Death of Dalziel - Dalziel & Pascoe 22 Read online

  ‘I suppose. But the Council Works Department are still assessing damage to the viaduct wall. Word is it looks OK and they're starting running trains over it again with a ten miles per hour speed restriction. The diversions were causing absolute chaos.'

  'So bad folk noticed, you mean?' said Pascoe. 'What about our royal visitant?'

  'Coming by chopper. What he prefers anyway.'

  1 see the papers are taking it as read that his train was the target,' said Pascoe.

  'Keeps them happy,' said Wield. 'Glenister says she's keeping an open mind.'

  'So you have been chatting about the case?' said Pascoe.

  'Like I said, she's approachable. And the PC in your office is on the CAT network, like she promised.'

  'Very cosy. Have you managed to check how many no-go areas are built in?'

  'Jesus, Pete,' protested the sergeant. 'She's falling over herself to keep us happy. You think I'm going to help matters trying to trip her up? Even if she does hold back a bit, I bet not even Trimble's got the clearance you need to know all that CAT stuff.'

  'I'm sure you're right,' said Pascoe shortly. 'So let's go and take a look before young Andersen there follows orders and shoots us.'

  They got out and went towards the barrier.

  Andersen greeted them with a smart salute, then took out his notebook.

  'No need for that,' said Pascoe smiling. 'This is sort of unofficial official. Must be a bit boring for you, just hanging around here.'

  'Doesn't seem much point to it,' agreed the youngster disconsolately.

  'Not to worry,' said Pascoe. 'As long as you're appreciated where it matters, eh? I'll have a word with Mr Ireland, see if he can't find you something a little more testing.'

  'Thanks very much, sir,' said Andersen, delighted.

  'You really going to start telling Paddy Ireland how he should deploy his men?' said Wield as they walked towards the ruined terrace.

  ‘I may suggest diplomatically that there are better ways of nurturing youthful enthusiasm than giving it all the most boring jobs,' replied Pascoe.

  Wield gave a grunt which was in itself a masterpiece of diplomacy, conveying the message You must be out of your tiny mind without getting close to a definably insubordinate phoneme.

  Pascoe wasn't paying attention anyway. He was recalling that day, so close still yet feeling as if it belonged in the historical past, when he'd risen from behind the car and taken those last few steps in the wake of Dalziel.

  The wake of Dalziel. Not the best omened of phrases.

  He shook it out of his mind and concentrated on the collapsed terrace into which Tig was already plunging with great delight, sending up clouds of white dust.

  'Any traces of asbestos?' he asked, suddenly alarmed.

  'No, you're OK,' said Wield, glancing in a plastic folder. 'Don't think expensive fire-retardant materials had much appeal for the guys who built houses like these.'

  'That Jim Upton's report you've got there?' said Pascoe.

  Lipton was the Chief Fire Officer.

  'That's right.'

  'What about the CAT stuff? If I know them, they wouldn't be happy till they got their own experts in to second-guess the local yokel.'

  'Tried to access it, but they've got a firewall even Jim 'ud find it hard to chop down,' said Wield.

  'So you have been checking!' said Pascoe, thinking that IT protection that kept Wield out had to be serious gear.

  'Only because I didn't want to draw attention, this visit being so accidental.'

  'Quite right,' said Pascoe. 'So what's Jim say?'

  'The way this place was built, the blast reduced it to matchwood, which was very handy for the fire. Site of the big bang was definitely Number 3. Relatively small amount of damage to the viaduct wall suggests that if it was their intention to plant the explosive there, they hadn't yet started their excavation.'

  'Anything on the explosive?'

  'Not from Jim. Not his bag. But it was definitely Semtex.'

  'Your friend Glenister tell you that?'

  'No, I got chatting to one of her officers. Nice lad.'

  Pascoe raised his eyebrows and said, 'Wieldy, I hope you remembered you're a happily married man.'

