Dalziel 18 Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  'Well, funny enough, I met my old mam for a start. That were a shock. Didn't even know she were dead. Mebbe I swore on her life once too often. And I saw a lot of other women, all wives of noble husbands

  'You didn't.. .'said Aeneas hesitantly. 'Did you perhaps see.. . would you know.. . Creusa, my wife, my son's dear mother, who strayed from my side as we fled burning Troy and was taken and slain by . . . say, did you see her?'

  Odysseus shook his great head and said, 'Nay, Prince, I'll not lie. I didn't notice her, but there were so many, and time were short. Tell you who I did see, but. Great Achilles! Aye, he were down there, prancing round the Elysian Fields, large as life. I said to him that I were sure a great hero like him got real special treatment even down here, and you know what he said?'

  'No. What did he say?' said the Prince dully, his mind still on his dead wife.

  'He said he'd rather be a serf working for a landless nobody than be king of all these dead warriors. Makes you think, doesn't it? Great Achilles. Makes you think, eh?'

  'Yes, I suppose it does,' said Aeneas, taking another long drink of wine. 'But you'll forgive me if I don't feel too much sympathy. If he'd never come to Troy, you'd never have beaten us. Didn't the gods proclaim it so?'

  'Aye, they did.'

  'And isn't it true that his mother sent him away to hide on Skyros disguised as a girl because she knew that he would die if he came to Troy? And was it not the subtle and cunning Odysseus who followed him there and found him out and made him join the Greek force? Oh, you have much to answer for, my friend, both at the start and at the end of this tragic business.'

  He stared gloomily at the fat Greek, and suddenly the old soldiers' bond which had grown between them felt very weak.

  'Hang about,' said Odysseus. 'You can't argue with the gods. You don't imagine any of us would have given up ten years of our lives to fight over a daft tart if we'd had any say in it? I certainly wanted no part of it, even though I'd taken an oath with a lot of other daft buggers who were wooing her to defend the rights of whichever of us got her in the end. When I heard that she'd been snatched and Menelaus was calling in our markers and going after her, I let on I was doolally and went around clucking like a chicken and pecking corn. Well, that didn't work, for all my famous smartness. So I thought, right, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and let's see if we can't get this mad business over and done with and all be home for the winter panegyris.'

  'You were still responsible for discovering Achilles, without whom none of this could have happened,' accused Aeneas.

  'Come on!' protested the Greek. 'You make it sound like summat special. Well, it weren't. Any idiot could have found him out. I mean, think about it. There he was, disguised as a lass among all these other lasses. Good thinking, eh? Except that he's seven foot tall and he's got a dong like Big Ajax's spear! You know what the lasses on Skyros used to call him when he hid among them? Stiffy! And it weren't for the way he danced.'

  Ellie laughed out loud at her own joke and sat back and sipped at her lemonade.

  Why did she want to be a writer? friends had asked her, though rarely staying for an answer. Which was just as well as there were so many answers, mostly disingenuous, none complete.

  Favourite at the 'serious' end of the market was that you were trying to make sense of, impose a pattern on, apparently senseless and disorderly human experience.

  But fiction writing, as she'd indicated to Daphne in the garden at Rosemont yesterday, was also an extension of experience, indeed at times a substitute for it, as well of course as an escape from it. Sitting here in the sunshine, laughing at her own invention, she felt she could offer one answer to the question without any prevarication.

  She wanted to be a writer because a writer could do anything, go anywhere, answer any question. Here was a world of profit and delight to equal that which tempted Faustus. Here was dominion which stretched as far as doth the mind of man. Maybe as with Faustus the price to be paid was your soul, or at least that part of you which fitted you to live in the real world. For she had tasted the sweet poison and knew that more than pipes of opium or lines of coke, when you drank the waters of Hippocrene, all that was actual, people and problems, time and troubles, trees and green grass, presently departed from you and left you falling down through the clouds to land lightly on the world of your own creation. Here she was God moving through Her Garden, and if from time to time her creatures exercised their free will, why, that was part of the deal too.

  'Mrs Pascoe . . . Ellie! Are you OK?'

