‘No, but it does give Mr Dalziel a good reason for dining with him, doesn’t it?’ he pointed out.
‘Aye, but then you’d think he’d have put Mr Dalziel on to this illegal betting shop racket, wouldn’t you?’ said Wield, who seemed determined to play devil’s advocate.
‘It was Mr Dalziel who put us on to Charlesworth, remember? I suppose a bookie has got to be careful about fingering others in the same line, even when they’re bent. Could be that friend Don will turn out to be financed by some legit firm who might not take kindly to Charlesworth shopping them. Seymour will keep his mouth shut there, I hope.’
‘Oh yes. He didn’t really want to tell me! I think he rather liked Charlesworth, and he’s certainly taken a shine to Seymour from the sound of it.’
‘Yes,’ said Pascoe thoughtfully. ‘There was a son, I recall. It was in the local rag a few years back. He seemed bent on raising a bit of hell with his dad’s hard-earned cash and ended up getting himself killed in a car smash. He’d be almost Seymour’s age.’
‘And build too if he took after his dad. And mebbe colouring if he took after his mam.’
Pascoe looked at Wield in surprise.
‘You know her?’
‘I saw her once in court. Speeding offence. Not long after the lad died. And not long before she and Charlesworth separated. Big red-haired woman. I got the impression she was chasing her lad the best way she knew how. I often wondered if she ran out of steam before she caught up with him.’
Pascoe shook his head glumly. This dying was enough to get a man down. He could just about cope, as everyone had to, with the idea that the car or perhaps the blood clot which was to knock him over was already speeding on its way. But the thought of what his death might mean to Ellie and to Rose was unbearable. Though is that real altruism or just disguised egotism? he asked himself. After all, the pension’s not bad, and there’s a bit of insurance, and that supercilious, bow-tied historian at the college has always fancied Ellie, and Rose would have lost all memory of me by the time she was two…
This morbid train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Cruikshank.
‘Seems you were right, then,’ he congratulated Pascoe, with the smile of a candidate who has just lost his deposit.
‘Yes, well, it’s got to happen sometimes. Law of averages,’ joked Pascoe, careful not to crow in the face of this attempt at magnanimity.
‘That’s right,’ said Cruikshank. ‘Oh, by the way, in the caravan that came back from Welfare Lane, there was this bag of stones. Hector told me they were the ones you got him to collect from the recreation ground. I thought, that’s Inspector Pascoe! So much on his plate, he’s bound to overlook a thing or two. So I’ve sent them down to Forensic for testing. On CID authority. That all right then?’
Pascoe looked at him with horror, imagining the reaction of the irascible little Scot in charge of the laboratory to the arrival of several dozen stones, unlabelled, all piled together in one bag, with a request for careful and almost certainly non-productive examination.
You rotten sod, Cruikshank! he thought. You wouldn’t have dared pull such a stunt if Dalziel had been around!
‘Thanks a lot,’ he said to Cruikshank. ‘Mr Dalziel will be so pleased to find uniformed and CID working so well together. I’ll make sure he knows exactly how much you’ve cooperated, Inspector!’
Which in the circumstances was the best he could do.
Dennis Seymour was also doing his best, but Bernadette McCrystal was more than a match for him. To the vast disapproval of the dragon supervisor, he had insisted that taking her statement was a matter of such urgency that it brooked no delay. Now, in the supervisor’s own office, with the statement signed and sealed, he had turned to more personal matters.
‘Why won’t I go out with you, is it?’ she asked. ‘Time was when a girl didn’t have to offer reasons, but times change and here’s three to be going on with. One, you’re a policeman and I’ve got me reputation to be thinking of. Two, you’re a Protestant, and I’ve got me religion to be thinking of.’
‘And three?’ prompted Seymour.
‘Three, I like dancing, real dancing I mean, and you look a clumsy, awkward sort of a fellow and I’ve got me feet to be thinking of.’
‘Hold on!’ he protested. ‘I’m a black belt at the old ballroom.’
