'And you yourself, Percy, when you finally made direct contact, how did he strike you? What did he say?' Across Pascoe's mind flickered a black and white image of Miles Malleson in Kind Hearts and Coronets asking the condemned duke for permission to read the ode he had composed to mark the occasion. Difficult to top that, but Percy came close. 'He said goodbye to everyone. Then he cupped his ear like he was listening and said, 'Hush!' We all hushed, and listened. Nothing.
Then he laughed and said, 'Sorry, I thought I heard a galloping horse.
Cheer up, Nugent -' the governor was looking as upset as ever I've seen him – 'it looks as if it's going to be a far, far better thing after all. Thank you, Mr Pollock. At your convenience.' And that was it, gentlemen. Forty-five seconds later. Sir Ralph was dead.' 'You're very precise,' said Pascoe. 'Yes, sir. This was by way of being a record. Usually I reckon on between fifty and eighty from the time I take them out of the cell, depending on how they move. But he stepped out so sprightly it was all done in forty-five. And he was my last, my very last, so it'll stand forever, I suppose.' There was a note of melancholy nostalgia in his voice that revolted Pascoe but before he could speak, Dalziel said, 'You had your contacts at the women's jail at Beddington too, I expect, Percy.' 'Oh yes. It's a long time since I had to take off a lady, a long, long time. But I had my contacts.'
'Anyone who would have been working there when Kohler topped the wardress?' Pollock thought a moment, then said, 'There's Mrs Friedman.
She retired the year after, I think. She was there.' 'And where is she now?' 'She lives locally, I believe. Would you like me to check, Mr Dalziel?' 'I'd appreciate it, Percy. Now, will you have another drink?' 'No, thank you,' he said, standing up. 'Time I was home to my supper. Goodbye, Mr Pascoe. A pleasure to meet you.' He offered his hand. Presumably his initial hesitation had been conditioned by the reluctance of some people to shake the hand that had slipped the noose over so many necks. Pascoe felt this reluctance more now than he had on first encounter, and to cover his slowness in responding, he said lightly, 'The bet Mickledore wanted placed, what happened?' 'Oh, it was put on. In fact, when word got around, so many officers not to mention the inmates and their families, backed the horse that its odds shortened from twenties to fives.' 'Oh aye?' said Dalziel. 'And did it win?' Percy Pollock smiled sadly. 'I'm afraid not. It fell at the last fence and broke its neck.' They sat in silence for a while after Pollock had left, Dalziel because he was eating a steak and kidney pie with double chips, Pascoe because he felt deeply depressed. 'Have a chip if you want,' said Dalziel. 'Not up to Black Bull standards, but they'll do.' 'No, thanks. Like I said, I'm not hungry.' 'You'll waste away to nowt. Man who doesn't take care of his belly won't take care of much else.' Pascoe felt this as a reproof and said, 'I do my job, full or empty.' 'Oh aye? Then do it. What do you make of old Percy?'
'Not a lot. If anything, I suppose he came down on the side of Mickledore being innocent.' 'What makes you say that?' asked Dalziel, studying a piece of kidney with the distrust of a police pathologist.
'That business about there being no chance of reprieve for him. That sounds like a fit-up.' 'Rumour. Ancient rumour at that,' said Dalziel, deciding to risk the kidney. 'What about Mickledore's demeanour? He acted as if he expected to be reprieved.' 'So what? He doesn't sound the type to collapse and kick his legs in the air. Stiff upper something, it's what they learn 'em at these public schools.' But if you take what he said at the end. 'Looks like it's going to be a far, far better thing after all.' Now the implication of that…' 'Yes, yes, I get the implication,' said Dalziel impatiently. 'I'm not totally ignorant. I go to the pictures too. And I'll tell you this for nowt, I can't see Mad Mick as Carter the martyr.' 'Carton,' said Pascoe. 'Who incidentally didn't look very likely material for Carter the martyr either. But isn't the point that Mickledore didn't want to be a martyr anyway? His kind of code says you do everything you can to cover up for a chum in trouble, no matter what he's done. Look at the way Lord Lucan's mates closed ranks when he vanished. But I doubt if any of them would have been willing to hang for him.' 'That's the choice they'd have got from me if I'd been running the case,' said Dalziel. 'So you're saying that when push came to shove, Mick said, sod this for a lark, and sent for Wally to tell him the truth, viz., that Westropp dunnit after all? So what about Westropp, then? This famous Lucan code says it's OK if you're the guilty party to let your best mate swing for you?' 'There may have been other considerations.
