Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  A second or two later it was reinforced by the restraining arms of Andy Dalziel, who had done considerable violence to the engine of Sempernel’s car in pursuit.

  ‘Easy, lad,’ said the Fat Man. ‘They’re out of the house now, lucky for you. Getting yourself shot’s not going to help any bugger, is it?’

  ‘We outnumber them. Andy, there’s only four of them left. Has someone got a hold of that guy out there? He’ll tell us what’s going off.’

  He spoke with the certainty of a medieval torturer.

  ‘I fear not, Mr Pascoe,’ said Sempernel, coming through the front door.

  ‘Shit. The bastard hasn’t died on us, has he?’

  ‘Happily not. The bastard is in fact one of my operatives whom I’d advised on the radio of your approach and instructed to intercept you before you came to harm.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Pascoe, remembering the vicious force with which he’d speared the man into the gravel. ‘Is he OK?’

  He broke free of Dalziel and went to the doorway.

  The man was sitting on the ground, leaning back against a car. He looked dazed, and his forehead and left cheek were tessellated with gravel.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Pascoe. ‘I thought…’

  Then the grazed and bleeding features began to tug at his memory. Surely this was the man he’d seen with the Fraud Squad super in the court, the man who matched Ellie’s description of the male half of the couple who’d tried to lure her out of the house with their story about Rosie being sick…

  ‘Bastard,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d broken your neck.’

  He turned back to Dalziel, and found him standing rapt before the life-size painting hanging on the wall opposite the main door.

  And…

  ‘What the hell is a painting of Kelly Cornelius doing in Feenie Macallum’s hall?’ the Fat Man asked.

  Pascoe looked.

  Dalziel was right. There she was, standing next to a fellow who could have modelled for Ozymandias, Kelly Cornelius to the life, that combination of classic bone structure and vibrant life, like Galatea feeling the first strong pulse of warm blood through soft flesh as Aphrodite’s breath quickens the cold ivory.

  What did it mean? thought Pascoe. What did any of it mean?

  He said to Sempernel, ‘What’s going on? Have there been any more shots? Who was firing? Where are those men who arrived? What are we doing standing around here? What in the name of God has happened to my wife…?’

  ‘Do take it easy, Mr Pascoe,’ said Sempernel. ‘You are an amazingly impetuous young man. If you had stayed to hear Jacobs’s whole message, you’d have learnt that when he first thought he heard a shot, he went to investigate before reporting in. There was a deal of activity on the terrace at the rear of the house. Eventually he saw a party of ladies amongst whom he recognized your wife…’

  ‘He would, wouldn’t he? The bastard’s seen her before.’

  ‘Indeed. As I was saying, he saw them process through the garden towards some kind of summerhouse on the cliff –’

  ‘So there wasn’t a shot?’ interrupted Pascoe.

  ‘I’m afraid there probably was,’ said Sempernel gravely. ‘Jacobs observed your wife and her friend, Mrs Aldermann, supporting your officer, WDC Novello, whose arm appeared to be in a sling.’

  ‘Shirley? Oh Christ. And what about my daughter? Did he see Rosie?’

  ‘He didn’t mention her but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. Jacobs had to observe from some distance, naturally…’

  ‘He’d have seen her. If there was bother, she’d not have strayed far from her mother. How the hell can you let something like this happen to innocent people?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard to separate the innocent from the guilty, Mr Pascoe,’ said Sempernel significantly. ‘And sometimes it’s distance rather than closeness which lends accuracy to the view.’

  Pascoe was looking at him like a man who feels that language has gone as far as it can and maybe it’s time to reopen older and more direct channels of communication.

  Dalziel, entertained by this unsuspected propensity for violence in his henchman, had no philosophical objection to witnessing Sempernel taking a punch on the nose, but felt with the Preacher that there was a time for every purpose under heaven and this long streak of owl-shit’s comeuppance could wait.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be doing something cleverer than standing around here when there’s a looney with a shooter who could show up any minute?’ he said reasonably.

  ‘It’s all right, Superintendent,’ said Sempernel rather patronizingly. ‘I dispatched my Cynthia to take over watch duties while Jacobs is recovering. I believe your sergeant, who seems something of a doubting Thomas, has accompanied her to take the lie of the land for himself.’

