed a mind still holding itself together.

‘That’s just what he wants…no fuss…me too…I just want things to carry on…no waves…I’ll go back to London and that’ll be an end to it…’

Fleur almost believed her, but she knew she’d never sell that to Goldie. He wanted closure, and closure did not mean leaving Wolfe alive to tell the tale.

Or this woman either.

There. She’d reached a decision that had been inevitable the moment they’d grabbed her.

She said, ‘Vince.’

‘What this time?’ said her brother, grinning. ‘Do her kneecap? Or mebbe…’

He reached down and flicked her skirt up around her waist with the gun barrel, revealing skimpy panties with a lace edging.

‘None of that, Vince!’ snarled Fleur, pulling the skirt back down.

For a moment this display of female sympathy brought a flicker of hope to Gina, but it was snuffed out immediately as Fleur Delay continued, ‘We’ll do her kneecaps if we have to, but let’s give her a foretaste.’

She kicked her square-toed shoe violently against the woman’s left knee.

Her scream echoed around the little quarry.

‘Bad?’ said Fleur. ‘Imagine what it’s going to feel like when he blows it to pieces. Come on, dearie. What do you owe that lousy bastard anyway? He dumped you, he walked away, the only reason you got anywhere near him was us, and you want him dead so’s you can marry your other copper. Don’t be a stupid bitch all your life. Talk!’

She drew back her foot in preparation for another kick.

‘Please, no!’ cried Gina, pushing herself into a sitting position. Her gaze flickered desperately around the quarry as if in search of some impossible escape route, then her eyes focused on her captors.

‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ she gabbled. ‘I’ll do anything you want…anything!’

She was looking up at Vince now. Her hands went down to her skirt and she dragged it even higher than he’d pushed it with the gun barrel. Then she slipped her thumbs inside the waist of her panties and began to ease them down. As her bush started to come into view, as vigorous and blonde as the hair on her head, a broad grin stretched Vince’s lips.

What the hell’s she doing this for? Fleur asked herself. Not only was it out of character, but even if she let Vince fuck her, she must know that, once he was done, the questioning was going to resume. So why…?

The answer was obvious. So obvious that on top form she’d have got there seconds earlier.

Distraction!

She turned in time to see a figure coming towards them at a dead run. In his hand was a jagged stone.

She had time to scream, ‘Vince!’ before the man’s shoulder hit her and flung her aside. Vince turned, the shotgun came up, Alex Wolfe swung his right arm and brought the stone crashing against the side of her brother’s head.

His legs folded, his arms flung wide, the gun sailed through the air, he collapsed on to his knees then fell slowly forward till his head rested against the ground in a grotesque parody of a Muslim at prayer.

Wolfe dropped the stone and knelt beside Gina.

‘You all right?’ he said.

She fought to control the sobs that were suddenly fountaining up through her chest and gasped, ‘Fine…oh Christ…I thought I was going to die…’

The sobs won and she leaned against him, crying uncontrollably.

He said, ‘It’s OK, I’m here, it’s OK. I saw them as I drove away. I thought, I know those faces…I couldn’t be sure, but I turned round anyway…things are going to be fine…you’re safe now…’

As he threw words at her to calm her down, his thoughts were racing in furious counterpoint. Seven years ago his life had disintegrated and he had fled into a saving darkness. He had emerged to find that, somehow, with only the most shadowy awareness of how it had happened, he had created a new life, patterned on the old, but with promise of greater durability.

He had checked out that old life and, though he did not doubt that his actions had left scars, he had been able to convince himself that he would do more damage by re-entering it than by staying out of it.

And then by one act of stupidity, by a joy-fuelled desire to give thanks, to pour a libation, he had put everything at risk. In that first life, the gods had destroyed him. In this second life, he had come close to destroying himself.

But it was still possible to restore the balance. Gidman was a pragmatist. Once he understood there was more danger in pursuing his prey than leaving it alone, he would call off his hunters. All he had to do was get that message to him, and he knew just the man to act as messenger. But first of all he had to make sure the Delays got the message too, and with Vince still in his devout oriental position, he’d made a pretty good start with that.

Then Gina screamed, ‘Alex!’ and he shifted his gaze and his heartbeat stuttered in fear as he found himself looking at a creature like an escapee from Dr Who with a high polished skull and black staring eyes in a face perfectly white except for the twin rivulets of red streaming from its nostrils.

It took a moment to recognize this as the woman he’d bowled over, dislodging her wig; and another to register that she was holding her brother’s shotgun.

He stood up and stepped away from Gina, partly to keep her out of the firing line, and partly to offer a moving target, though at this range and with this weapon, it wasn’t going to be easy to miss.

