Dalziel 05 A Pinch of Snuff

by Reginald Hill

  'Just one thing more,' said Dalziel. 'I almost forgot. Inspector Crabtree.'

  'Sir,' said Crabtree who had just arrived holding one side of Gerry Toms who looked to be in a bad way.

  'Inspector Crabtree,' said Dalziel ponderously. 'You are suspended from your duties pending investigation of certain allegations which have been made into your conduct as a police officer. You will remain here until a senior officer from your force arrives who will accompany you to your home where a search will be made in your presence. You understand me, Inspector?'

  'Yes, sir,' said Crabtree without emotion.

  'Good,' said Dalziel and went into the house.

  Crabtree let Toms slip to the ground and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. Pascoe stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  'Ray,' he said.

  Crabtree smiled and shrugged.

  'I've a complete answer to all the charges,' he said. 'It's "go fuck yourself". Better push off, Peter, before master gets impatient.'

  'Inspector Pascoe!' bellowed Dalziel from within.

  Crabtree's smile broadened.

  Pascoe went into the house.

  Chapter 25

  Dalziel hit him across the face.

  'Peter! Peter!' he said.

  'Get stuffed,' choked Pascoe.

  'You OK? Here, have a drink of water.'

  'I'm OK, I'm OK,' said Pascoe.

  'I'll get you something stronger just now. For Christ's sake, lad, you've seen worse than that, and in the flesh too.'

  'I know it, I know it,' said Pascoe.

  He had too. He had seen bruised and battered flesh; shot-gun wounds like spoon-holes in a bramble pie; bodies ballooned with long immersion or devoured by long decay. But these he had somehow dealt with, somehow reduced to facts, somehow eventually controlled with his intellect. But this girl dying silently on the screen in the half light of the Calli viewing-room had slipped through his defences as though they didn't exist.

  'OK now?' repeated Dalziel. 'If you're going to honk, do it under the carpet. I'll get back and tell that lot in there you were caught short. Can't have them thinking you're soft. Though it might not harm. There's some as reckons the ACC's as bent as a Boxing Day turd.'

  Dalziel went out.

  Thanks, mouthed Pascoe after him. He meant it. He'd sat through as much of the film as he could but in the end he'd had to make for the exit. Once through, he had relaxed the effort of will which had carried him thus far and folded up into the arms of Dalziel who'd followed him out.

  He rose now and went to the window. Wilkinson Square looked peaceful and well ordered in the spring dusk. If the vigilantes knew what had just been shown in the Calliope Kinema Club, they would surely have come running out to tear the place down brick by brick. At least Pascoe hoped they would. But there was no certainty. We all like it, Ray Crabtree had said. It's just a matter of degree. Well, that was just special pleading, Pascoe now recognized. But for any plea whatsoever to be possible in defence of this made a mockery of civilization.

  Crabtree. He shook his head wearily, but was glad to have something else to concentrate his thoughts on. Dalziel had used him there. Sooner or later there must be a confrontation about that, but Pascoe could already map out the route via which he would be conveyed to a state of indignant impotence.

  It was clear now that Crabtree and Homeric had been under investigation for some time. Normally when suspicion falls upon a police officer, action is swift and open. Fellow officers are naturally reluctant to become involved in any clandestine investigation of one of their own number. Whose turn will it be next? But when a neighbouring Task Force in the process of closing down its own local pornography industry had chanced on a trail which led to Homeric and eventually to Crabtree, it had been decided to keep things very quiet till the full extent of the business could be seen.

  'Great thing about Homeric is that they admit pornography's their business,' Dalziel had said as they drove away from Hay Hall. 'Disarming, that. Please, sir, tell us if we go too far.'

  'How far's too far?' Pascoe had asked.

  'Not for me to say, lad,' said Dalziel grimly. 'But if there is a too far then Homeric must be going it, for we reckoned they were going all the way.'

  He turned in his seat as he spoke and looked at Pascoe.

  'I don't really meanwe,' he said. 'Not my investigation, you understand that? I had to know, of course. But I wasn't running things.'

  When Pascoe had come along with Shorter's story, Dalziel had tried to wet-blanket it. In any case it seemed too far-fetched to be possible. But once Pascoe had struck out on his own by contacting Homeric direct, Dalziel had pushed him on.

