Ruling Passion (17 page)

She looked at him in exasperation.

'I'm telling you. Mr Atkinson went along to the office that afternoon.
That's
why it was probably  about their business. Why else should he go to the  office when it was closed?'

Pascoe restrained himself with difficulty from shaking her till her crooked teeth rattled.

'You
weren't at the office on Monday afternoon  though?'

'No. But I was in the High Street shopping  and I saw Mr Atkinson and Mr James going into  the office.'

'Ah.'

There didn't seem much else to say for a  moment.

'What time was this?' he managed finally.

'About three. A bit later perhaps.'

'But you didn't see Mr Lewis?'

'No.'

'Sure?'

'Of course I am! I'd have noticed, wouldn't I, especially as he was meant to be in Scotland?'

'I suppose you would. This Mr Atkinson now. . .'

He paused. Suddenly he recalled where he had  seen the name.
John Atkinson. Lochart 269.
In Sturgeon's telephone book. It was an absurd coincidence.

'What does he look like?'

'Look like. Well; I don't know.'

Tall? Tall as me?'

'Oh no. A bit shorter, I'd say. But broader across  the shoulders. And he's older too. He's got grey  hair. And a nice smile.'

'Thank you, Miss Collinwood,' said Pascoe. 'You've been very helpful. Just one more thing.'

It was absurd. But he might as well ask.

'Just where in Scotland is Mr Lewis's cottage?'

'Where? It's in a village somewhere. Near a place called Callander.'

'Lochart?'

'That's right. How did you know? It sounded  very nice. He once said I could stay there some time. When he and his family weren't there, of  course.'

'Of course,' said Pascoe, not even noticing the  imminence of tears this time. His mind was too occupied elsewhere.

His indifference seemed to be therapeutic, for suddenly the girl brightened and smiled sweetly  at him.

'Are you driving through town? You couldn't  give me a lift, could you? I want to make a hair  appointment. It's my birthday on Saturday.'

'Certainly,' said Pascoe. When she smiled she looked extremely pretty. She should smile more  often. Perhaps everybody should.

But he could not feel that any possible development in this particular case was going to cause  much amusement.

Chapter 6

'Don't be daft,' said Dalziel more from habit than  conviction. 'What kind of connection could there  be?'

'I don't know, sir,' said Pascoe. 'All I know is the connection that already exists.'

'Lewis has a cottage in a village called Lochart  where Sturgeon appears to know somebody? It's  not much!'

'Where Sturgeon appears
not
to know somebody. Remember that Harry Lauder, or whatever  his name was, denied the existence of an Archie  Selkirk.'

Dalziel whistled a few bars of 'Roamin' in the  Gloamin', ending with a scornful discord.

'And there was the other man, Atkinson, also  with a Lochart number.'

'Oh? Have you tried ringing it?'

'Not yet. I thought I'd check with Lauder first.'

'Go ahead,' commanded Dalziel waving at the  phone on his desk.

He's hooked, thought Pascoe. It's a bit early yet for him to admit he likes the taste, but the bait's  been swallowed.

'And there's another connection,' said Pascoe as  he waited for his call to be put through.

'Yes?' said Dalziel, who had removed his left  shoe and was scratching the sole of his foot on  the corner of his desk.

'They were both burgled.'

'So they were. But so were a dozen others. You're not seriously suggesting that Lewis wasn't  killed by laddo, but by someone else who had it in  for him personally?'

'I don't know, sir.'

'You realize there's only one guy to date who might connect the two things. And that's your  mate, Sturgeon. What's the theory then? He wants  to do for Lewis, so lies in wait for him at his  home, beats him to death, then makes it look like a housebreaking along the same lines as happened to him? Did he strike you as being the  super-criminal type?'

'On the contrary,' said Pascoe. 'But men do  strange things when . . . hello! Sergeant Lauder?  Look, it's Sergeant Pascoe again, Mid-York . . .  PASCOE, yes. We spoke earlier. No, it's not about  Archie Selkirk again. No. John Atkinson. What's  that you say?'

Some impediment on the line suddenly cleared  and Lauder's voice came through loud and as clear  as his accent would permit.

'No. There's nae such creature, Sergeant Pascoe. What is it that's making ye think all the missing  persons in Yorkshire are coming here to Lochart?  We're just a wee village, ye ken. Are ye no' mistaking us for Glasgow, mebbe?'

