Dalziel 03 Ruling Passion

by Reginald Hill

  'I don't know,' answered the vicar. 'There are dark tunnels beneath the surface wherever you go -'

  'Alan is an allegorical moralist,' said Pelman. 'It's the Welsh disease. Hartley, you're very welcome of course, but was there something special?'

  'Nothing important. I just felt like a stroll to get the London dust out of my lungs.'

  'It must be tough at the top!' interjected John Bell. 'I must be off, Angus. Thanks for the drink. You'll look at that report I prepared, won't you?'

  'I'll take it to bed with me,' promised Pelman. 'It may do what Hardisty's pills can't manage. Get me to sleep!'

  A good area for insomniacs, thought Pascoe. He himself felt there would be little difficulty in getting to sleep. A cloud no bigger than a thumbnail seemed to be floating in his mind. Another drink, and great billows of cumulus would obscure things completely. And if he hung around too long, they might be torn apart by jags of lightning and made terrible by the noise of thunder.

  'Would you excuse me too?' he said to Pelman.

  'But the night's young. You've only just arrived.'

  'Hush, Angus,' reproved Marianne. 'Mr Pascoe's had a nasty bang on the head today. It must have been a great shock for you. I hope they catch whoever did it.'

  'So do I,’ said Pascoe. 'Yes, I think I've overestimated my powers of recovery. Do forgive me. Good night. Good night.'

  He left quickly, feeling very faint. It passed off in the evening air and he drove down the long track to the road following the tail-lights of Bell's car. Culpepper had at least turned the immediate approach to his house into a proper drive, but Pelman as a working land-owner obviously accepted bumps, ruts and puddles as part of the facts of existence. He drove carefully to preserve his car-springs, but the lining of his head proved much more sensitive to the lurchings of the vehicle and he had to stop before he reached the road.

  Pelman's woods stretched darkly to his right, and to the left about fifty yards away he could see the lights of the group of cottages whose owners were so suspect in John Bell's eyes. Faintly among all the other night sounds he could hear the murmur of water. It must be the contentious stream. Presumably a culvert of some kind carried it beneath the ridge of land bearing the lane to Pelman's house.

  He opened the car door and stepped out for a breath of fresh air. It was a disappointment, smelling none too fresh. But he did not feel like resuming his journey straightaway. He leaned back against the car-bonnet and let images crowd uncensored into his mind.

  Places - Thornton Lacey, Birkham, Lochart. The dead - Rose, Timmy and Carlo, Matthew Lewis, Sturgeon almost. The missing - Colin, Archie Selkirk, Atkinson. The betrayed - Mrs Lewis, Culpepper. The enigmatic - Davenant, Etherege.

  Etherege. Why did he think of Etherege? Because of Birkham. Too much was happening around Birkham. Too much? An antique shop which had sold a few quids' worth of stolen stamps. That wasn't much. What else? The Jockey, of course. Ellie had been attacked. Connection? Ellie was known to be connected with one fairly minor policeman, himself. Then she turns up with the big fish, Dalziel. Touching pitch and being defiled.

  The image amused. He climbed back into his car, his mind working too hard now to be affected by Pelman's lane, and drove rapidly to Crowther's telephone.

  'Why aren't you in bed?' demanded Ellie.

  'I've just got up for a moment,' lied Pascoe. 'Listen, love. Dalziel said that one of the things you lost tonight was a pendant. Would that be the one I bought in Birkham?'

  'Yes, I'm afraid it was,' said Ellie. 'Why do you ask?'

  'I'm not sure,' said Pascoe.

  'There's something rattling round your nasty suspicious mind,' said Ellie - 'Hang on. There's something I can tell you about it which might or might not help. That bit of rock certainly wasn't a local pebble like the chubby fellow in the shop said. One of the geologists at college was admiring it. I think he fancies me. Anyway he said it was some kind of bloodstone probably originating from South America. Which makes the local craftsman angle a bit fishy! They probably came in a job lot from Buenos Aires!'

  'You are beautiful,' said Pascoe. 'Beautiful! I love you!'

