really sorry afterwards. I'd got him to play, see? We were short anyway, always are, and I thought, right Connie, I'll know where you are this afternoon at any rate. Then he went down in this loose scrum, shouldn't have been there, but he was always a bit of a hero, and I put my foot in looking for the ball and there he was. I couldn't have missed him, but I could have slowed down a bit. But I didn't. Silly really, I've never done anything like it before. Never. Hard, you know, but never malicious. I was really sorry. Might have killed him. I thought I had for a moment.' I wish he wouldn't get so blasted Welsh when he's excited, thought Pascoe. My shorthand doesn't have the right symbols somehow. I'll never be able to read it back. 'But I didn't, did I?' Evans went on. 'And I didn't kill his missis either, if that's what all this is about, which is all I can think.' 'No one has suggested such a thing, I hope?' said Dalziel, shocked. 'Your value to us, Arthur, is that you were there. In the road. Up at the house. At a significant time. We want to know what you saw. Tell us again what you saw.' Halfway through the third telling, Pascoe was called out to the phone. He returned a minute later looking thoughtful. 'Now look,' said Evans. 'I've got to be going. Gwen will be thinking I've been put in a dungeon. And I've got to catch the team bus at twelve-forty-five. We're away today. So unless you've got ways of keeping me here you haven't revealed yet, I'm off.' 'Arthur,' said Dalziel reproachfully. 'You've been free to go any time. We've no way of holding you.'
'No,' agreed Evans, rising.
'Except perhaps for obstructing the police by not revealing all this a lot earlier.'
Ouch! thought Pascoe.
'Early or late, I've revealed it now. And it'll go no further, I hope.' 'Not unless needed, Arthur. We're always a little doubtful about statements that have to be forced out of witnesses by revealing the extent of our prior information.' Evans laughed, the first merry sound he'd made since his arrival. 'Information nothing. It's piss-all information you had. I volunteered my statement because I wanted to volunteer, not because of your pathetic bluff. When you sort out your notes, Sergeant, you might include in them the additional information that my car was parked at the other end of Boundary Drive, the end furthest away from Glenfair Road, see? So it's purely voluntary isn't it? And now I'm going to volunteer to go home. Good day to you both.' Dalziel and Pascoe looked at each other for a long moment after the door had slammed behind Evans. Then they both began to grin, and finally laughed out loud. It was their first moment of spontaneous shared amusement that Pascoe could remember. 'Well now, boyo,' said Dalziel in a dreadful parody of a Welsh accent, 'you'd better watch your bloody self, see? Telling such lies to an honest citizen.' 'It might have been his car,' said Pascoe. 'White Hillman. I mean, why not? It didn't seem absolutely out of the question. By the way, we had a phone call.'
'From?'
'Connon. He was worried about Arthur. Wanted us to go easy on the thumbscrews, I think.'
'Did he now? And he asked for you?'
'Why yes. I expect so.'
'I see. Thinks I haven't got any better feelings to appeal to, does he? Well, go on.' 'There's nothing to go on with. I assured him we were only asking Mr Evans one or two questions that might or might not be connected with the case. And I suggested he should contact Evans himself for full details.'
'That was naughty. You didn't ask then?'
'Ask what? Sir?' Dalziel looked pleadingly up to heaven. Pascoe sighed inwardly. The party's over then, he thought. Like Christmas, a brief moment of good will and fellowship, then back to normal. You've spent your allowance, Bruiser. What're you going to do at the end of the week? 'You didn't ask who he got his information from. About Evans's being here.' He's right. I should have asked. That's another of his blasted troubles. He keeps on being right. 'No, sir. I didn't. Sorry. I'll get back on to him, shan I?' 'Don't bother,' said Dalziel. 'If he doesn't want to tell us (and the minute you ask, he won't) there's no way of finding out. From him. But the possible sources aren't many, are they?'
'No, sir.'
'Our bobbies. A couple of nosey neighbours. Or the fair Gwen herself. Who's got your money, Sergeant?'
Pascoe's mind was racing.
'That'd mean, or might mean, that Evans is not altogether wrong. And if he's not altogether wrong, then Connon suddenly gets a great big motive.'
