Bones & Silence (18 page)

CHAPTER
TWO

From each according to his ability: to each according to his need.

Dalziel had once stated this as the basis of his allocation of CID duties during an investigation. Pascoe had not cared to inquire if its source was a conscious or unconscious irony. But the morning after Waterson's second vanishing act and Wield's first gay assault, he had to admit the fat man seemed to have got it just about right.

He, Dalziel, had undertaken to grill the landlord of the Pilgrim's Salvation, and it was a universally acknowledged fact that grilling was hot and thirsty work. Seymour had been despatched to see if his boyish charm could get more out of Pamela Waterson than the Superintendent had managed the previous night during an interview inhibited by the pressure of her duties and the presence of Ellison Marwood.

And he, Peter Pascoe, husband of a woman who was constantly urging upon him the need for more pulses and bran in his carnivorous diet, found himself in a health food shop.

The clue which had drawn him here was the car number Wield had noted. A computer check revealed the owner of the blue Peugeot estate to be a Mr Harold Park of 27a String Lane. This was an off-city-centre street whose buildings were listed as being of architectural interest, though it was hard to imagine to whom. There was no visible 27a but 27 was a single-fronted, grimy-windowed shop called Food For Thought, sole prop. Gordon Govan. Pascoe entered and found himself at the end of a short queue of three monks being served by a shadowy figure with an accent like Billy Connolly with a bad cold. Finally the brown-robed figures left, lugging several hundred-weight of assorted seeds and grasses. Pascoe could only hope they bred budgies. He stepped up to the counter and the accent was joined by a pair of bright blue eyes and a tangle of gingery beard.

'Mr Govan, is it?' said Pascoe. 'Excuse me, but I'm looking for 27a.'

'Is that so?' mused the Scot, rolling non-existent r's.

'It is indeed. A Mr Harold Park.'

'You don't say?'

Pascoe sighed and produced his warrant card.

'The polis, is it? You should have said. I get some really weird characters in here.'

'Like monks?'

'Och, the wee brownies, you mean? Aye, we do a lot of business with the religious communities. They say it's in the Bible, but I reckon that stuff damps the libido, and that'd be a kind of advantage in their situation, I'm thinking. You know, a bit of roughage is cheaper than a bit of rough. Paul's Epistle to the Aberdonians.'

This threw an entirely new light on Ellie's leguminous evangelism. Pascoe switched it off and said, 'Mr Park? Can you help?'

'Aye. 27a's a wee flat above the shop. You reach it up the entry round the side. But he's no' there just now. He's a traveller, you see. Sometimes a whole week or more goes by without sight nor sound of him.'

'What's his line?'

'Veterinary products, I'm thinking. Pills for poodles, that kind of thing. Can I take a message?'

'You can ask him to contact me when he gets back. Here's my card. But I'll probably call back again anyway.'

'Aye, you'd be wise to do that,' said Govan, accompanying him to the door. 'Some people don't rush to help the polis, know what I mean? Me, I like to keep a good relationship going. Never know when we might need each other, eh? Man, I hope you've not far to your car. It looks like coming on rain. Or worse.'

It was indeed a cold snarling sort of day and in the east beyond the just visible cathedral tower a swelling bank of cloud threatened the snow this mild winter had so far spared them.

Pascoe turned up his collar and said, 'I'm almost parked in the close. Nearest I could get, the Lane's so narrow.'

'Och, man, you should have come round the back. There's loading yards behind all these shops, did you not know that?'

Of course he knew. He'd been a cop too long in this town not to know its ins and outs. He just hadn't thought, that was all. Or rather he'd thought like a citizen instead of a policeman. Perhaps it wasn't just his leg that had needed a repair job.

He was scurrying along the pavement, head down in anticipation of the oncoming storm, and once again it was ordinary citizen Pascoe in charge, not DI Pascoe, for he was totally unaware of the pursuer at his heels till the attack was launched.

He felt his arm seized from behind. He began to turn, defensive reflexes lumbering into life, but it was too late. A hand caught at the nape of his neck, his head was dragged back, and the main assault was launched at his unprotected face. He felt a soft warm moistness against his mouth, and just as he registered what was happening and started to enjoy it, contact was broken and Chung said, 'Now that's for being a good boy, Pete, honey.'

