Dalziel And Pascoe: A Clubbable Woman Part 15

'I wish I was. This weather's no good for my business.' 'It doesn't help mine much either. Come on now. Is this social? If it is, p.i.s.s off. If not, get your finger out.' One day, Jacko promised himself, one day I'll tap him on the head and wall him up in a brick kiln.

It was his perennial New Year resolution.

'A bit of both,' he said. 'I'm having a little party for a few select friends, tomorrow night. Christmas Eve. I'd like you to come.' Dalziel hesitated. Jacko Roberts rarely entertained but when he did, it was usually lavish. He regarded it as an investment. Dalziel didn't mind being invested in as long as it was done the right way. A couple of years earlier, Jacko's investment had consisted of the introduction of a group of very willing young ladies to his previously well liquored stag party of civic and other dignitaries. Dalziel had been sober enough to leave early. He had noticed that the Roberts Building Company got a large share of munic.i.p.al contracts the following year and had had words with Jacko.

Now he wondered if he had forgotten.

'Don't worry yourself,' snarled his prospective host. 'It's all respectable. They'll all be there, from Noolan to the Town Clerk. With their wives.'

'What time?'

'Any time after eight.'

'I can't promise. I'll try to make it.'

'Oh, and Bruiser. As you're short of a partner, why not bring that nice sergeant along? Whatsisname?' 'Watch it, Jacko,' said Dalziel softly. 'There's a notice on my overcoat which says, this is where Christmas stops.' 'All right. But I meant it. Ask him anyway. It pleases these old cows to have a virile young man about the place.' Dalziel grunted and thought that Jacko must be doing well at the moment to be in, for him, so light-hearted a mood. He made a mental note to check on what the builder had been up to. 'Right,' he said. 'You said there was some business. Or is that what we've just been talking about?' 'That's an odd thing to say, super. No, but are you still interested in this Connon business or is it all neatly tied up?' 'Don't play clever b.u.g.g.e.rs with me, Jacko. What have you got? Anything or nothing?' 'I don't know. It's just that Mary Connon and Arthur Evans were seen in close confabulation over a drink the Friday before she died.'

Dalziel digested the information for a moment.

'Where?' he asked.

'The Bull, on the coast road.'

'Anything else on a connection between them?'

'Not that I've heard.'

'It's probably nothing. That all?'

'Unless you're going to thank me.'

Dalziel put the phone down hard and sat looking at it. Then he picked up the internal phone and pressed a b.u.t.ton.

'Sergeant Pascoe here.'

'Dalziel. Busy?'

'Well yes. I've just got in.'

'Had your tea?'

'Not yet. I was just going to . . .'

Then you can't be all that busy. Step along here for a minute, will you. Bring your coat. I'll probably want you to go out.' Pascoe sighed as he took his sodden riding mac off the radiator. A minute earlier he had been feeling sorry for the men who were still out on house-to-house questioning. Now he began to wonder if his sympathy was misplaced. Back in Dalziel's office the phone rang again. He picked it up crossly, but after listening for a few moments, his expression softened and he nodded twice.

'Yes, yes. That's good. I'm glad, very very glad.'

Pascoe was surprised to find him looking almost happy when he came through the door. 'Jesus H. Christ,' muttered Detective-Constable Edwards. It was his private theory that Wood field Council estate had been built as a series of experiments in wind-tunnelling. Behind him the door of the house whose occupant he had just been interviewing had been closed with considerable firmness. Some attempt had been made to turn the area immediately in front of the door into a rose-arbour by the erection of a bit of trellis work at right angles to the wall, and he crouched behind the little protection this afforded. The wind came howling down the street full of rain and incipient snow. A shoot of the rambler clinging precariously to the trellis whipped round and slashed against his face. 'Jesus,' he repeated and turned up his collar and went up the path. As he closed the gate he saw the curtain drop into position in the front window. 'All right. I'm off the premises,' he said aloud. What a thing it was to be loved. Not that we deserve it anyway. b.l.o.o.d.y half-wits. G.o.d, to think how chuffed I was to get out of uniform. Detective! All I've done since seems to be walk around and knock on doors. First Connon. Now this. Poor little b.u.g.g.e.r. I wonder where he is? He turned his mind away from the private conviction that little Mickey Annan was somewhere lying dead; deep beneath bracken on the moors; under an old sack in some outhouse; it didn't matter where. His job at the moment was to ask questions.

