A Fall from Grace (20 page)

“Come in and have a look at something. I've chosen the most suitable train for the four-year-old daughter of a rising policeman, and it's a present, so you can't quarrel with my choice. It's good to see you, Charlie. No starry-eyed little customers at the moment, so it's ideal. Why don't you sit down and tell me what you want done.”

When they were settled down around the counter, surrounded by steam and diesel engines drawing passenger or freight stock of ancient and modern design, Charlie got straight to business.

“You guessed it was about Coggenhoe's death. I don't
like calling him Dad, and it's something I never did to his face. I'll tell you right away that the connection with what I want you to get on to is almost nonexistent, but even so, putting you on to this chap is a little bit distasteful. The man has become a friend since we moved to Slepton Edge. In fact, he and his wife are our best friends there. His name is Chris Carlson, he's early to midthirties, wife expecting. He's a retired medical consultant, or perhaps one just taking time out. He's dabbling in local politics, taking a totally independent line, and not doing too badly. Makes a sort of living by painting local scenes—solid middle-of-the-road kinds of pictures, quite attractive.”

“I think I registered him when he did quite well in the election for mayor earlier this year. He didn't sound a middle-of-the-road kind of person.”

“He's not. If he's anything it's a maverick. The other thing that marks him off is that he's become a sort of father confessor figure for Slepton—or an agony aunt, if you prefer. He's so likeable and sympathetic that people come to him with their problems.”

“Is that what Rupert Coggenhoe did?”

“No—not at all. Chris did try to offer him advice—not his usual practice, but he knew we were worried about him—but he was slapped down.”

“What was the advice about?”

Charlie shifted uneasily in his chair.

“A relationship that seemed to be developing with a young girl—a fifteen-year-old one. I stress ‘seemed,' because Felicity and I don't think it was a sexual thing at all, more a master-and-willing-slave one. Something
of the sort had happened in Coombe Barton, where he used to live. He'd been forced to decamp and come north.”

“To live with you? How did you get on?”

“Edgily. No explosions, no warmth. But he was near, not with.”

“And it's this Chris Carlson you want investigated?”

“Yes, and I feel rotten about it.”

“Save me your moral agonies. What is it you want to know?”

“Parents, birth, education, medical career, why that career was given up. And anything you can pick up by the wayside.”

“Shouldn't be too much trouble. I don't think we'll get much on the usual electronic information purveyors—”

“No, I thought not.”

“—but once I get the place and date of birth it should be fairly plain sailing. There are medical directories and so on, and they're fairly up to date, though of course we won't find any scandals there, any more than we would in Crockfords.”

“If you want scandals about vicars you go to the local newspapers and
The News of the World
. Both of these are pretty good on scandals involving professional men or women in general.”

“They are. So leave it with me. I'm shutting for lunch now. Come with me and we'll take Margaret out for a pub lunch.”

The lunch was hasty but pleasant, and Oddie's wife was delighted to renew her acquaintanceship with
Charlie. She asked who the mystery man was that her husband was to look into.

“A friend,” said Charlie. “And a friend with only the slightest connection with Rupert Coggenhoe. He tried to warn him—usually silly, and with Rupert predictably useless. He was bound to just continue on his way.”

“And who is this friend?”

“He was a hospital consultant. He quit the job because of disgust at the way the Health Service is being run—becoming a sausage machine, run by management men obsessed with waiting times and patient turnover: heartless, soulless, that's what he thinks. I've every reason to believe those really were his feelings. But were they the reason he quit? Why is he so cagey about everything that he did or that happened to him before he came to Slepton Edge? I'd like to clear up that definite mystery and see if there is any possible connection with how Felicity's father met his death.” It sounded feeble, but he knew that both Mike and Margaret trusted his judgment. The question wouldn't go away as he worked through the afternoon at Millgarth Police Headquarters in Leeds. It was pure coincidence that on his way home he had to call in at the general infirmary to collect a confidential report on a uniformed constable who was showing signs of breaking up. He was just taking charge of the gray folder in the foyer when he saw Alison Carlson coming slowly and heavily down the stairs. Her face looked frazzled and exhausted.

“Hi, Alison. Have you got the car or do you want a lift home?”

She smiled at him warmly.

“What I want more than anything is a cup of coffee. No—Chris has got the car. The campaign comes first.”

“We'll take the long way home, then. I know of a nice little coffee place in Horsforth. You look as if you could do with it.” She let him take her arm and lead her out into the street.

“I
ought
to be over the moon,” she said as Charlie eased her into the car. “I've been given a clean bill of health, the pregnancy is proceeding on course without any problems beyond the normal ones—I should be dancing. It's all the waiting and waiting, the being passed from doctor to nurse to consultant like a parcel in a children's game. You lose sight of the fact that what you're going through is a perfectly normal process, in spite of the fact that you're surrounded by others in the same boat.”

“Felicity feels a bit like that, though it's much easier the second time around. There's one consolation: you can tell Chris all about it and it'll be grist to his mill.”

But he was conscious that as he spoke Alison was nodding off to sleep. He drove in silence through Kirk-stall and out to Horsforth, stopped at the Coffee Bean and got a cup of coffee into her before they really started talking again over the second cup.

“That's better!” said Alison. “
Now
I feel human, not some sort of specimen for analysis. It's so easy, when you're going through the mill of the infirmary, to think: This isn't worth it. Not worth all this fuss. But of course it is.”

“You've been waiting a long time for it.”

“For a baby? Yes, we have. Though actually if it had been an intentional wait, it wouldn't have been a long time in present-day terms. I just look around me in the infirmary to see a host of women in their late thirties who I know are having their first babies. But we did want one earlier.”

