Death Comes for the Fat Man Read online

  “If it’s more, Mr. Dalziel will settle up,” he said.

  “Yes, sir…but what about…him?” muttered Hector, his gaze flicking to number 3.

  Poor sod’s terrified of being shot at, thought Pascoe.

  “Him?” said Dalziel. “That’s what I like about you, Hector. Always thinking about other people.”

  He stood up once more with the bullhorn.

  “You in the house. We’re just sending off to Pat’s Pantry for some grub and my lad wants to know if there’s owt you’d fancy. Pastie mebbe? Or they do grand Eccles cakes.”

  He paused, listened, then sat down again.

  “Don’t think he wants owt. But a nice thought. Does you credit. It’ll be noted.”

  “No, sir,” said Hector, fear making him bold. “What I meant was, if he sees me moving and thinks I’m a danger…”

  “Eh? Oh, I get you. He might take a shot at you. If he thinks you’re a danger.”

  Dalziel scratched his nose thoughtfully. Pascoe avoided catching his eye.

  “Best thing,” said the Fat Man finally, “is not to look dangerous. Stand up straight, chest out, shoulders back, and walk nice and slow, like you’ve got somewhere definite to go. That way, even if the bugger does shoot, chances are the bullet will pass clean through you without doing much harm. Off you go then.”

  Up to this point, Pascoe had been convinced that the blind obedience to lunatic orders which had made the dreadful slaughter of the Great War possible had died with those millions. Now, watching Hector move slowly down the street like a man wading through water, he had his doubts.

  Once Hector was out of sight, he relaxed against the side of the car and said, “OK, sir. Now either you tell me exactly what’s going on or I’m off back to my hammock.”

  “You mean you’d like to hear Hector’s tale? Why not? Once upon a time…”

  Hector is that rarity in a modern police force, a permanent foot patrol, providing a useful statistic when anxious community groups press for the return of the old beat bobby. The truth is, whether behind the wheel or driving the driver to distraction from the passenger seat, a motorized Hector is lethal. On a bike he never reaches a speed to be dangerous, but his resemblance to a drunken giraffe, though contributing much to the mirth of Mid-Yorkshire, does little for the constabulary image.

  So Hector plods; and, plodding along Mill Street that day, he’d heard a sound as he passed number 3. “Like a cough,” he said. “Or a rotten stick breaking. Or a tennis ball bouncing off a wall. Or a shot.”

  The nearest Hector ever comes to precision is multiple-choice answers.

  He tried the door. It opened. He stepped into the cool shade of the video shop. Behind the counter he saw two men. Asked for description, he thought awhile then said it was hard to see things clearly, coming as he had from bright sunlight into shadow, but it was his fairly firm opinion that one of them was a sort of darkie.

  To the politically correct, this might have resonated as racist and been educed as evidence of Hector’s unsuitability for the job. To those who’d heard him describe a Christmas shoplifter wearing a Santa Claus outfit as a little bloke, I think he had a mustache, a sort of darkie came close to being eidetic.

  The second man (looked funny but probably not a darkie, was Hector’s best shot here) seemed to be holding something in his right hand which might have been a gun, but it was hard to be sure because he was standing in the deepest shadow and he lowered his hands out of sight behind the counter when he saw Hector.

  Feeling the situation needed to be clarified, Hector said, “All right then?”

  There had been a pause during which the two inmates looked at each other.

  Then the sort-of-darkie replied, “Yes. We are all right.”

  And Hector brought this illuminating exchange to a close by saying with an economy and symmetry that were almost beautiful, “All right then,” and leaving.

  Now he had a philosophical problem. Had there been an incident and should he report it? It didn’t take eternity to tease Hector out of thought; the space between now and teatime could do the trick. So he was more than usually oblivious to his surroundings as he crossed to the opposite pavement, with the result that he was almost knocked over by a passing patrol car. The driver, PC Joker Jennison, did an emergency stop then leaned out of his open window to express his doubts about Hector’s sanity.

