Cap laughed and said, “Ellie, you’ve trained your husband well. Yes, but only a couple of years. Of course that makes a lot of difference at that age, but she was a legend in her own lunch hour. Our answer to Lady Chatterley.”
“That sounds interesting,” said Pascoe, recalling Hot Rod’s assurance that Edie was a very sexy lady.
“It was. Kitbag—that’s Dame Kitty Bagnold, our head—caught her bonking in the potting shed with the college gardener. Or rather with his son and assistant who was, I recall, quite dishy. Sex-on-a-shovel we used to call him.”
“Bloody male hamster wouldn’t be safe in them places,” muttered Dalziel.
“So what happened?” asked Pascoe.
“Boy vanished. I think his dad sent him out on other jobs thereafter. As for Edie, it was pack your bags and never darken this doorstep again.”
“Working-class employee gets off scot free, rich fee-paying pupil is sent down the road. Bet the Tory tabloids loved that!” said Ellie, hoping to steer the conversation into more general areas, away from anything no matter how distantly connected with CAT.
It didn’t work.
Cap said, “Kitbag must have decided that good gardeners were harder to come by than rich kids and Edie only had a couple of terms to go anyway. She was a real school heroine till she ruined her image a couple of months later by marrying Alexander Kewley.”
“What was wrong with that?” asked Pascoe.
“For a start he was nearly thirty years older than she was and it wasn’t as if he were stinking rich or had a title or anything. He was a trustee of the school and he’d show up at Speech Day and Founder’s Day and Sports Day, especially at Sports Day. Wherever young flesh was being flashed, there would Alexander the Great be also. He was always chatting up Edie—I think he knew her father—and she’d do her cock-teasing thing. But no one imagined she would ever let him get closer than teasing distance.”
“So why did she do it?” wondered Pascoe.
Why is he always so fucking curious? Ellie asked herself.
Cap smiled reminiscently and went on, “Maybe so she could turn up at the next Founder’s Day with doting hubby and gurgling infant and queen it over Kitbag. I remember at one point Edie gave her the baby to hold while she tucked into the buffet, and the brat immediately filled his nappy.”
There was a loud snore from the bed. Dalziel was pretending to have gone to sleep. Or perhaps the poor old sod wasn’t pretending.
Ellie saw her chance and said softly, “Peter, I think perhaps we ought to go.”
“Yes, of course.”
Cap pressed a button to lower the bed’s backrest. Supine, he looked even paler and frailer. They moved quietly to the door. Cap followed them into the corridor.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “Bring Rosie next time. He’s very keen to see her.”
“We practically had to lock her up to stop her coming today,” said Ellie. “But we thought, best leave it till we saw how he looked. How do you think he’s doing, Cap?”
“Fine,” said Cap. “But not half as fine as he wants to pretend. It’s going to be a long haul to get him back to where he was, and you know Andy, he’s a one-mighty-leap man. But don’t worry, we’ll get him there eventually.”
Her breezy confidence was reassuring, and Pascoe needed to be reassured. While there’d been flashes of the old Dalziel, what had been disturbingly constant was the sense of change, his fear that something had happened inside to dilute the Fat Man’s essence, perhaps that something was broken beyond repair.
He tried to dislodge the distressing notion from his mind by returning to the niggle provoked by what Cap had told them.
“Why do you think Alexander Kewley agreed to change his name?” he asked.
“Don’t know. Maybe because he was seriously strapped for cash and the Hodges had it dripping out of their ears,” said Cap.
“That makes it sound like a deal,” said Pascoe.
Ellie said, trying not very successfully to hide her irritation, “Stop being a cop!”
Cap said, “I’m still in touch with old Kitbag. Could ask her about Edie Hodge if you like.”
Ellie gave him her Gorgon glare and Pascoe began to mutter, “No really, don’t bother,” when a thin reedy voice called from within the room, bringing to all their minds memories of past Dalzielesque summonses that could drown all church bells within an acre.
