‘I never said …’
‘Because I called at his shop when I was on my way to meet Miss Soper. I had those stamps. Sturgeon wasn’t able to say yea or nay about them, so I thought as I was passing I’d have a look in. Anyway, he wasn’t there, but an old bird who looks after his house for him told me he was at a sale in Durham somewhere, not expected back till late.’
‘It was just an idea,’ said Pascoe dispiritedly. All their bright ideas seemed to be leading nowhere in this case. Dalziel’s suggestion about a kennels being the source of information about empty houses had proved fruitless too. It was in fact true that all the people robbed had owned animals, but a variety of kennels were used and in at least one case, Lewis’s, the dog had been away on holiday with the family.
‘Get some sleep,’ advised Dalziel. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He replaced the receiver and stood in thought for a moment. The television raged in the neighbouring room, but the house still sounded empty. His stomach rumbled, reminding him of the inroads Grainger’s diet was making on his flesh.
Pascoe’s a good lad, he thought. He has his daft moments, but who doesn’t? Most of what he said was worth thinking about. He looked at his watch. It was only quarter to ten. Worth a call.
Chapter 4
Thornton Lacey was lovely in the morning sunlight, and surprisingly quiet. Ellie glanced at her watch as she drove down the High Street. She was too late for the nine o’clock captains of industry. She realized she had been externalizing her own feelings of tension at the imminent inquest and had somehow expected the place to be as nervously taut as a Western Frontier town before the big shoot-out.
Pascoe met her outside Crowther’s house and greeted her with a satisfyingly passionate kiss – satisfying not because she felt much like bed at the moment but as a reassurance of his physical well-being. For all that, he looked pale, and she examined the dressing on the back of his head as though it could tell her something about the nature of the wound beneath.
‘I’m all right,’ said Pascoe, who had in fact slept well until about six o’clock, when he had woken with his mind chaotic with thoughts which he had only begun to put into some kind of order. He had long since acquired the habit (most suggestively amusing to Ellie) of setting out his notebook and pencil on his bedside table every night so that intuitions of the night should not be sacrificed to indolence. It rested in his pocket now.
He led Ellie into the house.
‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘That was an odd business.’
‘Too true, I’m fine. Fat Dalziel had pumped so much gin into me that I slept like a log. He’s quite a kind old sod, really. He rang me up again later to check that I was OK.’
‘Did he now? About quarter to ten?’
‘That’s right,’ said Ellie surprisingly. ‘Why do you ask?’
Pascoe began to laugh. It was a good sound so Ellie did not interrupt it, puzzled though she was.
‘It’s the thought of old Uncle Andy phoning about your health!’ he explained. ‘It’s always business with that one.’
Quickly he described his own telephone conversation with Dalziel the previous night. Ellie was less than rapturous about the implied theory.
‘You mean Etherege is a fence?’
‘In a small way.’
‘And he jumped me last night just to get that pendant back?’
‘Well, not Etherege,’ admitted Pascoe. ‘He’s probably got an alibi.’
‘Ah, I see! A good friend of his, you mean, who just happened to think he’d do his mate a handy turn by putting a bag on my head and shutting me in a broom cupboard? All for an old pebble?’
‘The pebble’s the key,’ said Pascoe, hastily retreating from the uncertain ground Ellie was challenging him on. Quickly he told her about Mrs Cottingley’s collection of stones.
‘Perfectly safe, really,’ he concluded. ‘But if you were the first to buy one and he then realized, as he did, that you were a copper’s moll, it’s the kind of thing that might niggle. So when he sees you cavorting with Detective-Superintendent Fat Dalziel, he decides to act on the spur of the moment.’
‘Who? Not Etherege, you say. Who then?’
‘Yes. There’s the rub, I’m afraid,’ said Pascoe thoughtfully. ‘Who else would be sufficiently concerned? Only one answer. The guy who did the robberies. Which would mean he was in the Jockey last night.’
He laughed.
