Dalziel 18 Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  'You're right, of course,' he said. 'She has this fond belief that danger can't touch her, or that if it does, the gods will protect her by turning her into a bush.'

  'Well, you've turned her into a flower,' said Ellie. 'Pity you weren't around yesterday to spray some sense into her.'

  It was a light-hearted joke at Daphne's expense but her husband seemed to take it seriously.

  'Yes. A pity. But I'm around now.'

  'Which you shouldn't be,' said Daphne. 'You should be on your way to Amsterdam. For heaven's sake, I'm not under threat. It was, as you two moral philosophers keep banging on, my own stupid fault that I put myself in the way of this thug who, having got me out his way, can't have any more interest in me, can he?'

  'He may still have an interest in Ellie,' said Aldermann. 'At least I assume Peter thinks so from the presence of that young man lurking behind the Zephirine Drouhin.'

  Ellie followed his gaze down the garden to an eight-foot- high pillar covered with carmine-pink blooms, through which the shape of DC Bowler was just discernable.

  'Shall I ask him up for a cup of coffee?' said Daphne.

  'No!' said Ellie, irritated. 'I'll tell him to sod off.'

  'Why not let him be?' said Aldermann. 'He's doing no harm and can come to none. Zephirine has a glorious scent and no thorns. So what does Peter think is going on, Ellie?'

  'I can't go into details,' said Ellie virtuously. 'Except he thinks the danger's probably over now. My minder down there in the rose bush is more for Peter's peace of mind than my protection.'

  'Exactly the reason you're hanging around here, Patrick,' said Daphne. 'It's a typical male control thing. Your feelings masquerading as our fault.'

  'Bravo,' laughed Ellie. 'You've been reading one of those books I loaned you.'

  'Don't be silly. You lot think you invented female insight the way kids think they invented sex. It's been around a lot longer than Germaine Greer, if that's possible. Ellie, help me get it into his head that just because I got a bang on the nose doesn't mean I have ceased to be able to stay in my own house by myself.'

  'Well,' said Ellie. 'I can see how you might be concerned, Patrick. Frankly I don't know how you can bear to let anyone so completely headstrong and so totally unreliable out of your sight for a moment. But isn't the solution obvious? Take her to the conference with you.'

  'Oh, he's tried that,' said Daphne. 'And I'd go if it was anywhere but Holland! I feel so depressed there, mentally and geographically. Only fish and crustaceans were created to exist below sea level. The thought that only some small child's finger is preventing a tidal wave from the North Sea gushing all over me is more than I can bear. But wait. I feel an idea coming on. There is a Plan B. This involves me going away to stay somewhere safe with someone sound. Patrick's preferred candidate is my cousin Joyce in Harrogate. I would prefer the bed of the North Sea to the company of my cousin Joyce in Harrogate. On the other hand, Ellie, you are someone sound whose company I could bear, for a little while at least. As for somewhere safe, David and his chums are abandoning the comforts of the bothy today for the more character-building terrain of a camp site in the Trossachs. Why don't we head out there for a few days, Rosie too, of course, and solve both our husbands' problems by looking after each other?'

  So, thought Ellie, must Marie Antoinette have sounded as she put forward her solution to the bread-shortage crisis. And so looked too, probably, except maybe for the nose bandage; but certainly the same shining eyes, the same delighted smile, the same exudation of exultation, which probably made the feyer members of the French court a little warm under the collar, were on show here.

  She left it to Patrick to point out the major flaw in the proposition, viz, that when stung by a wasp, you do not achieve safety by running away with the jam-pot. When he didn't speak, she put it down to natural spousal reluctance to hurl the first stone and said, 'Daph, that's great, except for one thing. It's me these lunatics are interested in, not you. Safest thing for you is to keep as far away from me as possible.'

  'There you go again,' said Daphne. 'Me, me, me all the time.'

  Ellie looked at Patrick for the delayed support.

