looked like a lengthy remonstration from her companion suddenly stubbed her cigarette out in the other's pheasant, rose and left the dining-room. After an agitated moment, Mrs Warsop followed her.
That made up Pascoe's mind. A wise cop didn't get involved in domestics if he could help it.
Stella Abbiss followed him to the front door.
'What happens?' she asked.
He looked at her and shrugged.
'Out of my hands,' he said.
'Does it have to be?'
She spoke flatly but there was no possibility of ambiguity.
Pascoe looked sadly at this pale, shining woman with her cloud of black hair and her dark tragic eyes which were yet sharp enough to have penetrated his fantasies. Did she honestly believe they were realizable? His gaze moved behind her to the reception desk against which Abbiss had discovered Charley Frostick socking it to Andrea. He nodded. It occurred to him that this was certainly ambiguous. He said firmly, 'Yes, it has to be,' and went out into the car park.
Chapter 24
'Pluck up thy spirits, man, and do not be afraid to do thine office.'
At seven o'clock the following morning Pascoe was roused by the telephone. When he answered it, the familiar foghorn at the other end made him think for a moment that all was as it had been and he was merely receiving another urgent summons to another urgent case. 'Peter,' said Dalziel. 'You still in bed, you lazy bugger?' 'Where else?' he yawned.
'You alone?'
'Ellie's still not back,' he answered regretfully.
'Oh aye. But are you alone?'
'Ha ha,' said Pascoe, waking up now. 'Sir, to what do I owe the. ..'
'Peter, I hear you're piling a bit of trouble on Paradise Hall.'
'Do you? Now, how on earth…'
'Forget it, Peter.'
'What?'
'Forget it.'
'But…'
'Peter, I'm still in charge, aren't I? I mean, they haven't made you commissioner and me the tea-boy, have they?'
'No, of course…'
'Then forget it. That's an order. All right?' Pascoe was amazed. He said, 'As a subordinate, I suppose it's all right though I'll need to think about it. As a friend..’
‘A friend. You want for us to talk as friends?' said Dalziel.
' Yes, sir. If you'll make the effort, then I will.'
'All right,' said Dalziel. 'Then please forget it.'
The phone went dead.
It rang an hour later just as he was getting ready to leave. This time it was Ellie.
'I rang last night,' she said.
'I'm sorry. I was a bit late.'
'Too late to ring me?'
'No. Well, yes. I didn't want to disturb you.'
The truth was he'd had a drink when he got home, switched on the ten o'clock news and awakened in the armchair with a crick in his neck, a nasty taste in his mouth and the TV switch-off tone in his ears.
'How is everything?' he asked.
'Pretty bloody,' she said in a worryingly flat voice. 'He went off last evening, just disappeared. I found him outside the library. It was quarter to nine. He said he was waiting for it to open at nine.'
'Poor old devil,' said Pascoe, genuinely distressed at his father-in-law's confusion, but also with a slight sense of comedy. This vanished rapidly with Ellie's next remark.
'Peter,' she said hopelessly. 'I don't know what to do.'
This was truly horrifying, more shocking far than the vagaries of senility. With a sudden flash of insight, he appreciated that Ellie was to his personal life what Dalziel was to his professional, a bulwark of certainty, often wrong, it was true, and frequently in need of diplomatic redirection, but always high on self-assurance and low on self-doubt.
She went on, 'He's not going to get any better, I can see that now. And as he gets worse, he's going to need more and more looking after and I'm not sure Mum can cope. She just seems to want to sit and play with Rose all day and pretend that nothing's happening. Peter, what am I going to do?'
Well, here's your chance, boy, here's your big moment, thought Pascoe. The perfect soap-opera situation: the modern, independent, feminist wife is at last forced to appeal to the big strong man in her life for strength and guidance; he is silent, but even his silence is reassuring; the hunter-provider, fleet of foot and rational of thought, is about to pronounce.
He said, 'Christ knows. I mean, it's pretty much of a mess, isn't it? I mean, I can see what…'
He took a deep breath, exhaled, blowing the remnants of hunter-provider out of his system, and said, 'Why don't I pop down and suss things out on the spot, so to speak?'
'Peter, could you? That'd be bloody marvellous! When?'
Heady with rapturously-applauded decision and suddenly filled with a huge need to see Ellie again, he said carelessly, 'This afternoon? Why not? I'll stay overnight, but I'll have to be up at the crack to get back here for slopping-out time.'
They spent a few more minutes promising an exchange of delights which left Pascoe feeling weak with desire and he needed another two cups of caponizing coffee before he felt able to go to work.
Getting away after lunch proved easier than mature reflection on the way to the station had suggested it might be. Like nearly all working detectives, he had no shortage of back-time; what was rare was the front-time to take it up in. Today, despite his two murders (the death of 'Tap' Parrinder now being acknowledged officially as a likely unlawful killing) there occurred one of those lulls in which everything possible to do was being, or had been, done and nothing remained but to wait hopefully for a break and catch up with the paperwork.
There was also a pleasing absence of brass about the place, and with Sergeant Wield and George Headingley happy to watch the shop for him, Pascoe felt no pangs of conscience at baling out after lunch in the CID's usual city haunt, The Black Bull.
He bought Wield and Headingley a third pint, contenting himself with a pre-driving tomato juice, and told them of his visit to The Towers and Paradise Hall the previous evening. He also told them of Dalziel's injunction, which he had obeyed though not without misgivings.
Wield interrupted his story during his description of Doreen Warsop and her companion at the restaurant.
'You're not saying that being lesbian means she's more likely to be a crook?' he said mildly.
'Well, no,' said Pascoe. 'I didn't mean to imply that.'
'It sounded like you were offering it as supportive evidence, that was all,' said Wield.
'Not intended, except in so far as treating her friends to expensive meals for which she didn't have to pay is supportive,' said Pascoe, rather irritated by what felt like an attack on his liberal convictions.
Wield nodded his acceptance. Such gentle forays as this were the nearest he ever came in his professional life to declaring his own homosexuality. When he first joined the Force, there had been no debate about concealment. But time and times had changed things, and now, though he did not delude himself that coming out would not still harm his own career, he felt a growing dissatisfaction with the path of secrecy he had chosen, and now these minor skirmishes tended to feel like acts of cowardice rather than courage.
