Ruling Passion (23 page)

'Aye, aye. But it seemed best. I've been a fool,  Mavis. All that money, all we had, gone. And the  bungalow. It seemed best . . .'

His voice tailed away and he and his wife had wept comfort to each other.

The picture broke up was replaced by thoughts  of Ellie. She was somewhere being threatened,  but he didn't know who by. Unless it was Anton  Davenant, but why should he . . .

Again the picture collapsed and when it reformed  it was in the likeness of Dr Hardisty with Backhouse standing in the background.

'You'll do,' pronounced the doctor. 'There may be some mild concussion, but you're not cracked open. These fellows should stop the headache from taking you apart.'

He handed over a bottle of tablets. From his demeanour Pascoe gathered that he must have been giving an appearance of rationality while he  was being examined. It was not a comforting thing to be aware of the body's capacity to carry on in a straight line while the mind was circling quite  other spheres of time and space.

'Thornton Lacey has not been a happy place for you, Sergeant,' said Backhouse.

'No, sir.'

'We'll get you back to Crowther's now. You need  some rest.'

'What about the man who attacked me, sir?'

'The police are being as efficient as you could wish, Sergeant,' said Backhouse smiling. 'It was  probably just some local tearaway who knew the  place was empty.'

'Probably,' agreed Pascoe. But a telephone bell  kept ringing in his mind as he went out to the  waiting car.

Chapter 2

Dalziel didn't know whether to be happy or  ashamed at the growing frequency of his bouts  of lust. In his league of gross appetites, sex had  always come a very poor third to whisky and food.  Perhaps it was his recently initiated diet which had  unbalanced things, but lust had suddenly rocketed  to the top, taking him quite by surprise. Also  surprising was the cause of it, Ellie Soper in a  simple cotton dress which let the sunlight filter  through.

He stood up as she approached his table. It  was pleasant out here in the little garden of the  Jockey with this extra bonus of summer making the Martini sunshades rather less ludicrous  than usual.

'Like what you see?' she asked as she sat down.  He realized he had been staring.

'It'll be cold in an hour,' he said.

'What will be?'

‘It didn't do to start lusting after subordinates' womenfolk, he thought. Especially when they  were sharp-tongued and ill-disposed.

'What'll you drink?' he asked, sitting down abruptly. 'Sam!'

'Yes, Mr Dalziel?' said the barman, appearing with great smartness.

'Gin and tonic,' said Ellie. 'It must be nice to be  known.'

'Not always. It's nice here though.' He nodded  approvingly at the village of Birkham.

'It's convenient,' said Ellie. 'It's half-way. I like  to meet people half-way.'

What am I doing here? wondered Dalziel.

'Now, what are we doing here?' asked Ellie.

'Christ knows,' grunted Dalziel. 'I'm giving an  explanation. You might like to think it's an apology.'

'As long as it's just that. I get suspicious when  middle-aged men start ringing me up as soon as  my boy-friend's gone away for the night.'

'Don't flatter yourself,' said Dalziel. He scratched  his armpit. If they thought he was bloody repulsive, he might as well look bloody repulsive.

'It's the inquest tomorrow then.'

'Yes.'

'You know why they've reopened it? Normally  nothing'd happen. The police would get a man,  he'd be tried, found guilty. The registrar of deaths  would put it in his book. Murder, manslaughter,  whatever. This lot's different. They'll bring in a  verdict of murder and name Colin Hopkins.'

'But why?'

'No one down there thinks the body's ever going  to come up. At least it might not. It's hard to do  things in law without a body. But they've got three  others for the coroner to work on.'

Ellie's drink arrived. The barman looked in mock  amazement at Dalziel's still untouched glass.

'On the wagon, Mr Dalziel?'

'I'm being dragged behind, Sam.'

'Well, don't forget, there's a big one in the bottle  for you.'

Dalziel waited till he had left their table.

'There was a note, you know. It'll be read. Conclusions drawn. Hopkins named. Everyone sleeps  happy in their neighbour's bed.'

'But what if Colin's still alive?' protested Ellie.

'What's the odds? A fake suicide note's as good  an admission as a real one.'

'I see,' said Ellie hopelessly. 'Peter thought much  the same.'

'He would,' said Dalziel approvingly. 'You know  his promotion's through? It'll be official tomorrow.'

