“My God. The poor woman could have been killed!”
“Which would have left us with egg on our face and probably muddied up his tracks even more.”
Freeman said obstinately, “I think she should still be treated as a suspect.”
“Is that right? Opinion noted, Dave,” said Glenister. “Now why don’t you run along like a good little spook and see if they’ve secured the cottage yet? And you might tell Gordon I’d like a word.”
Freeman moved away. Pascoe had enjoyed seeing him squashed but wished he’d wriggled a bit more.
“I’m glad for Ffion’s sake he’s not in charge,” he said. “I think he’d be booking her a room in the Tower with the Full English Execution laid on for the morning. What will you do with her, by the way?”
“She’ll need to sign a statement then we’ll cut her loose, I expect,” said Glenister.
“Good,” said Pascoe. “All right if I have a word with her now?”
“By all means. The poor child’s naturally a bit strung out. A familiar face would probably be a comfort to her.”
Giving Glenister house points for humanity, Pascoe opened the car door and slipped in beside the publicist. She looked haggard and weary but her face lit up when she saw who it was.
“Peter,” she said. “Are you OK? God, I was so worried when I saw you go down!”
She leaned toward him and he put his arm round her shoulders and drew her in.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Really. How are you? That’s the important thing. This must have been a terrible shock.”
“You’re not wrong there! It’s a nightmare! What happens now?”
“You’ll need to make a written statement, then we’ll get you back to civilization.”
“You sure?”
“Of course. What else did you imagine might happen?”
“I don’t know. It’s all been so crazy. When I heard that first bang and looked out and saw those guys running around all tooled up, I thought, This is it for you, girl! I slammed everything shut and said a prayer of thanks that Jonty had got the place so well protected. But I thought, Those guys out there look like they’ve come for serious business and they’re not going to let a bit of stainless steel and reinforced glass keep them out for long. When you appeared I was never so glad to see anyone in my life! But what’s happening anyway? What’s Jonty supposed to have done?”
Pascoe said cautiously, “It’s a security matter. We think he might have got mixed up with some rather unsavory people.”
“Is this anything to do with that Templar gang who chopped the Arab’s head off and poisoned Carradice?”
She was sharp, perhaps too sharp for her own good. Of course the possible connection was not too hard to make, especially if she had a radio. The airwaves had been full of debate about the origins, identities, and intentions of the so-called New Knighthood, most of it pure speculation, and ranging in tone from absolute condemnation, through various versions of understanding-the-impulse-while-deploring-the-deeds, to the near open approval of the Voice’s editor. Interviewed on one of the news programs he had repeated the burden of his editorial rant.
If the Security Services can’t catch the terrorists, and the Law is powerless to punish the few who do get caught, it’s hard to blame anyone who looks for a better way. If the question is, do the Templars make me feel safer now than I did before, the answer is a resounding yes, they certainly do!
Pascoe thought of warning Ffion about putting her speculations in the public domain but decided that would only come close to confirming them.
He said, “Look, we need to talk to Youngman, for his own good as much as anything. The sooner we can eliminate him from our inquiries the better. So if there’s any way you can give us a line on him…”
There was something, he felt it. But she was hesitating, maybe because she was in the media business herself and hated to give up a possible story, or maybe because she was recalling her own terror at the sight of those armed men coming at her across the garden. He thought of drumming home his conviction that Youngman had deliberately set her up to take the brunt of the likely assault on the cottage. But he decided she’d been terrified enough tonight already without piling on more.
He said gently, “Listen, Ffion, if there is anything, I’ll do my best to get to him by myself, just to talk to him, none of this guns-at-midnight nonsense. We want to talk to him, that’s all, to let him have his say. Anything you can tell me that might help me reach him before the Wild Bunch out there do, now’s the time. It won’t go any further.”
He felt her relax against him and she said, “It’s probably nothing, but when I toured his second book in February, there were a couple of times he spent the night away from our hotels. Nothing wrong with that, he never missed a promotional meet, not until Friday that is. I probably wouldn’t have noticed he was away, except that we’d sort of got together by then, so him not being around at night impinged, if you follow me.”
“Did you ask him where he’d been?” said Pascoe.
“Too bloody right I did!” she said with sudden force. “OK, he’s not the kind of guy you expect exclusive rights on, but no way was I going to play second fiddle to some randy reading-group woman. Some of these writers are forever on the make when they do a signing, see. It’s a small step from fan to fanny, that’s what one of them once said to me, and him what they call a literary novelist and on the Booker shortlist that year!”
Pascoe made a note to tell Ellie that Ffion clearly expected a higher standard of behavior from serious novelists than mere genre fiction writers.
He said, “But he convinced you he hadn’t just availed himself of a better offer?”
“Oh yes. First time he said he’d dropped in on an old military friend and been persuaded to stay the night. That was when we were staying in Sheffield. Same thing a couple of nights later when we were doing Leeds. I said, another old military friend? He laughed and said, in a way, though not so old. I didn’t get that, but I did get the impression that if I started acting like I had some sort of right to know what he was up to, I’d soon get the dusty answer. So I shut up.”
