Deadheads

by Reginald Hill

  Dalziel’s basilisk gaze froze the trickle of words.

  ‘Fancy a bit of action, do you, lad? Bloody a couple of noses, get a police medal?’

  ‘No, sir. I just thought mebbe the experience …’

  ‘Let me tell you about the experience,’ said Dalziel. ‘Either you’ll sit on your arse, bloody uncomfortable, all night, and you’ll end up in the morning, cold and tired, with bugger-all to show for it, and the officers you’re with will all know it’s been on your say-so they’ve wasted their time. Or the villains’ll come and there’ll be a bit of aggro and mebbe a bit of blood. Any road, when the lights go on, there’ll be you, standing there feeling all pleased; and looking right at you will be your old mate, what’s his name? oh yes, Jonty Marsh. Are you ready for that, lad? Whichever way it goes?’

  Singh hesitated, recalling Wield had warned him along similar lines.

  There was a tap on the door behind him.

  ‘Come in!’ bellowed Dalziel.

  The door opened and Pascoe appeared with Wield behind him.

  ‘Here they are, the heavenly twins, Castor and Bollocks,’ said Dalziel. ‘Run along, son, and don’t forget about that tea.’

  Singh left, passing under the craggy indifference of Wield’s expression like a nervous pinnace beneath a fortified cliff.

  ‘Welcome back, sir,’ said Pascoe, observing the swollen nose with keen interest. ‘We weren’t expecting you till this afternoon.’

  ‘I skipped the fond farewells,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ve been going through all this stuff on Aldermann, then I had a word with young Abdul.’

  ‘Singh, you mean, sir? Shaheed is his first name, I think,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Aye, Abdul. He’s not daft, that lad. Has someone been giving him a hard time? I just got an impression he might be feeling he’s being shoved around a bit.’

  He glared accusingly at the two men.

  ‘I won’t have officers throwing their weight around,’ he said. ‘Consideration for subordinates, that’s what it takes to knit a good team together. Understood?’

  Pascoe glanced at Wield, then said, ‘I entirely agree, sir.’

  ‘Good. Now what have you two idle sods been at these past few days? This joker Aldermann, are we arresting him or protecting him?’

  ‘Protecting him,’ said Pascoe promptly. ‘I’ve found nothing concrete to suggest he’s ever stepped over the line except in the case of the old lady’s money when he was working for Capstick in Harrogate.’

  ‘One step’s often enough,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘We’re all permitted one bit of stupidity, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘Anyway, there’s something else.’

  Briefly he recounted what Daphne had told him at Rosemont.

  Dalziel sniffed, rubbed his nose and winced.

  ‘That’s something,’ he said grudgingly. ‘That explains a few things.’

  ‘A lot,’ said Pascoe firmly.

  ‘You’re recommending we wrap it up, are you?’

  ‘We have no complainant, no evidence of crime, nothing!’ said Pascoe.

  The internal telephone rang. Wield picked it up and listened.

  ‘Sir,’ he said to Dalziel, ‘there’s a Mr Masson to see you.’

  ‘Masson! The solicitor? What’s he want?’ asked Pascoe.

  Dalziel made a face. It wasn’t pretty.

  ‘Acting on information received,’ he intoned, ‘mainly from you, Inspector, indicating you believed Masson wasn’t coming clean with us, I rang the old sod at his golfclub and told him he’d better get his arse down here if he didn’t want to be retrospectively struck off. Or words to that effect.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Now you tell me that the case is closed,’ said Dalziel. ‘Perhaps you’d like to talk to him?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Tell ’em to wheel him in,’ Dalziel said to Wield. ‘Christ, is there nothing we can charge anyone with? Have you been right through the index in the big book?’

  ‘We might try Elgood and Mandy Burke with perjury?’ suggested Pascoe. ‘Or perhaps she actually gave the ladder a push …’

  ‘Do you really believe that? No? Nor do I. Accident. Perjury now, they’d have to cough in front of witnesses, and they’re not going to do that, are they? No, the lines I was thinking on were that Aldermann spotted Burke and Elgood making off after lunch at the White Rose and gave the husband a ring in the hope he’d catch them in the stirrups. Good as a killing, that. He’d not be likely to stay on at Perfecta, would he? Still, now you’ve washed him whiter than snow, that’s buggered that, hasn’t it?’

