Bones and Silence

'Tell me, Andy,' said the Chief Constable. 'Is there any reason I should keep on being showered with shit because I won't close the Swain case?'

'Once I get hold of Waterson . . .'

'Waterson! You're no nearer finding him, are you? And even if you do and he sticks to his statement, he's going to be no use whatsoever to you, is he? Well, is he!'

The best answer Dalziel could manage was a neutral grunt. He'd played the drug connection for all it was worth to keep the Swain case open, suggesting that Swain could have used it to blackmail Waterson into a conspiracy. No one was convinced. Even Swain's laughter when Dalziel put the thesis to him had rung genuine and Thackeray had made yet another sonorous complaint of harassment to the Chief Constable.

'So we're where we were at the beginning,' said Trimble heavily. 'All right, Andy, I'll spell it out. I'm informing the coroner that the Swain inquest can be reopened. I do not doubt what the verdict will be. And that will be the end of it, Andy. No more harassment of Mr Swain. Do you understand me? And in the meantime you will do and say nothing which Eden Thackeray can interpret as even hinting a suspicion that Philip Swain might have been responsible for his wife's death.'

Dalziel said, 'I'm not sure what -' but Trimble cut right across him.

'Andy, you'd better hear this and hear it well. In matters recreational, you may choose to ignore my advice and go ahead and make a fool of yourself. I don't like it, but I'm not going to match your foolishness by making a public spectacle of myself in openly trying to forbid you.'

He paused to draw in breath. For a small man he was pretty impressive, admitted Dalziel.

He resumed. 'But I'm not giving you advice here. As your superior I'm giving you a direct order. And I assure you, failure to obey my direct orders will result in instant suspension. Is that understood?'

'Yes, sir. Suspension, sir. By what, sir?'

Trimble smiled sadly.

'By the book, Andy. Which, though you may not believe it, can be a lot more painful than by the balls. That will be all for now.'

So. Dismissed from the presence without a sniff of the Caledonian nectar.

'Right, sir. Thank you,' said Dalziel, rising. 'Going to the ball, sir?'

It was the night of the Mayor's Hospice Appeal Ball.

'Indeed I am,' said Trimble. 'A man in my position can hardly afford to miss what I gather is the county's premier social occasion. And you?'

'Oh aye. They let the lower orders in too,' said Dalziel. 'I'll save you a dance mebbe.'

'How kind,' murmured Trimble. 'I'm sure that you'll do a lovely Dashing White Sergeant. Especially if you don't take care.'

It was the ultimate degradation. Yorked by a Cornishman! No point in even bothering to look at the umpire. Slowly, sadly, Dalziel walked away.

CHAPTER TEN

Trimble was right. Despite the competing claims of the Liberal Club's Barn dance, the Rugby Club's Barbecue, and the Federation of Working Men's Clubs' Festival of Brass, the Mayor's Hospice Appeal Ball was Mid- Yorkshire's most scintillating social occasion.

Nobody with pretensions to rank, power, charitable works, social concern or high fashion could afford to be absent.

True, to underline its democratic appeal, the tickets stated Dress Optional, and Peter Pascoe, unable to resist his wife's anti-elitist arguments, had come along in his charcoal grey flannel suit, only to be dazzled on all sides by frothy shirt fronts, bow ties like butterflies, and cummerbunds of every colour in the TV test-card. Nor were his drab feathers smoothed by his awareness that Ellie's egalitarian principles had not prevented her from investing in an off-the-shoulder and just-on-the-bosom blue silk gown in a style which Princess Di had made fashionable only a week before.

But even Ellie was upstaged by Dalziel's entrance. Immaculate in a d.j. of the latest cut, with heliographic shoes, and diamond studs glinting like ice in his snow-white shirt, he was a fitting foil for his companion. Though in truth she needed no foil. It was Chung, the Occident in her birth suppressed and the Orient given full sway. She wore a cheong-sam in green and yellow silk around which a bejewelled dragon caressed her sinuous body. The split up the side started at her ankle and seemed as if it went on for ever. At every stride, strong men gasped, and strong women ground their teeth in blase smiles.

'Down, boy,' Ellie murmured in Pascoe's ear.

He grinned, divided in admiration between Chung's beauty and Dalziel's aplomb as he blew a kiss to the Lady Mayor and called out cheerfully, 'What fettle, Joe?' to the Lord Bishop, before settling himself and his partner at a table shared with Trimble and Eden Thackeray among others.

'Now that's what I call an odd couple,' said one of Ellie's politico-academic chums who made up the eight-place table, Ellie having pre-conditioned an evening free from constabulary conversation. 'Beauty and the Beast aren't in it!'

'Not odd at all,' corrected someone else. 'After all, where there's pork, you generally find crackling.'

There was a noise like the thud of a toe against a shin and the speaker let out a cry of pain. The age of diplomacy was not dead, thought Pascoe. Then he caught Ellie's eye and saw her lid droop in a conspiratorial wink and knew that the kick had after all been punitive not cautionary. He smiled back but he could fight his own battles. Turning to the kicked man whose Ph.D. thesis on medieval crop rotation he knew had just been referred for the second time, he said, 'Those gardening notes you've been working on, got anyone interested yet?'

Academics are naturally cannibalistic and this taste of their own blood put the rest of the table in the best of humours and the evening thereafter went with a bang. Everything was as it should be on such a splendid public occasion. The drink prices were exorbitant, the band played like a committee, and the buffet was as glorious to the sight as it was tasteless to the palate.

Midway through the evening, there was a charity auction of items donated by various 'personalities'. Bidding