Deadheads Page 6

  Singh had been reluctant to break in on the rapt sergeant, but now he said, ‘Was it all right me playing with the kiddie, Sarge? I thought it’d give you a bit more chance to suss out her mam.’

  Wield regarded the boy in momentary puzzlement, then recalled to mind that of course he had no notion that their visit to Rosemont had anything but the business of Mrs Aldermann’s car behind it. So his move with the little girl had been pretty clever. But the sergeant did not articulate his approval. Instead he said coldly, ‘Enjoy yourself in the sand-pit, did you? We’ll have to see if we can get you posted to permanent school-crossing duty.’

  Singh glanced sideways and smiled, ready to share the joke, but the sight of that savage, rough-hewn profile made it hard to believe in Wield’s humorous intent. He felt a strong need for the man’s approval and tried again by saying, ‘That Mrs Aldermann, when I was on traffic duty yesterday morning I saw her down the Market Caff. And you know who she was with? Mr Pascoe’s wife!’

  Wield unlocked the car door and slid in behind the wheel.

  ‘Traffic duty from the Market Caff?’ he said. ‘I hope you’re learning good policing as quick as you’re learning bad habits. Get in if you don’t want to walk back.’

  Police Cadet Singh hurried round the car and they drove back to the station in a far from companionable silence.

  7

  COPPER DELIGHT

  (Floribunda. Fairly vigorous, coppery gold blooms in

  clusters of three to five, little fading but needs protection

  from black spot, sweet-scented.)

  Peter Pascoe dandled his daughter, marking the rhythm by chanting in a music-hall Scots accent. ‘De’il and Dalziel begin with ane letter! The de’ils nae guid and Dalziel’s nae better!’

  The little girl was much taken by this verse and gurgled happily, but Ellie, coming into the lounge unheard, said, ‘What’s the fat slob been doing now?’

  ‘That is no way to talk of your daughter,’ said Pascoe sternly.

  ‘Funny. Not that she doesn’t get called worse than that sometimes. But to get back to Dalziel.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing worse than usual. He’s just still niggling about this Elgood-Aldermann thing. But I can’t get out of him what he expects me to do. Wield went round there last night …’

  ‘To the Aldermanns’?’

  ‘Yes. But don’t fret yourself. It was ostensibly about your buddy’s car.’

  ‘And what did he find?’ asked Ellie, a trifle aggressively. She had mixed feelings about police subterfuge, sometimes seeing it as a threat to the body social, sometimes taking a kind of perverse delight in it which worried her.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ said Pascoe hastily, not about to reveal that when Wield had mentioned the locked cabinet, he had picked up the phone and had a long talk with the police pathologist who had reeled off a huge list of potentially lethal chemicals used in garden care, ending by saying, ‘But give me the flesh, and I’ll give you the substance, Inspector. Have you got flesh for me?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Pascoe, feeling like a war-time butcher. ‘No flesh. But just off your cuff, is there anything which might leave a man with a known heart condition looking as if he’d had a heart-attack? Or anything that might make a driver with a skinful of booze almost certain to crash?’

  ‘Well,’ said the pathologist doubtfully, ‘there’s sodium fluoroacetate. Used for killing rats and devilish difficult to get hold of. Lots of symptoms – nausea, mental collapse, epileptiform convulsions – but if no one saw the symptoms, it might pass for a heart-attack if there was a history and no post mortem. As for the other, once a man’s system is invaded by alcohol, it wouldn’t take much to cause confusion. One of the chlorinated hydrocarbons, like chlordane; or an organic phosphate, like parathion; but without flesh …’

  That had been that. The reason why there was no flesh was that both Bulmer and Eagles had been cremated. Not that there would really have been a very good case made of exhumation. The lab reports on the garage door and the Anglepoise lamp had revealed no clear evidence of tampering.

  ‘So there’s nothing to support Elgood’s allegations?’ said Ellie.

  ‘No, and I’ll tell him so,’ said Pascoe firmly. ‘I’m going to see him tomorrow. I reckon he probably just got a touch of the sun, lying around at that cottage of his. He’ll probably be happy to back off now he’s had a couple of nights to sleep on it. I think this child is wet.’

