An April Shroud
Page 25
‘Well, there’s a thing,’ murmured Pascoe. ‘Would you stake your professional reputation?’
Shorter, who had been looking very serious, suddenly grinned.
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I really was convinced that John Wayne died at the Alamo, But it’s bothered me a bit. And you’re the only detective-inspector I know, so now it can bother you while I get back to teeth.’
‘Not mine,’ said Pascoe smugly. ‘Not for six months.’
‘That’s right. But don’t forget you’re due to have the barnacles scraped off. Monday, I think. I’ve fixed you up with our Ms Lacewing. She’s a specialist in hygiene, would you believe?’
‘I also gather that she too doesn’t care what goes on at the Calliope Kinema Club,’ said Pascoe.
‘What? Oh, of course, you’d know about that. The picketing, you mean. She’s tried to get my wife interested in that lot but no joy there, I’m glad to say. No, if I were you I’d keep off the Calli while she’s got you in the chair. On the other hand I’m sure she’d be fascinated by any plans Bevin might have for harnessing female labour in the war effort.’
‘Shorter,’ said Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel reflectively. ‘Does your fillings in a shabby mac and a big hat, does he?’
‘Pardon?’ said Pascoe.
‘The blue film brigade,’ said Dalziel, scratching his gut.
‘I managed to grasp the reference to the shabby mac,’ said Pascoe.
‘Clever boy. Well, they need the big hats to hold on their laps.’
‘Ah,’ said Pascoe.
‘Of course it’s a dead giveaway when they stand up. Jesus, my guts are bad!’
Scatophagous crapulence, diagnosed Pascoe, but he kept an expression of studied indifference on his face. On his bad days Dalziel was quite unpredictable and it was hard for his inferiors to steer a path between overt and silent insolence.
‘I reckon it’s an ulcer,’ said Dalziel. ‘It’s this bloody diet. I’m starving the thing and it’s fighting back.’
He thumped his paunch viciously. There was certainly less of it than there had been a couple of years earlier when the diet had first begun. But the path of righteousness is steep and there had been much backsliding and strait is the gate and it would still be a tight squeeze for Dalziel to get through.
‘Shorter,’ reminded Pascoe. ‘My dentist.’
‘Not one for us. Mention it to Sergeant Wield, though. How’s he shaping?’
‘All right, I think.’
‘Shown his face at the Calli, has he? That’s why I picked him, that face. He’ll never be a master of disguise, but, Christ, he’ll frighten the horses!’
This was a reference to (a) Sergeant Wield’s startling ugliness and (b) the Superintendent’s subtle tactic for satisfying both parties to a complaint. The Calliope Kinema Club had opened eighteen months earlier and after an uneasy period as a sort of art house it had finally settled for a level of cine-porn a couple of steps beyond what was available at Gaumonts, ABCs and on children’s television. All might have been well had the Calli known its place, wherever that was. But wherever it was, it certainly wasn’t in Wilkinson Square. Unlike most centrally situated monuments to the Regency, Wilkinson Square had not relaxed and enjoyed the rape of developers and commerce. Even the subtler advances of doctors’ surgeries, solicitors’ chambers and civil servants’ offices had been resisted. It was true that some of the larger houses had become flats and one had even been turned into a private school which for smartness of uniform and eccentricity of curriculum was not easily matched, but a large proportion of the fifteen houses which comprised the Square remained in private occupation. Even the school was forgiven as a necessary antidote to the creeping greyness of post-war education based on proletarian envy and Marxist subversion. No parent of sense with a lad aged six to eleven could be blamed for supporting this symbol of a nation’s freedoms, whatever the price. The price included learning to add in pounds, shillings and pence and being subjected to Dr Haggard’s interesting theories on corporal punishment, but it was little to pay for the social kudos of having a Wilkinson House certificate.