‘Black belt? That’s judo, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ he grinned. ‘I’m not so hot on the entrechats, but you won’t half fly around the floor.’
She laughed and said, ‘All right. I’ll give you a two-dance trial. Where are we going?’
‘I’ll leave that to you,’ said Seymour, delighted. ‘I’ll just choose where we’re starting from. The lounge bar at The Portland, eight o’clock tonight.’
‘That’s a posh kind of place,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘I reckon you’re a posh kind of girl,’ said Seymour gallantly.
‘Then you’re on. Now I’d better get back to cleaning them tables, else she’ll be grinding her false teeth to pumice.’
Outside the department store, Seymour stopped to take in a deep breath of wintry air. He felt well satisfied with life. Just as (oh, how these untimely thoughts came sneaking in!) ‘Tap’ Parrinder must have felt, close to this very spot last Friday. Money in his pocket, food in his belly, nothing to bother him except to decide which off-licence to buy his rum in.
In fact, it occurred to Seymour for the first time, he had a choice of two close at hand. Turning left about a hundred yards along on the opposite side of the road was the off-licence he’d actually used.
But if he’d turned right instead, the very next shop to Starbuck’s was a wine and spirit store.
And if his plan had been to walk back to Castleton Court, taking the short cut across the Recreation Ground, then that was the way he should have gone.
It was probably simply explained. Perhaps this wine shop had been closed on Friday evening. It was easy to check. Seymour strolled along and looked at the listed opening hours, then went in to double-check.
No, it had been open.
Perhaps it was a question of choice, or of price? But a glance at the shelves showed the same brand of rum that he’d purchased at the other place, and five pence cheaper at that.
As Seymour made his way to the other off-licence, he recalled Pascoe’s puzzlement that a man with money in his pocket should choose to walk home in that weather. Fifty yards further in this direction there was a taxi-rank. Perhaps Parrinder had determined to get a taxi, but after buying his rum changed his mind. Perhaps there was no taxi free and, impatient of waiting, he had set out on foot.
The man who’d served Parrinder couldn’t help. He signed his statement but was unable to say which direction the old man had turned as he left the shop.
Seymour thanked him and walked on to the taxi-rank. His reception swung between opposite poles in the first minute, from being greeted as a customer to being recognized as a cop, but it soon settled at cautious cooperation when the cabbies realized he was not inquiring into their peccadilloes.
It was a quiet time of day and there were seven of them there, all of whom had been on on Friday afternoon, but none of them recalled Parrinder.
‘We hardly ever got back here,’ explained one of them. ‘It was a filthy afternoon; folk who’d never dream of taking a cab normally were flagging us down. You’d no sooner dropped one lot than there was someone else pushing in.’
So probably the rank had been empty and old ‘Tap’ had made the fatal decision to set off walking.
But Seymour was bent on thoroughness today. No more questions left unasked! He was not going to have Wield’s Gothic eyebrows arch up in disbelief or, worse still, Pascoe’s leanly handsome features stretch in faint puzzlement as one or the other asked, ‘But you didn’t actually talk to all the cabbies?’
A comprehensive list of those who might have been around on Friday was provided by the now very friendly seven who took him into their
shelter and gave him cups of tea, the whiles vying with each other to provide the most remarkable reminiscence of cab-life. An hour later Seymour was awarding the palm to the perhaps valedictory coupling of groom and best man on their way to church, with as a close second the story of the couple who kept the taxi with its meter running outside a bank which, unbeknown to the driver, they were robbing, only later to be caught by the police having a fierce argument about the size of the fare, when a little man called Grundy appeared with a terrible cold which his colleagues told him in plain unadorned terms to keep to himself.
But Grundy when questioned about ‘Tap’ Parrinder replied instantly, if throatily, ‘Yeah, I remember him. Old boy, full of the joys of spring, he were. Told me to drive him to Castleton Court.’
