Deadheads

and the felt tip was now adding a new royal blue line to the scrawl of varicose veins on his calf.

Pascoe said, 'You mean he used us to put the skids under his business rivals? The cunning sod!'

'Aye, he's that, right enough,' said Dalziel. 'Mebbe he's still playing that game, stirring things up to help himself. I'll have him if he is, though he's been quiet for a good bit now. I reckon when they got took over, the game became that much bigger and also he lost a bit of interest. You don't look after someone else's mansion the way you do your own house, do you?'

'He seemed to be looking after it fairly well when I saw him, and single-handed. The place didn't exactly look packed with senior management waiting for the union meeting to finish. Though I did see Aldermann, of course. Mind you, he looked to be packing it in for the day! I told you he gave me a rose, didn't I?'

'He wanted to give me a bunch,' said a voice from the doorway. It was Wield who had entered with his usual quietness.

'God, it's creeping Jesus,' said Dalziel, looking round. 'You want to get some hobnails in them boots of yours, Sergeant. But now you're here, just tell me again what you thought of Mr Aldermann when you called on him the other night.'

'Like I said in my report, sir, he was difficult to get to. Very self-contained, watchful almost, but not in a suspicious way. He came to life when he started showing me his roses, though.'

'You felt he could be more interested in his roses than his wife and family?' said Pascoe.

'There's men more interested in golf and greyhounds than their wives and families!' interjected Dalziel. 'That doesn't make them killers!'

Wield said, 'Not more interested in, perhaps, sir, but more passionate about, if that makes sense. He handles them with love. And when he deadheaded them, it was like watching a surgeon at work.'

'Aye, there's some of them buggers'd be better off using a pair of garden secateurs!' observed Dalziel, who tended to regard doctors as causes rather than curers of ill health.

'No, he uses a pruning knife,' said Wield, justifying his simile. 'It's a beauty, lovely shape, sharp as a scalpel.'

'I hope you're not suggesting that just because he's got a nice, sharp, shiny pruning knife, he's likely to go around slitting people's throats, Sergeant?' said Dalziel with heavy sarcasm.

'No, sir,' agreed Wield. 'That doesn't follow.'

'It's what you might call a non-secateur,' murmured Pascoe, adding hastily as he saw the look on Dalziel's face, 'and there was the cupboard full of poison, wasn't there?'

'What a way you've got with language!' said Dalziel sarcastically. 'Garden weedkillers, that's what he's got. Which there's no evidence he's used to kill owt but weeds. And what did he do with Burke? Blow the stuff up his trouser leg while he was climbing that ladder?'

He'd finished scratching his leg and now he pulled his trouser down again without noticing the decoration on his calf. Wield met Pascoe's gaze. Pascoe had a sudden desire to giggle, but Wield's rocky impassivity stemmed the impulse.

'One reason,' said Dalziel. 'Give me one reason to waste any more time on this business.'

'Curiosity,' said Pascoe promptly.

'Curiosity? About what?'

'About how a man, who, as far as I can ascertain, has never shown much real aptitude for his chosen profession, should be at the edge of becoming financial director of a subsidiary of a large international company.'

'Christ, by that yardstick we should be curious about fifty per cent of directors, seventy per cent of politicians and ninety-five per cent of Chief Constables!' said Dalziel in disgust. 'Listen, this Aldermann sounds to me like Mr Average. Dull; ordinary; wife and two kids; nice house; loves to get home to his family and his rose-garden. He'll likely go to Corfu for his holidays and have his white-haired old mother to stay at Christmas. He has got a white- haired old mother, has he?'

'Mrs Penelope Highsmith,' said Pascoe promptly, glancing at his file. 'Flat 31, Woodfall House, Denbigh Square, London SW1. Age and colour of hair unknown.'

'Very good,' complimented Dalziel. 'Your information, I mean. Highsmith? Why not Aldermann? Did she marry again?'

'She wasn't married in the first place. Highsmith was her maiden name. Evidently she never let on who Patrick's father was and it was his own idea to take his great-uncle's name when he came of age.'

But Dalziel didn't seem to be much interested in this bit of family history.

'Highsmith?' he said. 'Penelope Highsmith? Used to live up here fifteen, twenty years back?'

'I presume so. At least, he went to school here.'

'Penny Highsmith! By God. Penny Highsmith!' Dalziel's face suddenly lit up, like sunshine breaking through at Elsinore.

'You knew Mrs Highsmith, sir?' enquired Pascoe.

'We met, if it's the same one. She used to come down to the Club odd Saturday nights when there was a dance on. I never knew she had a son, though. She was a real lively lass. Full of fun and bonny with it. A real live spark.'

Whose memory brought a lustful gleam to Dalziel's weary, cynical eyes as well as Elgood's twinkling, questing ones, thought Pascoe. She must have had something! 'The Club' of course, meant the local rugby football club. Pascoe's only connection with it had been a professional one some years before while he was still a sergeant. It was not a game nor an ambience that he much cared for, but the Superintendent had evidently played the game with some skill and (Pascoe guessed) a great deal of physicality in his younger days.