Dalziel took the phone from Pascoe and held it  close to his lips.

'This is Detective-Superintendent Dalziel here,  Sergeant. Let's not waste public money. Just answer  the questions. Right? Lochart 269, whose number's  that?'

'Good evening to ye, Superintendent Dalziel.  You're no' from these parts, are ye? If it was a  Dalziel you were seeking after, I could lay my  hands on a dozen. They seem to be very thick  about here.'

Too true anywhere, thought Pascoe, keeping a straight face with difficulty.

'Now, 269. Well, that's easy. It's the hotel. The  Lochart Hotel. It's very comfortable, I believe.'

'I'm not bloody well going to stay there!' roared  Dalziel. 'Listen, I'm interested in a man called  Atkinson, John Atkinson, who may have stayed  there in the recent past. I don't know how recent.  Now if without causing too much disturbance you  could find out when he was there, how long, and  (if possible) why, I'd be very grateful.'

Description,
mouthed Pascoe, trying to make it  look somehow accidental.

'Shall I try for a description also?' asked Lauder.  'To make sure it's the right man?'

'Please,' murmured Dalziel with a self-restraint  which Pascoe would not have believed he possessed. 'Soon as you can, eh.'

He gave Lauder his telephone number, replaced the receiver, and picked it up again straightaway.

'Get me the infirmary at Doncaster, will you?'  he said. 'I want someone who knows something  about the condition of Mr Edgar Sturgeon. I
don't 
want some little brown man who doesn't know a  thermometer from a banana.'

If they could expel Dalziel from the Commonwealth, thought Pascoe, there might be hope for  peace in our time.

'Your girl-friend called, Sergeant,' said Dalziel  suddenly.

'What?'

'I spoke to her.'

'What!
I mean, what did she want, sir?'

'How should I know? She said bugger all to  me.'

A tiny, tinny voice was coming out of the ear-piece with which Dalziel was massaging his bald  spot. Finally he became aware of it.

'Hello!' he roared, reducing it to silence. But  after introducing himself, he settled down to listen.

'Well, there's no help there,' he said when he  had finished. 'It seems to me as if Sturgeon and  Lewis are soon going to have something else in  common. They're both going to be dead.'

The men searched the ground thoroughly for over  an hour. Then they searched it again, this time  with a metal detector. Only after this second search  and after as comprehensive a photographing of  the area as was possible outside Hollywood did  Backhouse send the order to tow the blue Mini-Cooper away. There was no question of driving it  away. The ignition had been left on, the engine was  sodden wet and the wheels had buried themselves  deep in a morass caused by the recent rains.

Backhouse walked through the gap in the wire  and peered down into the clay-pit.

'I wouldn't go too near the edge, sir,' said Constable Crowther, practising what he preached and  standing a good two yards back. Always sensitive  to local expertise, Backhouse retreated before asking why.

'If you look over to the other side, sir, you'll see  there's quite an overhang. Well, that continues all  the way round. They gouged deep into the sides  before they decided the place was played out.'

'When was that?'

'Oh, when I was just a lad, sir. I'm from these  parts, as you know. There was always trouble  with the drainage, I believe. Water coming in,  but not finding a way out very easily. Finally they  struck an underground stream and that was that.  Once they stopped pumping it away, the place just  filled up.'

'It's deep then?'

'It is, especially after the rain we've been having.

Deep and dangerous. Bits of the overhang drop  in from time to time. That's why they've got this  wire round it. But what's wire to kids? Or anyone  determined to get through?'

'What indeed?' said Backhouse staring at the  neatly cut gap in the fence. 'Any fatalities?'

'Three, sir, that I know of.'

'Children?'

'That's what you'd expect, sir, but the answer's  no. If they'd all been kids, something would have  been done about the place long ago. Only one was  anything like a child. Boy of sixteen, skylarking with friends round the edge, slipped and fell in.  He couldn't swim.'

'And the others?'

'A man and woman, sir. Suicide pact. They were having an affair, but there were difficulties. They both wanted divorces but there was  little chance of that. So they talked it over, it  seems, then strolled up here one night and jumped  in.'

'Good Lord! Yes, I seem to remember something.  About twelve years ago?'