  'I knew if you went to Harrogate, you'd start chatting to Crabtree. Now, the Homeric lot would be having a go at him too, asking what the hell was going on. There had to be something for him to say. Old mate P. Pascoe being a bit over-conscientious, that fitted the book nicely.'

  'You could have told me,' said Pascoe sourly.

  'Would you have done it?'

  Pascoe considered.

  'In any case,' continued Dalziel, 'you might have turned something up. You certainly stirred something up. At the Calli.'

  The connection between Homeric and the Calli had been vague.

  'We knew that Arany was tied up with Homeric in some way, but you've got to remember that they were openly in the porn game. Arany was an agent. Also he had got a share in a Film Club. So what was more natural? But just how much he was mixed up in the under-the-counter stuff we didn't know. All that fuss by the fuddy-duddies gave us an excuse to take a close look at the Calli and old Gilbert. But it was looking pretty well OK till two things happened. Miss Alice and you.'

  'Look, sir,' said Pascoe. 'Can we just get two things straight. Who killed Haggard?'

  'Arany, of course,' said Dalziel in exasperation. 'I don't think he meant to, but he did. And those stupid sods let him slip through.'

  This was the only fly in his ointment. Despite Trumper's assurances, Arany had got out of the grounds of Hay Hall with no bother at all. On the credit side, his tip about the fireplace had proved very helpful and the boot of the car was laden with material they had found stored away there.

  'Second thing,' said Pascoe. 'Why doesn't Burkill want to mangle Arany? They acted like old mates.'

  'They are,' said Dalziel. 'Thing is, Arany knew nothing about Sandra doing that film, though he was instrumental in getting her involved. She'd met Toms and the Homeric lot a couple of times when Arany had taken her out to Hay Hall to see some filming in process. The clean bits, let me add. He was very careful of her morals, poor bastard. Toms spotted her potential, though. I suspect she very much played the little girl with Uncle Maurice, you know how ruthless kids can be, milking him for all he was worth. But with other men, she could be very different. And Toms, the big film man, all that glamour - well, it was a crazy thing to do on both sides, but they did it, made the film, then she came along and said she'd got herself knocked up.'

  'Who by?' asked Pascoe.

  'Who knows?' said Dalziel. 'She made it clear that if the balloon went up, she'd blame Toms or her fellow stars. He promised to fix up an abortion. Then her mother cottoned on.'

  'So she dropped Shorter in it?'

  'Aye. That might have been a fail-safe story devised by Toms. Probably was.'

  Pascoe nodded vigorously and assumed an I-told-you-so expression.

  'Don't get too cocky, Peter,' warned Dalziel. 'Ask yourself why they concocted that particular story.'

  'For God's sake!' snapped Pascoe. 'You're not going to go on with that business, are you?'

  'Of course not. No jury on earth'd convict him when this other lot came out,' said Dalziel. 'But that doesn't make him innocent. But where was I? Oh aye. You start probing. Toms rings Penny Latimer who's far from clean, but I don't think she's in the muck much beyond her thighs. Christ, can you imagine them thighs? One of those across you and you wouldn't be up for breakfast.'

  'So Toms r
ings,' said Pascoe impatiently.

  'Right. Penny tells him about you sniffing around. Toms is worried. First of all the film Droit de Seigneur does have something in it that he didn't think anyone would notice. He's evidently a great one for patching things together

  'I told you that,' said Pascoe.

  'So you did. Also he's worried about the actual film. Now Blengdale had this.'

  'How do you know?'

  The fat man chortled in glee.

  'It's surprising how much he was able to spill out just for me keeping Brian Burkill from working him over again.'

  This then was the explanation of Dalziel's long delay at Hay Hall. A little torture session in the woods. Pascoe knew he ought to feel disgusted.

  'Next he rings Haggard. No answer. Alice cuts the wire. Finally he rings Arany, tells him what's up, says he's worried something may be going on at the Calli, would he slip round and take a look.'

  Suddenly Pascoe comprehended.

  'Ah!' he said. 'Miss Alice said, "Some of the things I found there. Such filth!" I thought it was just an old woman's generalization!'

