“By telling me the truth,” said Pascoe.
Waverley made no effort to look puzzled. He walked on in silence as if considering his reply, then shook his head.
“No, Mr Pascoe, you’ve got it wrong. That is not how I can help you. In fact that would be quite the reverse of helping you.”
Pascoe said, “I think I should be the judge of that.”
A rather sad little smile touched Waverley’s lips.
“Mr Pascoe, all the portents are good for you, all the smart money is saying you will go far. According to your confidential file, which of course doesn’t exist, you have most of the right qualities. You are clever, perceptive, sensitive, discreet, articulate; you have a natural authority but you are not a bully; you are willing to listen to the opinions of others but you are not afraid to make hard decisions. And you do not make the same mistake twice. But there are some mistakes it is fatal to make even once. If you examine the credentials of all those who have climbed the slippery pole before you, you will find one thing they have on top of all the qualities I have just listed. They are able to recognize there are things they should not be the judge of. This is one of them. It is unnecessary for you and it would be unhelpful for you to be told the truth. I have a telephone number you can ring to receive confirmation of this, but in the greater scheme of things it would be marked down as a mistake for you to have found it necessary to make such a call. So let us part friends, me to resume the even tenor of my retirement, you to continue along the busy highway of crime investigation. I’m sure there is work enough there to occupy all the livelong day.”
They had reached the Jaguar. He opened the door and slipped in behind the wheel, put his key into the ignition, looked up at Pascoe, and smiled.
Good exit, thought Pascoe. Silence. I watch him go. The Jag disappears down the lane. I shake my head as if bringing myself back to the real world then turn back to the cottage. The curtain falls. Tumultuous applause.
He leaned down to the open window and said, “You’re quite right. I have a huge backlog of work and new things drop on my desk every day. I have to make decisions about them, which I’m not afraid to do, though, as you say, I’m always happy to listen to the opinions of others before I do so. What, for example, would be your opinion about a case like this one that’s just come to my notice? It involves a woman of about sixty who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Happily at the moment she seems to be enjoying a period of remission, but when her symptoms become too troublesome, she attempts to alleviate them by smoking marijuana. Now I am of course aware that the law relating to the use of marijuana has been relaxed slightly, and attitudes have relaxed even more. But according to my information, this woman grows the stuff herself, and possibly in quantities in excess of what might be needed for personal use.”
He paused and raised an enquiring eyebrow at Waverley, who was sitting very still with his fingers still gripping the ignition key.
“So what is the nature of your problem, Chief Inspector?” he asked.
“How do I proceed? Do I summon a team to search this woman’s house and dig up her garden? Do I have her brought in for questioning? Do I charge her with possession, cultivation, and possibly distribution? She lives in what some people might regard as rather eccentric conditions involving wild birds, some of which may be protected species. Do I involve the social services? Do I, when her case comes up, have a quiet word with the magistrate and suggest that an official psychological examination and report might be useful? Will the RSPCA or the RSPB wish to investigate? And what steps should I take to protect the woman’s property from the intrusive interest of the popular press? I’d be interested in your opinion, Mr Waverley.”
Now the man’s eyes were filled with coldness which in a real VAT investigator would have had Pascoe burning all his financial records.
“You could find it in you to do all this to a woman whose only crimes are that she is ill and she values her privacy?”
“It would be a hard decision to make, but from what you just told me, not making it could be seen as a sign of weakness which might affect my long-term prospects.”
Waverley said, “I don’t believe you could do that, Mr Pascoe.”
“In that case, goodbye, Mr Waverley.”
“But it’s not a risk I am willing to take. Would you care to join me?”
He opened the passenger door. Pascoe got in. There was an opulent smell of leather. They must have a good pension scheme, these funny buggers, thought Pascoe. Perhaps when they offed anyone, they inherited their benefits.
Waverley said in a businesslike tone, “I shall speak to you as briefly as I can. I will not be interrupted and I shall not answer questions. There will be no further interviews after this, and of course no record.”
Pascoe switched on the mini cassette recorder in his pocket and said, “Agreed. In your own time, Mr Waverley.”
The world is a botched palimpsest, Mr Pascoe. From time to time attempts are made to obliterate what has been written before and inscribe something completely new. But the ur-writing always shows through and there we may read two inerasable though apparently contradictory truths. One is the economic imperative, the other is the holiness of the heart’s affections.
The latter we may see evidenced by the apparently aberrant behaviour of myself in regard to Miss Lavinia Maciver, or of your Mr Dalziel in regard to Mrs Kay Maciver, later Kafka.
The former at all levels drove the takeover of Maciver’s by Ashur-Proffitt.
To the world it seemed simply another step in the process of commercial globalization, or in the Thatcherite sell-off and sell-out of British industry, depending how one regarded such things. In fact it was, as I believe you understand now, merely a small movement in the constantly changing pattern of that global black economy which unifies the world despite all the temporal surface shifts of elections, revolutions, and all other forms of political change.
This gap between appearance and reality becomes more evident if I point out that, at a time when the thaumaturgic word in the corridors of Westminster was privatization, this takeover was in fact a sort of covert nationalization. What I mean is, the activities and the security of what was now known familiarly as Ash-Mac’s became, albeit sub rosa, the responsibility of certain people in Whitehall and Westminster with a watching brief accorded to some others in Washington DC.
I am sure you have worked this out. It won’t have been difficult. Rumours always abound. But the government-any government-has any amount of machinery dedicated to spreading other rumours, counter rumours, more interesting rumours.
What became a matter of concern was the subsequent behaviour of Palinurus Maciver Senior, the former owner of the firm, now, as they thought, safely sidelined into a meaningless advisory directorship. When a man of his standing begins to make accusations of sanction busting and other forms of illegal trading, eventually people will start taking notice. And if he could produce hard evidence to back up his claims, then we would have a scandal on our hands.
And there are always plenty of people in the agencies of government, both public and covert, who will be delighted to advance themselves and their causes on the back of a scandal.
The American management at Ash-Mac’s assured us the matter was under control. Nevertheless my masters, who have a view of good old American know-how only matched in its scepticism by the American view of British savoir-faire, despatched me to Yorkshire to get an unbiased view of the state of play.
The cover I used was a favourite one of mine, that of a Value Added Tax Investigator. It goes deep. You will find a detailed CV of Laurence Waverley in the Customs and Excise personnel records. And it is a job which attracts such natural suspicion that no one imagines I might be something worse. In this case, as I was ostensibly looking into possible VAT irregularities at Ash-Mac’s, it meant I could present myself to Maciver in a very favourable light under the pretext of wanting to compare the record-keeping systems presently in operation with those used before the takeover. Once he got the message that I wasn’t happy with the new regime, he was putty in my hands, as they say. Soon he was sharing with me his own concerns about the firm, and it was from his own
