Death of Dalziel - Dalziel & Pascoe 22

by Reginald Hill

  He called up Hospital Security and got a man posted outside Hector's room.

  'No one in unless they're known to you,' he commanded. 'Especially not this chap.'

  He showed the photo on the back of the book which he'd confiscated from the grumpy patient whose name was Mills and who was in the Central for an haemorrhoidectomy, which perhaps explained his grumpiness.

  Compared with the jacket photo. Hector's drawing gave a rather clearer picture of the man's features, but Pascoe felt the armour and the jaguar might be a distraction.

  'I'll get one of our officers stationed here as soon as possible,' he told the security guard. 'Till then, don't budge.'

  Two of the other three Security men on duty he set to checking waiting rooms and public areas just in case Youngman was still on the premises. The third he despatched to the car park to take a note of any Jaguars left there. But Pascoe had a feeling that his man was long gone.

  He rang through to the Station and found Paddy Ireland on duty. When he enquired about spare bodies, the inspector began Uniformed's standard moan about shortage of manpower and deep cuts in the overtime budget till Pascoe silenced him with, 'Paddy, remember you got your knickers in a twist about Mill Street? Well, you were right then, I humbly admit it, and I apologize. But I'm right now.'

  'In that case, I'll see what I can do,' said Ireland.

  A car with Alan Maycock and Joker Jennison in it appeared on the scene within ten minutes. Jennison said, 'Got another firework display laid on for us, sir?' Maycock kicked him violently on the ankle and said, 'Mr Ireland says he'll try and get another couple of bodies along in the next half-hour.'

  Pascoe said, 'Thank you for that, Alan. And for the kick,' and put them to work.

  He was grateful to Ireland but didn't doubt he'd cover his own back, so it was no surprise when Chief Constable Dan Trimble showed up a quarter of an hour later, looking like a man who'd been snatched unwillingly from the bosom of his family.

  'Peter, what's going on?' he demanded. 'Paddy

  Ireland says you think someone might be trying to kill Hector. Why in the name of God should anyone want to do that?'

  Paddy's told him what I think, thought Pascoe. But he wants to make me say it myself, and then he can bollock me for not ringing him straight away.

  Trimble listened without comment till Pascoe concluded, 'I think that Hector's accident wasn't an accident, but someone deliberately ran him down for fear he might be able to identify the man he saw in the video shop on Mill Street. And I think the same man came here today to try and have a second bite at the cherry.'

  Now the chief spoke.

  'I thought I made it clear that I was to be kept apprized of anything that could have a connection with the Mill Street explosion,' he said coldly.

  'Yes, sir. And I was going to ring you just as soon as I got things sorted on the ground here. When an officer's at risk, practicalities come before protocol, that's what Mr Dalziel always says.'

  In fact he couldn't recall Fat Andy ever saying any such thing, but if he hadn't, it was only because it was too sodding obvious to need saying.

  It certainly gave Trimble pause.

  'Right, then. Let's hear about these practicalities.'

  Pascoe filled him in on what he'd done, concluding, 'I did a quick check with the ward staff. A couple of them recall seeing the man around the ward earlier, and one of them spotted him sitting in the day room reading a paper, about an hour ago.'

  ‘I haven't had much truck with hired assassins. Is that normal behaviour?' interrupted Trimble.

  'He's not going to go around with a homburg pulled down over his eyes, carrying a violin case,' said Pascoe with some irritation. 'Mr Mills, that's Hector's room-mate, recalls the door to their room being opened earlier this morning. Someone looked in - he didn't see who it was - then went away. I think it was Youngman. When he realized that Hector had someone else in the same room, he went and waited quietly in the day room till he saw Mr Mills come in. Then he headed back to the ward, only to find myself and Rosie arriving to visit Hector at the same time. He probably kept an eye on things till he saw Mr Mills return and realized that this wasn't really his day. Like I said, I've got Security looking for him, but I reckon he's gone. He could come back though.'