Charlie nodded.

“Chris mentioned this the first time we met, in the square at Slepton. We talked about it, and he put your success down to the fact that he had packed in his job and was living a life with all the bad pressures removed.”

“I think he's right,” said Alison, smiling. “It worked, anyway. But I think that even if he went back to hospital work now, the pressures would be less, once we've actually got a child.”

“Is that what you want? Him going back to hospital work?”

She frowned.

“Well, in some respects it's the last thing I want. What could be better than the life we have now? But thinking less selfishly, it does seem an awful
waste
—of his training, expertise, genuine interest in what he was doing and helping people in concrete ways. Part of me hopes that this mayor business, much more serious than last time, will be the catalyst to sending him back to medicine.”

“Why should it be?”

“Why shouldn't it? After all, he won't get in, will he? Independents don't in British elections. And he'll
have a serious, stimulating, taxing few weeks and will—I
know
—come through it unscathed, still able to enjoy life. So it could show him that he could go back to some kind of medical practice and not wear himself down emotionally to a wet rag. And not just emotionally—physically too. He's naturally resilient, and this could show him he could do a demanding job and survive.”

“Hmmm,” said Charlie. “I think you're out of date about independents. Think of that man who became an MP by campaigning on the one point of the closure of the local hospital. People are pretty disillusioned about politicians at the moment, and Chris's campaign—centering on the Health Service but broadening out from that—could be just what the average Halifax elector wants.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Well, I rather hope not. And I'm being unselfish not selfish when I say that. I hope he does well, but not that well. You think he's started the campaign too early, don't you?”

“I do rather. But what do I know?”

“Intelligent observer. Someone who watches and listens as part of his daily work. Chris should have listened to you.”

“I was just reacting along the lines of the general feeling that when there's a death you pause, take a few breaths, reflect a bit, before you get back to the real world and start replacing the dead person. Everyone believes that apart from journalists.”

“You make clear what you don't like, don't you, Charlie?”

“Only when I'm off-duty. It doesn't do to be anything but neutral when you're questioning suspects.”

“So you're off-duty, are you, when you show that you're disillusioned with Chris?”

“I don't show that I'm disillusioned with Chris, because I'm not.”

“Chris thinks you are.”

“Then Chris expects a lot too much uncritical adulation.”

“There you are! You wouldn't have thought that a few weeks ago.”

“It's just that over time one sees around a subject, sees it or him from all angles. Take these ‘personal problem' programs on television: Do they do anything but harm by parading exhibitionists before a mass audience to pour out what passes for their souls? OK, that's different to what Chris does, but he does give rise to a notion that he can
solve
problems, rather than just help by listening to them. I have this feeling that the person who has the problem needs to look into himself and solve it.”

“You're an old-fashioned nonconformist type.”

“Maybe,” said Charlie, getting up from their table. “I think my attitude comes from my mother. She's an expert in creating problems and then solving them. As I was growing up that usually meant turfing out unsatisfactory men . . . Two—no four—cappuccinos, please.”

The girl behind the cash desk was looking at him with calf eyes.

“Hello, Mr. Peace,” she said, talking through her nose. “I met you when you came to arrest my brother.” She handed him his change and he dropped a coin into the saucer on the desk. “You did it ever so nicely.”

“Well,” said Charlie as they went out into the street, “she's got an original line in chat-up patter, but I don't care for the accent.”

“I hated Midlands accents when I first heard them, but it was only a matter of months before I didn't notice them at all.”

They drove across the wasteland that was Keighley Moor, then on the steep road to Halifax. For the first miles Alison was silent, but then she came out with what was on her mind.

“Have you read today's papers?”

“Not yet. Why?”

“Review of
The Wild Duck
. The two I read while I was waiting in Leeds Infirmary were full of praise for Desmond Pinkhurst's performance. ‘Frail and infinitely touching' was one. ‘Rare moments of feeling come from Desmond Pinkhurst's funny and clever portrayal of Old Ekdal.' ”

“Good. I'm happy for him. He'll be enormously chuffed.”

“He will. And it will give him the confidence to take on other things if they get offered.”

“Best not take on King Lear if that's offered,” said Charlie. “I suspect he could do the pathos but not the grandeur.”

“Maybe. But I'm just trying to say that Chris can do good, and quite often he does.”

“I'm sure he does.”

“He's a
good
man, Charlie. I'm not just talking as a wife. I love Chris, but I also like him. Often the two don't go together. And I like him because he's warm and caring and wants to help people. That's why he went into medicine. Probably if he'd just consulted his own inclinations he would have gone to art school. But he needed to do good and to see it working. And because he couldn't give less than all of himself he hated all the conveyor-belt diagnosis and treatment that he was forced to provide as a consultant. But one day he'll go back to it, maybe as a GP, maybe in the third world—whatever. We take so many doctors from poor countries that can't afford to lose them that I can see him wanting to go there and in a tiny way redress the balance. You may be skeptical, even cynical—I expect that goes with your job. But you'll see: there's a practical, down-to-earth side to Chris's character, and it'll be put to good use before long.”

Charlie left a pause, then said, “I'm sure you're right. You know him best.”

Soon they were driving up one of Halifax's daunting hills toward Westowram. When they got to the Carlsons' stone house, set imposingly back from the road, Chris was loading posters and improvised banners into the back of his car.

“Hi, Charlie! Picking up other people's wives now, are you? I'm just taking these to headquarters, love, and then I'll be back to hear about your day. I'll cook dinner—or get a takeaway if we've got nothing in.”

Charlie watched Alison kiss her husband, thinking
there was an element of a mother kissing a beloved child. Then he drove the two-minute route to home.