Deadheads

bathroom, Peter, I have everything.'

'Yes,' said Pascoe. ‘in your evidence at the inquest, you mentioned the bathroom, I believe. You said you had a shower before you went out.'

'Oh yes,' she answered. 'So I did. I recall thinking later that perhaps it happened while I was actually in the shower. You can't hear a thing in there - telephone, doorbell, nothing. And I wouldn't look out on to the patio before I left. Perhaps he was lying there already. Somehow that made it all seem so much worse.'

The coroner had recorded laconically 'break' at this point. Presumably Mrs Burke had been overcome. Even now her handsome face was shadowed.

‘It wouldn't have made any difference,' said Pascoe gently. 'He died instantly, I gather.'

'Yes, that was a comfort,' she replied, dabbing at her eyes, smiling bravely, and taking a long drink, isn't it warm today? Why don't you take your jacket off?'

'No. I must be going shortly,' said Pascoe. 'When you found him, was there any sign that anyone else had been with him?'

'What on earth do you mean?'

'Well, a couple of glasses, for instance,' said Pascoe holding up his own. She tried to refill it, but he moved it back hastily and she topped up her own instead.

'No. Nothing like that. I recall I put the car in the garage, came out of the door straight on to the patio, and there he was. No sign that there'd been anyone else here. Why should there have been? I mean, if there had been, they would have said, surely?'

'Yes, of course,' said Pascoe. 'Tell me, as a matter of interest, did Mr Burke socialize much with his colleagues at Perfecta? Mr Elgood? Or Mr Eagles? Or Mr Aldermann, say?'

'My, you do know a lot, don't you?' she said admiringly. 'I thought, the moment I saw you, there's a man who knows a lot. Let me see. Elgood, no. He was friendly enough but only in a bossish sort of way. Tim Eagles and his wife we swapped dinners with a couple of times a year. As for the other, Aldermann, the one who got his job, Chris reckoned nothing of him. There'd been talk of some trouble when he was in private practice, I believe, but it wasn't that. Chris wasn't a man for gossip. Very strict moralist, Chris. Old Testament judgements, but he had to see for himself, he wouldn't condemn without he had the firm evidence before his very eyes. But he didn't care for Mr Patrick Aldermann. He said he was superfluous to requirement, even as a part-timer. It was a fix, he said, and Chris didn't care for fixes.'

'Did he complain about Mr Aldermann?'

'You mean officially? Oh, I expect so. He would hold his peace till he was certain about something, but then there was no holding him. He would make his view known even if it meant half the country knowing his business. Oh bother. The jug's empty. It just evaporates in this heat, you know. I'm going to make myself some more. Why don't you unbutton and have a swallow or two with me?'

She stood up, swayed, placed a hand on Pascoe's shoulder to steady herself and let gravity direct the heavy bombs of her breasts towards his upturned face. Alarmed, he slipped sideways out of the deckchair, going down on one knee in the process.

'Careful!' she said anxiously. 'You haven't torn your trousers, have you? Never mind if you have. I'm a demon with a needle. I can stitch you up and send you home so your wife wouldn't notice you'd been mended.'

'No, no, it's fine,' Pascoe assured her. 'I'll have to be on my way. Many thanks, Mrs Burke.'

'Mandy,' she said. 'Call again. Or drop by my little boutique in the market. Mandy's Knick-Knacks. I can always find something interesting for a friend.'

'Perhaps I will,' he said, ‘isn't the market open today?'

'Oh yes,' she said. 'But I roasted there all morning and decided my assistant could manage by herself this afternoon. It's all right when you're young and skinny, but when there's a bit more upholstering, the sweat just runs off you.'

She shook herself gently as if to demonstrate the phenomenon.

Pascoe smiled and retreated, not without relief. But as he drove away he was surprised by an uneasy feeling that, drunk and gamesome though she had been, and though he had resisted all her offers, even of running repairs with needle and thread, yet she had somehow managed to stitch him up in some not yet definable way.

7

 

EMOTION

(Hybrid perpetual.Beautifully formed flowers, opening from tight buds, pale foliage.)

Sergeant Wield was privately convinced that the whole Aldermann business was a load of time-wasting crap, and a morning spent catching up on CID paperwork followed by a hasty lunch in an overcrowded, overheated pub, had sent him to his interview with Mr Wellington, the coroner on the Burke inquest, in a far from happy mood.

Wellington was now retired, a dried-up stick of a man with a strong belief in all those virtues, such as temperance, chastity and respect for authority, which time recommends to the old. But if the years had blunted his appetite, they had done little for his temper.

'Wield? Wield? I remember you. You were saucy with me once, young man. In my own court! I reprimanded you. Severely.'

'That's right, sir,' said Wield and pressed on to the matter of Burke. There was no joy here either. Wellington was indecisive only about whether to be more offended by the suggestion that Burke, a man of notorious sobriety, might have been drinking, or that he himself, a man of notorious probity, might have played down such a fact. A lecture followed on the inadequacies of modern policemen, the immorality of modern youth, and the immaturity of modern coroners. Musing on the delights of giving evidence at an inquest on Mr Wellington himself, Wield was almost past the station desk when the duty sergeant's call brought him to a halt.

'Young Singh was asking after you,' he said. 'Seemed to think it was urgent.'

'Did he?' said Wield sourly. 'Where's he at?'