'What do I get for being a bad boy?' gasped Pascoe.

'We'll have to debate that with Ellie,' laughed Chung. 'But not in the street where we may frighten the natives.'

Several of the natives were already looking at them with undisguised interest. Pascoe couldn't blame them. It wasn't often that you saw a defenceless policeman being sexually assaulted in Mid-Yorkshire.

He said, 'OK, what have I done?'

'We got him, Pete! He's said he'll do it. Hallelujah! I've found my God!'

'He's really said he'll do it?' said Pascoe incredulously.

'I had to work on him a bit,' she grinned. 'But yes, I've hooked the big one. And I just wanted to say thank you, Pete. Without you, I couldn't even have got started.'

'Oh no,' said Pascoe emphatically. 'It was nothing to do with me!'

'Don't be modest, sweetie.'

Chung sank a little in Pascoe's admiration. A director of the top rank ought to be able to tell the difference between modesty and blind terror.

'Walk with me a ways,' said Chung, her grip on his arm brooking no denial. 'I'm on my way to the close to break the news to the Canon. Seems he may have got some silly notion he was up for the part and we don't want him sulking, do we?'

After a few paces her need to use her arms when talking gave him his release but he didn't try to escape. There was in her company such an overflow of vitality that a man would need to be a very dull clod to want to evade that warm aureole.

She was talking about her plans for the Mysteries and after a while Pascoe managed to distance himself sufficiently from her infectious enthusiasm to say, 'Chung, what I don't really get is why you're so keen on these plays. I should have thought they embodied just about every ism that ever got up your nose. I can see how you can direct Shakespeare to get your own ideas across, but surely this stuff is pretty intractable?'

She punched him. It may have been intended as a playful blow but the ribs that received it felt like they could now fit into a thirty-six jacket instead of his normal forty-two.

'So that's how you see me, huh? A preachy polemicist? Well, maybe, but that's not where I start, Pete. The play's the thing, the conscience-catching comes a long way second. This is where it all began, these are the roots, the modern European theatre starts here -'

'I thought the Greeks -' interrupted Pascoe foolishly.

'Same sort of thing, but it died and had to start all over again, this time with
our
society,
our
psychology, our meterology,
our
gods; and we can tune in at a stage far earlier in evolutionary terms than Greek classical drama.'

'You sound very . . . Euro-minded,' said Pascoe cautiously.

'What dat you say, my man?' mocked Chung. 'Don't let the slanty eyes fool you, my boy. My daddy brought my mummy back from Malaya with him and this little girl was brought up in would you believe Birmingham?'

She laughed joyously at the idea. Why it should seem so incongruous Pascoe wasn't sure, but he found himself laughing too.

By now they had passed his car park and were at the entrance to the close. Pascoe halted and said firmly, 'I am not going any further. You can spike your Canon without my moral support.'

'Hey, if I need a policeman, I'll blow my whistle,' said Chung. 'But don't go. Come into the cathedral with me, let me show you something.'

Once more he was whirled along, this time out of the chill winter air into the chiller a seasonal atmosphere of the great church. It was empty except for a couple of shadowy figures, which Pascoe hoped were human, gliding along a side aisle. His agnosticism was not proof against the humbling power of these vibrant spaces but Chung's flame burnt bright enough to meet whatever occupied them on level terms. She led him to the choir and made him stoop to look at the woodcarvings beneath the misericords. They consisted of figures, some individual, some in small groups, but all finely differentiated, of men at their trades and at their play. Here were tanners, tinkers, herds and hunters; here were men playing pipes and tabors, shawms and citoles; here were dancers, dicers, tumblers and mummers.

'The guy who carved these knew those people, he'd seen them, he knew they were as important and everlasting as anything else in this place. I'm not doing any prissy historical reconstruction, Pete. I'm plugging into the continuum. Come on, there's some more in the Pliny Chapel.'

