‘Look,’ murmured Pascoe, ‘isn’t there any way I can help?’
‘No. Just get off, that’s an order. No need for you to be around when the sparks start!’
Reluctantly, Pascoe gestured at Wield and the Sergeant, who had the girl’s arm in a vice-like grip, propelled her down the steps and across the courtyard towards the car.
‘Super’s in bother, is he?’ said Wield.
‘Could be,’ said Pascoe.
They reached the car and Wield pushed the now quiet and blank-faced girl into the back seat and got in beside her. The driver opened the front passenger door for Pascoe but the Inspector didn’t get in.
He was looking towards the stable block, beyond the dead and eviscerated pheasants, with the group of Customs officers standing by, their attention fixed on the house; beyond the more distant group of beaters, also watching the unfolding drama with keen interest; to a shadowy coign of the stable wing where the black, drug-sniffing labrador seemed to be trying to mount some struggling and reluctant partner.
Suddenly the dog let out a long and triumphant howl. Pascoe grabbed the driver’s flashlight from the glove compartment and moved swiftly towards the strange couple whose relationship he had already decided was not amatory.
The Customs men too had been attracted by the dog’s call, but Pascoe got there first, sending a beam of light thrusting at the dog’s new-found friend.
‘Hector!’ he exclaimed. ‘Constable Hector!’
It was indeed Hector, accoutred in an incredibly shabby gaberdine which must have been made for a creature of even greater length.
Guilt and alarm were on his face.
‘It’s all right, sir,’ he cried, trying to push away the dog. ‘Mr Dalziel knows I’m here.’
‘Does he indeed? But does he know you have this strong attraction for dogs?’
He looked at the terror-stricken constable with growing speculation. Surely he looked fatter than he recalled? Less of a beanpole? Perhaps it was just the gaberdine …
‘Hector,’ he said. ‘Open your coat.’
The constable sighed, like the exhalation from a reedpipe, looked almost relieved, and obeyed.
‘I thought it was fair do’s, sir,’ he explained. ‘I mean, who’s to miss ‘em, and we do all the work. One was for me mam, the other for me Auntie Sheila.’
Hanging in poacher’s pockets, which is to say two small sacks pinned to the inside of the voluminous coat, was a pair of fat pheasants.
Pascoe removed one of them and examined it. It had been split open round about the anus. A corner of plastic protruded.
‘Hector,’ said Pascoe gently. ‘What did you imagine this was?’
Hector looked. Then he said in a puzzled voice, ‘Giblets, isn’t it, sir? They always come in little plastic bags.’
Pascoe began to laugh. He was still chortling quietly as he escorted the lanky constable, danced around by the excited dog, towards the group on the steps.
‘Mr Dalziel, sir,’ called Pascoe. ‘Constable Hector here has made a remarkable discovery.’
He slowly drew forth a long thin plastic bag from the gut of the pheasant. Through the bloodstained transparent covering it was possible to see that it was packed with white powder, perhaps a pound and a half in weight. The sad-faced man came quickly down the steps, took it from Pascoe’s hand and made a small incision with his pocket knife.
First he sniffed, then he put a couple of grains on his tongue.
Turning, he nodded at Dalziel.
Hector’s face during all this was showing a complex of emotions. He was not yet certain whether he had committed a very great crime or performed a very meritorious deed. But now Dalziel’s voice broke out, ‘Hector, lad, I don’t know how you’ve done it, but I love you!’ And the long head slowly rose from between the hunched shoulders, like a flower roused by the warmth of the sun.
‘Remember, you are mortal,’ murmured Pascoe as he saw the joy and relief break out on the young man’s face.
Dalziel turned back to Kassell.
‘Major Kassell,’ he said. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of being involved in the smuggling of illicit drugs into this country. You do not have to say anything but if you do, it’ll be taken down and may be used in evidence. Sir William, shall we all go inside now? There’s things to be talked about, things to be done.’
With a shattered look on his face, Pledger turned away. Dalziel urged Kassell to follow him, but the Major looked first to the man with the gun. An expression crossed Charlesworth’s face which might almost have been one of disappointment, then gently he uncocked his weapon.
‘Well, thank God for that at least,’ said Kassell with a smile of relief. ‘Dalziel, I know nothing of this business, of course, but I realize you’ve got to do your duty. I should like to ring my solicitor before things go any further, however. I believe that’s my entitlement.’
The gun came up so quickly that there was nothing anyone could do. The twin barrels swept up between Kassell’s legs and hard into his groin. He screamed, went grey with pain, doubled up.
‘Arnie, for Christ’s sake!’ shouted Dalziel.
