Ruling Passion (2 page)

'Telephone,' he said, his voice low, his mind  racing. From the dining-room a narrow flight of  stairs ran to the next floor. His ears were alert for  any slight sound of movement above.

'Yes,' said Ellie. 'Doctor. No, ambulance is better,  there was a hospital sign, do you remember?'

There was a telephone on the floor beside one  of the two armchairs. She bent over it.

'No,' said Pascoe, taking her arm and pushing her towards the front door. 'We passed a  phone box down the road. Use that. And get the  police. Tell them they'll need an ambulance and a  doctor.'

'Police?' repeated Ellie.

'Hurry,' said Pascoe urgently.

He heard the Riley start as he placed his foot  carefully on the first stair. It creaked, the second  even more so, and, abandoning stealth, he took  the rest at a run, narrowly missing cracking his  head against the ceiling cross-beam halfway up.

He went through the nearest door low and fast.  A bedroom. Empty. Bed unslept in.

The next the same. Then a bathroom. A tiny  junk-room. One more to go. Certain now the first  floor was uninhabited, he still took no chances and  entered as violently as before.

Looking down at the bed, his heart stood still.  A pair of children's handcuffs lay across the two  pillows. In one bracelet was a red rose. In the other  a young nettle. On the bedhead above was pinned  a paper banner.

It read
Eloisa and Abelard, Welcome Home.

Pascoe felt the carapace of professionally he  had withdrawn behind crack across. The room  overlooked the rear of the house. He did not look  out of the window but descended rapidly. With a  great effort of will, he forced himself to confirm  by touch what his eyes had told him, that the two  men were dead.

Timmy used to play the guitar and when in  funds gave presents of charming eccentricity to  those he loved. Carlo (it
was
Carlo, the one eye  which remained unscathed told him that) had a  fiery temper, adored Westerns, demonstrated for  civil rights, hated priests.

These were memories he didn't want. Even less  did he want to kneel beside this woman, turn her  gently over, see the ruin of soft flesh the shotgun  blast had made in Rose Hopkins.

She was wearing a long silk evening gown. Even  the rain and the dew had not dulled its iridescent  sheen of purple and green like a pheasant's plumage. But her eyes were dull.

The sundial against which she lay had an inscription on its pedestal. He read it, desperately trying  to rebuild his carapace.

Horas non numero nisi serenas.

I number only the sunny hours.

He was still cradling the dead woman in his arms  when Ellie returned, closely followed by the first  police car.

Chapter 2

'Dalziel here.'

'Hello, Andy. Derek Backhouse here.'

'So they said.' Dalziel's voice fell a long way  short of enthusiasm. 'It's been a long time. And  you must be after a bloody big favour, to be ringing  on a Saturday morning.'

'No favour,' said Backhouse. 'I'm ringing from  the station at Thornton Lacey. I've got one of your  men here. A Sergeant Pascoe.'

Pascoe!' said Dalziel, livelier now. 'He's not been  crapping in the street again, has he?'

'Sorry?'

'Joke,' sighed Dalziel. 'What's the problem?'

'Nothing really. He's down here visiting some  old friends.'

'So?'

'So when he arrived this morning, three of the  old friends were dead. Shotgun at close range.'

Now there was a long silence.

'Christ,' said Dalziel finally. Another silence.

'That's rough,' said Dalziel. 'I don't think he's  got enough old friends left to spare three.'

Backhouse made a moue of distaste at the callousness of the comment, though he thought he  detected a hint of real concern in the intonation.  But he might have been mistaken.

'Anyway,' said Backhouse, 'I'm just interested  in confirming that he and Miss Soper didn't arrive  till this morning.'

'She's with him, is she?' grunted Dalziel.

'You know her?'

'Vaguely. Hey listen, my lad, you're not thinking  Pascoe had anything to do with this, are you?'

'Just checking, Andy. He says he got held up on  a case last night.'

'Too true, he did. He wasn't best pleased, but he's  a dutiful lad. He was here till about nine-thirty.  Then we had a drink till closing. That suit you?'

'I think so. We haven't had the PM yet, but the  doctor was very certain it happened last evening.  I wasn't really concerned about the sergeant, but I  wanted to be sure. He may be a great help to us.'

