Death Comes for the Fat Man (23 page)

“It’s understandable that she’s concerned,” said Kentmore.

“Drinks?” said Pascoe.

Kentmore and Ellie had scotches. The woman had a vodka on the rocks, grimacing when he offered her tonic. Pascoe had another lager.

He said, “Quite a night.”

“Not what I was expecting, and I don’t just mean the lady with the gun,” said Kentmore. “I made it quite clear when they invited me that my brother’s death was a no-go area. I gather Ellie got ambushed too.”

“Bloody right, I did,” said Ellie. “Ffion even pretended to have completely forgotten Pete was a cop when I reminded her that I didn’t answer questions on his job.”

Kilda glanced at Pascoe and raised her thin black eyebrows.

“Good to see naïveté isn’t a gender thing, eh, Peter?” she murmured shaking her glass to produce the tinkle of ice undulled by liquid.

He returned her smile and refilled her glass. When he looked at Ellie he saw, unsurprised, that she didn’t take kindly to being called naïve, even when she definitely had been. Or maybe, he told himself smugly, she just didn’t care to see him exchanging smiles with a sexy young woman, which Kilda in her skinny and bony way defi nitely was.

Kentmore said, “I read about the explosion. Good to see you didn’t d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 171

take any long-term damage, Peter, but Ellie was saying your boss is still very ill.”

“Yes,” said Pascoe, more brusquely than he intended.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to intrude,” said the man, finishing his drink.

“Think we should be moving.”

“No, look, have another drink,” said Pascoe, pushing the bottle forward as he recalled that not only had this guy also been through a traumatic experience, but his intervention had probably stopped Ellie from flinging herself on the gun-toting woman. “I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that there’s nothing to tell. Andy, that’s my boss, is in a coma. Nobody knows if he’ll come out of it, or if he does, what condition he’ll be in.”

He thought he spoke calmly but Kilda reached across to him and gently squeezed his hand. Kentmore poured himself more whisky, which he drank as if he needed it. As if in sympathy the woman helped herself to another large vodka.

Ellie said, “I wonder what drove that poor woman to do something so crazy.”

“Some close personal loss, I’d guess,” said Kilda. “It drives different people to different things.”

She spoke dispassionately, you might almost have said uncaringly, if you didn’t know about her own loss, thought Pascoe. What had it driven her to? Drink, was the obvious answer.

He said, “Yes, you’re right.”

He saw no problem in passing on what Wield had told him about the woman, confident that every detail of her life would be splashed across the papers tomorrow.

When he finished, Kentmore nodded and said, “Yes, I noticed her earlier and thought she looked a bit disturbed. Didn’t expect a gun, though.”

Ellie said, “If Fidler wanted a panel with some strong personal slant on the terrorism question, maybe the bastard got his researchers to make sure some of the audience were affected too.”

“I’d put money on it,” said Pascoe.

“It’s terrible using people like that,” said Kentmore angrily.

172 r e g i n a l d h i l l

“I did try to warn you about shows like Fidler’s,” murmured Kilda, whose glass seemed to be fi lling itself.

“Yes, you did,” said Kentmore, frowning. “But I was foolish enough to believe my views on agriculture were enough to make me prime-time television fodder. Silly me. Ellie, Peter, I think we should be heading off. Many thanks for your hospitality.”

He hesitated, then took a card out of his wallet and set it down on the table.

“Look, it would be nice to keep in touch, if you like, that is. In fact, as I was telling Ellie earlier, doing a bit of touting for custom, it’s our local village fete tomorrow . . . ”

“Yes,” said Pascoe, seeing where he was heading. “I heard Fidler giving it a plug. Weather forecast sounds good. I hope you have a lovely day.”

But Kentmore was not to be diverted.

“They always have it on one of my fields,” he went on. “From what you were saying, your little girl’s going to miss out on her skating treat.

I know it’s not the same, but the organizers always go out of their way to give the kiddies a good time. So, just a thought, we’re no distance really, Haresyke, just the far side of Harrogate. If you felt like a breath of country air . . . ”

“What a nice idea,” said Ellie. “We might just do that, mightn’t we, Peter?”