  Instead, after another long moment's reflection, he said, 'Nosebleed, as you know, is about fifty miles away on the coast.'

  'Nosebleed?' echoed Ellie, trying to interpret this as an obscure and untypically discourteous reference to Daphne's injury.

  'Yes. Our cottage. Nosebleed Cottage. That's its name.'

  'Good Lord. Charming.'

  Patrick smiled and said, 'Don't let it put you off. It's a local name for the common yarrow, Achillea millefolium.'

  'Achillea? As in Achilles?' said Ellie, suddenly thinking of her story.

  'That's right. Yarrow is a potent medicinal plant and has magical properties too, though the distinction is often blurred. Hang on a moment.'

  He went through the window into the house.

  Daphne said, 'Haven't you learnt never to express an interest in any form of vegetation when Patrick's around, not even if you're eating it?'

  'Shut up. I am interested.'

  Patrick returned, bearing tomes of various size and antiquity. He leafed through what looked the most ancient.

  'Here we are. Gerard's Herball, 1597. "The plant Achillea is thought to be the very same wherewith Achilles cured the wounds of his soldiers." And Grigson in his Englishman's Flora cites Apuleius Platonicus's Herbarium. "It is said that Achilles the chieftain found it and he with this same wort healed them who were stricken and wounded with iron." So, a kind of Homeric Savlon.'

  'As Achilles seemed to spend the best part of his life running around, wounding people, I imagine he had plenty of opportunity to try it out,' said Ellie. 'That's medicine. You mentioned magic before too.'

  'Oh yes. Powerful for or against evil, says Grigson. And he quotes from Hurlstone Jackson's Celtic Miscellany a translation of a Gaelic incantation to accompany the plucking of yarrow. I have Jackson's slightly modified 1971 version here. You read it, Ellie. It's for a woman.'

  He handed her a Penguin paperback with his finger laid against the passage.

  Ellie read, hesitantly at first, but in a strengthening voice as the words caught her imagination.

  'I will pick the smooth yarrow that my figure may be more elegant, that my lips may be warmer, that my voice may be more cheerful; may my voice be like a sunbeam, may my lips be like the juice of the strawberries. May I be an island in the sea, may I be a hill on the land, may I be a star when the moon wanes, may I be a staff to the weak one: I shall wound every man, no man shall wound me.'

  The air seemed to grow heavier and warmer and more richly scented in the silence after she spoke and she felt close to fainting till Daphne broke the spell by saying, 'That was really beautiful, Ellie. Patrick, why isn't our garden full of yarrow?'

  'Because here it would be a weed,' said Aldermann firmly.

  'But there's a lot of it at Nosebleed, is there?' said Ellie, recovering.

  'Indeed. But there's a lot of it on most uncultivated ground. I expect the cottage got its name originally because some early occupant was a healer. Or a witch.'

  'Yes, but why call it Nosebleed - the plant, I mean?' asked Ellie.

  'Grigson says if you put the leaves up your nose, they can make it bleed, which is a way of finding out if your love is true. Yarroway, yarroway, bear a white blow. If my love love me, my nose will bleed now.'

  Ellie thought, well, I shan't need to try that, and smiled.

  Patrick smiled back, but made no irritating enquiry as to the source of her amusement. He was good at that, not at all pushy, content to let people - and things - come to him.

  Daphne said, 'Nose-bleeding is a rather insensitive subject for you two to be going on about in view of my condition, don't you think?'

  'Sorry,' said Ellie. 'But clearly I was never going to get any of this fascinating information from you. Thank you, Patrick.'

  Patrick said, 'My pleasure. I don't know why, but I as
sumed you would know all about the cottage, perhaps even have visited it.'

  Ellie said, 'No, I know nothing about it, except that Daphne refers to it as the bothy, which makes it sound like some rural slum. I didn't even realize till yesterday that in fact you bought it off my good friend, Feenie Macallum.'