Cap pushed open the door and went back inside.
Ellie said, “Peter, you are going to leave it alone, aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course I am. Honest. Normal service resumed. I promised, didn’t I?”
She looked at him distrustingly but before she could respond, Cap reappeared.
“He woke up and realized you’d gone and he says there’s something he wanted to say to you, Peter. Do you mind?”
“Of course not.”
As the door closed behind Pascoe, Cap looked at Ellie curiously and said, “You two OK, are you?”
“Yes. Fine,” said Ellie shortly. Then she added, because she disliked prevarication, and Cap though not close was a friend, “He promised me all this business with CAT was behind him. He’s lucky to have got out of it as lightly as he did. I just think that he ought to give it a rest and settle back into things here.”
“It was Andy who wanted to hear all about it,” said Cap.
“That’s what Peter said, but I can tell, it’s stirred it all up again.”
“Ellie,” said Cap gently. “One thing I’ve learned since I partnered up with Andy is we need to be linked together by a long and loose rope.”
“Peter’s not Andy.”
“Of course he isn’t. But the rope linking them is in some ways a lot shorter and tighter than ours.”
The two women found things to look at in the empty corridor. They knew they were in a minefield where even a cautious step might end in an explosion, and so they stood in a silence waiting for rescue.
There was a saving silence too at Dalziel’s bedside. To Pascoe it seemed that the Fat Man had gone to sleep again, and he felt relieved, suspecting that anything that was said now was merely going to confirm his worst fears.
He began to turn away.
A sound from the bed stopped him and he leaned over the still figure.
The lips moved a fraction, letting out scarcely enough breath to stir a feather. Pascoe thought he heard his name on the breath.
He said, “Yes?”
“Peter, is that you?”
This was marginally stronger but not so strong it would have done more than tremble a candle flame.
“Yes, Andy, it’s me.”
The Fat Man’s eyes opened. The pupils seemed cloudy and unfocused.
He said, “Peter.”
“Yes.”
His left hand moved. Pascoe instinctively patted it and felt his fingers seized in a grip weaker than he recalled his daughter’s when first he’d held her.
“Pete, mate, I thought you’d gone.”
“No, Andy, still here,” said Pascoe, thinking, Mate! Oh Jesus, this was bad.
“Something I need to…Cap told me…back in Mill Street when I got blown up…”
The voice failed. Were those tears in his eyes? Oh shit, this was very bad!
“It’s OK, Andy,” he said. “You rest now. We’ll talk about it later, OK?”
“No…need to do it now…in case…you know. In case. Cap said…if it weren’t for you I’d likely have…she said you saved me, Pete…you saved me…”
His voice choked, as if the emotion were too much for his depleted strength.
“I can’t recall much about it now, Andy,” said Pascoe, eager to get out of here before the Fat Man said something so cloyingly sentimental it would clog up their relationship forever. But the grip on his fingers was too strong now for him to break away without it being quite clear that that was what he was doing.
“…and what I want to say, Pete…”
The voice was getting fainter again, the
eyes had closed. Perhaps the poor bastard’s debility was going to save him! He leaned forward closer to catch the soft-spoken words.
“…what I want to say is…”
And the eyes snapped open and stared straight into Pascoe’s, bright and tearless.
“Just because tha gave me the kiss of life doesn’t mean we’re bloody engaged!”
Now the great mouth opened wide to let out a bellow of laughter so strong Pascoe felt himself blasted upright.
“You rotten bugger,” he said. “Oh you rotten bugger!”
Grinning broadly he made for the door.
The two women, attracted by the sudden outburst within, greeted him anxiously.
“Is he all right?” asked Ellie.
“I’m afraid so,” said Pascoe. “Well, look who’s here.”