  If he'd had to give a rating to his report, it would have been Beta minus at best. He'd started with a heavy handicap. In Mid-Yorkshire anything with Hector at its centre needed a supporting affidavit from the angel Gabriel. And he couldn't blame the chief for looking shell-shocked when he heard about the constable's vision, nor for his uncontrollable twitch when the charioteer sketch was produced as supporting evidence.

  But Trimble was a man who liked to give his officers leeway. Anyone with Andy Dalziel under his command soon learned that the likely alternative was to find yourself high and dry on a sandbank.

  He said, 'All right. Leave someone on watch here. I don't suppose you've had time to contact Superintendent Glenister yet, though of course you were going to ring her immediately after you rang me?'

  'That's right, sir,' said Pascoe.

  'Good. Well, just as Mr Ireland saved you the trouble of contacting me, I'll extend the same courtesy with regard to CAT'

  Meaning you don't trust me to do anything about it for the next couple of hours, thought Pascoe.

  But Trimble was wrong. Locally Pascoe knew all the short cuts and short circuits. He'd been well taught. Getting after Youngman outside Mid-Yorkshire where he guessed the search would have to begin was another matter. Dalziel might have been able to manage it. He had strings to pull whose far ends were tied to some very strange places. But for Pascoe that kind of network was still being woven.

  In any case the quickest way to show CAT you didn't trust them was to act like you didn't trust them, and he wanted a far better hand before he made that play.

  'Peter!'

  He turned to see Ellie coming towards him with Rosie.

  He'd got one of the nurses to look after her.

  He'd suggested taking her to the hospital creche at first but this had evoked such a furious response that he'd changed it to the canteen and offered as placation a tenner for refreshment.

  Then he'd rung Ellie, said there was a bit of an emergency, and asked if she could come and pick the girl up.

  Ellie as always had responded to the word emergency without question.

  But now she was here, she expected to hear what was going on.

  Her response echoed Trimble's.

  'Someone wants to kill Hector?' she said incredulously. 'But why?'

  She listened to his theory with the kind of expression Galileo probably saw on the face of his Chief Inquisitor.

  'Pete, for heaven's sake, this is Quentin Tarantino stuff. I mean . . . Hector!’

  'All right,' he said testily. 'One way to check is I'll cancel the guard on Hector's room and if he gets killed, then I was right!'

  'Now you're being silly.'

  He glowered at her, then turned his attention to his daughter, intending to short circuit the discussion before it became a row by asking for his change. How much refreshment could a girl ingest in forty minutes?

  She regarded him with her mother's wide-eyed candour then, before he could speak, said, 1 think Dad's right. I didn't like that man.'

  'You didn't?' said Pascoe, delighted at this unexpected support. 'Why was that?'

  'Well, he smiled as he held the door open, but I could tell he was really pissed off,' said Rosie. ‘I mean, a lot more pissed off than you'd be just because someone you'd come to visit wasn't in his bed.'

  Do I reprimand her for saying 'pissed off -twice! - or let it go because she's said it in support of my case? Pascoe asked himself.

  Ellie had no doubt.

  'Come on, my girl,' she said grimly. 'We'll get you home and on the way we'll have a little heart-to-heart about your special relationship with the language of Shakespeare. Any idea how long you'll be, Peter?'

  Truce offered and accepted
. 'Not long,' he promised. They kissed. Definitely accepted.

  She said softly, 'Just in case you're right, which I don't admit, take care.'

  He watched them go. She was right. If he was right, he should perhaps take care.

  And of course the people he should take most care of weren't lying in a hospital bed but walking away from him.

  At the door Ellie turned and called, ‘I forgot to ask. How's Andy?'

  Pascoe looked at his daughter who smiled at him complicitly.

  He said, 'No change there. Either.'

  14

  the tangle o' the Isles

  Andy Dalziel is on his way to Mairi's Wedding.

  Step we gaily on we go

  Heel for heel and toe for toe

  Proud to be a Yorkshireman, proud of all that his lovely Yorkshire mam had brought to his being, proud to belt out 'On Ilkla Moor baht'at' with the best of them, it has always been the music from his father's side of the family that plucked at his heart strings and squeezed the tear out of his eye.