'That's right, sir.'

'I wasn't in this area then, of course, but it was in  the national Press. Wait now, wasn't one of them  called..’

'Yes, sir. Mary Pelman. She was married to Mr  Angus Pelman.'

'Well now. There is a thing, Crowther,' said  Backhouse. It was difficult to know whether he was commenting on Crowther's information or  the arrival of the breakdown vehicle which came  grinding up the long, wet track from the distant road.

'We found her almost at once,' Crowther continued. 'She came up to the surface. He stopped  down in the mud. It took nearly three weeks before  they got him out.'

'Who does it belong to, Crowther?' asked  Backhouse, watching the breakdown truck negotiate itself into position before the Mini.

'No one, really,' said Crowther. 'Mr Pelman  owns most of the land on this side, the south. His  house is at the back of that ridge over there. Then  the land drops away, woodland mainly, down to  the village.'

'The woods behind Brookside Cottage?' said  Backhouse.

'That's right. But there's no direct route. Not for  a car. It'd have to come round by the road and up  the old track. Three miles about.'

'Something seems to have come this way pretty regularly,' said Backhouse, examining the ground  carefully. 'I wonder why? And who would want  to cut a gap in the wire?'

'Can't say, sir,' said Crowther. 'Do you think  Hopkins is in there, sir?'

'I don't know yet. I'm not even sure if I'd like him to be. It'd be neat, certainly. But I don't  know.'

Forgetting Crowther's injunction, he strolled back towards the edge, thinking of the odd, enigmatic note found in the car. It was back at HQ  now undergoing the most rigorous examination.  Fingerprints, handwriting, type of paper, all would  be subjected to the closest scrutiny. But the state of  mind of the writer was what interested Backhouse.  Could it be read as a confession and the last desperate cry of a man about to drown himself? It might  well be. Hopkins seemed to have been something  of an original. Perhaps the opinion of that other  highly individual young man, Sergeant Pascoe,  might be worth seeking. If it could be obtained without sparking off some kind of explosion.

The breakdown truck was advancing from the  bosky tunnel into which the Mini had reversed. He  turned to watch it. It wasn't possible for the truck  to turn towards the track until the car was clear  of the undergrowth. Therefore it came straight towards him. For a frightening second he thought  it wasn't going to stop, but the driver began to spin  the wheel round a good twenty feet away. In any  case, it could hardly come through the small gap  in the wire.

One of the truck's wheels lost its grip on the soft  ground momentarily and began to spin. Foolishly  the driver revved up and the next minute both  were spinning wildly.

Half-wit, thought Backhouse, staggering slightly  for some reason. Fainting fit? he wondered. The  first warnings of a stroke? It was frightening, as if  the ground were moving under him.

'Superintendent!' yelled Crowther.

Backhouse, still surprised, stepped towards him,  then turned his step into a leap, as beyond all  dispute the ground moved.

Crowther seized him by the hand and dragged  him violently away from the quarry. Quite unnecessary, Backhouse thought, as he turned and looked  back. It was a goood two seconds before a long  section of earth, including the bit on which he  had been standing, slid undramatically out of sight  into the depths below. It was difficult to see any  difference. If it hadn't been for the posts supporting  the wire leaning drunkenly out into space it would  have been impossible to detect that anything had  happened.

'Get this thing out of here before it causes any  more damage!' commanded Backhouse, pointing  at the truck.

'If he's under that little pile, sir, he'll be hard to  find,' said Crowther.

'We'll find him, never fear,' said Backhouse. 'If  he was buried under a mountain, we'd find him.'

'Hello! Peter?' said Ellie uncertainly, standing at  the open front door.

'Hello, love,' said Pascoe, stepping into the hall-way. 'Come on in.'

Ellie entered, still looking puzzled, and followed him into a comfortable sitting-room furnished in a  period-less old-fashioned style.

'What are you doing here?' she asked. 'Or more important, what are
we
doing here? This isn't a subtle way of setting the scene for a marriage-proposal, is it? Because if this is your idea of home,  I refuse!'

'It's not bad,' protested Pascoe. 'Very cosy.'

'So it's cosy! It also reeks of a-woman's-place-is-in-the-home. You've got a very Victorian paterfamilias look about you.'