  There was a tap at the door. Wield opened it and Masson stepped in. He was wearing a red sports shirt and checked trousers.

  ‘Right, Inspector Pascoe, that’ll do for now, but I’ll want to talk to you later,’ said Dalziel sternly. ‘Mr Masson, good of you to come!’

  Pascoe and Wield left. As Pascoe closed the door he heard the beginning of Dalziel’s conversation.

  ‘Promising lad, that Pascoe, but a bit overkeen sometimes. I’m sorry if he’s been bothering you about the Mrs Highsmith business.’

  ‘What business is that?’ said Masson sharply.

  ‘You’re not still her solicitor, are you?’ said Dalziel. ‘You’ll understand then, I really can’t say. Of course, if she herself wanted to see you …’

  He nodded significantly at the wall, as if suggesting Penelope were chained to the other side of it. It was simply his intention to get rid of Masson with minimum aggro, but it was already striking him as curious that the man hadn’t come in with all guns blazing indignation. He decided to try the all-boys-together line. Besides, he felt in need of sustenance.

  ‘What about a drink?’ he said. ‘And a little chat off the record.’

  He took a huge key from his pocket, opened the cupboard in his desk and produced a bottle of Glen Grant and two glasses which he filled to the brim.

  ‘Here’s health,’ he said.

  They drank.

  ‘Of course,’ he went on, but not sure where he was going, ‘you were Mrs Highsmith’s solicitor after she inherited the house, weren’t you? There was all that business about the disappeared will …’

  For a moment he thought he was going to get the expected explosion from Masson but then the old man relaxed and drank deeply from his glass.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m not absolutely sure what this is all about, but there are some things it might help you to know, only …’

  ‘Only …?’

  ‘Between these four walls?’

  ‘Of course. You have my word,’ said Dalziel solemnly.

  ‘All right then,’ said Masson, taking a deep breath.

  What came was an anti-climax.

  ‘I’ve no idea what happened to the will,’ said Mr Masson.

  ‘None?’ said Dalziel disbelievingly.

  ‘Nothing that I could offer in evidence,’ said the solicitor firmly.

  ‘But suspicions?’

  ‘Ah, suspicions! Suspicions are only malicious guesses, aren’t they? There had been a will. I had left it with Mrs Aldermann after she had called me in to discuss the possibility of changing it substantially in favour of her niece. She died. There was no will to be found. Why should I be suspicious rather than accept that in all likelihood the old lady had torn it up prior to getting me to draft a new one?’

  ‘Because,’ said Dalziel gently, ‘because you buggers are like us buggers, you’re bred up to be suspicious. Instead of which you’re sitting there all sweetness and light and Christian understanding! You weren’t having a bit on the side with Mrs Highsmith, by any chance, were you?’

  ‘Mr Dalziel! How dare you?’ cried Masson, scandalized.

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ protested Dalziel. ‘She’s a very attractive woman. You were a vigorous young man, well, in the prime of life, twenty years ago.’

  ‘I was, I was,’ said Masson, suddenly smiling. ‘I could tell you a tale … but I won’t. A
nd I certainly wouldn’t have dreamt of bending my sense of duty in the interests of a mere personal relationship!’

  ‘But you did suspect that it wasn’t Mrs Aldermann who’d got rid of the will, didn’t you?’ pressed Dalziel. ‘So why did you sit on your arse and say nowt? Why?’

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you why,’ said Masson with sudden passion. ‘Because justice was best served by doing nothing. Because I was absolutely certain that three years earlier, Florence Aldermann had deliberately and maliciously destroyed her husband’s will, that’s why!’

  Dalziel finished his whisky in his surprise and had to pour himself another.