  ‘It’s that rhyme about Dalziel,’ said Ellie. ‘Dump her on a newspaper and I’ll fetch a nappy.’

  On her return, Ellie said thoughtfully. ‘You’re probably right of course, about Elgood, I mean. But Perfecta doesn’t seem all that healthy a place to work, does it?’

  ‘Two deaths, one drunk, one heart? About par for the average business firm. I should have thought.’

  ‘There was someone else a few years back. I met his widow when I was with Daphne, that’s how I know. Burke was the name. He used to work with Aldermann.’

  ‘Burke?’ said Pascoe. ‘That rings a faint bell.’

  ‘Does it? Before that mighty computer mind goes to work, I think your daughter would like her nappy changed.’

  ‘It’s your turn,’ said Pascoe, rising from the floor. ‘I just want to make a phone call.’

  He returned a couple of minutes later and Ellie said casually, ‘By the way, you’ll let me know if you change your mind again, won’t you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About whether you’re seriously investigating Patrick Aldermann.’

  ‘Because of seeing his wife, you mean?’

  ‘I suppose I mean that.’

  ‘Yes, of course I’d tell you.’

  ‘So that I’d stop seeing her?’

  Pascoe grinned and said, ‘I see tiger-traps. No, so that you’d know. Nothing more.’

  ‘So you don’t mind me seeing her again?’

  ‘I mind your asking,’ said Pascoe. ‘Or rather, I’m suspicious of it, as I’m suspicious of anything that smacks of wifely dutifulness. What’s it mean?’

  Ellie rose from the happily re-nappied baby and went to open the cupboard of an old oak dresser from which she took a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.

  ‘Tit for tat, I suppose,’ she said. ‘It struck me that not so long ago I might not even have known that Daphne was the wife of a man you were interested in. You’ve been a lot more forthcoming about your work since I stopped mine.’

  Ellie had been, in fact still officially was, a lecturer in the social science department of the local Liberal Arts College. The period of her maternity leave was now expired but as there had not been much for her to do at this fag-end of the academic year, by mutual agreement she had merely made a token return by undertaking some examination marking. Ironically, her resumption of ‘work’ was in reality likely to be quickly followed by a resumption of being out of work, as the following year the college’s pleasant country site was to be sold off and the staff lumped with the staff of the local town-based College of Technology in an Institute of Higher Education. Most of the courses Ellie was interested in teaching would disappear, and as it was rumoured that the local authority were offering trading stamps to staff willing to become voluntarily redundant, Ellie was contemplating perpetual retirement with whatever compensation she was entitled to, so that she could settle to finishing her second novel (the first having remained obstinately unpublished).

  ‘So I’ve gone gabby?’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ll have to watch that.’

  Ellie set his whisky down beside him and sipped her own.

  ‘Faced,’ she continued, ‘with a choice between regarding this new garrulity as a rather tardy recognition of my strong intellect, rational judgment and complete trustworthiness, and taking it as a condescending, sexist attempt to give the little woman a sop for having to vegetate at home all day, rooted by the brat, I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

  ‘You hear that, Rose?’ said Pascoe, picking up the baby and holding her
face up to his. ‘My life has not been in vain. I may not have much, but I have the benefit of the doubt.’

  ‘Renegotiable on a weekly basis,’ added Ellie. ‘This week I’ve taken into account that Andy Dalziel is obviously being an even bigger pain in the arse than usual.’

  ‘Not bigger,’ corrected Pascoe. ‘Different. I get worried about him sometimes. At his best he’s been a great cop. But times are a-changing.’

  ‘And he’s not changing with them? Well, when the dinosaurs had to go, they had to go. And there in the wings ready to take over is Homo erectus!’

  ‘You flatter yourself,’ grinned Pascoe.

  ‘But you are ready to take over, aren’t you, Peter?’ said Ellie thoughtfully. ‘I don’t mean Andy’s job specifically, but you do feel the dinosaurs have been hanging on just a bit too long, don’t you?’

  ‘Do I? Mebbe so. But I also worry about them. I mean, I sometimes even suspect Fat Andy’s got some powers of self-awareness, and deep down grasps what’s going on. Perhaps this is why he’s seemed a bit uncertain lately. Then other times I’m certain he’s just making sure I look the idiot in all this daft Aldermann business. With a bit of luck, it’ll all blow over before he gets back.’