  She said this to preempt any snidery about Feenie, though to the best of her recollection, she'd never heard Patrick Aldermann say anything unpleasant about anyone.

  Daphne snorted at the name and winced as her nose reacted badly.

  'Weren't you about to make some point about the cottage before you got diverted, dear?' she said.

  'Was I? Oh yes. I was going to say that, despite its distance, I believe the Axness area falls within the purlieu of the Mid-Yorkshire Force? In other words, if you did spend some time there, it would be no problem for Peter to maintain a supervisory programme?'

  'You mean, set someone to watch over me? Well, yes, I suppose so. But, Patrick, this is silly . . .'

  'Why?' he said. 'In view of what's happened over the past two days, I'd be surprised if Peter hadn't already considered the possibility of removing you and Rosie to a place of safety.'

  'Well, yes, he did say something, but - '

  'There you are then,' said Aldermann who, despite his quiet and unassertive manner, was somehow very good at inserting his words into the apparently unbroken speech flows of other people. 'And the fact that you've never been there before would make it even less likely that anyone could get a lead on where you'd gone, in the unlikely event that anyone should attempt to get such a lead, I mean.'

  'Perhaps, but I think you're missing the point. Like I just said, it's having me around that could be dangerous to Daphne.'

  'Forgive me, Ellie; not having you around Daphne is one thing - though I should point out it was your choice to visit us this morning - '

  He smiled the smile at her, but it didn't take away the faint sting.

  '- but not having Daphne around you is quite another matter. I know you may find it surprising that in some matters I know my wife rather better than you know your friend, but what is preventing me from catching my plane today isn't any suspicion that as soon as I leave, kamikaze terrorists will come spilling across the lawn, it's the certainty that Daphne would be heading to your side as fast as she could, frightened you might enjoy the next episode of your adventure without her company.'

  He looked from Daphne to Ellie and back again. They were silent, whether from amazement or indignation they hadn't yet made up their minds.

  'Therefore if I am to go to my conference, and I don't disguise that missing it would be a blow, I should feel happier if the pair of you were safely stowed somewhere these people couldn't possibly know about, under the aegis of a police escort, than I would be relying on any assurance my wife or indeed your good self might offer of avoiding each other's company.'

  This was more packed with insults than a philanthropist's Christmas pudding with silver three pennies.

  Ellie opened her mouth to spit out retaliation, but Daphne was quicker.

  'Oh good. That's settled then,' she said brightly. 'Nosebleed, here we come. Ellie, darling, when can you be ready?'

  xviii

  the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la!

  Kelly Cornelius lay in her hot foaming bath and closed her eyes.

  Through the open door she could hear her Gilbert and Sullivan compilation disc pulsing full blast out of the hi-fi. It had been playing almost continuously since she got home but so far none of her neighbours had complained. Possibly even the macho dickhead who occupied the flat above had been given pause by his awareness that she'd been accused of assaulting a police officer.

  'Taken from the county jail,’ she sang along. 'By a set of curious chances . . .'

  As a precocious kid she'd used to mock her Hispanic/Hibernian father for his love of something so English as the Savoy Operas, but at times of stress this was the music which she could rely on to bring back his lean, smiling face and her sun-filled, love-filled childhood.

  '.. . liberated then on bail, on my own recognizances. ..'

  A musical bath had been the second most important thing on her mind when she got back to her flat after her unexpected release. The first had been to check that the hollow wooden light pull in her bathroom had not been touched, unscrew it, and do a couple of lines of the coke hidden there. She'd been pleased to discover how well she managed in custody without it. Not that it would have been hard to score in the remand centre where most things were on offer, but she'd been advised by experts, or at least by one expert, that your weaknesses were what both the screws and your fellow prisoners were looking for, so keep them hidden as long as you could. It had been a comfort to be able to confirm what she'd often asserted to herself, that she was still a long way from being an addict.

  But, Christ! it had been good to feel the jolt once more.