Someone must have seen the boy that night.

His heart sank when he saw where his questionings would take him next. It was a little cul-de-sac of some two dozen semi-detached bungalows. Pensioners. Old Women. Mostly alone, often lonely. Welcoming, garrulous. He would be pressed to cups of tea, cocoa, Bovril, Horlicks. He tried to harden his heart in advance, but knew it was just a front. I'm your friendly village-bobby-type, he thought, not your hard-as-nails CID boy. This is going to take hours. 'Mrs Williams? Mrs Ivy Williams?' he said to the large heavily-made-up woman who answered his ring.

'No, that's my mam. What are you after, then?'

'I'm from the police. We're checking on the movements of people in this area last night, Mrs . . .?' 'My name's Girton. Is it about that lad then what's missing? Well, mam can't help you. Never gets out at night, do you, mam?' An elderly woman had appeared out of the kitchen which Edwards could see through the half-opened door at the end of the small hallway.

'What's that? What's up?'

'It's a policeman, mam. You weren't out last night, were you, mam?'

'No, I wasn't. Where'd I go?'

'That's right,' said Mrs Girton to Edwards. 'Where'd she go?' 'Well, thank you. You weren't here yourself last night, were you?' 'No, not me. Mondays and Thursdays are my regular nights. Sorry.' 'Will you have a cup of tea, eh?' Mrs Williams was; already turning into the kitchen. Her daughter caught the: look on Edwards's face and grinned sympathetically. 'Don't be daft, mam. He's got a lot of work to do,, haven't you? Got to visit everyone in the road?'

'That's right. Thanks all the same. Good night.'

He turned to go. 'Everyone in the road, eh?' shrilled the old woman. 'Well, make sure you talk to Mrs Grogan next door, then. She knows something, eh? She'll be able to tell you something if you're from the police.'

She disappeared back into the kitchen.

Edwards raised his eyebrows quizzically at Mrs Girton, who shrugged. 'You never know. She's getting on now, but she takes good notice of whatever anyone says. I wouldn't pay too much heed myself, though.'

'Well, thanks anyway. Good night.'

'Good night.' It was raining in earnest. He glanced at his sodden list under the street-lamp. Mrs Kathleen Grogan, No 2. There was a sharp double blast from a horn. Turning, he saw at the end of the cul-de-sac a police-car. He went towards it. 'h.e.l.lo, Brian,' said the uniformed constable cheerily. 'Enjoying yourself?'

'Great. What are you doing here?'

They've found him. Mickey Annan.' Edwards nodded and said, more as a.s.sertion than question, 'Dead?' 'No. Alive and well. We've come to tell you to jack it in. Hop in and we'll give you a lift back.' Edwards was half into the back seat before he remembered Mrs Grogan. He hesitated. 'Come on, then.' 'Look, John. Could you hang on just a couple of minutes? There's just one more call I'd like to make.' 'What're you on about? Playing detectives? I told you, the house-to-house is off . .

'Yes but . . .'

'Sorry, Brian. I've got to get on. There's at least two other poor sods trudging around in the wet when they could be clocking off and going home. Now hop in and let's go.'

Edwards got back out of the car.

'OK, John. You shove off. I'll make my own way back.' 'Have it your own way. But you're a silly b.u.g.g.e.r. Cheers.' Yes, I'm a silly b.u.g.g.e.r. The silly b.u.g.g.e.r to end all silly b.u.g.g.e.rs. 'b.u.g.g.e.r!' he said aloud as he watched the car's taillights disappear into the driving rain. 'I must be mad.' He made his way back along the pavement and turned up the narrow path. Pascoe had sat in silence as his superior swiftly and efficiently did his part in calling off the search for Mickey Annan. This was the first rule when an operation was over. Get your men back. There were too many working hours for too few police as it was without letting any be wasted unnecessarily.

Finally Dalziel was done.

'What happened?' Pascoe had asked.

'He was out looking for Jesus.'