  Suddenly she was back in the garden of Nosebleed Cottage, summoned there by a flushed and anxious-looking Shirley Novello.

  'Yes, of course I'm OK. Have you been running? You really should be careful in this heat.'

  'You said you'd stay inside and lock all the doors,' said Novello accusingly.

  'You instructed me to lock the doors, which in fact I have done,' said Ellie. 'As for staying inside, on a day like this? You must be joking!'

  'Yeah, I'm full of jokes. Where's Rosie?'

  'She's . . .'

  Nowhere.

  The birdsong persisted, but the chatter of the child's voice as she played in her own parallel universe was no longer its descant.

  And now the trees and green grass did swim away from Ellie Pascoe and leave her falling down through the clouds.

  'Rosie! Rosie!' called Novello. 'Where are you? Rosie!’

  Silence. The desperate cry had silenced even the birds.

  Then there came a barking, followed a moment later by Tig. And blessedly, somewhere beyond the high garden wall, they heard the girl's voice calling, 'Goodbye, goodbye,' and a moment later she came running through the garden door, in her hand a posy of small white flowers.

  For a second Ellie felt a huge gratitude to Novello, as if it was the power of her summons alone which had brought Rosie back to her. But almost instantaneously this turned into an equal and opposite resentment at the unnecessary shock to her system administered by the stupid woman's sudden arrival and disruptive urgency.

  Rosie was the beneficiary of this reversal. Instead of reproving her for straying, Ellie said, 'Hello, darling. You mustn't get too hot. Come and have a glass of lemonade. Are those for me?'

  'Yes, the lady picked them for me and Nina.'

  Novello, who had gone to the doorway and looked out, turned round and said, 'Nina? Who's Nina?'

  Ellie, who was studying the wild flowers, looked up and said, slightly mocking, 'Rosie's friend that no one else can see.'

  Novello frowned at her. She had the kind of strong face which a frown made even more striking, thought Ellie grudgingly.

  'And the lady who picked the flowers? Does she have a name too?' demanded the DC.

  Rosie considered this then said, 'Well, she had a moustache so I think she might be the lady you told me about. Cucumber.'

  'Cucumber?' said Ellie, puzzled.

  'Think she might mean Uncumber,' said Novello reluctantly. 'She's a saint. . .'

  'Yes, I know,' said Ellie suspiciously. 'Wilgefortis. I'm just wondering why on earth you were telling Rosie about her. Not missionary work, I hope.'' It just came up,' said Novello. 'And I'm just wondering how on earth you know about her?'

  Cheeky, thought Ellie.

  'As a well-known atheist, you mean?' she said. 'Well, you see, my dear, just because I don't subscribe to any of the primitive superstitions doesn't mean I can't be entertained by their more risible legends.'

  Novello's face flushed with an angry offence which it would have done Father Kerrigan's heart good to see, but which made Ellie feel guilty.

  Time maybe for an olive twig.

  She said, 'Rosie, dear, this lady you mentioned with the moustache, is she like Nina? Or could Shirley here see her too?'

  There. She'd used her first name!

  The girl examined Novello assessingly over the rim of her lemonade glass, then gave her a complicitous smile as if to remind her they were in the same gang.

  'Maybe
she could,' she said. 'And maybe Nina too.'

  Baffled, the policewoman looked to Ellie for assistance.

  'Probably Mrs Stonelady,' she mouthed, then returned to her examination of the posy, the greater part of which consisted of plants with white-leaved yellow-centred florets blooming in profusion on single stalks.

  'How lovely,' she exclaimed. 'And how fitting. Yarrow. I think these are yarrow.'

  'Yarrow? What's that?' said Novello.

  Ellie smiled into the posy, not her daughter's smile, which had been conspiratorial and inclusive, but an inward-looking and secretive smile.

  '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,' she murmured. '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.'

  She paused and now her gaze lifted to look straight at Novello.

  'I shall wound every man,' she declared in a strong clear voice. 'No man shall wound me.'

  The dog, which had been sniffing at Novello's trainers with a foot-fetishist's enthusiasm, now cocked his leg and began to pee.

