Pictures of Perfection

CHAPTER SEVEN

Digweed said, ‘In a sense it was my own property I was stealing.’

‘Oh aye? In what sense does Mrs Hogbin’s herb pudding or Mrs Stacey’s cardigan belong to you?’ asked Wield.

‘I wasn’t going to keep them,’ protested the bookseller. ‘I would have left them at the GPO in town.’

‘That might save you six months,’ said Wield drily. ‘So what made you decide to steal your own property?’

‘It was a foolish impulse,’ said Digweed. ‘I realized I had packed the wrong book in one of my parcels. I could of course have retrieved it from the Post Office this morning, but last night as I returned home, my judgement clouded by alcohol — you recall we drank a considerable quantity together, Sergeant — the notion came into my head of picking up the parcel there and then, so to speak. I think I must have been influenced by the discovery of Toke’s burglary of my shop. Traumatized is I think the cant term. I deeply regret my action and will of course make full restitution.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Wield.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘That ’ud be a better line,’ said Wield. ‘You try the other load of bollocks out in court and you’ll get five years. Let me take you through it slowly. You didn’t do it on the way home, you did it in the early hours of the morning. You weren’t traumatized by Toke’s break-in, but it did give you the idea of how to set about it. You didn’t ask Wylmot for the parcel back because you knew, him being a by-the-rule-book kind of gent, he was unlikely to break regulations and hand back an item of mail that had been accepted. And of course, once you’d asked for it and been refused, any subsequent theft might have put you in the frame.’

He paused and admired Digweed’s attempts to look indignant.

‘And as for your judgement being clouded by alcohol, I reckon you were sober as a judge. And don’t give me any crap about yon bourbon you so generously brought along in case I was feeling lonely. All you wanted to do was make sure the one cop left in the village was in no fit state to be snooping around in the middle of the night!’

‘Now that’s outrageous!’ protested Digweed, flushing.

‘Is it? You even brought them fancy glasses so’s I’d not notice how much I was drinking compared with you!’

The flush remained but it had more of shame in it now than indignation.

‘All right, Sergeant, I admit it. Such was my intention. But I don’t want you to think … Look, all right, I was not predisposed to like you. But it will not do. In vain have I struggled. I do not say this in hope of influencing you in your official capacity, but my feelings will not be repressed. Already before last night I was beginning to realize there was more to you than meets the eye. Last night, I admit it, I came because I wanted to get you drunk. But I stayed because I found that, despite all the differences between us, I was enjoying myself.’

He ground to a halt. Wield regarded him with astonishment, then burst out, ‘Well, thanks a lot, sir. That’ll really keep me warm in the geriatric ward, recalling how a gent like you once took a shine to a common or garden copper like me.’

For some reason the reaction seemed to please Digweed who smiled as he replied, ‘Hurt your feelings, have I, Sergeant? Or are you perhaps just a teeny bit ashamed to think that you actually enjoyed a night’s drinking with a tedious old intellectual like me?’

Wield fought back an inclination to return the smile and said, ‘So let’s see what all the fuss was about, shall we?’

He took the parcel addressed to Ellie Pascoe and started to rip it open.

‘I told you, I realized I’d packed the wrong book,’ said Digweed, alarmed. ‘And it wasn’t that packet anyway …’

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ said Wield. ‘Of course it was this packet. Soon as you realized our Mr Pascoe might be related to your Ms Pascoe, you got worried, and you didn’t let up till you’d checked they were one and the same. So what is it you don’t want to fall into the hands of a copper’s wife?’

He didn’t have an answer ready himself, apart from porn or a terrorist handbook, neither of which seemed very likely. But what came out was a well-used copy in a slightly tatty dust jacket of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. He opened the accompanying letter.

Dear Mrs Pascoe,

Here is the copy of Murder on the Orient Express we talked about on the phone. I hope it is to your satisfaction and that your husband finds it a suitable ornament to his collection. I enclose my invoice in the sum of £295 as agreed.

‘Bit hefty for an old thriller, isn’t it?’ said Wield.

‘It’s a first edition, with dust wrapper,’ said Digweed. ‘In better condition, I could get four hundred. At that price it’s a bargain.’

‘No it’s not,’ said Wield. ‘It’s dodgy, else you’d not have wanted to get it back when you discovered it was intended for a cop. Is it a forgery?’

‘Hardly,’ said the bookseller. ‘That would cost more than the book’s worth!’

‘Then it’s the jacket! What was it you said yesterday? A jacket could bump the price up by ten times or more?’

He saw by Digweed’s face that he’d hit on the truth.

‘But why?’ he asked. ‘I mean, OK, so you make a hundred quid or so, it’s not going to make you rich, is it? And it’s a fellow booklover you’re ripping off.’

The accusation hit Digweed where it hurt. He said, ‘Look, it’s not as bad as it seems … Well, yes, it is, and I’m ashamed, but my motives … What happened was I happened to get two inquiries from the States on the very same day for this volume, and I knew where I could lay my hands on one. I already had on my shelves a couple of copies without wrappers …’

‘Worth?’ interposed Wield.