  'You must have been hit harder than you think,' said Dalziel. 'Let's get this straight. You reckon that Mrs Cottingley's collection of bits of stone has been passed to Etherege who polishes 'em, sticks 'em in a bracelet or whatever, and flogs them in his shop?'

  'Why not? It'd make a perfect outlet for unidentifiable stuff. Or nearly unidentifiable.'

  'Unidentifiable,' grunted Dalziel. 'You can't identify a lump of rock.'

  'You can say wherever else it was picked up, it wasn't Yorkshire!'

  'You might be able to, if you had it! And this is why you think your lass was attacked? For the pendant?'

  'It's possible.'

  'You've been watching too much telly,' said Dalziel. In the background, Pascoe could hear Dalziel's own television set blaring away, but diplomatically he said nothing.

  'Well,' resumed Dalziel. 'If you're thinking it was Etherege as robbed your girl, you'd better think again.'

  'I never said

  'Because I called at his shop when I was on my way to meet Miss Soper. I had those stamps. Sturgeon wasn't able to say yea or nay about them, so I thought as I was passing I'd have a look in. Anyway, he wasn't there, but an old bird who looks after his house for him told me he was at a sale in Durham somewhere, not expected back till late.'

  'It was just an idea,' said Pascoe dispiritedly. All their bright ideas seemed to be leading nowhere in this case. Dalziel's suggestion about a kennels being the source of information about empty houses had proved fruitless too. It was in fact true that all the people robbed had owned animals, but a variety of kennels were used and in at least one case, Lewis's, the dog had been away on holiday with the family.

  'Get some sleep,' advised Dalziel. 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

  He replaced the receiver and stood in thought for a moment. The television raged in the neighbouring room, but the house still sounded empty. His stomach rumbled, reminding him of the inroads Grainger's diet was making on his flesh.

  Pascoe's a good lad, he thought. He has his daft moments, but who doesn't? Most of what he said was worth thinking about. He looked at his watch. It was only quarter to ten. Worth a call.

  Chapter 4

  Thornton Lacey was lovely in the morning sunlight, and surprisingly quiet. Ellie glanced at her watch as she drove down the High Street. She was too late for the nine o'clock captains of industry. She realized she had been externalizing her own feelings of tension at the imminent inquest and had somehow expected the place to be as nervously taut as a Western Frontier town before the big shoot-out.

  Pascoe met her outside Crowther's house and greeted her with a satisfyingly passionate kiss - satisfying not because she felt much like bed at the moment but as a reassurance of his physical well-being. For all that, he looked pale, and she examined the dressing on the back of his head as though it could tell her something about the nature of the wound beneath.

  'I'm all right,' said Pascoe, who had in fact slept well until about six o'clock, when he had woken with his mind chaotic with thoughts which he had only begun to put into some kind of order. He had long since acquired the habit (most suggestively amusing to Ellie) of setting out his notebook and pencil on his bedside table every night so that intuitions of the night should not be sacrificed to indolence. It rested in his pocket now.

  He led Ellie into the house.

  'How about you?' he asked. 'That was an odd business.'

  'Too true, I'm fine. Fat Dalziel had pumped so much gin into me that I slept like a log. He's quite a kind old sod, really. He rang me up again later to check that I was OK.'

  'Did he now? About quarter to ten?'

  'That's right,' said Ellie surprisingly. 'Why do you ask?'

  Pascoe began to laugh. It was a good sound so Ellie did not interrupt it, puzzled though she was.

  'It's the thought of old Uncle Andy phoning about your health!' he
explained. 'It's always business with that one.'

  Quickly he described his own telephone conversation with Dalziel the previous night. Ellie was less than rapturous about the implied theory.

  'You mean Etherege is a fence?'

  'In a small way.'

  'And he jumped me last night just to get that pendant back?'

  'Well, not Etherege,' admitted Pascoe. 'He's probably got an alibi.'

  'Ah, I see! A good friend of his, you mean, who just happened to think he'd do his mate a handy turn by putting a bag on my head and shutting me in a broom cupboard? All for an old pebble?'

  'The pebble's the key,' said Pascoe, hastily retreating from the uncertain ground Ellie was challenging him on. Quickly he told her about Mrs Cottingley's collection of stones.