‘I deserved one,’ said Charlesworth.
‘You bastard. I’ll get you for this,’ choked Kassell.
The bookie considered him for a moment.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ he said.
Chapter 29
‘Tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.’
It started snowing again during the course of the evening and by half past nine, when Pascoe with all loose ends carefully tied up or at least tucked out of sight was preparing to go home, it was settling in earnest.
He thought with alarm of Ellie’s drive north the next day, and did not know whether he was more alarmed at the dangers of the drive or the prospect of being without her even longer if the weather was too bad for travel.
Dalziel he had not seen since leaving Haycroft Grange. Whether the fat man were in the building or not he didn’t know and wasn’t about to find out. There would be plenty of time to dot i’s and cross t’s over a reunifying pint; now all he wanted was to get back home and go to bed.
But the phone rang as he was leaving.
It was Dr Sowden.
‘Just thought you might like to know Mrs Escott’s fading fast,’ he said rather curtly.
‘Thanks,’ said Pascoe.
What did it matter? There was nothing more she could tell them. It was probably better for her. What did the future hold but at best a few twilit years of being bullied by the nurses in a geriatric home? No, better by far for her to go now. And there was no point in his being there to see her go. None at all.
‘You came, then,’ said Sowden.
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t sound very interested on the phone,’ said the doctor.
‘I’m not … interested,’ said Pascoe wearily. ‘Involved, maybe. Though Christ knows why.’
Sowden grinned and said, ‘I’ll be off duty in twenty minutes. Let me buy you that drink we keep talking about.’
‘I’m a bit knackered,’ said Pascoe. ‘Anyway, have you seen the weather?’
‘With a bit of luck we could get snowed in some comfortable saloon bar. No crime, no one dying. Two or three days of that would probably do us both the world of good. Still, if you’re too tired …’
He led the way into the ward. A nurse was drawing the curtains around Mrs Escott’s bed.
‘Isn’t there, well, somewhere else,’ said Pascoe, glancing uneasily at the other beds.
‘A kind of dying room, you mean? Afraid not. We’re pushed for space, you see. In any case, with these old folk, once you start wheeling them out to die, every time they’re taken out of the ward for any reason begins to feel like a death sentence!’
Mrs Escott lay so still and with her face so composed that Pascoe thought he had come too late after all. He stood helplessly by the bedside and repeated to Sowden, ‘I really don’t know what I’m doing here.’
‘
In some of the ancient religions, last words are meant to be redolent of significance and power,’ murmured Sowden.
Pascoe looked at him in surprise.
‘That doesn’t sound too scientific to me,’ he said.
‘Scientifically speaking, death is the great debunker,’ said Sowden, feeling the woman’s pulse. ‘There it is. A faint flutter, like a … like a …’
Perhaps some poetic comparison had suggested itself which embarrassed him for he let the words tail off.
‘Aren’t there any relatives? Or friends?’ asked Pascoe.
‘To be here, you mean? No, no relatives that can be traced. Friends at Castleton Court, probably, but too old and not close enough to be brought out on a night like this.’
‘So we’re it.’
‘That’s right.’
Pascoe shook his head.
‘Not much to show for threescore and ten, is it?’ he said half to himself.
Suddenly the woman’s eyes were open.
She said, ‘Mr Pascoe.’
‘That’s right. How are you, Mrs Escott?’ Pascoe heard himself saying absurdly.
‘Mr Pascoe,’ she repeated with an injection of urgency.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘I saw Tap,’ she said. ‘He spoke to me.’
‘Yes? What did he say?’
She smiled radiantly.
‘Winner,’ she said. ‘Winner. Tap says the winner is …’
She stopped.
Sowden monitored her pulse once more, then shook his head.
‘That’s it, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘Dead?’
‘I’m afraid so. Nurse!’
The nurse reappeared. Sowden and Pascoe emerged from the curtains and walked together down the ward. Pascoe felt completely drained of all energy as if these old and dying people were reaching out to draw it from him.
‘Last words,’ said Sowden. ‘Exit lines. I wonder what her friend’s tip was?’
‘It’s not knowing that makes horse-races,’ said Pascoe wearily.
As they reached the door, a patient at the far end of the ward began to make a noise. At first it was just a kind of moaning sound, but finally words came out quite clearly.
‘Teeny! Teeny! Where’s my tea?’
Pascoe stopped.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘That? Oh, some old boy who came in this afternoon. Had a nasty fall downstairs.’
Downstairs? Pascoe thought of Mabel Gregory’s old father lying on his bed in the front parlour. Thought also of the woman’s tired face and of her blank-eyed husband sitting far down the garden, smoking a cigarette and looking at nothing.
