Bones & Silence (38 page)

That's because you go all round the houses telling a tale,' growled Dalziel.

'I'm sorry,' said Swain, unruffled. 'This morning, as I've told you, Arnie's mind was much occupied by his son-in-law. We sat and talked about it. Then we did some work but I could see he wasn't concentrating. And I said to him from the cab, "For heaven's sake, Arnie. Stop moping. All right, make a clean breast if you must and let the law take its course. But don't take more on yourself than you deserve. All you've done is conceal a terrible accident. That's all it was.

An accident!" And he replied more to himself than me, "Aye, that's what that one was. But not that other fornicator!" Then before I could ask him what he meant, he went back to working, and I did too, and not long after ... oh God, perhaps neither of us had our minds fully on what we should have been doing. I'll never forgive myself!'

His voice had broken momentarily.

Dalziel belched and said, 'I still don't see what put Waterson in your mind.'

'Don't you see? It was what he said before he died. "Not Phil's fault. God's will. Helping a friend. Good friend to me." I thought at first he was referring to the accident. Then later I thought it must be referring to Appleyard. But how could anyone imagine that was my fault? And finally it struck me. What if poor Arnie, feeling himself deeply indebted to me, and hating Waterson not just because of what he'd done to me, but because he was involved in filth like drugs and casual sex, had felt himself to be doing the will of God by putting him out of the way?'

He looked at the two policemen urgently, as though begging them to contradict his dreadful suspicion.

Dalziel said, 'Oh aye? And what do you think he might have done with the body?'

'I've no idea,' said Swain. 'But you have to look for it, Superintendent. I beg that you will spare no effort in looking for it.'

And outside the sound of the pneumatic drills ceased.

It was Waterson without a doubt, almost perfectly preserved. He had been buried beneath the concrete behind the gatehouse. Unfortunately for the appearance of the car park, the drillers had started at the other side and worked round, so there was a trench some twelve feet in length.

Dan Trimble regarded this defacing scar sadly.

'I suppose it could have been worse,' he said.

'It will be,' said Dalziel laconically.

'What?'

'We've not found the girl yet. Beverley King.'

'You think she's in here too?'

'Where else? She were on that boat with Waterson and she's not been seen for God knows how long. He'd not leave her alive when he killed this poor sod, would he?'

'Stringer? Andrew, are you sure? From what you say, he might well think he was the instrument of God in dealing with Waterson, but he'd have to be stark staring mad to include the girl.'

'Stringer? Who's talking about Stringer?' demanded Dalziel. 'You don't think I swallowed that load of crap, do you? No, it's that bastard up there I'm after. Oh God, he thinks he's so clever. Correction, he is clever. Credit where it's due. He thinks fast, like a rat in a corner. He heard the drills start up again and he guessed what I was after. So quick as a flash, before he's faced with this poor sod's body and asked for an explanation, he gives one!'

Trimble was unimpressed.

'That's one way of looking at it,' he said. 'The other is that he's telling the truth. I want both possibilities thoroughly investigated. I gather Swain says he went up to Darlington on business the night Waterson was seen at the Sally. Have you checked this?'

'What's the rush when I know what we'll find?' retorted Dalziel. 'It'll be a good story. But there won't be any good witnesses.'

'Mr Pascoe, I wonder if you'd care to check the Superintendent's prognosis?' murmured Trimble. 'But even if it's accurate, it still proves nothing.'

'Bev King's body'll prove something,' asserted Dalziel. 'And it shouldn't take us long to find. They must've been put in close together.'

'You'd better be right, Andy,' said Trimble, trying to lighten the tone. 'It's my heart those drills are digging into, you realize that?'

'Then they'll need to be right sharp,' replied Dalziel.

By the time Pascoe reached the interview room, the drills were back at their work but Swain showed no sign of reaction to the new outburst of noise.

The next ten minutes saw a lot of points being marked up to Dalziel. Swain's story was that he had driven north to look at an old house shortly to be demolished, with a view to buying the bricks and some fixtures. The contractor hadn't turned up and on phoning him at home, Swain had discovered one of them had got the wrong date. The man had been unable to join Swain that night, so he had taken a look around by himself, then had a drink and a sandwich at a pub in Darlington called the Crown or something royal. When he came out, he found he had a flat tyre. He had changed it with some difficulty and finally got home after midnight.

