There was something different about him. Like herself, he had smartened up. This morning he had been decently dressed but with little care for colour coordination or the location of creases, and though his face had been in recent contact with a razor, the effect had been that of a badly mown lawn. Now his drumlin chins were smooth as a bowling green and he wore a dazzling white shirt tucked into pale green slacks whose crease fell like a plumb- line on to matching deck shoes.
Novello made a bet with herself that everything below the waist at least had been bought by the Fat Man’s partner, Cap Marvell. She wasn’t quite so confident that Cap would know, or approve, the occasion of what looked like their first airing.
She watched carefully to see how Dalziel greeted the blonde. Disappointingly (not that she bore Cap Marvell any malice, but what a story it could have made!) there was no embrace, not even the airiest of air kisses. So his decision to smarten himself up didn’t seem to be sexually based. In any case, he’d hardly have invited a subordinate to witness the encounter. Unless of course he didn’t trust himself and she was really there as a kind of chaperone…
She grounded these flights of fancy and once again checked out possible watchers over her Breezer.
Dalziel had attracted a few glances as he made his way across the terrace, but that was only to be expected. He had never been one of Mid-Yorkshire’s blushing violets and his close brush with death in the Mill Street terrorist explosion had got most of the local media trailing their prepared obituaries. But none of the lunchers showed any sign of continued interest.
Pietro passed by, ushering a middle-aged couple to a nearby table. The man, hook-nosed and balding, protested that he’d asked for a table overlooking the gardens. Pietro apologized profusely saying there must have been a mix-up but now, alas, all the al fresco tables were booked. Hook-nose, who gave the impression of a man used to getting his way, looked ready to make an issue out of it, but his companion, slightly younger though that might have been down to her make-up, uttered soothing noises and gave him a consoling stroke of the crotch area which, in view of their advanced years, Novello assumed was the result of age-related myopia rather than erotic targeting. But when she observed that under the table the man was responding in kind, Novello closed her eyes in horror. They had to be over fifty, for God’s sake!
‘No sign of your friend then?’
She opened her eyes. Pietro, having disposed of the lusty geriatrics, had paused alongside her.
‘No. Typical. Maybe I’ll start without her. What’re the open prawns like?’
‘Opened fresh every day! I’ll order one for you, shall I? Such a shame a good-looking girl should have to eat alone though.’
‘You trying to wangle an invite to join me?’ she said, smiling.
‘Love to, but I’d get fired,’ he said. ‘Don’t work all the time though…sorry, got to go.’
He headed back to his station where some new arrivals were waiting impatiently.
Doesn’t work all the time, she thought. Unlike me and all the rest of us sailing on the Good Ship Dalziel.
Mind you, she could do with a lot of work like this. The sun was shining, she had the Fat Bastard’s money in her purse, there was even some music drifting up from the garden; not the kind of music she’d have dreamt of listening to normally, but here in this place it fell very pleasantly on the ear.
She found herself wondering what time Pietro got off, then pulled herself together.
He wasn’t her type, and she had a job to do.
Once more she started checking off the other lunchers, one by one.
Result as before. No one suspicious.
Now she let her gaze return to Dalziel and the blonde, and then beyond them to the source of the garden music.
There seemed to be some kind of buffet party going on, with tables set up on a square of lawn at the centre of which stood a gazebo that held the musicians. Occasionally a cork popped; everyone seemed to be having a good time. She felt quite envious. Being a cop could be a lonely business.
Then she saw someone who wasn’t entering into the swing of things. A guy standing on the edge of the lawn. Maybe he just didn’t like that kind of music either. Or that kind of drink. He had ’phones on his ears, a bottle of lager in his hand, and he was nodding his head so that his black Zapata moustache and his matching shag of hair bounced up and down as though in time to a beat from his MP3.
Hard to tell precisely what he was looking at as he was wearing big reflective sunglasses, but he was facing the hotel and there was an uninterrupted line of sight between him and Dalziel’s table on the lower terrace, a distance of twenty or thirty yards.
Maybe she was being over-cautious, but those ’phones were a bit too big for the general air of cool the guy seemed to be trying to project. And the Zapata moustache was a bit demode too.
She took out her mobile, brought up her phone book and selected Dalziel.
12.10-12.20
Dalziel was not a religious man but he felt grateful to something that a day that had started so badly had taken a distinct turn for the better.
Certainly, sitting in the sun with a good-looking young woman opposite you and the prospect of a tasty meal ahead of you was not the worst way to spend a Sunday lunchtime, not unless you were his old Scots granny, of course. She wouldn’t even have given him brownie points for his visit to the cathedral. A kirk should be small and homely. Those overblown buildings said more about man’s vanity than God’s greatness.
Well, it were twenty years since she’d gone to her long home, so now she’d know for sure if she’d been right. Which she probably had been, according to the eschatological model Dalziel sometimes liked to propound at the end of a long night in the Black Bull. In the Gospel according to St Andy, after death, everybody discovers they’ve been right. In other words, we all get the afterlife we believe in, whether it’s eternal harping or eternal oblivion. Even suicide bombers, except that in their case when they find themselves exploded into the midst of their seventy-two doe-eyed virgins, they find the one bit missing after the reassembly process is their dicks.
But for all his mockery of formal religion, today it somehow felt as if his brief unplanned visit to the cathedral had won him the reward of this lunchtime.
It was tempting just to relax and enjoy it, but how much he could relax rather depended on whether he was working or not. If, as he suspected, someone had been in his house, and if that intrusion had anything to do with this woman, then certainly he was working. But if the phone thing had just been a technical glitch…
Gina said, ‘So did I check out?’
‘Eh?’
‘Come on. Since we talked, you’ll have checked me out to make sure I haven’t been sent by Professor Moriarty to bewitch you into a compromising situation. If you haven’t, then I can’t see you being much good to me.’
Clearly she was completely back in control.
‘Fair enough. Aye, you checked out, more’s the pity.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He gave her his best leer and said, ‘It’s a long while since I’ve been bewitched into a compromising situation. Bothered and bewildered, yes, all the time. Like now. But bewitched doesn’t come round as often as it once did.’
‘I know the feeling. But I know you’ve spoken to Mick. He rang me afterwards. I’m sure he filled out the picture. So why should you feel bewildered and bothered?’
‘I’m a cop, Mrs Wolfe,’ said Dalziel heavily. ‘I catch criminals. Nowt criminal going off here, according to you and Mick. Unless you know something I don’t.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as Alex, your dear departed husband, was definitely on Goldie Gidman’s payroll and getting reunited with him might also reunite you with some large sums of dirty money only he knows the location of.’
He’d seen the vulnerable emotional side of her, now let’s take a look at how she stood up to a bit of rough and tumble.
