surprising to find that his great sexual energy obeyed the same rules. He took his pleasure wherever he was. This did not mean he was incapable of true loyalty and affection, however. A woman might have to turn a blind eye for the best part of their life together, but a woman who was willing to do this stood a chance of making a successful long-term relationship with Mickledore. So Cissy assured herself and it was on this slender thread that she hung most of her hopes of lasting happiness. But that was for the future. For the present she was content to snatch what joy she could and never hint of the dreams which filled her sleeping of a life in which all her lover's smiles were for her alone and where no rival survived to threaten her joyous peace. She dreamt now, and as so often, the dream went beneath its own perfection into the imperfections on which it was based and she saw again the staring eyes, the streaming blood… She cried out and burst into consciousness with a force that sat her upright. But it was all wrong. She wasn't in the Westropps' Kensington apartment with Pip and Emily in the tiny nursery next door. And she wasn't in the narrow bed in the prison cell which had been her home for so many, many years … She looked with terror at the stranger by her side, flinching from the touch of his fingers on her arm. He said, 'Cissy, you OK?
Sorry to wake you, but we're beginning our descent. You'll need to fasten your belt.' She turned her head away from him, looked out of the window. Far below like an effect in a child's pop-up book, she saw a prickle of skyscrapers. 'There it is, Ciss,' said Jay Waggs. 'The land of the brave, the home of the free.' 'I hope they'll let me in,' said Cissy Kohler.
SEVEN
‘I am anxious to have your opinion… on a very curious case…' At six that evening with still no sign of Dalziel, Pascoe went home. As soon as he got into the house, he picked up the phone and dialled his mother-in-law's number. Ellie answered almost immediately. 'How's it going?' he asked. 'I found her standing in the kitchen this morning looking into the recess where the central heating boiler is. She looked completely confused.' 'So she'd heard the boiler make a funny noise. They all do!' 'No! She was close to being terrified, Peter. Then I remembered. When I was a kid, before they got the old kitchen extended, that used to be the larder. She had a milk jug in her hand. She'd gone to the larder to get a bottle of milk.' 'Conditioning's hard to alter. I still switch the wipers on every time I want to turn right, and I've had this car for three years.' 'You're as helpful as the doctor,' snapped Ellie. 'You've spoken to her doctor?' 'This afternoon. Complete waste of time. Old Doc Myers retired soon after they put Dad in the Home. Now there's this thing that looks like a schoolgirl and talks like she's addressing a class of infants.' 'Oh dear,' said Pascoe. 'And what did she say?' 'She said that I must expect a certain degree of vagueness in the old, adding in passing that Mum must have left it pretty late to have me, as if any problem with her health was likely to be my fault. She told me Mum was being treated for various specific physical conditions none of which were immediately life-threatening, but that at present, as my experience with Dad should have taught me, senile dementia was untreatable. In other words, tough.' 'Perhaps it's just that she'd prefer to make her own diagnosis,' suggested Pascoe. 'You were there? Funny, I didn't notice.' It was time to move on. ‘Is Rosie there?' he asked. 'I'll get her.' It was a joy to hear his daughter's voice say, 'Hello, Daddy,' and a relief to detect nothing but delight at the novelty of staying in her grandmother's house. When Ellie came back on, he said, 'Sounds as if she's enjoying herself.' 'That's what grannies are for. How are you?' 'Oh, I'm fine. Andy's been away today, so I wasn't force-fed any meat pies. I'm just about to treat myself to one of your vegetable casseroles from the freezer.' 'What a good boy you are,' said Ellie. 'Where's our fat friend at, then?' Pascoe hesitated. He doubted if Ellie would approve of Dalziel's quest to prove that Wally Tallantire was in the right, and he was certain she would think him crazy both personally and professionally for his complicity. The doorbell rang. 'Hang on,' he said. 'Someone's at the door.' 'No, I'll ring off,' said Ellie. 'I'd better get Rosie to bed.