  Arm in arm and row on row

  All for Mairi's wedding

  Who he is arm in arm with he is not certain, nor indeed whether in any strict sense the arms in question are arms at all, but the feelings of joy and lightness which the song inspires are real

  enough, and he's never been a man to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Unless of course it's donated by Greeks. Or Lancastrians.

  Over hillways up and down

  Myrtle green and bracken brown .. .

  No real hills of course. No greens or browns. Just effortlessly floating on a highway of music as he recalled doing years ago, squashed in a corner of some tiny bothy with his Scottish cousins when big Uncle Hamish got his fiddle out.

  Plenty herring plenty meal

  Plenty peat tae fill her creel

  Peat. The sweet smoky reek of it. And better still when it's coming off the surface of a golden pool set in a crystal tumbler . . .

  Plenty bonny bairns as weel...

  Now young Rosie Pascoe was a bonnie bairn and she'd grown into a bonnie lass and would, if God was kind, which so far he'd not been given any reason to doubt, turn out a stunning woman. And what was more important a kind and caring one.

  Cheeks as bright as rowans are ...

  He'd always been able to depend on the kindness of women. Even his wife had been kind . . . in her way . . . Some women before they left cut up their husbands' suits or poured their twenty-year-old single malts down the bog and substituted vinegar. His had left a note . . . Your dinner's in the oven on the low burner... He'd gone to the kitchen and opened the oven.

  There it was, gently crisping.

  A plate of ham salad.

  It still makes him laugh all these years on.

  Women, women . . . perhaps it is their arms that he feels in his now ... all those kind women . ..

  And one above all. . .

  The last? Who can say that?

  But a star . . . more than a star . . .

  Brighter far than any star

  Fairest of them all by far...

  Cap. Ms Amanda Marvell. Mrs the Hon. Rupert Pitt-Evenlode. Call her what you will. The sense of her presence sends him soaring even higher than the music.

  Over hillways up and down

  Myrtle green and bracken brown

  Past the shieling through the town

  All for the sake of. . .

  Cap.

  The music dies away but still he floats. But what's this? The pace slackens to a crawl, the mood changes. Oh no! The Flower of Scotland.

  Dear God! What a doleful dirge. He has always been persuaded that the only thing keeping Scottish rugby from World Cup glory is their pre-match anthem. How can those fine young men be expected to march forward to fight the auld enemy with this turgid tune clogging their feet? It makes 'God Save the Queen' sound like a cavalry charge!

  But at last it drags its weary weight to a close.

  And now thank God he's out of the mire again and soaring high once more as the pipes and drums explode into the song which is his signature tune at the Police Christmas Party.

  Sure by Tummel and Loch Rannock andLochaber I will go

  By heather tracks wi' heaven in their wiles

  If it's thinking' in your inner hairt the braggart's in my step.

  You've never smelt the tangle o' the Isles.

  Here's the truth of it. Though his feet have always been firmly planted in the rich earth of his native Yorkshire and on the hard pavements of its great cities, the heart is for ever Highland.

  And when a man is hovering between this world and the next, it takes a music as seductive as that of the far Cuillins to pull him away, though whether its call is to heaven or to earth Andy Dalziel as yet cannot and indeed does not care to know.

  15

  a shot in the dark

  As far as Peter Pascoe was concerned, you could take heather tracks and stick them up your reeking lum.

  There was heather beneath his feet now and he was being bitten to death. OK, Scotland didn't begin officially for another dozen miles, but nobody had bothered to tell this to the midges which were assailing his face with a Caledonian ferocity. Perhaps their native reiving instincts had been alerted by the rancid smell of the CAT camouflage make-up that Glenister had insisted he smeared on his cheekbones and brow.

  It was her suggestion too that he should wear a flak jacket. No, suggestion was the wrong word. The jacket had been a sine qua non of his inclusion in the raid.

  Pascoe was confident that both jacket and camouflage were unnecessary.

  If, as he suspected, the Templars had a mole in CAT, then the chances of John ‘I. Youngman

  being inside the small white cottage the CAT hit squad was presently surrounding were nil.

