Ruling Passion (13 page)

'I didn't mean ... all I said was...’

'OK, Peter. I'm sorry, love. I'm beat. All I want is  a dose of oblivion, a nice, effective, SRN-measured  dose. Would you mind if we scrubbed round this  evening? Hell, we'd just sit and look miserably  at each other anyway. What can you talk about  when there's only one thing to talk about? No  news yet?'

'Nothing.'

'Well. No news is . . .'

'. . . no news. That's all.'

'Yes. Ring me tomorrow, will you?'

'Yes. Look, Ellie, let's have lunch together. I'm  going to be out at Birkham in the morning. It’s not so far for you to come. We'll have a bowl of  soup at the Jockey.'

'OK. About one; that suit? Good. 'Bye.'

'Bye, love.'

He replaced the receiver thoughtfully.

'What's the attraction at Birkham? Apart from  the soup.'

Dalziel was standing at the door. You had to  admire the way the man made no effort to conceal  his eavesdropping. Or perhaps you didn't have to  admire it at all. It was no use protesting about it,  that was certain.

Quickly he filled him in on the day's events.

'Precious bloody little,' he grunted. 'If we got  paid by results, there'd be a lot of hungry buggers  in this building tonight.' He coughed ferociously  into his large khaki handkerchief.

'I'd see about that cough, sir,' suggested Pascoe  diffidently.

'Would you now?' said Dalziel. 'Well, Sergeant,  as you seem to be at a loose end tonight, you can  stroll me quietly down to the Black Eagle and buy  me some medicine. George, you coming?'

The inspector thus addressed as he moved past  the door in his raincoat didn't pause in his stride.

'Not tonight, thanks, sir,' his voice receded.  'Urgently expected at home.'

Pascoe admired him. It took a good man to keep going when Dalziel spoke. Perhaps that was  the quality he lacked, which would keep him a  sergeant all his days.

'The girl, she's all right?' asked Dalziel as they  stepped out into the cool evening air.

'Yes, thanks.'

'Good. She seemed tough enough.'

Dalziel had met Ellie during an investigation at  the college where she lectured, the same investigation which had brought Ellie and Pascoe almost  reluctantly together again after years without contact. Pascoe was still not certain about the depth and strength of their relationship. They met regularly, slept together when they felt like it (which  meant when Ellie felt like it: Pascoe nearly always  did), but their intimate talk was always of the  shared past, never a shared future. The week-end  at Thornton Lacey had seemed in prospect something of a proving ground. It might still turn out  to have been so.

But the relationship between Dalziel and Ellie  was clear enough. They did not like each other. Each was the other's bogeyman, monstrous and  against nature - Dalziel the brute with power and  Ellie the woman with brains. Pascoe sometimes  felt it would be very easy to find himself crushed  to death between them.

'I had a word with Backhouse earlier. He was  cagey, but he's no further forward.'

Dalziel made it sound as if in Backhouse's place he would have been a great deal further forward.

'There's not much he can do, sir,' said Pascoe,  deciding he might as well go along with this we-can-discuss-the-case-coolly therapy. 'Not until  they find Colin.'

'If he did it. Which seems likely. What seems likely is usually what happened. Though there is  one thing.'

What the one thing consisted of was not to be  immediately revealed. They passed through the  saloon bar door of the Black Eagle as Dalziel spoke.  The barman stood with the telephone to his ear.

'Just a minute,' he said. ‘For you, Mr Dalziel.'

Dalziel listened with nothing more than a couple  of grunts and one long cough.

'Right,' he said finally. 'Send a car.'

He replaced the receiver firmly. Pascoe looked  at him expectantly.

'Just in time for a drink,' said Dalziel. 'Two  scotches, Tommy. Quick as you like.'

'We're going out,' stated Pascoe.

'Right. Good job your bit of fluff's tired. Cheers.'

He downed his scotch in one.

'Laddo's been at it again,' he continued. 'Only  this time he was interrupted.'

'You mean we've got a witness?' asked Pascoe  hopefully.

'No. From the sound of it we've got a corpse.'

Chapter 2

It was one-thirty when Pascoe arrived at the Jockey  at Birkham. The pub was situated alongside a boarding kennels and the resident dogs howled  accusingly at him as he parked his car.