‘That’s the one,’ said Seymour, now very puzzled. ‘You didn’t see what he did when he got to Castleton Court, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ snuffled Grundy. ‘Mainly because I wasn’t there.’
‘You weren’t there?’
‘We never got to Castleton Court, see?’ proclaimed the catarrhal cabbie. ‘I was driving steadily along through the rain when suddenly he yells out, “All right! Stop here! This’ll do!” so I stops, and out he gets, there was eighty-five p. on the clock and he gives me a quid and that’s the last I see of him.’
‘You don’t know why he changed his mind?’
‘I don’t know. I thought maybe he just realized how much it was costing him. Could be it was his last quid, poor old sod. If he’d said something, like, I’d have run him home all the same. It wasn’t a night for putting a cat out.’
He sneezed violently. Seymour averted his face in a hopeless attempt at evasion.
‘And where was this?’ he asked.
‘Where he got out, you mean? Right outside the Alderman Woodhouse Recreation Ground.’
Seymour knew he was putting his health at grave risk by getting into a cab driven by a man with a cold like Grundy’s, but when a bout of sneezing almost had them on to the pavement, he realized that germs might be the least of his worries.
It was with great relief that he got out at the spot which Grundy assured him was as near the point of Parrinder’s departure as made no difference.
As an exercise in reconstruction in the event it didn’t seem to have very much point. Grundy repeated his story without alteration. He also pointed out that, as stated, there was eighty-five pence on the clock, and looked significantly at his passenger.
Assuring him that he would later want a full statement, Seymour paid up. The cab drew away, leaving him in the gathering dusk looking into the uninviting gloom of the recreation ground. But it was not as uninviting as it must have been two hours later in last Friday’s weather. What had possessed the man? he wondered.
He entered the ground, determined to see his reconstruction through to the end. Pascoe and Wield would not be able to claim he had left any stone unturned! The cliché reminded him of Hector and his famous sack. A joke it had seemed at the time of collecting, and a waste of time too. But now, with the certainty of assault and robbery of an old man looming large in his mind, there seemed little to laugh at. And indeed, as he walked slowly across the recreation ground and the few figures still visible seemed very distant, and the lights beginning to glow along the roads at the park’s edge were like camp-fires in some vague valley seen from a perilous hill, he found himself wishing for the company even of a twit like Hector.
A few minutes later he had made the crossing without the experience of either assault or inspiration and his remembered fears made him feel ashamed.
Castleton Court lay not far ahead. It seemed a good opportunity to pay another visit to Mrs Escott, though later reflection had brought him to much the same conclusion as Pascoe: i.e., that it was not likely to prove of any profit.
Still, he told himself with the good-natured perception of a favourite grandchild, a visit would most likely be welcome, be rewarded with a hot drink against the chill November air and Grundy’s germs. Also it occurred to him that the old lady might well need cheering up if she herself had realized her error of recall.
He let his big, cheerful, reassuring smile slide across his face as he pressed the doorbell, but when no reply came to a second and prolonged pressing, the smile faded.
Oh well, he thought, she was probably out shopping. Try again later.
He turned away, then on impulse turned back and went to Mrs Campbell’s door. Here again he thought he was out of luck, but just as he was giving up the door opened cautiously on the chain and Lucy Campbell’s bold, handsome face appeared.
She recognized him instantly, which was surprisingly flattering.
‘It’s Mr Seymour, isn’t it? How are you?’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s Mrs Escott I was looking for. She’s not at home and I just thought she might have popped in here.’
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Campbell. ‘I saw her a little earlier this afternoon coming in. She looked a little distrait, I recall, hardly even looked at me when I said hello. But she’s been like that, off and on, recently, poor dear.’
‘And she went into her flat?’
‘Oh yes. And shut the door rather emphatically.’
There was a pause while they both reflected.
‘I think I’d better get the warden,’ said Seymour finally.
‘Please, wait a moment,’ said Mrs Campbell.
