Chapter 6.
'It'll soon be Christmas,' said Pascoe inconsequently. Dalziel's gaze wandered suspiciously round the room as if seeking signs that someone had had the effrontery to deface the slightly peeling wall with festive decoration. 'What do you want, Sergeant? A present?' he asked sourly. It's getting him down, thought Pascoe with a frisson of pleasure for which he was instantly and heartily ashamed.
It was, after all, his job too.
But the past few days had been depressing. Things had seemed to be opening up. For a while there had been a feeling that they were asking the right questions and that at any moment the individual answers would shuffle themselves into a significant total. But they remained ragged, unfinished, unproductive. The enquiry's initial impetus was being lost and now they were all groping. Other matters, important and routine, had arisen. New demands on time and men were being made all the time.
'Yes, I suppose it will,' said Dalziel.
'Will what?'
'Soon be Christmas.'
Thanks,' acknowledged Pascoe satirically, but for once Dalziel ignored him. 'Something'11 happen soon. Something pretty big. We're stretched as it is. Something will happen that will almost snap us. It always does,' he ended with sour satisfaction. 'Just before Christmas.'
'What had you in mind?'
'Anything. Have you never noticed? Look, there's good reasons. People need more money at Christmas, even crooks. And there's more about. In the shops; in the wage-packets; moving to and from the banks. Right?'
'Right.'
'And it's darker. Gloomier. Half the bloody day. Makes it all seem easier. Darkness encourages other things too. Children have to come home in it. Women in lonely places are there more in the dark than at any other time of the year. Or if you want something else, the weather's rotten as well. Cars crash easier. Trains hit ice on the rails. Planes lose themselves in fog and drop out of the sky into city centres. 'But most often there doesn't seem to be any good reason. Things happen just because it's Christmas. Life showing its arse at the universal party.' 'It's the other way round, isn't it, sir? Things are just more striking if they happen against the background of Christmas. Now I bet if you looked at it statistically…' The very word, as Pascoe had half intended, was enough to jerk Dalziel out of his reverie back to his normal state of being. 'Statistically!' he sneered. 'If you're not superstitious yet, son, you bloody well get superstitious. And stuff your statistics!' 'Up life's arse at the universal party?' enquired Pascoe politely.
Dalziel laughed, almost sheepishly for him.
'I said that? It must be the high-class company I keep. But I mean what I say. Get superstitious. One of us had better get lucky soon.' Pascoe looked ruefully at the piles of paper which had accumulated since the enquiry started. 'No, sir,' he said, T can't agree. It's not luck we want now. It's a computer. The answer, or at least, an answer, is in here somewhere.' 'We're just waiting for it to rise to the surface are we, Sergeant? Have you noticed in the detective books how there's always something bothering the private-eye's subconscious? Some little oddity of behaviour or event which, when he recalls it, will prove the key to the whole problem. But it's not like that, is it, Sergeant? Nothing is odd because there's no norm. Or everything's odd. I mean, look at this lot we've got ourselves mixed up with. All of them, known and unknown, thrashing around in uncontrolled sexual activity like midnight at a Roman orgy.' 'It's like midnight all right. It's catching them at it that's difficult. If only we knew! Is there anything going on between Connon and Gwen Evans? That gives us some kind of motive if there is, but there's damn' little evidence. She might have phoned him up when we brought Evans in. It seems likely she did, but we don't know for sure. He might have gone to see her that Saturday night. Fernie saw him going into the house. Evans says the car was there when he went round. But the only person who could tell us whether Connon was in or not is Mary Connon, and she's dead.'
'Gwen Evans isn't.'
'No, but she says she was round at the local. The landlord knows her well, but couldn't remember seeing her that night. He said he'd ask the staff when they got in. He hasn't contacted me, so I assume no one saw her. But she could still have been there.' Dalziel took a noisy sip from the cup in front of him and pulled a wry face. 'It's gone cold. Carry on Sergeant, do. I'm stuck for something else to do at this minute, so I might as well listen.' Pascoe inclined his head in acknowledgment of the favour. 'Thank you for your enthusiastic reception. Then there's this letter writer, or rather, these letter writers. We're no further forward with either. You got no help on the first at the Club, and anyone from a dirty old man to a randy adolescent could have written the others.' 'They did suggest a combination of experience and athleticism,' smirked Dalziel. He must have caught a shade of disapproval in his sergeant's poker-face for he added, 'Don't be so strait-laced, Sergeant. They're just so much pornography and none of us turn up our noses at a bit of that now and then. They probably haven't anything at all to do with the case. And if it's that girl you're thinking of, forget it. They're tough nowadays. You heard her. It's a bloody permissive society.' 'Yes, sir,' said Pascoe. But he could not dismiss the thought of Jenny Connon so easily. He had never been short of girl-friends, not at university anyway. But he had discovered that joining the police had, for one reason or another, cut him off very largely from his old source of supply. The reaction of several members of his old student circle had surprised him. There had been nothing dramatic, no great debate, just a lot of jokes and heavy irony to start with, then a gradual, gentle separation. Plus, of course, he admitted to himself wryly, the fact that the hours and the work don't make me the ideal boy-friend, let alone husband. Still, there's always that little bit of vitality Sheila whatsit, Lennox, that's it, down at the Club. Now she'd shown an interest. Young perhaps. But Jenny's age at least. And enthusiastic. If Dalziel found out he'd laugh for seven days.
To get back to the letters, sir,' he said.
'We'd left them had we? Daydream on your day off, will you.' 'Sir. Well, I've read them pretty closely and though there's no date or any positive indication in them of the order in which they were written, there does seem to be a progression of a sort. I mean, two of them seem as if they are referring back to something which has happened since the first two.'
Dalziel was interested.
'You mean, they'd met. Or something like that?' 'No, nothing as positive as that. It's as though the show had become somehow more spectacular. All the time he's writing as if he'd seen her undressing, but there's something just a bit more theatrical about the last two.' 'You're being vague again, Sergeant. We'll get no further on with vagueness. We need something positive.' There was a knock on the door and the station sergeant stuck his head round. 'Excuse me, sir. There's a Mr Wilkes here to see Sergeant Pascoe.'
'Is there now? Wheel him in here, then.'
'And there's a telephone call for you, sir. From a Mr Roberts.' 'Christ, I ask for something positive and they come shooting at us from all angles. Right, Sergeant, you take your boy elsewhere and I'll see what jolly Jacko, the life and soul of the party, wants.' Pascoe got up and went out. He saw Antony standing talking animatedly to a rather bewildered looking police constable who looked relieved to get away. 'Hello there, Sergeant,' he said brightly. T was just enquiring of that officer whether in fact he was formally trained in deliberateness of manner. Perhaps you as a graduate in Social Sciences and a policeman could tell me?'
'I'm afraid I can't help you, sir,' said Pascoe woodenly.
'There you go!' said Antony. 'And the reason why I asked to see you rather than your superintendent was that you looked capable of rising above it.'
'What did you want to see me about, Mr Wilkes?'
'I'm sorry. Have I been offensive? It's just sheer nervousness, I assure you. It's like coming into a hospital.' Pascoe looked closely at the smiling youth. Suddenly he believed him. He was nervous. No one could appear as self-confident as this boy and not be nervous. Almost no one.
'Come in here,' he said. 'Sit down.'
'Here' was an empty interview room.
'What do you want to say to me?'
Antony perched himself comfortably on the edge of the table. 'It's about the letters. A piece of impudence on my part, really, but I have a strong sense of civic duty. Mr Connon when I arrived told me about the letter Jenny received and also about your warning to him that there might be phonecalls also. This made me think. I wondered if