She spoke with a degree of enthusiasm which seemed to go beyond politeness.

“Yes. Sounds great,” he said.

His own effort at enthusiasm must have fallen short, because Kilda Kentmore grinned slyly at him, then finished her drink and leaned forward to brush her ice-chilled lips against his cheek, murmuring,

“Thanks for the drink. Good night, Ellie.”

Ellie shook Kentmore’s hand and said, “Thanks for the lift, and everything.”

“My pleasure. Good night.”

“Well, you seem to have made a hit there,” said Ellie after their guests had left.

“He seemed a nice enough guy,” said Pascoe.

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 173

“I wasn’t talking about the guy, but Miss Stolichnaya. Weird relationship.”

“You find a nice guy taking care of his dead brother’s widow weird?”

“Still taking care a couple of years on I find weird. But you’re right, he is rather nice. For a land-owning, Tory-voting, peasant-oppressing country squire, that is. Maybe it would be fun to drive down and take a look at him in his natural milieu, what do you think? And at lean and thirsty Kilda too, of course.”

“Kilda,” said Pascoe. “Interesting name. Rings a bell.”

“She is, or was, a fashion photographer. Dropped out after she lost her husband, I gather. But maybe you recall it from a few years back when you were drooling over the lingerie adverts in the glossy mags.”

“Could be. But isn’t there a saint called Kilda?”

“Wrong,” said Ellie one of whose less attractive traits was combin-ing snippets of esoteric knowledge with a love of being right. “True, it’s the name of a barren, windswept island in the Outer Hebrides whence all life has fled, but in fact there never was an actual saint called Kilda.

So a sort of pseudosaint. Fits in most respects so far as I can see.”

Women beware women, thought Pascoe. Time to move on. But subtly.

“Talking of lean mean women,” he said, “how did things end between you and F-Fiona? Did you pull one of her two f-faces off ?”

“Don’t be silly. I offered her a deal. Either I strangled her there and then or she undertook to get my next book the biggest exposure since Harry Potter.”

“I presume she’s still breathing? I think you’ll do very well in the media business, love. You’ve got the right twisted mind for it.”

“You reckon? So how would your nice straight mind react if I said let’s take this bottle of scotch upstairs and finish it in bed?”

Pascoe stood up and said, “I feel a twist coming on.”

7

I N T H E M O O D

On Saturday morning two nurses were straining their backs cleaning and rearranging Dalziel.

“Much more of this and they’ll be finding a bed for me,”

complained one of them, a little blonde with the face and figure of a well-fed angel. “How long before they switch this bugger off ?”

Her friend, used to excursions into the macabre as an escape route from the everyday horrors of their job, replied, “Could be they’re keeping him going till they find someone in need of a big heart. With his weight, he must have a huge one.”

“Not just his heart,” said the fi rst nurse, looking down. “Wonder if I could get that transplanted onto my Steve? Mind you, with his weak knees, he’d probably fall over every time he stood up!”

Dalziel, could he have heard the exchange, might have enjoyed a good laugh. Unfortunately, he isn’t having an out-of-body experience today. In fact, he is very much in body, awareness reduced to a pinprick of dim light in a black box at the bottom of the deepest shaft of an abandoned mine. There is nothing in this awareness that could be called memory, not even of the most generalized kind—rain in the grass, light on the land, sun on the sea—no sense of anywhere else, not even really a sense of
here
and
now,
just the thinnest membrane of differentiation between pinprick and darkness.

And the only choice remaining is when to let the pressure of the dark pop the membrane and go out, go out, beyond all doubt . . .

The blond nurse said, “Right, that’s Fatty done. No, hang on. Best put the music back on else his girlfriend will be looking for someone’s arse to kick.”

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 175

Cap Marvell’s mini-disc frequently got switched off, sometimes because a cleaner wanted the power point, sometimes because a con-sultant didn’t like competition with the sound of his own voice, sometimes because a member of staff simply found
Swinging with the Big
Bands
even pianissimo set his teeth on edge, but mainly because very few people believed it served any function other than to bolster delu-sional hope.

