Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  The man in the photo looked very different, difficult to age between thirty and fifty, gaunt of face and figure, with hair cropped just this side of shavenness.

  Only the controlled watchfulness of the eyes remained.

  ‘I’d not have recognized him,’ Dalziel had said.

  ‘Oh, I would,’ said Pascoe.

  You didn’t forget people who’d tried to kill you with their bare hands.

  The flat was on the top floor of a converted terrace in an area which, by morning light at least, gave an impression of being, if not well-to-do, well-ordered and well-maintained.

  He rang the bell. Waited. Rang again. Then knocked hard.

  A woman came out of the other flat on this landing.

  ‘He’ll be asleep,’ she said. ‘He works late. Won’t it keep till later? Seems a shame to wake him.’

  She was in her fifties, maternally defensive. The Roote charm obviously still worked.

  ‘No, it’s urgent,’ said Pascoe, resuming his knocking, then shouting, ‘Mr Roote? It’s Peter Pascoe. Could you open the door? Mr Roote? Can you hear me?’

  ‘They can probably hear you in Rotherham, you’re making enough noise to wake the dead,’ said the woman.

  Pascoe looked at her and saw the awareness of what she’d said register in her eyes.

  ‘Does anyone have a spare key,’ he asked.

  ‘Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, I do. I sometimes pop in and tidy up for him.’ She blushed faintly as she spoke and Pascoe emended his previous maternally.

  ‘Could you get it, please?’ he said. And when she still looked doubtful he pulled out his ID and said, ‘I’m a police officer.’

  The door opened onto a small living room. Armchair, table, dining room chair, crowded bookshelf, all very neat and tidy. There were three closed doors.

  Pascoe opened one of them. Kitchen. Sink. Draining board, cup and saucer recently washed. Kettle on a small gas stove. He touched it. Still warm.

  The woman had opened another door. Bedroom. Bed made up, unslept in.

  She turned to the third door.

  ‘No, let me,’ said Pascoe.

  He pushed it open. Bathroom. Steam. An old chipped enamel bath, filled with water the colour of cherryade. And, sitting up at one end, with an open book on the soap rack in front of him and half leaning sideways as if posing for the Death of Marat, was Franny Roote.

  Blood dripped from the wrist of the hand trailed along the floor. The other was beneath the ever darkening water.

  His eyes were closed.

  The woman started to shriek.

  Pascoe said, ‘Shut up!’, pulled out his mobile and hit 999.

  The eyes opened, blinked, focused on him.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Franny Roote.

  xiv

  a man’s best friend

  ‘A child?’ said Edwin Digweed. ‘We are going to have a child?’

  ‘Not as such,’ said Edgar Wield.

  ‘Not as such? As what, then? As an entrée at supper, fricasseed à la Swift? As a parthenogenetic earnest of Jehovah’s good intentions? As an early entry to some new Dotheboys Hall you are planning to found here in Enscombe to finance your dotage? Or is this infant in fact a Mafia dwarf turned Queen’s Evidence for whom you are caring under the Witness Protection Programme?’

  Wield, accustomed to his partner’s blasts of invective fancy, bowed his head meekly before the storm.

  When it abated, he said, ‘Pete Pascoe’s lass, Rosie. I promised I’d show her the menagerie.’

  ‘With a view to joining it, perhaps?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Edgar, since we set up house together, I have put the interests of domestic harmony above my professional calling and pandered to your biblio-phobia by making this cottage to all intents and purposes a book-free zone. And what have you brought into our life by way of return? I shall tell you what. First an aerobatic ape. Then a possibly rabid dog. And now a female child. What more need I say? I am speechless. I rest my case.’

  It was a long time since a scandalous episode in Digweed’s youth had obliged him to give up the law, but he could still sound very forensic. Books, however, were now his livelihood and his life. When Wield first met him he was living in a flat above his antiquarian bookshop in the village High Street, fighting a doomed rearguard action against the relentless advance of dusty old volumes up the stairs. Forewarned is forearmed, and when they agreed to set up house together in Corpse Cottage by the churchyard, Wield had made it a condition of cohabitation that only books for personal use should be admitted to the premises, his own contribution being limited to Moriarty’s Police Law and the complete works of H. Rider Haggard.

