Why was he doing this anyway? It wasn’t as if the vandalization had been the crime of the century! The truth was he just wanted to impress Sergeant Wield. And Sergeant Wield, he’d worked out, wasn’t interested in kids scratching cars, but in Mrs Aldermann herself.
He thought he saw a way of side-stepping his problem without too much conscience-bending.
‘Do you come this way every morning?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ said Marsh vigorously. ‘We don’t go into the centre every morning. Anyway usually we use the underpass, isn’t that right, lads?’
The others, now hunched up close, chorused their agreement.
‘Thing is,’ said Singh, becoming confidential, ‘CID’s not really interested in whoever scratched them cars last Monday. In fact, whoever scratched them might’ve done us a favour. It’s a car-stealing ring they’re after. One of the cars they’re interested in got its paintwork done over that morning. It was a VW Polo, light green. Likely there was a woman driving. Now, you didn’t happen to notice that car up here last Monday, did you?’
If they’d simply denied being up on the top storey any time the previous week, Singh would have been happy to let it rest there, and to hell with his certainty that they were responsible. But they hesitated, and looked at each other, and Singh, now well worked into his role, said in a bored voice, ‘Look, if you did see owt, lads, it could be helpful. Like, what time the car was here? Did you see the driver? What was she wearing? Was she carrying anything? Which way did she go? You scratch our backs, we’ll scratch yours.’
He felt at the same time proud and ashamed of his performance. When it won a prize, he was amazed.
Mick Feaver said, ‘Yeah, we did see her. I mean, I think I saw her.’
He looked around at the others apologetically, offering them the path of non-involvement by his correction. But the bait of police favours and the natural human instinct to seek star-witness status combined to make his friends resent rather than be grateful for his attempt to exclude them. Rapidly progressing from a trickle to a torrent, the information came.
‘Yeah, a green Polo. Nice little car.’
‘About ten past nine. We were just going by when it parked.’
‘Tall blonde bit. Middle-aged. Big teeth.’
‘No, she was better than that. Quite tasty really.’
‘You like ’em old, don’t you? I’ve seen you looking at his mam!’
‘My mam’s not old. Not that old.’
‘She was about thirty, this tart. She was smart. Not with it smart, but smart like the nobs are smart.’
‘That’s right. She looked a right stuck-up cow.’
‘She had a little handbag. Nothing else.’
‘We thought there was something funny when she got in the other car.’
‘Not funny. We thought she was going for a bit of umpty.’
‘Yeah, wham! bang! on the back seat. She didn’t look like a crook.’
‘What do you think a crook looks like, you silly bugger!’
Here the torrent was interrupted by an energetic scuffle.
Singh said, ‘You mean she got into another car?’
‘That’s right,’ said Jonty, as eager as any of the others to be a star-witness. ‘She parked next to it and got out of hers and straight into his.’
‘His? You saw the driver?’
‘Not really. There was tinted windows. I hadn’t even noticed him sitting at the wheel till she got in and he drove off right away.’
‘Right away?’
‘That’s right. He must have started the engine soon as he saw her.’
‘What kind of car was it?’
‘Audi.’
‘Volvo.’
‘No, it wasn’t a Volvo, they have their lights on all the time.’
‘It was a BMW 528i.’
The speaker was Mick Feaver, and he spoke with a note of authority so authentic that no one challenged him with further alternatives.
‘You didn’t get the number, did you?’ said Singh hopefully.
They shook their heads, except Mick Feaver who tentatively suggested an X registration with a 9 before it.
Now Singh really did feel triumphant. This was something to toss casually before Sergeant Wield. He racked his brains in search of any other information he might possibly squeeze out of these eager witnesses. It struck him that this gang were not likely to have been inconspicuous, yet Mrs Aldermann had denied seeing anyone suspicious. That could be very significant.
‘Did she see you?’ he asked.
‘Probably. She drove right by us,’ said Jonty.
‘Yeah. And you were playing the fool,’ guffawed one of the others.
‘What did you do?’ asked Singh.
For answer, Marsh made an obscene gesture with his right forearm and clenched fist.
‘Well, I thought she was off on the job,’ he explained. ‘Randy old cow!’