‘Oh thirty, forty pounds,’ said Digweed. ‘But that wasn’t the point. I had to disappoint one of my American customers, and I was wondering which when … a friend said, why disappoint either? and a few days later came up with this superb copy of the wrapper design. Well, I did the jacket copy, I mean the writing — it was a sort of challenge — and in the end I had something only a truly expert and scientific examination could distinguish from the original. It all took time and money, you understand. In fact by the time I finished …’

‘You were working for nothing, yes, yes,’ said Wield impatiently. ‘So you sent one of the Americans a copy … no, in the end you sent them both a copy, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t want to play favourites,’ said Digweed. ‘Then coincidentally — these things always go in threes, don’t they? — there came this query from Mrs Pascoe. It was for an anniversary present, and she’d set her heart on getting him this, and I was her last hope … I couldn’t resist.’

Wield nodded in amused recognition. One of the many things he admired about Ellie Pascoe was that in matters of commerce she didn’t let her feminism inhibit her from using her femininity.

‘This friend who copied the design, it was Caddy Scudamore?’

‘I never said that,’ said Digweed. ‘I shall never say that.’

‘Very noble,’ said Wield. ‘But you’re better at bitchy. Man should follow his natural bent.’

‘Talking of which,’ said Digweed abruptly, ‘I presume my particulars will be fed into some know-it-all computer? So perhaps I should preemptively admit I have a record.’

‘You what? You’re not really the Pink Panther?’ said Wield, smiling.

‘No, though in retrospect my trial seems more comic than tragic. Here are the facts. About thirty years ago a certain gentleman who later became an ornament of the House of Lords was discovered in a Brighton hotel committing what was called an act of gross indecency with his solicitor. It caused great mirth. The lord-in-waiting got six months, suspended. The young solicitor was adjudged to have been led astray by a man his superior in age and social standing, so he got let off with a hefty fine, which he could scarcely afford. And he was also debarred from practising law by his professional council. No prizes for guessing his name. It will all be there in your records, I do not doubt.’

Long before Digweed finished talking, Wield had reached his own conclusion.

He knows about me. He can’t do, but he does. It’s nothing I’ve done or said, I’m sure of that. So someone’s told him. Who? Pascoe? Never. Dalziel? Not unless he saw something in it for himself! Which left … no one. Maybe he was being neurotic and Digweed had pressed his button without being aware of it. Such things happened sometimes in interrogations, and the suspect coughed to crimes he wasn’t even suspected of when all he had to do was look blank.

But meeting the bookseller’s gaze full on and seeing the ironically interrogative arch of those hispid eyebrows, he knew that this time he was got bang to rights.

He said quietly, ‘Mebbe I should warn you, attempting to influence a public officer by blackmail or intimidation gets you far more than burglary.’

Digweed’s irony rounded into puzzlement, then exploded into disgust.

‘Good God, man, what do you think I am? Some young shit tried that on me once. I told him to publish and be damned. Then, seeing from his oikish expression that he did not grasp the reference, I kicked him in the crutch. He certainly grasped that!’

Wield said, ‘Assault as well as burglary? You’re a man of hidden talents.’

‘Not so well hidden as yours, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ said Digweed.

Wield considered this, found he didn’t mind, and said, ‘All right. I’m sorry I misunderstood. Trouble with you is, the stick’s got so many wrong ends, it’s a hard job finding the right one. So nothing’s changed, then. I know you’re gay. You know I am. I’m still a cop, you’re still a crook.’

‘So what happens now?’

Wield said, ‘I’m thinking. Care to tell me how you clocked me?’

‘I didn’t. Retrospectively I see indicators, of course, such as a strange reluctance to despise you as much as you clearly deserved. But, no, it was Caddy. Don’t be surprised. She has a true artist’s eye and sees behind most masks.’

‘So she knows about you?’

‘Good Lord, everyone in Enscombe knows about me,’ laughed Digweed. ‘And knew about me long before our worthy constabulary did me the favour of “outing” me all those years ago.’

‘A favour, you say? And you’re not thinking of returning the favour?’

‘By outing you? How many times do I have to tell you, I’m neither a blackmailer nor a radical.’

‘So why let me know you know?’

‘Just to be sure. I’d have tried to check you out even if this unfortunate business hadn’t come up. So let’s forget it, shall we, and carry on regardless. What now?’

‘How often have you done this?’

‘I’ve told you. The two Americans and Mrs Pascoe. She was the last. If it wasn’t that Cad … that my friend had done me three jackets and I still had one left, I wouldn’t have dreamt of it. In fact, I spoke with my friend just after our first encounter and told her that was it. I must have subconsciously penetrated your disguise even then!’

‘And your friend?’

‘She — or he — had no more interest in any case. All that concerned her was the technique involved. For an artist, copying is part of the learning process whether it’s an old master or a book design.’

‘But you’ve still got the genuine jacket, I take it?’

‘Yes, I have. But why …?’

‘I think Mrs Pascoe deserves it. In fact,’ added Wield, removing the forged jacket and slowly tearing it up, ‘I think she’s going to get it, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Digweed, regarding him with an expression in which bewilderment warred with hope.

‘Good. Just to be on the safe side, I’d run a duster over the rest of the mail, the bits you shouldn’t have touched. And wear gloves when you take them into town to re-post them.’

The bookseller fell to with a will …

What the hell am I doing? Wield asked himself. I must be mad! But before his introspection could go further, Digweed stopped in his task of rubbing his prints off envelopes and said, ‘Sergeant, I didn’t pay any heed to these before, but now I look closer … well, there’s a couple here I think you ought to see.’

He passed over two identical buff envelopes.

Wield took them and studied the addresses.

‘I think we’ve got a problem,’ he said.