Arms and the Women (27 page)

'Enjoy it while you can. But I'm not asking permission. I'm thinking of what's safe for Rosie, and Daphne, and me, in that order. If you say this would be a crazy thing to do in the circs, that's it. I totally reserve the right to make any decisions I like affecting just myself, but not my family and friends.'

'Good Lord. This smacks dangerously of democracy. What's so funny?'

'Nothing. Just something I was working on. So, what's the verdict?'

'Let me tell you about my day first,' said Pascoe.

She listened without interruption, then she said, 'He's going to be all right, Roote?'

'Oh yes. Fine. It was all stage management. Only me being late let it go as far as it did. And he had the failsafe of his neighbour bringing his breakfast in if I didn't turn up at all.'

'But why?'

'Stark bonkers. Always was. That's my partial, prejudiced and non-expert view. What he certainly was, and still is, is the great manipulator. I left him sitting up in bed talking to the press and giving the impression, without actually saying anything specific, of a poor sensitive soul who's paid his debt to society being hounded to despair by an insensitive and uncaring police force. Mrs Driffield and Miss Mackie, that's his parole officer, are a very telling supporting chorus. And from the way I got treated in the hospital, it's clear he is regarded less as a porter and more as a cross between St Francis and Mother Teresa.'

'Peter, why are you sounding guilty?'

'Am I?' He rubbed his face wearily. 'Could be because I feel. . . well, not exactly guilty, but responsible anyway. OK, he's a nut, but he's a nut who's served his time and has got a job and isn't doing anything that's a threat to society, then because of me he starts feeling hassled . . .'

'And decides to give you a lesson by slashing his wrists in the bath? Listen, love, if that's the way his mind works, then you've done him a favour by putting him in the professionals' hands. Anyway, what's to say that he isn't our man and the reason he decided to top himself was because he realized the implacable sleuth Pascoe was on his tail and the game of terrify-the-little- woman was up?'

'I'd really like to believe it,' said Pascoe. 'But there was nothing in his flat to suggest a connection. Except he had a book open on the soap rack in the bath, like he was reading himself to sleep. It was Empson's
Seven Types of Ambiguity,
ha ha. That's just his kind of joke.'

'So he's still down as a maybe. Fine. Got any other
maybes
you haven't bothered to tell me about, Peter? It would be nice to know just how many more lunatic clients of yours are running around out there looking to get even.'

'No other strong candidates for vengeance,' he assured her. 'And my own preferred choice for simply putting pressure on me has been taken out of the frame.'

He told her about Dalziel's debacle at the Kelly Cornelius hearing. But he didn't tell her about the weird letter. He was still making up his mind about that, and this was reassurance time.

'You know, I've got this suspicion Andy cocked things up on purpose,' he concluded. 'Partly because he reckons the Fraud boys are mucking us about, but also because if all this has got anything to do with Cornelius, cutting her loose should put an end to it.'

'So perhaps he did it for you. Because he knew you wouldn't do it for yourself,' said Ellie, observing him gravely.

'Who knows?' said Pascoe.

'Whatever, it sounds to me like your front runners have both been scratched. So can we assume the danger's over? I should tell Daphne yes?'

Pascoe hesitated then said, 'Look, let me have another word with Fat Andy. He's got a nose for these things.'

He went out to use the hall telephone. A couple of minutes later he returned looking pensive.

'Problem?'

'Not really. Andy says he's pretty sure nothing else will happen, either because we've sorted the trouble or failing that because whoever it is knows now we're on to them. But he agrees we ought to stay on full alert.'

'Meaning he thinks a trip to the seaside would be a bad idea?'

'On the contrary, he reckons that Daphne's cottage sounds an ideal safe house, so long as you're accompanied by a minder.'

'Like dishy young Hat? Yes, please. So why the worried face?'

'He just sounded a bit preoccupied, that's all.'

'You rang him at home? Maybe he was just about to scale the mountainous Miss Marvell.'

'Why am I not allowed to make jokes like that? Well, maybe. Anyway, it's on. And there's one big plus. It will allow that ravening beast you picked up at Enscombe to demonstrate just how house-trained he is on someone else's carpets.'

He studied his wife's expression, then said, 'You have told Daphne about Tig, haven't you?'

'I didn't know about him till I got back to Enscombe and found the deal had been done,' said Ellie defiantly.

'Never mind. Nice upper-class English girls are practically suckled by dogs, aren't they? It'll be a pleasant surprise. Work going well?'

He leaned over to squint at the laptop screen but Ellie half closed the lid.

'I've told you, I can't seem to get down to anything, not while I'm waiting for word on the Great English Novel. This is just my comforter, something for me to keep sucking at till I grow out of it.'

'Is it the thing you started at the hospital? I'd love to see it sometime.'

She smiled and said, 'No, you wouldn't. It's for my eyes only. It's a course of therapy I need to complete. No, that's too heavy. Let's call it a
jeu d'esprit
for one player.'

'And you'll know it's over when the good news from the publisher comes thudding onto the hall mat?'

'Oh no. Haven't you learned anything, Peter?' said Ellie. 'A thud means a returned script. Gloom, doom, rejection. What I want will come floating through the letterbox light as a feather shed front the snow-white plumage of the sweet bird of success who nests on the topmost slopes of Parnassus.'

'Eh?'

'A letter,' said Ellie. 'A long, eloquent, enthusiastic, and accepting letter.'

'Talking of letters.'