‘Pity Dalziel didn’t think of that. He could have lined all the customers up and made them pee in a kettle.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you remember I told you what this villain did? Well, we had the stuff tested and it turns out he’s a diabetic. A slender lead, but a lead.’
‘And he’s also the man who murdered that estate agent? Lewis?’
‘Probably.’
Ellie shuddered at the memory of the gloomy corridor in the Jockey. Something else connected with the Jockey which she ought to tell Pascoe nearly surfaced for a moment, then was gone.
‘Perhaps I was lucky,’ she said.
‘Perhaps,’ said Pascoe, putting his arm round her shoulder. ‘I think it’s nearly time to go.’
Dalziel felt lucky as he drove out to Birkham. If Pascoe were right and Etherege was doing a bit of fencing, Andrew Dalziel was the man to lean on him. He could be sympathetic. People are bound to take advantage of a man in your position. Promissory. You tell us what you know and I’ll see you all right. A nod’s as good as a wink, eh? Threatening. There’s a murder involved here, you know. Withholding information can get you ten years.
But first he had to establish that this wasn’t just something dreamed up by a man who’d been knocked on the head. He’d play the customer to start with. Have a look round. Size up the man.
He was quite looking forward to it.
It was about time he had a break. There was all that stolen property unrecovered, a murder unsolved, Sturgeon’s forty thousand sunk without a trace – all these things somehow linked as well. One good break could settle the lot. Perhaps he was on his way to it now. He began to whistle a selection from Oklahoma! bursting into off-key song when he reached ‘Oh what a beautiful morning!’
‘I realize, Mr Backhouse, that it might not be desirable for you to give us a detailed account of your investigations into these tragic and terrible deaths, but insofar as anything you have discovered might relate directly to this present court’s business, we would be grateful to hear of it.’
French’s tone was reasonable, deferential almost, but the gaze he fixed on Backhouse over his reading spectacles had something of defiance in it.
Pascoe looked round the crowded schoolroom. The desks had all been stacked outside in the corridor, but it still bore the unmistakable signs of its normal, more innocent function. Children’s paintings adorned the walls and a chart immediately behind Backhouse demonstrated that Celia was the tallest in the class, taller even than James and Antony. Poor Celia. He hoped that time would redress the balance for her.
Backhouse was explaining with his usual combination of efficiency and courtesy that he was not yet able to contribute very much officially to the proceedings.
Ellie nudged Pascoe.
‘Where’s Pelman?’ she whispered.
He glanced round the room again. The Culpeppers were there; the Dixons, Bells, Hardistys; the sisters Langdale from the post office; Jim Piss Palfrey; Anton Davenant making notes, but no Pelman.
‘He’ll have work to do, I suppose. Why?’
‘Nothing. Something I remembered. Hang on.’
French had finally succeeded in what had clearly been his aim, to have the note found in the abandoned car introduced into the evidence.
‘It has been established that this note is written in the hand of Colin Hopkins, husband of the deceased woman?’
‘Yes,’ said Backhouse.
‘And that his fingerprints are on it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. It is not generally the pr
actice of this court to have notes written in such circumstances read aloud, but in this case I think it may be in the public interest to depart from practice. Such a crime as this arouses feelings of horror and revulsion in everyone, but among those who live in proximity to the scene of the crime, it must also arouse trepidation and fear of repetition. It is the task of this court to allay such fears where possible.’
French coughed twice and began to read from the paper before him. Pascoe shut down his hearing and turned his thoughts elsewhere, but phrases kept on coming through … here for ever, ever must I stay … a naked lover, bound and bleeding … all is calm in this eternal sleep …
‘Pope,’ whispered Ellie.
‘What?’
‘Pope. The poet. He’s quoting Pope.’
She was holding his hand tightly, and he felt she was trying to keep the words intoned by French in a dry, unemotive, literary context, far removed from the rainlashed car bumping and skidding its way towards the stinking quarry pool.
‘Oh, Peter,’ she said. ‘It’s Eloisa to Abelard!’
She stood up and left. There was no outburst of tears, nothing dramatic at all. It was as if she had remembered an appointment elsewhere.
