Ruling Passion

Chapter 5

There was a police-car outside Sturgeon's house when Pascoe arrived.

Marjory Clayton had not been much help. Aged about twenty, she was a plain girl, rather anaemic in complexion and wearing a shapeless cardigan which looked as if it had been woven round a sack of potatoes. She seemed genuinely upset at her employer's death and Pascoe treated her gently. Monday had been her half-day and she had been nowhere near the office after midday. Nothing unusual had occurred during the morning. In fact practically nothing at all. No customers, few calls. Business, it seemed, was very, very slack. No, she had not known that Mr Lewis was returning from Scotland that afternoon, though it didn't surprise her. He spent a lot of time up there and seemed quite happy to drive back and forth at fairly frequent intervals.

The other secretary, Jane Collinwood, lived at the far side of town. She would have to wait till later. It was beginning to feel like a wasted day.

But the scene that met him when he stepped through the open front door of Sturgeon's house drove his own troubles out of his mind. Mavis Sturgeon, aged from a sprightly sixty to a parchment like ninety, was being helped into her coat by an awkward-looking constable. She was clearly in a state of shock and showed no sign of recognition.

'What's up?'

'Are you a friend, sir?' asked the constable hopefully.

'I'm a detective-sergeant, son. Come on, what's happened?'

'It's Mr Sturgeon, Sergeant. There's been an accident, and I was sent..’

'Yes.' Pascoe put his arm round the woman's shoulders. 'Have you sent for a doctor?'

'Well, no. She wouldn't… she just insisted on going straight to the hospital,' the constable answered helplessly.

'For God's sake, man! She's in no state, can't you see?'

Pascoe's anger drained quickly away. Being a messenger of death and disaster was no job for a young man. He pointed at the leather-bound address book by the telephone in the hallway.

'You'll find her doctor's number in that, probably. It's Andrews, I think. Ring him. Tell him to get out here at once. Then go next door, dig out a neighbour and bring her round.'

'Please, I must go to Edgar,' said Mrs Sturgeon piteously.

'Yes, love. Soon. Come and sit down a moment,' answered Pascoe, leading her gently into the lounge.

'He's been so worried lately. So worried. He wouldn't tell me why. I should have been harder. I should have tried harder.'

She began to weep and the trio of cats which had been viewing the scene suspiciously from the darkest corner of the room now advanced, mewing piteously, and jumped up on her knees. She buried her fingers in their fur, crying still.

A few minutes later the constable arrived with a neighbour, a sensible middle-aged woman who took control with the brisk efficiency of a Women's Institute president. Pascoe retired to the hall and spoke to the constable.

'Yes, Sarge, pretty serious, I believe. He was still alive when they got him to hospital, but at that age…'

'Do you know how it happened?'

'No. Not the faintest. Nothing else involved, that's all I know.'

'And he was down the Al?'

'Nearly at Doncaster. That's where they've taken him.'

Pascoe turned to the phone, first making sure the lounge door was firmly shut. He had to wait a few moments for the operator to answer and his eyes ran over the opened telephone book. One number caught his eye. A Lochart number, but the name next to it meant nothing.

Finally the operator replied and with compensatory swiftness put him through to the Doncaster Royal Infirmary. He identified himself and inquired after Sturgeon. The old man was very ill, he was told. Face cut, ribs broken, left kneecap shattered, no serious internal injuries as far as they knew yet, but he had lost a great deal of blood and was in a serious condition. Anyone wanting to see him might be well advised to move as quickly as possible.

'Thanks,' said Pascoe, putting down the phone.

Hospital, doctors; blood, violence, death.

'It's a hell of way to make a living,' he said to the fresh-faced constable. 'You'll hang on here till the doctor comes?'

'Yes, Sarge. You going now?'

'There's work to do,' said Pascoe.

Dalziel had decided to skip tea, partly as a result of Grainger's suggestion that he should try to lose a pound or two and partly because the medical examination had taken the edge off his usually ferocious appetite. He had left samples of just about everything extractable or removable from his body. It had made him very conscious of himself as a scaffolding of bone with flesh, blood and gut packed into the interstices. The thought of ham sandwiches or sausage rolls had no immediate appeal. But neither his mind nor his body could find anything wrong with the thought of a large stiff scotch (pure malt, drunk with a large dash of gusto) and accordingly he settled down in his room with the aforesaid medication and tried to think about the work in hand.

He was disturbed to find how little it interested him. When a man had devoted his life to something – even, some might say, destroyed it for that something – the least that something could do in return was not bore him.

The telephone rang. It was the duty sergeant.

'Sorry to bother you, sir, but I was just wondering if you knew when Sergeant Pascoe would be back. I know he's out doing something for you and…'

'I am not Pascoe's bloody keeper! Nor am I a bloody answering service. What do you want him for?'

