and Mary Pascoe a son, Stephen George Colin. Where'd they come from? Back nine… whoa! No need. Jump gun. August 28th. Stephen Pascoe, 13 Miter Lane to Mary Quiggins, 3 High Street. Cut it fine. A connection? Miter Lane. Common family groupings.'
'Possibly. I don't know. Miter Lane, does it still exist?'
'Name does. But blocks of flats. Sixties. Ghastly. No Pascoes I know of.'
'Any Clarks?'
'Can't recall any. But Quiggins. Unusual name. There's old Mrs Quiggins still lives with her daughter in High Street. Still at Number 3, I think. Original. Just over from church. Across cobbles. All that's left. Any use?'
'You've been most helpful,' said Pascoe. 'Just one thing, you said something about not the first, a little note…?'
'That's right. Someone else interested. Pencil. Keeping track. Look. Naughty but only copies so no harm. Other relative?'
'Most probably,' said Pascoe. 'Thanks again. I think it's stopped raining.'
'Good. Brolly down. Old parishioners touchy.'
It occurred to Pascoe that he might be wiser to change his umbrella rather than rely on the sun in his efforts to avoid giving offence. But he knew better than to come between a vicar and his God.
Outside, the cobbles were glistening blackly, like a still from an old French movie. This too was a salient, it occurred to him, this stretch of the old High Street and the church, a piece of the past bulging into the present, overlooked on all sides and rammed up hard against that impregnable defensive wall of the ALBA complex. He crossed the street carefully and looked for Number 3.
The woman who came to the door looked as if she'd fallen on hard times, or more precisely as if hard times had fallen on her, leaving her bent and misshapen under their weight. Her torso formed a right angle with her spavined legs and she supported her body weight on a thick blackthorn stick. Twisting her head to one side so that one bright, suspicious eye glared up at Pascoe from waist level, she said, 'We've had it, we've got it, we don't want it,' and prepared to close the door, evidently feeling that this rubric covered all possible contingencies.
'Mrs Quiggins?' said Pascoe quickly. 'I wonder if I might have a word.'
'Mother, who is it?' demanded another female voice from within.
'It's only the tallyman.. I've sent him packing,' screeched the angulated woman whose bent body gave Pascoe a clear view into the parlour which opened direct onto the street. From a door in direct line with the street door and which his acquaintance with the topography of such houses told him probably led into the kitchen, a second woman emerged, younger in the sense that she was fiftyish to the other woman's indeterminate antiquity and still solidly upright, but with an unmistakable familial resemblance in the way her unblinking two eyes fixed him as she said, 'Mother, come out of the way,' giving Pascoe the impression she wasn't so much clearing the air for apology as the decks for action.
'Miss Quiggins?' he said.
'Who's asking?'
It was time for a quick decision. Friendly stranger seeking information about his family, or impersonal cop making impersonal enquiries?
He would have preferred to stay with the truth but instinct told him that boyish charm was no route to the inner counsels of this unwelcoming pair.
He produced his warrant card, flashed it – too quick he hoped for them to register his name – and said, 'Police. We're trying to trace a family called Pascoe used to live in this area. The vicar said you might be able to help.'
'Did he? What the hell does he know?' said the younger woman scornfully.
'He brings me fags,' said Mrs Quiggins, looking at Pascoe with hopeful greed.
Dalziel would have produced a packet instantly. Pascoe smiled apologetically and said, 'So, can you help us, Miss Quiggins?'
'Mrs Lyall. Was Miss Quiggins a long time back.'
There was a note of nostalgia in her voice which suggested the altered state had not been altogether to her taste.
'So, Mrs Lyall, about these Pascoes, do you know anyone of that name?' said Pascoe crisply.
Mrs Lyall had moved her mother out of the way by main force, and now her bulk filled the door in a manner which suggested he was not about to be invited in.
'No one round here of that name,' she said authoritatively. 'What've they done?'
'Just helping with enquiries,' said Pascoe dislocatively.
'Well, we can't. Sorry.'
The door began to close. Then the old woman, presumably pissed off at being pulled out of the front line, cried invisibly, 'What's he saying? Pascoes? Is he asking about them bloody Pascoes?'
'Oh give it a rest, Mother!' yelled Mrs Lyall over her shoulder. And to Pascoe she said, 'She wanders. Pay no heed.'
'She seems to recognize the name,' said Pascoe.
'You reckon? Well, I live with her and I tell you she recognizes nowt. See this little bit of street here? Same as it was a hundred years back. That she recognizes, 'cos that's where she's lived all of her life. Take her fifty yards down the road to where it's all changed and she starts screaming like she's dropped off the end of the world. So if she recognizes the name it's because it belonged to someone who's long gone and likely long dead.'
'Nonetheless,' said Pascoe. The word affected the woman in much the same way as it affected Dalziel, bringing on a look of irritated resignation.
'If you've got time to waste, that's up to you. Me I've got work to do. See you don't let her out!'
So saying, she turned and retreated to the kitchen leaving Pascoe uncertain whether he'd been invited in or was expected merely to remain as guardian of the port.
He compromised by stepping over the threshold but remaining in the open doorway.
'Do you recall a family called Pascoe?' he said gently to the old lady.
'In trouble are they?' said Mrs Quiggins.
There was a note of hope in the old woman's voice which made him think that confirmation was more likely to move him forward than reassurance.
'I'm afraid so. We need to get hold of them urgently. So anything you can tell us about their whereabouts…'
She shook her head vigorously and said, 'Find that whore and you'll find him. All rotten, every last one on them.'
'That whore? Who do you mean?' he asked.
'Her! That cow! The one who was married to the other, the windy one who ran away and let his men get killed so they tied him up and shot him. All the same, it's in the blood, a bad lot.'
She was a crazy old woman, her mind as crooked as her body, Pascoe told himself. And I'm almost as crazy to be standing here, listening to her ramblings. Call it a day. Go home. Cultivate your garden. Play with your kid. Make love to your wife.
He said steadily, 'Would that be Peter you mean?'
'Aye, that's the one. Stuck-up bugger. Ideas above his station. And his mam no better than she ought to have been. And that other cow, so proud he were a sergeant, and all the time him plotting to kill the king!'
This was very lunacy! But he couldn't turn away from it now.
He said, 'And the other, the one who ran off with the… whore?'
'Uncle bloody Steve, of course! Just upped and offed wi' her. Never a word more to Auntie Mary. Never a thought for the young 'un though he turned out as bad wi' that blood in him. The army said he'd gone to America, but we knew where he was. Oh yes, we knew!'
He had to get it absolutely clear. Even malicious craziness needs to be recorded if it is to be refuted.
He said, 'And the… whore as you call her, she was the cousin's wife, Peter Pascoe's wife?'
'That's right. Alice Clark as was. She knew how to pick 'em, didn't she? Spreading her legs to one stinking deserter while t'other she's married to is getting shot by his own side!'
The daughter had emerged from the kitchen and was standing watching Pascoe with growing puzzlement.
