It started with a head-high bouncer.
'Tell me, Andy,' said the Chief Constable. 'Is there any reason I should keep on being showered with shit because I won't close the Swain case?'
'Once I get hold of Waterson . . .'
'Waterson! You're no nearer finding him, are you? And even if you do and he sticks to his statement, he's going to be no use whatsoever to you, is he? Well, is he!'
The best answer Dalziel could manage was a neutral grunt. He'd played the drug connection for all it was worth to keep the Swain case open, suggesting that Swain could have used it to blackmail Waterson into a conspiracy. No one was convinced. Even Swain's laughter when Dalziel put the thesis to him had rung genuine and Thackeray had made yet another sonorous complaint of harassment to the Chief Constable.
'So we're where we were at the beginning,' said Trimble heavily. 'All right, Andy, I'll spell it out. I'm informing the coroner that the Swain inquest can be reopened. I do not doubt what the verdict will be. And that will be the end of it, Andy. No more harassment of Mr Swain. Do you understand me? And in the meantime you will do and say nothing which Eden Thackeray can interpret as even hinting a suspicion that Philip Swain might have been responsible for his wife's death.'
Dalziel said, 'I'm not sure what -' but Trimble cut right across him.
'Andy, you'd better hear this and hear it well. In matters recreational, you may choose to ignore my advice and go ahead and make a fool of yourself. I don't like it, but I'm not going to match your foolishness by making a public spectacle of myself in openly trying to forbid you.'
He paused to draw in breath. For a small man he was pretty impressive, admitted Dalziel.
He resumed. 'But I'm not giving you advice here. As your superior I'm giving you a direct order. And I assure you, failure to obey my direct orders will result in instant suspension. Is that understood?'
'Yes, sir. Suspension, sir. By what, sir?'
Trimble smiled sadly.
'By the book, Andy. Which, though you may not believe it, can be a lot more painful than by the balls. That will be all for now.'
So. Dismissed from the presence without a sniff of the Caledonian nectar.
'Right, sir. Thank you,' said Dalziel, rising. 'Going to the ball, sir?'
It was the night of the Mayor's Hospice Appeal Ball.
'Indeed I am,' said Trimble. 'A man in my position can hardly afford to miss what I gather is the county's premier social occasion. And you?'
'Oh aye. They let the lower orders in too,' said Dalziel. 'I'll save you a dance mebbe.'
'How kind,' murmured Trimble. 'I'm sure that you'll do a lovely Dashing White Sergeant. Especially if you don't take care.'
It was the ultimate degradation. Yorked by a Cornishman! No point in even bothering to look at the umpire. Slowly, sadly, Dalziel walked away.
CHAPTER TEN
Trimble was right. Despite the competing claims of the Liberal Club's Barn dance, the Rugby Club's Barbecue, and the Federation of Working Men's Clubs' Festival of Brass, the Mayor's Hospice Appeal Ball was Mid-Yorkshire's most scintillating social occasion.
Nobody with pretensions to rank, power, charitable works, social concern or high fashion could afford to be absent.
True, to underline its democratic appeal, the tickets stated Dress Optional, and Peter Pascoe, unable to resist his wife's anti-elitist arguments, had come along in his charcoal grey flannel suit, only to be dazzled on all sides by frothy shirt fronts, bow ties like butterflies, and cummerbunds of every colour in the TV test-card. Nor were his drab feathers smoothed by his awareness that Ellie's egalitarian principles had not prevented her from investing in an off-the-shoulder and just-on-the-bosom blue silk gown in a style which Princess Di had made fashionable only a week before.
But even Ellie was upstaged by Dalziel's entrance. Immaculate in a d.j. of the latest cut, with heliographic shoes, and diamond studs glinting like ice in his snow-white shirt, he was a fitting foil for his companion. Though in truth she needed no foil. It was Chung, the Occident in her birth suppressed and the Orient given full sway. She wore a cheong-sam in green and yellow silk around which a bejewelled dragon caressed her sinuous body. The split up the side started at her ankle and seemed as if it went on for ever. At every stride, strong men gasped, and strong women ground their teeth in blase smiles.