With an apologetic glance at French, Pascoe followed. He caught up with her in the playground.
‘Don’t you see,’ she said. ‘That poem would come to mind because of us. In some way he must have thought about us at the end.’
She clung to him, sobbing now. Pascoe held her close but could not enter into her mood of emotional abandonment.
‘You mean, because we were coming for the week-end and one of his little jokes was to compare us with two medieval lovers, an eighteenth-century poem on the subject would come to mind after he’d murdered his wife, two close friends, and decided to commit suicide?’
‘For God’s sake, Peter, do you have to be so precise and analytical about everything,’ she cried, pushing him away. But the tears had stopped.
‘This poem, it’s years since I looked at Pope, what form does it take?’
‘Well, it’s supposed to be a letter from the girl Eloisa after they’ve been separated. Peter Abelard was castrated, you knew that? She’s in a nunnery or some such place, but the fire’s still there. It’s a very passionate poem.’
‘A strange choice. Look, love, I want to push off for a while and work something out. Do you mind?’
One of Ellie’s many virtues was that she knew when not to object.
‘All right. I’m all right, I’ll go back in now.’
‘Fine. One thing. What are you going to say about Pelman?’
‘Well, it’s not about him really, not directly anyway. It’s just that I remember something more about that holiday in Eskdale. That awful farmer who kept hanging round, the one who rented us the place? Well, he lived by himself and the locals in the pub said that his wife had run off with one of his farmhands a few years earlier. No one ever saw them again.’
Pascoe grasped the railings of the playground with both hands and stared unseeingly at the sunlit field on to which the school buildings backed.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I remember. And didn’t Colin, and Tim, I think, haunt him one night when they were a bit stoned? They dressed up in sheets and ran down the fellside behind his farmhouse as he was driving home.’
‘That was it,’ said Ellie, smiling widely. ‘I remember.’
For a moment they were all alive again.
‘I’ll go now,’ said Pascoe gently. ‘See you later.’
‘All right.’
She watched him stride athletically across the yard and through the gate. Something made her call after him, ‘Take care!’ but she didn’t think he heard. Incongruously she now remembered what she should have told him about the Jockey. But it would keep. This morning had to be got through first.
‘I don’t know much about antiques,’ said Dalziel, ‘but I know what I like.’
‘Really?’ said Jonathan Etherege, a smile spreading over his round pleasant face. ‘I can only hope you have an expensive lack of taste. Would you like to browse?’
‘Aye,’ said Dalziel, enjoying his fat philistine role. Role? he thought. I am a fat philistine!
But the thought merely added to his enjoyment.
‘Been in the business long, Mr Etherege?’ he asked, as he strolled around the antiques section of the shop checking the articles he saw against a mental list of stolen property. It was a matter of routine rather than hope.
‘Long enough,’ said Etherege. ‘I started in the scrap business and worked my way down.’
‘You’re very frank,’ said Dalziel. ‘Why do you say down?
‘Half a joke.’
‘And the other half?’
‘Well, if I’m selling you a couple of hundredweight of lead-piping, you know the going price and either want it or don’t. With this stuff everyone thinks in terms of value. It’s not just a matter of so much a hundredweight.’
‘I still don’t follow why you said down,’ grunted Dalziel, trying unsuccessfully to open the top drawer of a handsome Victorian desk. Etherege leaned over, pulled, and the drawer slid effortlessly open.
‘Price is always above value, sir,’ he said. ‘So it must be down.’
‘Too bloody clever for me,’ said Dalziel. ‘Still you sound like an honestly dishonest man. You like brass, eh?’
‘I’ve been without it,’ said Etherege. ‘I won’t be again if I can help it.’
‘No. This all local work?’
They had moved into the craft section.
‘A lot of it. Fancy a basket for your wife? Or a horse brass?’
‘For my wife? Not very complimentary,’ said Dalziel. He could see no sign of anything like the pendant Ellie had described. He began to poke among the ornaments displayed on a large wooden tray.
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘But I’d like something for the neck. No, not a collar either. A whatsit.’