  'Perfectly safe, really,' he concluded. 'But if you were the first to buy one and he then realized, as he did, that you were a copper's moll, it's the kind of thing that might niggle. So when he sees you cavorting with Detective-Superintendent Fat Dalziel, he decides to act on the spur of the moment.'

  'Who? Not Etherege, you say. Who then?'

  'Yes. There's the rub, I'm afraid,' said Pascoe thoughtfully. 'Who else would be sufficiently concerned? Only one answer. The guy who did the robberies. Which would mean he was in the Jockey last night.'

  He laughed.

  'Pity Dalziel didn't think of that. He could have lined all the customers up and made them pee in a kettle.'

  'What?'

  'Don't you remember I told you what this villain did? Well, we had the stuff tested and it turns out he's a diabetic. A slender lead, but a lead.'

  'And he's also the man who murdered that estate agent? Lewis?'

  'Probably.'

  Ellie shuddered at the memory of the gloomy corridor in the Jockey. Something else connected with the Jockey which she ought to tell Pascoe nearly surfaced for a moment, then was gone.

  'Perhaps I was lucky,' she said.

  'Perhaps,' said Pascoe, putting his arm round her shoulder. 'I think it's nearly time to go.'

  Dalziel felt lucky as he drove out to Birkham. If Pascoe were right and Etherege was doing a bit of fencing, Andrew Dalziel was the man to lean on him. He could be sympathetic. People are bound to take advantage of a man in your position. Promissory. You tell us what you know and I'll see you all right. A nod's as good as a wink, eh? Threatening. There's a murder involved here, you know. Withholding information can get you ten years.

  But first he had to establish that this wasn't just something dreamed up by a man who'd been knocked on the head. He'd play the customer to start with. Have a look round. Size up the man.

  He was quite looking forward to it.

  It was about time he had a break. There was all that stolen property unrecovered, a murder unsolved, Sturgeon's forty thousand sunk without a trace - all these things somehow linked as well. One good break could settle the lot. Perhaps he was on his way to it now. He began to whistle a selection from Oklahoma! bursting into off-key song when he reached 'Oh what a beautiful morning!'

  'I realize, Mr Backhouse, that it might not be desirable for you to give us a detailed account of your investigations into these tragic and terrible deaths, but insofar as anything you have discovered might relate directly to this present court's business, we would be grateful to hear of it.'

  French's tone was reasonable, deferential almost, but the gaze he fixed on Backhouse over his reading spectacles had something of defiance in it.

  Pascoe looked round the crowded schoolroom. The desks had all been stacked outside in the corridor, but it still bore the unmistakable signs of its normal, more innocent function. Children's paintings adorned the walls and a chart immediately behind Backhouse demonstrated that Celia was the tallest in the class, taller even than James and Antony. Poor Celia. He hoped that time would redress the balance for her.

  Backhouse was explaining with his usual combination of efficiency and courtesy that he was not yet able to contribute very much officially to the proceedings.

  Ellie nudged Pascoe.

  'Where's Pelman?' she whispered.

  He glanced round the room again. The Culpeppers were there; the Dixons, Bells, Hardistys; the sisters Langdale from the post office; Jim Piss Palfrey; Anton Davenant making notes, but no Pelman.

  'He'll have work to do, I suppose. Why?'

  'Nothing. Something I remembered. Hang on.'

  French had finally succeeded in what had clearly been his aim, to have the note found in the abandoned car introduced into the evidence.

  'It has been established that this note is written in the hand of Colin Hopkins, husband of the deceased woman?'

  'Yes,' said Backhouse.

  'And that his fingerprints are on it?'

  'Yes.'

  'Thank you. It is not generally the practice of this court to have notes written in such circumstances read aloud, but in this case I think it may be in the public interest to depart from practice. Such a crime as this arouses feelings of horror and revulsion in everyone, but among those who live in proximity to the scene of the crime, it must also arouse trepidation and fear of repetition. It is the task of this court to allay such fears where possible.'

  French coughed twice and began to read from the paper before him. Pascoe shut down his hearing and turned his thoughts elsewhere, but phrases kept on coming through . . . here for ever, ever must I stay ... a naked lover, bound and bleeding ... all is calm in this eternal sleep . . .

