'Sir,' he said. 'One thing. I wonder if, well, what I mean is, while I'm doing this investigation…'
'Clarification,' corrected the DCC.
'Clarification,' said Headingley, 'it's not all that helpful, from the point of view of discretion I mean, if, well, if Mr Dalziel's around and I sort of bump into him, like yesterday.'
He finished at a rush.
The DCC smiled sadly, sympathetically, consolingly.
'Yes. I understand,' he said. 'I'll make sure that you won't be troubled by such coincidental meetings again.'
After Headingley had left, he picked up his phone and dialled. It rang for at least a minute with no response but he didn't hang up. Another thirty seconds passed, then a voice bellowed, 'Yes?'
'Andy, is that you?'
'Depends who that is.'
'It's me,' said the DCC.
He spoke at length and in friendly tones about the troubled times, the subversive movement's anti-police propaganda, the prurient and sensational press; he spoke eloquently and persuasively; after a while he became aware of a noise on the line, a sort of distant buzz such as might be made by an electric razor in the room next to the telephone.
He paused and said, 'Andy? Andy? Are you there? Hello? Hello? Superintendent Dalziel?'
'If you're going to shout like that, where's the point in using the phone?' said Dalziel's voice reproachfully. 'What can I do for you, sir?'
'Superintendent, when I told you to take some leave yesterday morning, I suggested perhaps a little frivolously that you might care to sample foreign parts. Now I'm suggesting, not at all frivolously, that a short break out of Yorkshire might do you the world of good. I believe they're enjoying some very pleasant weather on the South Coast at the moment. I think it might do you good. What do you say to Eastbourne, perhaps? Or maybe Bognor Regis?'
A few seconds later, the DCC replaced the phone with the gentleness of a man to whom even the softest click could be the last sound that shattered his vibrating ear-drums. But in his head he could hear a voice quite clearly.
George Headingley would have been amused, or perhaps not, to recognize in this voice that same note of polite incredulity which was the dominating tone of his own mental Board of Inquiry.
He said what? And you did what?
I went to play golf, sir.
The DCC rose from his desk and went to play golf.
Chapter 16
'Mehr Licht!'
Ellie rang again on Sunday night. She sounded rather more cheerful, though she admitted that it was probably on a false basis.
'Mum says the same. Much of the time, most of the time, he's just like he's always been. Then he'll do something odd. Often it's trivial. He'll go and have a bath twice in an hour, quite forgetting that he's been already. Or he'll not bother with having a bath at all and when she pushes him, he looks puzzled and says he's just had one that morning. He forgets whole days. When he remembers them later, as he sometimes does, it really upsets him, you know, to know he's forgotten. From that point of view, I suppose it'll get better as it gets worse.'
'But he's been OK today?'
'Oh yes. Fine, completely like his old self. When I see him like this, I can't help but feel that all he needs is a course of pills to stimulate the old mental juices, you know, some kind of 'upper' like we used to take before exams.'
Not me, thought Pascoe. Not you either, if I remember right. It wasn't just old age which found memory a trouble. As the dull plateau of middle age hove over the horizon, the broken landscape of youth got rearranged into more interesting patterns. But he kept his reflections for a better time.
After Ellie had rung off, he was just settling down in front of the television with a bottle of beer and a slice of cold pie when the doorbell rang. His first reaction was irritation. For some reason he was certain it was Sammy Ruddlesdin, despite the fact that he'd seen the journalist that morning and given him as full an account as he could of progress on the Deeks case.
But the shape he saw through the frosted glass of the front door was unmistakable.
'Hello, sir,' he said. 'Is it a raid?'
'Them merry quips'll be your downfall, Peter,' said Dalziel. 'A lesser man might take offence.'
'There's a lot of them about,' said Pascoe, pressing back against the wall to allow the fat man to pass. 'Are you coming in?'
This last was addressed to Dalziel's neck as he progressed into the living-room. By the time Pascoe had joined him, he'd switched the telly off and was sitting in Pascoe's armchair looking speculatively at the beer and pie.
'Care to join me, sir?' said Pascoe.
'Why not?' said Dalziel. 'It won't do any harm. I'm trying this fibre diet everyone's on about, did I tell you? It's grand, you can eat just about anything as long as it's got fibre.'
'Well, this is pretty fibrous, as you'll find,' called Pascoe from the kitchen. 'Chicken 'n' ham, from the supermarket, not the fruits of anyone's gun, I'm afraid.'
He returned with beer and pie.
Dalziel leered at him and said, 'Tickled your fancy that one, didn't she, Peter? Ellie away for long?'
Whether this was deduction or information wasn't clear. Its insinuation was. Pascoe said, 'She'll be back tomorrow. And strange though it may seem, even were her absence longer, I would not be shooting off my gun all over Yorkshire.'
'I'm doing a bit myself,' said Dalziel, sinking his teeth into the pie. For a moment Pascoe thought this was the beginning of some unsavoury amorous confession and the fat man's eyes registered the thought as he washed the chicken 'n' ham down with half a pint of beer.
'Shooting,' he said. 'Bang, bang.'
'You mean shooting… things?'
'Aye,' said Dalziel gravely. 'They tell me things are in season.'
'Birds? You're going to go shooting birds!' exclaimed Pascoe, incredulity struggling with indignation.
'I asked about sheep,' said Dalziel regretfully. 'I wondered if they'd let me start with sheep, being only a trainee, so to speak. Something a bit bulky and sort of static. Sheep-shooting's never caught on, they tell me. Stags, yes. But not sheep. You can do all kinds of things with sheep, especially if you've been stuck out on the moors a long time, but you can't shoot them. It has to be birds. I asked about swans then…'
Pascoe interrupted this ponderous frivolity.
'But why? It's not your bag, is it? I mean, you're not the..’
'Type?' said Dalziel. 'What you mean, Peter, is I'm not one of your tweedy twits, all upper crust, and brains like these chicken leftovers beneath it. Well, you're right. I'm not. I'm glad you've noticed. But it's not like that any more. It's a popular sport. Pricey but popular. Businessmen, professional people, foreigners, they're all at it. So why not me?'
'Do you want the general objections, or the specific?' asked Pascoe stiffly.
'Well, I doubt if anyone with the stomach for this battery-raised pap can make much of a case against killing birds in the wild,' said Dalziel, swallowing the last of his pie. 'So let's hear the specific. Don't be shy, lad. Speak free.'
'I don't know,' said Pascoe. 'It just doesn't seem the kind of thing you'd want to do, somehow.'
'Why not? The Chief Constable's a dab hand, so they tell me. Mebbe I'm a late developer. Mebbe I've got secret ambitions.'
