certain would jump at him, and we parted on good terms. I kept an eye open but never saw anything. He died, you said? Was that soon after we met? Before he had a chance to shop around?' 'Yes. Quite soon,' said Pascoe. 'Tell me, Mr Farmer, why did you think your firm decided to turn the memoirs down? Whose decision would that be?' 'Someone like me, as I am now, I mean. Then I was simply an editor, coal-face stuff, dealing direct with writers and their writings. Now I suppose I'm a publisher. The kind of meeting I attend, and one of which I shall shortly be late for, decides on broad policies and wider strategies.'
'Yes, but weren't you surprised?' 'Not really. Sort of thing happens all the time, and especially after a change of management.' 'You mean internally? Or as a result of a takeover?' 'Both. Publishing houses are like Third World countries, constantly under threat both from foreign invasion and civil war. God, the changes I've been through.
Treeby and Bracken were a nice little independent publisher when I joined them. Then they were bought by the Glaser magazine group, which wasn't so bad. At least it was still about the printed word. Then Glaser got gobbled up by Harvey Inkermann, the investment people, and suddenly it was all about finance and returns and investment. Even then we laughed when we heard about the Centipede takeover. Lots of jokes about free condoms with every book! But we laughed too soon.
Centipede was clearly just another bargaining counter in the discussions between Stampers and Inkermann – ' 'Hold on,' said Pascoe in whose mind a diaspora of information was coming together. 'This Stamper, he'd be the Sheffield Stamper…' 'That's right. The dreaded Sir Arthur.' 'And his company amalgamated with Harvey Inkermann to form – ' ‘Inkerstamm. You must have heard the story that when they joined up, Sir Arthur wanted top billing in the new conglomerate name, but the best they could come up with was Stinker!'
'Very droll,' said Pascoe. 'And who was it that owned you when you were dealing with Superintendent Tallantire?' 'As I was trying to tell you, we'd just been subsumed by Inkerstamm and forced into a shotgun marriage with Centipede. New brooms were being flourished, and in those circumstances, much that is good always gets swept away with the dross, just to establish who's in charge. Your Mr Tallantire was, I fear, a victim.' Perhaps a victim indeed. But it was all so far-fetched. Treeby and Bracken would hardly register on Stamper's mind except as a line in a balance sheet. So, a new senior editor flexing his muscles. And an ageing bobby, after a career full of hard drinking, irregular eating and sleepless nights, has a heart attack.
Nothing odd there. 'Just one more thing,' he said, ‘I don't suppose you can recall if Mr Tallantire referred to a notebook during your lunch?' 'Oh yes indeed. Several times. I recall joking that perhaps he should forget about his memoirs and just publish the notebook, and he smiled and said it was better to have ten bob to spend than a quid to bequeath. The phrase struck me.' 'Shit', said Pascoe as he replaced the phone. He didn't need to re-scan the list he'd dug out of coroners' records, but he did anyway. When people die in public places a careful inventory is made of their possessions, very careful indeed when the dead man's a copper. Nowhere in the list of what was found on Tallantire's person or in his briefcase was there a mention of a notebook. Pascoe knew all about detectives' notebooks. Some cops recorded no more than the minimum that regulations required. Others wrote copiously. And a third group kept two notebooks, one officially recording the case in hand, the other omnivorous, devouring every fact or fancy that touched upon the case, no matter how distantly. From all accounts, Tallantire had belonged to this group. If Dalziel's judgement of the man was correct, he wouldn't have hushed up any information, no matter how delicate, that had a direct bearing on the Mickledore Hall killing. But in an affair like this, involving a royal, a cabinet minister, an American diplomat, and God knows who else, at a time when British public life was going through the greatest turmoil since the trial of Queen Caroline, what peripheral details, recorded conversations, gossip, hints, innuendoes, plain theorizing, might have found their way into the missing notebook?
Tallantire's own comment, recalled by Farmer, that publishing the notebook might bring him money to bequeath rather than spend, hinted that it contained just this kind of material. And next thing he's dead on a train. Coming back from a visit to a publisher. And the notebook has vanished. At what point does subsequence become consequence?
Later, to a rationalist thinker. Sooner, to a workshop cop. Pascoe, philosophically and professionally, tried to tread a middle way. As he did in most things, he thought with bitter self-mockery. Middle of the road's grand, unless it's the M6 on a Bank Holiday. The Gospel according to St Andrew Dalziel. Who else? And with each passing hour Pascoe could feel the traffic building up.