  ‘He gets that from me,’ said Dalziel, sniffing the air, which carried a faint but not yet unpleasant burning smell. ‘Think I’ll take a quick look inside just to make sure there’s no one lurking.’

  Sempernel didn’t look happy, but the Fat Man had already opened one of the doors and was moving out of sight into the body of the house.

  ‘Do take care,’ called Sempernel. ‘And please do not show yourself on the terrace. Hello, what have we here?’

  Through the front door into the hall ran a small patchwork dog, barking excitedly at Pascoe and jumping up at his legs.

  ‘He seems to know you, Chief Inspector,’ said Sempernel.

  But Pascoe did not hear. He was lost and away, recalling Wield’s account of going to tell Elsie and Tony Dacre that their missing daughter was dead and inadvertently letting Tig run into the house ahead of him as so often he must have done to announce the return of his young mistress.

  Sick with foreboding, he went to the doorway and looked out. Echoing fate once more had Edgar Wield hot on the small dog’s heels, but now Pascoe’s heart soared as high as it had plummeted low when he saw that it wasn’t bad news the sergeant was bearing, but Rosie, high on his shoulder.

  ‘Look what I found!’ cried Wield.

  He swung the child down and she came running to her father, who caught her up and hugged her so tightly she cried out.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, releasing her. ‘Are you OK? No one’s hurt you, have they?’

  ‘Only you,’ she said without malice. ‘But Shirley’s been shot, I heard Miss Macallum say so, but not shot dead, she’s got a sling and she’s walking, only Mummy and Daphne are helping her, and we had Mrs Stonelady’s casserole, and there’s bread and butter pudding and chocolate ice cream for me, only I got down to play before the pudding while they were all talking, and I wouldn’t have gone under the fence but Carla went and Tig followed and I think they must have been chasing a rabbit, so I went to fetch them back, and I hid when I heard someone coming, and Miss Macallum spoke very loud so I knew not to come out, but they would probably have found me when they came through the fence only the lady with the moustache took me by the hand and showed me where to hide and I stayed hidden till I heard someone else and looked out and saw it was Wieldy.’

  She paused for breath.

  ‘Who,’ said Sempernel softly, ‘is the lady with the moustache?’

  ‘The lady who gave me the flowers for Mummy,’ said the girl, with the natural exasperation children display when adults ask them to explain what is obvious. ‘Uncle Andy, what on earth are you eating?’

  Dalziel had re-entered, in one hand a large bowl, in the other a matching spoon.

  ‘Hello, is that my favourite girl or is it a garden gnome?’ he cried. ‘Come here, luv, and give your Uncle Andy a kiss.’

  She ran up to him and reached up to kiss his stooped head, then examined the contents of the bowl with great interest.

  ‘Bread and butter pudding, bit charred, just the way I like it,’ Dalziel explained. ‘Custard were ruined but. Some things you can burn a bit, like tatie pot and traffic wardens, and no harm done. Not custard though. That’s why I had to put chocolate ice cream on it.’

  ‘T
hat’s mine!’ cried Rosie indignantly.

  ‘Nay, finders keepers. You can try a spoonful if you like.’

  His gaze met Pascoe’s over the child’s head as she helped herself to a large dollop of choc ice and he went on, ‘Bit past your bedtime, isn’t it, luv? Tell you what. Why don’t you go back to yon cottage with the funny name…’

  ‘Nosebleed,’ said Rosie indistinctly.

  ‘Aye, that’s the one. Wieldy will take you, right?’

  His gaze was still on Pascoe. He wants Rosie out of here, as do I, thought Pascoe. But he knows I won’t go while Ellie is still in danger.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Wield. ‘There’s that story I didn’t finish yesterday.’

  ‘What about Mummy? I want Mummy,’ said the girl. Then, quick to avoid giving offence to those she loved, she looked round and said, ‘And you can come too, Wieldy, and finish your story.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said Pascoe. ‘You go on with Wieldy, darling, and Uncle Andy and I will go and fetch Mummy. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ she said, with the insouciance of one who had not yet learned that there were things in the world which not even her father and Uncle Andy could guarantee. ‘What about Carla?’