“Because you liked him a lot?”
“Because I liked him quite a lot, yeah. Also I like my job, and if a successful author says he wants to dump a publicist, people start asking questions. Talking of jobs, you sure I’ll get away tonight? I really need to be back at my desk sometime tomorrow.”
Forgetting that you’ve already told Glenister you’re not expected back till Tuesday, thought Pascoe. But he couldn’t blame her for wanting to be back in bright-light land as quickly as possible, especially not with a story like hers to tell. No doubt CAT would try to persuade her to keep quiet for a while at least. Well, good luck. It wasn’t his job, thank heaven!
“Yes, sure,” he said. “But you ought to take things quietly when you get home. You’ve had quite a weekend. First that thing on the Fidler show, now this. Maybe you should pick your authors more carefully.”
“Will you tell Ellie or shall I?” she riposted.
Smiling, he got out of the car and went to join Glenister.
“Nice work,” she said.
“What? I haven’t told you anything yet,” he replied. And he still wasn’t certain how much he was going to tell. Feed information into CAT and you never knew where it was going to come out.
Then he saw her remove her ear-piece, and the implication of her compliment struck home.
“You’ve been listening!”
“Of course,” she said. “Told you a friendly familiar face would do the trick, didn’t I? You played it well, laddie. That stuff about wanting a little heart to heart with Jonty, no nasty guns, that was the perfect line. We’ve got his military record already, of course. Now we’ll do a deep trawl to see if we can pick up a link around Sheffield or Leeds.”
There was no way to express his indignation without giving away his doubts.
He said, “We try to please. So if we’re done here
now, shall I send her on her way?”
She gave him the schoolmarm stare.
“You’re joking,” she said.
“But I practically gave her my word…”
“She’s Welsh. You know what they think of the word of an Englishman. Get real, Peter. You don’t think I’m letting someone with her press connections loose, do you? At least, not before two Appeal Lords and a whole coven of Amnesty lawyers make me!”
“But surely if we explain to her, she’ll promise to cooperate.”
“Of course she will. She’ll promise you her bonny Welsh body if it means getting somewhere she can start haggling with the Voice. After that trick she played on your wife, I’m amazed you can even contemplate trusting her.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“She’s going to be invited to accompany us back to Manchester for further questioning. If she plays up, I’ll arrest her.”
“For what?”
“Come on, laddie! Earn your pay! She had a rendezvous with a man suspected of being complicit in several serious crimes. She held stuff back when she talked to me, God knows what she’s still holding back. And she fired a shotgun at my men.”
“But you know she’s innocent!”
“Innocent? You sure of that, Peter? We need to be absolutely sure. Anyway, innocent, guilty, the important thing is, it will be a couple of days before anyone starts asking questions about her, so why let her run round shooting off her mouth before then? You know it makes sense. Do you want to be the one who tells her or shall I?”
Pascoe looked toward the car. Ffion was watching them through the window. She smiled at him. He smiled uncertainly back.
God knows what all this is going to do for Ellie’s literary career, he thought gloomily.
“She’s all yours,” he said. “Now, please, can I go home?”
“Of course,” said Glenister. “I’ve sent someone to fetch your car. Didn’t think you’d want to sit with the fair Ffion again! Thanks a lot, Peter. You’ve been a great help.”
This sounded a bit final.
He said, “So, see you tomorrow.”
She looked at him blankly, then said, “Here, help me get out of this torture machine before I swoon away like a Victorian maiden.”
She doesn’t know what to do with me, he thought as he gave her what was quite unnecessary assistance in removing her bullet proof vest.
“Thank God for that,” she said joggling her liberated bosom. “I’ve lost all sense of feeling. I could suckle a warthog and not feel a thing.”
He said, “And tomorrow?”
“I hope normal service will have been resumed by tomorrow,” she laughed.
“I meant me, tomorrow. Shall I report to the Lubyanka?”
“No. Take a day off, Peter,” she said. “You probably came back to work too soon anyway, and this weekend was meant to be an R and R session for you. Didn’t really work out that way, did it? You have a long lie-in with that lovely wifie of yours, and I’ll give you a bell, OK?”
I shouldn’t have asked, he reproached himself. I should just have turned up in Manchester. Now they can cut me right out of the loop.
He felt as if he were on the edge of seeing things plainly but was powerless to stop the lights being turned off.
He said, “I’d like to go on helping. I think I can contribute.”
He tried to keep it tight and professional. Any hint of a personal plea could be counterproductive. He knew from his own experience that having someone on your team whose motives were too up close and personal was generally a bad idea.
“Of course you can,” she said reassuringly. “But only if you’re fully fit. And, Peter, a word. If I ring you at home and find that you’re not at home because you’ve gone into work, that’s it. I don’t like laddies on my team who can’t follow instructions. Watch how you drive now.”
Was she his friend or not? He didn’t know, but he had to act as if she were.
“I will,” he said. “And you watch out for warthogs.”