He said, ‘Fleur, Miss Delay, there’s no need for this. Ring Goldie, it’s all being taken care of…’ but even as he spoke he knew that yet again he’d let the chance of happiness slip through his fingers and not all the honeyed songs of Orpheus would be enough to soothe this wild beast.

18.57-19.22

Hendrix was singing ‘Castles Made of Sand’, but at the sight of this new visitor, Goldie Gidman did not hesitate to switch him off.

‘Mick! Good to see you. It’s been a long time. You’re looking well. Sit down, have a cigar.’

‘No thanks, Goldie. Gave up a long time ago.’

Purdy looked at the man seated in a deep leather swivel chair set in front of the huge TV screen. He hadn’t seen him in the flesh for some time. Not a lot had changed. A few more pounds on his belly, a crisping of frost on his tight-curled hair, but he still created the same impression of controlled menace.

‘Fell for the health propaganda, huh?’ said Gidman with a laugh. ‘Flo’s got me dieting, but I won’t give up my smokes. It’s all bull, Mick. You ever notice it’s always the good shit that’s bad for you? Them bible-punchers got this government by the short and curlies. Iran thinks it’s a religious state, they should come here!’

‘That going to figure in the next Tory manifesto, Goldie?’

Gidman laughed again and said, ‘Now how’d I know about that? Politics I leave to the boy. Sorry he couldn’t be around to make your better acquaintance, Mick. Heard you got off on the wrong foot at that committee thing. He’s had to take off with Flo down to Broadstairs. Her sister’s taken bad. Flo’s real worried. Me, I hope the cow snuffs it. Never did take to Flo marrying a nigger. Came round a bit when I got rich and respectable, but I got a long memory.’

‘Everyone’s got long memories since they invented computers, Goldie. I can remember when you had some very bad habits. I shouldn’t like to think you’re falling back into them.’

‘Sure you won’t have a cigar? You won’t mind if I do? This is the only room in the house Flo let’s me smoke in, can you believe that? She got smoke alarms fitted everywhere else so’s the fire brigade will come running the minute I light up. Even got a specially sensitive one over our bed in case I should even dream of daring to smoke in there when she ain’t around.’

He carefully snipped off the end of a cigar and went on, ‘But I know how to turn it off, Mick. That’s the secret to enjoying life, Not having no problems, nobody can manage that; but knowing how to turn them off, that’s the trick. Wouldn’t you agree, Mick?’

He put the cigar in his mouth. Slingsby, who’d followed Purdy into the room and taken up his stance by the door, came forward with a book of matches, struck one and moved it gently under the cigar’s end.

‘Never use a lighter, Mick,’ said Gidman between puffs. ‘You want a gentle flame for fine tobacco. Too sharp a flame and you start a bad reaction. Just enough and you get that slow, relaxing burn. There we go. Thank you, Sling.’

’I’m here to talk about Gina,’ said Purdy.

‘Gina? We’re talking Lollobrigida here?’

‘Don’t fuck about, Goldie. What the hell are you playing at?’

Gidman drew on his cigar and let out a long sigh of smoky satisfaction.

‘Not sure what you’re getting at, Mick.’

‘I’m getting at you faking a photo to get Gina shooting off to Yorkshire looking for her missing husband. And don’t give me that old-fashioned bewildered look. I know your pet pair of psychos are up there looking too. And I know they’ve managed to kill one guy and put a female cop in hospital.’

‘That’s a lot of interesting stuff you know, Mick,’ said Gidman. ‘Let’s suppose just for the sake of argument that I did send Fleur and that creepy brother of hers to have a little chat with DI Wolfe, if that’s where he turns out to be. What’s your problem? You got twice as many reasons as me for not wanting Wolfe to come back from the dead.’

‘How do you work that out?’

Another long puff. The atmosphere in the room was getting a bluey-grey tinge.

‘Well,’ said Goldie, ‘we both might have reasons to be a tad worried in case he started saying bad things about us. But at least I ain’t fucking his wife.’

Purdy took a step towards the man in the chair. He didn’t hear Slingsby move but suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘That’s right, Sling, get Mick a chair. I think he’s a bit overwrought, he needs to sit down.’

A chair was pushed against the back of his legs and he sank into it.

He breathed in deeply, grimaced at the taste of the smoke, and said in a low hard voice, ‘Goldie, what you do about Alex is your own affair, but I don’t want that pair anywhere near Gina. What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, doing this without reference to me?’

‘First off, didn’t realize you were so serious about the woman. Thought you were just pleasuring yourself there till something better came along. I recall way back when Wolfe went missing, it was you told us all everything you knew about him that might help put us on his trail. Including that stuff he told you when you were pissed one night about the games him and whatser-name, Gina, liked to play. That came in very useful getting her up there to winkle him out. She still like to play that plucky little trooper game, Mick?’