'Down, boy,' Ellie murmured in Pascoe's ear.
He grinned, divided in admiration between Chung's beauty and Dalziel's aplomb as he blew a kiss to the Lady Mayor and called out cheerfully, 'What fettle, Joe?' to the Lord Bishop, before settling himself and his partner at a table shared with Trimble and Eden Thackeray among others.
'Now that's what I call an odd couple,' said one of Ellie's politico-academic chums who made up the eight-place table, Ellie having pre-conditioned an evening free from constabulary conversation. 'Beauty and the Beast aren't in it!'
'Not odd at all,' corrected someone else. 'After all, where there's pork, you generally find crackling.'
There was a noise like the thud of a toe against a shin and the speaker let out a cry of pain. The age of diplomacy was not dead, thought Pascoe. Then he caught Ellie's eye and saw her lid droop in a conspiratorial wink and knew that the kick had after all been punitive not cautionary. He smiled back but he could fight his own battles. Turning to the kicked man whose Ph.D. thesis on medieval crop rotation he knew had just been referred for the second time, he said, 'Those gardening notes you've been working on, got anyone interested yet?'
Academics are naturally cannibalistic and this taste of their own blood put the rest of the table in the best of humours and the evening thereafter went with a bang. Everything was as it should be on such a splendid public occasion. The drink prices were exorbitant, the band played like a committee, and the buffet was as glorious to the sight as it was tasteless to the palate.
Midway through the evening, there was a charity auction of items donated by various 'personalities'. Bidding was particularly brisk for a Yorkshire cap presented by the county's greatest post-war cricketer, but silence fell after a voice jumped the offer from £550 to a thousand.
'No advance?' inquired the auctioneer. 'Then sold to Mr Philip Swain!'
Pascoe followed his gesture and for the first time saw Swain. Whatever Dalziel's threats and Picardy's hopes, locally his credit must once more be good. He looked relaxed and at his ease as he accepted the congratulations of those at his table. Pascoe could put names to most of them except one young woman, good-looking in a heavy-featured way, who looked familiar but defied identification till he spotted Arnie Stringer beside her. It was Shirley Appleyard. She didn't look as if she were enjoying herself very much. As he watched, she rose and moved across the ballroom till she reached Dalziel's table. She caught Dalziel's attention, he got up and moved aside with her a little way, they talked, then both went back to their seats.
'Very interesting,' Pascoe said half to himself.
'What?' said Ellie.
'What some people will pay for a second-hand hat,' he answered vaguely.
'Second-head, you mean, surely,' said a would- be wit.
'Which would you prefer, a second head or a second cock?' interposed another.
'Depends if you're buying or selling.'
They could spin skeins of this pedantic waggery. Pascoe excused himself and went to the loo. As he came out, he walked into a very English low-voiced, high-keyed scene. A woman, whom he recognized as Mrs Horncastle, must have just emerged from the Ladies to find her husband waiting to intercept her.
'But it's so early,' she was protesting. 'And you agreed yourself it was a good cause.'
'I'm not sure if the end altogether justifies the means,' said the Canon. 'In any case, I feel we have done our duty. Our presence will have been noted.'
'So will our departure,' she replied. 'I can't possibly leave without saying goodbye to the people on our table.'
'I have made the farewells for both of us,' said the Canon.
At this p
oint he became aware of Pascoe's presence and glared at him indignantly. Pascoe smiled back and said, 'Good evening, Canon, Mrs Horncastle. It's going rather well, I think. Perhaps we can have a dance later, Mrs Horncastle.'
She smiled pallidly and he left them to their synod.
Back in the ballroom the dancing had started again and the first thing he saw was Dalziel doing a nifty quickstep with Chung. The second was Ellie in the close clutches of the mediaeval vegetable man. Before he could analyse what he felt about either of these conjunctions, a bleeper went off. It said much for the atonality of the band that at first no one noticed. Then all eyes focused on a stationary couple, one of whom was fishing angrily through his pockets. It was Dr Ellison Marwood, and his partner was Pamela Waterson. The bleeper was found and switched off. He spoke apologetically to the woman. Pascoe walked over to them and said, 'Duty calling, Dr Marwood? I know the feeling. Don't worry about Mrs Waterson. I'll take over while you find a phone.'