And then he thought of the news which had reached the Gregorys that evening.
‘Why? You interested in him?’ asked Sowden.
Pascoe shook his head. Somehow it didn’t feel quite such a betrayal as a spoken no. Betrayal of what? Of whom? He realized he didn’t want to go home to an empty house. Tomorrow with luck it would no longer be empty. Ellie would be there. And Rose. One-year-and-one-week-old Rose. Perhaps they would give him the strength to contemplate what he ought to do about the Gregorys. Perhaps.
Meanwhile.
They had reached the lifts. Pascoe stepped in. Sowden stood back and watched him.
‘Goodbye then,’ he said.
The doors began to close. Pascoe racked his brain for something to say. Every parting should be treated as a rehearsal for the last one; everyone should have some piece of farewell wisdom or wit at his tongue’s end; but, alas, for most, even the best prepared, this was probably how it would be; the doors closing, the light fading, the lift descending, with nothing said, nothing communicated.
The doors closed. His hand shot out and his finger pressed the open button. The doors parted and Pascoe stepped back out into the corridor. He grinned triumphantly at Sowden who looked at him mildly surprised.
‘Some rehearsal, huh?’ said Pascoe. ‘Now, about that drink.’
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Chapter 1
Death? Not much. Not then, not now. What is it? You here, I there: you stopping, I going on? Unimaginable! But I can imagine dying and the fear of it. The love of it too. I can imagine a corvette in heavy seas - a bathtub vessel in harbour, but let a gale come howling up the Tyrrhenian, then in the twinkling of a dog-star, its steel sides are changed to perilous cliffs and the dinghy far below bounces on the wild waters like a baby’s teething-ring.
I can hear what the wind sings! At home, a father’s anger and a mother’s tears; at school, nipping draughts and stumbling repetitions, dreadful doubts and tiny triumphs … the sum of the squares … Lars Porsena of Clusium … a spot on the nose … a place in the Eleven … how to mash a girl … arma virumque cano!
Now I seize the rope and feel its fibres burn my frozen palms. With what strange utterance the wind resounds against this metal cliff; arms and the man, it sings … you ‘orrible sprog! … move to the right in threes! … hands off cocks and on to socks! … squeeze it like a tit! … a pip on the shoulder … a place on a course … how to kill a man …
Italiam non sponte sequor!
And now at last the gaping O receives me and suddenly it is once more a dinghy and the wind is just a wind. Master of myself finally, and of these men who kneel around me, I give commands. Eyes gleam white as fish in sea-dark faces, paddles plunge deep, and my buoyant craft drives over the grasping waves towards the sounding but unseen, the undesired but never to be evaded Ausonian shore.
Fanciful, you say? Romantic even? Oh, but I have still darker imaginings. Time blows like mist in a wind, parting and joining, revealing and concealing, and now the wind is a wind of autumn bearing with it not the salt spume of foreign seas but the bright decay of fallen leaves and the peppery scent of heather and the dust of limestone tors.
There is noise in it too, animal noise, a breathing, a coughing, an uneasy shuffling of feet as I pass over the dew-damp grass towards the darkling house. A window stands carelessly open … reckless I enter and the wind enters with me … slowly I move across the rooms … along corridors … up stairs … uncertain, hesitant, yet driven on by a gale in the blood stronger than any fear.
I push open a bedroom door … a nightlight shines like a corpse-light … but this dimly apprehended shape is no corpse.
Who’s there? Is there someone there? What do you want?
It is time to speak into this light which shows so little.
Mother?
Who’s there? Closer! Closer! Let me see!
And now the wind is a burning wind of the desert in my veins, and it sobs and it shrieks, and the house bristles with light, and I reach for the saving darkness as the helpless, hopeless sailor embraces the drowning sea …
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Acknowledgments
My thanks to the following: Joseph Addison (Chapter 2), Julius Caesar (12), Charles II (14), Thomas Coryat (11), William Cowper (7), Elizabeth I (20), George V (15), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (16), William Hazlitt (8), O. Henry (13), Thomas Hobbes (26), James V of Scotland (27), Jehoram King of Judah (23), Somerset Maugham (9), Thomas More (24), Captain Oates (1), Lord Palmerston (3), William Pitt the Younger (6 and 10), François Rabelais (19 and 29), Sir Walter Rayleigh (24), Philip Sidney (18), Sydney Smith (5), Lytton Strachey (22), Jonathan Swift (25), Lord Tennyson (21), James Thurber (17), the Emperor Vespasian (28), and Oscar Wilde (4).
Requiescant in pace.
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 A
ward. 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
About the Publisher
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New Zealand
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