'Now watch it!' said Dalziel threateningly. 'We've  got work to do here too, you know. Nothing  glamorous like a multi-murder, but someone's got  to catch thieves. And I need Pascoe. He's due back  Monday. I'll expect him Monday.'

'We do have experienced detectives of our own,'  said Backhouse drily. 'No, the way he can help is  with his knowledge of the missing man.'

'Missing man?'

'Didn't I say? We're one light. The host, the man  whose cottage it is, Colin Hopkins. Your sergeant's  special mate.'

‘I see,' said Dalziel. 'You reckon him for it,  then?'

'I'd like to talk with him,' said Backhouse cautiously.

‘I bet!! Anyway, what you're saying is you want  Pascoe to help pin this on his mate? You're asking  a bit much, aren't you?'

'It was his friends who died,' said Backhouse  quietly.

'Well, he's a good lad. Is he there? I'd better  have a word.'

What kind of grudging condolence did he propose? wondered Backhouse.

'He's with Miss Soper at the moment. She is  badly shocked.'

'Later then. But I want him Monday. Right? I'll  look for you on the telly!'

Bloody old woman, thought Dalziel as he  replaced the receiver. He scratched the back of  his left calf methodically from top to bottom, but  derived no relief.
The itches you scratch are internal, 
someone senior enough to dare had once told him.  He looked with distaste at the mound of files on his  desk. Suddenly they seemed trivial. Stupid twats  who spent good money on pretty ornaments, then  didn't take the trouble to look after them properly.  Somewhere in that lot there was a pattern, a flawed  system. There was always a flaw. A man lay at the bottom of that pile and they'd find him in the end.  But today, this moment, it seemed trivial.

It was a rare feeling for him. He wasn't a man  who took his work lightly. But now he stood up  and went in search of someone to drink a cup of  tea with and talk about football or politics.

The enormity of what had happened had not  struck Ellie for some time after her return to  the cottage. She had not gone into the building  but made her way along the side of the white-washed garage into the garden. At the bottom of  the dew-damp lawn, audible though not visible,  ran a stream in a deep cutting, shaded by alders and  sallows. The murmuring water, the morning-fresh  garden unheated yet by the lemon sunlight, the  flight of a white-browed blackbird from a richly  laden apple-tree, all helped to make unreal the tableau formed by the man on his knees by the dead  woman at the foot of the sundial. Only the gnomon  of the dial, cutting the fragrant air like a shark's fin,  seemed to be of menace.

Something shone, brighter than dewdrops, in  the grass around the body. Pieces of broken glass.  Her first concern was intimate, domestic. Pascoe's  trousers might be torn or, worse, his knees cut.

She knew, and had known since she first looked  from the window, that Rose was dead. Calling for  an ambulance was a gesture, the drowning swimmer's last clutch at the crest of the wave that will  sink him. The ugliness of it, visible now as Pascoe laid the woman on the grass once more, was the  greater shock. But even that she assimilated for the  moment as she turned back to the cottage, looking  for the others. Pascoe stopped her before she went  in through the open french window.

But it had been too late to stop her seeing what  lay inside.

The police-station at Thornton Lacey was merely  the front ground-floor section of the pleasant  detached house in which Constable John Crowther  and his wife lived and which they would give up  with great reluctance when Crowther reached  retiring age in a couple of years. Neither he  nor his wife was particularly impressed by the  arrival of major crime in their little backwater.  There was nothing in it for the constable except  trouble. At this late stage in his career, not even  personal solution of the crime and apprehension of the criminal could bring him promotion.  But he was a conscientious man and, unasked,  was already preparing for the superintendent a  resume of all local information he felt might be  pertinent.

His wife, a craggy woman whose outward semblance belied her good-heartedness, took one look  at Ellie on her arrival at the station and led her  into the kitchen for tea and sympathy. Ellie had  deteriorated rapidly under the treatment (a necessary process, well understood by Mrs Crowther) and  by the time Pascoe came away from Backhouse, she had been given a mild sedative by the doctor and  removed to a bedroom.

Doctor Hardisty, a rangy, middle-aged man  whose unruly grey hair gave him a permanently  distraught look, met Pascoe at the kitchen door.  They had encountered once already at Brookside  Cottage.

'You all right?' he now asked diffidently.