Ellie had finished her soup and was tearing the  heart out of a steak pie, signs of a good appetite  which pleased him as he made his apologies and  refilled her glass.

'I thought you said you were going to be in  Birkham this morning,' she complained.

'Something came up.'

Dropping his voice, he quickly sketched out what  had happened the previous evening. Matthew  Lewis, forty-three, senior partner in a firm of estate  agents, had been called back from a late holiday in Scotland to attend to some urgent business. He  had finished at his office at four-thirty. Deciding  he was too exhausted to face the long drive north  that evening, he made for home.

A neighbour had seen him turn in to the drive of his handsome ranch-style bungalow at ten past five. At five-thirty, the neighbour, Mrs Celia  Turvey, had gone to the front door of Lewis's  house with a parcel she had taken in for him  from the postman. The front door was open. No  one answered her calls. She went into the house and discovered Lewis lying dead in the lounge.

Pascoe talked calmly, objectively, about the case,  keeping a close eye on Ellie's reactions. It was a  good thing to have her interest like this. But it  would be easy to let this new act of violence spill  over into the emotional area of their own weekend. The momentum of the case had carried him  unquestioningly along for most of the previous  evening. But when Mrs Lewis, travel-weary and  pale beyond despair, had arrived with her two  young children, he had turned away and left rather than run the risk of having to speak to her.

He did not tell Ellie this. Nor did he tell her that  Matthew Lewis's head had been beaten so badly  that slivers of bone from his fractured skull were  found buried deep inside his brain. He kept the affair at the level of a problem, as much for his  own sake as for hers. But the targetless anger  he had felt in Thornton Lacey was beginning to scratch demandingly at whatever cellar-door of his  being contained it.

Ellie too had sombre-coloured news. She had  been in touch with Rose's parents in Worksop and  discovered that the body had been released to them  and the funeral was taking place the following day.

'That's quick,' commented Pascoe.

'It's not something to be put off,' said Ellie. 'With the funeral done, there's some chance of starting  to live again. Can you go? It's not that far.'

'I'll try,' said Pascoe. 'Of course, we're very  busy.'

'Oh, stuff your precious bloody job!' said Ellie,  standing up. 'Are you finished? Let's get some air.'

They strolled in silence along the road outside the pub, arriving eventually at the old barn  which bore the sign
David Burne-Jones and Jonathan  Etherege - Antiques.
This had been his original reason for meeting Ellie in Birkham, but there had  been no time that morning to visit the shop. He had  intended to call there later, after Ellie had departed,  but now, as she stopped and peered through the  open doorway, he said nothing but waited to see  what she would do.

'Fancy a browse?' she asked.

'Anything you say.'

They went in. Sitting, and managing to look comfortable, on a Victorian chaise-longue was a  man who seemed just to have finished a picnic  lunch and was cleaning his teeth on an apple. About forty-two or -three, he had a round, cheerful face which matched his general shape. Fat if you disliked him, otherwise just chubby, thought Pascoe, leaving his own judgement still in the  balance.

'Afternoon,' he said. 'Anything in particular you,  want?'

'Just browsing,’ said Ellie.

'Be my guest. Let me know if you come across  anything half decent among the junk.'

The shop was divided into three sections. The largest contained furniture, the next local craftwork, and third and smallest, a mere couple of  display cabinets, stamps and coins.

Pascoe peered closely at these, laboriously trying  to set them against a mental check list.

'I didn't know you were interested in stamps?'  said Ellie, appearing at his shoulder.

'There's a lot you don't know about me,' murmured Pascoe. And vice versa.

They wandered back into the craft section. He  picked up an ashtray thrown by some local potter.

'You can steal better at the Jockey,' he said.

'I've often thought of it,' said the apple-eater, who had wandered up behind them unnoticed.

'Sorry,' said Pascoe, putting down the ashtray  hastily.

'No need,' grinned the man. Pascoe grinned  back, making up his mind. Anyone who could  laugh at his own business deserved to be chubby.

'These are nice,' said Ellie. She was looking at  a selection of pendants and brooches made up  from small stones, some polished, some not, all  described as 'Real Yorkshire Stones' as if this gave  them special value.

'You won't find those in the Jockey,' said the  dealer. 'But all good local work. Very local. Me,  in fact. Keep your local craftsmen happy.'