Purdy began to rise, but his buttocks hadn’t got more than a couple of inches off the chair before he felt Sling’s hand on his shoulder once more, this time accompanied by the touch of cold sharp steel at his jugular.

‘Take it easy, Mick,’ said Gidman. ‘Don’t mean to offend you. I consider you a friend. Always have done. That’s why I made no fuss when you made it clear way back we were done, you’d chosen the path of righteousness and wanted to bury the past. I felt the same, Mick. That’s why I respected your choice. You never had to look over your shoulder and see me there, right?’

‘You were there when they set up Macavity,’ said Purdy accusingly.

‘Come on, Mick. I knew that wasn’t the kind of operation you were into. But no harm in ringing up an old friend and asking him if he could think of anyone might be interested in keeping me up to date with what was going on. And you gave me DI Wolfe. No pressure. You just gave him up.’

‘And I’ve regretted it every day since,’ said Purdy quietly.

‘Don’t take it to heart, Mick You weren’t to know it would give me grief,’ said Gidman, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘And have I ever reproached you with it? No way. Anyhow, he did good work till he went sick in the head. Got well paid for it, too. That’s what put us on to him in the end, the money. Funny thing about cop amnesia, you guys can forget everything except where you put the money.’

He laughed melodiously.

‘All these years, I could have closed that account, got myself a full refund, but I didn’t need the money. Hell, it was small change anyway. So I thought, leave it, Goldie, my man. That’s where he’ll go if ever he shows his head again. And that’s what he did. Unfortunately, he just used the account to make a transfer to some hotel up there in the sticks. I thought maybe he’s working at this hotel, or staying there, so I sent my gal Fleur to take a look. After a couple of days she says she can’t get no lead on him. But I knew he was there, I could feel it. And that’s when I got the notion of using your lady friend Gina to flush him out.’

‘Not one of your better ideas, Goldie,’ said Purdy. ‘That’s why I’m here. Tell them to stand down till I get Gina back home.’

‘Does you credit to worry, Mick, but believe me, the nearest they’ll get is to see if she leads them to Wolfe. Then they’ll have a quiet chat with the guy, just check him out, know what I mean? No need for anyone to get hurt.’

‘You know, Goldie, I think you probably got that right. No need for anyone to get hurt. No need for any of this. If Alex is up there, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence yet, what kind of risk is he likely to be? He’s been away for seven years. Why should he want to show up and cause a fuss now? And if he did, what the hell can he say anyway?’

‘Well, he could say that it was you recruited him on to my payroll. Now I wouldn’t like that. But over the years I got used to people trying to put shit on me and no one’s ever been able to make it stick. So I might be an incy bit embarrassed. You, though, Mick…’

He shook his head sadly, regretfully.

‘What about me?’

‘Hey, you know better than me what them whitewashed sepulchres you work for are like. Even if they couldn’t prove anything, it would mean goodbye to your career, Mick. You done well. And you’ve done it clean, for the most part. Why risk throwing it away? And what about your lady friend? How do you think she’s going to feel when she finds out the guy who’s fucking her now had fucked her husband a long time ago?’

Purdy said quietly, ‘I didn’t come here to listen to your crap, Goldie. I came here to tell you, anything happens to Gina, you’re going to be a lot more than embarrassed. I’ll raise such a shit storm, you’ll end up in the Bailey and that boy of yours won’t be a rising star at Westminster, he’ll be a rising stink.’

For a moment Gidman sat stock-still, then he raised his cigar again, setting the heavy gold bracelets on his wrist jingling against the broad gold band of his Rolex.

‘How you going to do that, Mick?’ he asked. ‘Macavity couldn’t do it. And the Daily fucking Messenger can’t do it. And all them professional ferrets at Millbank been over me with microscopes and even my shit came out smelling like roses. You think those guys are going to let themselves be proved wrong? No, I got tank-proof protection, Mick. So what can you say to hurt me?’

‘You’re forgetting I was around way back before you went corporate, Goldie. I was around when you were just a jumped-up loan shark, screwing your own neighbours into the ground. I watched your back then, God help me! Remember when that Polish tailor reported you for crushing his fingers with a hammer? It was me who warned you what was going off so you had time to fix the witness he cited, your lovely Miss Delay.’

‘Got to interrupt you there, Mick. Fleur didn’t need fixing. I said nothing to her, just wanted to see how she’d react when you interviewed her. ’Course, if she’d blabbed, I’d have had to send Sling round to arrange another accident. But she did the right thing without needing to be told, and I knew I’d got myself a treasure. You’ve met her; you know how good she is, right?’