  Hector listened politely—he had after all heard it all before—then when Jennison paused for breath, off-loaded his problem onto the constable’s very broad shoulders.

  Jennison’s first reaction was that such a story from such a source was almost certainly a load of crap. Also there were only five minutes till the end of his shift, which was why he was speeding down Mill Street in the first place.

  “Best call it in,” he said. “But wait till we’re out of sight, eh?”

  “I think me battery’s flat,” said Hector.

  “What’s new?” said Jennison, and restarted the car.

  Unfortunately his partner, PC Alan Maycock, came from Hebden Bridge, which is close enough to the Lancastrian border for its natives to be, by Mid-Yorkshire standards, a bit soft in every sense of the term, and he was moved by Hector’s plight.

  “I’ll get you through on the car radio,” he said.

  And when Jennison dug him viciously in his belly, he murmured, “Nay, it’ll not take but a minute, and when they hear it’s Hec, they’ll likely just have a laugh.”

  As a policeman, he should have known that the rewards of virtue are sparse and long delayed. If you’re looking for quick profit, opt for vice.

  Instead of the expected fellow constable responding from Control, it was duty inspector Paddy Ireland who took the call. As soon as he heard number 3 Mill Street mentioned, he gave commands for the car to remain in place and await instructions.

  “And then the bugger bursts in on me like he’s just heard the first bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor,” concluded Dalziel. “Got me excited till he mentioned Hector. That took the edge off! And when he said he’d already called it in, I could have wrung his neck!”

  “And then…?” inquired Pascoe.

  “I finished me pie. Few minutes later the phone rang. It were some motormouth from CAT. I tried to explain it were likely all a mistake, but he said mebbe I should let the experts decide that. I said would this be the same experts who’d spent so much public money breaking up the Carradice gang?”

  Pascoe, the diplomat, groaned.

  Six months ago CAT had claimed a huge success when they arrested fifteen terrorist suspects in Nottingham on suspicion of plotting to poison the local water supply with ricin. Since then, however, the CPS had been forced to drop the case against first one then another of the group till finally the trial got under way with only the alleged ringleader, Michael Carradice, in the dock. Pascoe had his own private reasons for hoping the case against him failed too—a hope nourished by Home Office statements made on CAT’s behalf that were sounding increasingly irritated and defensive.

  “What’s up with thee? Wind, is it?” said Dalziel in response to Pascoe’s groan. “Any road, the prat finished by saying the important thing was to keep a low profile, not risk alerting anyone inside, set up blocks out of sight at the street end, maintain observation till their man turned up to assess the situation. Why’re you grinding your teeth like that?”

  “Maybe because I don’t see any sign of any roadblocks, just Maycock smoking a fag at one end of the street and Jennison scratching his balls at the other. Also I’m crouched down behind your car with the patrol car next to it, right opposite number three.”

  “Who needs roadblocks when you’ve got a pair of fatties like Maycock and Jennison? And why move the cars when anyone in there knows we’re on to them already? Any road, you and me know this is likely just another load of Hector bollocks.”

  He shook his head in mock despair.

  “In that case,” said Pascoe, tiring of the game, “all you need do is stroll over ther
e, check everything’s OK, then leave a note on the shop door for the CAT man, saying you’ve got it sorted and would he like a cup of tea back at the Station? Meanwhile…”

  It was his intention to follow his heavy irony by taking his leave and heading for home and hammock, but the Fat Man was struggling to his feet.

  “You’re dead right,” he said. “You tend to fumble around a bit, but in the end you put your white stick right on it, as the actress said to the shortsighted cabinet minister. Time for action. We’ll be a laughingstock if it gets out we spent the holiday hiding behind a car because of Hector. Where’s yon bugger got with my mutton pasties, by the way? We were mad to trust him with our money.”

  “My money,” corrected Pascoe. “And you misunderstand me, I’m not actually suggesting we do anything…”

  “Nay, lad. Don’t be modest,” said Dalziel, upright now. “When you’ve got a good idea, flaunt it.”

