Ruling Passion (16 page)

Wet but happy, he began to make his way home  to the village.

Chapter 5

There was a police-car outside Sturgeon's house  when Pascoe arrived.

Marjory Clayton had not been much help. Aged  about twenty, she was a plain girl, rather anaemic in complexion and wearing a shapeless cardigan  which looked as if it had been woven round a sack  of potatoes. She seemed genuinely upset at her employer's death and Pascoe treated her gently.  Monday had been her half-day and she had been  nowhere near the office after midday. Nothing  unusual had occurred during the morning. In fact  practically nothing at all. No customers, few calls. Business, it seemed, was very, very slack. No, she  had not known that Mr Lewis was returning from  Scotland that afternoon, though it didn't surprise  her. He spent a lot of time up there and seemed  quite happy to drive back and forth at fairly frequent intervals.

The other secretary, Jane Collinwood, lived at  the far side of town. She would have to wait till later. It was beginning to feel like a wasted  day.

But the scene that met him when he stepped  through the open front door of Sturgeon's house  drove his own troubles out of his mind. Mavis Sturgeon, aged from a sprightly sixty to a parchment like ninety, was being helped into her coat by  an awkward-looking constable. She was clearly  in a state of shock and showed no sign of recognition.

'What's up?'

'Are you a friend, sir?' asked the constable hopefully.

'I'm a detective-sergeant, son. Come on, what's  happened?'

'It's Mr Sturgeon, Sergeant. There's been an  accident, and I was sent..’

'Yes.' Pascoe put his arm round the woman's  shoulders. 'Have you sent for a doctor?'

'Well, no. She wouldn't . . . she just insisted  on going straight to the hospital,' the constable  answered helplessly.

'For God's sake, man! She's in no state, can't  you see?'

Pascoe's anger drained quickly away. Being  a messenger of death and disaster was no job for a young man. He pointed at the leather-bound address book by the telephone in the  hallway.

'You'll find her doctor's number in that, probably. It's Andrews, I think. Ring him. Tell him to get out here at once. Then go next door, dig out a  neighbour and bring her round.'

'Please, I must go to Edgar,' said Mrs Sturgeon  piteously.

'Yes, love. Soon. Come and sit down a moment,'  answered Pascoe, leading her gently into the  lounge.

'He's been so worried lately. So worried. He wouldn't tell me why. I should have been harder.  I should have tried harder.'

She began to weep and the trio of cats which  had been viewing the scene suspiciously from the darkest corner of the room now advanced, mewing  piteously, and jumped up on her knees. She buried  her fingers in their fur, crying still.

A few minutes later the constable arrived with  a neighbour, a sensible middle-aged woman who took control with the brisk efficiency of a Women's  Institute president. Pascoe retired to the hall and  spoke to the constable.

'Yes, Sarge, pretty serious, I believe. He was still alive when they got him to hospital, but at that  age . . .'

'Do you know how it happened?'

'No. Not the faintest. Nothing else involved,  that's all I know.'

'And he was down the Al?'

'Nearly at Doncaster. That's where they've taken  him.'

Pascoe turned to the phone, first making sure the  lounge door was firmly shut. He had to wait a few moments for the operator to answer and his eyes  ran over the opened telephone book. One number  caught his eye. A Lochart number, but the name  next to it meant nothing.

Finally the operator replied and with compensatory swiftness put him through to the Doncaster  Royal Infirmary. He identified himself and inquired  after Sturgeon. The old man was very ill, he was told. Face cut, ribs broken, left kneecap shattered, no serious internal injuries as far as they knew yet, but he had lost a great deal of blood and  was in a serious condition. Anyone wanting to  see him might be well advised to move as quickly  as possible.

'Thanks,' said Pascoe, putting down the phone.

Hospital, doctors; blood, violence, death.

'It's a hell of way to make a living,' he said to  the fresh-faced constable. 'You'll hang on here till  the doctor comes?'

'Yes, Sarge. You going now?'

'There's work to do,' said Pascoe.