We'll talk tomorrow, OK?' 'Fine. Good night, then.' He put the phone down. It was like two fighters relieved to accept a draw. Except that the guilt he was already feeling at his relief left him well behind on points. The bell was ringing again, a long impatient peal, and he knew before he opened the door whose great finger was trying to drill the bellpush through the jamb. 'Evening,' said Dalziel. He was carrying an old blue suitcase and looked like the kind of brush salesman even a medieval Stylite might have found it hard to deny. 'I rang the zoo and they said you'd escaped early.' 'Early?' Pascoe heard himself almost screaming. 'And where the hell have you been all day?' 'Christ, Peter, you remind me what it was like being married. You need a drink.' They were in the lounge now with Dalziel taking a bottle of Scotch out of the sideboard and pouring two sturdy stoupfuls. 'That's better,' he said as he emptied one of the glasses. 'You need to take out a small mortgage for a glass this size down among the Cockneys. How'd it go this morning?' Recriminations were wasted breath. Pascoe described his morning, while Dalziel listened intently, at the same time absent-mindedly drinking the second Scotch. 'Well, well,' he said when Pascoe finished. 'The more I hear of Nanny Marsh, the more I like her.
Screwed by the lord, sacked by the lady, does she end up in a workhouse for fallen women? No way! She parks her fanny in a luxury flat, rent free, in Harrogate! How'd she strike you, lad?' 'Like a little old retired nanny most of the time, except that now and then I got a sense of someone else peeping out and having a not very friendly laugh at me. There's something not quite right in all this…'
'You're never satisfied, are you? Have another whisky.' 'I've not had one yet,' said Pascoe. 'Perhaps I should pour while you tell me about your day?' He decanted two decent measures while Dalziel started to describe his adventures in darkest Essex. 'So what do you make of that, sunshine?' he asked when he'd done. 'This fellow in the car was security, you say?' asked Pascoe. 'He had one of them identification cards that tell you nowt,' agreed Dalziel. 'Then this means this is even more serious than we thought!' 'Not than I thought,' said Dalziel grimly. 'Way I see it is, Waggs dug up summat that gave him the leverage to get Kohler out…' 'Something that provoked her to want to get out,' interjected Pascoe. 'She'd shown precious little enthusiasm before.' 'Aye, you're right. So a deal's done, part of which is that she stays put here, so they set a watch on her, only she does a runner.. 'There has to be a time factor,' said Pascoe. 'They couldn't be planning to sit on her forever.' 'Right again,' said Dalziel with almost paternal pride. ‘Go on.' 'Go on where? I need ten times more information to make the next jump. Look, I can offer you hypotheses which put Tallantire in the clear and hypotheses which paint him black as a miner's snot-rag, and I can probably do you most points in between. OK, there's definitely something odd going on, but it may not be the kind of oddness you're looking for. Have you thought of that?' Dalziel poured more whisky. 'Be a good little hostess,' he said, 'and fetch my case in from the hall.' Pascoe had been trying to forget about the case. 'What's in it?' he asked uneasily. Dalziel laughed and said, 'You're scared mebbe I've come to spend the night!
Calm down, your reputation's safe. It's Wally's papers. I stowed them in the left luggage and I've just picked them up now when I came off my train.' Not bothering to hide his relief, Pascoe got the case.
Dalziel opened it and arranged its contents in three untidy piles on the floor. 'I did a quick sort out before I stashed it,' he said.
Wally was a bugger for order on the job, but when it came to his own stuff, he kept things in a right tip.' 'Reminds me of someone,' murmured Pascoe. 'Aye, there's some mucky buggers about,' agreed Dalziel. 'This lot here's letters, bills, that kind of stuff. Nowt there for us. This pile's some stuff he was putting together on his old cases. He were thinking of writing his memoirs when he retired.
Well, he never made it.' 'What happened exactly?' asked Pascoe. 'The usual,' said Dalziel. 'Heart attack. He carried far too much weight, I were always on at him about it. He'd been down to London, died in the train back. He were in a carriage by himself and went on to Newcastle before anyone noticed. I thought of him today as I travelled back.'
Amusement at the idea of Dalziel warning anyone about the dangers of obesity mingled with sympathy at the note of genuine regret. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'No need to be,' said Dalziel briskly. 'Well, not much. Wally would have hated retirement. Writing his memoirs was just his way of trying to spin things out a bit longer, I reckon. I doubt it would have come to owt.' 'Anything much on the Mickledore case?'
'Aye, some interesting stuff. One thing I don't have, but, is his notebook. He was a great scribbler on the job, was Wally. Used to say his own notebook was the only bedside reading he ever wanted. Man who noted everything could solve everything. I hope Adolf and his vultures didn't get their claws on it, else it'll be long gone. But this is what Adolf would give his left bollock to get hold of.' He handed Pascoe a handwritten sheet. I am Cecily Kohler from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. For the past two and a half years I have been working as nanny to the Westropp family. On the night of August 3, 1963. I went into the gunroom at Mickledore Hall where Mrs Pam Westropp was