Her laughter as he walked away sounded genuine enough.
But then it would, wouldn’t it?
PART FIVE
For God is like a skilful Geometrician, who, when more easily and with one stroak of his Compass he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and fore-laid principles of his Art.
—SIR THOMAS BROWNE, RELIGIO MEDICI
1
A FREE LUNCH
For the next few days the papers were full of Templar and terrorist stories, but by mid-week even the speculative fecundity of the tabloids was finding it difficult to create the appearance of novelty without hard facts.
The weekend security alert at Mid-Yorkshire Central Hospital got a good airing, but on the whole it was a blank white sheet that flapped in the wind. The gentlemen of the Press, desperate for copy, soon seized upon the fact that two policemen linked to the Mill Street bombing were patients there. But only the Voice, which in matters of pure fabrication always went the extra mile, for once got close to the truth with its theory that an attempt had been made on the life of one of the officers, though they could offer no hard evidence to support it. The official spin was that the alert had been sparked by an attempt to steal drugs from the dispensary. While no one believed it, no one could disprove it either, and a lie unchallenged is very soon stronger than a truth unsupported.
Knowing that Voice jackals would have been padding round the hospital corridors waving bundles of banknotes under every nose that came their way, Pascoe wondered how CAT had managed to sit on the grumpy Mr. Mills who shared Hector’s room.
Perhaps they’d locked him up with Ffion Lyke-Evans.
When Ellie heard that Ffion was being held incommunicado, she grew indignant on her behalf, which at least took the heat off Pascoe for a while.
On his return from Northumberland, he had opted to tell Ellie everything, on the deplorably sexist grounds that simple facts could never be as bad as female fancy.
Unhappily he quickly discovered that parity of information does not necessarily lead to parity of conclusion. While it was obvious to him that he had (a) never been in any danger during the assault on Youngman’s cottage and (b) that the only way he was going to discover what had really happened to put Fat Andy into a life-threatening coma was to stick as close to CAT operations as he could, to Ellie it was just as clear that if his conspiracy theories had any merit at all, his persistence in nosing around unofficially could only put his own health, physical and professional, at serious risk.
“Go and see Trimble,” she urged. “Or write to the Commissioner. Get it in the open so you’re not a solitary target.”
“You think that would help,” he retorted, “when I’ve no idea how high this goes, how many blind eyes are being turned at top level to these so-called Templars?”
To which she replied, “And you think that’s going to comfort me?”
But what did comfort her was his strong suspicion that his ad hoc secondment to CAT was going to be terminated.
On Monday, he’d wanted to go into the Station and see how things were there, but recalling Glenister’s injunction, he stayed at home, jumping every time the phone rang.
It was never Glenister and by midafternoon he was convinced that she wasn’t going to call. Then at five o’clock, the phone rang again.
“Pascoe,” he said.
“Peter, hi. It’s Dave Freeman.”
His heart sank. She wasn’t even doing her own dirty work.
Then what Freeman was saying sank in.
“Sandy’s sorry she can’t ring herself, but she’s busy busy. How’re you feeling?”
“Fine. Well rested. Ready for work.”
“Excellent. But let’s not rush things. Sandy thought you were looking a bit peaky on Sunday. Why don’t you meander across here tomorrow evening, settle back in your hotel, then report for duty at the Lube on Wednesday.”
His fi
rst impulse was to say he could be there tonight but he resisted it.
“Yes! Fine,” he said. “I’ll be there first thing Wednesday.”
He must have sounded keen.
“At least wait till sunup,” said Freeman.
He laughed as he spoke, but it was a sharing, friendly laugh rather than his usual knowing fricative.
When he told Ellie, she wasn’t pleased, but seeing it was pointless to argue, she held her peace. Never part mad had been one of their early marriage resolutions, never broken without subsequent regret, and her good-bye kiss as he left the following day was as passionate as a man could wish for.
Next morning she was sitting glaring in frustration at the recalcitrant third chapter of her new novel when the phone rang. The number in the caller display was unfamiliar, and she answered with a snappy, “Yes?” ready to cut off any attempt to sell her anything.
“Ellie?” said a man’s voice cautiously.
“That’s right. And you are?”
“It’s Maurice. Maurice Kentmore. I’m sorry, is this a bad time?”
“Maurice!” she said. “Hi. No, it’s fine, really. For some reason I thought you were trying to sell double glazing. Sorry.”
He laughed and said, “No, not selling. The opposite in fact. I had to come over here on business this morning, and I just wondered if I could buy you—and Peter, of course—lunch? Sorry it’s so last minute, but I got my business done much quicker than I expected, and I have to hang around as I’m picking up Kilda later—she’s visiting a friend—so what I mean is, I thought I’d have a bite to eat somewhere, and I tend to bolt my food when I’m eating alone, which gives me indigestion…”
“So this is a medical emergency rather than a social call?” said Ellie, amused for once rather than irritated at the polite Englishman’s inability to say, “Fancy some lunch?”
Death Comes for the Fat Man Page 24