'It's not me, sir. It's the young lady, Miss Soper, the one who was with him, at the week-end, you know. And she's very insistent on getting in touch with him, so I thought in the circumstances I would ask…'

Heart. There's a nasty outbreak of heart about this bloody place, thought Dalziel. The usual symptoms. Swellings of sympathy, failure of the proprieties. He drank the rest of his whisky.

'Put her through to me,' he said on impulse.

'Hello?'

'Hello, Miss Soper. Dalziel here.'

'Oh.'

'Sergeant Pascoe's not here at present, but I hope to be seeing him later. Was it urgent?'

'No. No, not really.'

'Forgive me asking, Miss Soper, but is it a private matter? Or is it police business?'

'I didn't realize you drew a distinction, Superintendent.'

That's better, thought Dalziel. That's the authentic liberal radical left-wing pinko Dalziel-hating note.

'If it's police business, Miss Soper, I'm sure the sergeant would want you to tell me.'

'What kind of police business had you in mind?'

Dalziel poured himself another scotch with his free hand.

'You are linked with a current inquiry, Miss Soper. Please accept my sincere condolences on what happened at the week-end. It must have been very trying for you.'

'Oh yes. I was very tried. Very tried indeed.'

Dalziel sighed and drank deeply.

'But, please, if any pertinent information should come your way, think carefully before you burden Pascoe with the weight of it. It's wrong to put overmuch strain on a man's loyalties. Wrong for everyone.'

'Let's chuck the circumlocutions, shall we? What're you trying to say, Superintendent?'

'I'm trying to suggest,' said Dalziel, his voice rising in spite of himself, 'that if for instance the man, Hopkins, should get in touch with you, it's your plain duty to inform the authorities. It would be wrong, and stupid, and bloody selfish to tell Pascoe and then try to get him to conceal the information. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Miss Soper. Not that you ought to need to be told, you're supposed to be so damn clever. Pascoe's a good lad, he's got a fine career in front of him if no one starts screwing him up. You stick to giving him soldiers' comforts in the night and leave him to do the job he's paid for. That's what I'm trying to tell you.'

He stopped and listened, waiting for a verbal explosion in reply or the sound of the phone being hammered down. Instead of either, he heard a soft rhythmic sound like a broken humming. It might have been either weeping or laughter.

'Miss Soper?' he said. 'Miss Soper.'

The line went dead.

He poured another inch of whisky. As usual, he had been right, he thought, staring down into the glass. This outbreak of heart was spreading widely. It was going to be difficult to avoid the contagion.

'Hello, Eric, or little by little,' said Angus Pelman, smiling through the Land-Rover window at the very damp boy on the grass verge.

Eric Bell was unamused by the facetious form of address. He hadn't been amused the first time he'd heard it and since then had found no reason to adjust his reaction.

'Hello, Mr Pelman,' he said politely. The man after all was a friend of his parents, though the word 'friend' seemed to have a rather odd meaning in the adult world. His mother and father always seemed delighted with Mr Pelman's company, made much of him, plied him with drink. But after his departure, the things they said about him though not always comprehensible were clearly far from complimentary.

'You'd better get in,' said Pelman. 'Though you couldn't get much wetter.'

Eric climbed in.

'No school today?' asked Pelman.

'No. The teachers are having a meeting.'

'Oh? With the holidays they get, you'd think they could meet in their own time. Don't you think so, Eric?'

Eric didn't bother to answer, ignoring his number one dictum, it pays to be polite to adults. He was going to pay the price he realized almost immediately.

'Was that you I saw earlier going up Poplar Ridge?' said Pelman casually.

'Up Poplar Ridge?'

'That's right.'

'It might have been.'

'Oh. There's not a great deal up there, is there?'

'Not much.’

‘No,’ said Pelman. 'Except the clay-pit.'

Eric fixed his eyes on the rain-pustuled glass in front of him. The windscreen-wiper was defunct on the passenger side and could only flick spasmodically like the broken wing of a shot bird.

His mind worked quickly. He saw no reason at all to trust Pelman. He hadn't laughed at his jokes, which is the biggest of anti-male sins. Therefore Pelman was almost certain to put the idea of the pit in his mother's mind. And that would be that. When it came to extracting information, Chinese inquisitors were mere unsubtle blockheads by comparison with his mother.

The best hope was to create a diversion.

'Yes,' he said. 'The clay-pit is up there. But that wasn't why I went. I went to look at the car.'

'The car?'

'Yes. There's a car up there. I went to see if it was still there.'

'What kind of car?' asked Pelman, slowing down.

'A blue car. A Mini.'

The Land-Rover came to a gentle halt by the roadside. Pelman peered closely at the boy.

