There were no secrets in a police station, thought Pascoe. He also thought that he really ought to stay as far away as he could get from this Dalziel business, but did not much like the feeling accompanying the thought.
‘Did you want to speak to the Army now?’ said Wield, reaching for the phone. Before he could touch it, it rang. The Sergeant picked it up and listened.
‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Half an hour unless he’s held up. Right.’
He replaced the receiver and said, ‘That was Ruddlesdin. He was hanging around earlier. Mrs Spillings spotted him. He tried to interview her.’
He smiled at the memory.
‘How the hell does he come to be ringing us here?’ wondered Pascoe. ‘Oh, and is that me you’re expecting in half an hour?’
‘That’s right,’ said Wield. ‘He’s keen to talk to you. He’s on his way and he’ll see you here at twelve-thirty. Unless you’re held up.’
‘Yes,’ said Pascoe slowly. ‘You know Sergeant, perhaps I should call in at Eltervale Camp rather than ring them. The Army tends to be a bit protective about its own.’
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Wield. ‘Face to face is best. And you’d have to go quite near The Duke of York, wouldn’t you? To reach the camp, I mean.’
‘So I would. Good. You’ll know where to get me, then.’
‘Unless Sammy Ruddlesdin asks, I will,’ grinned Wield.
‘Sergeant, you’re a darling man. By the way, did you send Seymour and Hector off to the recreation ground?’
‘Aye,’ said Wield. ‘And I’ve heard nothing since. Hector’s likely got lost, and Seymour will have found himself a bird to chat up. What’s it all about, sir?’
He sounded disapproving and Pascoe said airily, ‘Could be something or nothing, Sergeant. See you later!’
As he left, Wield shook his head sadly. Something or nothing! He much admired Pascoe, but there was no getting away from it, sometimes the young inspector did get his head full of daft notions.
Though in this case, Wield, who was a man of considerable sensitivity beneath his harsh and rugged exterior, wondered how much Pascoe’s present ‘hunch’ wasn’t just a mental space-filler, delaying him from admitting just how upset he really was by Dalziel’s spot of bother.
The Sergeant’s stomach rumbled. No Duke of York for him, but he had been relying on Seymour’s return so that he could slip away for a quick snack. Where was the man? Chatting up a bird, he’d suggested to Pascoe. Wield’s inner sensitivity did not extend to forgiving DC’s who kept him from his food while they chatted up birds.
He chewed on the end of his pen and planned reprisal.
The Sergeant’s suspicions about Seymour were to some extent justified, but not in every particular. Women delayed him, but only in the way of duty.
Castleton Court, where the late Thomas Arthur Parrinder had lived, was a block of local authority retirement flats, in no way an old people’s home, though there was on the site a widower in his early sixties who had undertaken the job of warden, which meant for the most part channelling complaints to the Housing Office and responding to the flashing lights and sounding bells which meant a tenant was in trouble.
The warden was called Tempest, a thick-set ex-miner who took his new duties as seriously as he’d taken his old. His cheerful face was shadowed as he let Seymour into Parrinder’s flat.
‘He were a good lad, Tap. That was what everyone called him, from his initials I suppose, though some says it was because when he was down on his luck with the hosses, he’d be tapping anyone he could for a bob or two. Well, I never knew it; a good lad, spry and lively and right independent. Mebbe a bit too much. Makes a change from them as is never off your back, but there’s a happy medium.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Seymour.
‘Well, look at this,’ said the Warden. ‘See these alarm switches on the wall in every room? They set off the light and the bell outside the door. See how they’ve got cords reaching down to the floor? Idea is, if anyone has a fall, he can still pull the switch, right? Well, look at this.’
He opened the bathroom door.
‘See. There’s the switch, but where’s the cord? They take ‘em off! Afraid they might pull it by accident instead of the light cord, see, and I might come rushing in and find them in the bath or on the pot. It’s daft, really, but that’s folk for you.’
Old Deeks could’ve done with one of those, thought Seymour. But likely he’d have been the same and put it out of action.