  Oh God, thought Novello. Trapped in a cottage called Nosebleed with a gang of skinny-dipping, poetry-reciting nutters, not to mention a weird kid and an incontinent dog.

  This could be a long, long day.

  viii

  we galloped all three

  Peter Pascoe opened the door of his house, picked up the mail from the mat and went through into the living room.

  The answerphone display was on, indicating one message. He pressed the Play button and sorted his mail from Ellie's as he waited for the machine to start.

  'Hi, it's me. Just to say we've arrived safely, quite a miracle when you consider the way Daphne drives. The bothy is lovely, makes our place look a slum, couldn't you take up growing roses? Rosie thinks it's heaven, and she's taken a shine to your infant prodigy, which isn't surprising I suppose when you consider what they've got in common, like grating voices and no social graces. Only joking, only just joking anyway, still can't see why we couldn't have had Dennis Seymour or that nice boy, Hat, no problem with sleeping arrangements, even Rosie has got her own room. So, everything's fine. You can enjoy your bachelor delights with a clear conscience. By the way, if there's anything for me from you-know-who, if it's a package, stick it on top of the wardrobe and say nothing till I get home. But if it's a letter, open it at once! Love you. 'Bye.'

  Pascoe stood, looking at the slim white envelope in his hand.

  Shit. He wished it hadn't come. OK, it was the letter not the package, but it might just contain a formal rejection and a request for the return postage if she wanted her script back. Did publishers do things like that? He'd never met any, not even professionally, though presumably some were penny-pinching bastards. Maxwell had been a publisher, hadn't he? And he'd certainly pinched a lot more than pennies. A good sign was that the envelope was handwritten, implying a personal interest. Or maybe they were just economizing on secretaries.

  Only one way to find out.

  He tore open the envelope and took out the single sheet it contained.

  The letter was unambiguous but he read it three times just to be sure.

  Then he shouted out, 'Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!' like a porn movie star having a climax, and grabbed the receiver.

  There are few things more frustrating than riding from Ghent to Aix and finding nobody in.

  He let the phone ring at Nosebleed Cottage for several minutes before putting down the receiver.

  Still, a pleasure delayed was a pleasure heightened, wasn't that what they said in the sex manuals?

  The doorbell rang. It was Wield.

  'Come in, come in,' said Pascoe. 'Grab a seat. What would you like to drink? Tea? Beer? Champagne?'

  The sergeant looked at him curiously and said, 'Tea'll do. You're very bouncy. Tracked down Lord Lucan, or what?'

  Pascoe was tempted to share his news, then thought, no, no one should hear this before Ellie, not even that doyen of discretion, Edgar Wield.

  'No. That's tomorrow, isn't it? Today he just wants us to find Kelly Cornelius. How'd you get on?'

  'Interesting.'

  Wield described his adventures in the park, concluding, 'Then finally just when I was thinking of packing it in, I saw Old Joe, you know, the bus-station beggar who always tries to get nicked for Christmas. He was just coming into the park from the town side. He says there's a lull about teatime and he likes to take a kip in the sun before he does the homeward-bound shift. He did the same yesterday and yes, he remembered Kelly Cornelius. Good description. Lovely girl, legs all the way to heaven, was how he put it. I said I hoped he wasn't turning into a dirty old man, clocking girls' legs, and he said he couldn't help it as she was on a bike, moving at speed, with her skirt trailing round her neck.'

  'Nice picture,' said Pascoe. 'So, the bike again.'

  'I headed back to the cricketers then. The young lad, the gormless one I mentioned before, he was coming away. Said it was boring. I remember the feeling, standing around at long stop all day, never getting a bowl, and out first ball. I thought, mebbe not so gormless after all. This time I listened to him. He's definite not only that he saw Cornelius on a bike, but that he saw the old woman she'd spoken to by the canal on the same bike, coming from the direction of the car park, and heading up the rise towards the public bogs.'

  'Before or after they spoke?'