  Glenister was full of bounce, in strong contrast to her rather weary and harassed demeanour last time he'd seen her at the Lubyanka. The prospect of crawling around in the dark in pursuit of a dangerous suspect seemed to have perked her up. Pascoe had seen plenty of male officers turned on by the prospect of physical danger, but never a woman.

  Perhaps he ought to get out more.

  Though if this was what getting out entailed, perhaps not.

  The reaction to Trimble's phone call had been swift.

  First Freeman had turned up at the hospital.

  In reply to Pascoe's, 'You must have been close,' he had given that irritating enigmatic smile. Then he'd asked a few questions, very sharp and pertinent Pascoe had to admit, before interviewing Hector. What he got out of that he didn't reveal. Finally he had approved all the measures Pascoe had taken and vanished with the charioteer sketch.

  At no point had he hinted a doubt of Pascoe's interpretation of events.

  Despite this, even with every possible precaution in place, an irrational fear that the moment he left orders would be given countermanding all he'd done made it hard for Pascoe to leave. It took an anxious, irritated phone call from Ellie wondering if he was the only police officer on call that weekend to give him the impetus to head for home.

  Ellie did her best to make the evening as normal as possible and Pascoe did his best to respond. He tried to conceal his restlessness, but he knew he wasn't being very successful and it was a relief when, about eight o'clock, the phone rang. Somehow they both knew it was to do with the case.

  Ellie answered it.

  'I'll get him,' she said.

  Handing the phone to Pascoe she said, 'Mrs Sinister,' loudly enough to be heard at the far end of the line.

  'You've been at it again, laddie. Go on like this and you'll put us all out of work.'

  This sounded like a sort of compliment.

  'What's happening?' he said.

  'We've got a possible location for Youngman and we're going to try and pick him up tonight. Want to come along? Thinking is, you've earned it.'

  Earned the right to leave his home and family in the middle of the night to go chasing around after a suspected
killer! What would they reward him with if he did something really amazing? Two weeks undercover work in Afghanistan?

  He said, 'Yes.'

  'Good. Knew you'd be up for it. Thing is it's a bit distant. He's got a cottage up in Northumberland, near the Kielder Reservoir. Can you make Hexham by ten o'clock?'

  'Yes,' said Pascoe, not bothering to try and work it out.

  'Great. Here's a grid reference.' She gave it only once.

  'Fine. If you're not there by ten we won't wait.' A pause, then she laughed softly and said, 'It's about ten miles north of Hexham along the B road to Bellingham. Me, I'm an old-fashioned A to Z lassie.'

  He told Ellie where he was going because there wasn't any point in lying.

  'Why?' she said with genuine amazement. 'It's not your patch. It's not your kind of work. And if you're right, and he's been warned off, there's not a cat in hell's chance of this Youngman fellow being there anyway. So why?'

  He said, 'Because they want me there, and I want them to go on wanting me around till I get some answers. Also it might give me the chance to poke about in Youngman's stuff before it all gets classified and locked up somewhere out of reach.'

  He went and got changed before she could pick his response to pieces.

  When he reappeared, Rosie, who'd been on her way to bed when the phone rang and who'd naturally used the distraction to snatch an extra half-hour, said, 'Are you going bird-watching. Dad?'

  Pascoe glanced down. He'd put on his heavy walking boots and hiking trousers and had his binocular case draped round his neck.

  'Not if I can help it, darling,' he said, smiling. 'When could you last help anything, Pete?' said Ellie.

  'I'm just doing what I get paid for,' he said.

  'No, you're not. No one's paying you to think you're Superman!'

  It wasn't a note to part on but there was no choice. Even with light Sunday-night traffic, he was going to have to move fast to keep his rendezvous.

  It was almost ten as he passed through Hexham. The sun had just set and there was still plenty of residual light. Before he left he'd marked the grid reference carefully on his map. He had it in his head that the CAT hit squad would have pulled off the road and set up camouflage and he was determined he wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of seeing him drive by.