interview with Mai Richter. In the week since, he'd looked at what he'd learned from every which side and found he'd no idea what it meant. He'd already contemplated laying it out before Pascoe, but whenever he thought he'd made up his mind, the counter-argument had come surging back, that this was merely the indulgence of weakness, off-loading on to someone else a burden he'd wilfully hoisted on to his own shoulders, and anyway the woman was long gone back to the land of Siegfried and Lorelei.
But one of his strengths was he was aware of his weaknesses, which happily were to some degree Pascoe's strengths. All right, sometimes he went out of his way to get up that narrow sensitive nose, like when he'd sounded off about Sore Arse and Rusty Bum and the Aral Sea. The difference was that while he knew poetry by rote, he knew nowt about poetry, what made it work, what it was for. Pascoe knew these things. Sensitivity, intuition, imagination, these were the gifts tossed into the infant Pascoe's cradle which had maybe been crushed in his own by the weightier prezzies of a cast-iron gut and sledge-hammer will. No escaping it, Pascoe was a useful, perhaps a necessary complement.
Thank God after a sticky start, he'd actually grown to like the bugger!
So now it was with relief that he shared everything he'd done and discovered.
Pascoe listened intently. Physical unwellness, as long as it didn't involve active pain, always seemed to hone his mind to a more than usually keen edge. The Fat Man offered little explanation of his own thought processes, but Pascoe filled out the bald description of events easily, recognizing and being touched by his boss's willingness to accept total responsibility for the 'tidying-up' (or 'cover-up' as it would no doubt have appeared in the tabloid headlines) of Dick Dee's death, both at the scene and in the subsequent witness statements. But the risk of that kind of accusation seemed to have passed, leaving a very different problem, and Dalziel's implied acknowledgement that he needed help and perhaps comfort here was even more touching. Not that it came very close to being openly implied. 'So there it is’ he growled in conclusion. 'What do you make of that, clever clogs?'
'Forget it’ said Pascoe.
'What?'
'That's the clever clogs answer. Be ready to collect Bowler's pieces and try to put them back together when Rye dies, but till then forget it. There's going to be grief to spare when that happens. Why go looking for more in advance?'
Tables turned, he thought. Here's me being pragmatic, down-to-earth. And there's him, wrestling with doubt and maybe even conscience!
But he knew what Dalziel was really wrestling with because it was the thing which, despite all differences, united them – the need to know the truth. 'Except…' he said,
'Might have known there'd be an except’ said Dalziel.
'Except it's no use us forgetting it unless everyone else is forgetting it too. This woman, Rogers’Richter, how'd she look to you?'
'Nice tits’ said Dalziel reminiscently.
Pascoe resisted the bait and said, 'You think she's going to drop it?'
'Aye. Not her cup of tea. Also she got to like Pomona and started feeling guilty. Plus there's this feminist solidarity thing, sisters, sisters… weren't there a song?'
Fearful that Dalziel was about to burst out singing once again, Pascoe hurried on.
'Tick her off then. Charley Penn?'
'Charley 'nil never shut up, but he's like a clock. People will only take notice when he stops ticking.'
'Which still leaves the other eavesdropper. The second bug, remember? Where was it by the way?'
'In the bedroom behind the headboard. I went in and had a look afore I left Church View. According to what Lilley told Richter, it was self-powered, voice-activated, range of mebbe fifty yards tops, and likely to have run out of gas after a fortnight. So the bugger could listen in from a car parked in Peg Lane. Or, if he didn't want to sit around there all night, he could have had a radio cassette tuned in and left somewhere handy. There's St Margaret's churchyard opposite, lots of nice overgrown tombstones to hide summat like that under. I had a poke around but didn't find owt. What's up wi' thee?'
Pascoe had jumped up and grabbed at the phone on the desk between them.
He dialled, listened, said, 'Hi, it's Chief Inspector Pascoe. I need to speak to Dr Pottle. Yes, urgent police business. Or clinical business, whatever gets him to the phone.'
A pause, then Pascoe spoke again, 'Yes, sorry, I'm making a habit of it, aren't I? Listen, all I want is Haseen's mobile number. No, I won't tell her how I got it.'
He scribbled on the desktop, dialled again.
'Ms Haseen, hi. It's DCI Pascoe, we met in Sheffield on Saturday. Sorry to trouble you again, but there was something you said when we were talking about Franny Roote
Dalziel groaned, rolled his eyes and generally did his How long, o lord, how long? act.
'No,' said Pascoe. 'Nothing personal or private. It was just that you said when talking about listening to him delivering Johnson's paper on the laughs in Death's Jest-Book, it wasn't worth spoiling your lunch for. But in the conference programme, Roote was scheduled for nine o'clock on Saturday morning… yes… yes,.. that's fine. Very helpful. Thank you very much, sorry to have troubled you.'
He put the phone down and turned triumphantly to Dalziel, who said, 'Don't tell me. You've found a way of dragging Roote into this. Jesus, Pete, you'll be telling me next he were Jack the Ripper, after he finished killing the princes in the Tower, that is.'
'His conference session was rescheduled from nine a.m. at his request because he developed terrible toothache the evening before and managed to arrange an emergency appointment for first thing on Saturday morning. Professor Duerden, who had the one thirty session, was pleased to do a swap. I bet Roote was touchingly grateful! But Amaryllis was pissed off because in order to hear Roote, which she wanted to do either for her own professional reasons or because hubby wanted her expert opinion on his state of mind, she had to duck out halfway through a posh lunch someone else was paying for.'
'Pete, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about’ said Dalziel.
'I saw him that morning, in St Margaret's Churchyard. Bang on nine. I thought it was some kind of optical delusion, or even worse, some kind of psychic apparition when I got that letter in which he claimed he'd had a vision of me as he started to give his address at nine a.m. But the bastard was just covering his tracks, don't you see?'
'Hang about. You're saying that Roote were here early that morning
… how?'
'He drove.'
'Weren't one of them letters you got written on a train? And weren't his car in dock?'
'You do pay attention, sir’ said Pascoe. 'So he hired a car… no, wait a sec, Blaylock, that Cambridge DI, he said something about some absent-minded academic reporting his car stolen that morning then finding he'd parked it on the other side of the college. Roote stole it, drove up, got here about half seven maybe, did what he had to do, drove back… he could make it by half ten or eleven, plenty of time to show his face and be ready for his post-lunch session.'
'Why?' asked Dalziel.
'Because he's listened to Penn banging away so much about Dick Dee being innocent that he's begun to wonder if maybe he could be right, maybe the guy who really killed his chum Sam Johnson is walking free. So he decided to check out Penn's theory of a police cover-up himself. He knew Rye was away that night, he realized being down at the conference gave him an alibi if anything went wrong, so he thought, here's a great chance to have a poke around her flat and also to plant a bug. He must have just hidden the cassette when I saw him. He probably picked it up last time he came back. It all fits!'
Except for one or two holes, such as, why did he turn the place upside down when bug planters traditionally took care to leave no trace of their passage?
Dalziel didn't look for holes, merely shook his head wonderingly, and said, 'Don't know if you're right or wrong, lad, but it makes no difference. What you're saying is, if there's some other bugger out there still sniffing around, it's up to us to find out afore he does where the smell's coming from.'
'Or put him somewhere that his nose can't bother us’ said Pascoe.
He related his latest discoveries in Sheffield.