  'After. And when he saw Kelly a bit later, she were shooting down the track from the bogs. She went across the grass, which impressed him as it's against the regulations and a parky chased her. At least he assumed it must be a parky as why would anyone else bother?'

  'Nice logic. Definitely not so gormless. This old woman, how old would that be?'

  'I wondered about that too. At his age anyone over twenty who doesn't look like Cornelius or Michael Owen probably qualifies as old. I asked him if she was older than me, say. He thought a bit then said, mebbe.'

  Pascoe was feeling an uneasiness, the same kind of uneasiness which had made him want to focus his attention on Cornelius after the attempted abduction of Ellie, and he guessed he was going to need the same obliquity of view to detect its source.

  A prolonged peal at the doorbell which could only harbinger Dalziel prevented any experiment.

  'Sorry I'm late. Had to go back to the factory,' he said. 'Ee, I could murder a cup of tea and a wad.'

  Pascoe brewed some tea to the required strength and with some trepidation dug out the last six inches of his favourite walnut cake, a slice of which he'd been looking forward to enjoying in bed with his hot chocolate nightcap. Nothing could compensate for the absence of Ellie's warm and willing body from his side, but walnut cake, whose crumby presence she absolutely forbade in the bedroom, was a small consolation.

  Wield refused, which was a good start. But the Fat Man said, 'Aye, why not?' and sliced himself a good three inches.

  'Right,' he said, after washing down his first cetacean mouthful with a torrent of hot black tea. 'How'd you get on?'

  Wield repeated his story, then Pascoe outlined his investigations, pausing for comment when he mentioned the car.

  'Lots of blue Golfs around,' said Wield. 'Could be coincidence.'

  'Coincidence is when I get into bed with Maggie Thatcher,' said Dalziel. 'More loose ends here than at a monk's wedding, and I don't like the way some of 'em tie up. And if she's got her car, why's she end up on a bike? Were that all planned in advance?'

  'Not in any detail, I imagine. But she knew she was going sometime, so she shoved her favourite photos in her bag just in case she didn't come back. When her accomplice told her about the bike plan, she jumped at it. Cool as you like, she drifts off to the shops to buy some basic female survival gear plus a knapsack to carry it in while the old bird puts the bike in the ladies. Then it's over the hills and faraway wi
th Sempernel's men flat-footed. I think she probably enjoyed it.'

  'Aye. Smart lass from the sound of it,' said Dalziel. 'Smarter than you two buggers if that's all you've managed to find out.'

  Wield and Pascoe exchanged glances, then the DCI said mildly, 'I thought starting from nothing we did OK, sir.'

  'You didn't start from nothing, lad. You started from knowing that she's taken off and that's where you've finished from the sound of it. All this fancy detective work you've been doing, has it left either of you with any notion where she's gone to? No, don't bother to answer. God, it's enough to drive a man to gluttony.'

  As if to illustrate the depths of his distress at their incompetence, he seized the remaining chunk of walnut cake and thrust it into his mouth.

  Hope the fat bastard gets indigestion, thought Pascoe surlily.

  'OK, sir,' he said. 'When you've finished chewing, are you going to tell us what you found out?'

  There had to be something. The Fat Man never sneered at others' empty hands unless he himself was the bearer of trophies.

  Another draught of tea, and he said, 'George Ollershaw. I knew he might be worth a look.'

  'Actually,' said Pascoe, 'I think it was me who suggested you look at him. So, is he an accomplice? Could he have set up the escape? Hey, Wieldy, this old woman in the park, did the boy say there was anything odd about her, the way she moved, I mean?'

  'George Ollershaw in drag?' exclaimed Dalziel in mock-outrage. 'He's a member of the Gents and a Mason!'

  He bellowed a laugh, then said, 'No, it's a nice thought, but you're barking up the wrong tree. Listen and I'll tell you a story, then mebbe you'll tell me what it means. Five years ago the old Nortrust Building Society demutualized itself. This means it stopped being owned by its members, that is them as saved with it or got mortgage loans from it, and became a bank, a public company, with shares on sale on the stock exchange and paying dividends to its shareholders, most of who didn't have savings with it or take out mortgages from it. You with me?'