And that was how it had started, thought Singh with a sudden flash of insight. Perhaps the first intention had been to write something rude on the dust on the Polo, but its shining bright paintwork hadn’t provided the looked-for slate. So the knife had come out and, once started, the enthusiasm had spread. But he didn’t want to know about that.
‘Thanks a lot, lads,’ he said, glancing at his watch and working out that PC Wedderburn would now be in the Market Caff, probably starting on his second cup of tea and growing steadily more furious. ‘I’ll pass this on. It could be very helpful. See you around.’
‘Yeah. Right. Sure. Great. See you.’
Dismissed, the youngsters walked out away towards the bridge leading to the shoppers’ car park. They had emerged from the lift as criminal suspects. They were now moving on as police witnesses. Singh dimly apprehended that it was an evolutionary process he might become very familiar with in his police career.
But his mind was more concerned with the immediate future, balancing Wedderburn’s certain wrath against Wield’s notional admiration, as he entered the lift and stabbed at the button to take him down.
12
EVENSONG
(Bush. Vigorous, upright, deep salmon-pink blooms, little fading, profuse in summer and autumn, straight firm stems, strong sweet scent.)
Peter Pascoe was finding himself becoming fascinated by the Aldermann case. Not that there was a case, and not that he intended letting the fascination develop into an obsession. But somehow the personality of this quiet self-contained man, whom he had only met in passing and who had given him a rose, teased his imagination like a half-remembered melody.
The whole business was of course just plain daft. Sex, booze and the strain of executive decision-making had curdled Dandy Dick’s mind. It was an occupational hazard of working under pressure. He should know. As well as this increasingly irritating rash of burglaries, the CID case-load at the moment included three alleged rapes, two suspected arsons, and any number of undisputed robberies, assaults, muggings, frauds and minor offences. Yes, indeed, he should know all about the mind-curdling properties of overwork. He could even recognize the symptoms. They included picking up the telephone half way through the morning, with the self-justification that this was his coffee break, and dialling his opposite number at Harrogate.
Relationships with Harrogate CID had been a little strained for a while after a Mid-Yorkshire Investigation into a blue films racket had led to the trial and imprisonment of a Harrogate detective. But things had settled down now, due largely to Pascoe’s assiduity in mending fences and despite Dalziel’s slightly less conciliatory attitude of Sod ’em They’re likely all as bent as lavatory brushes!
‘Ivan? Hi! It’s Peter Pascoe. How’s it going?’
‘All the better for the old man being away at this Modern Policing Conference!’ replied Detective-Inspector Ivan Skelwith. ‘I dare say you’re missing Fat Andy too. It’s funny, I was just thinking of giving you a ring. Those housebreakers of yours seem to have strayed on to my patch. Some people got back from holiday yesterday evenin
g and found they’d been done. From what the computer chucks up, it sounds like the same lot.’
‘Does it now?’ said Pascoe, suddenly scenting a self-justifying opening. ‘Why don’t I drive over and have a look?’
‘Time hanging heavy on your hands, is it? All right. When?’
‘This afternoon?’
‘Christ, you don’t hang about! All right. Come before three. That OK? By the way, what was it you were ringing about?’
Pascoe said hesitantly, ‘Nothing really. There’s a firm of accountants on your patch called Bailey and Capstick. They had a man called Aldermann working for them up until seven or eight years ago. He may have left under some kind of cloud. I just wondered if anything was known.’
‘I’ll sniff around for you,’ said Skelwith. ‘Anything I should know about?’
‘The faintest smell and you’ll be the first to know,’ promised Pascoe.
‘Fair enough. Till three then.’
Ivan Skelwith was a dark and dapper Lancastrian who claimed to have joined a Yorkshire force because their mean measuring tapes enabled him to scrape in at the minimum height requirement. He greeted Pascoe with pleasure and a cup of tea and some biscuits, which helped make up for the lunch Pascoe had skipped to propitiate his conscience in wasting more time on Aldermann.
