“’Allo, ’ere is Dolores your Lady of Pain…”
“Pull your tongue back in afore someone steps on it,” said Dalziel. “It were the only number trying to make contact with Maciver’s shop, home and mobile around seven o’clock, which meant it should have been Jason Dunn. It were young Bowler here that spotted it-nice to see that once you shake the feathers out of his bonce, his brain’s as sharp as ever. We’ll make a real thief-taker of him yet…”
This was as near to fulsome praise as you were likely to get from the Fat Man and Novello once again felt the injustice of it. Those phone records had been sent at her behest, she should have been the one to analyse them, she would have spotted the number and rung it, no bother…
She was diverted from the treacherous path of might-have-been by her awareness that the DCI seemed to have gone mad.
He had pressed the redial button and this time when the message bleep sounded, he said into the phone, “Oh hello, Miss Upshott. Peter Pascoe here, DCI Pascoe. Could you drop in to see me at your earliest convenience? Alternatively, I could call round at the vicarage to speak to you there. Thank you.”
The silence that followed was religious in its intensity and breakable only by God.
“What the fuck was that all about?” demanded Dalziel.
“It’s about Joker Jennison’s highly specialized powers of perception,” said Pascoe.
When he’d completed his explanation, the Fat Man shook his head incredulously.
“And you believe him? You don’t think this could be one of Joker’s little japes?”
“I don’t know if I believe him or not,” said Pascoe. “But there’s a close connection between Miss Upshott and Maciver-the shop, the village-and if it is her, when she gets my message, she’ll be round here like a flash rather than risk me dropping in on her and her brother. And if it’s not, well, all we’ve got is one very puzzled Lady of Pain.”
Novello, feeling rather ashamed at her resentment of Hat’s small triumph, now compensated by saying, “I think Joker could be right. There’s not much I’d trust his judgment on, but when it comes to female bums, I reckon we should take it as an expert opinion.”
“You reckon?” said Dalziel. Then his face split in a salacious grin. “Here, it ’ud make a grand identity parade, but. We could sell tickets.”
No one laughed and he grunted, “Please yourselves,” and continued with the story of his interview with Dunn.
When he’d finished, Pascoe said, “Oh shit.”
“Eh? Thought you’d have been glad. I still don’t know what it adds up to, but it’s been you from the start saying there’s more going off here than meets the eye.”
“I was thinking of that poor girl in hospital. Does this have to come out, sir?”
“Only if it’s relevant to your enquiries into Maciver’s death,” said Dalziel.
In other words, if it’s suicide, we can sit on it. But if it’s murder…
There were things to be got out into the open but the open didn’t include everyone present. Not even Edgar Wield.
He sought for some courteously diplomatic way of suggesting that the meeting close and he and Dalziel be left to themselves, but before he could speak, the Castiglione of Mid-Yorkshire showed him how it should be done.
“Right, you lot. Bugger off,” he growled. “Everyone except you, Pete.”
As the other three made for the door, Dalziel called, “Ivor, you’ve earned a break, you and young Bowler both. He’s still on the panel officially so why don’t you ferry him down to the canteen and see if you can lure him back permanent with a mug of tea and a slice of summat tasty? But keep him off the millet. All that ornithology can send a young man blind.”
When they were alone, Pascoe said, “Nice to see Bowler getting back to normal. Meeting Lavinia’s obviously done him a world of good.”
“You reckon? Gives you a warm glow, does it?”
“Well, yes, it does. And I hope it makes you happy too, sir,” said Pascoe.
“Happy? Aye, it might have made me happy if I’d not had a call from Desperate Dan asking if the lad were back on the strength.”
Pascoe turned this inside out looking for hermeneutic clues, gave up, and said, “You mean the Chief noticed him hanging around and wondered if he’d been signed off the sick list?”
“No, I don’t bloody mean that. I mean that some mate of Dan’s at the Yard has been enquiring all unofficial like if DC Bowler was assisting in some delicate CID enquiry under the guise of being off sick.”
This required even more consideration.
“Why should the Yard be interested in Bowler?”
“Not the Yard, dickhead. Some other bugger somewhere had enquired at the Yard for someone who was well placed to make a nice chummy call to Dan and put the question.”
“Some other bugger…?”
“Some other funny bugger is my guess,” said Dalziel grimly.
In Dalziel-speak funny buggers meant anyone working in the shadowy realms of security, whether MI something, or Special Branch, or MoD, or some other area so penumbral it dare not speak its name.
Pascoe was amazed.
“But why on earth… I mean, what’s Bowler been up to that even the neurotics who run these outfits could misconstrue?”
“You heard the lad. He’s been wandering round the woods and having breakfast with this bird lady and her feathered friends. Now it could be that she’s a key figure in a pigeon post network that’s going to take over after all electronic communication’s been nuked out of existence. He did say she don’t have a phone or a radio, didn’t he? But if it’s not that, what are we left with that’s set some funny bugger’s alarm-bell ringing?”
Pascoe said, “The only connexion she’s got to anything vaguely official is she’s Pal Maciver’s aunt.”
“Aye. And then there’s this VAT man, Waverley.”
“But you just sat on Bowler for even suggesting as a long shot that he could be linked to anything… Ah…”
“That’s right,” said Dalziel approvingly. “The lad’s keen as mustard and now he’s getting back to the land of the living, he’ll be eager to impress. Plus he seems to have taken a real shine to the bird lady. If this Waverley does have owt to do with the funny buggers’ interest, the last thing I want is young Bowler sticking his beak in and getting it snapped off. So, what did you reckon to Waverley?”
“I took him at face value. Retired Customs and Excise, on a decent pension-drives a newish Jag, wears a mohair Crombie-so, fairly high-powered-uses a walking cane, heavy silver top-slightly favours his right leg.”
“What’s his relationship with bird lady?”
“Old friend, likes to take care of her. Physically she looked just a touch wobbly, arthritis maybe…”
“MS,” interrupted Dalziel.
“Hat told you that? Then maybe Waverley’s right, she does need looking after.”
“Is that all? Nowt sexual?”
“Who knows? People like them aren’t all over each other. Certainly emotional. They still address each other pretty formally-Mr W and Miss Mac-but that’s probably just a habit which helps preserve the equilibrium of a loving friendship. Look, sir, apart from the fact he wears a trilby, is there anything else to make us take a closer look at Waverley?”
“Gedye,” said Dalziel.
“And to you too, sir,” said Pascoe.
“No. It’s a name. It’s the name of the funny bugger who got Dan’s old mate at the Yard asking questions about Bowler.”
“Ah,” said Pascoe.
“Ah so,” said Dalziel. “Any idea how they met? Not one of them tweeters, is he?”
“Twitchers. Don’t think so… though she did say… yes! I knew there was something!”
Detectives, like Quakers, had their Inner Light too and if you relaxed and didn’t fret about it too much, eventually it would bloom and effulge in speech.
“What?”