'So apart perhaps from a barmaid in a possibly regal pub, you've got no one who can support your story,' said Pascoe.

'The demolition contractor can confirm my phone call,' said Swain. 'And I dare say someone saw me changing my wheel in the car park. But why all this interest in my whereabouts, Mr Pascoe?'

'Routine, sir.'

'Come on! I'm not an idiot.' He regarded Pascoe reflectively, then suspicion rounded his eyes and his mouth as he exclaimed, 'Oh my God! Those bloody drills . . . have you found. . . not Waterson? Oh Arnie, Arnie. Once he got an idea in his mind . . . And you think I helped him again? Come on, Chief Inspector! I've admitted my part in helping him hide one body, but I assure you I didn't make a habit of it! I am right, aren't I? You have found Waterson?'

Pascoe nodded, never taking his eyes off the man's face.

'Damn, damn, damn! I told you that was what I feared, but I still hoped I'd been wrong about Arnie. Couldn't he see it was in my interest for Waterson to turn up alive and well so he could clear up Gail's death absolutely, once and for all?'

He spoke with a passionate earnestness Pascoe could not fault.

He stood up abruptly and went to tell Dalziel he'd earned ten out of ten for his prognosis.

But in the car park he found the fat man's credit as a clairvoyant was fast running out. A Somme of new trenches serpentined away from Waterson's grave and it was clear that the area which might reasonably have been concreted at the same time was almost exhausted. Trimble's face had smoothed to an emotionless mask more revealing than tic or grimace, and the drillers, sensitive to vibrations stronger than those of their machines, paused and looked inquiringly at Dalziel.

'Keep going,' he said harshly. 'She's here. Peter, how'd you get on?'

Pascoe retailed what Swain had said, loyally stressing the accuracy of Dalziel's prediction. Trimble was not impressed.

'There's still nothing to link Swain with Waterson's death,' he said. 'Not even a good motive. Why on earth
should
he want to murder a man whose testimony cleared him of any suspicion of complicity in his wife's death?'

'Man who trains fleas needs a big thumb,' said Dalziel.

'I'm sorry?'

'Mr Waterson was a very volatile character,’ said Pascoe, feeling that Dalziel's gnomic utterance required some slight exegesis. 'I think the Super means that, like a photographic negative, he needed to be fixed at a very precise point to preserve the desired result.'

Trimble said, 'I think I'll go inside before I'm tempted to ask any more questions.'

As they watched him walk away, Dalziel said, 'What the fuck were you on about!'

'Same as you, I think.'

'In that case, book me in to see Pottle!'

By six o'clock Pascoe was beginning to wonder if a trip to the psychiatrist mightn't be such a bad idea for Dalziel.

'Sir,' he said diffidently. 'I'm sure you appreciate you're well back into the area that was completed in February?'

'So what?'

'Well, Waterson was last seen on March the first, wasn't he?'

'I know that.'

'So if your theory is the girl was killed at the same time, then wherever she is she can't be . . . there.'

He gestured to where the last bit of concrete was being ripped up in front of the new garages.

'Who said she was killed at the same time?' said Dalziel.

'Well, I just assumed

'Leave assumption to the Virgin Mary,' snapped Dalziel. 'When's the last sight there was of this lass?'

'She moved from Bulmer's Wharf on February the third. She last visited her parents on February the fourteenth. The farmer at Badger Farm reckons there was someone round the boat for most of February ...'

'That peasant! Bugger's too tight to buy a calendar let alone a pair of specs!' interrupted Dalziel.

'Nevertheless. Look, if she is buried here, she must have been killed by either Swain or Stringer. And as you've got back beyond the March level already, she must have been killed in the second half of February. Why, for God's sake? Why?'

'I don't know why,' grated Dalziel. 'All I know is that sod killed his missus, and in my book he's guilty of everything else that happened round here till some cleverer sod than me proves him innocent!'

He was close to running amok, thought Pascoe. He looked desperately for some brake he could apply.

'Then logically you intend digging up everything that was concreted over since Valentine's Day?'

'If that's what it takes,' said Dalziel.