'Fine,' said Pascoe. It wasn't altogether a lie. The  act of signing the coolly formulated statement had  produced a temporary catharsis. Momentarily the  morning's discoveries had been reduced to the  status of a 'case'. He even found himself prompted  to question the doctor about his examination of  the bodies, but decided against it. Hardisty was the  local man, living and practising in the village. By  now the bodies would be on their way to the mortuary and the probing knife of the pathologist.

By now Timmy and Carlo and Rose would be  on their way . . .

He nipped the thought off smartly.

'Miss Soper?' he asked. 'How is she?'

'Resting upstairs. I've given her something.'

'May I see her?'

'If she's awake. It's straight ahead on the landing.'

Pascoe turned and began to climb the stairs.

Ellie opened her eyes as he came through the  door. Her dress was draped tidily over a chair and  she lay under a patchwork quilt in her slip.

'OK, love?' said Pascoe, taking her hand.

'Doped to the back teeth,' she said. 'I don't want  to sleep. It's always worse remembering when you  wake up.'

'You've got to sleep,' he said gently. The sight  of her lying there so palely moved him almost  as deeply as the discovery of the three corpses  had done.

She nodded as though he had performed some  feat of subtle persuasion, and closed her eyes. But  as he opened the door to leave, she spoke again.

'Peter,' she said. 'Where's Colin? He's got to  be told.'

'It's all in hand,' he said reassuringly. 'Sleep  now.'

On the stairs he felt dizzy and had to pause,  leaning heavily on the banister. It was certainly  in hand, the business of finding Colin. But the  searchers' motives were far from humane.

'You OK, Sergeant?' said Backhouse from the  foot of the stairs. He sounded more concerned  than the doctor had done.

'Yes sir,' said Pascoe, descending.

'Miss Soper asleep?'

'I think so.'

Backhouse looked closely at him, his thin scholarly face solicitous, assessing.

'I'm going back to the cottage. The lab boys  should be finished now. I wondered if you felt  up to coming with me. I'd appreciate your assistance.'

The ghost of a grin flitted involuntarily over Pascoe's lips at this semi-formal courtesy. Fat  Dalziel, his own superintendent, must have missed  out on this part of the senior officers' training  course.

'Certainly, sir,' he said.

Some minor telepathy must have operated. As  they climbed into the waiting car, Backhouse said,  'I've been talking to Mr Dalziel on the phone.'

'Oh.'

'He was naturally sorry to hear what had happened.'

Naturally. But I bet the sod didn't make the  normal polite distressed noises. Backhouse was  doing a translation job.

'He says you're too important to be spared past  the week-end, but I would appreciate what help  you can give me in that time.'

Appreciate
again. He was being given kid-glove  treatment. You didn't have to be a detective to  work out why. But let them say it. He was damned  if he was going to broach the matter.

Them.
With surprise Pascoe realized that he was  thinking of the police as
them.

'Stop here,' said Backhouse to his driver. The  car pulled up outside a high-roofed, pebble-dashed  building with narrow, church-like windows. A  well-kept notice advertised that this was Thornton  Lacey Village Hall. Beneath the gold and black  lettering a typewritten sheet supplied the menu  of activities that could be sampled in the hall  during the current week. Last night, for instance, the Village Amenities Committee had met. And  tonight the Old Time Dancing Group was scheduled to waltz, fox-trot, two-step, and polka its  way down Memory Lane. But the light fantastic would have to be tripped somewhere else,  thought Pascoe as he followed Backhouse into  the building.

The large musty-smelling room was full of  activity. Shirt-sleeved policemen were arranging  tables and two Post Office men were fixing up  telephones. All the lights were on to supplement  the meagre ration of sunlight the windows let in.

The station's too small,' said Backhouse. 'Especially if this turns into a large scale operation. Which  I hope it won't.'

He glanced sideways at Pascoe, then looked  quickly away. A uniformed inspector came to meet  them.

'Anything new?' Backhouse greeted him.

'Just a couple of things, sir.'

The inspector glanced assessingly at Pascoe,  then led Backhouse away to the far end of the  hall. Pascoe thought of following. He was desperately keen to discover what was going on but  also very conscious of his ambiguous position. He  was merely a witness, he had no official standing here.