Deadheads

the sand-pit, did you? We'll have to see if we can get you posted to permanent school-crossing duty.'

Singh glanced sideways and smiled, ready to share the joke, but the sight of that savage, rough-hewn profile made it hard to believe in Wield's humorous intent. He felt a strong need for the man's approval and tried again by saying, 'That Mrs Aldermann, when I was on traffic duty yesterday morning I saw her down the Market Caff. And you know who she was with? Mr Pascoe's wife!'

Wield unlocked the car door and slid in behind the wheel.

'Traffic duty from the Market Caff?' he said. 'I hope you're learning good policing as quick as you're learning bad habits. Get in if you don't want to walk back.'

Police Cadet Singh hurried round the car and they drove back to the station in a far from companionable silence.

7

 

COPPER DELIGHT

(Floribunda. Fairly vigorous, coppery gold blooms in clusters of three to five, little fading but needs protection from black spot, sweet-scented.)

Peter Pascoe dandled his daughter, marking the rhythm by chanting in a music-hall Scots accent. 'De'il and Dalziel begin with ane letter! The de'ils nae guid and Dalziel's nae better?

The little girl was much taken by this verse and gurgled happily, but Ellie, coming into the lounge unheard, said, 'What's the fat slob been doing now?'

'That is no way to talk of your daughter,' said Pascoe sternly.

'Funny. Not that she doesn't get called worse than that sometimes. But to get back to Dalziel.'

'Oh, it's nothing worse than usual. He's just still niggling about this Elgood-Aldermann thing. But  I can't get out of him what he expects me to do. Wield went round there last night . . .'

'To the Aldermanns'?'

'Yes. But don't fret yourself. It was ostensibly about your buddy's car.'

'And what did he find?' asked Ellie, a trifle aggressively. She had mixed feelings about police subterfuge, sometimes seeing it as a threat to the body social, sometimes taking a kind of perverse delight in it which worried her.

‘Nothing, nothing,' said Pascoe hastily, not about to reveal that when Wield had mentioned the locked cabinet, he had picked up the phone and had a long talk with the police pathologist who had reeled off a huge list of potentially lethal chemicals used in garden care, ending by saying, 'But give me the flesh, and I'll give you the substance, Inspector. Have you got flesh for me?'

'Sorry,' said Pascoe, feeling like a war-time butcher. 'No flesh. But just off your cuff, is there anything which might leave a man with a known heart condition looking as if he'd had a heart-attack? Or anything that might make a driver with a skinful of booze almost certain to crash?'

'Well,' said the pathologist doubtfully, 'there's sodium fluoroacetate. Used for killing rats and devilish difficult to get hold of. Lots of symptoms - nausea, mental collapse, epileptiform convulsions - but if no one saw the symptoms, it might pass for a heart-attack if there was a history and no post mortem. As for the other, once a man's system is invaded by alcohol, it wouldn't take much to cause confusion. One of the chlorinated hydrocarbons, like chlordane; or an organic phosphate, like parathion; but without flesh . . .'

That had been that. The reason why there was no flesh was that both Bulmer and Eagles had been cremated. Not that there would really have been a very good case made of exhumation. The lab reports on the garage door and the Anglepoise lamp had revealed no clear evidence of tampering.

'So there's nothing to support Elgood's allegations?' said Ellie.

'No, and I'll tell him so,' said Pascoe firmly. 'I'm going to see him tomorrow. I reckon he probably just got a touch of the sun, lying around at that cottage of his. He'll probably be happy to back off now he's had a couple of nights to sleep on it. I think this child is wet.'

'It's that rhyme about Dalziel,' said Ellie. 'Dump her on a newspaper and I'll fetch a nappy.'

On her return, Ellie said thoughtfully. 'You're probably right of course, about Elgood, I mean. But Perfecta doesn't seem all that healthy a place to work, does it?'

'Two deaths, one drunk, one heart? About par for the average business firm. I should have thought.'

'There was someone else a few years back. I met his widow when I was with Daphne, that's how I know. Burke was the name. He used to work with Aldermann.'

'Burke?' said Pascoe. 'That rings a faint bell.'

'Does it? Before that mighty computer mind goes to work, I think your daughter would like her nappy changed.'

'It's your turn,' said Pascoe, rising from the floor. 'I just want to make a phone call.'

He returned a couple of minutes later and Ellie said casually, 'By the way, you'll let me know if you change your mind again, won't you?'

'About what?'

'About whether you're seriously investigating Patrick Aldermann.'

'Because of seeing his wife, you mean?'

'I suppose I mean that.'

'Yes, of course I'd tell you.'

'So that I'd stop seeing her?'

Pascoe grinned and said, 'I see tiger-traps. No, so that you'd know. Nothing more.'