Purdy ignored this and said, ‘Talking of Sling and accidents, you shouldn’t forget it was me who did the tidying up after him back then. When he burnt the tailor’s family to death, it was me spotted the butane spray he’d used to get things going and got rid of it before the fire inspection team got on the job.’

‘Hey, man, didn’t burn the whole family-the little girl got rescued, remember?’ interrupted Slingsby indignantly.

‘That’s right, Sling,’ said Gidman soothingly. ‘Mick got it wrong, and I’m sure he’s sorry. Right, Mick?’

Purdy felt the pressure of the knife at his throat intensify and he grated, ‘Right.’

‘Good,’ said Gidman. ‘Let’s clear up this other thing while we’re at it. You saying you kept that butane can all these years or something, Mick? Don’t believe you. And even if you had, don’t see how it can be tied in to Sling and me after all this time, not even with the wonders of modern science.’

‘That will be for the courts to decide, Goldie. And it’s not the only story I’ve got to tell.’

Goldie stubbed out his cigar and scratched his chin reflectively.

‘Sounds like you’re threatening me, Mick, That’s not a friendly thing to do.’

‘Just warning you, Goldie. The old days are over. For Christ’s sake, you must see that. You can’t go back to using your hammer again without it coming back to you. The Delays have killed one man already. The Yorkshire police know there’s a link to you.’

‘A very old link, Mick,’ said Gidman. ‘Let’s see, how will my press statement go…?’

His voice changed, became deeper, almost pontifical, as he intoned, ‘“Miss Delay once worked for me as an accounts clerk. As my affairs grew progressively more complicated, I found I needed a different kind and quality of financial help and she became redundant. So I let her go with a generous settlement well over a decade ago. Naturally I’m sorry to hear she’s got herself into trouble, but really I don’t think I can help the authorities any further in this matter.” How’s that sound to you, Mick?’

‘Sounds like a load of crap,’ said Purdy. ‘Goldie, I’ve said what I want to say. I came here to give you the chance to start tidying up while you still can. You’ll be stupid not to take it.’

‘Threatening me in my own house is what I call stupid, Mick,’ said Gidman. ‘As for tidying up, at the moment the only untidy thing I can see is you. Now give me a moment, I need to take a moment to think…’

It felt to Purdy as if the knife at his throat was nicking his skin. Certainly he could feel something warm trickling down his neck. Had to be sweat or blood.

‘Take as long as you like, Goldie,’ he said. ‘As long as you like.’

And through his mind ran the thought that finally the fatigue of the weekend operation and the pills he’d popped to counter it had taken their toll. What the fuck had he been thinking of, coming out here? This figure sitting before him might have adopted all the trappings of wealth and influence and respectability, but the very fact that he’d sent the Delays up to Yorkshire to clean up for him should have been a reminder that, beneath the surface, Gidman was the same ruthless, amoral gangster he’d always been.

It suddenly felt that it was going to take a divine intervention to get him out of this hole.

18.52-19.23

Sometimes what Orphic music would fail to soothe, a simple panic bellow can freeze in its tracks.

‘HOY!’

The sound hit the back of the quarry, ricocheted off and rattled around, making direction hard to pinpoint.

For a second they all looked up, thinking such an ominous noise must have come from the skies.

Then Alex Wolfe saw that two men had appeared at the edge of the quarry. Straight away he recognized one of them: Peter Pascoe, who’d been at his daughter’s christening.

The other looked vaguely familiar. That bulk…that ursine gait…that simian head…wasn’t this the man Gina had been sitting with at the Keldale…? Wasn’t this the famous Andy Dalziel?

He was the one who’d shouted. No way such a sound could have emerged from the slender larynx of Peter Pascoe, who anyway seemed less bewildered by the presence of a bald-headed woman with a shotgun than the apparition of his christening party host.

‘Ed, what the hell are you doing here?’ he called.

Wolfe made no effort to reply. That was a question he’d need to think about. Unless things went really badly. In which case I won’t need to bother, he thought, as he watched Dalziel advancing with the majestic instancy of a disgruntled rhinoceros.

‘That the gun that shot yon poor lad at Loudwater? Best put it down, luv. It’s evidence.’

This was almost an aside as the Fat Man walked past Fleur towards her brother, who had pushed himself up into a simple kneeling position.

Hard to say which of this trio was the most grotesque, thought Wolfe with that calmness which can sometimes follow terror: the pale bald woman, the bleeding man, or the megalithic cop.

’Vincent Delay, I presume?’ said Dalziel. ‘You the one who did the shooting and put my DC in hospital? How do you manage when you’ve not got a gun and you’re not fighting a girl? Like to give it a try?’

