issue the invitations. Please sit down, Sergeant.' Only the remembrance that her mother had died in this room not a week earlier stopped Pascoe from grinning.
He sat down.
'The words in that letter were printed, of course, but even printing is sometimes recognizable. Did the writing remind you of anyone's you had seen before?'
Jenny shook her head.
'No.'
'Sure?'
'Yes, I'm sure.' 'Can you think of anyone who would send such a letter to you?'
'Yes.'
Startled, he ceased his pretence of making notes.
'Who?'
'The man who killed my mother.'
He shook his head slowly.
'Now why should he do that?'
'To divert suspicion from himself.'
'How can he hope to do that when we don't know who wrote the letter?'
'But you do know who you're suspicious of.'
Of whom you are suspicious, Antony might have said. But it sounded a little clumsy for Antony. He never let his passion for correctness trap him into clumsiness. In any field.
She noticed that this time Pascoe had let his grin show through. She felt like grinning back, whether at Pascoe or at the thought of Antony she wasn't sure. But she didn't, for at the same time she felt guilty, as she did whenever she found herself acting normally, as if her mother hadn't been done to death, here, in this very room, last week, on an ordinary Saturday evening with the television set babbling uncaringly on in the background. The thought had stopped the grin even if her willpower had failed. But even now she recognized how diluted the emotional shock of remembering had already become. I could go out tonight, she thought. Have a drink and a laugh, no bother. I know I could. I feel I shouldn't be able to, but I could. They've got to catch him soon, they've got to, I'll make sure they do, he deserves it, he must be caught. Must. That'll be an end of it then, some more distant part of her mind whispered. Dear God! the most conscious level replied, aghast. Is that it, then? Is that what the pursuit of vengeance is not the instinctive reaction of deep and lasting grief, but an attempt to compensate for shallowly felt grief, to give it body, to make testimony to it? Confused, she became angry. Angry at herself for thinking like this. Angry at the police for making no progress. Angry at Pascoe for talking to her here while the real interview was taking place in the next room.
'Let's stop this farce, shan we?' she said.
'Farce?' 'Yes. You don't want a statement from me. What the hell can I state that's any help or even needs recording? All you want is me here so that disgusting Dalziel can chat Daddy up by himself.' Pascoe's face relaxed again at her choice of adjective and this time an answering smile almost broke through.
'Now why should we want that?' he asked politely.
She turned away from him.
'So that he can ask Daddy if what the letter says is true, I suppose. About me not being his child, I mean.' Pascoe seemed to be trapped like a disembodied spirit somewhere in the room where he could see and hear an unemotional policeman, disguised as himself, ask in an absolutely even voice,
'And is it?'
'The question's purely biological, I presume, Superintendent?'
'Pardon?'
'You're interested in the narrow question of whether I am physically the girl's father, rather than in my attitudes towards her?' Christ! another talking like a Sunday Supplement article. Pascoe's bad enough and at least the bugger's on my side. But this.. . cold fish, Connon. He'd work out which side your balls were hanging before he made his sidestep. 'That's right, Mr Connon. I think. I mean, was young Jenny born as a result of you having intercourse with your wife?'
Connon shrugged. He looked very tired.
'I think so.'
Think!?'
Dalziel took a rapid command of himself so that though the word began as a roar it ended as an almost gentle interrogative. 'I have never had any positive evidence to the contrary. At the same time, I can't point to any proof positive on the other side. There have seemed to me and others to be physical resemblances, but parents and relations in general are notoriously blind in these matters.' 'So you admit that it's possible the terms of the letter could be accurate?'
'Not all of them, Superintendent.'
Hair-splitting now. Don't answer. Let the sod go on in his own sweet time. 'It's a question of faith, I suppose. I suppose it always is.'
'And you didn't have that faith?'
'Once. But it went. Too late to matter as far as Jenny was concerned, I'm glad to say.' 'Why did it go? Was there anything in particular, talk, anything like that? Gossip?' 'No. Probably. I never heard, but then I wouldn't. More in your line.' The truth of this simple statement half surprised Dalziel. He ran his mind back over the narrow little track signposted 'Mary Connon', but came across no landmarks of interest.
'Well, then…' he said.
'She told me.'
'She what?'
'Told me. Several times. She wanted me to give up playing almost from the start. Said it was too much to expect her to cope all week with a baby and then to be left to herself on Saturdays as well. I daresay there was something in it.'
'But you didn't.'
'You know I didn't. I went on. Every Saturday from September to April. It was important.' To you?' said Dalziel very softly. He didn't want to disturb his man. He thought he recognized the beginnings of that half-dreamy inward-looking state in which a thought-monologue could easily lead to a confession. But his soft interjection seemed to blast into Connon's mind like a hand-grenade. 'To me?' he said, laughing. 'Of course. But that sounds selfish, doesn't it? The outskirts of a motive. No, important to us all, the three of us, my wife and child, as well as me.'
'But you said she told you. What?'
'She told me that I might as well keep on going to the Club. At least that way I might run into Jenny's father.'
'She said that!'
I'd have broken her neck, thought Dalziel. Motive? What better? I'd have broken her bloody neck! But the thought went on against his will: perhaps that's why she told you by telegram, perhaps that's why you ended up standing stupefied in the lobby of your little semi-detached, reading and re-reading the jumble of words on the buff form. He'd often thought since of his wife in some post office writing those words down, then passing the form to some clerk to count them up. Had he said anything? Had there been an expression on his face as he counted? Was there a query perhaps?
It must have cost her a packet.
But, he thought now, with a self-irony which had only developed of later years, but, he thought as he looked down at his tightly clenched fist, it had been money wisely spent.
'When was this?'
Too long ago for a motive. Fourteen, fifteen years.'
'What did you do?'
'I forget.'
Dalziel let this pass for the moment.
'Did she ever say more?' 'She repeated the claim, twice I think, both times at moments of great anger.'
'Did you believe her?'