  ‘Carla?’

  ‘The other pooch,’ said Wield. ‘Miss Macallum’s dog.’

  He snapped his fingers and a black and white sheepdog which had been lurking in the background came trotting forward.

  ‘Tig and her are best friends,’ said Rosie. ‘Miss Macallum won’t mind.’

  Is this menagerie going to keep on growing? Pascoe asked himself. What happens if I get mixed up in a case involving wolves?

  ‘Best I think if Miss Macallum’s dog is out of the way,’ murmured Sempernel, coming close. ‘They can be so unpredictable. Especially the female of the species. Mr Pascoe, I have no desire to cause your daughter stress, but if perhaps Sergeant Wield could get out of her as detailed an account as possible of what she witnessed, it might assist us in our deliberations.’

  ‘You heard that, Wieldy?’ said Pascoe. ‘But go very easy, eh?’

  ‘I’ll only use the rubber truncheon if I’ve got to,’ said Wield.

  Pascoe, reproached, said, ‘Sorry. She couldn’t be in better hands.’

  He watched as Wield drove away with Rosie and the two dogs, then turned to Sempernel and said, ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Dalziel. ‘I were wondering that. Normally I’d have whistled up a couple of our ARVs by now. Shot fired, policewoman hurt, armed suspect on premises, hostages taken…’

  ‘No, not hostages,’ said Sempernel. ‘Until they know we’re here, the ladies are merely captives, not hostages.’

  ‘That’s grand,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ll remember that in future. How to avoid hostage situations, just don’t let on to the crooks that you know about them. And if folk didn’t let on they’d been burgled, or if corpses kept it to themselves they were dead, we’d really knock the burglary and murder rates on the head.’

  ‘I meant that we have time to deliberate our next move, Superintendent. The situation is static until we set it in motion.’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ve got a wounded officer out there who’s not getting any better without proper treatment, and is likely getting a lot worse. Plus my colleague here’s got a wife out there who he’d prefer to have back in one piece. So unless you can convince me that you’ve got a better idea, I’ll just get on with calling up the cavalry. Mebbe you’d care to start by being a bit more honest with us. So far you’ve been lying through your teeth about why you’re here, and if removing your teeth’s the only way to stop you lying, I’ll do that too. So, like Shakespeare says, who’s doing what and with which and to whom?’

  Sempernel smiled thinly and said, ‘First let me deploy what little force I have. Jacobs, you fit for service now? And just as important, is your radio fit for service?’

  The man was back on his feet. He’d recovered his radio which he now raised to his damaged face.

  ‘Seems OK,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Go and keep watch on their vehicles. Eventually they’ll have to come for the truck. Let me know as soon as that happens.’

  Jacobs moved away. Pascoe didn’t know whether he felt sorry or not to see his new ally limping.

  ‘This truck,’ said Dalziel. ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘Transport, what else? Somewhere round here, Mr Dalziel, as I suspect you have guessed, Popeye Ducannon’s cache of arms is hidden, plus, almost certainly, the cocaine which Chiquillo brought to pay for them. Before you wax indignant, let me say that if we had thought there was any prospect of either the drugs or the arms disturbing the even tenor of criminal life in Mid-Yorkshire, we would of course have tapped into your expertise. But Mr Trimble, your Chief Constable, was persuaded that the fewer people who knew about their existence, the less chance there was of any leakage. Particularly as until a little while ago we were unsure ourselves of their precise location. We didn’t want to spark off some kind of lowlife treasure hunt.’

  Pascoe said, ‘You’re telling us that this stuff’s hidden in Gunnery House? And you knew this back there when you were shooting us all that shit about Ellie being completely safe?’

  ‘Not in the house,’ said Sempernel, feeling it best to ignore the second part of the question. ‘In something called the CP, which stands for Command Post, which I have reason to believe is the nickname given by the Macallum family to the pavilion on the cliff where Mrs Pascoe and her friends are now, I regret, situate. The good news is that there’s no way for anyone to move out of there without passing us here.’

  Pascoe digested this, then said in the softly reasonable tone which sometimes made people underestimate him, ‘Great. So the best plan is to let them do just that. Pass us here, I mean.’

