there, looking at the pics. I didn’t ask her what she were doing. Somehow all that mattered was she didn’t believe what them photos seemed to be saying, so I told her everything.
She didn’t seem surprised, but went downstairs. I could hear her on the phone as I got dressed. When I came down she was making a cup of coffee and as I drank that she did me a great mountain of toast and fried me some eggs and half a dozen rashers. I felt better after I got that lot down. I wanted a drink but she wouldn’t let me have anything alcoholic, not till she’d done me a repeat order of food. Then she poured two glasses of malt, a big one and a little one. And she handed me the little one.
I’d thought she might be something special from the first time I saw her, but that was when I knew it for sure, when she handed me the little Highland Park and kept the big one for herself!
After that she lit the fire and we sat and talked, not about Linda or anything, just ordinary stuff, and finally I must have dozed off ’cos suddenly I was woken by the door bell and when I opened my eyes it were after nine o’clock.
I heard Kay answer the door, talk to someone, then she came back in to me. She were carrying this cardboard box which she put on the floor in front of the fire. Then she said she had to be going, and that she’d call me in the morning to check I was OK.
And she was gone before I even had time to say thank you.
I sat there for another half-hour before I looked in the box. Truth was I were feeling better and I didn’t want to risk losing the mood. Just by sitting around talking with Kay I’d calmed down so much that even though things still looked black as midnight, somehow midnight didn’t seem such a dreadful place to be.
Then, only because I began to feel knackered and decided it were time to head for bed, I looked in the box.
That woke me up.
I couldn’t believe it. I thought I must be hallucinating again. It was all there.
Photos, negatives, video, even the little vial of blood.
Everything.
I didn’t hang around.
I stirred up the fire till it really got going then I dumped everything out of that box on to the flames and I sat there with my bottle of malt watching and occasionally stirring the coals till there was nowt left but a pile of hot ashes.
Then I went to bed.
End of story. End of statement.
Christ, but all this talking makes a man thirsty. Are you ready for a top up yet, lad?
21 THE VOICE OF DEATH
“No thank you, sir,” said Pascoe. “So let me get this straight. What you’re saying is that Kay Kafka once covered up for you and now whenever she snaps her fingers and asks for help, you come running. Would that be simply because you’re grateful, sir, or because she’s got enough on you to lose you your job if she talks?”
It was the only time in his life that Pascoe thought that Dalziel might physically assault him.
The Fat Man came round the desk with the speed of a Kodiak bear and put his face so close to Pascoe’s, he could smell the Highland Park on his hot breath.
“What have you got in that college-educated, overheated brain of thine?” grated Dalziel. “Bird droppings? Have you listened to a word of what I’ve said? Well, have you?”
“Acu-otically,” said Pascoe.
He doubted if the word existed, but instinct told him that you don’t fight an enraged beast, you try to distract it and he knew the Fat Man could rarely resist an opportunity to mock redundant sesquipedalianism.
“Acu-otically?” echoed Dalziel, still just an inch away. “Acu-otically?”
He barked a disbelieving laugh and withdrew a couple of inches.
“Acu-fucking-otically!”
Also he dearly loved a tmesis.
Slowly he straightened up and backed away, all the way round his desk, never taking his eyes off Pascoe even as he sat down and topped up his whisky tumbler and drained it dry.
Then he slammed it on the desk surface with a crash that made Pascoe jump.
“You think if she’d ever suggested some kind of tradeoff, I’d have listened for a second?” he said. “You think if she’d tried to blackmail me, I’d have put up with it for even half a second? I’ll tell you what she asked for, lad. Nothing! Not then, not ever. I rang her up the next day and tried to say thanks and she said, “Andy, I fried you some eggs and made you some toast. What’s to thank me for?” Next time I saw her, I tried to thank her again. She looked at me like I was raving. Not then, not ever, has she mentioned any of that stuff. Not a hint. Not even a bloody hint of a hint of you-owe-me-one. When Pal-old Pal, I mean-topped himself, I stepped in to take care of the case because of her, I don’t deny it. But I checked every bit of her story twice as close as I checked anyone else’s. And after she made that statement on the tape, I got Dave Thatcher to use his contacts over there to check out the American stuff. I felt ashamed doing it, but I bloody well did it all the same. It all checked out, right down the line. She’s true diamond, Pete, true bloody diamond, and anyone who tries to tell me different had better have an affidavit signed by Jesus Christ himself to back it up.”
Does he know about her little adventures at the Golden Fleece? wondered Pascoe. Would it matter if he did? Should it matter?
These were questions to tease a man out of thought. More importantly they seemed likely to be questions that could tease a man out of life if put in the wrong way, which was to say in the same room or even town, and without an armed guard of marine commandoes.
He said, “Sorry, sir, didn’t mean to be offensive.”
“Me neither, lad. I’m sorry too. It’s the smell of them funny buggers as does it. One sniff of them and I get edgy. What the hell interest can they have in this business, eh?”
“I think you touched on that in your-ah-statement, sir. That stuff about Ashur-Proffitt and the Iran-Contra affair.”
“That’s old history, done and dusted,” said Dalziel.
“No, sir, stuff like that’s never done. On the surface things change-new treaties, yesterday’s enemies become today’s allies. But whatever the surface rules are, once you dig deep, they don’t apply. Down there it’s a whole different ball game-sanction breaking, illegal arms deals, out-of-date-drugs dumping-where only two things matter: profit and not getting caught. It’s like the domestic black economy where work gets done without troubling the tax man or the VAT office. Except this is on a much huger scale, and a lot of it has covert official approval, and its colour is red because it’s paid for in human lives.”
He came to a halt, somewhat surprised at the passion with which he’d been talking.
“You been reading Ellie’s e-mails again?” said Dalziel.
“No, sir,” said Pascoe wearily. “Just the newspapers and between the lines. I’d have thought 9/11 might have changed things a bit. In fact I’m sure it has. But there are always plenty of people who’d be looking to turn a fast buck even if they saw the four horsemen of the apocalypse galloping across the sky. You say you never heard from Linda Steele again?”
“No, not a dicky. Kept on coming across bits and pieces she’d left around the house and it were funny, despite what she’d done, or tried to do, I’d feel I really missed her. But she never showed her face here again, nor back home so far as Dave Thatcher could trace. But, like I say, she were a bright lass, bright enough to know there was little future in going back home to tell her creepy boss she’d screwed up. So I’d guess she did what she’d told me she’d done in the first place: quietly resigned and went off somewhere exotic to start a new career.”
“And you never found out exactly how Kay got the negatives back?”
“Not from her, but I could guess. Who else? Would hardly be Kay, would it? No, she must’ve told Kafka what Linda was up to and he sorted it out. I didn’t ask questions, I were just glad to be off the hook.”
“You never wondered if something unpleasant might have happened to her then?”
