He had a hard but totally unproductive afternoon. Paperwork seemed to come at him from all sides and his one excursion into the outside world proved fruitless too. The 'closed' sign was up in the premises of Etherege and Burne-Jones at Birkham and he had a flat tyre on the journey back. He changed the wheel in record time, determined that at least the evening was going to remain unspoilt.
His haste turned out to be unnecessary. When he rang Ellie at five-thirty to say it looked as if he was going to be able to get away that evening, she answered in a voice distant with fatigue.
'I'm whacked, Peter,' she said. 'It just came on this afternoon. I had to send a class away. They probably reckon I'm pregnant. Or at the menopause, more likely.'
Her effort at lightness failed miserably.
'Have you seen a doctor?' asked Pascoe anxiously.
'Hell, no. I got some pills from the college sick-bay. Guaranteed to knock me out.'
'Pills? Don't you think you should…'
'Oh, stop fussing!' she snapped in irritation. 'We've got a trained nurse here and she only doles out two of these things at a time, so there's not much risk of an overdose.'
'I didn't mean… all I said was…’
'OK, Peter. I'm sorry, love. I'm beat. All I want is a dose of oblivion, a nice, effective, SRN-measured dose. Would you mind if we scrubbed round this evening? Hell, we'd just sit and look miserably at each other anyway. What can you talk about when there's only one thing to talk about? No news yet?'
'Nothing.'
'Well. No news is…'
'… no news. That's all.'
'Yes. Ring me tomorrow, will you?'
'Yes. Look, Ellie, let's have lunch together. I'm going to be out at Birkham in the morning. It’s not so far for you to come. We'll have a bowl of soup at the Jockey.'
'OK. About one; that suit? Good. 'Bye.'
'Bye, love.'
He replaced the receiver thoughtfully.
'What's the attraction at Birkham? Apart from the soup.'
Dalziel was standing at the door. You had to admire the way the man made no effort to conceal his eavesdropping. Or perhaps you didn't have to admire it at all. It was no use protesting about it, that was certain.
Quickly he filled him in on the day's events.
'Precious bloody little,' he grunted. 'If we got paid by results, there'd be a lot of hungry buggers in this building tonight.' He coughed ferociously into his large khaki handkerchief.
'I'd see about that cough, sir,' suggested Pascoe diffidently.
'Would you now?' said Dalziel. 'Well, Sergeant, as you seem to be at a loose end tonight, you can stroll me quietly down to the Black Eagle and buy me some medicine. George, you coming?'
The inspector thus addressed as he moved past the door in his raincoat didn't pause in his stride.
'Not tonight, thanks, sir,' his voice receded. 'Urgently expected at home.'
Pascoe admired him. It took a good man to keep going when Dalziel spoke. Perhaps that was the quality he lacked, which would keep him a sergeant all his days.
'The girl, she's all right?' asked Dalziel as they stepped out into the cool evening air.
'Yes, thanks.'
'Good. She seemed tough enough.'
Dalziel had met Ellie during an investigation at the college where she lectured, the same investigation which had brought Ellie and Pascoe almost reluctantly together again after years without contact. Pascoe was still not certain about the depth and strength of their relationship. They met regularly, slept together when they felt like it (which meant when Ellie felt like it: Pascoe nearly always did), but their intimate talk was always of the shared past, never a shared future. The week-end at Thornton Lacey had seemed in prospect something of a proving ground. It might still turn out to have been so.
But the relationship between Dalziel and Ellie was clear enough. They did not like each other. Each was the other's bogeyman, monstrous and against nature – Dalziel the brute with power and Ellie the woman with brains. Pascoe sometimes felt it would be very easy to find himself crushed to death between them.
'I had a word with Backhouse earlier. He was cagey, but he's no further forward.'
Dalziel made it sound as if in Backhouse's place he would have been a great deal further forward.
'There's not much he can do, sir,' said Pascoe, deciding he might as well go along with this we-can-discuss-the-case-coolly therapy. 'Not until they find Colin.'
