Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  Daphne began to say, ‘No, it will be easier for me to back up…’ but Feenie was already back in her Land Rover and reversing at speed down the lane.

  Daphne said, ‘Silly woman. She’ll have to go all the way to the bothy. Still, if that’s what she wants…’

  She slid back behind the wheel.

  ‘She live round here then?’ said Novello, who had come up behind Ellie quietly enough to startle her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said irritably. ‘Incidentally, shouldn’t you have come running, brandishing your truncheon or something, when you saw our way was blocked?’

  ‘I was thinking about it till I saw who it was,’ said Novello. ‘Talking of security though, these are very narrow roads to be driving round at Mach three.’

  ‘Really? Well, let me tell you, it’s not long since Serafina Macallum drove a ten-ton truck full of relief supplies all the way from Yorkshire to Bosnia, and despite the problems of negotiating mountain roads in winter, not to mention the attendant dangers from gunfire, land mines, assault and arrest, she got there and back without a scratch.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, that’s great, Mrs Pascoe. Only I wasn’t talking about the old girl, I was talking about your friend, Mrs Aldermann. I mean, a couple of times, if I’d been in Traffic, I’d have belled her down and given her a ticket. Maybe you could have a word? It ’ud be a bit embarrassing if one of our cars did pull her over. Hope you don’t mind me saying.’

  To which of course the only reasonable reply was an abashed, ‘Not at all, my dear. You are only doing your job, and in fact you’re quite right. She does drive far too quickly.’

  Ellie said, ‘Oh, but I do, Constable Novello. I have been married to a policeman all these years without ever feeling the need, nor indeed ever being asked, to act like one. If you wish to report Daphne for a road traffic offence, that’s both your privilege and your job. Now let’s get on, shall we?’

  Back in the car, Daphne said, ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Parameters,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Oh dear. With you and Modesty Blaise at loggerheads, and old Meg Merrilies clearly planning to slip deadly nightshade into my cup of acorn coffee, this could be a very fraught few days. We may have done better to stay in town and run the risk of the Black Hand Gang. Where on earth has she disappeared to?’

  They’d turned a slight bend in the lane and could see straight ahead to where it ended in a gate with a building behind it.

  ‘I think she’s taking the short cut,’ said Ellie. ‘Or perhaps she’s hunting dinner.’

  The Land Rover had reversed into a field and was now bucketing across it through a bow wave of sheep.

  A few moments later, the Audi reached the lane end and halted before the gate which bore in flaking black paint the legend Nosebleed Cottage, beware –

  ‘Of what?’ enquired Ellie.

  ‘Bull? Feenie Macallum? I don’t know, it had faded away when we bought the place, but for the next few days it had better be Tig. Rosie, dear, would you like to open the gate?’

  Rosie hopped out and pushed the gate open and Ellie turned her attention to the cottage itself.

  It was certainly, as she had expected, a bit more substantial than a bothy, but her imagination had widened the litotic gap to such an extent that the square-built, lichen-stained, grey-pebble-dashed building she saw was a bit of a disappointment. For some reason she had expected finely pointed York stone, louvred green shutters, blooming window boxes, a rose-arbour porch, a kidney-shaped swimming pool… no, the swimming pool she admitted had always been a fantasy, but just as physical self-depreciation was only acceptable from a truly hunkish fellow, it seemed to her that Daphne’s playing down of Nosebleed ought to have been based on something a little more des-res-ish than this.

  ‘So what do you think?’ asked Daphne as they got their bags out of the car.

  ‘Fine. I mean, lovely. Very rustic.’

  ‘Yes, we decided against prettification. Much more honest to stay true to your roots, that kind of thing. I thought you’d approve.’

  Ellie smiled bravely, but suddenly she was recalling from the lessons of her reading just how spartanly the upper middle classes embraced their pleasures. For them, back to nature meant really back to nature. Oil lamps, washing under the pump in the yard, cooking on an open fire, sleeping on boards under a scratchy wool blanket, up at dawn and off on long walks during which you refreshed yourself with berries from the hedgerows and draughts of spring water so porridgy, you couldn’t spot the liver flukes…

  There, she was overdoing it again, like she was trying to prove to herself she was a real imaginative writer, but being hyperbolical didn’t mean you were wrong.