‘A pendant?’ suggested Etherege. ‘We have a couple here. A simple rather plain design, if you like that sort of thing.’
‘No. No,’ said Dalziel. ‘Something a bit more decorative than that.’
‘I’m sorry. We did have some rather nice ones with local stones in a ceramic setting, but, alas, they’ve all gone now,’ answered Etherege. ‘Such a pity.’
He knows, thought Dalziel suddenly. The sod knows. He knows who I am and what I’m after. Shit! If he’s that sharp, it’s going to be difficult to touch him.
He looked at his watch. It might be worthwhile getting a search warrant and really turning this place over. But he doubted it.
Etherege was looking at his watch too.
‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ he said. ‘Feel free to poke around as much as you like.’
Cheeky bastard, thought Dalziel, as he watched Etherege disappear into what looked like a small office behind the stamp display. He’s probably gone off for his elevenses so I can convince myself there’s nothing here.
The thought of his usual mid-morning coffee and two doughnuts set his stomach rumbling. He’d even been reasonably successful these past few days in cutting down on the drink, and the cumulative effect was not one he could foresee himself becoming resigned to.
He looked around the converted barn in frustrated distaste. His own tastes, so far as they could be called tastes, in living styles were what was generally known as old-fashioned. But that was because they had been formed by the material and moral aspirations of a working-class family in the ’twenties. This self-conscious pursuit of the aged was not something he understood. He liked the old oak table off which he ate his lonely breakfast (and precious little else since his wife had left him) because it was his and had been his parents’. Probably his grandparents’ too; he had no idea how old it was. It didn’t signify. But if he had to get another, it would be something new. This stuff was just secondhand. Evidence of your own family’s use and misuse was one thing; other people’s scars, scratches and grime was somethin
g quite different.
No, there was nothing for him here, either professionally or personally. He turned to go, then on impulse went through the stamp section and pushed open the office door. He intended only to leave Etherege with some kind of thinly veiled threat. Dalziel was a man who did not like to feel mocked.
The significance of what he saw when he opened the door took a moment to sink in. Etherege was sitting at a table with his jacket off and his left shirt-sleeve rolled up. In his right hand he held a hypodermic syringe. He looked up angrily at the intrusion.
‘Please wait outside,’ he said sharply. Dalziel didn’t move. ‘It’s all right,’ said Etherege, still sharp, but mocking now as well. ‘I’m not having a fix. It’s merely my insulin shot.’
‘You’re a diabetic,’ said Dalziel, stepping into the room. ‘Well, well, well.’
He smiled broadly. This was the morning of the lucky break, after all. He had had things the wrong way round. Etherege wasn’t merely the greedy fence. This was where the action was worked out in detail. It made much more sense.
‘Is it a crime?’ asked Etherege. ‘Better call a policeman.’
He really did think he was sitting pretty, thought Dalziel. He believes we can’t touch him. Perhaps we can’t, but we’ll have a bloody good try.
He leaned over the antique-dealer and picked up the insulin pack which lay on the table.
‘You know, Mr Etherege,’ he said, ‘you shouldn’t go around peeing in other people’s kettles.’
Etherege became absolutely still. It was almost possible to see his mind rushing to a realization of what Dalziel meant.
‘The world is full of diabetics,’ he said with an effort at coolness. Dalziel noted the effort, and looking grim, he placed his hand heavily on the man’s left shoulder.
‘Jonathan Etherege,’ he intoned. ‘I must ask you to accompany … Jesus!’
He leapt back, sending a chair, a card-index and an electric kettle crashing to the floor, and gazed at his wrist. Dangling grotesquely from it was the hypodermic which Etherege had thrust violently upwards. The sight made him nauseous and quite unfit to deal with the attack that followed. Etherege’s knee caught him in the stomach and drove him back into the sharp edge of a filing cabinet. Memories of the potential – and realized – violence of the man they had so long been looking for mingled fragmentarily with black shapes of pain which were trying to join together and bring complete obscurity.
Ruling Passion Page 20