They spent the next hour at the burgled house where the m.o. and attendant circumstances seemed exactly the same as Pascoe’s burglaries, right down to the angry householders who as usual were threatening to sue the company who’d sold them their alarm system. The thieves had neutralized this with an expertise which spoke of careful planning. The only unusual feature was that some virginia creeper which covered the wall on which the external alarm bell was set had been torn away and some plants in the flowerbed immediately below were badly crushed, as if someone or something had fallen on them. There were no helpful footprints or anything of that kind but at least it narrowed the limits within which the break-in must have occurred, for though the damage was not apparent to the casual glance, the owner’s one-morning-a-week gardener was able to confirm that the border was untouched when he last called the previous Friday.
‘So. A weekend job. Does that help?’
‘Not bloody much,’ said Skelwith.
Back in his office, they had another cup of tea accompanied this time by jam doughnuts.
Skelwith watched Pascoe devour his enthusiastically and said, ‘That’s the trouble with marriage. It’s all instant sex and gourmet cooking till the kids start coming, then it’s do-it-yourself or do without.’
‘You look well enough on it,’ said Pascoe. ‘Four, isn’t it? How’s that long-suffering wife of yours?’
‘Five next January, and she’s fine. Now, about that firm of accountants, it’s Bailey, Capstick, Lewis and Grey, by the way, only Bailey’s been dead twenty years and Capstick retired the year before last. It might have been Lewis and Aldermann, I gather. Their Mr Grey was taken on to replace your Mr Aldermann six years ago and has already attained to a partnership. Mr Aldermann, however, blotted his copybook in some undisclosed way and was lucky merely to lose his job, at least so my informant assures me.’
‘Your informant being …?’ enquired Pascoe.
‘Our Sergeant Derby. You might’ve noticed him on the desk. Rumour has it he was here before they found the spa. He certainly knows something about everything in this town.’
‘Very useful,’ said Pascoe. ‘He didn’t give any details, I suppose?’
‘I’m afraid not. They tend to keep a well-buttoned lip, these accountants, especially when there’s been a bit of naughtiness in the double entry. But Derby reckons your best bet is to steer clear of the active part of the firm and go for old Capstick. First, he was absolute master of the business when Aldermann got the push. Secondly, he himself was eased out last year, having reached seventy and suffering badly from gout. He did not take kindly to being “cut off in his prime by striplings.” The quotation is, according to Sergeant Derby, from the speech Capstick made at his farewell dinner. Derby does funny voices too.’
‘What a splendid man he sounds,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’m certain he’ll have got me an address too.’
‘Naturally,’ smiled Skelwith. ‘Capstick’s got this old house out in the sticks where he’s kept in his place by a ferocious old housekeeper, it seems. Those who rescue him either by visiting, or better still by removing him, are rewarded with long and often scandalous reminiscences of Harrogate social life over the past half-century. And your luck’s holding, as usual, Peter. It’s on your way home. The address is Church House, Little Leven.’
Herbert Capstick had been rendered symmetrical by age. The shock of white hair which crowned his head was exactly matched in shade by the swirl of white bandage which swathed his foot. In between, a thin but not emaciated body, clad only in a cotton singlet and a pair of old-fashioned, pocketed rugby shorts, reclined in a huge, deep, upholstered wheelchair at the open door of a jungle-like conservatory.
The old woman who had escorted Pascoe through the house frowned disapprovingly at Capstick and withdrew. She hadn’t spoken more than two words, listening to Pascoe’s request for an interview in silence, then leaving him standing on the doorstep while she vanished inside. On her return she had beckoned to him and led him through a gloomy drawing-room into the miasmic conservatory.
The ferocious housekeeper, guessed Pascoe.
Capstick said in a high, precise voice, ‘Mrs Unger has all the merits of her class and situation. She distrusts equally sunshine and strangers. You would probably be more comfortable, Mr Pascoe, if you moved that chair outside and sat in the sun. I should dearly love to join you but this is as far as I dare go without putting myself in the way of punitive reprisals such as lumpy custard and stewed greens. I hope you don’t mind talking through the doorway. It should give something of the quality of the confessional to our exchanges, which in view of your profession may be not inappropriate. Which of my many embezzlements over the past sixty years do you wish to discuss, Inspector?’
Beneath the apparently uncombed or perhaps simply uncombable white hair, grey eyes rounded interrogatively in a wrinkled, leonine face, and full lips smiled.