'If he did it. Which seems likely. What seems likely is usually what happened. Though there is one thing.'
What the one thing consisted of was not to be immediately revealed. They passed through the saloon bar door of the Black Eagle as Dalziel spoke. The barman stood with the telephone to his ear.
'Just a minute,' he said. ‘For you, Mr Dalziel.'
Dalziel listened with nothing more than a couple of grunts and one long cough.
'Right,' he said finally. 'Send a car.'
He replaced the receiver firmly. Pascoe looked at him expectantly.
'Just in time for a drink,' said Dalziel. 'Two scotches, Tommy. Quick as you like.'
'We're going out,' stated Pascoe.
'Right. Good job your bit of fluff's tired. Cheers.'
He downed his scotch in one.
'Laddo's been at it again,' he continued. 'Only this time he was interrupted.'
'You mean we've got a witness?' asked Pascoe hopefully.
'No. From the sound of it we've got a corpse.'
Chapter 2
It was one-thirty when Pascoe arrived at the Jockey at Birkham. The pub was situated alongside a boarding kennels and the resident dogs howled accusingly at him as he parked his car.
Ellie had finished her soup and was tearing the heart out of a steak pie, signs of a good appetite which pleased him as he made his apologies and refilled her glass.
'I thought you said you were going to be in Birkham this morning,' she complained.
'Something came up.'
Dropping his voice, he quickly sketched out what had happened the previous evening. Matthew Lewis, forty-three, senior partner in a firm of estate agents, had been called back from a late holiday in Scotland to attend to some urgent business. He had finished at his office at four-thirty. Deciding he was too exhausted to face the long drive north that evening, he made for home.
A neighbour had seen him turn in to the drive of his handsome ranch-style bungalow at ten past five. At five-thirty, the neighbour, Mrs Celia Turvey, had gone to the front door of Lewis's house with a parcel she had taken in for him from the postman. The front door was open. No one answered her calls. She went into the house and discovered Lewis lying dead in the lounge.
Pascoe talked calmly, objectively, about the case, keeping a close eye on Ellie's reactions. It was a good thing to have her interest like this. But it would be easy to let this new act of violence spill over into the emotional area of their own weekend. The momentum of the case had carried him unquestioningly along for most of the previous evening. But when Mrs Lewis, travel-weary and pale beyond despair, had arrived with her two young children, he had turned away and left rather than run the risk of having to speak to her.
He did not tell Ellie this. Nor did he tell her that Matthew Lewis's head had been beaten so badly that slivers of bone from his fractured skull were found buried deep inside his brain. He kept the affair at the level of a problem, as much for his own sake as for hers. But the targetless anger he had felt in Thornton Lacey was beginning to scratch demandingly at whatever cellar-door of his being contained it.
Ellie too had sombre-coloured news. She had been in touch with Rose's parents in Worksop and discovered that the body had been released to them and the funeral was taking place the following day.
'That's quick,' commented Pascoe.
'It's not something to be put off,' said Ellie. 'With the funeral done, there's some chance of starting to live again. Can you go? It's not that far.'
'I'll try,' said Pascoe. 'Of course, we're very busy.
'
'Oh, stuff your precious bloody job!' said Ellie, standing up. 'Are you finished? Let's get some air.'
They strolled in silence along the road outside the pub, arriving eventually at the old barn which bore the sign David Burne-Jones and Jonathan Etherege – Antiques. This had been his original reason for meeting Ellie in Birkham, but there had been no time that morning to visit the shop. He had intended to call there later, after Ellie had departed, but now, as she stopped and peered through the open doorway, he said nothing but waited to see what she would do.
'Fancy a browse?' she asked.
'Anything you say.'
They went in. Sitting, and managing to look comfortable, on a Victorian chaise-longue was a man who seemed just to have finished a picnic lunch and was cleaning his teeth on an apple. About forty-two or -three, he had a round, cheerful face which matched his general shape. Fat if you disliked him, otherwise just chubby, thought Pascoe, leaving his own judgement still in the balance.
