“Yes, sir. The barman said you’d probably not notice the difference,” said Bowler, eager to divert the Fat Man’s anger.
“Did he now?” said Dalziel, scowling barwards. “Standards, eh, Charley? Man like that ’ud not get employed over the border. So you didn’t care for the councillor?”
“He was a man for causes, was Cyril, mainly saving public money.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Dalziel. “He thought owt spent on the police was a waste of cash. Cars, for instance. ‘Get the buggers back on the beat. Shoe leather comes cheaper than petrol and at least the public have got someone who can tell them the time.’”
“That sounds like Cyril. The Arts too. Library spending. The theatre subsidy. And the few bob they give my literature group, you’d have thought that was enough to cancel the Third World debt.”
“So you had a motive, then?”
“Well spotted, Sherlock. Aye, you and me both, Andy. A motive to kick him up the arse, but not to kill the silly old bugger.”
“Well, let’s not speak ill of the dead, eh?” said Dalziel, a little late in Hat’s eye. “One thing you had to say about him, he practised what he preached. He never wasted any of his own cash on daft things like buying a round of drinks or paying for his own grub. But his heart was in the right place.”
“It is now,” said Penn. “I liked the subtle way you moved from Ripley to Stuffer. You reckon there’s a connection between their deaths?”
Dalziel downed the offending whisky with no sign of distaste and said, “Only connection I’m looking at at the moment seems to be you, Charley.”
Penn grinned and said, “The old techniques are still best, eh? When you’ve not got the faintest idea which way to go, prod every bugger with your stick, then follow the one who runs off quickest.”
“We could have made a cop of you, Charley, if we’d got a hold of you afore you started ripping bodices. Seriously, but, and just for the record, we’ve got a nice statement from you about the preview yesterday, but I don’t think anyone ever asked you where you were and what you were doing the night Ripley got killed.”
“No reason why anyone should have asked, was there?”
“Not then.”
“And now?”
Dalziel waved the fax of Ripley’s article.
“Scraping the barrel, Charley. But you know what Mr. Trimble’s like. Comes from the southwest, and they live off barrel scrapings down there. So…?”
“Tell you what, Andy,” said Penn. “I’ll go off now and have a long think, and if I can remember anything about that night, I’ll scribble it down on a bit of paper and let you have it.”
“Nay, don’t rush off for me,” said Dalziel. “Stay still, young Bowler here ’ull buy you another. In fact, I’m thinking of having a spot of lunch here. They do a lovely sticky toffee pudding. My treat.”
“Yuck. Don’t know what the opposite of a sweet tooth is, but that’s what I’ve got. Too much force-feeding with sugary goo when I were a kid. Which reminds me, Andy. I’d love to stay, but Sunday’s family visiting day, at least for us who’ve got families to visit, it is.”
That sounded like a dig, thought Hat.
“Oh aye. Your mam well, is she?” said Dalziel. “Still taking care of the three K’s out in the sticks?”
And that, though incomprehensible, sounded like a riposte.
Penn for a moment looked like he’d have enjoyed tipping the rest of his ale over the Fat Man’s huge head, but he reduced his reaction to a snarling smile and said, “Yes, Andy, my old mam’s still alive and kicking, and it’s me she’ll be kicking if I don’t turn up to see her on a Sunday. So I’ll have to postpone that drink you’ve so kindly if vicariously offered me, Constable. Cheers. See you both tomorrow, I expect.”
“Tomorrow?” said Dalziel.
“You’ve not forgotten? What is it? Alzheimer’s or just so many bodies in your business, you lose track? Let me remind you. Now the inquest’s over, and the ghouls have done chopping her up, they’re going to let poor Jax be buried. Don’t the books tell us murderers always like to attend their victims funerals? See you.”
He downed his drink, swept up his change which Bowler had put on the table, stood up and strode towards the door.
“Sir?” said Hat, looking after him. “Do we just let him go?”
“What do you want to do?” said Dalziel. “Rugby tackle him then slap the cuffs on?”
“I suppose not. Sir, what was that about the three K’s?”
“Kinder, Kuche, Kirche. Children, kitchen and church. What German women are supposed to occupy themselves with, don’t they learn you owt these days?”
Hat digested this.
“But Mr. Penn’s local, isn’t he? He sounds real Yorkshire.”
“Sounds it, aye. Bred, but not born. Mam and dad got out of East Berlin a couple of steps ahead of the Stasi when the Wall went up. You remember the Wall, do you, lad?”
“I remember it coming down. There was a lot of fuss.”
“Aye, there always is,” said the Fat Man. “Number of times in my life I’ve joined in singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’…but they never are, mebbe because they never were…”
He looked into his glass with what might have been melancholia or was perhaps just a hint that it was almost empty.
“So his parents came to Yorkshire to settle, did they?”
“Got brought to Yorkshire. Lord Partridge, big Tory politician way back, he sponsored them. Bit of a gesture to show he was doing his bit to fight the red peril, I expect. Fair do’s but, he took care of ’em. She worked around the house, he helped with the horses. And Charley got a good education. Unthank College. Better’n me. Mebbe I should have been a refugee.”
“Unthank College? But isn’t that a public, I mean a private school? Boarders and all that?”
“So what? You’re not one of them trendy Trots, are you?”
“No. What I meant was, he doesn’t sound like he went to one of those places. He sounds more like…”
He tailed off, fearful of giving offence, but Dalziel said complacently, “More like me, you mean? Aye, you’re right, whatever else they did to Charley there, they didn’t get him speaking like he’d got a silver spoon up his arse. Interesting, that.”
Encouraged, Hat said, “Are both his parents still alive?”
“Don’t know much about ’em apart from what I’ve told you. In fact, come to think of it, I’d not heard Charley mention either of them till he started on about rushing off to see his mam just now.”
“She must be a good age. Penn’s no spring chicken,” said Hat.
“Nay, Charley’s not as old as he looks,” said Dalziel. “Continental skin tone, you see. Doesn’t age half as well as us home-grown stock. Likes to think he passes for a native, but you can always tell. But that’s no reason to be racially prejudiced, lad. He might look like an old-time axe-murderer, but I can’t see anything here that looks like a motive, not even in the dusk with the light behind it. You heard what he said about Ripley. They’d kissed and made out.”
“Yes, sir. But, well, even if, or especially if he’d killed her, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Dalziel laughed and said, “Now you’re thinking like a cop, lad. No, even if he were lying about that, he’d still need a better reason than her badmouthing his books five years back. Not that I think that were his real reason for assaulting her. Like I told him, I think what really pissed him off were her suggesting he’d never finish this thing he’s writing about Heinz.”
“Heine,” said Bowler.
“Both on ’em,” said Dalziel. “Any road, he tells me now it’s coming on nicely, so bang goes that motive if it ever was one.”
“Don’t quite follow…”
“Someone takes the piss saying you’re not up to finishing something you’ve started, you sock it to ’em by finishing it, not by killing ’em. It’s only if you think they may be right that you turn violent, which was why Charley reached for the pudding trolley in the first place. But now he reckons he’s cracked it, and in any case a peace treaty’s been sealed with a loving bang, where’s the point?”
“But surely the thing about the Wordman is he doesn’t need a motive, not in the strict sense. He’s got some