'Motive? What motive?'
'Why, she, Mary Connon that is, finds out.' 'How?' 'Accidentally by finding something,' said Pascoe impatiently. 'Or is deliberately told. Anonymous friend, a telephone call, that kind of thing. We've got one around that doesn't like Connie much, we know that.'
'So. She knows. What then?'
'She tells him, that night. Gets nasty. Says some more unpleasant things about his daughter. Connon sees red. He's had that crack on the head remember. He grabs…' Pascoe paused.
'What does he grab, Sergeant?'
'How do I know? Something odd enough in shape not to be a normal part of living-room furniture. Something, anything, he can use as a club. And swings it at her.'
'At his own wife? Sitting in his own lounge? Connon?'
Pascoe sighed. 'I didn't know the lady as well as you, sir, but she seems in all particulars to have been a pretty clubbable woman.' 'No, I didn't mean her. I mean Connon. It's out of character. You've met him. Sudden violence doesn't fit.' The fat sod's fair, thought Pascoe. You've got to admit he's fair. I'm sure he'd like it to be Connon, but he doesn't try to bend matters. 'Perhaps the whole thing's a fake then, sir. Perhaps there was no concussion, no quarrel, no heat of the moment. Perhaps Connon decided he would like to marry Gwen Evans or just unmarry Mary Connon. So he goes quietly home, sits and watches the telly with her a while; then, in the commercial break perhaps, he leans forward, taps her on the head with whatever he has selected for the job, waits a couple of hours, then rings us.' Dalziel was scratching with both hands, one on his inner right thigh, the other under his chin. One movement was clockwise, Pascoe noted, the other anti. Difficult.
'That sounds better. But not by much.'
Well, let's have your ideas, for God's sake. You're the great detective! Pascoe kept back his exasperation with difficulty and put his thoughts as mildly as he could manage.
'What do you think then, sir? An intruder?'
Dalziel laughed without much merriment. 'You and your damned intruder. No, be sure of one thing, there wasn't any intruder, my lad. The answer's nearer home. Your intruders'll all turn out to be like that laddo last night. Bit of a disappointment that, eh? Christ, he could talk! Made even you sound like a board-school lad at the pit-face. But he seemed nice enough. He'll be good company for that kid of Connon's. He's not exactly the laughing cavalier, is he?'
Pascoe stood up.
He's going to try to get the knife in, he thought. Just a little wriggle this time. 'Will that be all then? I'd better try to tidy my desk up a bit.' 'Mind you,' continued Dalziel, ignoring him, 'it wasn't all waste, was it? I mean, Ted Morgan turned out to be a real find, didn't he? The eyes and ears of the world. You must have leaned upon him pretty hard.'
'Not really,' said Pascoe.
Dalziel leered at him across the desk. 'It's not a crime to take Jenny Connon out, you know. Eh? Now don't be offended. Just take care that fancying her doesn't make you go too soft on the rest of the family, or too hard on anyone else. I glanced at the stuff from young Curtis and the Fernies. Nothing much there, eh?'
Pascoe shook his head.
'Though the Fernies do seem to be around a lot, don't you think? And I met Mrs Curtis – she came in to see what it was all about. She'd just got in, and her husband. Do you know them?' 'No,' said Dalziel without interest. But Pascoe ploughed on. 'He's nothing, a little silent man, not much there, I think. She's a talker, gab, gab, gab. The Fernies got rid of her when I left and she walked me to the front gate. Made Ted Morgan seem like an amateur. But one thing she did say was that our friend Fernie is going around telling everyone Connon killed his wife. And claiming he knows how.' Dalziel was now immersed in some papers and didn't even glance up.
'There's always plenty of them, isn't there?'
'I wouldn't know, sir. Is it worth a word with him?' 'I shouldn't think so. There hasn't been a complaint? See him if you want, though, but it'll be a waste of time.' He glanced at his watch, opened the top drawer of his desk and swept the papers in. 'Come on,' he said. 'We'll be able to get a drink in a moment. You'll be wanting an early lunch, won't you?' 'Will I?' asked Pascoe, trying to conceal from himself the effort he had to make to keep up with
