least turned them into a team.
'Are you going back to work?' asked Pascoe.
'Do you think I should?'
'If you can manage it.'
'My solicitor said the same,' said Shorter. 'I can't dispute two expert opinions. I thought I'd go in tomorrow.'
He added, with a bitter laugh, 'I'll keep Alison chained to my drill.'
'Do that. I spoke to her this morning.'
'She told me. On the phone. She rang specially.'
'She's a loyal girl,' said Pascoe.
Shorter who all this time had been standing restlessly by the fireplace now sat down in the seat vacated by his wife and peered closely into Pascoe's face.
'It's a funny side-effect,' he said, 'but since this started, I keep reading significance and double meanings into everything anyone says.'
'That's called paranoia,' said Pascoe, 'and is not recommended. I said Alison was loyal. That's what I meant. Simple statement.'
'My country right or wrong, that's loyal,' said Shorter, smiling. 'Are you suggesting Alison's loyal like that?'
He looked and sounded perfectly relaxed and Pascoe felt an urge to give him a jolt.
'I certainly think she fancies you,' he said. 'Has it gone further than that?'
Shorter ran his fingers through his thick black hair and looked boyishly embarrassed.
'A bit of tight hugging at Christmas, birthdays and public holidays, but I haven't been to bed with her, no. I think she's ripe for it, but I don't want to complicate my life. Or hers, for that matter.'
'Big of you,' said Pascoe. 'What did you tell Mr Dalziel?'
'Aren't copies of statements pinned on the canteen wall?' asked Shorter. 'I told him I'd been treating Sandra Burkill for several weeks; to the best of my knowledge I'd never been alone with her for any period longer than two minutes; at no time did I touch her in any way other than that required by the performance of my profession; at no time did she touch any part of me with her hands, nor did I invite her to do so; at no time did I have intercourse with her. That's about it.'
'Succinctly put,' said Pascoe. 'Can you think of any reason why this girl might want to get at you, Jack?'
'Dalziel asked me that too. I suggested that he didn't have to look far to discover that young girls in a professional relationship with older men – pupils and patients in particular – were very prone to sexual fantasizing. Not too infrequently this overflowed into reality in the form of either a declaration or an accusation.'
He sounded as if he were quoting a Reader's Digest article.
'The girl is pregnant,' said Pascoe. 'Some overflow!'
'Dalziel made just the same point. It doesn't negate my point. Someone's put her up the stick. She points the finger at me. It fits in with her adolescent sex fantasies and it takes some of the pressure off her.'
'I don't quite see what you mean,' said Pascoe.
'Well, for God's sake, what's your traditional working-class moron's attitude to the news that his daughter's got one in the oven? He cuffs her round the ear and chucks her out into the street! But not in this case. She gets the whole class thing going for her. Wealthy, educated professional man takes advantage of naive innocent girl. So in this case, instead of thumping his daughter, Burkill comes round and starts thumping me!'
Emma Shorter came in with a tray. Pascoe stood up.
'I'm sorry,’ he said. 'It's very good of you, but I really can't stay.'
'Other crimes, Peter?' said Shorter.
'That's it.'
'Well, thanks for coming. I won't forget it.'
'I'll see Peter out,' said his wife, putting the tray down on a stainless steel table.
Pascoe left the room thinking that he too was now suffering from a double-entendre neurosis. 'I won't forget it.' What did that mean?
Emma put her hand on his arm at the front door.
'We really are grateful,' she said.
'That's all right,' said Pascoe, disengaging himself from her grip.
'What do you think now? After talking to John, I mean.'
She looked at him appealingly, lips apart, small even teeth glistening damply, as white and as perfect as a dentist's wife's teeth ought to be.
Was there an invitation there? wondered Pascoe. Or had he just been watching too many toothpaste ads?
'Don't worry too much,' he said. 'Things will take their course. I'm sure it'll be OK.'
He walked swiftly down the tarmacked drive, the words he had wanted to say so loud in his mind that he wasn't absolutely sure that he hadn't in fact said them.
'After talking to him, I think he's probably innocent,' he had wanted to say. 'But, after talking to him, I like him a bloody sight less than I thought I did.'
On the other hand, he found he liked Emma Shorter a little more. Loyalty is the better part of love. He wondered if her loyalty was the 'my country right or wrong' type.
Chapter 14
They caught up with Johnny Hope at the Branderdyke Variety and Social Club. This was a bit larger than most of the local clubs and somewhat different in character. It had a real stage with a proscenium arch and though in origin it was, like the rest, a meeting and drinking place for locals, it had taken a larger step than most towards the status and dimensions of Wakefield or Batley.
Top of the bill that night was a singer who was either on his way up to, or down from, the Top Thirty. But it was in the communal changing room shared by the lesser artistes that they found Johnny Hope.
He was talking to a young sullen-faced girl, so slim and slight that it was difficult to gauge her age. She wasn't answering, however. Every time Hope asked a question, a suspicious-eyed matron with a mouth like a sabre-cut replied, draping one arm protectively over the girl who was wearing a cream and lavender Bo-Peep costume.
'How old are you, Estelle?' Hope asked as if sensing Pascoe's problem.
'Seventeen,' said the matron.
'When did you first get interested in the trampoline, Estelle?' asked Hope.
'She saw Olga Korbut on the telly at the Olympics in 1972 and she thought she'd like to start doing the gymnastics,' said the matron. 'One thing led to another.'
'One more thing,' said Hope, but he was interrupted by the entry of an elderly man eating a frankfurter with onions.
'Your girl's got two minutes, missus,' he said splodgily.
'Come on, luv,' said the matron.
She led her daughter out, glaring ferociously at Pascoe as if he had an indecent thought written in a balloon above his head.
'Isn't she,' enquired Pascoe, 'a trifle overdressed for trampolining?'
'Johnny,' said Wield.
'Hello, Edgar!' said Hope.
Edgar, thought Pascoe.
'This is my Inspector, Peter Pascoe.'
'Glad to meet you, Peter,' said Hope, shaking his hand vigorously. 'Any mate of Edgar's a mate of mine.'
Now the women had disappeared, Pascoe took a closer look at the man. He was small, ruddy-faced, his bright blue eyes ringed with crows-feet from (perhaps) too much time in too many dimly lit rooms, his cheeks
