'So he went off somewhere the bookies didn't know him, hit a lucky streak, and worked his leavings back into enough to buy the partnership. Wieldy, you're really straining at this one.'
'You want me to drop it, sir?'
Dalziel finished his pint and looked reflectively into the bottom of his glass.
'You still think there's summat there, do you?' he said.
Taking this not to be solely a hint that another drink would be welcome, Wield said, 'Could be not much in the end, but something, yes.'
‘Then keep prodding. I've put a feeler out to see if this Sanderson had any strikes against him in the army.'
'Officially, sir?' said Wield concealing his pleasure at this retrospective evidence of the Fat Man's confidence.
'Officially's no use. Bloody army starts singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' if any civilian starts asking questions about one of its own. No, this is personal contact stuff. Anything comes up I'll let you know. Meanwhile mebbe I can have half your attention back on this bones-in-the-wood thing. Just because you've dumped a few tons of sludge on Dr Death doesn't mean you can wash your hands and forget about it.'
'No, sir. Almost forgot. Just before I left the factory, there was a message for you from the forensic lab. Seems Dr Gentry's sluices have come up with something.'
'Useful?' said Dalziel hopefully.
Wield shrugged. 'Useful' wasn't a word that Gentry used a lot. He saw his job as making discoveries. The use they were put to was in the purview of coarser life forms, like detective superintendents.
'OK, Wieldy, why don't you shoot along there…'
'Sorry, sir,' said the sergeant firmly. 'I'm off this afternoon. Should have finished more than an hour ago. Unless you're authorizing overtime…?'
'Only if you'll take washers,' said Dalziel. 'Where the hell's Peter? He's the only one can get any sense out of Death. I knew I should never have let him bunk off to Kirkton. I bet the bugger's sneaking around there, trying to prove he's descended from the Lords of the fucking Manor.'
Though not following the reference, Wield sprang to Pascoe's defence.
'The DCI 'ud not waste time, sir,' he said reprovingly. 'Whatever he's doing, you can bet your last penny it'll need done.'
'Yes, OK, Wieldy,' said the Fat Man. 'But whatever he's doing, it's not worth it if it means I've got to go and talk to yon walking corpse, Gentry!' ix
The church door was locked.
A man in search of sanctuary, or even just a bit of shelter from the rain, was out of luck in modern Kirkton.
Pascoe turned up his coat collar and leaned against the ancient woodwork. He'd managed to find two Pascoe headstones in the unkempt graveyard before the first spots had signalled that the sad old sun had lost its struggle against the creeping barrage of cloud from the west.
The first stone had been one of the many leaning up against the churchyard wall, presumably not so much signalling the last resting place of those named thereon as that they were somewhere in the vicinity. Many were rendered illegible by the impious abrasion of time, but fortunately the mason who had inscribed the Pasco (sic) stone had struck deep, and though the sharp edges of the lettering had long since been rounded by the wind and rain and moss and frost, the message from the grave remained clear.
'Here lye ye earthly relics of Walter Pasco shoemaker of this parish passed away in ye fifty-third year of his life, April 16th 1742 'His soul at last amended'.'
Soul. Last. Mended, thought Pascoe. Someone had had a sense of humour. Modern vicars got rather uptight about what they thought of as unsuitable inscriptions, but surely something like this could only have been devised by people genuinely fond of the dead man who didn't doubt that he was sharing the final joke with them.
The second memorial had still been in place, but even though a century and a half younger, its softer stone and shallower chiselling had rendered it much more difficult to read. No jokes here, just the necessary information and pious exhortation.
'Samuel Pascoe, struck down by Providence in his thirty-sixth year, April 29th 1898. BE YE READY ALSO.'
April, noted Pascoe, definitely seemed to be the cruellest month as far as the Pascoes were concerned. So much for Ellie's mockery of his refusal to let a mild Easter lull him into discarding his undervest too soon. Be ye ready also. He must remember that as a clincher next time discussion of his natural caution came up.
Of course it was possible that neither of these Pascoes was any relation. He'd need to look at something more detailed like the parish records to be sure of that.
'Help you?' said a voice.
A small man in a large suit was peering at him from over a clerical collar just visible beneath a bushy beard, and from under a golfing umbrella bearing the legend: And on the seventh day God played golf.
'If you can open this door, you can offer me shelter from the rain,' said Pascoe.
'Certainly.'
The man produced a bunch of keys, three of which were necessary before the door swung open.
'Vandals,' he explained apologetically. 'Did my other church over at Mackley so thought it best to kill two birds. Prevention better than. Jonathan Wood, by the way. Vicar of this.'
He was very young, thought Pascoe, which probably meant the beard was an attempt at instant ageing. He'd either been very ill and lost a lot of weight or he shopped at Oxfam. As for the brolly…
'Gift from my last. Curate there. Jolly lot,' said the vicar, following his gaze. 'And you?'
Mr Jingle seemed an unlikely role model, so Pascoe guessed that his abbreviated conversational style was devotional rather than literary in origin, deriving perhaps from a sense of the transience of things. Did he carry it over into his services? Dearly beloved. Gathered in the presence. Do you take. Pronounce you man.
'Pascoe,' he said. 'Peter Pascoe. I'm on an ancestor hunt. We came from round here a couple of generations back. I've found some gravestones with the name on. Latest was Samuel Pascoe, died April 1898, aged thirty-six. I was wondering if there were any records of births, marriages, deaths…'
His style was obviously too circumlocutory for the Reverend Wood who cut in, 'This way. Back to seventeenth. Before that, Civil War.'
Pascoe followed him down the aisle. It was a gloomy little church, with everything in it, font, altar, pulpit, pews, seeming disproportionately large, and the three stained-glass windows, with their central depiction of St Laurence on the gridiron flanked by two other exceedingly grisly martyrdoms, did little to uplift his soul.
The vestry was better in that there was a bright electric light and no memento mori other than a box file of church records which Wood placed before him.
'Photocopied,' he explained. 'Originals safely stowed. 'Ninety-eight, you said?'
He worked as rapidly as he spoke and in no time at all, or at least considerably less than Pascoe would have taken unaided, he found himself looking at an entry recording the death and burial of Samuel Pascoe in 1898. The entrant had been a conscientious man and there was the bonus of other information not included on the headstone. Sam Pascoe had died from injuries sustained in an accident at Grindal's Mill and he had left behind a widow, Ada, and a son, Peter. That just about clinched it, though it left unsolved the mystery of the name changes. But even as the thought passed through his mind, quick-fire Wood who had been riffling through the record sheets like the wild west wind came up with part of the answer.
'Here we are, to Saml. and Ada Pascoe, 13 Miter Lane, Kirkton, a son, Peter, July 15th 1892. Swithin's Day. Wonder, did it rain? Not the first. Little note. 7.4.11. Leap forward. Yes. Wedding. Peter Pascoe of this, to Alice Clark spinster of.'
Clark. It made sense. Alice Pascoe, out of… what? shame? fear? pride?… had reverted to her maiden name and passed it on to her daughter, Ada. Who by coincidence had married someone called Pascoe and so restored the family name. Coincidence? He recalled what Dalziel said about coincidence. 'No such bloody thing. If it happens to you, it's good detection. If it happens to someone in the frame, it's a bloody lie.' It didn't really apply here except in general terms. Don't trust coincidence.
Wood hadn't finished.
'Fast forward. 13.12.12. To Peter and Alice Pascoe a daughter, Ada. What's this. Same month. To Stephen