Along the corridor, moving on a pair of crutches with a strange crablike motion, came Hector. Tucked into the neck of his T-shirt was a bunch of lilies whose pollen had redistributed itself generously across his gaunt features, giving him the appearance of a man who had just died of some rare form of jaundice.
“How’re you doing, Hec?” inquired Pascoe.
“Fine, thank you, sir. How’s Mr. Dalziel? Can I go in to see him?”
Cap had begun to say, “No, he’s resting…” when Pascoe stepped in front of her and opened the door.
“Mr. Dalziel’s fine,” he said. “And he’d love to see you. In you go, Hec.”
The constable hopped sideways through the door which Pascoe closed gently after him. There was a moment’s silence then came a crash, presumably as Hector dropped one of his crutches in order to extract his bouquet, then a dull thud, presumably as he fell across the bed, followed by a great cry of shock or rage or pain.
“Why did you let Hector in?” asked Ellie curiously as they left the hospital.
“Why not?” asked Pascoe gaily. “After all, in a way it was them two that started it all. Only fitting that they should bring it to an end, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” agreed Ellie, returning his smile. “The end. Only fitting. Now let’s go home.”
2
REALLY THE END
But it wasn’t really the end.
The following sunny Sunday Pascoe and Rosie and Tig had gone for a walk to a favorite spot by the river where Tig could swim, Rosie could paddle, and Pascoe could lie in a green shade and think thoughts of whatever color he pleased. Ellie had excused herself on the grounds of a woman’s work never being done.
This was true, but the work in question was not in fact the implied mountain of ironing, it was work on her novel, which had reached a sticky patch.
Not admitting this was of course just silly. In regard to her literary ambitions, Peter had never been anything but a source of support, admiration, and praise. Yet, until she could wave a very large royalty check at their bank balance, she couldn’t avoid this absurd sense of guilt at the inroads into her family life made by the creative impulse.
She switched on the computer and as always checked for e-mail.
There was a small backlog which she dealt with swiftly. Peter had a couple also, one from Cap Marvell. After a moment’s thought, she brought it up.
Cap embraced all new forms of technology and their idiom with a fervor which brought out the mad Luddite in Dalziel. As Ellie picked her way through the message she felt in some sympathy with the Fat Man. If this is what she did to her e-mails, God knows what her text messaging looked like!
Hi! Wnt to see Ktbg at Sndytn ystrdy—rmmbrd ur intrst in E Hodge as I ws lvng—Ktty v trd by thn—sd shd thnk abt it—gt e frm her tdy whch Im frwdng—A mkng gd prgss—tlks of cming hme—dr sys nt 4 a cpl wks at lst—thn cnvlsce smwhre lke Sndytn whre wrks nt on hs drstp! Luv 2El nd Rsi nd Tg Cap
Ellie turned to the forwarded message and was relieved to find that Dame Kitty had not followed her old pupil down the path of mangled language. To her, e-mail was simply a faster way of sending a letter.
The Avalon Nursing Home
Sandytown
East Yorkshire
Dear Amanda,
Thank you for your visit of yesterday. Buried in this necropolis, it is always pleasant to receive news from the world of the living, despite the fact that, as you doubtless observed, I find even the vicarious sharing of a life like yours quite exhausting.
I am sorry I was too fatigued by the end of your visit to deal with your inquiry about Edie Hodge but I woke up this morning feeling much refreshed and all the details of Edie’s adventure came flooding back.
The story that it was I myself who caught them in the potting shed is in fact untrue. The truth is, as so often, both likelier and stranger.
It was in fact Jacob, the boy’s father, who came across them. You might have thought that his concern would have been to keep things quiet for fear of the possible consequences for his son, but his reaction was as Old Testament as his name. The way he saw it, his son was not the seducer but the seduced, led astray and defiled by a Daughter of Satan!