TEN
'I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances.' There was a time when Sheffield in a word association test would have provoked either steel or Wednesday. Now it was likely to be snooker. Despite this sad falling away, Dalziel still liked the place. It had the vibrant energy of a frontier town. For any true-born Yorkshireman, after Sheffield it was Africa. All right, there was the cordon sanitaire of the White Peak whose open acres might cushion the shock for a while, but in no time at all you were unmistakably into that nowhere called the Midlands through whose squeezed-out diphthongs the Cockney cacophony could be clearly heard. The huge Inkerstamm building had risen from the eastern wasteland of the city and was a dominating presence as you drove down the Ml, though reaching it once you left the motorway proved problematical. And actually getting inside looked likely to prove impossible. Dalziel came to a stop at a security barrier painted like a barber's pole. For a while nothing happened, then out of the cabin at the pole's end strolled a guard built on the same lines as the building ahead. He was dressed like an American highway patrolman, and from his belt dangled a truncheon carved from a bough of oak and polished till it reflected the sun which vanished behind him as he stooped to the window with the complacent smile of a man used to complete physical domination. 'Got yourself lost, luv?' he inquired.
Dalziel, who knew that the further south you got in the county, the more unisex 'luv' became, felt neither insulted nor invited, but he had to admit to a feeling which came close to intimidation. He produced his warrant card with his most fearsome scowl and said, 'I'm here to see Sir Arthur Stamper.' The guard's smile broadened. 'Just you sit there a while, Mr Dalziel,' he said, mispronouncing the name, 'and I'll see if there's anyone home.' He strolled back to his cabin, spoke into a phone, listened, wrote something down and ambled back out. 'Your lucky day,' he said. 'You're expected. Wear this at all times.' He handed over a plastic lapel badge with Dalziel's name and arrival time printed on it in indelible ink. 'I'm not a bloody parcel,' snarled Dalziel. 'Take that off and you could end up being wrapped and delivered like one,' laughed the guard as he raised the barrier with one finger. Even allowing for the counterweight, it was an impressive performance. Dalziel was checked again twice, once in the car park, once at the main entrance, and his irritation kept him from wondering how he came to be expected when no one knew he was coming. His second interlocutor said, 'You'll be met in the atrium,' as he opened the door. 'What's one of them when it's at home?' demanded Dalziel, but he received no answer and would probably have heard none as he stepped with incredulous awe into what had to be the largest urinal in the world which even provided trees for visiting dogs. It took him only a moment to grasp that the tinkling came from a series of central fountains and the figures niched round the walls were statues, but the green and white tiles remained unadjustably lavatorial and the trees, though thin and etiolated, were undoubtedly trees. Threading her way through this ectopic boscage came a woman, high heels clicking on the tesselated floor. 'Superintendent Dalziel?' she said, getting the pronunciation right. 'You're early. Come this way.' Dalziel might have asked, 'Early for what?' if a more pressing question had not been occupying his mind. Was William Stamper after all a Queen of Crime? How else to explain his appearance here in a fetching white blouse and grey pencil skirt? All answers came together. 'I'm Wendy Stamper,' said the woman. 'By the way, I thought it was a Mr Hiller who had the appointment to see my father?' 'My colleague,' said Dalziel. 'He'll be along shortly.' But not too bloody shortly, he hoped, as she led him into a lift which ascended at a knee- trembling speed that made him think nostalgically of his hot youth. He said, ‘I were talking to your brother yesterday. He didn't remember me at first sight either.' 'Either?' 'Aye. We met at Mickledore Hall. I were just a young bobby then, the one who gave you the bull's-eyes.' The lift stopped and they stepped out into a discreetly lit, plushly carpeted corridor. The woman looked at him frowningly. 'Sorry,' she said, it was a long time ago. I was only a child.' 'Your brother's memory was very good once he got going.' 'My brother makes a living out of fictions,' she replied. 'Would you like some coffee?' They had moved into what might have been an elegant drawing-room were it not for the computer terminal alongside the rosewood desk. 'No, thanks,' said Dalziel, gingerly settling on to a chair with that expensive antique look which in his experience often meant woodworm. It sighed but held. 'I could mebbe