‘Andy!’ said Pascoe. ‘Leave it. He’s hurt.’

‘Call that hurt? That’s a flea-bite. But I can wait. Or mebbe not. Murder, and him with his record, I shouldn’t think he’ll see the light of day in my lifetime.’

‘Step away from him!’

It was Fleur, the gun trained on the Fat Man’s belly.

Dalziel turned, a reassuring smile on his face.

‘Nay, luv,’ he said. ‘Tek care. I warned you not to mess with that thing. Put it down afore you do yourself an injury.’

‘Vince, on your feet. We’re getting out of here.’

Now the Fat Man’s smile broadened into a grin.

‘Where to? Listen.’

He cupped an ear with his great hand. Distantly but rapidly getting nearer they could hear the sound of approaching sirens.

‘Three of our lot, one ambulance,’ Dalziel analysed. ‘That’ll be for Sunny Jim here, so’s they can clean him up and get him looking pretty for the judge. You don’t look so clever yourself, luv. Mebbe they’ll take you along too, give you a bit of time to make your last farewells. Pity they don’t have mixed jails, else you could do your time together.’

‘Fleur!’

Vince was on his feet now. He wiped the blood away from his eyes.

‘Shoot the bastard!’ he croaked. ‘We need to get away from here.’

Pascoe took a step forward and said, ‘It’s over, Fleur. Put the gun down. My men will be here any minute. They’ll be armed. If they see you with that thing in your hand, they won’t hesitate to take you out.’

The barrel moved uncertainly from the Fat Man to the slim DCI.

At least it’s taken her mind off me, thought Alex Wolfe.

As if by thought transference the gun arced back in his direction.

‘Make up your mind, luv,’ said Dalziel. ‘One shot’s all you get.’

‘Fleur, please! Let’s go,’ pleaded Vince, his voice almost child-like in its pitch and intonation. ‘I can’t go back inside. They’ll never let me out. We’ve got to get away, we’ll go to Spain, I’ll settle there, I’ll like it there, I promise. Please, Fleur, please.’

He began to move unsteadily towards the blue VW. Dalziel stood aside to let him pass. The sirens were very close now.

The woman started to follow him.

Dalziel said musingly, ‘How old is he? Not yet fifty? He could have a good thirty years inside if he keeps in shape. Never mind. He can catch up on all them GCSE’s he missed out on.’

She kept on walking, though every step looked an agonizing effort.

The sirens had stopped. They heard the sound of car doors opening, voices shouting, feet running.

‘Last chance, luv,’ said Dalziel.

‘Bastard!’ she spat at him, and pulled the trigger.

The first of the new arrivals burst on the scene, heard the shotgun blast, saw the man slump heavily to the ground.

‘Armed police!’ he called.

The woman turned towards him, swinging the gun round with her.

‘Drop it!’ he called.

She brought it up to point at his chest.

He shot her through the heart.

‘Oh shit,’ he said, aghast at what he’d done. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Nay, lad, don’t beat up on thaself,’ said Andy Dalziel. ‘She were on her way out anyway, you don’t need to be a quack to see that.’

He looked towards Gina Wolfe. He wanted to speak to her, but she was folded in the shaven-headed man’s arms and he was talking urgently into her ear. Somehow the Fat Man got the impression it was instruction rather than comfort that was being given.

‘You know that guy?’ he said to Pascoe, who had come to join him, looking rather shell-shocked.

‘Yes…it’s Ed Muir…it was his daughter’s christening I was at…’

‘What’s he doing here then?’

‘I don’t know…in fact, I don’t know anything…what’s just gone off here, Andy?’

I’ve got to pull myself together, he thought. I’m sounding as pathetic as that poor bastard who just got shot by his sister!

‘Nay, lad, don’t get yourself in a tangle,’ said the Fat Man, giving Pascoe an avuncular pat on the shoulder that made him stagger. ‘Knowing stuff’s the responsibility of the man in charge, and that’s me, remember? What’s your mate doing now?’

Pascoe looked to see that Muir had now moved away from the blonde and was talking urgently into his telephone.

‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘Probably ringing Ali, his partner…’

‘Saying, “Sorry, luv, I’ll likely be late for supper, I’ve been held up by a pair of murderous sickos.” Hope she’s an understanding lass.’

He walked forward to where Vince Delay’s body sat slumped against the VW, a look of faint surprise still printed on his face.

‘Talking of understanding lasses, yon Fleur did you a favour, son,’ said the Fat Man, looking down at the corpse. ‘Everyone should have a sister like her.’

‘Loving, you mean?’ said Pascoe, control of his voice restored.