But delusion was not a term anyone cared to use in the face of Cap Marvell’s very real anger, so now the strains of “In the Mood”

played by the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra stole forth once more, crept into the Fat Man’s ear and sent its brassy brightness spiraling down into the darkness.

A couple of seconds later a momentary respondent syncopation of the hitherto regular notes of the heart monitor might have interested the nurses but by now they were out of the door and on their way to their next angelic assignment.

8

W I T H O U T F E A R O R FAV O R

On Saturday morning Pascoe, as a result of what had been very much an in-body experience, woke late.

Ellie’s side of the bed still bore her warm imprint and he rolled into it as he ran over the events of the previous night. After their initial frantic bout of lovemaking, Ellie had confessed how frightened she’d been at the sight of the gun and he had told her how he had felt in those long minutes after the screen went blank. Then they had lain silent in each other’s arms for a long while, clinging to each other less like lovers than a pair of lost children in a dark forest who can face any terror except the terror of being alone.

The bedroom door opened. He looked toward it, smiling, expecting to see Ellie come in bearing coffee and croissants.

She came in, but coffee-less. And she didn’t return his smile.

“I just heard the news. They’ve murdered Mike. Did you know about this?”

Who’s Mike? he wondered, but happily before he could articulate the question his brain answered Michael Carradice, aka Abbas Asir, suspected terrorist.

He sat up and said, “There was something on the news about a body, his name was mentioned but nothing defi nite. Has it been confirmed it’s him?”

“Oh yes. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I had other things on my mind, remember?”

“Like sex, you mean?”

He didn’t reply but regarded her gravely till she grimaced and said,

“Sorry. I know . . . I’m just so . . . shit, I don’t know what I am. This is England, isn’t it? But there’s bombs going off, people getting their d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 177

heads chopped off and waving guns around on the telly, and now this . . .

what’s happening, Pete?”

He reached out his hand and drew her down beside him onto the bed.

“I don’t know but I’m going to find out,” he said. “What else did the police say?”

“Just that they confirmed the body was his. The reporters kept on asking about cause of death. Cause of death: poisoning. Not ricin as everyone’s saying—that would have taken much longer. A massive injection of diamorphine. Quicker. And kinder, though I doubt if that played much part in their thinking. I put the telly on and I saw the shot they took of the dinghy he was in, and the banner.
Now it’s safe.

Pete, they’re saying they’ve heard from those Templar lunatics who beheaded Said Mazraani. He was acquitted, and they murdered him just the same.”

“They probably murdered him because he was acquitted,” said Pascoe somberly.

“And what are your Manchester chums doing about it?” she demanded, pulling away from him. “Or do they reckon this is just someone doing their dirty work for free?”

“I’ll be sure to ask next time I see them,” said Pascoe. “Now maybe we ought to get ourselves decent before Jane turns up with our daughter.”

He walked through a quick shower and got dressed. He could smell coffee being brewed downstairs. He picked up his mobile and dialed the Lubyanka. When the phone was answered he identifi ed himself and asked if Lukasz Komorowski was in.

His thinking was simple. To anyone else he might have to explain his interest in Carradice, or risk them putting their own interpretation upon it.

To his surprise he got put through instantly.

“Hi,” he said. “Didn’t know if you’d be there.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” said Komorowski. “How is your wife, by the way?”

“You saw the show?” wondered Pascoe.

“No. Not my thing. But I heard about it.”

I bet, thought Pascoe.

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“She’s fine. But this Carradice business coming on top of it . . . look, I know this is personal, but if there’s anything you know, I’d appreciate it.”

“No problem,” said Komorowski. “With acquittal very much on the cards, naturally we arranged surveillance. We had men in place. In addition we’d put a trace on him, a bug in the heel of his shoe. While he was being processed out of the system, his solicitor was telling the Press his client would be joining him shortly to answer their questions.

But of course he didn’t. The bug told us he was still in the building.

When we went looking we found his shoes on top of a lavatory cistern.

We assumed this had all been part of a ruse concocted by his brief so that he could leave via one of the other exits. His lawyer denied it, but we were unpersuaded till we got the news that his body had been found in a dinghy floating on a Nottinghamshire reservoir. Cause of death. Ricin poisoning.”