Deadheads

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Boys take much longer to mature than girls,’ said Ellie comfortably. ‘Peter, what did happen to Dick Elgood? Have you heard anything?’

  ‘There’ll have to be an inquest,’ said Pascoe vaguely.

  ‘He always seemed likely to go quickly,’ said Daphne. ‘All that exercise at his age.’

  Ellie choked into her squash and Daphne glanced reprovingly at her.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she continued, ‘but I felt as if I were seeing him for the last time on Sunday. There seemed to be something very final when we said goodbye.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Ellie deflatingly. ‘We all have these premonitions after the event.’

  ‘No, that night, after we got back from your place, I couldn’t sleep. I went to bed, but in the end I had to get up. I was sitting out here half the night drinking whisky. It was a strange feeling to have after such a lovely day. A sense of some horrible happening being quite close. You can believe me or not,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘And Patrick? Did he have this premonition too?’ asked Pascoe with sudden interest.

  ‘No.’ Daphne laughed. ‘He slept solidly, till I woke him getting back into bed about four. Then we had to get up again so he could have a drink. Then we sat out here and drank and talked for another hour or so.’

  She blushed faintly as she spoke and Ellie guessed that conversation wasn’t all that had passed between them on the terrace.

  ‘I slept all the way to Gloucester,’ concluded Daphne. ‘I was still yawning when I met the headmaster and the staff, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Ellie. ‘In those places the teachers are used to that reaction to their presence.’

  ‘Tut-tut,’ said Pascoe, filled with relief at what he’d just heard. Surely even Dalziel would admit this unsolicited alibi? ‘I think I’ll go and have a word with Patrick, if you’ll excuse me.’

  He found Aldermann hard at work in his rose-garden.

  ‘Hello, Peter,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you’d arrived. I’m sorry to have been so unhostly.’

  ‘That’s OK. No, don’t stop. It’s nice down here.’

  ‘There’s really such a lot to do,’ said Aldermann, still apologizing. ‘That storm the other night – it must have been the night you were in the house – such damage!’

  All the time he talked the silver blade of the pruning knife was moving with swift economy around the rose branches, severing broken twigs and damaged blooms which were then popped into the canvas bag slung around his neck.

  ‘And now, of course, you’re minus your gardeners,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Yes, that’s almost the worst thing,’ said Aldermann. ‘I was flabbergasted. Caldicott! Why, he’s been coming to Rosemont ever since he was a boy. And his father before him was with Uncle Eddie from the beginning.’

  ‘It was Brent, the son, who was the trouble, it seems,’ said Pascoe. ‘He had a bit of a record, nothing serious, but that’s how he met Arthur Marsh when they were in the nick together. Later Arthur had this bright idea. It was quite bright, I suppose.’

  ‘But how did they get old Caldicott to go along with it?’

  ‘Feeling the pinch, I suppose. Everyone’s been cutting back lately, wanting Caldicott to come half a day a week instead of a full day, but expecting much the same work. It’s easy to start resenting their big, comfortable houses and all the goodies you glimpse through doors and windows. Marsh saw other things – alarm systems, sensor locations, bypass switches, wiring circuits – he’s a trained electrician and there’s plenty of written material about these systems nowadays. They were able to do such neat jobs, not being hurried and working in daylight, that often it wasn’t till the owners got home, sometimes days later, that the break-in was discovered.’

  ‘I still find it hard to believe, or forgive. I certainly never cut back on their time here.’

  No, you wouldn’t thought Pascoe.

  He said, ‘Caldicott senior did say as much. He’s the one who’s cracked and coughed the lot. He hadn’t wanted to do Rosemont. That’s where the business had really started, he said, and you were that rare thing among employers, a real gardener rather than just a flash Harry wanting to put on a show.’

  ‘He said that?’ Aldermann looked pleased. ‘Well, I’ll have to find someone else now, of course. It was quite a shock. But then this other business of Dick Elgood – that was really devastating. You’ve heard, of course?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ve heard.’

  ‘Poor Dick. It’s such a tragic waste. But then, so much of his life was, wasn’t it?’

  ‘He looked very successful to me,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Did he? Yes, I suppose he would. And I dare say that’s how he thought of himself too. But I doubt if he was really a happy man. I honestly believe that in Nature there’s only one true course of development for each of us, and the trick is finding it. At some point Dick took a wrong road. Like a rose-tree. You can cut and trim it away from its true growth and be quite successful with it for a long time. But in the end, the misdirection shows.’

  ‘What will happen at Perfecta now?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s all in the melting-pot. There’ll be changes, I expect, but nothing ever really changes.’