'What?' 'It's these b.l.o.o.d.y schools. When I was a kid it was twotimes table and the sharp edge of a ruler along your a.r.s.e if you didn't know them. Now it's all stimulating the imagination. Christ! Show me a kid who ever needed his imagination stimulated! Anyway, little Mickey Annan was a wise man in the school Nativity play and got very interested in guiding stars in the East, and all. Especially when his teacher explained that Jesus was born again for everyone every Christmas and Bethlehem was never far away. How many b.l.o.o.d.y miles to Bethlehem! His favourite poem! Anyway, to Mickey the East was where his Uncle d.i.c.k and Aunt Mavis live at High Burnton out towards the coast.'

'How did he get there? He did get there, I take it?'

'Oh yes. Sat on a bus. Told the women he was sharing a seat with that he'd lost his money. He reckons wise men don't need to bother much with the truth as far as ordinary mortals are concerned. Anyway his uncle had gone off for Christmas with his family, the house was empty. He got in through a half-closed larder window. Very small evidently. Then he bedded down.'

'But what's he been doing today, then?'

Dalziel had looked pityingly at the sergeant. 'Wise men don't travel by day,' he said. 'You can't see any stars by day. You've got to wait till it's night.'

'Oh? I suppose you would, really.'

'Anyway the woman in the bus saw his picture in this evening's paper, told the local bobby and gave him the boy's uncle's address which the lad had pa.s.sed on to her the previous evening. He was very chatty, evidently, not a care in the world when she was with him. She never a.s.sociated him with the missing lad till she saw the picture. Off they went to Uncle d.i.c.k's just in time to meet Belshazzar taking off in search of a clear patch of sky. Kids! I hope his father whacks him till he's a confirmed atheist.' Pascoe was still grinning at the story as he rang the doorbell of Arthur Evans's house. There were lights on all over the house but no one seemed in a hurry to answer the door. He hoped it would be Gwen Evans who came, though his business was with her husband. a.n.a.lysing his emotions, he came to the conclusion that Owen's affair with Marcus, far from making her more inaccessible, had merely confirmed her accessibility.

He rang the bell once more.

Almost instantly this time the door was flung open. Arthur Evans stood there. He looked distraught, his tie was pulled down and his collar open, his hair was ruffled, but even if he had been neatly dressed and groomed, the bright staring eyes and hectic cheeks would have warned Pascoe that something was amiss. And the smell of whisky. 'What the h.e.l.l do you want?' demanded Evans, then with a sudden change of tone. 'Is anything wrong? Have you found them?'

'Found who?' enquired Pascoe politely.

'Oh, Christ,' said Evans, letting his shoulders sag as he turned and walked away from the open door. Pascoe hesitated a moment then followed him, closing the door quietly behind him. Evans had gone through into the lounge and was standing leaning against the mantelpiece in the cla.s.sic pose of grief.

But this was no mere pose, Pascoe decided.

'Mr Evans,' he said softly, 'what has happened?'

Evans looked at him wretchedly.

'What am I to do without her?' he groaned. 'Without Mrs Evans, you mean?' asked Pascoe. 'Why, where is she, Mr Evans. What's happened to her?' He did not go any further into the room but stood in the door keeping a watchful eye on Evans. For all he knew, Gwen was lying upstairs dead and the man in front of him was building up to another outburst. 'She's left me,' said Evans with difficulty, mouthing the words in an exaggerated way as if examining them in disbelief as they came out.

'Left you? How do you know she's left you?' asked Pascoe, still suspicious that he might be listening to the self-deceiving euphemism of murder. Evans reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, crumpled as though it had been thrust deeply and desperately out of sight.

Pascoe came carefully forward and took it.

'Dear Arthur,' he read, 'I am leaving you. Our marriage has been at an end for some time as far as I am concerned. I am sorry, but there's nothing else to be done. Please forgive me. Gwen.' What the h.e.l.l do I say? Pascoe asked himself. Oh, Bruiser, I wish you were here. Evans sobbed drily, gulping in great mouthfuls of air, and rocked back and forward against the mantelpiece which was lined with Christmas cards. One rocked and fell. He looked up then and became aware of the others. Soundlessly, he swept his forearm down the whole length of the mantelpiece, scattering cards and ornaments alike.

Pascoe touched his arm.