'Afternoon,' he said. 'Anything in particular you, want?'
'Just browsing,’ said Ellie.
'Be my guest. Let me know if you come across anything half decent among the junk.'
The shop was divided into three sections. The largest contained furniture, the next local craftwork, and third and smallest, a mere couple of display cabinets, stamps and coins.
Pascoe peered closely at these, laboriously trying to set them against a mental check list.
'I didn't know you were interested in stamps?' said Ellie, appearing at his shoulder.
'There's a lot you don't know about me,' murmured Pascoe. And vice versa.
They wandered back into the craft section. He picked up an ashtray thrown by some local potter.
'You can steal better at the Jockey,' he said.
'I've often thought of it,' said the apple-eater, who had wandered up behind them unnoticed.
'Sorry,' said Pascoe, putting down the ashtray hastily.
'No need,' grinned the man. Pascoe grinned back, making up his mind. Anyone who could laugh at his own business deserved to be chubby.
'These are nice,' said Ellie. She was looking at a selection of pendants and brooches made up from small stones, some polished, some not, all described as 'Real Yorkshire Stones' as if this gave them special value.
'You won't find those in the Jockey,' said the dealer. 'But all good local work. Very local. Me, in fact. Keep your local craftsmen happy.'
'And rich,' said Pascoe drily, looking at the price tag of the red-flecked green stone pendant Ellie seemed to be taking most interest in.
'All right,' said the man. 'Instant reduction of twenty-five p. just to test the sincerity of your interest.'
Ellie looked at Pascoe, grinning broadly at his predicament. He reached for his wallet and paid up. The grin alone was worth it.
'Thanks,' she said. 'Now I've got what I want, I'm going to rush off. I have a class at two-thirty. Ring me about tomorrow, will you?'
'OK,' said Pascoe. 'I'll just hang on here a bit.'
He watched her go, then turned to the dealer.
'Mr Burne-Jones?' he asked.
"'Nearly right. Etherege,' said the man.
He looked unperturbed when Pascoe introduced himself and blank when he was shown the stamps.
'Sorry,' he said. 'They're just bits of paper to me. Never been able to see it, myself. My partner looks after that side of things. There's nothing in it for us, really, but he's interested.'
'That would be Mr Burne-Jones? Could I speak to him?'
'Not for a few days. He went off to Corsica for his hols this very morning.'
'Damn,' said Pascoe. He produced a copy of the complete list of stolen articles.
'You'll have seen this?'
'Yes,' said Etherege. 'They keep on coming round, but as you can see, it's mainly furniture we deal in here. A bit bulky for your cat-burglar and in any case I buy most of it in myself at the sales, so we know where it's come from.'
'What about the stamps?'
'God knows. I sometimes think David, my partner, hangs around school playgrounds and does swops. Look, if you like, why don't you sort out anything from our stock which matches any of the stamps on your list and take them away for a closer check.'
'That's very generous of you,' said Pascoe who had been about to do just that. But it was nice for a change not to have a fuss.
'Not really,' said Etherege. 'Nothing there's marked at more than a few quid. No penny blacks, I'm afraid.'
There were one or two items, not of any great value or rarity, which corresponded with entries on Sturgeon's catalogue. Pascoe gave Etherege a receipt for them.
'If there's no identification, you'll get them back, of course.'
'And if there is?'
Pascoe shrugged.
'Never mind. I'll take it out of David's profits,' smiled Etherege. 'Cheerio, Sergeant. Come again and do some browsing. Bring the young lady. She seems able to get you to spend rather than just confiscate! Is she in the force too, by the way?'
'No such luck,' said Pascoe. 'Goodbye.'
He walked back to the pub car-park. It had not so far been a very productive day. As he approached his car which was parked up against the fence surrounding the kennels, he heard the dogs howl again, forlorn, wanting their owners.
Dalziel's pain, dissipated or forgotten in the activity of organizing a murder hunt, had returned after lunch. The timing supported his own diagnosis of indigestion, but having worked his way in vain through a variety of pharmaceutical and folk cures, he reluctantly made an appointment to see his doctor. This produced an immediate improvement in his condition and the optimistic reaction was still in evidence as he talked about the Lewis case with Pascoe.