She closed the door to undo the chain, then opened it wide.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Mr Tempest is in fact visiting me. He’s been repairing a window-catch and I asked him to have a cup of tea.’
Mr Tempest was in fact standing in front of the fireplace, an expression of some uneasiness on his round, open face. There was no tea in sight.
Seymour wondered why Mrs Campbell had felt it necessary to put the chain on the door before she opened, then blushed furiously as the outrageous explanation presented itself.
Not at their age! his suddenly puritanical young mind protested.
But Mr Tempest’s unease was quickly redirected when he heard Seymour’s story.
‘She’s likely just gone out again, or mebbe having a nap, but we’d best just check,’ he said, producing his master key.
The living-room was empty. Seymour looked into the kitchen while Tempest opened the bedroom door.
‘Oh Christ!’ he heard the warden choke out.
He pushed past him into the room.
Across the bed surrounded by a scatter of pill bottles lay Jane Escott. Her eyes were wide open and staring, but it was not possible to tell if she were alive or dead.
Chapter 23
‘There is treachery, O Ahaziah.’
Approached at night through an avenue of skeletal trees which Walt Disney might have designed, The Towers was a sinister sight, more suited to the incisive antics of venereal vampirism than to the careful cradling of reposing age. Their crenellated teeth snatching at a wild November moon, the ungainly asymmetric structures which gave the house its name impressed Pascoe with that sense of foreboding frequently enjoyed by heroines of Gothic romance as they approached some three-volume test of their nerve and their virtue.
All it needed, thought Pascoe, was for the old brass-studded oaken front door to creak open at his approach and a corpse-like figure to glide forward and beckon him in.
He set his foot on the doorstep. The door swung slowly open with a small but indisputable creak and there indeed was a figure, if not corpse-like, at least at an advanced stage of rehearsal of that condition.
It glided forward and spoke.
‘Are you the undertaker’s man?’ it asked in a querulous tone. ‘’Cos if so, you’re not wanted. She’s got better.’
‘Thank you, Mr Wilson,’ said Miss Day’s patient and kindly voice. ‘I’ll look after this. Oh hello. It’s Mr Pascoe, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ said Pascoe, shaking the matron’s hand and looking after the retreating Mr Wilson wh
o in the light of the hallway now appeared as simply a white-haired old gent with a glissading style of ambulation caused by a dilapidated pair of carpet slippers.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘Mr Wilson? Oh, one of our ladies was taken ill. A bad bout of indigestion was all it was, but she looked very poorly for a while. Another of our lady guests has a distant cousin in the undertaking business and at the slightest sign of decline, she’s off to the telephone, presumably to assure the poor man that if he turns up here with a coffin, there’ll be work for him to do!’
‘And Mr Wilson?’
‘He hates her. He’s convinced that she’s been in his room at night measuring him up.’
She laughed and Pascoe joined in.
‘Don’t get the impression we’re all as odd as that, Mr Pascoe,’ she said. ‘Most of them here are just plain, straightforward people, whatever that means! But they’re all at the time of life when the cracks begin to show. Usually it doesn’t matter. Sometimes, though, it can be very painful.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Pascoe soberly, thinking of Mrs Escott.
The news of her attempted suicide had been one of the things which had delayed his visit here. When Seymour had rung in from the hospital, he had felt incredibly guilty. It was irrational, he knew. He and Ellie had often discussed the putative right of individuals to determine when they died and though he was not quite so emphatic about it as Ellie, they generally agreed that such a right existed. So Mrs Escott, becoming aware that senility was creeping up on her, had decided to exit with dignity. Only, she hadn’t exited. And Pascoe was left with the memory of the apparently content and cogent woman he had spoken to, happily unaware till his interference that she had managed to forget a whole day.
‘I’m sorry to call so late,’ he began.
Miss Day interrupted him with some exasperation.
‘It’s only eight-thirty, Mr Pascoe. We don’t sound lights out at nine, you know. This is neither a hospital, nor a nursery, nor an army barracks!’
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