Arms and the Women (45 page)

'Jesus Christ,' said Pascoe. 'And you say you work in partnership with these guys?'

'Security makes strange bedfellows, Chief Inspector. I should perhaps say that a little further down the line we had our arrangements made to take both Popeye and Chiquillo separately. The Cojos would have been politely thanked, then dismissed. We'd have had an operational triumph in capturing the arms, boosted our always over-stretched overseas finances in the form of the coke, and made lots of friends in America by handing over Chiquillo for close questioning by their anti-drugs agency.'

'Christ, you're as bad as them!' accused Pascoe.

'Believe me, it would be a mistake for you to think so,' said Sempernel earnestly.

Before Pascoe could reply, Andy Dalziel said, 'Nice line in Scotch your mate Patrick keeps, Peter. Must be doing all right with them flowers of his. Sure you won't try some? How about you, Mr Sempernel?'

The white patrician head shook and the Fat Man went on, 'Please yourself. This has been really interesting, better than owt they ever show on telly. But like they always say on the telly, there's one thing I don't understand. How come if you lot know so much, you're hanging around here? Unless there's something going on you're not telling us.'

Sempernel smiled ruefully and said, 'How I wish I could confess to such an arachnoid subtlety, with a web of plots and plans based on secret knowledge and close reasoning. The truth is far more banal. Alas, for the best-laid plans of mice and Military Intelligence, we have lost contact with almost everyone, nearly all our lines of enquiry have dried up and we are reduced to marking time and keeping an eye on your good lady, Mr Pascoe, on the off-chance that Bruna surfaces here in another attempt to make contact. Unlikely, I realize, but at least it means that Mrs Pascoe has an additional cordon of security to the one I do not doubt that you and Mr Dalziel have put in place. So you see, we're all on the same side. I'm sorry we've had this little misunderstanding among friends. I shall now withdraw with my people to hide my embarrassment. You of course will want to remain here till your women-folk return. It would be a mistake, I think, to try and contact them at Gunnery, only causing unnecessary alarm. So good night now. I'm so glad we've cleared the air.'

He rose like a well-mannered guest, expert at judging when to take his leave.

This is a change of heart, thought Pascoe. Or at least a change of plan. When we got here he was telling us we ought to make ourselves scarce.

He glanced at Dalziel. To his surprise, the Fat Man was rising obediently, a pleasant smile on his lips, looking for all the world ready to say thanks, it's been a perfectly charming evening, I do hope we meet again soon, and let Sempernel make his departure with nothing said about Feenie Macallum and Kelly Cornelius and George Ollershaw and the Nortrust Bank and . . .

'No!' he said. 'It won't do. I think you want shut of us and as you've realized we're not going anywhere, you've decided the simplest thing is for you to leave us here.'

Sempernel looked at him with that polite smile and those ironic eyebrows while Dalziel's great slab of a face registered something which approximated to embarrassment.

'Nay, lad,' he said. 'Let's be sensible. If Mr Sempernel here says your missus is safe and it's best for us to sit here supping Scotch till she gets home, we've got no choice, have we? Except maybe...’

'Yes?' enquired Sempernel.

'Like I said before, if you want hard information, you choose between the gut and the bollocks. Now which do you think we ought to go for, Pete, lad?'

How serious he was, Pascoe never found out. Very serious, he guessed, and Sempernel's expression hinted he guessed the same.

But before the Fat Man could indicate his choice, the door opened and the woman, Cynthia, was propelled into the room by Edgar Wield. She had a radio in her hand.

'Sir,' said Wield to Dalziel. 'Our friend here's just had a message. Didn't want me to hear it, but I think it's something we should all hear. Go on, luv.'

The woman looked at Sempernel.

'It's Jacobs at the house. A white Merc and a truck turned up a couple of minutes ago. Parked a little way back. Two men in the truck. Look like muscle. In the car two Latins, one white male. He's pretty certain the Latins are Jorge Casaravilla and Luis Romea. The other's definitely Popeye Ducannon. Him and Romea have gone into the house, Casaravilla and the muscle round the side.'