  Upside was that Rosie and Tig obviously thought it was great, rushing round the cobbled forecourt, scrambling over the broken-down, nettle-festooned walls, the dog jumping up at a knotted rope dangling from a branch of a tall oak tree, the child pulling at the arm of a metal pump over a stone trough… oh God, the dreaded pump! Ellie’s heart sank. Then she registered that the fearful engine was encrusted with rust and the arm wasn’t moving. At the same moment Daphne unlocked the unwelcomingly solid front door which looked as if successive generations of Heathcliff had tried to kick their way through it and said, ‘Come on in then. It’s not much but it’s home.’

  And Ellie stepped out of the eighteenth century into the kind of interior you could safely be interviewed in for Hello! magazine. Whitewashed walls hung with old samplers, a rustic dresser lined with Delft, stone-flagged floor scattered with woven rugs, a huge fireplace occupied by a brass scuttle filled with flowers and foliage, a wide-screen TV and a hi-fi system with Quad speakers, lovingly polished antique furniture – even the radiators had an old oak finish.

  ‘Central heating,’ said Ellie stupidly. ‘You’ve got central heating?’

  ‘Oh yes. I know how much you’ll disapprove but with walls this thick it really gets cool in here even in the warmest weather. Kitchen through here.’

  There was, of course, an Aga (oil-fired), and a table so large it must have been built within the kitchen as it didn’t seem possible it could have come through any of the doors or windows. But Ellie was distracted from the logistics of its construction by the sight of a hobgoblin seated at its head, bloodily dismembering a small mammal with a cleaver.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Stonelady. You got my message all right? Oh lovely, you’re doing us one of your stews.’

  The creature’s face, in colour and contour very like a walnut kernel, with a mole on her upper lip from which sprouted three black hairs, gave no sign of acknowledgement, but Daphne, after standing there for a moment, smiling as if at an exchange of pleasantries, said, ‘That will be lovely, Mrs Stonelady. We’ll talk again later. Ellie, let me show you the bedrooms.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me the medieval healer Patrick talked about was a sitting tenant,’ whispered Ellie, once out of the kitchen.

  ‘She is rather quaint, isn’t she? That is Mrs Stonelady who does for us. She has a son, Donald, who is two leeks short of a harvest supper, but is excellent for heavy work around the garden, so she’s a double treasure.’

  ‘And does she speak? I mean, when you said, you got my message, you were talking telepathy, I presume?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Ellie. She lives a couple of miles away and she doesn’t have a phone, so I leave messages on the answerphone here and when she comes in to see everything’s OK, she always checks it out.’

  ‘You mean, she’s into modern technology?’

  ‘Really, Ellie, for a tie-dyed Trot, you’re sometimes so elitist. By now I’d have thought that, having decided the role you would like to play in the world, at least you would have learned your lines properly.’

  These words were the surface manifestation of something faintly sardonic in Daphne’s manner since their arrival and it occurred to Ellie now that neither her disappointment at the prospect of unspoilt rusticity nor her relief in finding that after all she was not to be a guest at Cold Comfort F
arm had been as well-concealed as she believed. Daphne was jerking her about.

  ‘Bitch,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You know what I mean. OK, where’s my bedroom? I hope I’m en suite with the jacuzzi.’

  ‘But of course. Shirley, there you are. Everything OK?’

  Novello, who’d presumably been checking for booby traps, said, ‘Fine, Mrs Aldermann.’

  Daphne said, ‘Daphne. I hope you don’t mind, but in the cottage at least you will be Shirley to me and I shall be Daphne to you. What the regulations say about modes of address between constables and the wives of senior officers I do not know, but they will not apply in these confined spaces. Ellie, Shirley; Shirley, Ellie. Now let’s go upstairs.’

  She was right about confined spaces, as far as the stairs went at least. They were narrow, dark and steep. But the bathroom, though jacuzzi-less, was sparklingly modern and the bedrooms, a double and two singles, were a reasonable size. There was also a narrow boxroom with bunk beds.

  ‘I thought Rosie might like this, but I’ll give you the double just in case it’s a bit much for her being alone in a strange place and she wants to snuggle in with you,’ said Daphne. ‘Shirley, you’re in here. You’ll find the window covers the front approaches with a good arc of fire.’