  Patrick Aldermann spoke with the confident disinterest of one who knows where the real centre of things lies. And why should he not? Had not life confirmed his judgement at every turn? Some might have called him an opportunist, but opportunity so invariably offered must assume the dimension of fate. There had been no doubt in his mind this lunch-time, for instance, that when he went to Perfecta he would find that Quayle had already assumed the mantle of acting chairman and managing director, and in that capacity had installed himself in Elgood’s office. It hadn’t even been necessary to find a pretext for getting him to open the safe. A stricken Miss Dominic had already opened it at his behest. And just as inevitably, the plain white envelope which Patrick had picked out and pocketed had contained the original of his Great-Aunt Florence’s will. This was no opportunism but destiny! With such assurance of maintaining the true order of things, where for instance had been the risk in wandering into Elgood’s cottage as the departing guests crowded the little garden outside to make their goodbyes, pulling down the attic ladder, ascending and depositing the cardboard box with bottle tops slightly loosened into the open cistern? Three minutes. No one had noticed he’d gone. So it had always been. So, he assumed, it would always be. Beyond choice. Beyond morality. Preordained.

  He became aware that Pascoe was observing him curiously. And not only Pascoe. His son was standing close behind the policeman, almost invisible in the camouflage of sun-flecks through the breeze-stirred roses.

  ‘Hello, David,’ said Aldermann, resuming his pruning. ‘What are you up to.’

  ‘Mummy sent me to say it’s rude for you to keep Mr Pascoe standing out here so long.’

  ‘And she’s right, of course. Thank you, David. Peter, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was my idea,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ said Aldermann, slicing another bloom off its stem with a single economic motion which set the sunlight spilling off the silver blade like alien blood.

  ‘Daddy,’ said the boy.

  ‘Yes, David.’

  ‘What is it that you’re doing? I mean, I can see what you’re doing, but why do you do it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Aldermann with his knife poised above another deadhead. ‘I’m …’

  Then he paused and smiled as if at some deep, inner joke.

  Carefully he closed the pruning knife and put it in his pocket.

  ‘Later, David,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain to you some other time. We have our guests to look after. Peter, you must be roasted, standing out here in the sun. Let’s go and find a cool drink and sit and talk to the ladies. Isn’t it a perfect day?’

  If you enjoyed Deadheads, read the next book in the Dalziel & Pascoe series

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  Read on for the first chapter now.

  Chapter 1

  ‘I am just going outside and I may be some time.’

  On a cold and storm-racked November night, while Peter and Ellie Pascoe were still celebrating with wine and wassail the first birthday which their daughter Rose had greeted with huge indifference, three old men, who felt far from indifferent, died.

  Thomas Arthur Parrinder, 71, was aroused for the last time by a warm wetness amid the freezing rain which had been lashing his face for almost four hours. He opened one eye and saw above him, silhouetted vaguely against the dark sky, a long animal head with pricking ears, and he glimpsed also the gleam of tooth and inquisitive eye as the beast stooped down to lick at him once more. His mouth gaped and a rattle that may have been a laugh spilled out with it a single word. ‘Polly!’ No other word passed his lips, and precious little breath either, before an overworked hospital doctor pronounced him (not without some guilty relief) dead on arrival.

  At just about the same time, Robert Deeks, 73, was being hooked back from a long slide to oblivion by the ringing of a distant bell. A little earlier another bell had rung for some considerable time, but that had eventually ceased. At last this new one stopped too. Then a door opened. A voice called out. Other doors. Opening and shutting. Footsteps below, hurrying, scurrying; a voice growing in volume and alarm; footsteps and voice together on the stairs, ascending. He took another lurch back to reality. He was in a bathroom, his own bathroom. To register this was quite a triumph and, thus encouraged, his mind took a further step. He was in the bath! He looked down at the russet-coloured water lapping his chest, grey and flimsy as a sodden newspaper blown against a picket fence. His mind suddenly broke through fact into feeling. It would be a shaming thing to be found in the bath, especially when he had made it so dirty. It was a special old people’s bath with a non-slip bottom and padded grips to help him ease himself in and out. He reached for the grips now, but his nerveless and swollen-knuckled fingers could find no purchase, and even if they had, he knew there was no strength left in his arms to pull himself upright. He let his arms fall. Fact and feeling were beginning to retreat at an even pace. He felt himself slipping away with them. A cry of horror from the open door inhibited the process for one last moment. Slowly he turned his head and saw his daughter in the doorway, paralysed at the shock of seeing him bathed in his own diluted blood. He opened his toothless mouth and said, ‘Charley.’ The next bell to ring was the ambulance bell but he was moving beyond recall towards a more urgent summons by then.

  Philip Cater Westerman (70) felt the rain bouncing off his plastic mac and the wind trying to get under it as he mounted his bicycle and rode out of the car park of The Duke of York. At least the wind was behind him as he turned left towards The Towers. That this narrow, country thoroughfare was called Paradise Road did not strike him yet as ironical. Then he saw lights coming towards him, making nothing of the wind, ripping through the curtain of rain with arrogant ease. The car must have covered a hundred yards in the time he took to cover ten, even with the wind at his back. And in the same instant as the thought, the lights were twisting and brakes screaming in an attempt at evasion both desperate and vain. He was facing the car when he and it almost simultaneously came to a halt. He saw the two front doors burst open and two figures come running towards him, one broad and bulky, the other as tall but thinner. The image remained in his mind, surprisingly powerful, indeed almost analgesic in its strength, as he was hurried to hospital. There, the same harassed houseman who had registered the first two septuagenarians d.o.a. saw that another mile in the ambulance would almost certainly have given him three in a row. As it was, this poor devil was hardly worth preparing for surgery, but the doctor was not yet so advanced in his profession as to be quite certain he was God’s agent, and he set the wheels in motion. As if to confirm this decision, Philip Cater Westerman opened his eyes and said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, old chap,’ said the doctor. ‘Take it easy. Have you right in no time.’

