He read through the letter one more time.
He felt he knew this woman. He could infer acquaintance from the letter, though of course it would be possible for her to know him but not vice versa. In that case there was no hope. So start from the premise that he knew her. She mentioned Wield also. The ugly sergeant. And she referred to a specific case. The Swain case. There were two women involved there, both with considerable cause to feel disenchanted with life. He reviewed them clinically in his mind. Shirley Appleyard was the younger, but he'd always felt a mature strength there. And she had a child to hang on to. Pam Waterson was strong too. But her personal tragedy would be compounded by hard work and long hours in an environment full of death, decay, disease . . .
He reached for the phone and dialled the number of the Infirmary.
Mrs Waterson was not on duty, he was told. Next he dialled the nurses' annexe. After some time, a woman's voice answered the communal phone. Yes, she thought Pam was in. She'd give her a knock. A couple of minutes later she came back on. Sorry, she must have been mistaken. There was no reply.
And she rang off before Pascoe could make up his mind whether his fears were strong enough to demand that she immediately raised the alarm.
But he couldn't spend any more time in abstract speculation. Picking up the letter, he set off back to his own room where he grabbed the complete Dark Lady file. As he made for the door, Wield came in, his face contorted in a smile.
'Have you seen this?' he said, waving the
Pascoe ignored the paper and bore the sergeant with him along the corridor, down the stairway and out into the car park which still bore its scars like a British heavyweight. In the car, the puzzled Wield read the letter as Pascoe explained where they were going. He'd heard Pascoe refer to the case but this was the first time he'd actually seen one of the letters and he was clearly puzzled by the Chief Inspector's agitation.
'Is there something in the rest of this lot which makes you think it could be her?' he said.
'Yes. I don't know. Maybe. I can't take the risk, you see that?'
'I see you'd want to stop her. Yes, obviously. I mean, it's obvious you'd want to stop her, though not necessarily obvious you should . . .'
Pascoe turned angry eyes on Wield and said, 'Don't give me any crap about free choice! Read those letters. There's no free choice there. She's been driven . . .'
'Yes, all right,' said the sergeant soothingly. 'I wasn't meaning to debate morality. Only to say, well, I can't see why you're taking it so personal. It's not even like it's you she's been writing to . . .'
'She wants to be found, she wants to be stopped, I know she does!' interrupted Pascoe. 'All right, she made the wrong choice with Dalziel, but she got a second chance with me, and what have I done?'
'A damn sight more than anyone else would have, from the sound of it. You've nowt to reproach yourself with.'
'Haven't I? All right, I've gone through the motions, but what's it amounted to? Nothing. A facade. At least Andy was open. Chuck them aside. They're an irrelevance. It's the Samaritans she should be writing to. If she wants police time, let her go out and commit an indictable offence! So on he boldly goes, passing by on the other side. While me, I pussyfoot down the middle of the road, a bit closer to the action maybe, but not getting close enough to actually do any good.
They had reached the Infirmary grounds. He ignored all signs diverting him to car parks, and drove straight up to the nurses' annexe. Leaving the car door wide open behind him, he rushed inside and bounded up the stairs, two at a time. Despite his efforts to keep pace, Wield was left behind. He had never seen Pascoe so agitated before. By thought association he recalled his recent comment that he had never seen Dalziel so obsessed before. One with punishment, the other with protection. The twin poles of policing. Pascoe, Dalziel, as far apart as you could get, but with a world in precarious balance between them . . . what the hell was he doing with a head full of philosophical waffle when he should be concentrating on (a) stopping Pascoe from making a fool of himself and (b) stopping himself from inducing a heart attack?
Breathless, he reached the second landing. Already he could hear Pascoe hammering on a door, calling, 'Mrs Waterson! Pamela! Are you in there?' Other doors had opened and heads were peering out. Pascoe seemed unaware of them. As Wield joined him, he said, 'We'll have to break it down. I know she's in there. I just know!'
And Wield, observing over Pascoe's shoulder the door handle beginning to turn, said, 'Yes, I believe you're right.'
The door was flung open. Pam Waterson stood there with a dressing-gown held tight around her body. Her eyes were bright with anger.
'What the hell's going on?' she demanded.
Pascoe turned and looked at her with an amazement too strong to be as yet compounded with relief. Indeed, to find his certainty proved so unarguably delusive amounted almost to a disappointment.
He said, 'Are you all right? I thought...’
'Yes, of course I'm all right.' She glanced along the corridor at the line of curious heads protruding from each doorway like a colonnade of caryatids. 'Come in and see for yourself if you must.'
This invitation puzzled Wield until he stepped into the flat and a man's voice said, 'Pam, what's going on?'
It was Ellison Marwood experiencing the difficulty of the newly awoken in pulling on a pair of trousers. Pam Waterson had obviously decided that inviting them in was the lesser of two perils when the other was the risk of Marwood displaying himself thus to that gauntlet of eyes.
'I'm sorry. It's nothing. I thought . . .'
Pascoe was doing a bad job, and Wield, who knew the value of presenting a stolid official face on occasions, said, 'We had reason to suspect that a woman as yet unknown to us might be at risk, and we wished to eliminate Mrs Waterson from our inquiries.'
