Pascoe regarded him with some irritation in which there was an element of pity. He didn't really believe that the elder Batty had been party to the raid on Fraser Greenleaf, guessed that the news that his own son was an instigator of theft and an accessory to murder would destroy him.
'Why should you imagine I want to see your father-in- law?' he asked scornfully.
The question started rhetorical, but somewhere along the line it became real.
Why should Batty think he wanted to confront Gertie? Or rather, why was it he still got the feeling, especially from the senior Battys, that the bottom line in all this was still unread?
Arthur's statement. That feeling he had of something still requiring explication. The bottom line literally, or rather, the bottom lines.
'Your grandfather mentions contributions to the maintenance of the sergeant's family,' he said to Mrs Batty. 'He never made any, I'm sure of that.'
'He couldn't find them, no one could,' she replied.
Young Colin Pascoe did, thought Pascoe. Only perhaps he looked harder.
He said, 'But why should he feel the need even to try? He'd seen his son's efforts at help tossed back in his face.'
She shrugged as if not trusting herself to speak.
Thomas Batty said, 'It's time, I think, to let sleeping dogs lie. You're a reasonable man, Mr Pascoe, and I'm sure you can see that…’
'What sleeping dog?' said Pascoe. 'I thought we'd woken them all up. What sleeping dog?'
He picked up the handwritten statement again, reread the final paragraph. Responsibility in law… allegations made concerning my own conduct… why should old Arthur have put in these apparently utterly redundant disclaimers?
What responsibility in law could have been alleged against him… ?
He looked at Thomas Batty's blank unrevealing face, turned from it to Janet's pale stretched-out features out of which stared a pair of intent and very blue eyes, turned finally to David and met the same blue eyes in that narrow intelligent face whose features had always created in him an uncomfortable sense of near-recognition.
He thought, not this! He recalled that other Peter Pascoe's piece of self-improving autobiography which recounted how his mother had been in service with the Grindals up to the time she left to get married and give birth to her son, recalled the dreadful Quiggins woman's screamed accusations that she'd been no better than she ought to have been…
Not this!
He said, 'I'm going to see him.'
'What? No!' protested Thomas.
'Mrs Batty,' said Pascoe. 'Feel free to go and prepare him as best you can, but I'm going up whatever any of you say. Don't you think I'm entitled?'
She didn't argue but rose at once and left the room.
David Batty laughed out loud and said, 'Thought you'd get there in the end, Peter. Kind of mind that doesn't miss a trick. Takes a one to know a one!'
Pascoe left the room, stepping round Thomas who didn't move.
He ran lightly up the stairs, saw an open door and made for it.
In a large airy bedroom giving a view out across the high boundary wall towards the church and old village of Kirkton, he saw Janet Batty sitting on the edge of a bed with her arm around the shoulders of an old man, propped up by pillows. His face was pared down almost to the skull, but a shock of soft white hair still fell over his brow and the eyes which fixed on Pascoe were bright blue and alert.
Then they began to fill with tears just as his daughter's had filled a little while earlier.
'Peter,' he said brokenly. 'It's you… after all this time… I didn't know… not then… I swear…'
He's not seeing me, thought Pascoe. He's seeing that other Peter who died for him.
'Didn't know what?' he asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear it from this ghost incarnate who could be himself a half-century on.
That we are brothers,' said Bertie Grindal.
Brothers. Had the sergeant known? Had his mother said something to him on that visit to her deathbed in Cromer? Was this the reason that Arthur had so long delayed passing on the information about her illness? He would need to read the journals again and again to find answers to these questions. And perhaps they weren't there. And perhaps he didn't want to know them.
Janet Batty was speaking.
'He had to make a choice. Grandfather had to make a choice.'
Between the legitimate heir and the left-wing bastard?
'No choice,' said Pascoe, his eyes riveted on the old man in the bed.
'I've just been working it out,' said David's voice from behind him. 'Funny really, but because you've got an extra generation in, I must be something like your half-uncle, once removed. Welcome to the family!'
Pascoe now let his gaze leave the old man and his pale-faced daughter, and turned slowly to take in David Batty with his father behind him on the landing.
He recalled his admission to Ellie… I used to fantasize about discovering I was a changeling and I really had this completely different family I could make a fresh start with… And here it was, his new family to set alongside the old one which had proved so singularly unsuccessful. No point in hanging around. Time to make that fresh start…
A kind of wild laughter was welling up inside him at the black comedy of it all, and its repression made his shoulders shake.
'No need to take on,' said David. 'I won't insist on my right to be called uncle.'
'Kind of you,' said Peter Pascoe. 'But a man should cling to his rights. Why don't I tell you a few of yours?'
And without a backward glance at the old man in the bed, he took the puzzled David Batty by the arm and urged him down the stairs. v
Andy Dalziel parked his car in the same spot opposite Cap Marvell's flat that he'd used four nights earlier.
It was almost the same time too and as he sat, undecided on his next move, he saw her again, only this time she was coming out of the apartment block and heading round to the garages.
Like a man who has screwed up his courage for a visit to the dentist's then finds the surgery closed, Dalziel didn't know whether he felt glad or disappointed.
Morning would be better, he decided. He'd had a long hard day though not so long as Des Patten, Captain Sanderson and Dr Batty. He'd found the captain at the doctor's house, wearing nothing but a kimono and a satisfied smile both of which had been removed prior to his departure for the station. Later Pascoe had turned up with Batty and that had been the turning point. The two military men knew the value of keeping their mouths shut till they found a way to communicate and produce a consistent story. But Batty, once the string of deaths had been laid before him, had been almost overenthusiastic in his efforts to put clear blue water between himself and an accessory-to-murder charge. Yes, he'd paid Sanderson to steal the Fraser Greenleaf research papers; yes, the second part of the deal had been for TecSec to get the Wanwood House contract after Patten had staged a raid there too, serving the double purpose of demonstrating the need to upgrade security and at the same time refocusing attention on the non-existent animal rights extremists who'd killed the guard at Redcar. But no, he hadn't at any time had any knowledge, either prior or subsequent, of any of the other deaths now laid at TecSec's door, and he'd honestly believed the guard's death had been completely accidental.
Load of bollocks, proclaimed Dalziel. But the doctor's small volume of evidence was going to be invaluable in putting the other two away. So, cause for celebration. But Wield had long since headed off home, and as for Pascoe, the lad had been in a funny mood, quite unable to join in the general euphoria that usually attended the fingering of collars. In fact, if he were honest, Dalziel himself had to admit he'd needed to work on it. Always at the back of his mind was the sense of unfinished business with Cap Marvell.
But it would have to stay unfinished tonight. God knows where she was heading now at this hour, and he didn't want to risk finding out! Pointless trying to apologize for one misunderstanding with another already on the boil.
