'It's been suggested,' said Pascoe, 'that undue violence may have been used in some scenes.'
'What?'
'Especially in the scene where the squire beats you up, just before the US cavalry arrive.'
'You sure you're not mixing it up with the Big Big Horn?' said Mrs Abbott.
'I don't think so,' said Pascoe. 'I was speaking figuratively. Before your boy-friend rescues you. You remember that sequence? Were you in fact struck?'
'I don't think so,' said Mrs Abbott. 'It's six months ago, of course. How do you mean, struck?'
'Hit on the face. So hard that you'd bleed. Lose a few teeth even,' said Pascoe, feeling as daft as she obviously thought he was.
'You are one of them funny buggers,' she said, laughing. 'Do I look as if I'd let meself get beaten up for a picture? Here, can you see any scars? And take a look at them. Them's all me own, I've taken good care on 'em.'
Pascoe looked at her un-made-up and unblemished face, then examined her teeth which, a couple of fillings apart, were in a very healthy state.
'Yes, I see,' he said. 'Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Abbott. You saw nothing at all during the making of the film that surprised you?'
'You stop being surprised after a bit,' she said. 'But there was nowt unusual, if that's what you mean. It's all done with props and paint, love, didn't you know?'
'Even the sex?' answered Pascoe sharply, stung by her irony.
'Is that what it's all about then?' she said. 'I might have known.'
'No, really, it isn't,' assured Pascoe, adding, in an attempt to re-ingratiate himself, 'I've been at your house by the way. I said I was a washing-machine salesman.'
'Why?'
'I didn't want to stir anything up,' he said, feeling noble.
'For crying out loud!' said Mrs Abbott. 'You don't reckon I could do me job without Bert knowing?'
'No, I suppose not,' said Pascoe, discomfited.
'Bloody right not,' said Mrs Abbott. 'And I'll tell you something else for nothing. It's a job. I get paid for it. And whatever I do, I do with lights on me, and a camera, and a lot of technicians about who don't give a bugger, and you can see everything I do up there on the screen. I'm not like half these so-called real actresses who play the Virgin Mary all day, then screw themselves into another big part all night. Lorraine! I told you to keep off of that road!'
'Well, thank you, Mrs Abbott,' said Pascoe, glancing at his watch. 'You've been most helpful. I'm sorry to have troubled you.'
'No trouble, love,' said Mrs Abbott.
He dug into his pocket and produced a ten-pence piece which he gave to Lorraine 'for sweeties'. She waited for her mother's nod before accepting and Pascoe drove off feeling relieved that after all he had not been categorized as a 'funny bugger', and feeling also that at the moment Jack Shorter would top his own personal list.
He needn't have worried about his meeting. It started late because of the non-arrival of one of the senior members and was almost immediately suspended because of the enforced departure of another. Reluctantly Pascoe found a phone and rang Ellie to say that his estimate of a seven o'clock homecoming had been optimistic.
'Surprise,’ she said. 'Will you eat there?'
'I suppose so,’ he said.
'I was hoping you'd take me out. You get better service with a policeman.'
'Sorry,' said Pascoe. 'Better try an old boy-friend. See you!'
He replaced the receiver and went back to the conference room where Inspector Ray Crabtree of the local force told him they were scheduled to restart at seven.
'Fancy a jar?' asked Crabtree. He was a man of forty plus who had gone as far as he was likely to go in the force and had a nice line in comic bitterness which usually entertained Pascoe.
'And a sandwich,' said Pascoe.
'Where do you fancy? Somewhere squalid or somewhere nice?'
'Is the beer better somewhere squalid?'
'No.'
'Or the food cheaper?'
'Not so's you'd notice.'
'Then somewhere nice.'
'That's a sharp mind you've got there, Pascoe,’ said Crabtree admiringly. 'You'll get on. ‘Somewhere nice' was the lounge bar of a large, plush and draughty hotel.
Crabtree ordered four halves of bitter.
'And two rounds of ham, Cyril,' he added. 'Tell 'em it's me and I like it cut with a blunt knife.'
'They only serve halves in here,' he said as they sat down. 'Bloody daft. You've got to get them in twos. Wouldn't do for Sitting Bull.'
'Who?'
'Dalziel. Your big chief. You know, I could have had his job.'
'I didn't know that,' said Pascoe.
'Oh yes. We were up before the same promotion board once. I thought I'd clinched it. They asked, are you as thick as Prince Philip? 'Oh yes,' says I. 'Twice as thick.''
'And what did Dalziel say?'
'He said, 'Who's she'?'
The sandwiches arrived, filled with thick slices of succulent ham, and Pascoe understood the advantages of a blunt knife.
'Do you know a company called Homeric Films?' he asked for the sake of something to say.
Crabtree paused in his chewing.
'Yes,' he said after a moment and took another bite.
'End of conversation, is it?' said Pascoe.
'You could ask if I'd seen any good films lately,' said Crabtree.
'All right. Have you?'
'Yes, but none of 'em were made by Homeric.
‘They're a skin-flick bunch, but if you know enough to ask about them, you probably know as much as me.'
'Why the pause for thought, then?'
'I said you'd a sharp mind. Mebbe I was just chewing on a bit of gristle.'
'It seems to me,' said Pascoe, 'that they have more sense here than to serve you gristle.'
'True. No, truth is you just jumped in front of my train of thought. What's your interest?'
'No interest. They just cropped up apropos of something. What was your train of thought?'
Crabtree finished his first half and started on his second.
'See in the corner to the left of the door?' he said into his glass.
'Yes,' said Pascoe glancing across the room. Three people sat round a table in animated conversation. Two were men. They looked like brothers in their fifties, balding, fleshy. The third was a woman, gross beyond the wildest dreams of gluttony. Surely, thought Pascoe, no deficiency of diet could have produced those avalanches of flesh. She wore a kaftan made from enough shot silk to have pavilioned a whole family of Tartars in splendour, and girded quite a few of them into the bargain. Dalziel would love her. It is not enough (Pascoe paraphrased) to lose weight; a man must also have a friend who is grotesquely fat.
'Homeric Films,' said Crabtree. 'They put me in mind.'
'How?' asked Pascoe but before Crabtree could answer, the huge woman rose and rolled across the room towards them.
'Raymond, my sweet,' she said genially. 'How pleasant and how opportune. I hope I'm not interrupting anything?'
Pascoe stared in amazement. It was not just that on closer view he realized how much he'd underestimated