'I heard. You're not building up to another  warning, are you?'

Dalziel laughed.

'Not really. No. We had a few words about that.  I must be getting soft. I can take anything from these lads now. Anything.'

'So I've heard,' said Ellie drily.

'But it made me think. I shouldn't have talked  to you on the phone the way I did.

‘No. You bloody well shouldn't.'

'No,’ agreed Dalziel.

'So you're sorry?'

'No point in being sorry. It's past now.'

'Jesus! So?'

'So what?'

'So what are we doing here?'

Abstractedly, Dalziel downed his drink in one  swallow then stared at the glass defiantly.

'Listen, I'm good. Of my kind of policeman, I'm  probably one of the best Pascoe will ever know. Mind you, I've peed behind too many doors to get  much farther. Pascoe, I reckon, of his kind, which looks like being the new kind, can potentially be  very good too. Excellent. If I live that long and he keeps going, I could be sirring him before we're finished. So my interest in him is self-interest in  a way.'

'You couldn't perhaps like him just a bit as well?'  inquired Ellie. She had softened a little but was still  very suspicious of this fat bastard.

'He amuses me sometimes,' said Dalziel. 'There's not many as do that.'

'I think I may marry him,' said Ellie thoughtfully.

'Good,' said Dalziel. 'Good. That would be best. I'm glad to hear you say that. Good.'

'Good?' repeated Ellie. 'Why, you fat bastard, that's what you want, isn't it? If you can't get us apart, you might as well get us respectable!'

'I told you I belonged to the old school. There's nowt wrong with a woman that can't be cured by colour telly, wall-to-wall carpeting and a couple of rounds up the spout,' he said with exaggerated  coarseness.

Ellie thought of kicking him in the crotch. Then she started laughing. She laughed so much that  people turned and stared and the dogs in the  nearby kennels started barking wildly as though  in reply.

'Let's have another drink,' Dalziel said when she  had recovered.

'All right. Just one. Peter's going to phone me  at eight. We can breathe heavily down the phone before we're married, can't we?'

She started laughing again. This time Dalziel  laughed too.

Pascoe slept for an hour and woke up feeling rotten. He got out of bed to take another pill,  felt slightly better and decided to ring Ellie. The  phone rang a dozen times. No one answered. He glanced at his watch. Seven o'clock. She'd  be having dinner. He went back to bed.

Ellie was enjoying herself. Her previous encounters with Dalziel had always been in polarizing situations. This evening they were keeping steadily  on neutral ground and she was finding it a pleasant experience. Like football in no-man's-land during a Great War Christmas.

He was talking about Sturgeon.

'There's only one crime and that's being poor,'  he asserted.

'Shaw,' said Ellie, through her fourth large gin. Dalziel took it as an expression of drunken agreement.

'You can grade men according to the way they react to being without money,' he continued.

'You're not going to tell me that the more you've had, the worse it is?' asked Ellie suspiciously. 'More sympathy for the rich, that kind of bullshit?'

'Not at all. Some people can take it. Some are so fond of luxury and position they'll do anything to conceal it. Others have been there before and are  absolutely resolved they'll never be there again.'

'Scarlett,' said Ellie. Even making allowances for gin, the chatter of people and the howling of dogs,  Dalziel couldn't make sense of this.

'O'Hara,' said Ellie. 'End of
Gone With The Wind 
part one before the intermission.'

'Yes,' said Dalziel. 'Great movie. Sturgeon was like this. Not for himself, mind you. For his wife.  He decided she would be better off with the insurance money. She didn't think so.'

'Get his money back.'

'What?'

She leaned towards him, exquisite in the darkling air.

'Get his bloody money back. That's what you're paid for, isn't it?'

'I wish it was as easy as that.'

The Fraud Squad's preliminary report had arrived  that afternoon. Quite simply, they could find no  case to answer, and as Dalziel could find no one  to answer this non-existent case, things were at a  stand-still.

It appeared that land had been bought, legitimately bought, from the fringes of the Earl of  Callander's huge estate near Lochart. It was land  fit for little except grazing sheep and by the terms  of the sale not usable for anything else either. A fair price had been given. The land agent who  negotiated the sale was acting for a Mr Archibald Selkirk about whom he knew nothing except that  he had placed at his disposal an amount of money  sufficient to cover the land price and expenses.

