brought up out of the UK. Or what if I remarried and my new husband didn’t care for the child? With no blood relationship between us, wouldn’t it be easy for me simply to dump her? Tony listened to my troubles and said, ‘Let’s get married and officially adopt the kid.’ That, plus undertakings to have her educated wholly in the UK no matter what happened to Tony in his job, cut the ground from under Pal’s feet. But I guess you know most of this already, Mr Pascoe.”
Her smile was ironic.
He said, “Detective work is all about hearing the same things again and again and looking for new angles, or discrepancies, Mrs Kafka.”
“You spotted any yet?”
“Nothing that can’t be explained by forgetfulness, natural bias, or inadvertence. But things got better, you say. Why was that?”
“Time, maturity, perspective. A recognition that the situation as it was now wasn’t going to change.”
“The situation being that you had succeeded in bringing Helen up in Mid-Yorkshire, she was now legally of age, not to mention married and pregnant. And he had accepted this, I understand. There’d been a rapprochement as evidenced by his playing squash with his brother-in-law.”
“So it would appear.”
“Which makes it a strange time to decide to commit suicide. If he’d hung on another day, he would have been an uncle. As it was, he was sounding a new note of family tragedy at the very time when the Macivers should have been popping corks to celebrate the start of the next generation.”
“Pal was never a man to let the needs or wishes of others take priority over his own.”
“You mean he might have chosen this time deliberately to upstage his own sister?” said Pascoe incredulously.
“I don’t say that. I just mean that all potential suicides must develop some form of tunnel vision; with Pal the tunnel was always there.”
His mobile rang. Mouthing an apology, he took it out and read the number.
Dalziel.
“Excuse me,” he said.
He stepped out into the hall and took the call.
“Pascoe.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at Cothersley,” he said. Then, annoyed at his own circumspection he added, “Cothersley Hall.”
“Oh aye. Best get back here.”
“What’s up, sir? Developments?”
“You could say. Meeting, my room, thirty minutes. And that’s an order.”
He went back into the room and said, “Thank you for your time, Mrs Kafka.”
“Does that mean we’re done? Or have you merely been interrupted?”
“Who knows?” he said. “Oh, by the way. Your husband, your first husband I mean, he owned two shotguns, I believe?”
“I seem to recall so.”
“The one he used is still in police hands. The one your stepson used seems to be the other half of the pair. Any idea where it’s been for the last ten years?”
“I don’t know… in Moscow House I presume.”
“Perhaps. Certainly not in the gun case in the study, which only has room for one gun and shows no sign of having had a weapon in it for some considerable time.”
“Then I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
Can’t you? he wondered. I think perhaps you can.
But he said nothing, took his leave and went out to his car.
As he drove away he glanced towards the window.
And was rather disappointed this time to find no one watching him.
19 CONFESSIONAL
There had been a time in Pascoe’s career in Mid-Yorkshire when he would as soon have thought of wearing a dress to the Police Ball as of disobeying a Dalziel order. But those days were long past, though on the whole being caught doing the former was likely to be less painful than being caught doing the latter. So it was not without qualms that he diverted to the police lab on his way back.
Here he handed over an evidence bag with a scribbled note:
You’ll find my prints on this and one other set with, hopefully, a palm print. Check ’em out against the prints on the study door at Moscow House.
“How’s it going?” he asked the technician he spoke to.
“Very interesting. Why don’t you come up and have a word with Dr Gentry?”
Dr Gentry was the head of the lab, a man famous for many things, among which wasn’t an inclination to brevity.
“No time. Mr Dalziel’s waiting for me. And you might like to tell Gentry he’s also waiting for the results.”
There was never any harm in threatening the workforce with the bogeyman.
Not of course that it was an empty threat, as evidenced by his own unease at finding himself already ten minutes late as he entered the station. He found the way ahead blocked by Joker Jennison, which meant it was substantially blocked.
“Sir, I were looking for you,” said Jennison.
“Not now, Joker,” he said, attempting to squeeze past.
“Sir, I think I saw that Dolores.”
That stopped him in his tracks.
“You think…?” he said.
“Well, I were sure at first. It were when she bent down. I may not be too hot on faces but I never forget a nice bum.”
“That’s great, Joker,” said Pascoe. “Have you spoken to her? Is she here?”
“No, sir. Thing is, when you seemed to know her, and her with her hair all different and looking such a bonny girl, not all white like a vampire on short rations, and when I told Alan, that’s Maycock, he said I were mad, but the more I’ve thought about it…”
“What the hell are you rambling about, man?” demanded Pascoe, glancing at his watch. “Come on. Spit it out.”
“That lass you were talking to outside the church at Cothersley,” said Jennison unhappily. “I’m certain that were Dolores. Like I say, when she bent down…”
“Miss Upshott, the vicar’s sister, you mean?” said Pascoe incredulously.
“Is that who she is?” said Jennison, looking even unhappier. “Look, sir, maybe it’s mistaken identity, but I felt I had to say summat…”
“Yes, yes, quite right. Listen, Joker, we’ll talk about this later, OK?”
He was now fifteen minutes late. But at least the mind-boggling improbability of what he’d just heard squeezed the fear out of his system as he tapped lightly on the door to the monster’s lair and slipped inside.
It was not often that the atmosphere in Andy Dalziel’s office could be described as religious but this was like stepping into a Quaker meeting.
The Fat Man sat behind his desk, head bowed, eyes closed. Sitting in front of the desk were Sergeant Wield and Shirley Novello and Hat Bowler (what the hell was he doing here?) The silence was total, not just the absence of speech but the absence of any sense of relationship between these people and their physical surroundings. Their minds and spirits were focused on something within, as if no one was going to break that silence till the Inner Light guided them to utter what was in their heart.
Like a mourner arriving late at a funeral, Pascoe glided silently to an empty seat.
