Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

‘Aye, and I wouldn’t. So, did you see owt interesting?’

  ‘No birds, but I thought there was something moving up there …and there was this funny little gargoyle, but then I lost it …’

  Wield smiled inwardly, though if he’d smiled outwardly, Bowler probably wouldn’t have noticed. Funny little gargoyles on St H. and M.’s tower tended to be Monte the marmoset, one of whose favourite perches this was.

  ‘That’s something else to keep quiet about, losing gargoyles,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. So is Mrs Pascoe staying here or am I still playing escort.’

  ‘Playing?’ said Wield reflectively. ‘If you mean, is Mrs Pascoe going off to see her friend, Mrs Aldermann, and are you going with her to ensure her safety, the answer is yes. I’m sorry if you feel baby-sitting the DCI’s family’s a bit beneath you. Mebbe you’ll feel different when you’ve followed far enough in Mr Pascoe’s footsteps to have made some enemies of your own.’

  Bowler, like Peter Pascoe, was a graduate-entry recruit, with good prospects for rapid promotion if he shaped up right. One of the reasons for his transfer north had been to widen his experience.

  He was physically not unlike Pascoe, slim, tallish, with a long narrow face and deep watchful eyes. Sensitive, too, like Pascoe. Wield’s reproof had made him flush. Ellie’s type, clearly. Hadn’t she called him a dish? Strawberry ice, perhaps, with that interesting flush suffusing his rather pale cheeks.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean …except maybe it’s more a job for uniformed …’

  ‘No way,’ said Wield. ‘When it’s hard getting trained CID men who should know better to take the job seriously, just imagine how easy it ‘ud be for some plod whingeing about special treatment for CID brass to take his eye off the ball. If an attempted abduction and an assault isn’t enough to catch your interest, maybe you should specialize in traffic.’

  It was heavy talk, but if Bowler was going to survive the kind of remedial education Andy Dalziel liked to offer what he called the educationally disadvantaged, he was going to need strong shoulders and a very thick skin.

  ‘Yes, Sarge. I see that. Sorry. Don’t worry. I’ll stick closer to Mrs Pascoe than …’

  He hesitated. Was going to say shit to a blanket, thought Wield, but suddenly it didn’t seem appropriate.

  ‘Closer than that,’ said Wield. ‘She can be a very elusive lady if she takes the fancy.’

  The elusive lady came out of the cottage and walked towards them.

  She said, ‘I’d get back in there quick, Wieldy. Edwin seems to be expiating some strange guilt feelings by force-feeding Rosie all kinds of exotic goodies from his larder.’

  Very sharp lady too, thought Wield.

  ‘Leave you in good hands then,’ he said.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Ellie, smiling at the young DC. ‘What do I call you, by the way?’

  ‘Bowler, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know that, but what do you get called? I presume you’ve got a first name?’

  ‘Yeah, well, my friends all call me Hat. You know. Bowler …’

  ‘Yes, got it, I think,’ laughed Ellie. ‘So, Hat it is.’

  ‘You don’t get Bert then?’ enquired Wield gravely.

  It wasn’t a cruelty, just another degree in the don’t-mess-with-me learning curve, to let the youngster know that Wield’s omniscience included the fact that Bowler’s parents, under the influence of history and/or alcohol, had christened him Ethelbert.

  Life in CID for a bird-watching graduate called Ethelbert could very easily be hell.

  ‘No, Sarge. Just Hat.’

  ‘In that case, Hat, you use them bins of yours for watching Mrs Pascoe here, nowt else. OK?’

  ‘OK, Sarge.’

  He stepped gracefully into his open sports car.

  ‘This car, bit showy, isn’t it? For the job, I mean,’ said Wield.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t use it for a stake-out on a wet winter’s night on a run-down council estate,’ said Bowler pertly. ‘But I don’t anticipate Mrs Pascoe going down many mean streets.’

  ‘I may surprise you,’ said Ellie. ‘Wieldy, thanks a lot. I’ll ring. Or you ring if there’s any problem. I’ve left my mobile number with Rosie. See you later. Come on, Hat. Wagons roll!’