  ‘But why should she?’ he wondered. ‘This chap, Eddie Aldermann, wasn’t the kind to disinherit his wife from what I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘Of course he wasn’t. He was the fairest, the kindest, of men. I drew up his will, of course. In it he left the bulk of his estate to his wife. But he also left a substantial legacy to Mrs Highsmith to be held in trust for her son, Patrick, till he came of age. It was this that so offended Mrs Aldermann, I suspect. Oh yes, there was no doubt in my mind but that she destroyed the will. Unfortunately I had just suffered a bereavement myself, my wife. And I had gone to Australia on a six-month visit to my daughter there. I didn’t know anything of all this till I came back. No will! I was furious. But I was uncertain what to do. There were constraints upon me, you see. After all, I might have been wrong. It wasn’t until she herself was struck down two years later and Mrs Highsmith came to Rosemont to take care of her that I learned that the allowance Eddie had always made her had been discontinued. Then I was sure! But it began to look as if things might be regularized without my intervention. There was all this talk of Mrs Highsmith staying on permanently, and of a new will. I was determined that justice would be done in this one, and to Mrs Aldermann’s credit it must be said that she’d come to a much truer estimate of her niece’s worth. It takes a brush with death to put things in perspective sometimes, Mr Dalziel.’

  Dalziel rubbed his huge hand across his huge face.

  ‘Look,’ he said in his kindliest tones, ‘I still can’t see why you let it pass. I mean, I can see why someone else might do it, but I know you, Mr Masson, I know how you’ve always gone on about the letter of the law being as important as the spirit, and I can’t see how, on what you’ve told me, you could convince yourself you were right to say nothing if you thought Penny Highsmith had removed that will. Why not take it to the law and try to sort out things there?’

  Masson laughed. It was an unexpected sound, high and clear and girlish.

  ‘It was because I could have done that and won very easily that I did what I did, Mr Dalziel,’ he cried. ‘That was the whole point! But I’d promised Eddie, you see. And also there’d have been a very great scandal. Things in those days weren’t quite so free as now. This way achieved the same, the right, the proper result, without any of that.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ said Dalziel. ‘What result? What did you promise Eddie Aldermann?’

  Masson shook his head. ‘A promise is a promise.’

  ‘To a dead man. Listen, you’ve bent your principles a good way, just bend them a little more. If you don’t, I’ll just have to go on probing. People will start talking, I don’t know what about yet, but they will. And I’ll probe till I find out. You’ve given me a direction, Masson. I’ll keep going till I get there.’

  No one could view the menacing thrust of Dalziel’s huge head and the determined clamp of the jaws without believing him.

  ‘All right. But no further!’

  ‘Than necessary,’ said Dalziel, uncompromising now he knew he’d won.

  ‘Patrick’s father,’ said Masson.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Patrick Highsmith’s father.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Dalziel, there already, but determined to make Masson say it.

  ‘Patrick Highsmith’s father was Eddie Aldermann.’

  3

  WILL SCARLET

  (Modern shrub. Wide-spreading, bright red blooms, long-lasting, with a musky scent.)

  Saturday had started well for Dick Elgood. At eleven o’clock he had been sitting in his office in the otherwise empty Perfecta building waiting for a visitor.

  The man, who arrived dead on time, wore dark glasses and a light grey hat. These were simple measures to cut down the possibility of recognition, matters of habit rather than fear though there were certainly people in this town whose recognition was to be avoided.

  Pascoe for instance might have recognized him as the man he’d glimpsed last time he had visited Elgood, but that was unimportant. Daphne Aldermann, however, might have recognized him as the man who’d masqueraded as a Water Board official, and that could have been embarrassing. And Andy Dalziel would certainly have recognized him as the man who’d punched his nose the previous night, and that would probably have been fatal.

  ‘Come in, Mr Easey,’ said Elgood. ‘What have you got for me?’

  Raymond Easey was a private enquiry agent, based in London, and recommended to Elgood by a business friend as having those qualities of speed, discretion, and scant respect for the law as long as the money was right, which Dandy Dick had specified.

  His main brief had been to procure an accurate representation of Patrick Aldermann’s financial position. His work here had been satisfactory to the extent that Elgood could now prove to the board that Aldermann was in some financial embarrassment. But that in itself might not be enough to discredit him.