‘One old lady,’ continued Mr Tempest, leading him back into the small but comfortably appointed living-room, ‘set her alarm off once by accident, she were so embarrassed, next thing I knew, she’d taken the fuses out so the bloody thing wouldn’t go off at all! Can you beat that, eh?’
Seymour, who was still young enough to feel immortal, shook his head in general bewilderment at the vagaries of age and studied the room. Television, two armchairs, low table with transistor radio, glass-fronted cabinet with the remnants of a good tea-set, not much of a reader but a pile of old Dalesman magazines and not so old racing papers by the fireplace.
‘He was a racing man, you say?’ he said with the approval of one who shared the interest.
‘Oh yes. Waste of time and money if you ask me,’ said Tempest, insensitive to Seymour’s enthusiasm. ‘Not that he went over the top, I’m not saying that. He always kept it within bounds as far as I could see. I suppose it’s a hobby like any other.’
‘Any family?’
‘Daughter in Canada, I think. No one closer, not as comes to see him anyway. His wife died fifteen years ago. He was the only man by himself in this block, the rest is all widows. Gentler sex, they say. I don’t know about gentler but they’re certainly tougher! I used to have a laugh with him about it. He said it was like most chances in life – came too bloody late!’
‘I know the feeling,’ said Seymour with the insincerity of the young. ‘Any particular friends?’
‘I don’t know about his own mates – certainly he didn’t get many visitors. Among the old girls? Oh, there’s two or three he’s quite thick with. They play cards for pennies and they like a flutter on the gees. Tap’d put it on for them. There’s Mrs Campbell in 24, nice woman, full of life, takes care of herself – you know, hair-do’s, make-up. Could pass for fifty. I often wondered if Tap had chanced his arm there! Then there’s Mrs Escott at 28. She was probably the closest, only, last six months or so, she’s started going.’
‘Going?’ said Seymour. ‘Where?’
‘Upstairs,’ said the warden significantly. ‘SD. Senile dementia. It’s just on and off at the moment, but once they start that game, there’s no road back. I’ve seen it too often. They get muddled and start wandering, mentally and physically. In the end they can get to be a menace to themselves. And everyone else. Turn the gas on, go out without lighting it, that kind of thing. It’s early days yet for Mrs Escott, but she’s going, poor dear. I’ve had a word with her son. He says he’s noticed nowt, but he’s noticed all right. Trouble is, with the telly and everything, people are getting wise these days.’
‘Wise to what?’ inquired Seymour, to whom all this was literally as well as figuratively territory antipodean, his two surviving grandparents living close to their eldest son, Seymour’s uncle Andy, in New Zealand.
‘The old folk problem,’ said the warden. ‘People live a long time these days. Trouble is they don’t stay young longer, they stay old longer. It’s when they start needing looked after, either because they can’t get about any more, or because they’re into SD, that the bother starts. I see it coming on, I just pass the word to the social workers. They start working at the relatives to take the old people to live with them. They say it’s best for them. Well, maybe. It’s certainly best for the local authority. Once you get an elderly relative being looked after in your house, you’ve got a hell of a job to get shut of him! There’s not the hospital beds, you see. The authority just doesn’t want to know. But now folk are gettin
g wise, they’ve seen it on the telly, old folk don’t come home to die any more, they come home to live and be a worry and a bother and a burden for years maybe.’
‘So what happens?’
‘If no one takes ‘em in, the authority’s got no choice. But you’ve got to be really hard not to take your old mam or dad in just for a couple of weeks, haven’t you? Hello, Mrs Campbell. Here’s a nice young bobby for you to dazzle. Always said you were a bobby-dazzler, didn’t I?’
Mrs Campbell who had appeared with a shopping basket was a great relief to Seymour. All this talk about senile dementia had filled him with foreboding, and it was a pleasant surprise to see this bright-eyed, handsome woman in an elegant fur coat and a truly remarkable hat which seemed to be composed entirely of orange feathers. She gave him a cup of tea and in the round, confident tones of the middle class expressed her great distress at the sad news about Tap Parrinder.