  'She doesn't sound like the type to generalize,' said Dalziel. 'No, there were pictures. Blengdale had been looking at them that night. Pictures of Sandra. A kind of trailer. Or perhaps when we get close to it, we might even find that Blengdale himself was joining in the fun. Anyway Arany goes upstairs, finds the wrecked study, wonders what the hell's going on. Then he spots the photos. Sandra's like a daughter to him. He thinks of her as a child . . .'

  'Which she is,' said Pascoe.

  'Yeah,' said Dalziel. 'Arany goes a bit crazy, looks for Haggard, can't find him but guesses where he is. We can be pretty sure he knew all Haggard's little quirks. So he does a bit of wrecking off his own bat just to make it look good.'

  'But he doesn't touch the kitchen because he doesn't want Haggard to get scared before he's right in the flat,' said Pascoe.

  'I bet you're great at Friday's crossword puzzles on Saturday,' said Dalziel. 'Haggard comes in, all fresh and glowing, at least his bum is. And bang! the ceiling falls in on him. Arany doesn't mean to kill him - he'd have finished him there and then if he had - but I don't expect he's much bothered when the old pervert dies. But of course he doesn't know just who or what's involved, though he's got a pretty good idea. So he keeps a low profile, tells Toms some story about finding the Calli wrecked and Haggard dying when he got there, blames a gang of tearaways or something. Toms is worried, but ready to believe. After all, the only other people interested in Haggard and the Calli are the police and we're not likely to behave like that. Are we?'

  'Not so near Easter,' said Pascoe.

  'Right. He doesn't care to see Sandra, can't even bring himself to deliver her birthday present. Then she turns up, all hysterical in the early hours of this morning. It all comes out, about her being pregnant and everything. He dosed her with some pills and went out in search of Burkill, guessing he'd find him at the Club. They swopped information. This morning after his secretary had brought her some clothes, Arany took Sandra off to that woman, Abbott, in Leeds. The one you went to see. Very conventional in some ways, these pornographers. A child needs a woman's care.'

  'She was a good choice,' said Pascoe.

  'Mebbe. I reckon the idea was also to clear the decks for a bit of the old wild justice. But Burkill who was probably sleeping it off didn't want to wait when he woke up. He set out for a chat with Blengdale.'

  'Yes, I'd worked that out,' said Pascoe. 'You reckon Heppelwhite was an accident then?'

  'Oh yes,' said Dalziel. 'I mean, when Bri Burkill finally got round to Charlie, he wouldn't have stopped at a couple of fingers, he'd have pulled the whole arm off and hit him with the soggy end.

  'Well, Arany finds Bri's jumped the gun, guesses he'll have headed for Hay Hall (God knows how he got out there!) and goes in pursuit. I think we saw most of the rest. Not a bad day's work, if they can lay hands on that Hungarian sod. He'll sing like a drunken Irishman, I reckon. Still with a bit of luck we've got enough in the boot to sort them all out. By God, it should be a good evening's entertainment going through this lot!'

  It had seemed a not unamusing irony that Dalziel had picked on the Calli as the place for viewing their booty from Hay Hall. The officers gathered there had been in high spirits as news of the successful completion of other stages in this multi-force operation came through and there had also been something of anticipated pleasure in the air which only Dalziel had the honesty or the insensitivity to express openly.

  But when the first film they showed proved to be the original from which the snippet in Droit de Seigneur had been taken, the atmosphere had quickly changed. Pascoe had tried to think of other, pleasant things, of Ellie waiting for him at home, of the bank of spring flowers he passed on his way to work every morning, of his holiday plans for the summer; but the best he could manage was Haggard bleeding to death internally, Emma Shorter swallowing pill after pill, Gwen Blengdale biting the stitching from her gloves as she peered through the breath-hazed window. And even with his eyes firmly closed, the images from the screen had still come through.

  But now he was out of it. For someone else it might be a case. Track down the maker, the actors, the distributor. Perhaps Toms was at the centre of things, perhaps he was just peripheral. But for Pascoe it was over. A few loose ends, and then all over.

  He checked the time. Still early enough to start some tying-up. Let Dalziel and the brass think what they might. He had no stomach for any more of this evening's entertainment.

  Outside in the Square he paused and glanced up at the Andover sisters' house. He thought he glimpsed a pale movement behind an upstairs pane. It might have been a face. Perhaps just a cat. He waved just in case and went on.

  First he went to the Infirmary.