'Even if it means going inside some of the new inspection garages? Mr Trimble's not going to like it.'

'You leave Desperate Dan to me,' said Dalziel. 'He may do the Floral Dance, but it's me who plays the fiddle.'

But at eight o'clock the music came to an abrupt end.

An hour earlier, Swain, who had been remarkably laid back about the whole protracted business, finally summoned his lawyer. Trimble conferred with the man for a while, then came down to talk to his head of CID. He didn't talk long. The drills had gouged random inspection holes in a good sixty per cent of the garage floors. When Dalziel reluctantly admitted they were into concrete laid at least a week before the last reported sighting of Beverley King, Trimble said, 'That's it, Andy.'

'But . . .'

'No buts. Work stops now. If I hear those drills again, you're suspended. You'd better believe me.'

He strode away. Five minutes later he reappeared in the silent car park with Swain and his solicitor, a bat-faced man with a switched-on memo-cassette in his hand. Trimble was at his most man-of-the-world conciliatory, but Swain didn't look as if he needed his feathers smoothed.

'Please,' he said. 'Don't forget, I'm here because I've committed an offence and I know I shall have to answer for it. I can well understand Mr Dalziel's keenness to make sure there were no more unpleasant surprises in store. No, no need of a lift. I came in my own car. Fortunately I didn't leave it in here.'

He looked around the devastated car park and smiled in Dalziel's direction. Pascoe felt the fat man's tension. Please don't say anything actionable, he prayed, not with Trimble and this mechanized scion of Dodson and Fogg in earshot.

Trimble must have felt the danger too. He said sharply, 'Mr Dalziel, I'd like to see you in my office in ten minutes, please.'

'Sir!' barked Dalziel, then turned on his heel like a dismissed soldier and marched away. Pascoe smiled a conciliatory smile at Swain and followed. He caught up with his boss in the first garage, staring gloomily into the hole from which Tony Appleyard had been lifted.

'I had him, Peter,' he said. 'I had him by the short and curlies! What went wrong? Three bloody corpses, and still the bastard's walking away with a million quid in the bank and Desperate Dan dusting off his jacket like an Eyetie barber! What in the name of God went wrong?'

This appeal to the heavens touched Pascoe beyond mere rhetoric. This was
Gotterdammerung,
this was old Saturn in his branch-charmed forest acknowledging that the time of the Titans was past.

He said, 'Perhaps nothing went wrong, sir. Perhaps Swain's been telling the truth all along, in which case everything's gone right, hasn't it?'

It was, he acknowledged later, an attempt at comfort on a par with assuring Mrs Lincoln she'd have hated the rest of the show. Dalziel's face glowed like a nuclear pile and a hand like a mechanical shovel seized Pascoe's arm. Perhaps foolishly, he opted for rational argument rather than kneeing the fat man in the crotch. Urgently he said, 'Swain's cooperated all down the line, you've got to admit that. All right, he changed his statement a bit, but Waterson's backed him up. And he volunteered all that info about Appleyard's death, and he brought us straight to the spot...’

The nuclear glow faded and the grip on his arm relaxed enough for his arteries to resume a limited service.

'Aye, he did too. And he even drew us a diagram, didn't he? Whose chalk did he use, Peter?'

'Sorry?'

'The chalk he marked the spot with! Were you the clever little boy scout who came all prepared?'

'No, sir. All I recall is Swain drawing the outline and saying we should drill here.'

'And he was spot on, wasn't he? And if it weren't your chalk, and it weren't my chalk, then it must've been
his
chalk, mustn't it?'

'I suppose so. Perhaps builders carry chalk around with them,' suggested Pascoe, uncertain why Dalziel was labouring the point. 'Tool of the trade.'

'Mebbe. In his overalls. In his working gear. But Swain had got changed since we saw him at the hospital. He was in one of them fancy blazers with the bullet-proof badges. Not the kind of thing a man of taste wants a cloud of chalk dust billowing out of every time he blows his nose!'

'Sir, I don't see that it matters. Main thing is that he did show us exactly where Appleyard was buried. Think of the mess we could have made of Mr Trimble's car park if Swain had been vague!'

It was less provocative than his earlier attempt at comfort but not much more effective.

'Mebbe I should write a thank-you note,' growled Dalziel.