Pictures of Perfection

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wield woke to the sound of bells.

He listened for the voice of God in them till they diminished to the trill of a telephone, whereupon he rolled off the sofa and went crawling in search of the instrument, certain that it would be the voice of God on it, full of wrath at being kept waiting.

He was right about the wrath, but it was Dudley Wylmot’s, not Dalziel’s.

‘About time,’ he said petulantly. ‘Can you get down here right away! We’ve been broken into again.’

Wield looked at his watch. It was ten to six. He thought of telling Wylmot to sod ‘awf’, dismissed the idea, thought of advising him to ring Filmer at the Section Office, or to ring HQ in town, or to …

‘Hello? Hello? You still there?’ demanded Wylmot.

‘Sod awf,’ said Wield.

Even as he said it he couldn’t believe he was saying it. He, Wield, the master of control, the man who let it all hang in.

‘I’m sorry? I missed that? My wife was speaking. What did you say?’

Wield drew in a huge lungful of air to service a long sigh of relief.

He said, ‘I’ll get down there soon as I can, sir.’

He rang off, then dialled the Section number.

A yawning constable answered. Wield identified himself, explained the situation, then went on: ‘Ask Sergeant Filmer to get over here soon as he can, will you? I’ll take a look, but I don’t want to be away too long.’

He went into the bathroom and immersed his head in a basinful of cold water, rubbed some toothpaste on his teeth with his finger-end and rinsed it out.

It wasn’t till he was walking out of the bathroom that it registered: there was toothpaste but no toothbrush.

Outside he drank in the cool air of a fine spring morning. The sun was up, but nobbut just, and the final coda of the dawn chorus still filled the air, plus the dull roar of a distant tractor reminding him that Enscombe was a working village and a farmer’s day still ran with the sun.

Walking was a little shaky at first, but by the time he reached the High Street he was beginning to feel more like a pulse in nature and less like a spanner in the works.

He met a couple of farmworkers who greeted him as casually as if they’d been doing it for fifty years. Perhaps his stubbled chin and rumpled clothes made him merge with the background.

At the Post Office he found Wylmot in a state of hangover which made his own condition positively healthy. He recalled remarking the speed with which the man had been sinking the gin and tonics. Foolish fellow. Now if he’d stuck to pure old bourbon …

Complacently he said, ‘Show me.’

Entry had been through a kitchen window, using the same technique as at the Tell-Tale Bookshop the day before. The difference was that here there was an alarm system.

Wield checked it. The main switch was off.

‘What happened, sir? Forget to switch it on?’

‘I must have done,’ said Wylmot. ‘I was rather … tired last night. Usually it’s something I do automatically. Oh shit. I hope the insurance won’t make a fuss. We had it fitted after the last time and there was a discount on the premium.’

‘These things happen, sir,’ said Wield. ‘What time did you discover the break-in?’

‘About half an hour ago. It wasn’t me. It was my wife.’

‘Have you any idea what’s missing?’

‘From the shop, yes. They don’t seem to have touched anything in here.’

Here was the sitting-room cum dining-room through which they went on their way to the shop. Wield paused at the connecting door and said, ‘Would this have been locked?’

‘That? No. I mean if they got that far, they’d be in, wouldn’t they? So what’s the point of giving them something else to damage?’

To Wield the natural end of this logic was to pack all your valuables into a suitcase and leave them on the kitchen table.

He went into the Post Office.

The place was in a bit of a mess, but it was mainly papers which had been scattered around, nothing which would have made a lot of noise.

He said, ‘Where’s your bedroom, sir?’

‘Right above,’ said Wylmot.

From the look of him it would have taken the massed bands of the Household Guards playing reveille to waken Wylmot, but perhaps his wife had heard something.

Wylmot went on, ‘It’s mainly mail they took, so far as I can see. The old safe we had you could get into with a hairpin, but this new one, you’d need gelignite. And I’m very careful to lock everything of value away. The tills were empty, of course. So I reckon they went for a lucky dip in the mailbag. It was rather fuller than usual as there was no collection yesterday.’

‘Oh yes, the postman’s accident. Any chance you can remember what was actually in the bag? Can’t have been too much, not from a small place like Enscombe.’

‘We do a surprising amount of business,’ retorted Wylmot. ‘If we didn’t they’d soon close us down, believe me. Oh, there you are, dear.’

Daphne Wylmot had appeared in the doorway. She wore a green and gold silk dressing-gown which ran liquescently over the curves of her body. Her shoulder-length hair had been brushed till it shone like the gown and she had applied just enough make-up to give life and colour to her morning face. Her feet were bare and her magenta-nailed toes flexed prehensilely on the cool tiled floor.

Wield viewed her with the dispassionate approval of an art lover, and her green eyes returned his gaze with the puzzled speculation of a beautiful woman not getting the response she expects, even at this time in the morning.

‘Hello, Mrs Wylmot,’ said Wield. ‘Detective-Sergeant Wield. We met yesterday. I believe you discovered the break-in?’

‘That’s right, Sergeant. I felt the draught as soon as I opened the kitchen door.’

‘You were up early,’ said Wield. ‘Did something disturb you?’

‘I don’t think so. Should it have?’