'A blue Mini, Eric. Did you find it, or did somebody tell you about it?'

Eric thought quickly. It sounded better for him if he'd merely gone to investigate someone else's report, he decided.

'Someone told me,' he said, adding virtuously, 'I wouldn't have gone up there.'

'That's very interesting,’ said Pelman, setting the Land-Rover in motion again. 'Then we'd better tell somebody else, hadn't we?'

On the surface, Jane Collinwood was even more upset at the loss of her employer than her fellow secretary had been, but Pascoe suspected she was thoroughly enjoying the thrill of being so closely connected with a real life murder. She was a pretty girl, except for rather crooked teeth, not much more than seventeen, and full of the careless vigour of youth which overflowed even into the little bouts of weeping she thought the fitting punctuation of her speech.

He asked the obvious questions without much hope. Anything odd she'd noticed? Any reason to think someone might want to hurt Lewis? Everything she replied discouraged him more and more in his theory that there might have been something personal in this killing. Dalziel was right, as always. The house-breaker had been disturbed and lashed out in panic. Tough on Lewis.

'Do you know why Mr Lewis came back on Monday?' he asked finally, preparatory to leaving.

'Oh no. Not exactly.'

'Not exactly? But you've got some idea?' asked Pascoe, suddenly interested. 'You heard something in the morning?'

'No, I didn't hear anything. I'd no idea he was coming back. It was just later when I heard… the news…'

'Blow your nose,' said Pascoe with headmistressly firmness. It seemed to work.

'I presume it was something to do with Mr Atkinson.'

'Who's he?' said Pascoe puzzled. The name rang some kind of bell, but not one connected with Lewis.

'I don't really know,' said the girl.

Pascoe was beginning to feel irritated, but he kept it in check. The girl's blether was far too near her eyeballs, as he had heard Dalziel say in one of his more Scottish moments.

'Then why do you say… well, whatever it is you do say?'

He thought he'd done it again, but she recovered. It was very hard being sympathetic for long, he suddenly realized. Grief was so anti-life. It is a relationship with the dead, emotional necrophilia.

'Mr Atkinson and Mr James and Mr Matt…’

'Who?'

'Mr Cowley and Mr Lewis. I always called them…'

'All right. Go on.'

'Well, they had been doing some business together for a long time. It seemed to be private, I mean there wasn't any correspondence, not that I was asked to do anyway.'

'Miss Clayton perhaps?'

'Perhaps. She was senior.'

She made seniority sound like a disease thought Pascoe.

'Anyway, I knew Mr Atkinson by sight. He always said hello when he came into the office.'

'And what makes you think that it was this business that brought Mr Lewis back on Monday?'

She looked at him in exasperation.

'I'm telling you. Mr Atkinson went along to the office that afternoon. That's why it was probably about their business. Why else should he go to the office when it was closed?'

Pascoe restrained himself with difficulty from shaking her till her crooked teeth rattled.

'You weren't at the office on Monday afternoon though?'

'No. But I was in the High Street shopping and I saw Mr Atkinson and Mr James going into the office.'

'Ah.'

There didn't seem much else to say for a moment.

'What time was this?' he managed finally.

'About three. A bit later perhaps.'

'But you didn't see Mr Lewis?'

'No.'

'Sure?'

'Of course I am! I'd have noticed, wouldn't I, especially as he was meant to be in Scotland?'

'I suppose you would. This Mr Atkinson now…'

He paused. Suddenly he recalled where he had seen the name. John Atkinson. Lochart 269. In Sturgeon's telephone book. It was an absurd coincidence.

'What does he look like?'

'Look like. Well; I don't know.'

Tall? Tall as me?'

'Oh no. A bit shorter, I'd say. But broader across the shoulders. And he's older too. He's got grey hair. And a nice smile.'

'Thank you, Miss Collinwood,' said Pascoe. 'You've been very helpful. Just one more thing.'

It was absurd. But he might as well ask.

'Just where in Scotland is Mr Lewis's cottage?'

'Where? It's in a village somewhere. Near a place called Callander.'

'Lochart?'

'That's right. How did you know? It sounded very nice. He once said I could stay there some time. When he and his family weren't there, of course.'

'Of course,' said Pascoe, not even noticing the imminence of tears this time. His mind was too occupied elsewhere.

His indifference seemed to be therapeutic, for suddenly the girl brightened and smiled sweetly at him.

'Are you driving through town? You couldn't give me a lift, could you? I want to make a hair appointment. It's my birthday on Saturday.'

'Certainly,' said Pascoe. When she smiled she looked extremely pretty. She should smile more often. Perhaps everybody should.

But he could not feel that any possible development in this particular case was going to cause much amusement.