‘Such a nice man. So independent, and good with his hands too. It’s so nice to have a man about the place, Mr Seymour, someone you can turn to if you need something lifted or fixed. Mr Tempest, the warden, is very obliging, of course, but he’s not the same as a real neighbour, if you know what I mean. I do hope we get a replacement as nice, and preferably another man. We do seem to be rather top-heavy with females, I’m afraid. Not that I’m complaining, Mr Seymour. I never anticipated finishing my days in council accommodation, but to tell you the truth, I’ve been quite delighted with the class of person I’ve met in the flats, quite delighted!’
After another cup of tea, Seymour finally got down to extracting firm answers to his questions.
She had last spoken to Parrinder on Friday morning.
‘He’d been a little under the weather for the past few days, just a cold, but he hadn’t gone out. I called to ask him if he wanted anything from the shops when I went out later as I usually do on Friday. He said no, he was still all right.’
‘Still?’
‘Yes. I’d looked in from time to time earlier in the week. I offered to collect his pension but he said he might as well let it stand as he had plenty of stuff in his fridge to keep him going.’
‘Did he say anything about going out later?’ asked Seymour.
‘Oh no. I’d have certainly told him what I thought if he’d even hinted it. It was so nasty, even I put off my shopping till Saturday, after all. He was standing looking out of his window as we talked and I remember saying to him I might change my mind and not go till Saturday if it didn’t get any better and he said something about yes, but it makes the ground nice and heavy, doesn’t it? As if that was a good thing! And then he goes out in it without telling anyone. But he was such an independent man. Independence! It’s your greatest fault and your greatest virtue, you men. You have to do things your own way, Mr Seymour. Your own way. There’s no denying you!’
She smiled coyly at him and Seymour finished his tea and took his leave, promising to call in again if ever he were passing.
He almost gave the demented Mrs Escott a miss, but he had a fairly strongly developed sense of duty and also knew that those omissions which the sharp eye of Sergeant Wield didn’t spot, the milder but no less perceptive gaze of Inspector Pascoe would surely pick up.
Mrs Escott was even more of a relief than Mrs Campbell. Instead of some wild woman of the woods, with mad eyes and unkempt hair, he found himself in the presence of a very ordinary-looking, rather dumpy lady with neat grey hair whose only sign of disturbance was that her soft brown eyes filled with tears when she discovered his mission.
She bustled around making a pot of tea which Seymour didn’t really want but guessed was a therapeutic response. He placed himself so that he could see into the tiny kitchen and check that she actually lit the gas. Everything was carried out swiftly and efficiently and the tea tasted fine, no salt instead of sugar, or any other mad substitution. His expression of gratitude must have been slightly overdone for he caught her looking at him as if she suspected he was slightly odd, a disconcerting reversal.
She was able to fill in a little more of Parrinder’s Friday timetable. She had called in to see him at about two o’clock that afternoon. He was watching some racing on the television and she had made a cup of tea and they had sat together and talked for about an hour. He had made no mention of any plans for going out later, but that didn’t surprise her. Not that he was a secretive man, but he was certainly one who made his own decisions independent of anyone else.
‘Did he drink a lot?’ wondered Seymour.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He liked a drop of rum when he could afford it, but he wasn’t what you would call a drinker.’
Seymour made notes. It was beginning to seem possible that Parrinder had met his ‘accident’ as he was heading across the recreation ground on his way into town later that evening rather than on his return, though the latter was by no means ruled out. It had been ten o’clock when Mr Cox found him. Presumably he had been lying there for some time for the wet and the cold to strike home with such deadly effect. It would have been dark by five o’clock on such a dreary day and very few pedestrians would have been out and about in such a place in such conditions.
‘Mr Seymour,’ said Mrs Escott in her rather gentle voice which had a great deal of the West Country beneath its patina of Yorkshire vowels and usages. ‘All these questions – was Mr Parrinder attacked by someone? When I heard about it this morning, they just said he’d fallen and broken something.’