  Easey’s secondary instructions had been that any evidence of unlawful activity on Aldermann’s part would bring a large bonus. The man had seemed clean, however, and the agent’s efforts to penetrate Rosemont in search of evidence to the contrary had been thwarted by Daphne’s unexpected return. Fortunately his intimate knowledge of the household debts had enabled him to talk his way out of that.

  He had returned to London where one of his employees had been checking on Aldermann during his brief visit there. It had all been boring stuff, flower shows and publishers, except for one unexplained visit to a flat in Victoria. Easey took over. He did all his illegal work himself on the grounds that employing others to do it cost too much, laid himself open to blackmail, and you couldn’t trust the bastards anyway.

  Getting in was simple. He’d waited till he saw the woman leave with a fat, balding man. Always ultra-careful in such matters, he had tracked them to a restaurant and seen them safely launched on their meal before returning to the flat and getting in with a pick-lock.

  A systematic search had elicited the disappointing information that Mrs Highsmith was the subject’s mother. Still, mums were notorious for keeping letters and other memorabilia, and loving sons often poured their hearts out into the maternal ear in search of a totally uncritical sympathy. But there had been nothing until he had noticed that the lining of the old leather writing-case he’d just been through with no joy was torn. He stuck his fingers in. There was something in there. He had just pulled it out and read the words in an almost Gothic script Last Will and Testament of Florence Aldermann when the outer door of the flat had opened.

  Carefully he’d put the will in his pocket, replaced the case in the drawer, and waited. His escape from the flat, the bruises on his knuckles, and the pounding in his heart as he fled along the street, had almost convinced him that the game wasn’t worth a candle. But now Elgood’s face as he looked at the will told him different. There was pleasure there, and a man had to pay for his pleasure.

  ‘Will she miss it?’ wondered Elgood.

  ‘Hard to say. It was well hidden to the point of being lost. You know how it is. People put things away somewhere safe and a week later they’ve forgotten where the hell they put ’em. Eventually they forget they even had ’em!’

  He was perfectly right. Penny Highsmith had had two decades to lose track of the will and with her happy-go-lucky nature, she needed far less than that. After Aunt Flo’s death, the will had been genuinely mislaid, and when Penny came
across it a couple of days later she’d stuck it in the lining of her writing-case, not with any real criminal intent but as a simple device for gaining pause to think. After all, hadn’t that nice, amiable lawyer said with something approaching a wink that, in his view, the absence of a will would mean justice was done the way Eddie Aldermann would have liked it? Not that she’d ever felt she had any rights as far as Eddie was concerned. A dear, kind man, sadly hag-ridden by old Aunt Flo, it had seemed perfectly natural when he came across her sunbathing in the garden one balmy afternoon, well away from her aunt’s disapproving eye, to draw him down beside her and give him what the old bat had clearly denied him for years. He’d been extremely concerned and generous when Patrick came along, but she’d never made any demands and it hadn’t surprised her when, after Eddie’s death, Flo had stopped the allowance.

  But now as the lawyer steered her towards this large inheritance, it had begun to seem foolish to worry about a will which gave everything away to some daft charities, and by the end of a year it had gone quite out of her mind.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ said Elgood. ‘I’ll see you’re rewarded.’

  Easey smiled. He saw to his own rewards.

  He put another piece of paper on the desk.

  ‘My bill,’ he said. ‘Terms are cash.’

  Elgood looked, whistled, but paid. He was, after all, in some ways paying for his future.

  And then had come the happy moment when he phoned Aldermann.

  Daphne had answered. She’d sounded surprisingly pleased to hear his voice, but he’d cut her off sharply and asked for her husband.

  Aldermann he’d offered even less chance to talk. There was, he was discovering in himself, a distaste for what he was doing. It was close to blackmail. In fact, what else was it but blackmail? But Elgood had a lifetime of ruthless business dealing behind him and he was not about to go soft now.

  ‘Aldermann?’ he said. ‘Listen to me. I’ve got something you might like to see. No, don’t interrupt. It’s a will. Aye, that’s what I said. And it seems to me to make it pretty clear that that big house of yours and them gardens and all that cash you’ve got through, shouldn’t by right have ever come to you in the first place!’