He more or less vanished, didn't he? Perhaps the funny buggers locked him up in a dungeon at Windsor till it was all over so he couldn't drag the family name through the mud. Perhaps he simply bottled out.
Perhaps he reckoned that if his best mate had been stuffing his wife, then hanging was what he deserved. Or perhaps he didn't do it after all, but Mickledore got the wrong end of the stick and thought he did, which would mean that Westropp could have believed Mickledore really was guilty.' Dalziel shook his head in admiration. He said, 'If ever Dan Trimble catches me banging his missus, I want you along to offer ten good reasons why he shouldn't believe his eyes. All right, you've got Mickledore sorted. He thinks he's doing a favour for a mate, then finds too late he's been thoroughly stitched up. Me, I don't believe a word of it, but just for the sake of argument, how does little Miss Kohler fit in? I mean, isn't she even less likely to let her lover hang for something he didn't do than something he did?' Pascoe thought: If Kohler got driven half mad by the death of Emily, then pushed the whole way by Tallantire browbeating a confession out of her, she doesn't need a motive. He said, 'You'll need to ask her that yourself. But I suspect it'll take more than a dead granny or a dental appointment to get you where she is.' 'We'll see,' said Dalziel. 'Meanwhile here's what we do tomorrow. ..'
'I'm not doing any more interviews,' said Pascoe firmly.
'Nay, I'd not send a pup to snap at Sir Arthur Stamper, that's work for a full grown hound,' said Dalziel ungraciously. 'You just ring that publisher fellow, see what you can find about Wally's memoirs. You can manage that, can you? You've got a lovely telephone voice.'
He returned his attention to his plate and disinterred another sliver of the suspect kidney. Holding it up for inspection on the end of his fork, he said, 'You didn't notice a barber's next door, did you?'
NINE
'Will you tell me who denounced him?' 'It is against the rule.' Pascoe had never phoned a publisher before and in his inexperience first dialled the number at nine-fifteen A.M. At his third attempt, at nine-forty, he made contact with a woman whose voice vibrated with a mix of suspicion and disorientation such as he hadn't heard since his last dawn-knock raid. His request to be put through to Paul Farmer perked her up, perhaps because its very naivety revealed she was in touch with a lesser breed outside the metropolitan time zone. He was invited to try again at ten-thirty. At ten twenty-nine he rang once more. This time he was put through to Mr Farmer's secretary who asked him if he were a writer in a voice which suggested she was about to blow a whistle down the phone if he said yes. He summoned up his best Dalzielesque orotundity and gave her the full majesty of his rank. She seemed unimpressed but a moment later a male voice, light and pleasant, said, 'Farmer here. How can I help you, Mr Pascoe?'
Pascoe explained, adding that he realized it was all a long time ago.
'That's all right,' said Farmer, laughing. 'My long-term memory's a lot better than my short-term these days. I find I can't remember who won the Booker two days after the ceremony.' ‘I thought that was a condition of entry,' said Pascoe. ‘But you do recollect Superintendent Tallantire?' ‘I do indeed. Interesting chap. Lots of good stories. I couldn't see the great reading public being much interested in his life and hard times in urban Yorkshire, but you do seem to have rather a good class of crime up there and I could see great potential in a memoir of the big cases he'd been mixed up in, with the strictly autobiographical stuff kept down to a minimum.' 'So you had lunch? How did you feel after you'd actually talked to him?' 'I felt I was right.
There was a real money-spinner here, pre-publication extracts in one of the popular Sundays, a bit of TV exposure on the chat shows, I think we could have turned your Mr Tallantire into a mini-star. That's what made it all the more annoying, not to mention embarrassing.' That he died, you mean?' said Pascoe, thinking this was a touch insensitive. 'What? Don't be silly. That I had to turn him down.' 'You were going to reject his idea? Yet you still took him out for lunch?'
'That was the trouble. I'd brought him up at our last editorial conference and got the go-ahead to set up a meeting. Then on the morning of the day we were having lunch, word came from above, police memoirs were no longer our cup of tea. Too late to cancel, so I had to go through with it, knowing the poor chap was to be elbowed.' 'Did you tell him?' ‘I didn't intend to. Chicken-heartedly I thought I'd just play along, then write to him in a few days saying, sorry, on mature consideration et cetera. But in the end after I'd listened to him for a bit, I found I was getting so keen, I just had to come clean. At least I felt able to suggest another couple of houses I was pretty