  She gave Wield a kiss on the lips, climbed into her car, started up and set off down the slope to the High Street with a smiling Bowler in hot pursuit.

  Wield watched them go. Young Bowler seemed OK, he thought. Though you couldn’t really tell, not till a man was tested. But he hoped the test wouldn’t come while he was baby-sitting Ellie Pascoe. All the Pascoes were special to Wield. But Ellie was special special. The kind of woman who made an old queen wish sometimes that he was a lesbian.

  Smiling to himself at the old joke, Wield went back into the cottage.

  The phone was ringing.

  Pascoe, he guessed as he picked it up, ringing to check that his womenfolk had turned up safe.

  He was wrong about the caller, but right about the call.

  It was Fat Andy Dalziel, pretending to be checking whether Bowler was going to be needed all day.

  ‘Yes, sir. They got here safe and sound …Ellie’s just headed off to see her friend …yes Bowler’s gone with her …I think he’ll be fine, sir …and I’ll take good care of the little lass …no need to worry, sir …cheers …’

  He put the phone down.

  No need to worry, he’d said.

  Except if Andy Dalziel was worried enough to call, mebbe there was more need to worry than anyone was letting on.

  The Fat Man claimed to be able to sense trouble in his piles and Wield for one believed him.

  Or maybe he was just going soft in his old age.

  Andy Dalziel going soft?

  Aye, when Gibraltar turned into a mound of pink blancmange!

  Grinning at the notion, he went through into the kitchen to rescue Rosie from Edwin’s compensatory force-feeding.

  xv

  spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

  Ol’ man Dalziel

  that ol’ man Dalziel

  he has to know something…

  Indeed he does, else he wouldn’t be sleeping here in his little casket waiting for the trumpet to sound his reveille.

  Let it blow! Let these electronic bones reassemble and put on flesh. Let’s take a look at him in glorious technicolour.

  Good Lord!

  Is this the face that…? Here’s a big genie to keep in such a little bottle. Once out, in bulk as large as whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian…

  But why has the archpriest commanded that this monster should be poured out of his bottle into the Leaves folder?

  Let’s have a look and see why the Great Gaw took an interest in him in the first place.

  Not apparently for the excesses of his mad youth, whose indiscretions seem to have been of quite another kind… no, here it is… sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found thee… now it all comes back. He got his clodhoppers tangled in the weedy depths of the Mickledore affair… twice… once at its beginning and again when it was recalled to life all those years later…

  This was Gawain Sempernel’s finest hour. With the scandals of the Profumo affair waiting to be resurrected… the royal connection… the American link… he was a man walking through a minefield while juggling flasks of nitro.

  And he emerged at the other end with not a hair out of place, everything under wraps, the dogs of the Press happily chewing their drugged titbits, the wolves of Westminster howling at nothing closer than the moon, which at that time looked like Gaw’s for the asking. But there’s many a slip…

  Oh yes, he has cause for resentment. But so have we all.

  Back to the Fat Man.

  He stirred things up, no doubt about that. He displayed a touching loyalty to a dead colleague upon whom Gaw found it convenient to tip any residual blame for miscarriages of justice, etc.

  But in the end, Gaw saw to it that Mr Dalziel came nowhere near the real truth…

/>   Or if he did he was clever enough to keep it to himself.

  He gives away nothing…

  Could a man who looked so brutish be so bright? Perhaps. After all, are not these electronic urns a memorial more lasting than monumental marble to man’s protean soul?

  And Gaw Sempernel has added an ambiguous footnote. Should not be under-estimated… perhaps. Of course, it’s rumoured among the young ones that old Gaw spends an hour each morning looking in the mirror till he’s convinced he really is himself.

  Oh, I could tell them a thing or two about how Gaw once liked to disport himself in the morning…

  No more of that.

  But an analysis of what actually happened over in the States when the Mickledore business blew up again does suggest that our plump Innocent Abroad was more manipulator than manipulated.

  So, one to watch. One who is close to DCI Pascoe who ‘accidentally’ encountered Kelly Cornelius on the Snake Pass and whose wife is an acolyte of Feenie Macallum’s.

  All very vague.

