'My God, that must have been a terrible shock for your wife!'
'Aye, might have killed a weaker woman,' said Dalziel with a faint note of regret. 'But once she realized it were me he'd come to kill, they got on like a house on fire. They were sitting having a cup of tea when I walked in. Luckily I'd had some bother with the car and took the bus home, so he had no warning. He jumped up and spilt his tea over his lap. Must've been hot 'cos he didn't half yell! Then I hit him with the teapot and he stopped yelling.'
'And your wife…?'
'She started yelling. It were her Crown Derby pot. I said, serve you right for getting the best china out for a nutter like Tankie, but she didn't see it like that. Why the hell am I telling you all this, Pascoe?'
He turned a coldly speculative gaze on the young DC ike a man looking for the watermark in a suspect pound note.
Memo to self, thought Pascoe. This is not a man the details of whose domestic life you want to know.
He said, 'You mentioned another reason Trotter has for bating you.'
'Did I? Not important.'
'Shouldn't I be the judge of that?' insisted Pascoe. 'You keep telling me it's my balls on the block too.'
This sudden descent into the demotic clearly impressed the Fat Man more than any amount of epagogic argument.
He said, 'Mebbe you're right. It's to do with Thomas, Tankie's dad. He died just at the time his mum took ill. I reckon he gave her a punch too many, bust something in her gut. She'd never blow the whistle on him, but he got his comeuppance all the same. Fell into the canal one night coming home pissed. Drowned. Tankie got compassionate for the funeral. Manacled to an MP, naturally. I weren't there, but I heard he spat into the grave.'
'He wasn't on the loose when his father drowned then?'
'Good thinking. No, safely banged up. Inquest brought in accidental death.'
There was an absence of finality in his tone.
Pascoe said, 'You don't think it might have been… Judith?'
'You're not just a pretty face then?' said Dalziel. 'Aye, it did cross my mind. But I said, what the hell? No way I could prove it, no way I wanted to prove it!'
'So why should this bother Trotter?'
'Cos I told him I could prove it,' said Dalziel gloomily. 'I got to thinking, I didn't much fancy having to look over my shoulder for evermore in case Tankie were coming after me. So before they took him back to the glasshouse, I told him if he ever pulled a stunt like that again, I'd make sure -his everloving sister got banged up even longer than he did. I thought, that'll do the trick.'
'Instead of which it just gave him another reason for wanting to sort you out.'
'Worse. I reckon he told Jude. I don't think she'd be risking everything she's got just for love of Tankie. No, she's got her own agenda here, protecting her own interests, her own life.'
'While actually you don't have anything on her at all! Great move, sir. Really clever thinking!'
'Nobody's perfect,' said Dalziel without conviction.
'Joe E. Lewis. Some Like It Hot,' said Pascoe.
'What the fuck are you on about?' said Dalziel. 'Stand by! Here we go again.'
Once more he was a second ahead in detecting the key in the door.
This time Trotter didn't enter the room but stood in the doorway. Pascoe saw his eyes take in the name scratched on the wall above the bed. Then he was screaming, 'Prisoner*. Double mark time!'
Dalziel began running on the spot.
'Higher! Get them knees up higher!' yelled Trotter. 'You great bag of lard. We shouldn't be feeding you, we should be fasting you till you start looking like a human being instead* of a blubber fucking whale! At the double, forward march. Left wheel! Keep them knees up, d'you hear me? Lef'ri'lef'ri'lef'ri'…'
Dalziel went out of the dairy with Trotter in close attendance. Pascoe took a tentative step towards the door, but Judith was there, the gun in her hands as steady as the grey eyes fixed on his face.
He forced himself to take another small step forward.
'Next one takes you off the edge of the world,' she said.
She had a low-pitched voice with a not displeasing huskiness. If she could hold a note, he could imagine her coming over like Bacall in To Have and Have Not. (Did Andy Williams really dub that?) He put on his Bogart lisp and said, 'Somewhere this has got to stop, you must see that. So it makes sense, the sooner the better.'
The gun barrel moved forward as slightly but as certainly as a Socratic question exposing a flaw in his argument. He gave way before it, retreating both steps he'd advanced and another besides. Bogie wasn't too proud to be scared. Remember Key Largol
'If you kill me…' He meant to urge on her the inevitable consequences to herself, her brother, the moral health of the Nation, and the Rule of Law. Instead he heard pathos slipping into bathos as he concluded limply, '… I'll be dead.'
Even as he thought, 'Oh God! I didn't really say that, did I?' he saw a reaction. First she smiled… that was at the bathos. And then the smile faded and for the first time she blinked as if something other than blank watchfulness was trying to show itself in her eyes. Perhaps that was the pathos getting to her. Perhaps for the first time she was seeing him not just as an adjunct of the gross Dalziel but as a young man with a life still to live, wine still to drink, movies still to see, girls still to…
He found he was blinking tears back from his eyes. Well, it had been a hard day so far and he'd had no breakfast. Even as he fought against this weakness which he suspected unfitted him to be a policeman he found himself wondering how his complete breakdown would affect the woman, which perhaps meant he was cut out to be a cop after all.
Before he could test just how meltable she was, he heard the sound of Dalziel's footsteps with their high- pitched lef'ri'lef'ri'lef accompaniment. The Fat Man appeared in the cell with a pint mug in one hand and a plate piled with some kind of stew in the other. At Trotter's command he marked time at the foot of the bed. Despite all his efforts at steadiness tea slopped out of the mug at every step and gravy dripped off the edge of the plate.
'Look what you're doing to the officer's meal!' screamed Trotter. 'I've a good mind to make you lick it up, you horrible man. HALT. LEFT TURN. Give the officer his meal and apologize for the mess you've made.'
'SIR!' shouted Dalziel breathlessly. 'Here's your meal, SIR! Sorry about the mess, SIR!'
He didn't look well, thought Pascoe. Or perhaps that grey-ness round the mouth was his natural colouring. The eyes were lively enough, full of promissory vengeance which came across as all embracing rather than targeted.
Even if I get out of this lot, thought Pascoe, I don't get the feeling I've much of a future in Mid Yorkshire!
He dug deep for his Alec Guinness voice. Because of the thickness in his throat it came out more Tunes of Glory than Bridge on the River Kwai.
'Carry on, Mr Trotter.'
And the poor fat sod was off again, doubling back down to the kitchen presumably to get his own grub this time.
Pascoe looked speculatively at the woman. The old blank-ness was back. Impervious she might be to hot tears, but how would she react to hot stew in her face?
Badly, he answered himself. And in these confined quarters there wasn't much chance of ducking out of the spread of two shotgun barrels.
He took a careful sip of his tea, then set it on the floor and examined the stew. There was a spoon half submerged in its rich brownness which gave off a good appetizing smell reminding him he'd missed breakfast. While there was life, there was hunger. He began to eat. It tasted as good as it smelt and he'd almost finished by the time Dalziel returned, clutching another mug and plate.
Trotter noticed his progress and said, 'Sir! Like another helping, sir?'
He almost said yes, then he looked at Dalziel still double marking time, and thought it would mean another trip to the kitchen for the poor sod.
'No, thank you, Mr Trotter,' he said.
'Right, sir. Thank you, sir. Prisoner, HALT! Stan' atease. Next inspection in thirty minutes.'
