Deadheads (4 page)

'Bloody hell,' said Dalziel, opening his eyes and sitting upright. 'And Dick really believes this?'

'That's why he was here. Though I think the more he talked it through - which was a great deal
more
, I've cut it down by at least ninety-nine per cent - the dafter it sounded to him. But he stuck to his guns.'

'Oh, he'd do that all right, would Dick,' grunted Dalziel. 'But there must've been something brought it on in the first place.'

'Two things,' said Pascoe. 'Evidently he had some kind of row with Aldermann last Friday. He made it clear to Aldermann that even though Eagles was dead, he was still going to block his elevation to the Board. He had to go out to a meeting then, leaving Aldermann in his office. Later he returned and worked well into the evening, long enough to need his desk lamp on. It's one of those Anglepoise things. He pressed the switch and got hit by an electric shock which knocked him out of his chair. He recovered pretty quickly - he's very fit for his age, he says, does a lot of swimming - and he put it down to a bad connection. But yesterday morning something else happened. He went to get his car out of the garage. It's got one of those up-and-over doors. It seemed to be a bit stiff so he gave it a big heave and next thing, it came crashing down on top of him. Fortunately he's a pretty nifty mover. He dropped flat and the door crashed on to the boot of his car. I've seen the dent it made and he can count himself lucky. So he crawled out a bit shaken and that's when he rang you and started shouting murder.'

'You've examined the garage door, I take it?' said Dalziel.

'Yes. It weighs a ton, but it just looked like the decrepitude of age to me. Still, the tech boys are taking a really close look at it, and I had someone collect the lamp from Elgood's office too. At a glance, nothing shows. Just wires working loose and shorting. But I've told them to double check everything, seeing as he's such a good friend of yours, sir.'

Dalziel ignored the gibe, looked towards his closed door and bellowed.
'Tea! Two!'

The door rattled and even the disregarded telephone shifted uneasily on its rest and let out a plaintive ping.

'Coffee for me,' said Pascoe without hope.

'Tea,' said Dalziel. 'Caffeine clogs the blood. That's why all them Frog painters' ears fell off, and God knows what else besides. Did Dick say he'd had another encounter with Aldermann on Monday? I mean, had he expressed surprise to see him still alive or anything?'

'No. In fact, Mr Elgood seems to have kept out of the office on Monday. He went down to some cottage he owns on the coast. Presumably that's how he keeps so fit swimming.'

'Aye, that's the least strenuous form of exercise that goes on down there, I gather,' chortled Dalziel. 'It's stuck on the edge of a cliff that's being eaten away by the sea. They say that every time Dick takes a new fancy woman down there, another bit gets shaken off.'

'Too much caffeine, perhaps,' said Pascoe. 'Anyway, Aldermann wouldn't need to see him to know he was still alive, would he? He'd have heard in the office if anything had happened.'

'So you think there's something in it, do you, Peter?' asked Dalziel.

'I didn't say that,' said Pascoe emphatically. 'It all sounds very far-fetched to me.'

There was a perfunctory knock at the door, which opened immediately to admit a tin tray bearing two mugs and borne by a man distinguished by the elegant cut of his sober grey suit and the extreme ugliness of his asymmetrical features.

'Either we're overmanned or undermanned, Sergeant Wield,' said Dalziel sarcastically. 'Where's that young tea-wallah?'

'Police-Cadet Singh is receiving instructions on traffic duties at the market roundabout, sir,' said Wield.

Cadet Shaheed Singh was the city's first Asian police recruit, who had brought out all that was colonial in Dalziel. The boy came from a Kenyan Asian family and had been born and bred in Yorkshire, but neither bits of information affected Dalziel's comments, which were at best geographically inaccurate, at worst criminally racist.

'Well, it'll make a change from rickshaws for the lad,' he said, taking the larger of the two mugs and sipping noisily.

'Tea,' he diagnosed. 'The cup that cheers.'

Pascoe took his mug and drank. It was coffee. He smiled his thanks at Sergeant Wield, winning a suspicious glance from Dalziel.

'What's Dick got against Aldermann, anyway?' asked the Superintendent. 'Why doesn't he want him on the Board?'

