Arms and the Women (35 page)

There was a pile of unopened mail on a table. Circulars, bills, a DVLC reminder. Presumably she'd taken anything personal. If there'd been anything. They'd found precious little in the way of personal papers at the time of her arrest. The nearest he'd got to her past was via a thickish photograph album he'd found at the bottom of one of her cases, though even here the lack of names, dates, or places on or under the pictures meant he was left with only a vague undetailed impression of a life spent growing up in fairly exotic settings (Mediterranean? Caribbean? Asian?). He opened it again. At last an indication she didn't intend to hang around. There were now more gaps than photos.

As he was preparing to leave, his mobile rang. It was 'Hat' Bowler whom he'd delegated to check with Cornelius's credit card companies for details of transactions recorded in the last twenty-four hours.

There were several, all occurring the previous afternoon in town centre stores.

As he made a note, his gaze fell on the pile of mail. The DVLC envelope was at the top. He picked it up and opened it. It was a reminder that Cornelius needed to retax her car at the end of the month. The car was a metallic-blue Golf.

Pocketing the form, he went out into the sunshine.

He decided to walk to the centre, following Cornelius's probable route. They'd never even thought about her car. Of course it was likely she had one, but she'd been using a taxi to the airport, so it didn't come up. He checked the residents' parking spaces in the street. No sign of a blue Golf. He put it to the back of his mind and as he strolled along, thought with envy of Ellie and Rosie relaxing by the sea at Axness. Must be nice to have enough money to afford a holiday cottage. Must be even nicer to have enough time to make good use of it. He and Ellie had once run through a list of alternative careers during one of their quieter debates about the many disadvantages of the police force. In the end she had said with rueful affection, 'One thing's sure, whatever else you might have done, it probably wouldn't have affected the amount of spare time you have for your wife and family. You'd have always been banging away with Miss Whiplash.'

'What? Am I supposed to start like a guilty thing surprised?'

'Of course not. Far too controlled. Anyway, I'm not talking about your fancy woman but that other disciplinarian who turns you on, stern daughter of the voice of God, Duty. If you'd been a dustman, you'd have spent your weekends oiling wheelie-bins.'

Was she right? Was he work-obsessive? When Rosie was ill, he'd dropped everything and gone running. But there was little virtue in that. What father wouldn't? It hadn’t been a matter of choice. And while it seemed to confirm his assertion,
I'll always be there when you need me,
even that (another of Ellie's obiter dicta) depended on your definition of need.

He was walking through Charter Park now without much recollection of how he'd got there. He paused to look around and there in the distance was Wield chatting to some kids playing cricket.

The Fat Man would probably have bellowed something like, 'Pay heed, lads! That's what comes of not wearing a face mask against fast bowlers.'

Is knowing the sort of things Dalziel would have said a step away from hearing me say them myself? he wondered.

He left the sergeant to his converse and made his way out of the park, across the busy road, into the town centre.

In the departmental stores he visited, his investigations proceeded at snail pace.

At till level, the assistants lived up to their reputation of being a timorous breed, herding together in shady recesses, and shying away nervously at the approach of a questing customer. When finally cornered, they expressed a positively Hectorian bewilderment at the notion that there might be a usable correlation between credit card transactions and till receipts, then picked up telephones and emitted whimpering pleas for assistance from the leader of the pack. This usually turned out to be a formidable lady wearing a westernized version of Kabuki make-up. She listened patiently (so far as one could read any emotion in that emulsioned face), asked the same questions three times, pronounced some oxymoronic mantra on the lines of
I don't know, I'm sure,
then declared, 'I'll need to have a word with Mr Earnshaw.' Mr Earnshaw (in Mid-Yorkshire, all deputy managers answer to Earnshaw), a callow youth who tried for gravitas by walking slightly stooped with his hands behind his back, as if in mourning for the passing of the frock coat, next invited Pascoe to follow him to Accounts. And here at last he was greeted with a smile and an acknowledgement that shops were for selling things, and technology was for facilitating that task, by a child of some twelve or thirteen years (apparently) who produced what he wanted in five seconds flat.

So finally he established that Kelly Cornelius had purchased various items of toiletry, lingerie, footwear and clothing, plus a small haversack into which she had presumably packed them.

Escape kit, he thought as he stepped from the cloying air of the inevitable supraliminal parfumerie department into the momentarily preferable stench of exhaust fumes, meaning she'd come out of her apartment not totally sure that she'd be doing her runner that same afternoon, though sufficiently aware the call might come at any time for her to stick the essential photos in her handbag. Then somewhere between the flat and the shops, she'd been given a signal, coolly spent the time she had left buying essential supplies, and then . . . vanished.

So, lad, he could hear Dalziel saying, you've established that she's gone? Grand! I always like having someone confirm what I've known for certain since yesterday evening!

It didn't worry him. This was his way. Drudgery divine, short but certain steps, all the time sweeping up information and gathering speed, till at last you reached the velocity necessary to take off into a flight of airy intuition.

While Dalziel . . . ?

He was probably spreading sweetness and light, or something, down at the head office of Nortrust. Pascoe recalled reading a short story once in which the hero, by refusing to believe in things, destroyed them. He ended up in Threadneedle Street turning his sceptical gaze on the mighty edifice of the Bank of England, which had begun to shake, when someone pushed him under a bus. After Fat Andy's little philosophical flight that morning with all that stuff about seeing what had to be there rather than what appeared to be there, Pascoe hoped that Nortrust had their premises well insured.

The thought made him smile as he made his way back towards the park, and people he didn't know or sometimes even notice smiled back at him.

In fact, Andy Dalziel wasn't in the offices of Nortrust. One thing he did see which the sharp eyes of neither Pascoe nor Wield could clearly discern was that the really important transactions of business life in Mid-Yorkshire weren't conducted on commercial premises but behind the imposing portals of the Gents.