  The only positive reason for Mr Dalziel’s presence in Leaves seems to be that Gaw who likes to cover all contingencies is not totally convinced that the cordon sanitaire he has thrown around Kelly Cornelius will keep the unsavoury superintendent from sticking his nose in.

  Forewarned is forearmed.

  But that works both ways.

  Clever cool calculating Sir Gawain has thought to give an extra twist to the stopper that keeps this fat genie in his bottle.

  What fun it might be to simply crack the bottle and let him out!

  And more than fun. A new way to pay old debts.

  But how to approach this monster?

  Let’s see…no home computer, no fax, not even an answer machine!

  Ned Lud, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

  But though he shakes the earth with his dinosaur tread, yet his police force with quiet but unrelenting step marches on into the new millennium.

  Think of it as ancient magic, ol’ man Dalziel. Think of it as Sibyl’s leaves fluttering down onto your desk. And then just be yourself…

  He just keeps strolling…

  just keeps on strolling…

  along…

  xvi

  oats for St Uncumber

  Andy Dalziel pretended to believe that e-mail was what they called a transvestite in Lancashire, so it was with some trepidation that Sergeant Harmony from the computer room entered the great man’s office.

  ‘E-mail for you, sir. For your eyes only,’ he said.

  ‘Oh aye? What’s it say?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir, I’ve not looked at it,’ said Harmony, scenting a trap.

  ‘How do you know it’s for me then?’

  ‘Looked as far as your name, sir. Didn’t read any more.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Dalziel, taking the print-out. ‘How’s that lovely missus of thine?’

  ‘Fine, sir.’

  ‘Tell her I want a tango with her at the next knees-up.’

  ‘I surely will, sir,’ said Harmony retreating, grateful to have escaped so lightly.

  The Fat Man read his e-mail twice, sat back in deep thought, read it again, then leaned back in his chair and bellowed, ‘SHOP!’ And waited. But only the echoes came.

  After a while he rose, flung open his door and went striding through the CID offices like Uranus through his starry halls, and like Uranus he found them empty.

  There was no escaping the fact. Mid-Yorkshire CID was short-staffed.

  A couple of its members were on leave. Not that this meant anything to Andy Dalziel who lumped holidays, meals and sleep together as privileges granted by his personal benevolence and which could be curtailed or cancelled at his personal whim. So the wise detective headed for faraway places and left no forwarding address, and these two were very wise detectives.

  Of those who remained, one was in hospital recovering from a broken leg, a couple were out on enquiries, Pascoe was pissing about in Sheffield talking to yon looney, Roote, DC Bowler was standing watch over Ellie Pascoe, and Sergeant Wield was entertaining Rosie Pascoe at Enscombe.

  Sometimes he thought Mid-Yorks CID should be retitled Pascoe’s Private Army.

  But there should have been someone here.

  God-like, his thoughts were commands.

  The door opened and Shirley Novello came in.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘I just popped down to the washroom, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Oh aye? What’s up? Spotted a crack in tha make-up, didst’a?’

  Provoked by her awareness that at work her face was practically a cosmetic-free zone, Novello said briskly, ‘No, sir. Actually, I needed a piss.’

  Dalziel looked at her in amazement and said, ‘Nay, lass, don’t shatter an old man’s illusions. What are you working on?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer but rustled through the papers on her desk.

  ‘Feenie Macallum? Yon batty old do-gooder? What in God’s name are you bothering yourself with her for?’

  ‘Just covering all the angles, sir,’ said Novello, with what she hoped was an air of brisk efficiency. ‘She turned up at the DCI’s house yesterday evening, and for some reason she seemed to think our surveillance had something to do with her, and I thought, with everyone so worried about Mrs Pascoe and everything, I’d better check out what the meeting was about.’

  In fact, it hadn’t been any kind of concern for Ellie that had sent her down to Records, it had been mere vulgar curiosity, plus a dislike of making a fool of herself.

  ‘Waste of time,’ said the Fat Man dismissively. ‘It ’ud be in aid of Women with Headaches or Underage Welsh Refugees with Acne. What the hell’s Wilgefortis? Something you rub on your chest?’

  He was looking at her scribblings.

  She thought of his likely reaction to her explanation, considered a selection of lies, then thought, what the hell?