'We need this one. This boy's mad.'
'Sir?'
'You saw Lewis. There was no need for that. The first blow would have stunned him, the next put him out cold. He must have been flat out on the floor for the next half-dozen, the ones that killed him.'
'Panic?' suggested Pascoe.
'I don't think so. You run when you panic. Hit anything in the way, perhaps, but mainly just run. There was no sign of this boy running. He beat an orderly retreat, didn't waste any time, but left in good order. It all points to a nutcase. We'd seen the signs.'
'Killing a man's not quite like peeing in a kettle,’ protested Pascoe.
'I don't know. You leave him lying there in the middle of the room. Like a heap of garbage. That's all a dead man is, after all.'
Pascoe looked doubtful. He was used to playing Dalziel's straight man. It was an exercise which often produced results.
'We're not even absolutely certain it's the same fellow,' he said.
Dalziel snorted with magnificent scorn.
'We've got a villain who does medium large detached houses while the owners are away on holiday. He has shown himself ready to use violence. The owner of a medium large detached house…'
'Bungalow.'
'… who should have been on holiday gets beaten to death by someone he catches in the act. Therefore…’
'He was done to death by a disgruntled client who helped himself to some bits and pieces to make it look like a robbery.'
'Fine. Except that no one knew he was going to be at home that day. He was supposed to be on holiday. Remember?'
'He did come back for a meeting, sir,' replied Pascoe. 'Someone must have known.'
Dalziel sighed as if Pascoe had taken all the joy out of his life.
'All right. Talk to the people at his office if you like. Let's leave no stone unturned. Or uncast, for that matter. We've got to get at this boy somehow. And if he is our thief, then we've only got two starting points. The break-ins themselves, or disposal of the loot. Which so far means a few bloody stamps. Was Etherege any good?'
'No. Oh, he'll know a few ways to make a quick bob or two, but I can't see anything there for us. I brought some stamps for Sturgeon to look at.'
'Which leaves your actual crimes,' sai
d Dalziel, setting in train a long spiral scratch which began at his calf and gave promise of attaining to his crotch.
Pascoe was silent. Everyone on the case had worked long and hard in the search for a common denominator which might lead somewhere. But such a thing was hard to come by. In only two cases did they even know the day of the week and the time of day the crime had taken place. The first, when the old gardener had been attacked, was a Thursday at seven-thirty pm. The second, when Lewis was killed, was a Monday at five-fifteen pm. Early, but that meant nothing. Given a choice, most thieves preferred daylight for a housebreaking job. There was no worry about lights, less risk of being asked to explain your presence on the streets by a casual policeman.
The only real potentially useful link between the crimes was that the house-owners had all been on holiday. The thief must have some source of information.
The trouble was there were any number of ways in which a professional thief could unearth the fact that a house was empty. Though just how much of a real professional their man was, Pascoe wasn't sure. Certainly it was doubtful whether he was known to the police. Every likely villain in the area had been descended on with great force and alacrity in the two cases where the time of the job was known. The results had been negative.
And the deliberate slaying of Lewis (if it had been their man in his house) bothered Pascoe considerably. Your thief had a great instinct for self-preservation. He might smash what lay in the way of his escape, but would probably see no reason to hang around to make a job of it.
'I still don't think he's a nutcase,' he averred as he left Dalziel groaning his satisfaction as he reached the vertex of his scratch.
In the corridor he met Detective-Inspector George Headingley, the man with the strength of will to resist Dalziel's drinking invitations. He held a sheet of paper in his hand.
'There's more in piss than meets the eye,' said the inspector sagely.
'What?'
'It was your idea to send the contents of Cottingley's kettle to forensic, wasn't it? Take a house-point. Our lad's a diabetic.'
'A what?'
'He's got diabetes, which might narrow things down a bit. I'm just on my way in to tell the super.
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