What inefficiency and paedophobia could not achieve, inflation and a broken economy did, and in the mid-seventies so many parents had a change of educational conscience that the school finally closed. The inhabitants of Wilkinson Square watched the house with interest and suspicion. The best they could hope for was expensive flats, the worst they feared was NALGO offices.
The Calliope Kinema Club was a shattering blow cushioned only by the initial incredulity of those receiving it. That such a coup could have taken place unnoticed was shock enough; that Dr Haggard could have been party to it defied belief. But it had and he was. His master stroke had been to change the postal address of the building. Wilkinson House occupied a corner site and one side of the house abutted on Upper Maltgate, a busy and noisy commercial thoroughfare. Here, down a steep flight of steps and across a gloomy area, was situated the old tradesman’s entrance through which postal and most other deliveries were still made. Dr Haggard requested that his house be henceforth known as 21A Upper Maltgate. There was no difficulty, and it was as 21A Upper Maltgate that the premises were licensed to be used as a cinema club while the vigilantes of the Square slept and never felt their security being undone.
But once awoken, their wrath was great. And once the nature of the entertainments being offered at the Club became clear, they launched an attack whose opening barrage in the local paper was couched in such terms that applications for membership doubled the following week.
Legally the Club was in a highly defensible position. The building satisfied all the safety regulations and the Local Authority had issued a licence permitting films to be shown on the premises. The films did not need to be certificated for public showing, though many of them were, and even those such as Droit de Seigneur which were not had so ambiguous a status under current interpretation of the obscenity laws that a successful prosecution was most unlikely.
In any case, as the Wilkinson Square vigilantes bitterly pointed out, Haggard clearly had strong support in high places and they had to content themselves with appealing against the rates and ringing the police whenever a car door slammed. Most of them hadn’t known whether to raise a radical cheer or a reactionary eyebrow when WRAG, the Women’s Rights Action Group, had joined the fray. Sergeant Wield, who had been given the job of looking into complaints from both sides, was summoned by Haggard and later three members of WRAG, including Ms Lacewing, Jack Shorter’s partner, were fined for obstructing the police in the execution, etc. This confirmed the vigilantes’ instinct that the rights of women and the rights of property owners had nothing in common and a potentially powerful alliance never materialized. But the pressures remained strong enough for Sergeant Wield to be currently engaged in preparing a full report on the Calli and all complaints against it. Pascoe felt a little piqued that his own contribution was being so slightingly dismissed.
‘So I just ignore Shorter’s information?’ he said.
‘What information? He thinks some French bird got her teeth bust in a picture? I’ll ring the Sûreté if you like. No, the only thing interests me about Mr Shorter is he likes dirty films.’
‘Oh come on!’ said Pascoe. ‘He went along with a friend. Where’s the harm? As long as it doesn’t break the law, what’s wrong with a bit of titillation?’
‘Titillation,’ repeated Dalziel, enjoying the word. ‘There’s some jobs shouldn’t need it. Doctors, dentists, scout-masters, vicars – when any of that lot start needing titillation, watch out for trouble.’
‘And policemen?’
Dalziel bellowed a laugh.
‘That’s all right. Didn’t you know we’d been made immune by Act of Parliament? They’ve got a council, these dentists? No doubt they’ll sort him out if he starts bothering his patients. I’d keep off the gas if I were you.’
‘He’s a married man,’ protested Pascoe, though he knew silence was a marginally
better policy.
‘So are wife-beaters,’ said Dalziel. ‘Talking of which, how’s yours?’
‘Fine, fine,’ said Pascoe.
‘Good. Still trying to talk you out of the force?’
‘Still trying to keep me sane within it,’ said Pascoe.
‘It’s too bloody late for most of us,’ said Dalziel. ‘I get down on my knees most nights and say, “Thank you, Lord, for another terrible day, and stuff Sir Robert.”’
‘Mark?’ said Pascoe, puzzled.
‘Peel,’ said Dalziel.
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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 Award. 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
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