'A white Merc?' said Pascoe. 'That mad bastard who attacked Daphne was in a white Merc. And now he's at Gunnery House? What the hell's going on, Sempernel?'

'Honestly, nothing to worry about,' said the white-haired man reassuringly. 'Everything's under control. As you heard, I've got a man round there keeping watch. And if that's not enough, there's . . .'

'Cyn, you receiving? Over.'

It was the woman's radio.

She glanced at Sempernel who made an impatient gesture.

'Yes, I'm here. Go ahead. Over,' she said.

The man spoke again. His voice was breathless, his tone urgent.

'Tell the boss there's been a shot. I say again, there's been a shot . . .'

The voice kept on talking but Pascoe heard no more.

Fear, anger, despair muffled his senses to everything except his need to be with his wife and child. He was heading for the door in an act of instinct not volition. A table stood in his way. It would have made no difference if it had been an armed soldier or the Queen Mother.

He sent it spinning aside and neither heard nor saw the small crystal vase on it go crashing to the floor.

Then he was outside and scrambling into his car.

Behind him, voices. Dalziel's, Sempernel's, Wield's.

Pascoe heard none of them.

All he heard was a gun going off.

And a gun going off.

And a gun . . .

On the floor of Nosebleed Cottage, trampled by the feet of his pursuers, amidst shards of crystal and a spreading stain of water, lay Rosie's posy, sending up a sweet unnoticed fragrance from the florets of crushed yarrow.

xiii

faery lands forlorn

What a stupid, useless, gimcrack thing life is, thought Ellie Pascoe.

Here am I, lulled once more by food and wine and the company of people I enjoy and might even come to love, into feeling at ease with myself and the world, into believing once more that there is hope for the human race, that our history, especially if left to the tender care of women, might after all be a long and slow but nonetheless steady progress towards some kind of perfect state.

And then, one shot, one loud explosion, one little piece of hot metal, brings the whole ramshackle jerry-built edifice tumbling down.

And the scene fills rapidly with men. Demolition men.

Two more had emerged from the shadows of the garden, solid muscular men who could have been brothers, though one was six inches taller than the other, guns in hand, faces smooth and blank, only their eyes showing (or so it seemed to Ellie) their eagerness to start massacring everyone in sight. Another two came from the house onto the terrace. At least this pair weren't waving guns. One of them, wearing a Cardinals baseball cap, dark and Latinate like the man who'd shot Novello, was pushing Mrs Stonelady before him. The other, pale-skinned to pastiness, with dark pop eyes like whole plums in an undercooked duff, went to the fallen policewoman, looked down at her and said, 'Oh Jesus, Jorge, what the fuck are you playing at?'

'She said she was police. She was reaching for a weapon,' said the gunman defensively.

Popeye felt in Novello's holster and pulled out a small leather folder.

'She was telling the truth and it's her ID she was reaching for. We're in trouble here. They're like rats, they run in packs, these ones.'

He had a soft Irish accent, which grew stronger under stress.

'No,' said the gunman, Jorge. 'She is here alone to guard Mrs Pascoe.'

He jabbed his gun threateningly towards Ellie and said, 'Is that not right, Mrs Pascoe? Are there more?'

'No,' said Ellie. Her voice, to her own ears anyway, sounded remarkably calm but her body felt paralysed from the neck down. 'She's the only one. Is she dead?'

'Of course she's not dead,' said Feenie with god-like certainty. 'One round to the shoulder doesn't kill a healthy young woman. Let me see.'

Ignoring the men, she knelt down beside Novello, raised her from the floor slightly, and slipped beneath her head one of the cushions used to make the worst of the chairs more comfortable. The policewoman groaned. It was the most pleasing sound Ellie could hope to hear. Apart from Rosie's voice. No, wrong. Yes, she wanted to hear her daughter's voice to know that she was all right. But if she heard it, then everybody would hear it, including this psychopath whose reaction to any threat, real or imagined, was violence.