  The sergeant and his partner, Edwin Digweed, had taken advantage of the new legislation formalizing same-sex relationships soon after it came into force. The Pascoes and Dalziel had attended the ceremony, which was a quiet affair. The party which followed in their local pub, the Morris, was far from quiet, but, rather surprisingly in view of

  Wield's profession, neither ceremony nor celebration caused the least ripple of interest in the local media. Surprisingly, that was, to everyone except Pascoe. He'd expressed the hope to Dalziel that, despite the two Eds' declared determination to live their lives as they wanted, there'd be no intrusive media presence. The Fat Man had replied, 'Shame. I were looking forward to seeing our Wieldy as Bride of the Month in Mid-Yorkshire Life. But mebbe you're right. I'll have a word.'

  It was generally believed that if Dalziel had had a word, news of the death of Little Nell would not yet have reached Mid-Yorkshire.

  'Get anything else from this nice lad?' enquired Pascoe.

  'Nay. Sandy Glenister came along just then and he were off like a linty.'

  'So much for her open sharing policy.'

  ‘I think you've got her wrong,' said Wield. 'She answers all my questions, or if she doesn't, she tells me why. She reckons they were probably setting up a detonator device and something went wrong.'

  'It certainly went wrong for Andy,' said Pascoe grimly.

  'It started going wrong before that,' said Wield. 'It started going wrong when he decided not to follow instructions.'

  'Got that in one of your cosy chats, did you?' snapped Pascoe.

  Wield did not acknowledge the question but after a short silence said gently, 'Pete, what exactly are we doing here?'

  What indeed? thought Pascoe. It was a desolate scene. The hot sunny spell was long gone, the temperature was distinctly unsummerish, clouds scudded overhead on a gusty wind which picked up handfuls of ash and created little dust-devils in the gloomy cleft formed by the looming mill and the railway viaduct. To explain he was here because of some crazy notion that only by finding out exactly what had happened in this place could he hope to keep Andy Dalziel alive would make him sound positively doolally.

  He said, 'A crime was committed here. That's my job, investigating crime.'

  It came out more pompous and dismissive than he intended.

  Wield said, 'So you're going to do your great detective act and sift through the ashes and find a clue the CAT team missed?'

  The open sarcasm was no more than he deserved, thought Pascoe.

  Trying to lighten things, he said, 'No, I'll leave that to Tig. What have you got there, boy?'

  Tig, a great snapper up of unconsidered and often insanitary trifles, came to them like his own ghost, covered in white dust and carrying something in his mouth.

  Pascoe stopped to accept the gift, wincing as his ribs reminded him that they might be ignor-able when he was dallying with his wife, but at all other times, they could still crack a sharp whip.

  It was a piece of plastic, fused into a bolus by the intense heat of the fire.

  'One of the videos, I expect,' said Wield. The report says there was hardly anything left identifiable.'

  Pascoe threw it away, which was a mistake. Tig went after it with a delighted yelp, raising an even denser cloud of dust and ash. He was going to need a thorough brushing before he came in sight of Ellie.

  'We've got company,' said Wield.

  'Shit,' said Pascoe.

  A car had drawn up by the barrier. Out of it stepped a blond-haired elegantly suited figure he recognized as Dave Freeman, Glenister's attendant spook.

  He came towards them, a faint smile on his too regular face.

  'Hi,' he said. 'Nice to see you up and about again, Pete.'

  Pascoe resisted an urge to come over r
egimental and insist on his rank.

  'Just out for a stroll, Dave. With my daughter's dog.'

  On cue, Tig, having retrieved his bit of plastic melt-down, returned to wag his tail at the newcomer. Pascoe was childishly pleased to see some of the ash thus redistributed drift on to Freeman's immaculate shoes.

  'And you're out for a stroll too, Sergeant?' the CAT man said to Wield, who Pascoe noted had slipped the plastic folder under his shirt. 'Sir,' said the sergeant.

  Wield's sir coming from a face as expressionless as a quarry wall was so neutral it could have been Swiss.

  'How about you, Dave? What brings you here?' enquired Pascoe.

  'Just here to see the site clearance people get a start. Sometimes a JCB can uncover something a finger search has missed.'

  'You think you might have missed something?' said Pascoe with ironic incredulity.

  'It happens. We can only try to be less fallible than the opposition,' said Freeman.

  'What's that,' said Pascoe, 'CAT calendar quote for July?'

  Even Wield looked slightly surprised at this heavy-handed mockery.

