Spanish, was the kind of Spanish that acknowledges winter and rough weather. It was a solid-looking two-storey building, burnt umber in colour, with balconied bedrooms and what looked like serviceable shutters, and a shallow pitched hip-roof of richly ochrous tiles. In front of it was parked a car.
Gotcha! thought Pascoe.
As he drove slowly up the long gravelled drive, it occurred to him that a good socialist should be feeling the odd pang of indignation that such a deal of space and building was squandered on two people, but all he could manage was a twinge of old-fashioned covetousness. Ellie would have done better, but then Ellie wouldn’t have liked the house anyway. Surprisingly for one so determinedly contemporary in outlook, her architectural tastes ran to ivied brick and ancient beams. She would have thought Casa Alba with its green shutters, its curved balconies, its blue tennis court and its kidney-shaped swimming pool, was discordant here and vulgar anywhere.
To Pascoe however it looked just the job. Ivied brick and ancient beams in his experience usually went hand in hand with icy draughts, uneven floors, deficient damp courses, smoking fireplaces, and an ambience more suited to rodent than human life. Happily, unless he won the lottery, this division of taste was unlikely to put much of a strain on his marriage.
The parked car, he saw as he got nearer, was a BMW 3 Series hatchback, and there was someone sitting in it, a woman he didn’t recognize. He drew up behind her, got out and stooped to her window, smiling.
She didn’t smile back. She didn’t do anything.
After a moment he tapped gently on the window.
The woman lowered it an eighth of an inch.
“What?”
“Mrs Maciver’s out, is she?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea when she’ll be getting back?”
“No.”
The window closed.
She was a well-made woman in her thirties, not overweight but with the athletically muscular look of a tennis or hockey player. She was probably quite good looking but unfriendliness didn’t do her any favours, emphasizing the strong jaw and shrinking the full lips to a tight line.
He had a wander round the house, glancing through the windows. It looked cool and comfortable inside, big chairs and sofas in soft white leather, just the job for relaxing in with a chilled San Miguel when your throat felt dry as an old don’s wit. Should have taken his chance with the blue beer at the Dog and Duck.
When he got back into his car, he was still undecided what to do.
He would like to talk to Sue-Lynn, but he didn’t want to waste any more time hanging around waiting. The day Dalziel had given him to check things out was running away fast and he was still as far as ever from having any coherent reason for keeping this investigation going. All he’d discovered was that Maciver relationships were marked by divisions, disloyalties, dislikes and distrusts. Bit like the Balkans. Stretches of fragile peace beneath which the old hostilities and hatreds gently simmered, waiting to burst out. But was there anything unusual in this? What family didn’t have its scar tissue? His certainly did.
With the Macivers, however, there was a focal point. Kay Kafka. You were either with her or against her. You either worshipped or reviled.
No question which camp the Fat Man was in. The woman seemed to have him, in Pal Junior’s phrase on the tape, deeply magicked. Ten years ago it was clear he’d taken over the case of her husband’s suicide to make sure she was protected. And somehow he’d made all the venomous accusations contained in the son’s tape go away.
But so what? Did any of this raking over of ten-year-old ashes have anything to do with today’s case? Pascoe couldn’t yet see how, hoped he never would. Perhaps the answer was in the cassette that Dalziel had given him, but he still felt reluctant to listen to it. All he wanted now, he told himself, was to be able to say, Yes, it was definitely suicide, and get back to his statistical analysis without having to follow the trail any deeper into the caverns measureless to man of Dalziel’s psyche.
But he couldn’t deny the denizens of his own caverns, particularly that insatiable curiosity about human motives and make-up which had led him into the police force in the first place. Who really was the abuser here and who the abused? Which was the more important spoor to follow-that mesmeric quality which Kay seemed to bring to bear on most men, or the obsessional element clearly present in Pal Junior’s statement?
Only one way to find out, and after all he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
He ejected Charles Trenet’s Greatest Hits from the car tape deck, took Dalziel’s cassette from his pocket, inserted it, and sat back to listen.
I was born Katherine Dickenson but I always got Kay.
I was an only child, I think. I seem to recall a baby when I was still very small, but it went away and nothing was ever said about it .
Maybe it was just some neighbour’s child my mother looked after for a while.
I never dared ask in case I found myself disappearing the same way .
My birth certificate says I was born in Milwaukee but we must have left there long before I started registering places. We seemed to move around a lot. Going where the work was, my mother told me when I was old enough to ask. But it always felt like we were leaving some place fast rather than going some place else we wanted to be.
My father was a sudden man; not bad tempered so’s you’d notice, and not violent, at least never to me. But sudden. And unchangeable. No debating. He’d make up his mind and that was it. I think this happened at work a lot. He’d do his job well enough till one day someone would ask him to do something he didn’t care to do, and he’d say no. No reason given. And if his boss said do it or leave, he’d leave. Then he’d come home and say, “Pack your bags, we’re moving on.”
I got to hate it if ever Pa showed up early. Ma and I would hear the door and whatever we were doing, we’d freeze.
Place we stayed longest was Springfield, Massachusetts. We were living in a trailer park. “Just temporary,” Pa said, “till we find something better.” That was Pa. First place he called temporary was where we got closest to being permanent.
I was fourteen when we moved to Springfield. I did well at school but always thought I’d be out of there soon as I was able and getting a job. Then one day Pa told me I was staying on and going to college. No explanation, no argument. Like I said, sudden.
That’s the way he died, too. And my mother. I was seventeen, going on eighteen, all fixed to start college in the fall, down in Hartford. That’s in Connecticut, next state south. Pa’s choice. He said there was plenty of work in Hartford and he was planning to move us there anyway. Planning! Maybe after a life of suddenness he’d decided to try forethought. Maybe that was what distracted him, starting to think ahead at last, and he stopped paying attention to what was close up, like the truck he pulled in front of, joining the interstate.
They were killed outright. When I got the news I must have gone into some kind of trance because I don’t remember much else till the funeral was over and suddenly I found I was surrounded by strangers, all concerned for my future. I heard myself telling them it was OK, I’d been going to stay with my aunt in Hartford when I went to college, so now I would just move in with her permanent. Someone asked why she hadn’t been at the funeral and I said she’d been on vacation in Europe and by the time she was contacted it was too late, but I’d spoken with her on the phone and she was expecting me in a couple of days.
What made me do this, I don’t know. Maybe it was Pa in me, not caring to be told what he should do.
They all bought it, everyone thinking someone else knew more of the details, and all of them probably glad to be rid of a problem that wasn’t really theirs.
There was a bit of money, more than I’d expected, enough to get me settled in Hartford but a long way short of enough to get me through college. I’d been going to get some work anyway, but now I really needed it.
That’s how I first got involved with the Ashur-Proffitt Corporation. A-P’s main plant wasn’t too far from the