  ‘He’s going away? Andy?’

  ‘Oh yes. I forgot to tell you. Obviously the ACC thinks Andy’s got to bend to the modern world too. He summoned him yesterday to say that circumstances were preventing him from attending the conference at the Yard next week, so he wanted Andy to be our representative.’

  ‘Not this conference on community policing in mixed societies? The one the Yanks are coming to?’

  ‘Not to mention Frogs, Krauts and Dagoes, as Dalziel puts it,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘God help us all. Dalziel will have them going home to train in the use of tactical nuclear weapons!’

  The baby, annoyed at not being central to the conversation, gave a sudden struggle in Pascoe’s arms.

  ‘Come here, darling,’ said Ellie taking her. ‘Time for you to be nodding off, I think. How about a drop of Scotch to see you through the night?’

  As she went up the stairs the telephone rang.

  Pascoe said, ‘I’ll get it.’

  He picked up the receiver, spoke briefly, listened rather longer and was back in the lounge by the time Ellie returned.

  ‘Anything important?’ she asked, retrieving her whisky.

  ‘Probably not. Just sheer curiosity on my part. Though on the other hand it is rather odd.’

  ‘Do I get three guesses?’ enquired Ellie after a moment.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Pascoe. ‘I was just thinking deep thoughts, that’s all. No, it was your mentioning that chap Burke. I knew it rang a bell. I rang the station and asked them to check if they could. It didn’t take long. Someone there was actually on the case.’

  ‘Case?’

  ‘Well, not a case, exactly. But there was an inquest. This chap Burke fell off a decorator’s ladder outside his house and broke his neck. Verdict, accidental death. No suspicious circumstances.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, as you said, it’s a bit odd, coming on top of what Elgood’s been saying. Particularly as it seems that Mr Burke was assistant to Mr Eagles, the Chief Accountant.’

  ‘And Aldermann got that job?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Pascoe. ‘Of course, it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘No, it probably doesn’t,’ said Ellie. ‘Elgood didn’t even mention it, did he?’

  ‘No. That’s true. I’ll mention it to him though,’ said Pascoe. ‘By the way, as a matter of interest, when are you seeing this Aldermann woman again.’

  ‘Daphne? We’re having coffee together tomorrow. Why?’

  ‘Nothing. What was your impression, by the way.’

  ‘I told you. I liked her. Lively and bright, blinkered of course, but far from stupid. Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s just that Wield described her as a very pleasant, ordinary, upper-middle-class wife, almost a stereotype. She didn’t sound your cup of tea, that’s all.’

  ‘Wield said that? Well, I suppose the presence of the fuzz is always inhibiting. Did he tell you how sexy she was?’

  ‘Sexy?’ said Pascoe, surprised. ‘No, there wasn’t the slightest suggestion … in fact, he seemed to think she was rather plain and homely. You thought her sexy?’

  ‘Oh yes. Not in a moist-mouth-look-at-me-shaking-my-great-tits way, but definitely sexy. Of course, Wield might well not notice.’

  ‘Why not?’

  But Ellie only smiled and rose to pour some more whisky into her glass.

  8

  BLUE MOON

  (Hybrid tea. Richly-scented, lilac-blue blossoms, perhaps an acquired taste.)

  When Pascoe arrived at the Perfecta plant early the following afternoon, he found it as silent as a Welsh Sunday.

  He hung around a small foyer for a few minutes, coughing loudly as he pretended to examine a small display of lavatorial artefacts, many of them with the Elgoodware insignium. Finally an early-middle-aged woman in a severe black and white outfit arrived and said in a matching voice, ‘Mr Pascoe? I’m Bridget Dominic, Mr Elgood’s secretary. Would you follow me, please?’

  Pascoe obeyed, feeling like a hen-pecked husband as he lengthened his stride to keep up with the swift-walking woman, a picture reinforced by the large plastic carrier bag he was carrying. After Dalziel’s hints of Dandy Dick’s sultanic habits, he found Miss Dominic a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps advancing age had brought Elgood into the realm of erotic discipline. Miss Dominic wasn’t a bad name for a good whipper.