He'd made up his mind. He'd taken a photocopy of the weird letter that morning as he dropped the original off for examination. Dalziel had asked how Ellie had reacted and when he'd heard she hadn't had the chance to react, his great shoulders had shrugged and he'd said, 'She's your missus.'

Ellie read the few lines quickly and said, 'Why didn't you say anything last night?'

'I thought you'd had enough to be going on with.'

'And now?'

'I think I was wrong. I mean, I think I was wrong to think I could protect you by keeping you in the dark.'

She said, 'I don't know whether to thump you or give you a big gluey kiss. Listen, there was a car last night. It sort of crawled by. I thought the driver stared up at me. I didn't say anything because I was starting to think that I was turning everything I saw into something sinister and significant.'

Pascoe shook his head and said, 'I don't know whether to give
you
a big gluey kiss or thump you. What did he look like? What kind of car?'

'Smallish, with a moustache, I think. But the car wasn't a white Merc. No, it was a hatchback, possibly a Golf. And darkish. Blue, I think.'

Pascoe recalled the neighbour's sighting of a metallic-blue Golf turning round and driving away on the day of the attempted abduction. He hadn't mentioned it to Ellie then. He mentioned it now.

'Anything else I should know?' she said.

'There are fingerprints on the letter, not Roote's, not on record,' he said. 'So, does it mean anything to you.'

She read the text again, frowned and said, 'Sort of cod Elizabethan. Some of the phrases sound familiar . . . hang on.'

She went and got her one-volume Shakespeare and thumbed through it.

'Here it is, that bit about the frown o' the great and the tyrant's stroke, it's from
Cymbeline.'

'Missed that one,' said Pascoe. 'What's it about?'

'Explaining the plot takes longer than seeing the play,' said Ellie. 'Basically about this guy, Posthumus, who lets himself be conned into thinking his wife's been unfaithful by an Italian called Iachimo, which is a diminutive of Iago, ha ha.'

'Another stab at
Othello
then?'

'Not really. It all ends happily. But dramatically it creaks along, full of unconvincing coincidences and anonymous gents having a chat to keep you up to speed with the plot, which has got the lot: princes kidnapped at birth, mistaken identities, poisons which don't work, transsexual disguises, and history dodgier than a TV documentary. The verse is odd too, sometimes very lyrical, sometimes positively rough and bizarre.'

'Sounds like the old Swan was getting low in the water,' said Pascoe, happy to go along with Ellie's apparent preoccupation with the source of the letter's language as long as it kept her from brooding on its underlying threat.

'I don't think so,' she said. 'It's like he's saying, this one isn't for the wits, crits and media twits, this one's for the folk who live and work at the sharp end. Let's take a look at this arty-farty drama business and see how it really works. OK, I've done slick, I've done elegant, I've done well-constructed, you know I can do them standing on my head. But why should I bother with that stuff when real stories and real feelings will always shine through muddle anyway, like they do in real life? And like in life, poetry's usually accidental and comes in brief flashes rather than in great elegant preordained chunks. As for the happy ending, tragedy's easy 'cos tragedy's the norm. It's happy-ever-after that sorts out the men from the boys. He would of course be sexist.'

Pascoe began to feel that going along had gone along far enough.

'Specifically,' he said. 'The letter.'

'It's from a song that's sung over Fidele's body, only he's not really dead, and he's not really
he
either, but Imogen, or more properly Innogen, the wrongly accused wife who has disguised herself as a boy and called herself Fidele, which even you can see means faithful, but is also an anagram of
defile
which is what the wicked Iti claims to have done to her.'

'I'm glad it all ends happily so long as it ends,' said Pascoe. 'But what's it's significance here?'

'Look, I've done the exegesis, it's you who gets paid to do the detection. I don't know what it means, except that it means I'll be even gladder to get Rosie away safe to Nosebleed Cottage in the morning. I'll go and ring Daphne now.'

'Aren't you forgetting something?'

'What?'

'You were making up your mind between thumping me and giving me a big gluey kiss.'

'So were you.'

'OK. On three. One . . . two . . .'

They were still glued together when a polite cough drew their attention to their daughter, who was patiently spectating.

Seeing she had their attention she said, 'Mummy, Tig's done a big pooh in the middle of the patio. What shall I do with it?'

xx

the last of the cobblers

Ellie Pascoe's guess had been partially right. Cap Marvell was in Dalziel's house when Pascoe phoned, but they weren't about to do anything more intimate than share a pot of tea.

And Ellie's epithet was hardly even partially accurate. Well-built the woman was, but her curves were more Cotswold than Caucasus and a long way short of the Himalayan heights offered by a supine Dalziel.

They had a relationship which both realized might not survive complete honesty, but which both recognized would certainly wither without it.

So when Dalziel came back from the phone in his entrance hall and said, 'Pop upstairs for a couple of minutes, luv. There's someone calling you don't want to meet,' Cap did not demur, but picked up her cup and went quietly up the stairs, confident that all would be explained later.

The doorbell rang.

Dalziel checked that Cap Marvell had left no sign of her presence, then went to answer it.

On the doorstep stood the tall, thin, silver-haired man whose approach, observed through the one clear pane in the coloured glass panel in the door, had made him cut short his conversation with Pascoe.

'Mr Dalziel, how pleasant to see you again,' said the man. 'Gawain Sempernel. We met . . .'

'Aye, I recall. You've not changed much. How're you keeping?'

They shook hands gently, neither trying to turn it into a competition.

'I'm well. No need to ask you. I can see you're blooming.'

'You'd best come in before the neighbours clock us holding hands. I were just having a pot of tea. Or if you'd like a drop of summat stronger . . . ?'