But when they reached the chapel they found it was occupied. Named after Sir William de Pliny, whose tomb stood here, topped by a full-size brass effigy of himself and his wife, with a small dog at their feet, this tiny chapel was set aside for private prayer. Standing at the foot of the tomb with her head bowed was a woman. Pascoe paused on the threshold but Chung went straight in. For a second he thought this was crass insensitivity, then she spoke and he realized it was quite the opposite.

'Mrs Horncastle, are you all right?'

He didn't recognize the woman till she looked up. But in the brief moment before she re-organized her features to a social smile, he recognized Chung was right to be concerned.

'Miss Chung. How are you?' she said.

'I'm fine. Like I say, how are
you?'

'Oh, don't worry about me. Really I'm fine too.'

'You looked upset,' said Chung bluntly.

'Did I? Perhaps I did. It's silly. Don't laugh, but it's the dog.'

'The dog?'

'Yes.' She set her hand on the little brass dog's head and stroked it.

'I used to have a dog very like this, a little terrier, Sandy, I called him. He got on Eustace's nerves. Well, he could be naughty, I suppose. And whenever he wanted a walk, he used to jump up and lick my face, then run to the door and leap up at the handle as if he were trying to open it. Sometimes he scratched the paint and Eustace became really furious. But it was only paint, wasn't it?'

'I'd say so,' said Chung gravely. 'What happened to Sandy?'

'He died. He somehow got out by himself and wandered out of the close into the main road and got knocked over. People said I should get another, but Eustace said I would be foolish to risk getting so upset again over a dumb beast so I never did. I'd often noticed how like Sandy the Pliny dog was - at least I thought so, though Eustace said I was imagining the resemblance. But they were alike.'

Suddenly she laughed and said, 'Do you have dreams, Miss Chung?'

'You mean, like ambitions?'

'Oh no. I gave those up long ago. I mean dreams, while you're asleep. I expect you do. Who doesn't? They mean nothing. Well, I had a dream, only I've had it two or three times and repetition suggests significance, doesn't it? I dreamt I woke up but couldn't move and after a while I realized that I was made of brass, like Lady de Pliny here, lying on top of our tomb with a brass Eustace by my side. And even though I was brass, it was so cold, so bitterly cold, I could feel my whole being contracting with the chill of it, and I wanted to scream out in agony, only I couldn't, being brass. Then I felt a movement against my legs, and on and on, higher and higher, till suddenly there was the touch of something warm and moist on my face and I realized the little dog at my feet was licking me. Gradually the warmth of his tongue began to spread through my body till finally I was able to move. What pain those first movements cost me! I was like an old arthritic woman, tottery, weak, uncertain. I looked around and my little strength failed again. I wasn't just on a tomb, I was
in
a tomb, surrounded by solid walls running with damp and unbroken except by a huge metal door. It had a handle, but even when I crawled across to the door and pulled myself up by the handle, putting my full weight on it, I couldn't feel the slightest movement. Full of despair, all I could think of was to stagger back to my plinth and lie down again alongside Eustace, this time for ever. But when I set off back, the dog rushed by me and began leaping up at the handle, just like Sandy used to when he wanted to go for a walk. Of course, at home he could never reach it and even if he could, he could never have turned it. There I stood by my brass husband, watching the poor little beast leaping higher and higher, but always in vain, and do you know, I felt sorrier for him than I did for myself. So I determined to stagger back to the door and have one more try, when suddenly he gave a mighty bound and his teeth caught around the handle and for a moment he hung there, feet scrabbling at the door, and he looked so pathetic I could have wept. Then slowly the handle began to move. I couldn't believe it. Lower and lower he pulled it, lower and lower. Then there was a loud grating noise and the door swung slowly open, and through it I could see a sunlit lawn and hear birds singing. And Sandy let go and dropped to the ground and stood outside in the sunlight, barking at me to join him.

'Now wasn't that a silly dream, Miss Chung? A silly woman's dream?'

She tried for the bright tone of one who is amused at her own absurdity but Chung did not respond in kind.

'Oh no, Mrs Horncastle,' she said. 'I don't see anything silly in it. Nothing at all.'

She put her arm round the woman's shoulders as she spoke and Pascoe, who had been edging further and further back as the story progressed, turned and hurried from the gloomy cathedral alone and felt a quite illogical relief to find himself out in the chill winter daylight once again.