  But no time was precisely what Philip Cater Westerman knew he had.

  ‘Paradise,’ he said reflectively. Then he added with great indignation, ‘Paradise! Driver … fat bastard … pissed!’

  And died.

  In the Pascoe household, the telephone rang.

  Pascoe groaned, Ellie made a face and went to answer it. Pascoe listened at the open door for a moment but when he heard Ellie greet her father, his face relaxed and he returned to his celebratory Marks and Spencer Burgundy. He grinned at his wife on her return, inviting her to share his relief that it hadn’t been the duty sergeant with the once flattering but now fearful message that yet again Mid-Yorkshire CID could not function without its favourite Detective-Inspector.

  Ellie did not return his smile, so he returned her worried frown.

  ‘Trouble?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure. It was Dad, ringing up to wish Rose a happy birthday.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s the second time. He came on the line when Mum rang this morning.’

  ‘He’s so proud of his granddaughter, he wants to do it twice,’ said Pascoe. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I said it was nice of him to do it twice and he seemed puzzled. Then Mum came on.’

  ‘And did she wish Rose happy birthday again too?’

  ‘No,’ said Ellie in exasperation. ‘She just said to take no notice of Dad, he’d be forgetting his own head next!’

  ‘Sensible woman, your mother,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘’Tis distance lends approval to the view,’ said Ellie ironically. ‘But she sounded worried. Dad hasn’t really been right since that bad turn he had two years ago. Mum didn’t say anything, but I can tell. Peter, I think I ought to pop down there and check things out.’

  Down there was Orburn, a small market town south of Lincoln, about eighty miles away.

  ‘Why not?’ said Pascoe expansively. ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow would suit me,’ said Ellie. ‘If that’s all right? They haven’t seen Rose for a bit. It’s been awkward for them since Dad gave up the car. I’d stay the night. It’s too far there and back in a day with the baby. Would you mind?’

  Pascoe sipped his wine reflectively and said, ‘You know, if you really let yourself go and give it all you’ve got, you could easily shatter your own record for getting close to asking my permission! Now, that would be nice. But I’d need the request in writing, else who’s going to believe it?’

  ‘Bastard,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m merely consulting your convenience.’

  ‘Let’s keep Andy Dalziel out of this,’ grinned Pascoe. ‘Hadn’t you better consult your mum’s too?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll ring her back now,’ said Ellie, retreating through the door.

  ‘And this time, leave the phone off the hook,’ called Pascoe after her. ‘If I’m going to be deprived of my marital rights tomorrow, I claim double ration tonight.’

  But before Ellie could reach the phone, it rang.

  He heard Ellie give the number, there was a pause, then she said, ‘All right, Sergeant Wield. I’ll get him.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Pascoe. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

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  About the Author

  Reginald Hill, who died in 2012, was a native of Cumbria and former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his novels featuring detectives Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. Their appearances won him numerous awards including a CWA Gold Dagger, the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement and the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award. The Dalziel and Pascoe novels have also been adapted into a hugely popular BBC TV series.

  By Reginald Hill

  Dalziel and Pascoe novels

  A CLUBBABLE WOMAN

  AN ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

  RULING PASSION

  AN APRIL SHROUD

  A PINCH OF SNUFF

  A KILLING KINDNESS

  DEADHEADS

/>   EXIT LINES

  CHILD’S PLAY

  UNDER WORLD

  BONES AND SILENCE

  RECALLED TO LIFE

  PICTURES OF PERFECTION

  THE WOOD BEYOND

  ASKING FOR THE MOON: A DALZIEL AND PASCOE COLLECTION

  ON BEULAH HEIGHT

  ARMS AND THE WOMEN

  DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD

  DEATH’S JEST-BOOK

  GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT

  THE DEATH OF DALZIEL

  A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES

  MIDNIGHT FUGUE

  Joe Sixsmith novels

  BLOOD SYMPATHY

  BORN GUILTY

  KILLING THE LAWYERS

  SINGING THE SADNESS

  THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES

  Other

  FELL OF DARK

  THE LONG KILL

  THE COLLABORATORS

  THERE ARE NO GHOSTS IN THE SOVIET UNION

  DEATH OF A DORMOUSE

  DREAM OF DARKNESS

  THE ONLY GAME

  THE STRANGER HOUSE

  THE WOODCUTTER

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