  ‘St Wilgefortis, sir. One of the Queen of Portugal’s septuplets. She took a vow of virginity but her father wanted to marry her off to the King of Sicily. Virginity wasn’t going to be part of the deal, so she prayed to God to make her too unattractive to marry.’

  Dalziel said, ‘Oh aye? I think I’ve met her sister. So what happened?’

  ‘She grew a moustache and a beard, sir. The King of Sicily got the next boat home. And her dad was so pissed off, he crucified her.’

  The Fat Man nodded as if this made good sense, then examined her upper lip and chin closely and said, ‘You trying to tell me something, Ivor?’

  ‘Just that she prayed while she was dying that women everywhere who felt sorry for her and acknowledged her pain should be freed from all trials and troubles and encumbrances.’

  ‘And what the hell has this got to do with owt you’re getting paid public money for?’

  ‘She was known by various other names. One of them was Liberata. This is the name of Miss Macallum’s organization which is a trust she set up to work on behalf of women who’ve been wrongly imprisoned and tortured and generally abused by repressive regimes.’

  Dalziel shook his head and said, ‘So this is how you spend your time? I’m all for freedom of religion, luv, but not in working hours. Specially not all this foreign crud.’

  ‘English women were especially fond of her,’ said Novello defensively. ‘They called her St Uncumber and they used to lay offerings of oats under her statue and pray that she’d uncumber them of their menfolk.’

  ‘You’re joking? Bloody hell. My wife were always making porridge and I hated the stuff.’

  This did not seem a profitable avenue to explore.

  Novello said, ‘Anyway, Miss Macallum is in our records. Mainly in connection with various protest groups. Obstruction. Abusive language. Breach of the peace. Plus one conviction for dangerous driving. Ran some guy off the road. Seems he knew her and was trying to avoid her and at first he wanted her done for attempted murder. Looks like she’s a pretty physical lady when the mood takes
her.’

  ‘You’re not looking at her for threatening Ellie, I hope?’ said Dalziel.

  ‘No, sir. Just being thorough.’

  ‘Thorough’s grand but not if it’s wasting time. Listen, I need your help. A woman’s touch. Who the hell’s that?’

  This in response to the shrill of a telephone.

  Novello listened carefully then said, ‘Sorry, sir. Don’t recognize the voice.’

  ‘God spare me from women comedians,’ groaned Dalziel. ‘Well, answer it, lass, if it’s not against your religion. And if it’s not mass murder or my knighthood, tell ’em to get stuffed.’

  Novello picked up the phone and listened.

  ‘The DCI, for you, sir,’ she said.

  Dalziel took the phone and bellowed, ‘What’s up? Got lost and ringing for directions?’

  Then he listened for a while, and said, ‘Jesus, Peter, nowt’s ever simple with you, is it? Will he snuff it?… So no harm done… Yes, I’ve got the letter back. Covered with prints but none of ’em Roote’s… Aye, you’d best hang around. Leave the scene and them buggers in South Yorkshire will likely fit you up for attempted murder… Yes, I know you should be back for Cornelius, but don’t worry. I’ll sort it out. Keep in touch.’

  He banged the phone down and stood there scratching his great head as if in search of something he’d buried there.

  ‘Something happened, sir?’ ventured Novello.

  ‘You could say. That nut Roote the DCI went to check out in Sheffield, well, he’s found him with his wrists slashed in a bath. I never asked, but I bet the daft bugger pulled him out.’

  Novello considered the alternatives and said, ‘But if he was alive, sir…’

  ‘What? Oh aye, see what you’re getting at. Question is, which is worse, a looney on your conscience or blood on your trousers? I’ve been there, and believe me, lass, you never get it out.’

  Uncertain which stain he was referring to, Novello said, ‘If this guy’s tried to top himself, along with the letter that looks pretty much like an admission, doesn’t it, sir?’

  Dalziel smiled sadly at her and said, ‘Nice to be young, is it? Aye, I can remember when I used to go jumping to conclusions like a newborn lamb. Now I’d not believe the Pope if he came to me with a signed confession. Didn’t you hear me say there’s nowt to connect the letter to Roote?’