Feenie rose and headed into the house. Jorge and the muscle-men pointed their guns. Popeye yelled, 'No!'

The other Latin used Mrs Stonelady to block Feenie's way.

'She needs treatment,' said Feenie over the tiny country-woman's head. 'I've got a medicine box in the kitchen.'

'I will go with her,' said the man to Jorge. 'You, old one, sit down.'

He shoved Mrs Stonelady towards the table. She sat on Novello's chair, looking completely unconcerned. Perhaps to her this was just another in the long line of oddities a Yorkshire lass had to expect once she got mixed up with the affairs of incomers.

The paralysis affecting Ellie's body was beginning to fade, permitting her to realize she desperately wanted a pee. She could also have done with a drink but the two needs seemed incompatible.

In a low voice she said, 'Daphne,' and for her pains got a look of pure hatred.

Then it faded and she realized it was aimed at Jorge and had been too intense to remove in the moment it took for her friend to turn her head.

'You OK?' said Daphne.

'Silence!' shouted Jorge.

'Silence yourself, you bastard,' retorted Daphne. 'You don't scare me. This time I'm ready for you, you greasy little dago!'

Ellie made another small adjustment to her world view. There were after all circumstances in which vulgar racial abuse was not only tolerable but admirable.

But in any circumstances, dangerous.

Jorge moved slowly round the table till he was standing right alongside Daphne.

He put the gun to the back of her head.

At its touch, Daphne's body went rigid. Not just through fear, Ellie guessed, though she must be terrified, but as much through her effort of will not to show fear. If this is what private education along lines running back unbroken to days when Britannia ruled most of the known world did for you, thank God for comprehensives! Grovel! she urged her friend mentally. Whatever he says, agree. Beg for mercy. It's only in very old and very out-of-date children's books that a show of British pluck can shame a foreign villain into reluctant admiration. Nowadays, they just blow you away.

Jorge spoke. For a moment, fixed in her expectation of threat, abuse, or demands for submission, Ellie could not understand what he said.

Then he pushed Daphne's head forward with the pistol and repeated it.

'Where is the place called CP? Is it in this house? Answer!'

Now Daphne's face showed emotion. Fear, yes. But also, and principally, indignation. Silence to the death was an English nobility, but to die quiet because you'd been asked a question you actually couldn't answer was ludicrous in any language.

Ellie said, 'It's out there, on the edge of the cliff. The pavilion. They call it the Command Post. CP. See?'

'CPC?'

'No. Just CP. Command Post.'

'Show me.'

She had his full attention now and part of her, in fact quite a lot of her, wished she hadn't been so quick to divert it from Daphne. She'd read of people being traumatized, bank tellers, post office clerks, off-licence owners, policemen even, by being put under threat from a firearm, and while full of genuine sympathy, she'd never been altogether successful in suppressing a feeling that maybe some of them were being just a touch wimpish. Perhaps she'd inherited it from her father who would shake his head when anyone talked of post-traumatic stress disorder and say, 'Counselling? What good's all this counselling? In my day, you just got on with it!' Of course, her adult reaction had been reasoned if patronizing argument. It made no difference to his views, and oh, what she would give on her visits to the Home to see any sign of that old stubborn certainty in his fearful and unrecognizing face.

But now she
knew
how wrong he'd been as she looked into that gun in the hand of a man who'd shown he would use it and felt a terror which would never leave her and which dissolved what little control she had left over her bladder.

'It's there. Look. Please. I have to go . . .'

Need overcame fear. More, it overcame shame. She walked away from him and made it to the end of the terrace where she squatted beside the plinth bearing the mortar and let go. She felt the greatest physical relief she'd experienced in her life.
If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy
. . . Somehow the ludicrously misplaced quotation gave her strength. She looked up to find the muscle men, Big Ajax and Little Ajax, she christened them, looming over her.