'Too bloody true!' bellowed Dalziel, who had come close enough to eavesdrop on Dove's resonant voice.
'What's that, Pete? Someone there with you?'
'Mr Dalziel's just come in,' said Pascoe hastily. 'I'll keep in touch.'
'You do that, old son. I'm avid for the next instalment. I used to think it was just a joke about you lot north of Watford having bat-ears and little bushy tails, but now I'm not so sure. Love to Andy-Pandy! Cheerio now!'
Pascoe put down the phone.
'I don't know what he's got to be cheerful about,' said Dalziel malevolently. 'Or what you've got to be miserable about either.'
'Two people dead,' said Pascoe. 'That's what.'
'And that's your fault?'
'Not court-of-law my fault. Not even court-of-enquiry my fault,' said Pascoe. 'It's just that, I don't know, I suppose… I was enjoying it! Secretly, deep inside, I was enjoying it. Big house, interviews in the library, chasing up to the churchyard, stopping the vicar from jumping, uncovering all kinds of guilty secrets – you know I was thinking, gleefully almost, wait till I get back and tell them about this! They'll never believe it!'
'I believe it,' said Dalziel. 'And I'd have done much the same in your shoes. You did it right. The only thing you couldn't know was that she was alive. That's what you call a paradox, you philosophers with degrees and O levels, isn't it? If you'd known she was alive, she'd be alive! But you didn't. You couldn't!'
'Someone should have done,' said Pascoe. 'They should have looked harder.'
'Too true,' said Dalziel with grim satisfaction. 'Cases like these, you follow up every line. One line they didn't follow.'
'What?'
Dalziel scratched his backside on the corner of the desk, a frequent preliminary to one of his deductive tours de force, which one of his more scurrilous colleagues had categorized as the anal-lytical approach.
'What was Swithenbank doing on the day his missus disappeared?'
'The Friday, you mean?'
'Aye.'
Pascoe opened his notebook at the page on which he'd first started jotting down notes on the Swithenbank case.
'He was at a farewell party at lunch-time.'
'Who for?'
'One of his assistants.'
'Name?'
'I've no idea,' said Pascoe.
'Cunliffe. David Cunliffe,' said Dalziel triumphantly. 'Thought you'd have known that.'
'It wasn't in any of the papers Enfield sent me,' said Pascoe defensively.
'Bloody right it wasn't,' said Dalziel with relish. 'They've a lot to answer for. This fellow was heading for the good life, back to Mother Earth, do-it-yourself, all that crap, right?'
'Yes. Up in the Orkneys, I think.'
'That's right,' said Dalziel. 'One of the little islands. Him, a few natives, a lot of sheep; and his wife.'
'His wife?'
'Oh yes. Only, suppose she wasn't his wife! They don't take kindly to living in sin up there, so it'd be better for community relations to call her his wife. But suppose that on that Friday your Kate packed her few things, put on her new blonde wig and set off for the Orkneys!'
Pascoe shook his head to fight back the waves of fatigue, and something else, too.
'Why the wig?' he asked.
'She was meeting her boy-friend at King's Cross, on the train. She had the wit to guess there might be mutual acquaintance there to see him off and she didn't want to be spotted. As it happened, the whole bloody party came along, including hubby, so she was very wise. Imagine, there's Swithenbank shooting all that shit about how he wished he had the guts to up and leave everything, meaning his missus, for a better life, and there she is sitting only a few carriages away, doing just that!'
'Oh Christ,' said Pascoe. 'Is this just hypothesis, or have you checked it out?'
'What do you think I am, bloody Sherlock Holmes?' exploded Dalziel. 'No, there's no way any of us could have worked out any of that. It was up to Dove and his mates, as I'll make bloody clear! What we've got is this. Arrived this morning.'
He handed Pascoe the sheet of paper he had been carrying.
It was a request for assistance from Orkney Police HQ in Kirkwall. They were holding one David Cunliffe on suspicion of murdering his 'wife', whom he now claimed was not his wife but Katherine Swithenbank, formerly of Wearton in the county of Yorkshire, where, he suggested, it was most likely she would return after leaving him.
It was clear the Orkney constabulary had no great faith in his claim. No one had seen her leave the small island on which their croft was situated. No one had spotted her on the ferry from Stromness or on a plane from Kirkwall Airport. Pascoe got a distinct impression that the croft which Cunliffe had so lovingly repaired was now being taken down again, stone by stone, and the land which he had tilled was now being dug over again, spadeful after hard-turned spadeful.
'She was a right little expert at the disappearing trick,' said Dalziel admiringly. 'When she gets fed up she just packs her bag and goes. And no one ever notices!'
'Someone noticed this time,' said Pascoe.
'Belt up! Think on – there's going to be some red faces this morning! Which do you want to do – Enfield or Orkney?
Best you do Orkney; Dove'll try to shrug it off, well, the bugger won't shrug me off in a hurry!'
He sounded really delighted, as though the whole of the Wearton business had been arranged just so that he could crow over the inefficiency of the effete south.
But before he left the room, he made one more effort to cheer up his dull and defeated-looking inspector, who was sitting with his head bowed over his open notebook.
Til say it one last time, Peter,' he said. 'It wasn't your fault. You reckoned she was dead, everyone reckoned she was dead, her brother, her husband, that Enfield lot. You had to go ahead as you did. You'd have needed second sight to know where she was hiding herself. I mean, inspired guesses are one thing, but to work out she was in the Orkneys on the basis of what you knew, you'd have needed a miracle. Right?'
'Right,' said Pascoe.
'Good,' said Dalziel. 'Come twelve, you can buy me a pint for being right. Again.'
He went out.
Pascoe closed his eyes and saw again the white-clad woman floating up the path from the lych-gate.
Why had she come back? What had she hoped for?
He shook his head and opened his eyes.
He would never know and he had no intention of trying an inspired guess. Dalziel was right. A detective should have no truck with feelings and intuitions.
He looked at his notebook, which still lay open at the first page of his scribblings on the Swithenbank case, made as he talked to Dove on the telephone two days before.
On the left-hand page there were two words only. One was hairdresser?
The other lightly scored through was Orkney?
He took his pen now and scratched at the word till it was totally obliterated.
Then he closed the book.
DALZIEL'S GHOST
'Well, this is very cosy,' said Detective-Superintendent Dalziel, scratching his buttocks sensuously before the huge log fire.
