Bones and Silence

'Mrs Coombes I found letters from. Miss King, I caught him in the stirrups.'

'Good lord. I mean, I'm sorry. Is there anything else you can tell me? Addresses, say?'

'No idea. King works at Greg's old firm and Chris Coombes is married to Peter Coombes, the personnel director, so you can see he didn't mind doing it on his own doorstep, almost literally in King's case.'

She had been standing stiff and erect during all this interview. Now her leg muscles seemed to lose their strength, she staggered slightly and sat down.

Pascoe said, 'Are you all right, Mrs Waterson?'

'Fine. Look, why don't you sit down, I've been very rude . . .'

He looked at her uneasily. He preferred her strength.

'No, thanks, I really have to be on my way and I think I've taken up enough of your time anyway. Thanks for your help. I hope this all works out for you somehow. Don't get up. I'll let myself out.'

He left guiltily. On the stairs he met a nurse coming up. He stopped her and said, 'You know Mrs Waterson? She looks a bit under the weather to me. If you could just look in casually in a couple of minutes, see she's all right . . . thank you.'

He went on his way feeling slightly better, but not much.

CHAPTER FIVE

Andrew Dalziel, despite what his friends said, was no paranoiac. He did not believe himself to be infallibly perfect or unjustly persecuted. His great strength was that he walked away from his mistakes like a horse from its droppings, and as he himself once remarked, if you leave crap on people's carpets, you've got to expect a bit of persecution.

But when he believed himself right, he did not readily accept evidence that he might be wrong, not while there was any stone left unturned.

Gail Swain was, of course, the keystone, but there wasn't much future in turning a corpse. Philip Swain was for the moment safely bastioned by the formidable Eden Thackeray and it would take a pickaxe to turn him. Gregory Waterson sounded as if he could be turned by a strong ant, but they had to find the useless bugger first. Which left very few candidates for up-ending.

After Pascoe's departure, he took another look at a memo he had received that morning. If Pascoe could have seen it, he would have realized just how desperate Dalziel was getting for this was from the Central Police Computer which he usually regarded with all the enthusiasm of Ned Ludd for a stocking-frame. It read: SAS PERSONNEL RECORDS NOT ACCESSIBLE WITHOUT MOD AUTHORIZATION BUT SEARCH OF ARMY RECORDS REVEALS CPL

MITCHELL, GARY, BORN CONSETT NORTHUMBERLAND 8.6.59 ENLISTED CATERING CORPS 1977, DISCHARGED 1983, NO CRIMINAL RECORD.

Beggars couldn't be choosers, he told himself. And with a bovine belch which reminded him how close it was to lunch-time, he rose and went to do a bit of stone-twisting at the Mid-Yorkshire Gun Club.

The club clearly did good midday business as anxious executives got rid of their morning tensions. A distant fusillade from some indoor range punctured the air as he waited in a small and militarily tidy office. After a few minutes a tall athletic-looking man came in. He had earmuffs round his neck, an irritated expression on his face, and a broken revolver in his hand which he laid carefully on top of a filing cabinet.

'I'm Mitchell,' he said, sitting on a swivel chair, crossing his legs on his desk and scratching his designer stubble. 'Hope this won't take too long. I said everything I had to say to your errand boy couple of weeks back.'

Dalziel said solicitously, 'Nasty thing, that acne. Still, they say you get rid of it when you grow up. Was that why you gave up the cooking?'

The fingers stopped scratching, thought of becoming a fist, decided against it.

'What do you want, Superintendent is it?'

'Detective-Superintendent Dalziel. But sir will do, Corporal. All I want's some facts. You were screwing Mrs Swain, right?'

'No!'

'But you tried your hand?'

'I asked her to have a drink with me a couple of times. She said yes, but she made it clear that was as far as it went. She was that kind of chick, you know, all up front.'

'Pardon?' said Dalziel, inserting a huge little finger into his ear and wagging it around. 'Didn't quite get that.'

Mitchell ignored the provocation and said, 'All we ever did was talk, nothing more.'

'What did you talk about?'

'Guns. Shooting,' said Mitchell vaguely.

'Piss off, noddy,' said Dalziel. 'Don't tell me you didn't talk about your fascinating life and hard times.'

'Why should I?'

'Because a corny would-be stud like you would imagine that was the way to turn her on. Get her rabbiting on about her troubles and next thing you could be doing some real rabbiting under the table. Isn't that how it works? So tell me about it.'

'About my life and hard times?' said Mitchell, trying hard to eyeball Dalziel in this battle of words.

'I'd rather read a ketchup bottle,' said Dalziel. 'What did she say to you?'

'Listen, you fat slob, I've had enough of this. There's some very important people use this club . . .'