While not able to go along with this completely, knowing Edie as I did left me with the suspicion that it was probably six of one and half a dozen of the other. At least after that onslaught from Jacob, dealing with Matt Hodge was relatively easy. Initially of course he was very angry indeed, such anger being the natural emotion of a good Catholic parent who feels that his child’s welfare has been neglected by those paid to take care of it. But though he was a doting father, he was by no means blindly so, and I do not doubt he was well aware of Edie’s proclivities. Indeed after his initial anger, I wondered whether he did not see this case of in flagrante as an opportunity to re-establish some control over his wayward child.
So the withdrawal of Edie from St. Dot’s was a decision reached amicably on both sides. Jacob dispatched his son to fresh woods and pastures new, and I kept an excellent gardener!
Once the dust had settled, I must confess I was much more surprised by Edith’s rapid return to a state of grace than by her fall from it. I suspect her marriage to Alexander Kewley was a case of her father striking a deal while the iron was hot! The nature of the heat is a matter of speculation, of course. I have no firm facts though the circumstantial evidence does come close to being a trout in the milk. When I was left holding the baby at the Founder’s Day reception (much to the amusement, I do not doubt, of all you girls), I was able to examine the infant at close quarters. And my reaction was, if this is a Kewley, I’m the Queen Mother! The hasty marriage, its speedy outcome, the change in the Kewley fortunes and the Kewley name were all explained, or at least explicable!
But I have always been an addict of detective fiction, so perhaps I only saw what an overheated imagination inclined me to see, though the giving of her lost love’s name to the baby does seem indicative. Of course, when I read all these years later in the newspapers of the poor boy’s sad fate, such speculation seemed irrelevant, almost indecent. Poor Edith. That her pursuit of pleasure, and her father’s pursuit of respectability, should have brought them to this ambush! Indeed, as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
But I am very pleased to hear that the wanton gods have not put paid to your Andy. May his improvement continue. He sounds an interesting man. Perhaps I may meet him someday? By way of hint let me remind you that the Avalon complex is not simply a place where old tuskers like myself come to die. The old house is used for convalescence, and its inmates have been seen to leave on their own two feet.
Whatever you decide, do keep in touch, if only to remind me that our speculative astronomers are right and there definitely is life out there!
Yours affectionately, Kittie Bagnold
P.S. I almost forgot. You asked about the background of the gardener. He was a Pole who came here as a child in 1945 when his family decided that after five years under the Nazis they deserved more than a communist future. He grew up, married a Yorkshire girl, and they produced that remarkably dishy young boy (yes, even in the staff room we remarked on such things!) who caused all t
he trouble.
The father was called Jakub, which we turned to Jacob, the boy Lukasz, which we turned to Luke, and their family name was Komorowski.
Ellie sat quite still for several minutes. She thought of many things, of truth and deception, of justice and revenge, of human savagery and human rights, of principle and pragmatism, of conscience and consequence. She thought of parents and children and how you lived through them and sometimes suffered through them too. She thought of fathers and sons, of pride and hope, of hope shattered and pride deformed. She thought of fathers and daughters, of Peter and Rosie, of them both waving good-bye as they left with Tig, of Peter looking almost young and fit enough to be the girl’s elder brother rather than her father. She thought of him lounging by the river, watching Rosie and Tig competing madly to see which of them could return home the wettest and muddiest. She thought of the troubled weeks after the Mill Street explosion, and she thought of the placid days since their visit to see Dalziel and she thought of Peter’s joy at the prospect of the fat old sod’s eventual complete recovery.
The time might be out of joint but it was someone else’s turn to put it right.
Somehow the imagined world of her novel, in which her characters moved in a tangled mesh of conflicting loyalties and moral choices, was no longer a place she wanted to be just now.
She pressed Delete and went downstairs to do some ironing.
About the Author
REGINALD HILL has been widely published in both England and the United States. He received Britain’s most coveted mystery writers’ award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger, as well as the Golden Dagger for his Dalziel-Pascoe series. He lives with his wife in Cumbria, England.
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Death Comes for the Fat Man Page 40