  'Pope,' whispered Ellie.

  'What?'

  'Pope. The poet. He's quoting Pope.'

  She was holding his hand tightly, and he felt she was trying to keep the words intoned by French in a dry, unemotive, literary context, far removed from the rain-lashed car bumping and skidding its way towards the stinking quarry pool.

  'Oh, Peter,' she said. 'It's Eloisa to Abelard!'

  She stood up and left. There was no outburst of tears, nothing dramatic at all. It was as if she had remembered an appointment elsewhere.

  With an apologetic glance at French, Pascoe followed. He caught up with her in the playground.

  'Don't you see,' she said. 'That poem would come to mind because of us. In some way he must have thought about us at the end.'

  She clung to him, sobbing now. Pascoe held her close but could not enter into her mood of emotional abandonment.

  'You mean, because we were coming for the week-end and one of his little jokes was to compare us with two medieval lovers, an eighteenth-century poem on the subject would come to mind after he'd murdered his wife, two close friends, and decided to commit suicide?'

  'For God's sake, Peter, do you have to be so precise and analytical about everything,' she cried, pushing him away. But the tears had stopped.

  'This poem, it's years since I looked at Pope, what form does it take?'

  'Well, it's supposed to be a letter from the girl Eloisa after they've been separated. Peter Abelard was castrated, you knew that? She's in a nunnery or some such place, but the fire's still there. It's a very passionate poem.'

  'A strange choice. Look, love, I want to pushoff for a while and work something out. Do you mind?'

  One of Ellie's many virtues was that she knew when not to object.

  'All right. I'm all right, I'll go back in now.'

  'Fine. One thing. What are you going to say about Pelman?'

  'Well, it's not about him really, not directly anyway. It's just that I remember something more about that holiday in Eskdale. That awful farmer who kept hanging round, the one who rented us the place? Well, he lived by himself and the locals in the pub said that his wife had run off with one of his farmhands a few years earlier. No one ever saw them again.'

  Pascoe grasped the railings of the playground with both hands and stared unseeingly at the sunlit field on to which the school buildings backed.

  'You're right,' he said. 'I remember. And didn't Colin, and Tim, I think, haunt him one night when they were a bit stoned? They dressed up in sheets and ran
down the fellside behind his farmhouse as he was driving home.'

  'That was it,' said Ellie, smiling widely. 'I remember.'

  For a moment they were all alive again.

  'I'll go now,' said Pascoe gently. 'See you later.'

  'All right.'

  She watched him stride athletically across the yard and through the gate. Something made her call after him, 'Take care!' but she didn't think he heard. Incongruously she now remembered what she should have told him about the Jockey. But it would keep. This morning had to be got through first.

  'I don't know much about antiques,' said Dalziel, 'but I know what I like.'

  'Really?' said Jonathan Etherege, a smile spreading over his round pleasant face. 'I can only hope you have an expensive lack of taste. Would you like to browse?'

  'Aye,' said Dalziel, enjoying his fat philistine role. Role? he thought. I am a fat philistine!

  But the thought merely added to his enjoyment.

  'Been in the business long, Mr Etherege?' he asked, as he strolled around the antiques section of the shop checking the articles he saw against a mental list of stolen property. It was a matter of routine rather than hope.

  'Long enough,' said Etherege. 'I started in the scrap business and worked my way down.'

  'You're very frank,' said Dalziel. 'Why do you say down?’

  'Half a joke.'

  'And the other half?'

  'Well, if I'm selling you a couple of hundred-weight of lead-piping, you know the going price and either want it or don't. With this stuff everyone thinks in terms of value. It's not just a matter of so much a hundredweight.'

  'I still don't follow why you said down,' grunted

  Dalziel, trying unsuccessfully to open the top drawer of a handsome Victorian desk. Etherege leaned over, pulled, and the drawer slid effortlessly open.

  ‘Price is always above value, sir,' he said. 'So it must be down.'

  'Too bloody clever for me,' said Dalziel. 'Still you sound like an honestly dishonest man. You like brass, eh?'

  'I've been without it,' said Etherege. 'I won't be again if I can help it.'