  Then straight into the bath to get the smell of the place off her. She topped it up with boiling hot water for the third time. She'd have to watch it or her skin would be going all puffy!

  She raised one arm out of the water and examined it for puffiness. No signs yet. She reached out her hand to the glass which stood on the stool beside the bath.

  'So bumpers - aye ever so many - And then if you will, many more! This wine doesn't cost us a penny, Tho' it's Pommery seventy-four!'

  She emptied her glass and looked contemplatively at the bottle resting in the bidet. Just one more glass . . . ? Better not. Coke high got you clear and sharp, but bubbly, delicious though it was, just got you pissed. Shame to waste it though.

  She stood up in the bath, picked up the bottle, pressed her thumb over the top and shook it violently. Then, pointing it at her crotch, she removed her thumb and shrieked as the icy bubbling jet played on her hot pink flesh.

  Jesus! she thought. I should patent this!

  She squatted in the water for a moment to wash away the wine, then got out and walked out of the bathroom draped in a huge white towel. God knows what kind of surveillance they'd set up, but she saw no reason to give them a show.

  Dried and dressed, she put a large floppy sun hat on her head and went out of the flat, leaving the music blaring behind her.

  ‘The flowers that bloom in the Spring, tra-la,' she sang as she ran down the stairs and out into the sunlight. 'Breathe promise of merry sunshine . . .'

  On the steps she paused as if drinking in the fresh air of freedom. Which indeed she was, except she wasn't sure if she was enjoying it with the compliments of that pair of suits who always turned up at her court hearings or whether that barrel of lard who'd rolled in instead of nice lean Mr Pascoe really was as incompetent as he appeared.

  Never mind. Calculation or cock-up, they were going to regret it.

  She headed for the town centre on a route which took her through Charter Park, the great expanse of open green space which was the city's main lung. As she turned into the gate, the car which had been following her slowed down to permit its passenger to get out. He strolled through the gate after her while the car continued on its slow crawl around the one way system which circumscribed the park. She paused from time to time, to call encouragement to some children playing cricket, to exchange a few laughing words with an old lady feeding ducks on the canal, to sniff at the roses in the municipal flower beds. She was still singing '. . . we welcome the hope that they bring, tra-la, Of a summer of roses and wine . . .'as she emerged at the other side of the park, stepping out onto the pavement almost coincidentally with the arrival of the kerb-crawling car.

  She spent the next hour wandering round the department stores, buying first of all a small haversack and then various odds and ends of clothing and make-up which she shoved into it. Finally she bought herself a huge ice cream cone with chocolate sauce, and with her long pink tongue burrowing into it like an aardvark at a termite tower, she retraced her steps into the park.

  The man on foot followed while the car continued on i
ts long one way circle, moving even more slowly now that the late afternoon traffic was building up.

  A couple of hundred yards into the park on a slight raise and partially concealed by a small grove of trees was a public lavatory. Dumping the remnants of her cone into a wastebin, Kelly Cornelius went into the ladies. As she disappeared she was humming, 'When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done . . .' The man found a bench to sit on from which he could observe the path leading up to the conveniences.

  He'd only been sitting thirty seconds or so when she reappeared.

  'Oh shit,' he said.

  She was riding a bicycle.

  She came swooping down the track towards him, then did a wide loop across the hard baked grass to avoid getting too close. He began to run in an effort to cut her off but even though the bike looked pretty ancient and heavy, it moved fast downhill under the thrust of those elegant young legs, and his outstretched arm came nowhere near her, though he was close enough to hear her voice raised in song as she shot by.

  '. . . the policeman's lot is not a happy one - happy one!'

  He pulled out a mobile phone and punched in numbers but she was out of the gate and weaving away along the pavement against the traffic flow long before the phone began to ring in the crawling car which was now a quarter of a mile away, bogged down in traffic and facing the wrong direction. '. . . the flowers that bloom in the Spring, tra-la, Breathe promise of merry sunshine . . .'