  “Sir,” said Pascoe. “Is this wise? I know Hector’s not entirely reliable, but surely he knows a gun when he sees one…”

  As a plea for caution this proved counterproductive.

  “Don’t be daft,” laughed Dalziel. “We’re talking about a man who can’t pick his nose unless someone paints a cross on it and gives him a mirror. If he heard owt, it were likely his own fart, and the bugger inside were probably holding a take-away kebab. Come on, Pete. Let’s get this sorted, then you can buy me a pint.”

  He dusted down his suit, straightened his tie, and set off across the street with the confident step of a man who could walk with kings, talk with presidents, dispute with philosophers, portend with prophets, and never have the slightest doubt that he was right.

  Interestingly, despite the fact that little in their long relationship had given Pascoe any real reason to question this presumption of rightness, the thought crossed his mind as he rose and set off in the footsteps of his great master that there had to be a first time for everything, and how ironic it would be if it were Ellie’s tender heart that caused him to be present on the occasion when the myth of Dalziel’s infallibility was exploded…

  At this same moment, as if his mind had developed powers of telekinesis, Mill Street blew up.

  3

  INTIMATIONS

  When the explosion occurred Ellie Pascoe was asleep in the garden hammock so reluctantly vacated by her husband.

  The Pascoe house in the northern suburbs was too far from Mill Street for anything but the faintest rumor of the bang to reach there. What woke Ellie was a prolonged volley of barking from her daughter’s mongrel terrier.

  “What’s up with Tig?” Ellie asked, yawning.

  “Don’t know,” said Rosie. “We were playing ball and he just started.”

  A sudden suspicion made Ellie examine the tall apple tree in next-door’s garden. Puberty was working its rough changes on her neighbor’s son and a couple of times recently when the summer heat had lured her outside in her bikini, she’d spotted him staring down at her out of the foliage. But there was no sign, and in any case Tig’s nose pointed south, toward the center of town. As she followed his fixed gaze she saw a long way away a faint smudge of smoke soiling the perfect blue of the summer sky.

  Who would light a fire on a day like this?

  Tig was still barking.

  “Can’t you make him shut up?” snapped Ellie.

  Her daughter looked at her in surprise, then took a biscuit off a plate and threw it across the lawn. Tig gave a farewell yap, then went in search of his reward with the complacent mien of one who has done his duty.

  Ellie felt guilty at snapping. Her irritation wasn’t with the dog, there was some other cause less definable.

  She rolled out of the hammock and said, “I’m too hot. Think I’ll cool down in the shower. You OK by yourself?”

  Rosie gave her a look which said without words that she hadn’t been much company anyway, so what was going to be different?

  Ellie went inside, turned on the shower, and stepped under it.

  The cool water washed away her sweat but did nothing for her sense of unease.

  Still nothing definable. Or nothing that she wanted to define. Pointless thinking about it. Pointless because if she did think about it, she might come up with the silly conclusion that the real reason she was taking this shower was that she didn’t want to be wearing her bikini if bad news came…

  Andy Dalziel’s partner, Amanda Marvell, known to her friends as Cap, was even farther away when Mill Street blew up.

  With her man on duty, she had followed the crowds on the traditional migration to the coast, not, however, to join the mass bake-in on a crowded beach but to visit the sick.

  The sick in this instance took the form of her old headmistress, Dame Kitty Bagnold who for nearly forty years had ruled the famous St. Dorothy’s Academy for Catholic Girls near Bakewell in Derbyshire. Cap Marvell had ultimately made life choices which ran counter to everything St. Dot’s stood for. In particular, she had abandoned her religion, divorced her husband, and got herself involved in various Animal Rights groups whose activities teetered on the edge of legality.

  Yet throughout all this, she and Dame Kitty had remained in touch and eventually, rather to their surprise, realized they were friends. Not that the friendship made Cap feel able to address her old head by her St. Dot’s sobriquet of Kitbag, and Dame Kitty would rather have blasphemed than call her ex-pupil anything but Amanda.

