to live the life of Riley by himself with no thought of sending owt back for his wife and kiddie.'
'You mean he's not come back to see them?' said Pascoe.
'Come back? Why should a useless bastard like that come back unless it were to bring more trouble with him?' exclaimed Stringer. 'I even went looking for him not long back, but he must have got wind of it, for he'd moved on without any forwarding address. Well, I tell you, he'll not have moved far enough for me!'
'And what about Shirley?' asked Pascoe, taken aback by the force of the man's emotion. 'What does she feel about all this? How's it affected her?'
'If you'd known her a few years back, you'd not need to ask that,' said Stringer. 'Here, take a look.'
From his wallet he took a colour snapshot. It was a picture of Stringer and a girl of twelve or thirteen, sitting together at a small folding table under a striped canvas awning. They were both smiling widely at the camera. The girl wasn't beautiful, but she was fresh-faced, vital, carefree, and it took a long hard stare to discern in this child the lineaments of Shirley Appleyard.
Her father was much more recognizable, but the passing of those years had stamped a mark of pain and anger and bafflement on his features too.
'Lovely girl,' said Pascoe.
He didn't mean it to sound past tense, but that's how Stringer heard it.
'Yes, she were,' he said, half to himself. 'Lovely girl. Everyone said so. And she reckoned there was no one like her dad. Went everywhere with me, told me everything. Then it all started to change. Like milk going sour. Gradual at first, everything looks the same . . . but in the end, it's not to be hid! You got any kids, mister?'
'One. A girl.'
'Then you'll likely understand.'
Understand what? wondered Pascoe as he drove home. Stringer did not strike him as a man for whom a trouble shared was a trouble halved. But as he read Rosie her bedtime story, he found himself speculating how he would feel about anyone who mucked up his daughter's life, and he did not find much comfort in the speculation.
He went downstairs to find Ellie at the dining-room table surrounded by the files and papers she'd started gathering as a result of her election as Chung's unpaid PRO. They exchanged smiles, then he wandered into the lounge and poured himself a drink. He knew there was a chat show on the television he usually liked to watch but he couldn't be bothered to switch it on tonight. Suddenly Ellie slipped on to the arm of his chair and rested her elbow on his shoulder.
'You look glum,' she said. 'Something bothering you?'
'No. Just life.'
'In that case, stop worrying. In the end it cures itself, they tell me.'
'That's on the National Health,' he said. 'Some people go private and jump the queue.'
'I'm sorry? What's this? My mystery for tonight?'
'No. There's this woman, Gail Swain, blew her head off. At least that's how it looks to me. And there's this other woman who's been writing to Dalziel saying she's going to kill herself.'
'Good lord. You never mentioned this before.'
'No. Well, she stopped and it seemed to be all over, then she just started again,' he said lamely.
'I see. Why Dalziel? And if Dalziel, how you?'
'In extremis even atheists say their prayers. And it is a leader's privilege to delegate.'
Ellie laughed, then said, 'These letters, any chance of taking a peek?'
Pascoe hesitated before replying, 'I don't have them with me. I left them at work.'
It was true, but it was not the true reason for the hesitation and he guessed that Ellie sensed it. Prior to the case which left him with his still painful leg, he had confided without inhibition or censorship in Ellie. If asked then, he would have said he did it out of complete love, complete trust. But in the grey hospital hours he had found himself wondering if he hadn't simply been testing that trust and that love to destruction. Finally had come a time when they found themselves in public and private opposition and, retrospectively, he found himself identifying a certain perverse satisfaction in having reached a boundary. As he emerged from the greyness, so that identification had become far less positive. But it added an extra and sufficient weight to the pressures keeping partially closed what had once been totally open.
Ellie rose and yawned. 'No bother,' she said lightly. 'I've got enough on my plate without solving your cases for you.'
He followed her back into the dining-room, eager to minimize damage.
'How's the unpaid job?' he asked.
'Could be fun. But time-consuming. I'll never be nasty about PR men again.'
'Like to bet?' smiled Pascoe. 'Incidentally, you might like to do a bit of PR liaising with Chung on my behalf: Somehow word's got out that she's keen to cast Dalziel as God. Could you assure her my lips have been sealed? I don't want to end up in some oriental death-lock.'
'You could have fooled me,' said Ellie. 'But I shouldn't worry. Leaks from the Kemble are like leaks from the Cabinet. She-who-must-be-obeyed drills the holes.'
'Chung? But why?'
'It's called pressure, dear. What's the best way of getting Dalziel to do something?'
'I don't know. Bribery? Corruption? Telling him not to do it . . .'