  The price of keeping Digweed to his side of the bargain was eternal vigilance. Returning late from a book-buying foray, it seemed perfectly reasonable for him to deposit a couple of cardboard boxes on the kitchen floor with the assurance that he’d move them down to the shop first thing in the morning. And perfectly reasonable too for him to start unpacking some of the books in order to share his delight in his trove with Wield. But reasonability ended two or three days later when the boxes were still there and the sergeant had to eat his cornflakes standing up because all the chairs were occupied by incunabula.

  But Wield’s strong moral position had been considerably weakened by what Digweed referred to as the menagerie. First there’d been Monte, not the great ape of Edwin’s fancy, but a marmoset which Wield had ‘rescued’ from a pharmaceutical research lab. That problem had been solved by the intervention of Girlie Guillemard, the chatelaine of Enscombe Old Hall, who had just added a Children’s Animal Park to the visitor attractions of her ancestral home. Monte had first joined the other more tender inmates of the Park in their winter quarters, a heated old barn. But when spring came, he moved out to a treehouse from which he was easily lured by promise of food, and more easily still by the presence of his beloved rescuer, Edgar Wield.

  The dog was more problematical. Tig, a mongrel terrier, had belonged to seven-year-old Lorraine Dacre, whose death while out walking her pet had triggered off one of Mid-Yorkshire’s most disturbing cases. The animal’s noisy entry into the Dacre house had always presaged Lorraine’s return home, and now the family found its bark unbearable. Wield had undertaken to take care of it, on a temporary basis, he averred, but it soon became clear that there was no way the Dacres would ever take the beast back. Relocation wasn’t going to be easy. The RSPCA rescue centre said they would try, but they couldn’t keep the animal indefinitely if a new owner couldn’t be found, and Tig’s aggressive demeanour towards everyone except Wield, who was just about tolerated, didn’t make this likely. Digweed in particular it thoroughly disliked, and the price of his continued tolerance was a proliferation of book boxes in unexpected corners.

  That very morning Wield had found some in the bath. They’ll be in the bed next if I let him get away with turning Rosie’s visit into a major incident, he thought.

  He said, ‘I mean I’m taking her up to Girlie’s animal park. And I would have told you, only you were supposed to be off to York today, so I thought what the mind doesn’t know, the heart won’t fret over.’

  ‘Sneaking her in behind my back, eh?’ sneered Digweed. ‘A real CID undercover job.’

  Their gazes locked, the bookseller’s patrician face wreathed in a haughty sneer, his eyes flashing a challenge. But it was Childe Roland before the Dark Tower. Like shadowed windows in a blank wall, Wield’s eyes gave no hint of what lay within.

  Finally Digweed passed his hand over his face, erasing hauteur and shaping rue.

  ‘I can’t believe I said that. Sorry. It was stupid.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Wield. ‘That’ll be them now. If you want to hide…’

  A car had drawn up outside.

  Digweed strode to the door and flung it open.

  ‘Mrs Pascoe. Ellie,’ he cried. ‘Welcome to our humble cot. And this must be Rose whose beauty doth outshine report. Step in, my dears, step in.’


  Ellie and Rosie came in, the woman mildly amused by the hype of Digweed’s welcome, the girl peering up at the tall silver-topped figure with wide-eyed curiosity.

  ‘Coffee, Ellie? Will you have some coffee? Real coffee, not Edgar’s revolting ersatz.’

  Ellie said, ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘What about you, Rose? Would you like a glass of barley water? Or perhaps a fizzy drink? Edgar here occasionally smuggles some cans of cola into the fridge to abrade the few remaining flakes of enamel clinging to his teeth.’

  Rosie glanced at her mother, who nodded.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said the girl. ‘A Coke.’

  ‘Of course. Do help yourself. You’ll find the fridge through there, first left.’

  Rosie went out.

  Wield said, ‘How do, Ellie. You OK?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘By yourself?’ The question casual.

  ‘Except for some Mad Max in a beat-up sports car I can’t seem to shake off.’