Dalziel had decided to skip tea, partly as a result of Grainger's suggestion that he should try to  lose a pound or two and partly because the  medical examination had taken the edge off his  usually ferocious appetite. He had left samples of  just about everything extractable or removable  from his body. It had made him very conscious  of himself as a scaffolding of bone with flesh,  blood and gut packed into the interstices. The thought of ham sandwiches or sausage rolls had  no immediate appeal. But neither his mind nor  his body could find anything wrong with the  thought of a large stiff scotch (pure malt, drunk with a large dash of gusto) and accordingly he  settled down in his room with the aforesaid  medication and tried to think about the work  in hand.

He was disturbed to find how little it interested  him. When a man had devoted his life to something - even, some might say, destroyed it for that  something - the least that something could do in  return was not bore him.

The telephone rang. It was the duty sergeant.

'Sorry to bother you, sir, but I was just wondering if you knew when Sergeant Pascoe would be back. I know he's out doing something for you  and . . .'

'I am not Pascoe's bloody keeper! Nor am I  a bloody answering service. What do you want  him for?'

'It's not me, sir. It's the young lady, Miss Soper,  the one who was with him, at the week-end, you know. And she's very insistent on getting in  touch with him, so I thought in the circumstances  I would ask . . .'

Heart. There's a nasty outbreak of heart about  this bloody place, thought Dalziel. The usual symptoms. Swellings of sympathy, failure of the proprieties. He drank the rest of his whisky.

'Put her through to me,' he said on impulse.

'Hello?'

'Hello, Miss Soper. Dalziel here.'

'Oh.'

'Sergeant Pascoe's not here at present, but I hope  to be seeing him later. Was it urgent?'

'No. No, not really.'

'Forgive me asking, Miss Soper, but is it a private matter? Or is it police business?'

'I didn't realize you drew a distinction, Superintendent.'

That's better, thought Dalziel. That's the authentic liberal radical left-wing pinko Dalziel-hating  note.

'If it's police business, Miss Soper, I'm sure the  sergeant would want you to tell me.'

'What kind of police business had you in mind?'

Dalziel poured himself another scotch with his  free hand.

'You are linked with a current inquiry, Miss  Soper. Please accept my sincere condolences on  what happened at the week-end. It must have  been very trying for you.'

'Oh yes. I was very tried. Very tried indeed.'

Dalziel sighed and drank deeply.

'But, please, if any pertinent information should come your way, think carefully before you burden  Pascoe with the weight of it. It's wrong to put  overmuch strain on a man's loyalties. Wrong for everyone.'

'Let's chuck the circumlocutions, shall we? What're you trying to say, Superintendent?'

'I'm trying to suggest,' said Dalziel, his voice  rising in spite of himself, 'that if for instance the  man, Hopkins, should get in touch with you, it's  your plain duty to inform the authorities. It would  be wrong, and stupid, and bloody selfish to tell  Pascoe and then try to get him to conceal the  information. That's what I'm trying to tell you,  Miss Soper. Not that you ought to need to be told, you're supposed to be so damn clever. Pascoe's a  good lad, he's got a fine career in front of him if  no one starts screwing him up. You stick to giving  him soldiers' comforts in the night and leave him  to do the job he's paid for.
That's
what I'm trying  to tell you.'

He stopped and listened, waiting for a verbal explosion in reply or the sound of the phone  being hammered down. Instead of either, he  heard a soft rhythmic sound like a broken humming. It might have been either weeping or  laughter.

'Miss Soper?' he said. 'Miss Soper.'

The line went dead.

He poured another inch of whisky. As usual, he had been right, he thought, staring down into  the glass. This outbreak of heart was spreading  widely. It was going to be difficult to avoid the  contagion.

'Hello, Eric, or little by little,' said Angus Pelman,  smiling through the Land-Rover window at the  very damp boy on the grass verge.

Eric Bell was unamused by the facetious form of address. He hadn't been amused the first time  he'd heard it and since then had found no reason  to adjust his reaction.

'Hello, Mr Pelman,' he said politely. The man after all was a friend of his parents, though the  word 'friend' seemed to have a rather odd meaning  in the adult world. His mother and father always  seemed delighted with Mr Pelman's company,  made much of him, plied him with drink. But  after his departure, the things they said about him though not always comprehensible were clearly far  from complimentary.

'You'd better get in,' said Pelman. 'Though you couldn't get much wetter.'

Eric climbed in.

'No school today?' asked Pelman.