  Novello, Ellie was pleased to see, was still in the early stages of working out whether she was dealing with a genuine upper-class twit or an accomplished deadpan comedienne.

  Then she made up her mind and said, ‘That’s fine. Is it OK to boil my oil on the Aga?’

  ‘Of course, as long as you understand damage from spillages must be paid for.’

  The two women exchanged a smile and Ellie dealt quickly with what might have been a pang of jealousy if she hadn’t suppressed it.

  Rosie was delighted with her bunk beds, declaring that she would sleep in the upper one and Tig could occupy the lower. When Ellie demurred and a crisis threatened, Daphne quickly moved in with the assurance that this would be fine as long as Tig slept on his own travel rug, adding with a severity that would have pleased Feenie Macallum, ‘And of course, if there are any accidents, you will be solely responsible for cleaning them up. Mrs Stonelady has had enough to do clearing up after my son and his sociopath friends. Animal waste products do not fall within the terms of her contract. So, any messes, and it’s down to you, Rosie. Do you think you can manage that?’

  Ellie watched her daughter make a solemn undertaking, her face lit by the religious glow of a Pre-Raphaelite knight pledging himself to the quest for the Holy Grail, and she sighed a deep, cynical sigh.

  Beside her, Novello said, ‘I shouldn’t worry. Looks to me like she means it.’

  ‘You reckon? Perhaps that’s because she hasn’t yet had the pleasure of dealing with shit on a blanket,’ said Ellie with more asperity than she intended.

  She looked for words to soften the effect but already the young policewoman was moving away.

  Oh dear, thought Ellie, returning to her room to unpack. I’ve got to find a way of dealing with this, else this is going to be a really bumpy ride!

  She opened a drawer to put her underwear in and saw that someone else had had the same idea and had left behind a pair of flowered briefs so skimpy that Ellie couldn’t recall a time when she’d have got into them.

  So much for young David Aldermann’s all-lads-together action holiday. Country sports clearly covered more than walking, climbing and swimming!

  Mention it to Daphne?

  Hell, no!

  Probably all she’d get in reply was a raise of those exquisitely plucked eyebrows and some crack about growing into a Mrs Grundy.

  She put the briefs back in the drawer and added her own. Then she went to the window and looked out.

  The room faced eastwards. Fields, hedgerows, small clumps of trees, then perhaps a quarter of a mile away, that exuberance of light where the land met the sea.

  Suddenly she felt very happy. Here whatever had happened back in town had no presence, no meaning. This was the realm of earth and air and ocean. She was no pantheist, but nature, heartless witless nature, she felt she could deal with. It was man who came after you red in tooth and claw, and here if anywhere there was a No Admittance sign at the entrance.

  She resumed her unpacking, whistling, rather off key, ‘In A Mountain Greenery’.

  ii

  drudgery divine

  Philosophy rarely survived Andy Dalziel’s presence for long without cheerfulness breaking in or wind breaking out.

  This morning, however, when on a summons which lacked much of its customary force, being audible no more than half a furlong, Pascoe and Wield attended their prince’s matutinal levee, they found him apparently as subdued in spirit as he was in voice, chins on his chest, eyes hooded, and in a curiously contemplative frame of mind.

  ‘Kelly Cornelius,’ he said in an incantatory tone, like a Buddhist priest, or in profile Buddha himself, proclaiming the morning’s mantra.

  Pascoe, fresh from seeing Ellie and Rosie off to Axness under the, to him, reassuring tutelage of Shirley Novello, flashed a grin at Wield, and echoed with a mocking sonority, ‘Kelly Cornelius.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Fat Man, nodding slowly as if the DCI had made some profound observation. ‘It’s all in the way you look at things. Seeing what’s really there.’

  ‘A man that looks on glass,’ said Pascoe, ‘on it may stay his eye, or if he pleaseth, through it pass, and then the heav’n espie.’

  The eyes unhooded and moved round to rest on him, balefully.

  ‘You going religious, or wha’?’

  ‘Just trying to demonstrate how, as so often, you are in accord with other fine minds of the past.’