  They went up several flights of stairs (didn’t they have lifts?) and arrived at a door with Elgood’s name writ large on the frosted glass. This opened on to what was clearly Miss Dominic’s own office. Pascoe was surprised at its dinginess. He’d have expected Dandy Dick to put on a bit more of a display. Or perhaps it was simply a delayer, like a landscape gardener’s tortuous and narrow path before the trees open wide for the surprise view.

  Miss Dominic knocked. The door was flung open. The view was a surprise.

  Elgood, looking most undandified, stood there jacketless, with his waistcoat undone, his tie awry, his hair ruffled, and an amber-liquored glass in his hand.

  For one moment Pascoe thought they must have caught him – how had Dalziel put it? – tupping a typist in his intray.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Elgood irritably. ‘Thank you, Miss Dominic.’

  The secretary retreated. Elgood closed the door behind her and said, ‘Have a chair. Have a drink. And don’t say “not on duty”. It’s Lucozade. I like to keep my energy up. Sit down. Sit down.’

  Pascoe sat down. The room was bigger and pleasanter than the outer office, but still no state apartment. Nice carpet; pretty curtains framing a pleasant view once the eye travelled beyond the industrialized foreground and the suburbanized middle-distance to the rich blue-green of the pastoral horizon; walls papered a bit like an Indian restaurant and hung with some rather gaudy stilllifes and a big photograph of a fiftyish-suited group formally arranged outside a works gate over which arched in letters of wrought iron the name Elgood.

  Elgood poured Pascoe a Lucozade and sat himself behind an old-fashioned, very sturdy desk. There was a sheet of newspaper opened on it and on the paper a half-eaten pork pie.

  ‘Lunch,’ said Elgood, following his gaze. ‘You’ve eaten? Lucky man. You’ve come at a bloody inconvenient time, I tell you. I may have to chuck you out a bit rapid. On the other hand, I may be able to sit and rabbit on with you all day. You never can tell.’

  ‘About what?’ enquired Pascoe.

  ‘About workers’ meetings. We’re having to make cutbacks like everyone else. I had the shop stewards in on Wednesday to tell ’em how the Board sees things. They’ve spent two days deliberating and this lunch-hour they called a full-scale meeting in the works canteen. It’s still going on. So that’s it, plant and offices idle till they get through yakking.’

  ‘Your
office staff are involved as well?’ said Pascoe, surprised.

  ‘Most of ’em. I don’t have two worlds here, Mr Pascoe, never have done. Same works, same perks, that’s always been my motto, though there’s a lot outside that don’t like it. But I’ve always got on well with the men who work for me. That’s why I’ve hung on here so long.’

  Pascoe, though he had the feeling that this apparent forthrightness was just another version of Dandy Dick’s circumlocution which was aimed for some reason at skirting the topic of Aldermann, was interested enough to ask, ‘But I thought that would be part of the deal, when I.C.E. took you over.’

  Elgood laughed.

  ‘Oh aye, it was part of the deal. But a company bent on a take-over’s a bit like a lad desperate to have it away – he’ll promise owt till the deal’s done, but once his wick’s dipped, it takes more than a happy memory to make him keep his word. But whenever anyone’s wanted shut of me, there’s been enough wise heads at I.C.E. to know that peace at Perfecta means money in their pockets, so I’ve stayed. The lads here know me, I know them. That’s why I’m here now. Instant availability, that’s what I offer them. While they’re down there talking, they know I’m up here waiting. But let’s get you out of the way, shall we? I’m beginning to think I’ve been a bit headstrong, to tell you the truth. I should’ve thought on before coming round to see you. The last thing I need at the moment is you lot poking around and stirring things up.’

  ‘What specific bit of poking did you have in mind?’ asked Pascoe politely.

  ‘Nothing specific,’ said Elgood in irritation. ‘But coming round here like this. And I bet you’ve been asking questions. You haven’t been asking Aldermann questions, have you? I hope to God you had enough sense not to do that!’

  ‘No, I haven’t asked Mr Aldermann any questions,’ said Pascoe. ‘Though I did in fact send someone round to his house, but it was on another matter entirely, please believe me. But I must say he reported nothing suspicious.’