  Wield smiled.

  ‘That’ll be DC Bowler. Not long with us. Should have introduced himself.’

  ‘Oh, he did,’ said Ellie laughing. ‘Nice polite boy. I told him Mid-Yorkshire would soon knock that out of him. Quite a dish too, or haven’t you noticed?’

  ‘Happen we’ll knock that out of him as well,’ said Wield gravely.

  Digweed gave him a sharp glance, but before he could follow it with a matching remark there was an outburst of excited barking from somewhere close.

  ‘Oh, God. I forgot the hound from hell was loose in the kitchen,’ exclaimed Digweed.

  He moved towards the door but Wield was quicker, with Ellie close behind. When the sergeant came to a sudden halt on the kitchen threshold, she tried to push past, but his broad right arm prevented her. Leaning over it like a pop fan at a crush barrier, she saw Rosie on her knees in front of the fridge with her arms around a small brown and white dog which had its forepaws on the girl’s shoulders. For a terrible moment, she thought the position was defensive. Then she realized that far from assault, the dog seemed to be trying to lick Rosie’s face off, while at the other end its stubby tail was signalling spasms of delight.

  ‘You OK, Rosie?’ said Wield lightly.

  ‘Oh yes. Isn’t he lovely? What’s his name? Is he yours, Wieldy?’

  Before Wield could reply, Digweed, demonstrating that his mind as well as his tongue still retained a legal sharpness, said, ‘Actually, he’s no one’s, dear. We’re just looking after him till we can find him a good home, aren’t we, Edgar? A lovely beast, but we can’t keep him here forever. Such a shame if he had to be… let go.’

  He wouldn’t have balked at put down, but Wield had turned to look at him, no Dark Tower blankness in his gaze this time, but a volley of arrows.

  Rose’s face had twisted in alarm, and hope.

  ‘We’ve got a good home. Could we have him, Mummy? He wouldn’t be any bother. I’d take care of him. Please.’

  Before Ellie could respond, Wield advanced into the kitchen and said gently, ‘We need to do what’s best for Tig, luv. He’s got a good home here already, you see, and you’d always be welcome to come and play with him. Now, how about that Coke?’

  But Ellie could see that the sergeant’s placations were falling on stony ground. Her daughter’s hands had locked about the dog’s spine like a Cumberland wrestler taking hold and her mouth was set in a stubborn line which Ellie had seen before. In her mirror. Across her mind a pack of questions hunted. Do I want a dog around the house? Does Peter want a dog around the house? And, leading them all, Do we want this dog around the house?

  For she knew Tig’s background, knew that every time they saw him, she and Peter would think of little Lorraine Dacre walking off along Ligg Beck that sunny Sunday morning, and her parents’ growing anxiety, and the fear of uncertainty slowly changing to the horror of knowledge …Could she bear to think of this every time she saw Rosie and Tig together?

  But she was seeing something else too, something she hadn’t seen since that day they gently revealed to their recovering daughter that her friend, Zandra, stricken with the same meningitis bug, had not recovered. It was a loving brightness in Rosie’s eyes as she hugged the little dog. A barrier which had come down as she took in the news of her friend’s death, a barrier which had made her turn away from Ellie’s or anyone’s offers of unstinted love, had been raised a little, and that had to be worth almost anything.

  She said, ‘Let’s see how you two get on together, shall we? There’s more to having a dog than just playing with it, you know. Dogs are like children, no use to anyone unless they do what they’re told.’

  In her mind she heard Daphne ironically applauding this fine old traditionalist viewpoint. Daphne. She must get round to see her.

  Rosie stood up, said firmly, ‘Tig. Stay!’ and took the can of Coke which Wield had fetched from the fridge. Then she moved over to the kitchen table, sat down, and started drinking. The dog remained where it was, but its eyes never left her.

  ‘Knows how to make a telling point, that child,’ said Digweed. ‘She ought to think of becoming a lawyer.’

  ‘She is inclined in the other direction, I think,’ said Ellie. ‘Wieldy, can I have a word?’

  She went back into the living room.