Shortly after one o'clock he'd drifted with a cloud's slow motion into the long dining room which was set as always with small tables for those who wished to lunch
a deux,
or
trois
or even
quatre,
while at the far end where a huge bay window glowered down at the busy High Street stood the broad general table for members who came in alone.

Among those seated there was a white-haired man whose head would not have looked out of place on a marble plinth in Caesar Augustus's palace, which was not the most unpleasant place many would have paid good money to relocate it over the years.

This was Eden Thackeray of Thackeray, Amberson, Mellor, Huby and Thackeray, Solicitors, usually known as Messrs Thackeray, etc. Semi-retired now, he claimed modestly to have dropped from pole position as senior partner into the end slot formerly occupied by his nephew Dunstan who had leapt, by virtue of his name alone, into control of the firm, but no one who knew him doubted for a moment that Eden still called the important shots.

Over many years, he and Dalziel had often opposed, occasionally assisted, and always entertained each other.

The Fat Man plonked his bulk down onto the chair next to him which fortunately, like nearly everything else at the Gents, including the menu, subscribed to Victorian values.

'How do, Eden,' he said.

'Andy, my dear chap. We see you in here far too infrequently.'

'Oh aye? Been doing a poll, have you? Soup, steak and kid.'

This to the waiter who'd already written it down. The alternative never chosen by Dalziel would have been soup and boiled cod. There had once been a motion to include a light salad on the menu during summer months but it had been rejected by a heavy majority.

Thackeray, who was finishing his main course, deferred selection of pudding till Dalziel had caught him up. By the time they dead-heated on their final spoonfuls of Spotted Dick, they were the sole occupants of the common table.

'Coffee and malt. One Park, one Lag. Big 'uns,' said Dalziel to the waiter. 'We'll have it here. And put it on my tab.'

'Everything, or just the drinks, sir?'

The Fat Man looked assessingly at Thackeray.

'Everything,' he said.

Sipping his whisky appreciatively, Thackeray said, 'So, you've made a blind investment, Andy. I hope you find the return worth the risk.'

'Fees you lot earn, I'd not expect much back for a plate of grub and an ounce of mouthwash,' said Dalziel. 'Tell me about the Nortrust Bank.'

'Ah. Let me see. Would this have anything to do with the rumours of fraud circulating around the person of the delectable Ms Cornelius?'

'Know her well, do you?'

'I have been in the same room as her,' said Thackeray.

'Me too. Same courtroom,' said Dalziel.

'Then you'll know what I mean.'

The two men drank their malt in contemplative silence.

'The word is,' said Thackeray finally, 'that after Ms Cornelius had been interviewed for her job, George Ollershaw, chairman of the interviewing panel, declared,
We've got to have this woman. Preferably me first.'

'Mucky sod,' said Dalziel censoriously.

'Indeed. I gather the lady director on the panel was greatly offended and expressed her offence by opposing Ms Cornelius's appointment.'

'So she didn't get a hundred per cent vote?'

'No. It was two-two, with the chairman using his casting vote. He was, of course, able to refute any accusation of undue hormonal influence by pointing to the evidence that from the technical point of view, Ms Cornelius was clearly superior to all other candidates. Of course, as it turned out, the bank might have done better if they had in fact appointed someone whose physical effulgence was not matched by hi-tech brilliance.'

'Eh? Oh, I'm with you. Big tits and no brains, gets her sums wrong but doesn't rip you off.'

'As ever your
reduetio ad vernaculum
removes all ambiguity,' said Thackeray.

'That's what my old mam always used to tell me. So, did any of these dirty old bankers get any further than wishful thinking?'

'If they did, they were uniquely discreet. Tongues have been observed hanging out, but none to my knowledge has ever made contact with any portion of Ms Cornelius's anatomy.'

This was good enough for Dalziel. In Mid-Yorkshire professional circles, Eden Thackeray's knowledge was like a London taxi driver's; as well as the broad and airy boulevards, he knew all the mean streets and dark ginnels.

'So, no sex,' said the Fat Man. 'Still, you can go partners with a lass without banging her, so they tell me. Anyone there with an appetite bigger than his income? George Ollershaw, for instance.'

Thackeray finished his drink, Dalziel crooked a finger and the watching waiter came with the prepared refills.

The lawyer said, 'I had heard that George was being examined by your people with more interest than a fan dancer's feathers at a police party. But personally I'd say you were urinating up the wrong tree there, Andy.'

'Oh aye? You know him well, do you?'

'Well enough. He trained as a lawyer, you know. Indeed, he worked with our firm for a while. A man of few scruples, but too clever to need to be criminal, I'd have thought.'

'You fire him or what?' said Dalziel hopefully.

'No. Amicable parting. He rapidly realized that for us poor solicitors, it is all a labour of love and we exist at mere subsistence level, so he rechannelled his talents into accountancy, moving into financial services during the eighties boom, and whatever benefits he may or may not have brought his clients, he certainly took his own advice to some good effect, emerging from the consequent recession with considerable wealth and property. When the old Nortrust Building Society demutualized five years ago, George was waiting for them. Now that's an interesting story - '

'Does it show him as a crook?' interrupted Dalziel. 'Or mebbe as someone owing big money to the Mafia?'

'Alas, no. Just a very sharp operator. And now he is a pillar of the community. No hint of financial problems, no reason to be helping anyone go scrumping round the Nortrust orchard when the golden fruit fall so freely and legitimately into his outstretched hand. He is of course seriously embarrassed by this investigation. Mud sticks, scrub you never so hard. And his mode of entree into Nortrust's inner sanctum made him many enemies. I see from your polite yawn that I'm not telling you anything you find helpful, am I?'