'Come and sit down,' he said. For a moment it looked as if Evans might resist, then he let himself be led to the sofa where he sat down quietly with his head between his hands and began to cry. Pascoe left him and ran lightly upstairs. It was his business to make sure that Gwen Evans was not still here. Arthur had obviously had the same idea. Every door was open, even wardrobes and cupboards, and all the lights were on. He looked into the wardrobes and through the drawers in the dressing-table and tallboy. She had packed well. Hardly a feminine article remained. The same in the bathroom. Only, there on its side on top of the medicine chest was an unstoppered bottle. He picked it up. It was empty. He read the label, then turned and ran downstairs three at a time. Arthur Evans was still on the sofa, only now he was sitting limp with his head resting against the arm. His eyes were closed and his breathing noisy. Pascoe turned back to the hall, picked up the telephone and dialled.

'Ambulance,' he said. 'Quick.'

'How was I to know,' said Pascoe defensively, 'that there were only two tablets in the bottle? Anyway he must have had about half a bottle of whisky.' 'You do not pump out a man's stomach because he's drunk half a bottle of scotch,' said Dalziel. 'If you did, half the top men in this town would be swallowing rubber tubes every weekend. Christ, your common sense should have told you. Evans isn't your romantic suicide type, he's your find-'em-and-mash-'em type. He'll have you on his list now.' 'I hope they've gone a long way,' said Pascoe. 'They seem to have taken everything. Felstead's landlady says he told her that he definitely wouldn't be coming back. They're almost certainly in his car. Is it worth sending out a call?'

Dalziel shook his head emphatically.

'Nothing whatsoever to do with us, Sergeant. If a woman runs away from her husband that's their business. Our only concern is if and when Arthur catches up with them. I can't see him sitting down for a quiet civilized three-cornered discussion.' Like you did? wondered Pascoe. Some hope! You and Evans are brothers under the thick skin. 'What did he say about meeting Mary Connon, that's the important thing,' went on Dalziel. Pascoe tried to stop himself stiffening to a seated attention position and couldn't quite manage it. 'Nothing,' he said. That is, I didn't actually ask him. I mean, how could I? The occasion didn't arise.' He wished his voice didn't sound quite so childishly defensive in his own ears, but Dalziel seemed happy enough with his explanation. 'It'll keep,' he said. 'Nothing's so important that it won't keep. Or if it is, and you keep it too long, it stops being important, and that's much the same thing. Look at the time! There's nothing more for us here. Come on!' He stood up and took his coat from the chair over which it had been casually thrown. 'Well, help me on with it, lad,' he said to Pascoe. 'And hurry up. The most dangerous moment of a policeman's life is the time between getting his coat on and getting out of the station. You never know what's just coming in through the door.' Just coming in through the door at that very minute was Detective-Constable Edwards. He was very wet. 'Where've you been, then?' asked the desk-sergeant aggressively. 'Out,' said Edwards with a nerve sharpened by cold and more than an hour in the company of Mrs Kathy Grogan. 'Is the super still in?' Entry to the Grogan household had not been easy. Mrs Grogan had wisely taken note of the many warnings issued to householders, especially the elderly living on their own, to examine carefully the credentials of all callers before admitting them. It took Edwards's warrant card, two library tickets, a pay-slip and a snapshot of himself and his fiancee on the beach at Scarborough to win him admittance. The snapshot was the clincher. The girl, Mrs Grogan told him, had the look of her late sister. Once her doubts had been satisfied and the door unchained and unbolted, her att.i.tude was one of reproachful expectancy. 'So you've come at last,' she said. 'You take your time don't you?'

'Pardon?' he said.

'Come along in, then. It's draughty out here. Gets right under my skirts if you'll excuse the expression. If I've written to the Council once about that front door, I've written fifty times. I told her next door you'd be coming, but I didn't think you'd be so long about it. If this is what you're like when you are anxious I wouldn't like to wait for you when you're not.' The small living-room she took him into was made even smaller by the amount of stuff she had in there. Every ledge and shelf was crowded with ornaments of one kind or another, most of them bearing some civic inscription ranging geographically from 'A gift from Peebles' to 'A souvenir of Ilfracombe'. Mrs Grogan, Edwards decided, was strongly attached to the past. He knew very well the dangers of any allusions to any of these articles, but the mere unavoidable act of looking at them was more than enough for his hostess. He reckoned he had done well to get away with two cups of tea and forty minutes of reminiscence before an opening arose to thrust in a question. 'Mrs Grogan,' he said, 'you said before that you thought we were anxious to see you . . .'

