Recalled to Life

NINE

'Will you tell me who denounced him?' 'It is against the rule.' Pascoe had never phoned a publisher before and in his inexperience first dialled the number at nine-fifteen A.M. At his third attempt, at nine-forty, he made contact with a woman whose voice vibrated with a mix of suspicion and disorientation such as he hadn't heard since his last dawn-knock raid. His request to be put through to Paul Farmer perked her up, perhaps because its very naivety revealed she was in touch with a lesser breed outside the metropolitan time zone. He was invited to try again at ten-thirty. At ten twenty-nine he rang once more. This time he was put through to Mr Farmer's secretary who asked him if he were a writer in a voice which suggested she was about to blow a whistle down the phone if he said yes. He summoned up his best Dalzielesque orotundity and gave her the full majesty of his rank. She seemed unimpressed but a moment later a male voice, light and pleasant, said, 'Farmer here. How can I help you, Mr Pascoe?'

Pascoe explained, adding that he realized it was all a long time ago.

'That's all right,' said Farmer, laughing. 'My long-term memory's a lot better than my short-term these days. I find I can't remember who won the Booker two days after the ceremony.' ‘I thought that was a condition of entry,' said Pascoe. ‘But you do recollect Superintendent Tallantire?' ‘I do indeed. Interesting chap. Lots of good stories. I couldn't see the great reading public being much interested in his life and hard times in urban Yorkshire, but you do seem to have rather a good class of crime up there and I could see great potential in a memoir of the big cases he'd been mixed up in, with the strictly autobiographical stuff kept down to a minimum." 'So you had lunch? How did you feel after you'd actually talked to him?" 'I felt I was right.

There was a real money-spinner here, pre-publication extracts in one of the popular Sundays, a bit of TV exposure on the chat shows, I think we could have turned your Mr Tallantire into a mini-star. That's what made it all the more annoying, not to mention embarrassing.' That he died, you mean?' said Pascoe, thinking this was a touch insensitive. 'What? Don't be silly. That I had to turn him down.' 'You were going to reject his idea? Yet you still took him out for lunch?'

'That was the trouble. I'd brought him up at our last editorial conference and got the go-ahead to set up a meeting. Then on the morning of the day we were having lunch, word came from above, police memoirs were no longer our cup of tea. Too late to cancel, so I had to go through with it, knowing the poor chap was to be elbowed.' 'Did you tell him?' ‘I didn't intend to. Chicken-heartedly I thought I'd just play along, then write to him in a few days saying, sorry, on mature consideration et cetera. But in the end after I'd listened to him for a bit, I found I was getting so keen, I just had to come clean. At least I felt able to suggest another couple of houses I was pretty certain would jump at him, and we parted on good terms. I kept an eye open but never saw anything. He died, you said? Was that soon after we met? Before he had a chance to shop around?' 'Yes. Quite soon,' said Pascoe. 'Tell me, Mr Farmer, why did you think your firm decided to turn the memoirs down? Whose decision would that be?' 'Someone like me, as I am now, I mean. Then I was simply an editor, coal-face stuff, dealing direct with writers and their writings. Now I suppose I'm a publisher. The kind of meeting I attend, and one of which I shall shortly be late for, decides on broad policies and wider strategies.'

'Yes, but weren't you surprised?' 'Not really. Sort of thing happens all the time, and especially after a change of management.' 'You mean internally? Or as a result of a takeover?' 'Both. Publishing houses are like Third World countries, constantly under threat both from foreign invasion and civil war. God, the changes I've been through.

Treeby and Bracken were a nice little independent publisher when I joined them. Then they were bought by the Glaser magazine group, which wasn't so bad. At least it was still about the printed word. Then Glaser got gobbled up by Harvey Inkermann, the investment people, and suddenly it was all about finance and returns and investment. Even then we laughed when we heard about the Centipede takeover. Lots of jokes about free condoms with every book! But we laughed too soon.

Centipede was clearly just another bargaining counter in the discussions between Stampers and Inkermann – ' 'Hold on," said Pascoe in whose mind a diaspora of information was coming together. 'This Stamper, he'd be the Sheffield Stamper…' 'That's right. The dreaded Sir Arthur.' 'And his company amalgamated with Harvey Inkermann to form – ' ‘Inkerstamm. You must have heard the story that when they joined up, Sir Arthur wanted top billing in the new conglomerate name, but the best they could come up with was Stinker!'

'Very droll,' said Pascoe. 'And who was it that owned you when you were dealing with Superintendent Tallantire?' 'As I was trying to tell you, we'd just been subsumed by Inkerstamm and forced into a shotgun marriage with Centipede. New brooms were being flourished, and in those circumstances, much that is good always gets swept away with the dross, just to establish who's in charge. Your Mr Tallantire was, I fear, a victim.' Perhaps a victim indeed. But it was all so far-fetched. Treeby and Bracken would hardly register on Stamper's mind except as a line in a balance sheet. So, a new senior editor flexing his muscles. And an ageing bobby, after a career full of hard drinking, irregular eating and sleepless nights, has a heart attack.

Nothing odd there. 'Just one more thing,' he said, ‘I don't suppose you can recall if Mr Tallantire referred to a notebook during your lunch?' 'Oh yes indeed. Several times. I recall joking that perhaps he should forget about his memoirs and just publish the notebook, and he smiled and said it was better to have ten bob to spend than a quid to bequeath. The phrase struck me.' 'Shit', said Pascoe as he replaced the phone. He didn't need to re-scan the list he'd dug out of coroners' records, but he did anyway. When people die in public places a careful inventory is made of their possessions, very careful indeed when the dead man's a copper. Nowhere in the list of what was found on Tallantire's person or in his briefcase was there a mention of a notebook. Pascoe knew all about detectives' notebooks. Some cops recorded no more than the minimum that regulations required. Others wrote copiously. And a third group kept two notebooks, one officially recording the case in hand, the other omnivorous, devouring every fact or fancy that touched upon the case, no matter how distantly. From all accounts, Tallantire had belonged to this group. If Dalziel's judgement of the man was correct, he wouldn't have hushed up any information, no matter how delicate, that had a direct bearing on the Mickledore Hall killing. But in an affair like this, involving a royal, a cabinet minister, an American diplomat, and God knows who else, at a time when British public life was going through the greatest turmoil since the trial of Queen Caroline, what peripheral details, recorded conversations, gossip, hints, innuendoes, plain theorizing, might have found their way into the missing notebook?

Tallantire's own comment, recalled by Farmer, that publishing the notebook might bring him money to bequeath rather than spend, hinted that it contained just this kind of material. And next thing he's dead on a train. Coming back from a visit to a publisher. And the notebook has vanished. At what point does subsequence become consequence?

Later, to a rationalist thinker. Sooner, to a workshop cop. Pascoe, philosophically and professionally, tried to tread a middle way. As he did in most things, he thought with bitter self-mockery. Middle of the road's grand, unless it's the M6 on a Bank Holiday. The Gospel according to St Andrew Dalziel. Who else? And with each passing hour Pascoe could feel the traffic building up.