‘No, I meant, sleeping directly above the shop …’

She smiled and said, ‘I wasn’t, not last night. Dudley was a little … indisposed when we got home so I thought it best to let him have our double bed to toss and turn in. I went into the spare room, which isn’t above the shop. No, I simply woke up, felt like a cup of tea and came down. It wasn’t all that early, not for us. Someone has to be around to receive the newspapers about six forty-five, and I didn’t anticipate Dudley being well enough.’

‘I see,’ said Wield. He looked at her husband, who was staring into a mailbag like a nervous air passenger about to be very sick. ‘Perhaps you could help Mr Wylmot work out what’s missing. But try to touch as little as you can.’

He went back into the living-room and let his eye run slowly over the route the burglar must have taken from the kitchen, then broadened the field of search. He was acting more out of habit than hope. Clues detectable by the human eye were rarer in life than in literature. But there was something. Under a table, a piece of grey-brown clay almost invisible on the heather-mix carpet. It bore the imprint of the deep tread of a shoe or boot and was set hard.

Carefully he carried it through into the kitchen, helped himself to a freezer bag off a roll on the wall, and slipped it in. Then he opened the kitchen door. It led into a small porch which housed a washing machine and was also the dumping ground for a couple of pairs of wellingtons and a pair of men’s walking boots. He checked their treads. None was deep enough to match the piece of clay.

He went through the outside door into a small yard, prettified by a couple of tubs bright with the flowers that bloom in the spring. The walls were about six feet, no obstacle to an active man, and in any case warpage had shifted the position of the solitary bolt on the yard door so that it touched but could not enter the hole drilled in the post to receive it, and the door swung open when he pulled at it.

He returned to examining the walls just in case his man had come over the top, but found no sign. The only odd thing his sagacious eye did observe was that in one of the flower tubs, a group of Poeticus Narcissi was a flower short. The stem had been snapped in half quite recently and there was no sign of the white-petalled flower with red and yellow cup either in the tub or on the ground.

He made a note, but didn’t bother to underline it. The flowers that bloomed in the spring, tra-la, were unlikely to have anything to do with this case.

Whistling the tune, he re-entered the cottage just as Filmer arrived.

‘You sound happy,’ said the uniformed sergeant.

‘It’s this early rising. You should try it.’

‘No need to be cocky just ’cos you were sleeping on the spot,’ said Filmer. ‘Any word of young Bendish yet?’

‘No,’ said Wield, glancing at his watch. ‘But there’s still time. I’d best get back to Corpse Cottage. You take over here, Terry.’

‘That’s right, run like hell before fat Dalziel finds out you’re missing,’ mocked Filmer. ‘God, he’s got you buggers scared witless, hasn’t he?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Wield. ‘He’s just a big cuddly bear and we all love him.’

He passed on what he’d gathered, both information and material, then left without speaking to Wylmot again. The man was quite capable of complaining at being fobbed off with Filmer, and Wield, alert to what he thought of as the Enscombe effect, didn’t want to risk being tempted to a second sod awf.

As he walked past the Wayside Café, his nose caught the smell of fresh baking and his stomach gave a low pleading rumble. He tried the door. It was locked but the noise of the handle brought Dora Creed out of her kitchen. She did not look welcoming as she unlocked the door.

‘Sorry, but I were passing and I’ve not had any breakfast and I could smell your baking …’

‘I’m getting things done for the Squire’s Reckoning,’ she said. ‘This is a very busy morning for me.’

‘Aye, it will be. Sorry to trouble you …’

‘You spent the night in Corpse Cottage, did you? You’re up early.’

‘There was a break-in at the Post Office,’ he said.

‘Another? Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Just wait here a moment, Sergeant.’

She vanished into her kitchen, leaving Wield reflecting that she didn’t seem much surprised at this new evidence of man’s depravity. A couple of minutes later she returned carrying a plastic bag containing a foil-wrapped packet.

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Wield. ‘How much do I owe …’

‘No need for money or thanks, Sergeant. I was an hungred and ye gave me meat. I was a stranger, and ye took me in. My duty and my pleasure.’

It was enough to turn a man religious, thought Wield, and his conversion was confirmed when he opened the foil parcel and discovered a feast of fresh-baked rolls filled with crisp hot bacon. He washed them down with a mug of Bendish’s good tea and felt for a while that all was right with the world.

But as the minutes ticked by, his worries about the fate of Bendish returned and with them his old conviction that while bacon butties were a strong plea in mitigation, God stood convicted of at least wilful neglect in the way He managed the world.

At eight on the dot the phone rang. He snatched it up, praying it would be the young man ringing in with apologies for being late … except of course he would hardly ring his own cottage!

Andy Dalziel said, ‘’Morning, sunshine. Anything happening?’

‘No, sir. Except there was a break-in at the Post Office.’

‘Oh aye? Any connection?’

‘Doubt it. What now, sir?’

‘What do you recommend? The circus?’

It was a straight question. Dalziel liked straight answers.

He said, ‘If it were up to me, I’d say not. At least, not yet.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘It just doesn’t feel like a spot where something nasty’s happened,’ said Wield reluctantly.

‘I’d like to see Desperate Dan’s face when I try that out on him!’ said Dalziel. ‘But you’re the man on the spot, Wieldy. For now. I’ll be out later with the lad to take a look for myself. Try not to go completely native till then, eh? And I’ll tell you one thing, Wieldy …’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘If young Bendish is still alive when we find him, I’ll mebbe kill the bastard myself!’