'No,' she said. 'You said that.'

'Did I?' he asked, half ready to believe anything.

'Yes. Here. Look, I'll show you.'

She dived into a pile of newspapers which lay in an untidy stack beneath her chair and after a short search, triumphantly produced a neatly folded paper which she handed to Edwards. He looked down at it and found himself reading an account of Mary Connon's death. Mrs Grogan's gnarled and knuckle-swollen finger was interposed between his eyes and the paper. The meticulously clear and polished nail came to rest on a line near the end of the story. The police are anxious to interview anyone who may have walked or driven along Boundary Drive between seven and nine on the night in question.' 'But that means,' Edwards began to explain, then pulled himself up with a smile. 'I'm sorry we've taken so long to get round to you, Mrs Grogan, but we've been very busy. Now, I understand then that you did take a walk down Boundary Drive on that night?' 'Oh yes. Of course I did. I always do. I go to my nephew's for tea on Sat.u.r.day afternoons and if the weather's not too bad I get off the bus in Glenfair Road and walk down the Drive. It saves me threepence on the fare that way. My nephew thinks I stay on the bus right into the estate, but I don't always. It would worry him if he knew. This won't have to come out in court, will it?'

'We'll try to keep it quiet,' Edwards a.s.sured her.

'Well, I'd just got opposite that poor woman's house, and I glanced up at it. I always look at the houses as I walk by them. It's really interesting. And then I saw the man.'

'The man.'

'Yes. I saw him quite clearly. A man.'

'Mr Connon?' suggested Edwards.

'Oh no. Not him. I saw his picture in the paper. It wasn't him. Someone quite different.' 'Evans,' interjected Dalziel when Edwards reached this part of his story.

'Probably,' agreed Pascoe gloomily.

'Evans?' asked Edwards. 'Yes. Arthur Evans. He was round there that night. I've talked to him about it.' 'Oh, I see,' said Edwards disappointedly. 'I didn't know. I suppose you asked him, sir, what he was doing up the tree?' 'Up the tree? Up what tree?' said Pascoe, his interest revived. 'No. We didn't ask him that, Constable,' said Dalziel. 'Do go on.' Edwards finished his story rapidly. Mrs Grogan had seen a man half way up the sycamore tree in the Connons' front garden. Despite the darkness and the distance, she claimed she saw him quite distinctly and, taking Edwards to her own window, she gave him a convincing demonstration of the excellence of her eyesight.

'What did you do then?' asked Edwards.

'What should I do? Nothing, of course. It's none of my business. I always look at the houses as I walk past, and I see a lot of things odder than that, but it's not my business, is it? No, it wasn't until I read about the murder in the paper that I thought any more about it. And when it said you were anxious to see me, I've been waiting ever since. I've even missed going out a couple of nights.' 'I'm sorry,' said Edwards gently. 'Next time why don't you come down to see us, to hurry us along a bit? Ask for Mr Dalziel if you do.'

But he didn't put that bit in his report.

'What price my intruder now, sir?' asked Pascoe, with some slight jubilation.' 'It depends who he is,' said Dalziel thoughtfully. 'And if he is. It's late now. And dark. Sergeant, first thing in the morning, you exercise your limbs round at Connon's and see what you're like at climbing trees. And I'll do a bit of sick-visiting, and go and talk to my old mate, Arthur, again. But watch yourself. Listen to that wind.' And a few miles away Antony heard the boughs of the sycamore tree sawing together and watched the sinister patterns moved by the wind across the frosted gla.s.s of the bathroom window. He put his toothbrush down and rinsed his mouth out. Then moving quietly along the landing in his bare feet, he came to Jenny's bedroom door.

It made a small noise as he opened it and he paused.

'Jenny,' he whispered. There was a little silence, then the sound of movement in the bed as she sat up. He could see her faintly, whitely.

'Come in,' she said.