  ‘Well, don’t bother. And that’s not what I meant anyway. Not see through summat, but see what it really is even though it doesn’t change.’

  ‘Hope till hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates?’

  The eyes closed again and the Fat Man sighed deeply.

  ‘Can you cover its cage, Wieldy?’

  ‘What you mean is, know what ought to be there and look till you see it?’ said Wield.

  ‘No. Not that either. That’s just the same as seeing what you want to see, and that’s the road to all kinds of trouble. Like marriage, for instance. No, I mean, knowing what has to be there, and going on as if you can see it even though you can’t.’

  ‘Like walking across an invisible bridge?’ suggested Wield.

  Dalziel considered this then his eyelids flicked up like the headlight covers on a sports car and the great face lit up.

  ‘That’s more like it. Aye. Though mebbe not completely invisible, mebbe what you can see is like a thread of cotton, and you’ve got to say to yourself, it’s a bridge, and step out on it.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘You’re in the clag but at least that’s a soft landing,’ said Dalziel. ‘Now what I see here is, Kelly Cornelius has got summat to do with what’s been going off with your missus.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ said Pascoe, surprised. ‘As you know, I always had it down as a possibility, though I seem to recollect you weren’t all that convinced…’

  ‘You’re missing the point, lad. You’re seeing what’s there, or at best what you’d like to be there; that someone’s trying to frighten you into letting Cornelius out on bail. But no one ever tried to suggest you should do this, did they?’

  ‘No, but she’s out, isn’t she?’

  ‘Aye, because of me, not you. And no bugger tried to twist my arm either.’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ said Pascoe, accepting this as a clear admission of what he’d suspected, that the Fat Man’s cock-up had been deliberate. ‘So why did you do it, sir?’

  ‘I did it because of you, lad. Nay, don’t go all gooey-eyed, I don’t mean ’cos I thought it ’ud get Ellie off the hook. I mean, because when all this crap started happening, the Cornelius case came out top of y
our list of possible connections. Why?’

  ‘Sorry? We’ve just been through all this…’

  ‘Aye, but ask yourself – all this stuff about someone out there wanting Kelly loose so’s they could have a pop at her, how convincing does it really sound to you?’

  ‘Not very, maybe, but a long way from impossible,’ said Pascoe defensively.

  ‘Oh aye? Listen to yourself. You’d not convince a barman you were old enough to serve shandy, sounding like that. But the fact remains, you still had this notion that the Cornelius case figured here somehow. So I got to thinking, mebbe there’s more to it than you’re saying. No, don’t start pursing your lips, I don’t mean you’re deliberately holding summat back. It’s just that you’ve always been a bit inclined to go wandering off in a world of thy own, and sometimes I’ve had to nudge you back onto the straight and narrow, and it could be I’ve nudged so hard in the past that this time you started making up the kind of reasons you thought I’d want to hear.’

  Pascoe regarded Dalziel doubtfully. Introspection on this scale unprefaced by a skinful (which in the case of this skin was at least two gallons of bitter beer) was rare if not unique. And as their morning confab was taking place in Dalziel’s office rather than the Black Bull, unless the Fat Man was pouring whisky on his cornflakes, he was stone-cold sober.

  Only thing to do was take him seriously. There were men staring vacantly at whitewashed walls because they had not taken Dalziel seriously.

  Also, he got the impression that the Fat Man knew more than he was saying. This didn’t bother him. Dalziel was his own interpreter and he would make things plain when it suited him. That was how it had always been and always would be, world without end, amen.

  He said, ‘Give us a moment.’

  He thought about Kelly Cornelius from the time of their first encounter at the accident on the Snake. He was gifted with great clarity of recall, and when someone made a strong impression on him, the recollected image could be eidetic in its intensity. Cornelius had certainly made that kind of impression. It wasn’t just sex, though sexuality definitely had a part in it. It was an emanation of vitality, a sense of her feeling her life in every limb. She was the kind of woman who could light up a morgue, the kind of person it felt good to be around. This quality, plus her evident top-grade computer skills, must surely have given her an entrée to the most glitzy and glamorous circles of high finance, and he wondered now as he’d wondered before how she’d ended up working in a relatively small-scale operation like Nortrust, having to bob and curtsey to provincial plonkers like George Ollershaw.