replaced the receiver. Give the poor devil a couple of hours’ sleep at least.
Finally he tried Cressida’s number and got the answer machine. This was frustrating. If Thin Men were to play, they had to find someone to play with.
On the other hand, perhaps this was the act of some tutelary spirit to save him from his own impetuosity. Disobeying Dalziel was not a path to peace.
He opened a file marked “Quarterly Crime Statistics” and applied himself to the honing of a report he was preparing thereon.
After half an hour or so of this stimulating activity, he closed his eyes the better to contemplate the rhetorical structure of his peroration.
He was aroused from this creative trance by a cough. Not a Dalzielesque cough, nevertheless a good, firm, I’m-here-and-why-are-you-asleep? kind of cough.
He opened his eyes and saw Novello standing in the doorway, clutching a plastic bin liner. She looked rather dusty.
He yawned and said, “Shirley, you come bearing gifts but not as a Greek, I hope.”
She had learned to ignore Pascoe’s prattery as easily as she did Dalziel’s provocations. She advanced to the desk and deposited the bin liner before him.
“I dug up this lot, sir,” she said. “One file, some bits and bobs. There’s a gun down there, but I didn’t bring it, seeing as you didn’t want to attract attention.”
“A gun? You mean…?”
“The shotgun he used. Yes.”
“Why do we still have that? We said goodbye to deodands a long time ago.”
“Suppose the family could have had it back if they’d wanted, but you wouldn’t, would you? I mean, every time you blew a rabbit’s head off you’d be thinking… well, you’d have to be a bit insensitive.”
“So it wasn’t the same gun last night. Bang goes one bit of the copycat.”
“But it still stays close,” said Novello. “I checked the details of last night’s gun. Practically identical. Had to be the other half of a matching pair. And the original permit was for two shotguns. No one seems to have picked up on that at the time.”
“Why should they? It can hardly have been relevant. But hang about-has the permit ever been renewed for the remaining gun?”
“No, sir. Presumably it just stayed in its cabinet in Moscow House.”
“No,” said Pascoe. “It’s a single-gun cabinet and, from the look of it, there hasn’t been a gun kept in there since Pal Senior took his out to do the deed. So the other gun must have been kept somewhere else. Interesting, but as I doubt if we can pursue Pal Junior for shooting himself without a permit, not important. Worth mentioning, though. Very conscientious of you. And this stuff you did think worth lugging from the store, anything there you found significant?”
“Significant? Don’t know, sir, as I’m not sure what you’re trying to signify. But there were a couple of things struck me as a bit odd.”
“Suicides usually are a bit odd, aren’t they? I mean, even in our neurotic society, it’s a slightly offbeat thing to do.”
“You reckon, sir? Seems to me, a guy gets depressed, waits till his family are out of the way, locks himself in his room, blows his head off, that’s pretty conventional stuff.”
“Really? Didn’t realize that Vatican thinking was so laid back these days.”
Novello was surprised. Heavy-footed religious trampling from the Fat Man, who numbered Joe Kerrigan, her parish priest, among his drinking mates, she’d come to expect, but Pascoe generally tiptoed through the tulips of personal belief.
She said dismissively, “I’m talking as a cop, sir, not a Catholic.”
“Which are, I trust, both permanent conditions, having in common the ability to believe several impossible things at the same time and before breakfast. So, on the one hand, a straightforward act of self-slaughter. On the other, an instance of that denial of God which is the unforgivable sin for which Judas stood condemned in the eyes of some theologians far more than for his act of betrayal. The black midnight of the soul which holds no hope of dawn. Strong stuff. Can you really keep it out of your cop-think in a case like this?”
“As easy as calling a doctor and saying a prayer if someone falls ill,” she said with spirit. “You’re mixing up depression and despair, sir. One’s a condition of the mind, the other of the soul.”
“And nowadays the Church can tell the difference?” he said smiling.
“Sometimes,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. God always can.”
There’s a conversation killer, he thought.
“OK,” he said. “So let’s get back to the oddities.”
“Maybe I’m overstating it,” she said, starting to empty the bag. “As you can see, it’s a very full file, chaotic, but with all kinds of stuff bundled in that you’d not expect to find when it’s not a criminal case. Looks like Mr Dalziel caught the call and stayed in charge.”
Pascoe looked at the confusion of papers on the desk. Definitely a Dalziel file. No pushing it off on to Uniformed here soon as suicide was confirmed.
Odd. Even odder than his appearance last night. Copycat suicide ten years on might just about explain a Head of CID’s interest. But why had the Fat Man involved himself so deeply the first time round? Curiouser and curiouser.
Novello said, as if he’d articulated his thought, “What’s really odd is… well, judge for yourself, sir. I made a sort of digest.”
She produced a sheet of paper and looked at him enquiringly.
He said, “I’ll stop you if I get bored.”
“OK,” she said. “On March 18th Mrs Maciver flew to New York with her younger stepdaughter, Helen. On March 20th Mr Maciver killed himself in Moscow House, the family home. His body was found by his son on his return from Cambridge on March 23rd. The news was passed on to the daughter, Cressida, at Brigstone School, Lincoln, and she came home the next day. Mrs Maciver, travelling in America with her stepdaughter, was harder to reach, so she didn’t arrive until three days later. Now it gets odd. Turning up at Moscow House, she found she couldn’t get in. She contacted the police. We assured her it was nothing to do with us, but we were able to ascertain the locks had been changed on the instructions of Mr
Palinurus Maciver Junior. We needed a contact address for Mrs Maciver and the one she gave eventually was c/o Mr Tony Kafka, Cothersley Hall, Cothersley. I expect you know she later married Kafka, who’s CEO of Ash-Mac’s-that’s Ashur-Proffitt-Maciver’s, which used to be the Maciver family firm till the Americans took it over in the eighties. Pal Senior kept a seat on the Board but seems it was just for show. There was speculation at the inquest about how much losing the top job could have contributed to his depression.”
“Othello’s occupation’s gone,” said Pascoe. “And eventually the Widow Maciver becomes Mrs Kafka. Wonder how long it took?”
“Nothing in this file about it, sir, but I checked. Eighteen months.”
Pascoe looked at her speculatively and asked, “Now why should you have checked that, Shirley?”
“Just being thorough, sir,” she said.
Long years of listening to spinners, trimmers, quibblers, equivocators and every other kind of truth-mangler had fine-tuned Pascoe’s ear, and he thought he detected something here. A hesitation? A reservation? Something.
He left it for now and asked, “And the inquest-anything interesting there?”
“Interesting?”
“Emotional outbursts. Wild accusations, that sort of thing. They didn’t come across as a very together family last night and this odd business of the young Maciver changing the locks suggests some antagonism.”
“No, sir,” said Novello. “Seems to have gone off very smoothly. Verdict of suicide. End of story. I checked out the evidence exhibits while I was at it. As well as the shotgun, there was the book they found on the desk. Family can’t have wanted that back either. Don’t blame ’em. Even cleaned up and dried off for ten years, it’s not something you want lying around your coffee table.”
From the bin liner she took a plastic evidence bag. Pascoe could see what she meant. The book it contained was open, presumably as it had been found on the desktop all those years ago. He’d looked at the volume on the