  'One thing you did miss, sir,' he came in quickly. 'Or mebbe it's me that's missed it. But looking through the file I didn't see any mention of the keyholder at Number 6.'

  'Number 6?' said Freeman.

  'Yes, sir. The only other premises in the terrace still occupied. Crofts & Wills, patent agents.'

  They all looked towards Number 6. The blast from Number 3 had ripped Numbers 4 and 5 apart but hadn't been quite strong enough to bring down the gable of the end house, which was presumably made of sterner stuff than the internal separating walls. The fire which followed the blast had done its best but there was still a good fifteen feet or so of blackened brickwork standing.

  'Someone checked them out,' said Freeman off-handedly. 'Seems they were going out of business and had cleared their office that weekend. Lucky break. For them, I mean.'

  'Funny place for a Patents Agency, Mill Street,' observed Pascoe.

  'Indeed. Could be that's why they went out of business,' said Freeman.

  Pascoe didn't reply but set out towards the end of the terrace.

  'Shouldn't get too close to that wall,' called Wield. 'Doesn't look very safe.'

  Pascoe ignored him. Like a child determined to demonstrate its independence, he went right up to the derelict wall and peered through the gap where a door had been blown out, its aluminium frame still hanging drunkenly from its hinges. Here he had a view down the whole length of the terrace to the matching wall of Number 1 which, having only one intervening house to cushion the blast, had taken a harder hit and at its highest point rose no more than five feet from the ground.

  What the fuck am I doing here? Pascoe asked himself. What is it I expect? That those little swirls of dust and ash raised by Tig will shape themselves into the wraith of one of the poor bastards who blew himself up here? And even if that did happen, what would I want to ask him?

  He turned away and rejoined the other two. As he did so, two trucks, one of them carrying a JCB, came rolling up to the barrier.

  'Here come the horny-handed sons of toil,' said Freeman. 'No rush though, Peter. First thing they'll do is erect a canvas hut and get a brew going, so plenty of time to complete your examination of the site.'

  He's taking the piss, thought Pascoe.

  He said, 'Right, Wieldy. Let's be off,' and with a curt nod, he set off to the car.

  'Seems a nice enough guy,' said the sergeant falling into step.

  'You reckon? Your type, is he, Wieldy?'

  'Could be he's a bi-guy,' said Wield equably. 'But if you mean, do I fancy him, then no. All I meant was, he's polite and helpful. You don't agree?'

  'He's a spook,' said Pascoe. 'Probably a prick too. It's a condition of service.'

  He got into the car. Tig followed dustily, dropping his lump of melted plastic on to the floor and taking his place at the open window.

  'Where now?' said Wield. 'Back home?'

  'Not with Tig in this state. He needs a swim in the river, so drop me by the park.'

  He reached down to pick up Tig's trophy, intending to drop it out of the window, but as he retrieved it, he felt something move inside. He raised it to his ear and gave it a shake. It rattled. Wield glanced at him.

  'Thinking of taking up the maracas?' he asked.

  'Only if I can hold a rose between my teeth,' said Pascoe, pocketing the piece of plastic. 'Wieldy, sorry about what I said. About you and Freeman and Glenister, I mean.'

  'No problem, long as you let me take a picture of you with the rose.'

  'You'll be the first, I promise you that!'

  The two men smiled at each other. Wield removed the file from under his shirt and passed it over to Pascoe. Tig barked joyously at a passing starling.

  Behind them, in Mill Street, Dave Freeman talked into his mobile phone.

  4

  dead men don't fart!

  Andy Dalziel is floating uneasily above Mid-Yorkshire.

  His unease derives not from his ability to defy gravity, which seems quite natural, but his fear that someone below might mistake him for a zeppelin and shoot him down.

  Not that England is currently at war with anyone likely to use zeppelins.

  On the other hand what lies directly beneath him does look a bit like a bomb site.

  It occurs to him that this might be exactly what it is. Hard to identify even the familiar from above, but isn't that the old wool mill. . . and over there the railway line with a no-man's land of desolation between . . . ?

  And don't the spirits of the dead come back to haunt the place where they passed away?