They're looking very pleased with themselves this morning, thought Pascoe. Even from this angle. 'This angle' was almost ninety degrees. He had left the comparative safety of the platform of the step-ladder and was now clinging to what felt like a dangerously pliable branch of the tree. Below him, hand in hand, staring up with lively interest, were Jenny and Antony. Looking up, it had seemed no height at all. Looking down corrected the illusion, so instead he applied his mind to the business in hand. If there had been a man up the tree on the night of Mary Connon's death - and a conversation with Kathy Grogan earlier that morning had convinced him, though her interpretation of the written word might be naively literal, there was nothing wrong with her senses, then that man could have been there for only one of three purposes. Unless he was a bird-watcher, he told himself. Joke. No, either he was up here to have a good look through one of the windows. In which case he'd be disappointed. Only if he really craned his neck sideways could he see anything of the front bedroom windows and then not enough to make the effort worthwhile. Or he wanted to get over the fence into the back garden. Which would be easy enough. Oops! Christ, nearly did it myself without trying. Or he was trying to get in through the one window in the house which was approachable from the tree side. The bathroom. Frosted gla.s.s. No good for your keen voyeur with an eye for detail, not even with the curtains open, blurred white shapes, very frustrating. So, decided Pascoe, if it was the window he was after, he was trying to get in. It was too much to hope that any sign of human presence in the tree would have survived two and a half wintry weeks. Not unless the climber had been wearing hobnailed boots. None the less Pascoe examined the likely branches conscientiously and as always in such cases, the satisfaction of expectation was a disappointment. Then he selected what looked like the safest route to the window and edged his way carefully out along the chosen branches. A sharp gust of wind set the whole tree in motion and he clung on desperately like a sailor in the rigging, remembering Dalziel's jocular injunction to 'watch himself. One thing's certain, he told himself, it wasn't fat Dalziel who climbed up this tree. Or anyone built like him. I reckon I'm about the limit. I reckon also I've reached the limit. He was as near to the window as he felt he could get without falling. There was nothing to be seen. Again he had expected nothing. One of the first things that had been done when the police arrived at the house was to examine all windows and doors for signs of forcible entry. There had been nothing. There was still nothing. The wind rose again, and again he tried to combine safety with dignity, thinking of the watchers below. And elsewhere. He had seen a few curtains moving in neighbouring houses. It was time to descend, he decided, and began to move backwards, fixing his eyes on the wall of the house in his determination not to look down. Then he stopped moving and kept on staring. At first he thought it was merely the effect of looking too hard, and he blinked his eyes twice. But it was still there. Just below the windowsill on the vertical brick there was something which looked like a footprint. Not much of a footprint, more of a toe-print. But it was there. As if someone scrabbling desperately for a hold had used even the little frictional grip pressure against the vertical could give. Wind and height forgotten, Pascoe swung down from the tree like a gymnast. Jenny's hair was blowing wildly all over her face, evading all the effort of her hand to restrain it. She was beautiful. 'Have you found anything, Sergeant?' she asked, pitching her voice high to get over the wind. 'Give us a hand with the steps,' he said to Antony. 'Over here.' Together they moved the step-ladder right up against the wall. The earth was soft here and the feet of the ladder began to sink as he ascended. 'Hang on,' he grunted to Antony and clambered quickly to the top. The bathroom windowsill was not far above his head. He stood on his toes and peered up towards it. 'Look out!' cried Antony, and the steps lurched violently sideways. But he was smiling as they helped him out of the herbaceous border. It was definitely a print, most probably made by the toe of a rubber-soled sports-shoe; a tennis-shoe, perhaps, or basket-ball boot.

'Are you all right?' asked Jenny anxiously.

'He looks a bit dazed,' said Antony. 'It was the soil. One of the legs just went down as if it was on quicksand.' 'I'm all right,' said Pascoe, rather light-heartedly. Take me to my leader.'

Jenny and Antony looked at each other dubiously.

'Come inside and have a cup of tea,' suggested Jenny. 'Or a drop of Daddy's scotch.' She took him by the arm and led him unresistingly into the house. 'h.e.l.lo,' said Connon, looking at the sergeant's earthstained suit. 'Had a fall?' 'Nothing to worry about, sir,' replied Pascoe. 'Winded me a bit that's all. May I use your phone?'

'Of course. Any luck with your tree?'

'Perhaps,' said Pascoe enigmatically, then seeing Jenny's look of enquiry, he relented and added, 'I think there may be a footprint.'