Pascoe returned the smile, took a deep breath, and said. ‘Not your embezzlements, Mr Capstick, but Patrick Aldermann’s.’
‘Ah,’ said Capstick. ‘Patrick. You have, of course, spoken with him about this matter?’
‘No. I haven’t as a matter of fact,’ said Pascoe uncomfortably. ‘I’ve only met him once, very briefly.’
‘Yet to me, whom you have not met at all, you are quite willing to broach the subject openly, without preamble? Strange. Perhaps you have been preadvised of my frank, disingenuous nature, my upright character?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Pascoe.
‘Or is it, perhaps, that you have been told that old Capstick is so tired of his own company out here in God’s heart-land all day, not to mention a touch of senile dementia, that he has started talking to the sparrows and may be easily persuaded to almost any verbal indiscretion?’
Pascoe took a chance and laughed.
‘I see I have been misinformed,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m here quite unofficially, Mr Capstick. I can’t even hint a threat that I may have to return some day officially. At the moment, though I can never be entirely off-duty, I am merely trying to satisfy my own curiosity. Shall I go on? Or shall I just go?’
Before Capstick could reply, Mrs Unger returned bearing a large tea-tray with folding legs. She stood in front of Pascoe and waited till, catching on belatedly, he unfolded the legs. She set the tray before him and left. It held, besides the teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl and two cups, a plateful of buttered scones.
‘Mrs Unger has decided to approve you,’ murmured Capstick. ‘The buttered scones are the sign. Tea she would bring were my visitor Adolf Hitler. But buttered scones are a sign of special grace. She will be sorely distressed if you do not eat the buttered scones. On the other hand, I should war
n you that you will be sorely distressed if you do. This is a dilemma. Such dilemmas cannot be unknown to you in your profession; moments when loyalty to those you work for clashes with loyalty to those you work with. You follow me, Pascoe?’
‘I think so,’ said Pascoe.
‘I had one such moment some years ago with Patrick Aldermann. I am not sure I may not be having just such another one now. Can you reassure me?’
Pascoe poured tea for both of them and said, ‘I’m not sure I can. But what I can say is that the only reason on earth I would see for doing anything to harm Mr Aldermann would be if so doing might prevent harm to someone less able to defend himself. I’m sorry if that’s not enough.’
He looked uneasily at the ill-omened scones. Then, seizing one boldly, he took a bite.
‘Yes, I think that’s quite enough, Mr Pascoe,’ said Capstick. ‘One bite will not harm you. If you care to take the rest and put them on the bird table in the middle of the lawn, we shall be entertained as we talk. The birds appear to be immune, I hasten to add.’
Pascoe took the scones to the bird table, not without an uneasy glance back to see if any curtains were twitching indignantly in the old house. But all seemed still. The well-tended lawn ran down to a thicket of flowering shrubs, including many richly-bloomed bush roses, bounded by a tall cypress hedge beyond which Pascoe could see the tower of the church which gave the house its name. Presumably it was St Mark’s church and presumably that was the very tower from which the stone had fallen to crack open the Reverend Somerton’s skull.
He returned to his chair by the open door. Without further preamble, the old man began to talk.
‘Patrick Aldermann was articled with my firm in 1968 or it might have been 1969. He was not outstanding in accountancy terms, but he was quiet, respectful, attentive and once you got beneath the rather bland shell, interesting and likeable. At least I found him so. Also I had known his uncle, or rather his great-uncle, Edward Aldermann. He had also been an accountant and a very successful one. He made the money which reconstructed Rosemont where young Patrick now lives. He was a quiet man too, but very pleasant when you got to know him. His wife drove him, of course. She drove him to make more money and she drove him to buy that rambling place which was far too large for the two of them. Well, he had her there, of course. He rebuilt the house for her but he rebuilt the garden for himself, and it was big enough for him to hide in. Still, she got him in the end, they usually do. But when his heart gave out, he was in his garden, thank God, pruning his roses. So, by one of life’s curious ironies, was she. Interesting, that. Perhaps his ghost appeared to her and frightened her to death! I’ve often speculated!
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