‘Dead, I mean,’ said Andy Dalziel.

19.22-19.30

Goldie Gidman sat staring at the blank TV screen as if still watching his old favourite Hendrix strutting his stuff at Woodstock. The silence stretched into a minute. Things to say bubbled up in Purdy’s head but they all sounded like pleas or provocation. He tried to think of ways of dealing with Slingsby. The guy was an old man with incipient dementia, but he was in the good physical shape that often goes with the condition, and in any case it didn’t take much strength to slice through flesh and vein with what felt like a razor-sharp blade.

Cave in, he told himself. Make Goldie think you’re backing off. But don’t be obvious. He’s no fool, he hasn’t got where he is today by being a fool.

To which was added the uncomfortable thought, Nor has he got where he is today by being unwilling to remove obstacles in his path with extreme prejudice.

If that divine intervention were written into the score, it was time for it to play now.

His phone rang.

Its ring-tone, downloaded for him by Gina, was based on the aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He’d protested, ‘Jesus, girl, they’ll all think I’ve gone weird when they hear that.’ And she’d replied, ‘Yes, but you’ll always think of me.’

He thought of her now.

The notes were repeated.

Goldie said, ‘Better answer that, Mick. But be careful what you say.’

Moving carefully to keep the pressure of steel on his throat constant, he took the phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear.

‘Purdy,’ he said.

He listened. Gidman, watching him carefully, saw with interest that whoever he was listening to had caught his attention so absolutely that Slingsby and his knife had gone completely out of his mind.

After the best part of a minute, Purdy burst out, ‘And she’s OK? Is she there? Can I speak to her?’

He listened again, then said, ‘OK, I understand. And that’s both of them dead. You’re sure of that?’

Another short period of listening then he said, ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself? Yes, he’s here. Hang on.’

He took the phone from his ear and said, ‘Goldie, I think you might want to hear this.’

Gidman stared at him for a moment then made a gesture. The blade went from his throat, he rose and moved forward and handed the financier the phone.

He said, ‘Goldie Gidman.’

Now it was his turn to listen.

After a while he repeated Purdy’s question.

‘Both of them? You’re sure?’

Another listen, then he said, ‘If you can make that play, then I’m OK with that. Believe me, I only ever wanted to talk.’

He switched off and handed the phone back. Then he smiled, gold fillings gleaming like Tutankhamen’s tomb, and Purdy knew he was safe. He touched his neck then examined his finger. Blood and sweat.

Gidman said, ‘You were right, Mick. Things got a bit out of control. We all have off days, right? But they’ve fixed themselves now. Thing I’ve found out as I’ve got older, nothing you can’t fix by talking.’

Purdy put his handkerchief to his neck.

‘Hard to talk with your throat cut, Goldie.’

Gidman laughed.

‘Would never have come to that, Mick, Sure you won’t have that cigar now? Drop of rum for the old days? OK, I understand. Don’t mind me saying, but you look a bit peaky. I’d say the best place for you is back in your bed, get some sleep in before your woman comes home. Sling will see you out. And, Sling, when you’ve said goodbye to the commander, have a word with young Maggie who’s volunteered to take care of me. Flo said she’d left one of her meat-and-potato pies for my supper. Show Maggie where she’ll find it. And tell her I’ll be honoured if she’ll join me at the table. Bye, Mick. Don’t be a stranger.’

Outside Mick Purdy watched as Slingsby, with the gentle smile that one uses to speed a parting friend, closed the door of Windrush House.

Then he took a deep breath of the evening air and looked up at the darkling sky.

Life felt good, even though there were difficult times ahead.

Alex had sounded confident he didn’t need to break whatever cover he’d created for himself. Purdy could accept that, but harder to accept was Wolfe’s assurance that Gina was going to go along with this. And if she did, what was going to be her attitude when she returned? Would she be willing to marry him, knowing that her husband was still alive? Would she let her lawyer go ahead with the petition for assumption of death?

And just how much would she by now have guessed about his role in recruiting Alex on behalf of Gidman?

These concerns he was confident of finding ways to deal with. They were mere midges in the ointment. But the one big blue-bottle potentially buzzing its way alongside them was Andy Dalziel.

How would he be reacting to all that had happened?

No doubt he’ll let me know, thought Purdy. In fact, he’ll probably be ringing shortly to tell me Gina’s OK. Got to be careful I don’t let him see I know already.

He was too tired for all this. Maybe he was too old for all this.

It was funny, but the one element he wasn’t worried about was Goldie Gidman.

As on so many occasions in the past, including some he had personal knowledge of during the man’s early career, some he guessed at in his latter corporate manifestations, Gidman had steered very close to the wind. But he carried with him an aura of invincibility.