'You' re too kind,' said Marwood satirically. 'I'll get back soon as I can, Pam. Sorry.'
She came into his arms and danced lifelessly till the quickstep ended. A ripple of applause was enough to send the band off into a tango.
'Do you?' said Pascoe.
'Not if I can help it. You haven't found him, then?'
'No. You haven't heard anything, I suppose?'
'No. I don't think I will. I think he's dead.'
'Good lord, no need to talk like that,' said Pascoe, genuinely shocked. 'He'll turn up just now, believe me.'
'I don't think so,' she said. She spoke without emotion but, as last time he spoke to her, he got that sense of black despair not far beneath the surface.
Could it be the kind of despair which would make her write letters to a stranger? He hadn't forgotten the letter-writer's hints that she would be here tonight, but it had hardly seemed worth exercising his mind on. There were getting on for two hundred women here, all wearing their most public faces. What hope of penetrating to the pain beneath that cosmetic finery?
Now here was someone who didn't, or couldn't, keep it hidden. Would a direct question surprise an honest answer? And how would he know? To ask would be to warn. Better to watch and ward.
He escorted her back to her table which seemed mainly medical. When he returned to his own, he found Ellie had just abandoned the fray, limping heavily. The vegetable man was most apologetic, but there was a glint in his eye which made Pascoe wonder if after all he had identified the toe which cracked his shin.
On the dance floor Dalziel and Chung swept from side to side in what should have been a parody of a Valentino tango but somehow wasn't. As if inspired by their togetherness the band was playing almost in tune.
'It's like the last night of the Titanic,' someone opined above the swelling music.
'Or the Waterloo ball,’ suggested another.
They could be right, thought Pascoe. Except that the silent icebergs and the blazing cannon were not external but had probably been brought right into the middle of this merry rout in the minds and the hearts of some of the revellers. Oh Christ. Two glasses of anti-freeze and his mind was turning purple!
He felt Ellie's gaze on him.
'Penny for them?' she said.
'I was just wondering if you'd ever play football again,' he said.
The tango ended and the band stuttered into an old-fashioned waltz.
'Try me,' said Ellie, rising.
They did a couple of circuits without talking. Then Pascoe felt a tap on his shoulder.
'Excuse me,' said Dalziel, a gigolo grin scimitaring his face. 'Man with a wooden leg can't be satisfying a lovely mover like this.'
'Fuck off,' said Pascoe amiably.
They waltzed away. Ellie's arms were round his neck pulling him close.
'That's the nicest thing I've heard tonight,' she said. 'I love you.’ ‘Me too.'
'So why don't we practise what you preach?'
'Eh?'
'I mean fuck off.'
They stole away without fuss. How simple life could be sometimes, thought Pascoe. All you had to do was walk away from the Titanic.
As long as you were aware, of course, that you might be stumbling into the Battle of Waterloo.
part five
Lucifer: Me needs not of noy for to neven,
All wealth in my wield have I wielding;
Above yet shall I be bielding,
On height in the highest of heaven.
There shall I set myself full seemly to sight,
To receive my reverence through right of renown;
I shall be like unto him that is highest on height.
Oh, what I am dearworth and deft - oh deuce! all goes down!
The York Cycle:
The Fall of the Angels'
April 3rd
Dear Mr Dalziel,
It's been a long time, more than a month. Did you think I'd given up the idea? Or perhaps simply gone off quietly and done it? I don't suppose you'd much care which as long as I was out of your hair! Don't think I'm complaining. It was your likely indifference I chose you for in the first place, remember? The last thing I want is for the Great Detective to actually set about tracking me down! Of course, even though I'm beneath your notice, you might fob me off on to one of your underlings. That bothers me a bit. I shouldn't like to think that someone who actually cares might end up picking up the pieces, particularly if I opted for something messy like jumping under a train. Now what put that idea into my head? Perhaps because it's St Pancras' day? Wrong St Pancras, I think, so no need to send your minions rushing off to the station!