  Sempernel’s eyebrows took off like Harrier jets.

  ‘Let them go past us? I do not see how that is even a possible plan, let alone the best!’

  ‘You don’t? Well, maybe that’s because you’ve been playing with yourself so much, you’ve gone blind,’ snarled Pascoe. ‘Any idiot can see that it’s better to let these guys drive away with their gear rather than keeping them trapped in there with my wife and the others as hostages. They’ve got miles of narrow empty road to negotiate before they get anywhere. You can block them off and take them out any time, no one else at risk.’

  ‘Sound sense to me,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘You think so? I’m afraid you do not yet understand the nature of the people we are dealing with,’ said Sempernel. ‘They will undoubtedly take some of the ladies with them when they go, giving themselves bargaining power in the event anything goes wrong along the way, and also giving those left behind an extra incentive not to contact the authorities.’

  ‘What do you mean, an extra incentive? What other incentive do they have?’

  ‘The natural reluctance criminals feel against incriminating themselves.’

  Here we are again, thought Pascoe. The sly slur. Damnation by circumlocution.

  He said politely, ‘Could you please tell us in direct and unambiguous terms which of the women in the pavilion you believe to be criminally involved here?’

  Sempernel, to his credit, started strong.

  ‘Feenie Macallum,’ he said. ‘She is the founder of and leading light in Liberata –’

  ‘I know who she is,’ interrupted Pascoe. ‘And you’re telling me she’s a crook? Bollocks.’

  Sempernel stayed serene.

  ‘As I’m sure one so distinguished in his profession must know, one of the problems for large-scale criminals, particularly drug traffickers, is that they tend to get paid in dirty money which they need to render clean. To this end many of them use the services of professional launderers, usually hi-tech experts with skills equally valued in legitimate financial circles whose mandarins, I fear, are often quite happy to have large sums of dirty money passing through their systems so long as they can throw their hands up in horror if things
go wrong and demonstrate that there is none of the dirt under their fingernails.’

  ‘Listen, sunshine,’ said Dalziel, scraping the bottom of his pudding bowl. ‘When I’m finished eating, if I’ve not heard summat significant, I’m going to start filling Axness with wall-to-wall flashing blue lights. So get a bloody move on.’

  ‘You’re talking about Kelly Cornelius,’ said Pascoe. ‘And you think she’s here too, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m certain of it,’ said Sempernel. ‘Her escape, as you’ve clearly worked out, was connived at by Miss Macallum. When I tell you that one of the many ingenious routes by which people like Cornelius channel their dirty money is via charities working in the Third World, you’ll begin to see the connection. Indeed, some of these charities have been set up precisely for this purpose.’

  ‘But Liberata’s always broke,’ protested Pascoe.

  ‘Your wife tells you that, does she? Well, well. No, don’t look so angry, Mr Pascoe. I make no accusation. Yet. But she is here at Gunnery House. And Kelly Cornelius is here too. And would you be surprised to learn that as at close of business yesterday, Liberata’s account, which your wife assured you is in the red, stood in excess of three million pounds sterling?’

  ‘This is getting as close to an accusation as I want to hear you get without a lot more evidence,’ said Pascoe softly.

  ‘Interesting,’ replied Sempernel with matching softness. ‘You don’t, as many husbands would, simply assert the impossibility of your wife’s being mixed up in anything illegal. Instead you require evidence. Could it be that you feel, as indeed her track record suggests, that she might in certain circumstances think the end justifies the means?’

  ‘Cut the crap,’ said Pascoe. ‘Evidence.’

  ‘Very well. My evidence, I admit, though highly suggestive, is purely circumstantial. Her Liberata cases seem to be concentrated in South America, and in Colombia in particular. Kelly Cornelius works specifically for several Colombian groups, freedom fighters or terrorists depending on your stance, whose main source of income is usually cocaine, which is why they need her services. As I told you at the cottage, it was Cornelius who brokered the arms deal, and it was she who got Miss Macallum to take Bruna under Liberata’s wing, and as you know, Miss Macallum entrusted her to Mrs Pascoe’s care. Of course, this might have been quite innocent, and your wife’s involvement could be purely attributable to chance.’