Bit like Andy Dalziel, thought Purdy.

Two great survivors, two untouchables.

Pointless worrying about them any more than there’s any point worrying about God.

Time to go home and sleep. The rest would keep till he awoke.

23.15-23.59

Shirley Novello opened her eyes for the second time since being brought to hospital.

The first time she been surrounded by masked strangers who had bustled around her, poked and prodded, adjusted wires and tubes, until finally an unmasked man had introduced himself as her surgeon, asked a couple of simple questions, appeared delighted with her monosyllabic answers, then taken his leave, which she had read as permission to go back to sleep.

The second time she opened her eyes, there was no sound or bustle, just a single monumental figure sitting by the bed. She might have thought it was God if it hadn’t been reading a Sunday tabloid.

‘How do, luv,’ the figure said. ‘It says here that the Tory Party’s put together a think-tank to take a close look at the recession and come up with ideas to fix it, and one of its five wise men is Goldie Gidman. Can you credit it?’

‘Who…he…?’ she managed faintly.

‘He’s the bastard who’s ultimately responsible for putting you in here,’ said the apparition who might not be God but was a dead ringer for Andy Dalziel. ‘And the bad news is, looks like it’s going to be bloody hard making him pay for it. The good news is the bastard who actually cracked your skull is downstairs in the morgue with his sister.’

This was all so surreal she decided it must be part of a post-anaesthetic delusion so she closed her eyes, but when she opened them again he was still there.

‘The big question’, said the Dalziel eidolon, ‘is how much to believe of yon mate of Pete Pascoe’s story. He says he were at the Lost Traveller talking to the landlord about a catering job, and when he were driving away, he looked down the hill and saw Gina being bundled into a car and he got worried so he followed. So, a real have-a-go hero, and modest with it, doesn’t want any fuss. Gina says she’d gone for a drive, got lost, got out of the car to get some air and her bearings, then the Delays showed up and kidnapped her. Does owt of that sound plausible to you, lass?’

Novello tried closing her eyes again, but far from shutting up the speaker, this seemed to be taken as a comment.

‘You’re right, luv. Sounds bloody thin to me too. But the thing is, if I give ’em a dose of good old Andy Dalziel deep questioning, where’s it going to lead but endless dole, eh? He’s just had a babby by young Rosie’s clarinet teacher, and Gina wants to get on home to claim a widow’s pension and marry Mick Purdy. Now there’s another problem, as you’ll not be slow to point out.’

‘Wa…er,’ gasped Novello, opening her eyes.

‘Eh? What…her? Is that like who…he?’

Wa…er,’ she repeated in exasperation.

‘Oh, water! Right.’

He poured a glass of water from a bottle on her bedside locker, put his arm round her shoulder and set the glass to her lips. When she indicated she’d had enough, he gently set her head back down on the pillow.

She said, ‘Is it really you?’

‘Good question, luv. Kind of day I’ve had, I’m not sure how to answer it. We were talking about Mick. I’ve got me doubts there. Nobody hates a bent cop more than me, but we all cut a few corners when we’re young, look the other way for a pint of beer here, a quick jump there. Could be straight as a die now. One thing I’m sure of is, it weren’t himself he were worried about, it were Gina. He really loves that lass. Do I want to muck that up? She’s not daft, but. I reckon she’s going to be giving him a hard time when she gets back, and I don’t mean that kind of hard either. So what should I do, lass? You’re going to have to make these decisions afore too long. You’re going far, I can always spot a good ’un, and you’ve got the makings. So what do you think I should do?’

She drew all her strength together and forced out the words very distinctly.

‘Go…home!’

‘Ay, you’re right, Sleep on it. Except I can’t go straight home. After we got most of it tied up back at the factory, Pete said he were going to buy the lads a drink down the Black Bull. I said I wanted to call round here, see how you were, but I’d likely look in on my way home. Not that there’ll be anyone there now, it’s well after closing time, but Pete and Wieldy might hang on for me. I’ll give them your best, shall I? Don’t expect you’ll be back for a couple of days. You don’t want to hang about this place too long, but. Full of sick people, never know what you’ll catch.’

She heard the chair being pushed back, large feet hitting the tiled floor as he proceeded slowly to the doorway. Was it all a delusion? Most of it had been incomprehensible, but there was one bit she wanted to cling on to and believe in. The bit where he said she was a good ’un and would go far. She could never ask him if he’d really said it, but some sort of authenticating sign that he’d actually been here in the flesh would be a comfort and an inspiration.

The footsteps paused. Distantly she heard the voice say, ‘Oh, one thing more, Ivor. That forty quid I gave thee for tha lunch. In the circumstances, we’ll not bother about the change, eh?’