I'm rambling. Sorry. Just because it's a ramshackle meaningless world we live in doesn't mean we should give up control of our own thoughts. What I'm saying is I don't want to add to all the misery on offer, so keep me clear of the sensitive plants if you can.
It was good to see you enjoying yourself at the ball last month, by the way, even though you didn't ask me to dance! The Hospice Fund must have done well. I felt so unselfish, knowing I couldn't personally benefit from it. And at the same time I felt like standing up and saying, no need to waste your money, I can teach you how to die! But that would have been a dead giveaway, wouldn't it? And I mustn't make life easy for you. Though come to think of it, it might be nice if I could. I owe you something for laying all my troubles on you like this. It would really please me if I could compensate for dropping one insoluble problem in your lap by helping you out with another. The coroner wasn't very kind to you the other day, was he? And by all accounts you weren't very happy with him. Naturally I can hardly hope to succeed where the Great Detective has failed, but I promise I'll keep my ears open.
It will give me something useful to do during the countdown.
CHAPTER ONE
It had been a mistake to play God.
Especially when you'd solved the old paradox: if God created everything, who created God?
The answer was Chung. And Chung the creator was very different from Chung the malt whisky drinker, or Chung the last tangoist.
Rehearsals at ground level had been demanding enough both of time and energy. But it was his first sight of a pageant wagon that brought matters to a head.
'I'm not going up that,' proclaimed Dalziel. 'Not even if you fit me with crampons.'
That was a narrow ladder up the back of a triple decker stage mounted on a flat-car. The lower deck represented hell, the middle earth, and the upper heaven. And over the upper deck, perched amid polystyrene clouds, was a tiny platform for the maker unmade, the mover unmoved, God Almighty, Andrew Dalziel.
'Come on, Andy,' said Chung. 'The frame's really secure. And there's a safety harness.'
'Aye, but is there a bloody parachute?' asked Dalziel.
'A couple of times and you'll be running up there like a mountain goat,’ she said persuasively. 'Look.'
She was more like a mountain lion, lithe and tawny, as she scaled the ladder with no apparent effort. Dalziel looked up at her, erect and magnifice
nt, on the tiny platform. She beckoned to him, smiling encouragingly.
'Care for a bunk up, Superintendent?'
He turned and looked at Philip Swain. This was another of the troubles with playing God. As Chung had rightly judged, Swain's presence in the cast had been a positive incentive to someone of Dalziel's character. But Trimble's warning about harassment had inhibited him more than he cared to admit, and now, to add injury to inhibition, the jury at the re-convened inquest on Gail Swain had brought in a verdict of death by misadventure. Swain had left the court with words of sympathy ringing in his ears, while Dalziel's had been filled with the flea-like buzz of pained reproof.
He had brought much of it on himself by refusing to desist from his efforts to blow clouds of suspicion Swain's way, thus obliging Eden Thackeray to waft them aside with reluctant ease.
'You had been where that night, Superintendent?' he had asked, smiling.
It turned out that Thackeray knew exactly where he'd been, how much he'd supped, and, their friendship notwithstanding, would bring witnesses to prove it if necessary. When the old solicitor somehow contrived to get him to admit he was being sick into a bucket when he first noticed Gail Swain at the window, his credibility was completely ruined and the coroner's summing up had come close to a recommendation that his conduct of the case be investigated by his superiors.
'Shouldn't you be in California?' he said to Swain now.
'I'm flying out with the coffin at the weekend.'
'Well, I hope it all goes off all right.'
'Thank you,' said Swain, surprised. 'Yes, it's going to be an extremely fraught experience. Not helped, of course, by the delay.'
'What? Oh aye. You're talking about the funeral. I meant the really important thing, your talks with them Delgado lawyers. I reckon they'd have made me mayor of LA if I'd pinned a murder charge on you!'
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