'A gesture?' He articulated the word as if some passing bird had crapped in his mouth.
'That's right. An act which resounds with significance far beyond its mere physical limitations. You should try one some day, superintendent.'
'At my age it happens all the time,' he said. 'So you took off. And headed straight for the labs. Just a bit of luck that, was it?'
'What else could it be?'
'Prior knowledge. Like, from being there before.'
'Being there when?'
'In the summer, maybe, when there was a break-in at Wanwood.'
'Yes, I recall… ah, I see your game, Mr Dalziel. Or may I call you Andy? If I remember right, the raid on Wanwood had many of the characteristics of the raid on Redcar. Lots of mindless vandalism and the animals merely released into the countryside. And you think they could have been done by the same people. Therefore link ANIMA with the second, you link us with the first. Right?'
'Right as a confession,' said Dalziel.
'Which it isn't. Do you have dates for both these raids?'
'Can't remember? I get like that,' said Dalziel. 'June 28th. May 19th.'
She rose and went through into the living room, returning with a leather-bound diary.
'Here we are,' she said. 'On June 28th I had dinner with my son, Piers.'
'He'll vouch for you, will he? What's his line? Urban terrorism?'
'In a manner of speaking. He's Lieutenant Colonel Pitt- Evenlode MC of the Yorkshire Fusiliers. Like his number?'
'Just tell me which bishops you were with on May 19th,' growled Dalziel.
'Sorry. No clergy. I went to a wedding at Scarborough, but it was a civil rather than a religious ceremony. I stayed the night there. In fact, I stayed up most of the night. There was a postnuptial party which went on until dawn. I think you'll find I made my presence felt sufficiently to be recalled through the alcoholic haze.'
Dalziel belched. She took it as an expression of doubt.
'Don't you believe me? Please, feel free to check.'
'I may just do that. And it's nowt to do with not believing you. It's just that I never believe my luck when folk start volunteering alibis before I've even asked for them.'
'That is perhaps because most of your customers are of a lower order of intelligence in which such pre- emptive thought would indeed be suspicious. If our acquaintance is to mature, you'll have to get used to dealing with someone whose brain is quite as good as yours. And also with someone who, unlike most of those others, is unworried by your ultimate threat of locking them away. For me to get a prison sentence would be a real publicity coup, so you must see that your threats, even if you meant to carry them through which I doubt, have little weight with me.'
She gave him a smile of great sunniness which was well worth basking in on a drab November day. He returned it gladly. She did after all have a point, and he never minded letting opponents build up a points lead. The more confident they got, the more likely they were to drop their guards and reveal a fatal weakness. Like here. Anyone who seriously doubted his willingness to carry through any threat he cared to make was wide open to a sucker punch any time he cared to throw it. But no need to rush, not with beer and crisps and pickles still on the table, and them lovely sugar loaves to leer at.
He drank and nibbled and leered, and waited to see where she would lead the conversation.
She said, 'I cannot of course provide alibis for all of my colleagues though two of them, Meg and Donna, were in fact at the Scarborough wedding also.'
'That 'ud be Jenkins and Linsey? The dykes?'
His reaction when he'd come across this surmise in George Headingley's notes had been, 'What the fuck's that got to do with anything?' But now he was happy to use the term as a possible irritant.
‘That's right,’ she said, unirritated. 'The dykes. As for the others, all I can do is vouch for their commitment to peaceful protest. Except perhaps Wendy.'
'Walker? But she acted as peacekeeper, didn't she?'
'Rather out of character, I feel. What about you? I got the impression you were already acquainted.'
'Aye. We've met.'
'And did I get the impression you were surprised to find her in such company?'
'What're we talking here?' he said. 'Class or causes?'
'Are the two really distinguishable in some people's eyes? But what I meant was, at the peaceful protest end of the activist scene.'
Dalziel laughed and said, 'You call what you got up to peaceful protest? I'd not like to see you if you went to war.'
'I'll try not to invite you then. But you've not answered my question.'
She was very insistent, he thought. That little exchange he'd overheard between her and Wendy Walker must have really got her going for some reason.
He said, 'What surprised me weren't so much Walker joining you lot as you lot taking her on board. How'd that happen?'
If he'd hoped to throw her off balance by reversing the question, he had failed. She was smiling rather slyly, an expression he found strangely exciting.
He crossed his legs the other way and waited for the answer.
'Oddly enough,' she said, 'it was through a colleague of yours in a manner of speaking, man and wife being one flesh. A mutual acquaintance introduced us. I expect you know her well. Mrs Ellie Pascoe.'
'You're not saying she's one of your lot?' he groaned.
'Not really. Sympathetic but too concerned with suffering humanity to have much energy left for the animal kingdom, so no need to be embarrassed.'
Another weakness, imagining embarrassment was one of his.
'Still, a bit of a handful, isn't she? Wendy, I mean.'
'She's certainly got her own ideas, and I'm not sure she'll stay with us forever. Too much energy and resentment, not perhaps enough self-knowledge. Like me, her marriage broke up, but she thinks it was because her husband was a scab, while the truth I suspect is that she so enjoyed the role she found in the Strike that there was no way she was ever going to go back to the life servitude of being a pitman's wife. Pitman. I had my own Pitt man too, so I can sympathize. But the difference is, I changed sides, while she lost; not only a battle but a whole bloody war. So perhaps it was no wonder she was looking for a new role where the issues were clear cut, even if it meant she has to work for a while at least alongside an old class enemy like me.'
She laughed and Dalziel grinned too. Weakness three. Believing she'd got Wendy Walker and her kind sussed. Couple of weeks on the dole could root out the centuries-deep deference of the British worker, but it took major surgery to eradicate the built-in smugness of the middle class.
He sucked the last drops out of the last can. Every plate was empty. Time for business.
He said, 'All right, missus
'Cap,' she urged.
'All right, Cap. So why did you want to see me?'
'To make a statement, of course. You were very keen for us to make statements last night.'
'Was I? Funny how you take these fancies, then go off them. Like being pregnant they tell me.'
'So you don't want a statement?' she said, disconcerted.
'Depends what you've got to state.'
'I thought we could negotiate,’ she said, recovering. 'I mean, you've got a body in the grounds of Wanwood House. I bet you've got some ideas about that already. So if it would help for me to say I saw that plonker Batty start like a guilty thing surprised when he got the news, just say the word. Or that TecSec Nazi, Patten, if it's him you fancy and you need an excuse to search his pad, maybe I could help there.'
Dalziel scratched his bubaline neck and said, 'What makes you think I'd take kindly to the idea of fitting someone up?'
'Oh, I know you wouldn't do it maliciously,' she reassured him, her candid brown eyes gazing deep into his. 'Only if you were sure it was in the best interests of justice. I mean, when I contacted the local media this morning