'And rich,' said Pascoe drily, looking at the  price tag of the red-flecked green stone pendant Ellie seemed to be taking most interest  in.

'All right,' said the man. 'Instant reduction of  twenty-five p. just to test the sincerity of your  interest.'

Ellie looked at Pascoe, grinning broadly at his predicament. He reached for his wallet and paid  up. The grin alone was worth it.

'Thanks,' she said. 'Now I've got what I want,  I'm going to rush off. I have a class at two-thirty.  Ring me about tomorrow, will you?'

'OK,' said Pascoe. 'I'll just hang on here a bit.'

He watched her go, then turned to the dealer.

'Mr Burne-Jones?' he asked.

"'Nearly right. Etherege,' said the man.

He looked unperturbed when Pascoe introduced himself and blank when he was shown the stamps.

'Sorry,' he said. 'They're just bits of paper to me.  Never been able to see it, myself. My partner looks  after that side of things. There's nothing in it for us,  really, but he's interested.'

'That would be Mr Burne-Jones? Could I speak  to him?'

'Not for a few days. He went off to Corsica for  his hols this very morning.'

'Damn,' said Pascoe. He produced a copy of the  complete list of stolen articles.

'You'll have seen this?'

'Yes,' said Etherege. 'They keep on coming round, but as you can see, it's mainly furniture  we deal in here. A bit bulky for your cat-burglar  and in any case I buy most of it in myself at the  sales, so we know where it's come from.'

'What about the stamps?'

'God knows. I sometimes think David, my partner, hangs around school playgrounds and does swops. Look, if you like, why don't you sort out  anything from our stock which matches any of the  stamps on your list and take them away for a closer  check.'

'That's very generous of you,' said Pascoe who  had been about to do just that. But it was nice for  a change not to have a fuss.

'Not really,' said Etherege. 'Nothing there's  marked at more than a few quid. No penny blacks,  I'm afraid.'

There were one or two items, not of any great  value or rarity, which corresponded with entries  on Sturgeon's catalogue. Pascoe gave Etherege a  receipt for them.

'If there's no identification, you'll get them back,  of course.'

'And if there is?'

Pascoe shrugged.

'Never mind. I'll take it out of David's profits,' smiled Etherege. 'Cheerio, Sergeant. Come again and do some browsing. Bring the young  lady. She seems able to get you to spend rather  than just confiscate! Is she in the force too, by  the way?'

'No such luck,' said Pascoe. 'Goodbye.'

He walked back to the pub car-park. It had not so  far been a very productive day. As he approached  his car which was parked up against the fence  surrounding the kennels, he heard the dogs howl  again, forlorn, wanting their owners.

Dalziel's pain, dissipated or forgotten in the activity  of organizing a murder hunt, had returned after  lunch. The timing supported his own diagnosis of  indigestion, but having worked his way in vain  through a variety of pharmaceutical and folk cures, he reluctantly made an appointment to see his  doctor. This produced an immediate improvement  in his condition and the optimistic reaction was still  in evidence as he talked about the Lewis case with  Pascoe.

'We need this one. This boy's mad.'

'Sir?'

'You saw Lewis. There was no need for that.  The first blow would have stunned him, the next  put him out cold. He must have been flat out on  the floor for the next half-dozen, the ones that  killed him.'

'Panic?' suggested Pascoe.

'I don't think so. You run when you panic. Hit  anything in the way, perhaps, but mainly just run. There was no sign of this boy running. He beat an  orderly retreat, didn't waste any time, but left in  good order. It all points to a nutcase. We'd seen  the signs.'

'Killing a man's not quite like peeing in a kettle,’  protested Pascoe.

'I don't know. You leave him lying there in the  middle of the room. Like a heap of garbage. That's  all a dead man is, after all.'

Pascoe looked doubtful. He was used to playing  Dalziel's straight man. It was an exercise which  often produced results.

'We're not even absolutely certain it's the same  fellow,' he said.

Dalziel snorted with magnificent scorn.

'We've got a villain who does medium large  detached houses while the owners are away on  holiday. He has shown himself ready to use violence. The owner of a medium large detached  house . . .'

'Bungalow.'

'. . . who should have been on holiday gets  beaten to death by someone he catches in the  act. Therefore...’