  But he'd shaken off Death, hadn't he?

  A starling circles him twice, then settles on his shoulder.

  'Watch what you're doing up there,' says Dalziel, squinting at it. 'I'm not a fucking statue.'

  The bird's beady eyes fix on his. With its smooth gleaming head hunched down between its folded wings, it reminds him of. . . Hector!

  'Sod off!' commands Dalziel. 'I'm not dead!'

  The bird's gaze communicates an indifference worse than mockery.

  The Fat Man feels his gut twist and tauten.

  The pressure becomes intolerable.

  He breaks wind.

  The relief is huge and more than physical.

  'Dead men don't fart!' he cries triumphantly.

  The starling rises from off his shoulder and flutters before his face as though contemplating sinking its arrowhead beak into his eyes.

  Dalziel breaks wind again, this time with such force he gets lift-off and accelerates into the bright blue yonder like a Cape Canaveral rocket. Soon the startled starling is nothing more than a distant mote, high above which an overweight, middle-aged detective superintendent at last realizes the Peter Pan fantasy of his early childhood and laughs with sheer delight as he tumbles and soars between the scudding clouds of a Mid-Yorkshire sky.

  5

  age of wonders

  The following day, Pascoe was back at work.

  Ellie, as omnivident as Wield had feared, did not take long to find out about the expedition to Mill Street.

  She'd been too deeply immersed in her writing to pay much heed when Pascoe and Tig returned from their walk. A swim in the river had removed all the ashy evidence from the dog's coat and Ellic's creative absorption had given Pascoe plenty of time to brush the tell-tale dust from his shoes and turn-ups. But when she came down from Parnassus to find him in the garage, carefully sawing a bolus of melted plastic in half, her suspicions were instantly roused and a very little application of that wifely knife, deep questioning, soon probed the truth out of him almost at the same time as he probed a small lump of impacted metal out of the plastic.

  'Wait till I see Edgar!' she threatened, her anger evidenced by her use of the sergeant's first name instead of the usual Wieldy.

  'Not his fault,' said Pascoe loyally. 'I'm his superior officer. I ordered him.'

  'H
ah!' said Ellie, conveying her low estimate of the authority of orders from such a tainted source. Then, sensing that her husband was less concerned about her wrath at the discovery of his perfidy than he ought to be, she said, 'So what have you got there?'

  ‘I would say it's probably a bullet,' said Pascoe, holding the distorted sphere of metal to the light. 'From a gun.'

  ‘I know where bullets come from.'

  'I'm sure you do. But this is a rather special gun. It's invisible to a CAT'S eye, you see. Of course, it might just be a metal spool in a cassette, melted by the heat.'

  She detected that this rider owed more to superstition than to doubt.

  'So what does it mean?' she said.

  'I've no idea. But it could prove something which in the past only the most fanciful of speculators have even dared hint the possibility of. Hector might have got something right. What's for tea?'

  Next morning he was up at his normal time. Ellie like a master tactician knew when protest was pointless and fed him his breakfast without comment, except to say as he kissed her goodbye, 'Pete, you're not going to do anything silly, are you?'

  'Good Lord, no,' he said. 'This could be evidence. I'll hand it over to Glenister.'

  But not, he added silently to himself, before

  I've made sure it really is evidence!

  Which was why his first call was not at the Station but at the Police Laboratory, where he made it monosyllabically clear to Tony Pollock, the head technician, that he didn't want it done soon, he wanted it done now.

  As a life-long Leeds United supporter, Pollock was well equipped to deal with whatever crap life could hurl, but even he remarked to his assistant, 'With that fat bastard in a coma I thought we might get a bit of peace and quiet from CID.'

  'Aye,' said the assistant. Adding, not unimpressed, 'Never would have thought the DCI knew words like that.'

  The result was what Pascoe had hoped for, what he'd expected.

  He found Sandy Glenister once more sitting behind Dalziel's desk.

  'Peter!' she said with the warm smile. ‘I wondered if we'd see you today. Dave mentioned seeing you in Mill Street and he thought you looked really well.'

  'Yes, I'm feeling much better,' said Pascoe. 'Look, something a bit odd. My dog was rooting around in the debris . . .'