Asked for and given.

Smiling, she fell asleep.

Dalziel left the hospital and drove through the quiet streets. It had been a hell of a day. Could have turned out a lot worse. That poor Welsh lad getting killed were bad, but he’d thought a lot about it and it weren’t down to him any more than it had been down to randy old Hooky. But if Ivor’s injuries had been fatal, if they hadn’t got to Gina in time, then he had a feeling he’d have asked for his papers. Mebbe he wouldn’t have had to. Mebbe they would have given them to him anyway.

He’d skidded close to the edge round a very dangerous corner, but he was still on the bloody road!

He pulled up on a double yellow in front of the Black Bull. Not another car in sight out here, it was well after closing. There was a dim light showing through a window and hardly any noise. Jolly Jack the landlord and his team of innumerate zombies would likely be clearing up. He almost pulled away but just on the chance Pete Pascoe had hung on, he got out and tried the pub door.

It opened and he stepped into the gloomy entrance hall, then turned right towards the doorway marked Bar.

First time I’ve come in here and not really wanted a drink, he told himself sadly. Nowt more depressing than a silent pub after throwing-out time.

He stepped pushed open the door and was hit by a cacophony of cheers and hoots and whistling.

They were all there, his motley gang, crowded into the raised area at the far end that CID had made its own. You could tell by their clothes what they’d been doing when news of the assault on Novello reached them. No one had paused to change. They’d all rushed in to offer their help, and though some of them had turned out to be superfluous to requirement, none of them had gone home. But why were they cheering so much? This was the kind of reception he might have expected to get at the successful end of a long and difficult case.

But somehow it felt different. Somehow it felt like they were welcoming him back after a long journey.

‘You buggers got no homes to go to?’ he demanded. ‘Jack, draw us a pint and whatever this short-armed lot are having. Likely they’ve been waiting hours for some mug to come in and stand them a drink. Just the one, mind you. It’s nigh on midnight and you’ve all got to be up for the crime-review meeting first thing tomorrow morning. Standards have been slipping. I’ll have the bollocks off anyone who’s late.’

He sat down in his wonted chair of state beneath an ancient Vienna clock whose eagle had long since flown at the end of some previous night of constabulary triumph, took a long pull at his pint, and delivered an optimistic bulletin on Novello that won another cheer.

‘So all’s well that ends well,’ murmured Pascoe in his ear.

Was there just a touch of irony there?

‘Not so well for Gareth Jones,’ said Dalziel reprovingly. ‘And I don’t see a happy ending for Hooky Glendower. But it’s ended a bloody sight too well for that bugger Gidman.’

‘Nothing we can do about that, unfortunately,’ said Pascoe. ‘We’ll have to leave it in the hands of God. Talking of Whom, sir, one question me and Wieldy were just wondering about. When taking Mrs Wolfe’s statement, she said something about meeting you in the cathedral early this morning. That fitted in nicely with Mrs Sheridan’s mistaking you for a kerb-crawler. Wieldy and I were just wondering, what in the name of all that’s unholy were you doing in the cathedral? Sir?’

Pascoe had that look of deferential interest on his face which was his customary mask for a bit of not so gentle piss-taking. Wield’s natural expression could have hidden anything. Both pairs of eyes were fixed on him.

He sipped his drink slowly, buying some time.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘We did meet in the cathedral. Often go there, specially on the Sabbath. Can’t say I’m surprised you two irreligious sods didn’t know that. Not much chance of running into you in church, is there?’

‘But why, sir?’ insisted Pascoe. ‘You’ve not been born again or something.’

Wield hastily supped his beer. Something must have gone down the wrong way as he choked slightly.

Dalziel said, ‘Born again? Nay. I’d guess it were a right painful experience for me mam the first time. Size I am now, I’d likely challenge an elephant. No, it’s the music.’

His two colleagues exchanged glances then Pascoe said incredulously on a sliding scale that would have got him the part of Lady Bracknell, ‘The music?’

‘Aye. You ought to go there and have a listen some time. Smashing acoustic. And the organist were practising his Bach this morning: “Art of the Fugue”. My favourite. Tha knows what a fugue is? Bit of a tune that chases itself round and round till it vanishes up its own arsehole.’

He whistled a series of random notes in alleged illustration. As if in sympathetic counterpoint, the old Vienna clock began to strike midnight.

Man and timepiece finished together. Dalziel stared at his interlocutors as if challenging response.

None came, and he said with some satisfaction, ‘Aye, there’s many a good fugue played on an old organ. You two might do well to remember that. Now, whose round is it anyway? I think some bugger must have drunk mine!’