  Charlie Heppelwhite they told him was doing well. He had lost two fingers but the third had been stitched back on, so Dalziel's quick thinking had not been in vain. A nurse showed him to the ward. She was young and Irish, with a bright little face and a melodic line of chatter like a song-thrush in a hedgerow. Pascoe liked listening to her though he took in hardly a word of what she said.

  It was visiting time and the ward was full of fruit and Lucozade and bright repetitive conversation punctuated by smiling desperate silences.

  Charlie Heppelwhite had three visitors; Clint, Betsy, and Deirdre Burkill.

  The last was patched and plastered and looked rather worse than when Pascoe had last seen her.

  'Hello,' said Pascoe generally. 'I was up here so I thought I'd look in.'

  'Nice of you,' said Charlie. On the whole he looked the healthiest of the bunch. Clint had a sullen, closed, pale look and Betsy's face had an unnatural feverish flush.

  Does she know? wondered Pascoe, looking from Heppelwhite to Deirdre Burkill.

  'You OK?' he said inanely.

  Heppelwhite held up his bandaged hand.

  'I won't be much use at the washing-up for a while,' he said.

  'You never were,' said Betsy without force.

  'I'm going to do Blengdale for every penny I can get,' continued Charlie. 'Never took notice when we complained about lack of safety precautions. The sod hasn't been anywhere near me since it happened, do you know that? Well, when he does, he'll find out he's got real troubles.'

  'He might have called round,' agreed his wife.

  Oh, he was busy elsewhere, thought Pascoe. As soon as he realized what Burkill's late arrival at the yard meant, he must have tried to get hold of Toms. Then when he couldn't, he'd made the mistake of going out to Hay Hall himself.

  It suddenly struck Pascoe that his approach up the drive must have been spotted from the house, precipitating Blengdale's flight.

  And Crabtree's delaying tactics. His crutch ached at the memory. The sod had known bloody well who it was on the other side of the door!

  'Mrs Burkill,' he said. 'Sandra's all right. I thought you might like to know.'

  'Thanks,' she said indifferentl
y.

  'And Brian too.'

  This time she didn't thank him.

  At the reception desk he made enquiries about Emma Shorter and discovered that she had discharged herself that afternoon.

  'It was against doctor's orders,' said the receptionist. 'But we can't keep them in if they don't want to stay.'

  She sounded disapproving as though, had she the running of the place, there'd be a stop to this softness.

  Pascoe begged the use of a phone and dialled Shorter's number. He deserved to know that the case against him was almost certain to be dropped.

  There was no reply. Pascoe stood by the phone and wondered. If Emma Shorter had left just this afternoon, you'd have thought there'd be someone in the house this evening.

  'Thanks,' he said to the receptionist and went out to his car.

  He wanted to go home. He felt almost desperate for home. But instead he swung west in a wide arc which eventually took him by a series of social degrees from houses that reflected the dignity of labour to villas that proclaimed the delight of wealth, and ultimately to Acornboar Mount.

  Shorter's lawn was beginning to burn where Clint had sprayed the weed-killer, but the dentist's water treatment had blurred the edges of the word so that it was almost illegible.

  There were two cars in the drive, Shorter's Rover and a battered Mini.

  Pascoe put his finger to the door bell and leaned on it till he heard footsteps in the hall.

  'For God's sake . . . oh, it's you,' said Shorter ungraciously.

  'Sorry, Jack, but if you can't hear your phone, I thought I'd better make sure you heard your door bell,' said Pascoe. 'Can I come in?'

  Shorter looked less than enthusiastic, but Pascoe was moving forward with a policeman's majestic instancy and it would have taken a physical barrier to prevent him.

  'In here, is it? Great,' said Pascoe, pushing open the lounge door.

  Emma Shorter, pale-faced but with something more of her calm self-possession and elegant grooming than the last time Pascoe had seen her, sat in one of the tubular steel chairs. At the other side of the room looking both physically and mentally uncomfortable, Alison Parfitt perched on the edge of the hanging basket. She was wearing a red raincoat with the belt pulled tight in a casual knot to reveal the generous curves of her bust and behind. And to counter the somewhat over-studied calm of the other woman's demeanour, the young nurse had a determined set of the jaw and shoulders which gave promise that her unease would not make her an easy target.