On the land was a small dilapidated croft. In the  record of the sale Archibald Selkirk had inserted after the single mention of the croft the words 
hereinafter known as Strath Farm.

So the land Edgar Sturgeon had purchased for something like thirty times its original value had  legally been the property of Archie Selkirk of  Strath Farm.

Where Archie Selkirk was now, or the money for that matter, was impossible to determine. No papers Sturgeon possessed were anything other  than strictly legal. The only evidence of fraud was the extortionate price paid by Sturgeon for the land. And, of course, Sturgeon's story.

'So the poor sod's had it!' exclaimed Ellie indignantly.

'Not altogether. If we can trace the man Atkinson,  or Selkirk, we'll have something to work on. But our best bet's dead, of course. Lewis.'

'He was definitely in it?'

'Oh yes. None of the land
he's
supposed to have  bought from Selkirk is registered to him. Poor Sturgeon got the lot. It's a good thing in a way.'

'Why?'

'Well, it's his only asset!' said Dalziel with a  grin.

Ellie stood up clutching her handbag to her  stomach.

'I was right about you,' she said clearly. 'You're a heartless old bastard.'

'Are you going?' asked Dalziel.

'Only to the loo. I'll have another gin when I  get back.'

The Jockey's conveniences were misnamed. The  gents consisted of a small brick outhouse, a fearful  journey on a rainy night. The ladies was inside at  least, but at the end of a long, gloomy corridor at some remove from the drinking areas. In rural Yorkshire the age when women didn't drink and  men used the wall outside was never far away.

Ellie was half-way down the corridor when she  heard a noise behind her. She began to turn her  head, but had only moved it through forty-five  degrees when something cold and slimily smooth  was thrust down over it. At the same time a knee was rammed jarringly against the base of  her spine.

She drew her breath to scream and sucked in a  mouthful of the cold and smooth material. She felt  her handbag being removed from her unresisting  fingers. For a moment the attacker's hand moved to her breast but the movement was acquisitive not exploratory and she felt her pendant being torn  from her neck at the same time as she was pushed  roughly sideways. Her shins struck something hard  and metallic and she fell to the ground. A door clicked shut. Then everything was quiet except for her own spasmodic breathing.

It took her several minutes to realize that she was lying among the buckets in a cleaning store-cupboard, that over her head had been a plastic  carrier-bag and, most mercifully, she was alone.

The door turned out to be without a handle on the inside and it took another five minutes to  attract attention.

'You've been a long time,' said Dalziel.

'A funny thing happened to me on the way to the loo,' she began.

Pascoe had been sleeping well the second time  round. Mrs Crowther's knock woke him from  a rather soothing dream in which he was pursuing Pelman slowly round the Kruger National  Park.

'I wouldn't have woken you,' said Mrs Crowther,  'only it's your young lady, Miss Soper, and if she  don't speak to you she's going to think you're  dead.'

It took several minutes to convince Ellie that he was in fact far from death's door, but finally she rather grudgingly accepted the fact.

'It's been a hell of a night so far then,' she said. 'I've been attacked too.'

'What!'

'Yes. A violent assault on my way to the loo in  the Jockey. I'm probably dreadfully bruised. And  then I was robbed.'

She told the story lightly, but Pascoe was extremely worried.

'Look, love, if they got your keys, you shouldn't  stay there alone.'

'Oh, I'm not alone. I'm well protected.'

'Who by?' asked Pascoe with sudden suspicion.

'That very perfect gentle knight - who else? Superintendent Dalziel. He's hovering. I think he'd  like a word.'

'Evening, Sergeant. Been in the wars again?  Mr Backhouse'll be getting ideas we can't handle  ourselves up here.'

'What's the form on this business, sir?' demanded  Pascoe impatiently.

'God knows. Accident? Someone saw his chance in the pub, made a grab, then probably drove off  home. No one noticed a thing of course!'

'What's been taken?'

'Precious little. A few quid. Toilet stuff. Her pendant. Nothing very valuable, Miss Soper assures me. It seems her men friends don't run to diamond bracelets and strings of pearls.' He laughed throatily. 'It hardly seems worth the effort, does it?'