“Something…? What are you trying to say, Pete? Something unpleasant like something fatal, you mean? For Godsake this is Mid-Yorkshire not the Middle East. Any road, people don’t get killed on my patch without me hearing something. And Kay might turn a blind eye to a bit of illegality but she’d never stand by and let another woman get hurt, that I’m sure of. No, Linda’s sitting somewhere as we speak, comfortable and warm, with a smile on her face and a glass in her hand, and ever I met her, I’d say give us a kiss and let’s down a noggin for the sake of auld lang syne.”
If you want blind faith, convert a cynic, thought Pascoe.
He said brusquely, “OK, sir. Where do we go from here?”
“It’s your case,” said Dalziel. “All I would say is, try and remember just what the case is about. Did Pal Maciver kill himself, that’s what. Nowt else. If he did, all this other crap’s irrelevant.”
“Do you still think he did, sir?” asked Pascoe, wondering if this were the time to admit that he too was starting to come round to this way of thinking.
“I’ve heard nowt so far to suggest different. And I’m beginning to think we won’t hear owt either, not unless we try a bit of table tapping and make direct contact with the dead!”
With perfect timing there came a rap at the door.
“Oh hell,” said Dalziel. “Talk of the devil.”
And Pascoe turned and found himself staring Death in the face.
Happily the face in this instance belonged to Arnold Gentry, Head of the Forensic Lab, of whom it was alleged that once he had fallen asleep in a hospital waiting room and woken on a slab just in time to grasp the pathologist’s wrist before he made his first incision. Police wit prefers the path most trodden, and naturally his cadaverous appearance had won him the sobriquet Dr Death.
“Andy,” he said. “And Peter. So there is life in CID.”
“Oh aye? And how’d you recognize it, Arnold?” said Dalziel.
“By its rudeness mainly. What I am trying to convey is that there seems very little sign out there. But to my business. Some interesting things have come up as a result of our further examination of the Moscow House material and as I was passing on my way to an appointment, I thought I would show how sensitive we were to Peter’s plea of urgency by conveying the findings myself.”
“Don’t think we’re not appreciative,” said Dalziel unpersuasively. “So what’ve you got, apart from the verbal runs?”
From his briefcase Gentry produced a plastic file which he laid before the Fat Man.
“I’ll read this on the bog later,” said Dalziel impatiently. “Just give us the gist.”
“If you insist, though all this talking does dry the throat,” said Gentry, his eye fixed on the bottle of Highland Park.
“Jesus,” groaned Dalziel.
He produced another tumbler, poured a generous measure and topped up his own. Pascoe shook his head.
Dalziel raised his glass to his lips.
“I’d say slainte, only it seems a bit of a waste in thy case, Arnold,” he said. “OK, get on with it.”
“Following the DCI’s strict instructions, the SOCO team had despatched to us everything they could remove from the room including, I should point out, several hundred rather dusty volumes which I would rather not waste my staff’s precious time on.”
“I didn’t mean them to remove the books, except to facilitate their search,” apologized Pascoe.
“Then they must have taken your instructions over literally. The portrait of the mountaineering gent, did you want us to look at that also?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Good. We did, however, examine a coil of rope that showed no signs of ever having been used to hang or even whip anyone. There was also an ice axe which, interestingly, beneath the dust and rust did have some faint residual traces of blood. But they had clearly been there far too long to have any connection with the present investigation and are presumably a relict of some occasion on which our intrepid mountaineer hit his thumb instead of a piton.”
“For crying out loud,” exploded Dalziel. “If you’ve got owt to say, Arnold, say it, even if it’s only goodbye!”
“I see you are impatient for the nitty-gritty, Andrew. Very well. First the lock. We noted that it had been recently and liberally lubricated with a high-grade lubricant with the effect that the turning of a key in it would meet with minimal resistance. Further, we found adhering to the lubricant some traces of ash, as we did on the key itself…”
“Not surprising,” interrupted Dalziel, “seeing the dead man had lit a little bonfire in his waste bin afore he topped himself.”
“Certainly it would have been easy to explain any traces on the key thus,” said Gentry. “But with the key inserted, the ash therefrom would hardly have penetrated the lock. Analysis reveals that the internal ash traces, and some of the traces on the key also, derive from a source other than the fire in the waste bin.”
“Where’s this leading us?” demanded Dalziel.
“It leads us to the gramophone,” said Gentry. “The only ash traces we found on its exterior were clearly from the waste bin. But when we dismantled the machine we found twisted round the turntable spindle a length of thread. High-quality thread, thin but very strong, the loose end of which shows signs of having been severed by flame.”
“Tell me you’re not telling me what you’re telling me,” growled Dalziel.
“I tell you nothing,” said Gentry. “I merely present the facts. Though I should add we are conducting various experiments in the lab and it does seem possible that if a thread had been tied to the turntable spindle then passed out through the power-cable aperture, wrapped round the head of the key, and fed through the keyhole, and if the key were placed in the lock on the inside then turned almost to the point where the bolt was engaged, then when a record was played on the player and the slack taken up by the spindle, sufficient pressure could be exerted to turn the key and lock the door. Of course, the player could be turned on from the outside simply by using the mains switch.”
“Oh-oh, me brain’s beginning to hurt,” moaned Dalziel, taking a long analgesic pull at his scotch.
Gentry followed suit, draining his glass.
“Nice scotch,” he said hopefully. But something in the Fat Man’s gaze told him he was reaching too far and he went hurriedly on. “The thread or a substantial part of it having been soaked in some form of accelerant- ordinary lighter fuel would do the trick-all the perpetrator would have to do would be to listen at the door on the landing till they heard the lock click then set a light to the loose end of the thread dangling from the keyhole. The flame would run through the lock, and burn round the key head, at which point the length of thread running to the spindle would be free and the record would resume playing.”
“And you’re saying this is what happened?” demanded Dalziel.
“Certainly not. Like I say, we simply present our findings and offer any hypotheses that seem germane. But we leave conclusions to CID. The rest of our findings, analysis of the ash in the waste bin, et cetera, you will find in the file.”
He stood up, then said, “Oh, and one thing more. The SOCO team faxed through a palm print for us to check against the one found on the door. It looks a good match. This second version they found in the lounge in which I gather an accouchement took place the same night as the suicide. What extraordinarily interesting lives you lead in CID! You see what this means. Someone who was in that lounge had also been up on the landing, crouching outside the study door.”
“Could have been one of our lot,” said Dalziel. “Or just old prints. The house is up for sale, there must have been people shown round.”
Gentry smiled, like a pirate ship breaking out its colours. The bastard’s saving the best-or worst-till last, thought Dalziel.
“Not one of your lot,” he corrected. “DCI Pascoe, meticulous as ever, had made sure we had all their prints for comparison. You will be interested to hear, Peter, that the sheet of paper you left with us a little earlier today held exactly the same palm print. Presumably you know whose that is, so that’s one mystery solved.”
Pascoe avoided Dalziel’s accusing stare by pretending to lick the last drops from his tumbler with his tongue.