'No. The teachers are having a meeting.'

'Oh? With the holidays they get, you'd think  they could meet in their own time. Don't you  think so, Eric?'

Eric didn't bother to answer, ignoring his number  one dictum,
it pays to be polite to adults.
He was going to pay the price he realized almost immediately.

'Was that you I saw earlier going up Poplar Ridge?' said Pelman casually.

'Up Poplar Ridge?'

'That's right.'

'It might have been.'

'Oh. There's not a great deal up there, is there?'

'Not much.’

 ‘No,’ said Pelman. 'Except the clay-pit.'

Eric fixed his eyes on the rain-pustuled glass in  front of him. The windscreen-wiper was defunct  on the passenger side and could only flick spasmodically like the broken wing of a shot bird.

His mind worked quickly. He saw no reason at  all to trust Pelman. He hadn't laughed at his jokes, which is the biggest of anti-male sins. Therefore  Pelman was almost certain to put the idea of  the pit in his mother's mind. And that would  be that. When it came to extracting information,  Chinese inquisitors were mere unsubtle blockheads by comparison with his mother.

The best hope was to create a diversion.

'Yes,' he said. 'The clay-pit is up there. But  that wasn't why I went. I went to look at the  car.'

'The car?'

'Yes. There's a car up there. I went to see if it  was still there.'

'What kind of car?' asked Pelman, slowing down.

'A blue car. A Mini.'

The Land-Rover came to a gentle halt by the roadside. Pelman peered closely at the boy.

'A blue Mini, Eric. Did you find it, or did somebody tell you about it?'

Eric thought quickly. It sounded better for him if he'd merely gone to investigate someone else's  report, he decided.

'Someone told me,' he said, adding virtuously,  'I wouldn't have gone up there.'

'That's very interesting,’ said Pelman, setting the Land-Rover in motion again. 'Then we'd better tell  somebody else, hadn't we?'

On the surface, Jane Collinwood was even more  upset at the loss of her employer than her fellow  secretary had been, but Pascoe suspected she was  thoroughly enjoying the thrill of being so closely connected with a real life murder. She was a  pretty girl, except for rather crooked teeth, not  much more than seventeen, and full of the careless vigour of youth which overflowed even into the little bouts of weeping she thought the fitting  punctuation of her speech.

He asked the obvious questions without much hope. Anything odd she'd noticed? Any reason  to think someone might want to hurt Lewis?  Everything she replied discouraged him more and more in his theory that there might have  been something personal in this killing. Dalziel was right, as always. The house-breaker had  been disturbed and lashed out in panic. Tough  on Lewis.

'Do you know why Mr Lewis came back on  Monday?' he asked finally, preparatory to leaving.

'Oh no. Not exactly.'

'Not
exactly
? But you've got
some
idea?' asked  Pascoe, suddenly interested. 'You heard something  in the morning?'

'No, I didn't hear anything. I'd no idea he was coming back. It was just later when I heard . . . the  news . . .'

'Blow your nose,' said Pascoe with headmistressly  firmness. It seemed to work.

'I presume it was something to do with Mr  Atkinson.'

'Who's he?' said Pascoe puzzled. The name rang  some kind of bell, but not one connected with  Lewis.

'I don't really know,' said the girl.

Pascoe was beginning to feel irritated, but he  kept it in check. The girl's blether was far too near  her eyeballs, as he had heard Dalziel say in one of  his more Scottish moments.

'Then why do you say . . . well, whatever it is  you
do
say?'

He thought he'd done it again, but she recovered. It was very hard being sympathetic for  long, he suddenly realized. Grief was so anti-life.  It is a relationship with the dead, emotional  necrophilia.

'Mr Atkinson and Mr James and Mr Matt...’

'Who?'

'Mr Cowley and Mr Lewis. I always called  them . . .'

'All right. Go on.'

'Well, they had been doing some business together for a long time. It seemed to be private,  I mean there wasn't any correspondence, not that  I was asked to do anyway.'

'Miss Clayton perhaps?'

'Perhaps. She was senior.'

She made seniority sound like a disease thought  Pascoe.

'Anyway, I knew Mr Atkinson by sight. He always said hello when he came into the office.'

'And what makes you think that it was this  business that brought Mr Lewis back on Monday?'