'Two reasons,' said Pascoe. 'First is, because it's become a test of his authority as chairman. Aldermann's appointment would be a serious defeat for him. Second, because he honestly doesn't think Aldermann's up to it. He reckons he cruises along, with only a token interest in the firm and his job.'

'Is that right? Might be worth taking a look at this paragon,' said Dalziel. 'I could likely find him a slot in CID.'

Pascoe ignored this and said, 'We can hardly just go barging in to his house, sir, and say we're checking an allegation that he's committed a couple of murders.'

Dalziel looked surprised, as if he could see no real objection to this way of proceeding. Sergeant Wield coughed and handed Pascoe a list of names and addresses.

'That trouble in the multi-storey on Monday, sir,' he offered as explanation. Dalziel looked exasperated. The 'trouble' referred to had been the vandalization of some parked cars by scratching their paintwork with a sharp metal instrument. It was not the kind of thing a sergeant was expected to interrupt his CID chiefs conference with.

Pascoe had more confidence in Wield. He examined the list. One of the names was underlined in red.

Mrs Daphne Aldermann. Rosemont House, nr. Garfield. VW Polo, metallic green, scratchings on bonnet.

He looked interrogatively at Wield, who said, 'It's his wife, sir, I checked.'

Pascoe showed the list to Dalziel who said, 'So what?'

Pascoe said, 'It's an excuse to call, sir. Take a look at this Aldermann without him knowing.'

Dalziel continued to look doubtful. Wield tactfully withdrew.

'Still,' continued Dalziel, 'if it's your considered opinion that we should nose around a bit more, Peter . . .'

'I didn't necessarily mean . . .'

'Sharp lad, that Wield,' continued Dalziel. 'Him and that darkie would make a grand pair on night patrol. The villains wouldn't stand a chance. They'd not see one of 'em and one look at t'other would frighten the buggers to death! What else did he say when you discussed Dandy Dick with him?'

Suspecting a reproach, Pascoe said, 'I trust his discretion as well as his judgement, sir. It'll go no further. What he said was he'd rarely heard such feeble reasons for suspicion as those given by Elgood. Then he went off and came back an hour later to say that from what he’d been able to learn about Elgood, for him to come to us on such weak grounds he must either in your own phrase have gone doolally, or else there was something he hadn't told us.'

Dalziel thought about this for a moment and then inclined his head in what Pascoe hoped might be the beginning of a nod but turned out to be only the beginning of a right-handed scratch down his spinal column, then across the left shoulder-blade.

Muffled, and apparently emerging from the stubble of greying hair which was all that Pascoe could see of the huge head, came Dalziel's voice.

'It's your case, Peter. Keep me in touch, that's all I ask. Just keep me in touch.'

'Yes, sir,' said Pascoe rising. 'I will.'

When he left he took his mug with him, not doubting else that Dalziel would soon have been examining the grounds with all the keenness of a sadistic fortune-teller in search of disaster.

4

CAFÉ

(Floribunda.Unusual blend of coffee and cream in the opened bloom, useful in floral arrangements, sweet aroma.)

Ellie Pascoe dunked a gobbet of bread roll in her coffee, tested the temperature and then applied the soggy wad to her baby's lips which sucked at it greedily.

Daphne Aldermann regarded the proceeding with some alarm.

'Isn't she rather young?' she ventured.

'Ignore all else but not this teaching,' said Ellie, 'that life is reached by over-reaching.'

'What's it mean?' wondered Daphne.

'Christ knows,' said Ellie. 'But don't worry. The coffee in this place is mostly milk, sugar and chicory. But the bacon butties are divine, don't you agree?'

This place had turned out to be a café, or more definitely,
T
HE
M
ARKET
C
AFF
, a title printed in fading letters along a sagging lintel above a steamed-up window mistily overlooking the open air market. Stall-holders drifted in and out, each, so far as Daphne could make out, on some personal timetable which meant that every combination of food, from breakfast fry-ups through teatime cake-and-scones to cocoa-and-sandwich suppers, was in demand. Ellie and Rose were obviously known here and it struck Daphne that Ellie greeted the many expressions of delight in the baby with none of that instant put-downery her own enthusiasm had provoked. She doubted if the balance of sincerity and conventionality here was much different from her own, so the solution could only lie in the source, but she had not plucked up courage to make this observation to this rather formidable woman when Ellie, whose grey eyes had been observing her with some amusement, said, 'You're quite right. Working-class crap is much more tolerable than middle-class crap because they've not had the chance to know better. On the other hand, my husband says thinking like that is itself a form of condescension and therefore divisive.'