For a woman whose mind was failing, she was sharp enough to be the first to ask the question direct, thought Seymour.
‘We don’t know,’ he said, adding reassuringly, ‘But don’t you worry about it. Maybe it was just an accident. That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘That recreation ground,’ she said, her eyes filling again. ‘It’s a dreadful place when it’s dark. All those muggings you read about. I won’t go near the place, I don’t even like it much in daylight either. Poor Tap, poor Tap.’
The double dose of tea had got to Seymour and he asked permission to use the bathroom.
‘Yes, of course,’ said the woman, directing him, and drying her tears at the same time.
Seymour went in. It was a ground-floor flat and Mrs Escott, not trusting to frosted glass to protect her privacy, also had heavy curtains drawn so that the room was in deep gloom. Seymour reached out, grasped the light cord and pulled.
No light came on, at least not in here, and distantly he heard a double-noted bell begin to clamour an urgent summons.
‘Oh shit,’ he said.
Chapter 10
‘Oh my country! How I love my country!’
George Headingley had had a mixed morning.
He just missed Arnie Charlesworth, learning at his main betting shop that the bookie was on his way to a race meeting at Newcastle.
The DCC had passed Major Kassell’s name on to him and he had rung Sir William Pledger’s mansion, Haycroft Grange, which was about ten miles out of town, to learn that he’d just missed Kassell too. The good news was that he was coming into town, to the local airport to be precise, to meet a plane.
The plane in question turned out to be a Cessna Utililiner, the property of Van Bellen International, which was bringing some of Sir William’s weekend shooting guests from the Continent. The plane had already landed and there seemed to be quite a lot of activity around it as Headingley drove towards the clubhouse of the local gliding club which was the only building on the site with any possible pretensions to being a passenger terminal.
To his surprise, there was a familiar figure standing at the side of the clubhouse, beating his arms against his sides to keep the blood circulating in the cold November air. It was Inspector Ernie Cruikshank, dowager of the uniformed branch, who usually had to be bribed to expose himself to the open air before May was out.
‘Ernie, what the hell are you doing here?’ asked Headingley.
‘Same as you, likely,’ said Cruikshank gloomily.
‘I hope not,’
said Headingley. ‘What’s going off, then?’
‘Don’t you know? It’s your boss who set it up! Special request from Customs and Excise. For some reason best known to themselves, they’re giving yon plane a right going-over and they asked if we could provide a presence in case we were needed. I ask you, bloody Saturday morning too, with them Rovers hooligans piling into town off every train for the match this afternoon, not to mention your precious poof Pascoe helping himself to my lads for his bloody murder inquiry!’
Headingley smiled, guessing that Cruikshank had opted for the outside duty which he felt entailed minimum exposure. The reference to Pascoe was best ignored. Cruikshank made little effort to conceal his opinion that the young DI was a jumped-up, supercilious, intellectual twit.
He pressed for further information and learned that Pledger had got a special dispensation for his company plane to land here during the shooting season.
‘Cost him a bit to get it made OK, they reckon,’ said Cruikshank. ‘Normally it’s nowt but gliders here and the odd light plane.’
‘Well, that’s hardly a heavy plane,’ said Headingley judiciously, looking at the Cessna.
‘Bit bigger than they normally have here,’ said Cruikshank with the defensiveness of one whose expertise had just been garnered via a ten-minute chat with an Excise officer.
‘And what’s all this about a Customs check?’
‘Well, seems normally they have a token chap here when Pledger’s plane arrives, just to make sure the formalities are observed. It’s top people, usually, and you know how them buggers get kid-gloved in this bloody country,’ said Cruikshank with a class-bitterness, Marxian in intensity, but which didn’t stop him voting Tory. ‘This time, but, Customs have had a tip, someone’s bringing in a load of naughties. They’re all very tight-lipped but it must be something big to make it worth upsetting Pledger and his mates.’
Exit Lines Page 7