  Wield, anticipating rebuke, started apologizing as soon as he came through the door.

  ‘Ellie, I’m sorry. Don’t know what Edwin was thinking of. I mean, yes, I do, and I’ll be giving him a good talking-to afore the day’s out …’

  ‘It’s OK, Wieldy,’ she said smiling. ‘All he was doing was taking the tide. Rosie was three-quarters gone already.’

  Wield considered this then said neutrally, ‘So you think there’s a chance maybe …’

  ‘A chance maybe, very maybe,’ said Ellie firmly. ‘I’d need to talk to Peter, who will take some persuading, I imagine, as word around the factory seems to be that Tig’s turned into a ravening monster.’

  ‘Well, he did have a go at the super …’

  ‘Is that right? Now that’s a very good selling point. Seriously, if there’s any chance of the animal turning nasty …’

  Wield said, ‘He’s just a bit nervous round strange men. Not surprising after what happened. Doesn’t seem to mind me too much, but Edwin and him can’t get on. You saw how he was with Rosie, but. Another little girl, what he’s used to. I can see how that might be a problem, for you, I mean.’

  One of the many things Ellie liked about Wield was that, like Andy Dalziel, he didn’t mince words, though, unlike his great master, he usually peppered them with kindness.

  ‘My problems are in the grain, Rosie’s can still be smoothed away, and if Tig’s what it takes …sorry, Wieldy, not your problem, though your concern’s much appreciated. Listen, what I wanted to ask is, do you mind if I bunk off? I want to go and see Daphne. After what happened, well, I feel responsible. Rosie won’t mind. Black Bitch apart, I seem pretty dispensable these days. So if it wouldn’t be too much bother …’

  ‘Not for me. It’ll bother Pete, though, if he finds out you’re traipsing about without an escort.’

  ‘I warned him and I think he had a word with DC Bowler.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll just have another word to make sure he’s quite clear.’

  He went outside. The detective constable had parked opposite the cottage and was leaning back against the bonnet of his MG, studying through binoculars the famous leaning tower of St Hilda and St Margaret, just visible over the high stone wall against which Corpse Cottage was built.

  ‘Hi, Sarge,’ he said, lowering the glasses. ‘Anyone told you your church is falling down?’

  His eyes ran up and down Wield’s form as he spoke. Not, the sergeant guessed, in admiration of my magnificent body, but because he wants to check out the rumours that I wear a tutu and nipple rings when I’m at home off duty.

  Wield had been ‘out’ for some little while now, but had never thought that explaining yourself to the pruri
ent or even making things easy for the embarrassed was an essential ingredient of ‘outness’. He knew there was a wide range of rumours about his rural retreat. Some his own extremely sharp ears had caught floating round the station, others had been retailed to him by Peter Pascoe who for a while had been one of the embarrassed but only because, despite being as close to Wield as anyone in the Force, he hadn’t taken in what had been clear to both Ellie and Dalziel from the outset. Since then he compensated, perhaps over-compensated, by keeping his friend abreast of in-house speculation, ranging from those who dismissed talk of the sergeant’s gayness with confident assertion that Digweed was merely his landlord, or (they liked this one) that he had gone sexually undercover to help break up a vice ring, to those who claimed that his true residence in Enscombe was in fact a house called Scarletts, a Morris design in pink brick and turquoise slates with hipped gables and battered chimney breasts, in which he and his partner organized S and M weekends for many of the great and good of Mid-Yorkshire.

  Bowler, the most recent addition to Mid-Yorks CID on transfer from the Midlands, would be naturally curious to check out the rumours of northern naughtiness. Wield said, ‘See anything you fancy?’ That dropped his jaw a good three inches. ‘Sorry, Sarge?’

  ‘Birds. You’re a twitcher, aren’t you?’ Jerk him around a bit, then let him see that while he might still be speculating about you, you already knew all about him.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, but I never said …’

  Never said anything to anybody at the station. A new member of a CID team was under close examination till you saw how he shaped up, and some things you kept quiet about, like that your hobby was bird-watching, which while not as nerdish as train-spotting, was certainly a very large peg for the would-be wags to hang their wit on.