'He sounds a clever man. I wonder. Does he earn half as much as most of these workers who've not had the chance to know better?'

Ellie smiled. This blonde, horsey, country-set woman might turn out to be worth a smoking.

'Probably not. But money's not the really important thing in our class matrix, is it? And it's certainly not brains, and it's only incidentally birth. It's education, not in the strict sense, but in a kind of masonic way. It's learning all those little signals which say to other people
look here, recognize me, I'm a member of the club.
You start learning them in a very small way at places like St Helena's, which is why I'm agin them. Also I can't smoke and wave a banner at the same time and I'm trying to cut down on smoking. Have one.'

She offered Daphne a filter-tip which she took. They lit up. Ellie dragged deep on hers and said, 'First of the day.' Daphne took a quick, short puff, coughed violently and gasped, 'First of the year.'

'Why'd you take it then?' said Ellie.

'It's hardly the most offensive thing I've taken from you this morning,' said Daphne.

Ellie said, 'You're a sharp lady, lady.'

The door opened and Daphne who was facing it saw two policemen enter, removing capes dripping from the still pelting rain. One was an older man in the traditional tall helmet; the other wore the flat cap of a cadet beneath which a good-looking young Indian face peered out at the momentarily silenced customers, whose chatter instantly resumed when it became clear all that the newcomers were after was a cup of tea.

'If I'm sharp, then it's a sharpness I picked up at places like St Helena's,' said Daphne.

'And boarding-school?'

'I was a day-girl. It was only in Harrogate, but yes, it was a boarding-school.'

'Well, to quote my husband again, that's one thing you've got to give the English single-sex boarding-school. It teaches you to hold your own.'

The two policemen were coming up behind Ellie in search of a table. The elderly constable glanced down and to Daphne's surprise his stern hello-hello-hello face broke into a smile.

'Hello, Mrs Pascoe,' he said. 'How are you?'

Ellie looked up.

'Well, hello, Mr Wedderburn,' she said. 'I'm fine.'

'Haven't seen you in here for a long time,' continued the constable. 'How's the kiddy?'

Ellie's eyes flickered towards her companion to see if she'd caught the implication of the policeman's remark. She had.

'Oh, she's blooming. Blooming this, blooming that.'

'Isn't she good,' said Wedderburn, impressed by the baby's sang-froid.

'In crowds and company and public places, yes,' said Ellie. 'She saves up her bad side for private performance only. She'll make a good cop. Who's your friend?'

'This is Police Cadet Shaheed Singh,' said Wedderburn gravely. 'He's just been learning that hell is the rush-hour on market days. Singh, this is Mrs Pascoe, Detective- Inspector Pascoe's wife.'

The cadet smiled. He looked like one of those elegant handsome young princes who at one time always seemed to be playing cricket for England.

'Nice to meet you, missus,' he said in a broad Yorkshire accent which made Wedderburn's sound like Eton and the Guards.

'You too, Mr Singh,' said Ellie. 'Won't you join us?'

Singh was clearly willing but Wedderburn said, 'No, thanks, Mrs Pascoe. We'll sit over here. There's one or two of the finer points of traffic control I need to discuss with the lad here and you'd likely find it a bit boring. Nice to see you.'

They moved away.

'Well!' said Daphne. 'So I'm in with the
fuzz.'

The word sounded alien on her tongue, perhaps because her upper-class accent squeezed it almost into
fozz.

'And,' she continued, pursuing her advantage, 'far from being your daily port of call, this elegant establishment is merely a stage-setting to soften up your victims!'

'Not quite,' grinned Ellie. 'But, OK, I did choose it specially this morning.'

'To turn me into a Trot? Or, with your police connections, are you really an
agent provocateur?'

'What's your husband do?' asked Ellie.

'He's an accountant with Perfecta, you know, the bathroom people.'

Ellie looked momentarily surprised, then said, 'And how's your long division?'

'Terrible,' admitted Daphne. 'But I don't see . . . ah!'