  A long and very active retirement had ground Dame Kitty down till ill health had finally obliged her to admit the inevitable, and two years earlier she had moved into a private nursing home that was part of the Avalon Clinic complex situated at Sandytown on the Yorkshire coast.

  At her best, Dame Kitty was as bright and sharp as ever, but she tired easily and usually Cap was alert for the first signs of fatigue so that she could start ending her visit without making her friend’s condition the cause.

  This time it was the older woman who said, “Is everything all right, Amanda?”

  “What?”

  “You seemed to drift off. Perhaps you should sit in this absurd wheelchair while I go inside and order some more tea.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. Sorry. What were we saying…?”

  “We were discussing the merits of the government’s somewhat inchoate education policy, an argument I hoped your sudden silence indicated I had won. But I fear my victory owes more to your distraction than my reasoning. Are you sure all is well with you? No problems with this police officer of yours, whom I hope one day to meet?”

  “No, things are fine there, really…”

  Suddenly Cap Marvell took her mobile out.

  “Sorry, do you mind?”

  She was speed dialing before Kitty could answer.

  The phone rang twice then there was an invitation to leave a message.

  She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, disconnected, and stood up.

  “I’m sorry, Kitty, I’ve got to go. Before the mobs start moving off the beaches…”

  This effort to offer a rational explanation produced the same sad sigh and slight upward roll of the eyes brought by feeble excuses for bad behavior in their St. Dot days.

  “OK, that’s not it. Sorry, I don’t know why,” said Cap. “But I’ve really got to go.”

  “Then go, my dear. And God go with you.”

  Normally this traditional valediction would have won from Cap her equivalent of the old headmistress’s long-suffering expression, but today she just nodded, stooped to kiss her friend’s cheek, then hurried away across the lawn toward the car park.

  Dame Kitty watched her out of sight. There was trouble there. Despite the bright sun and the cloudless sky, she felt it in the air.

  She stood up out of the wheelchair that the staff insisted she should use on her excursions into the gardens, gave it a whack with her stick, and began to make her slow way back to the house.

  4

  DUST AND ASHES

  Later Peter Pascoe worked out that Dalziel h
ad probably saved his life twice.

  The Fat Man’s car, which they’d been sheltering behind, was flipped into the air then deposited upside down on the pavement.

  If he hadn’t obeyed the Fat Man’s command to follow, he would have been underneath it.

  And if he hadn’t been walking in the lee of that corpulent frame when the explosion occurred…

  As it was, when some slight degree of awareness began to seep back into his brain, he felt as if every part of his body had been subjected to a good kicking. He tried to stand up but found the best he could manage was all fours.

  The air was full of dust and smoke. Like a retriever peering through the mist in search of its master’s bird, he strained to penetrate the swirling veil of motes and vapor. An amorphous area of orangey red with some consistency of base gave him the beginnings of perspective. Against it, marked by its stillness in the moving air, he made out a vague heap of something, like a pile of earth thrown up alongside a grave.

  He began to crawl forward and after a couple of yards managed to rise off his hands into a semi-upright crouch. The shifting coiling color he realized now was fire. He could feel its heat, completely unlike the gentle warmth of the sun which only an hour ago he’d been enjoying in the green seclusion of his garden. That small part of his mind still in touch with normality suggested that he ought to ring Ellie and tell her he was all right before some garbled version of events got on to local radio.

  Not that he was sure how all right he was. But a lot all righter than this still heap of something which he was now close enough to to formally identify as Andy Dalziel.

  He had fallen onto his left side and his arms and legs were spread and bent like the kapok-stuffed limbs of some huge teddy bear discarded by a spoilt child. His face had been shredded by shards of glass and brick, and the fine gray dust sticking to the seeping wounds made him look as if he were wearing a Kabuki mask.

  There was no sign of life. But not for a second did Pascoe admit the possibility of death. Dalziel was indestructible. Dalziel is, and was, and forever shall be, world without end, amen. Everybody knew that. Therein lay half his power. Chief constables might come and chief constables might go, but Fat Andy went on forever.