Death Comes for the Fat Man (51 page)

“No need for that,” Sowden assured her. “There’s no problem with his heart.”

Cap said, “I know that. I mean on alert for you.”

During this period there’d been a ban on visitors other than Cap, but that night she rang Pascoe to tell him that Dalziel was fi nally visitable.

“I’ve told him all I could about what’s been happening,” said Cap.

“But he’s really keen to hear your own account, Peter.”

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 389

Which was a loose translation of, “I want to hear this from the horse’s arse.”

It was a shock to see him sitting up, and not a reassuring one. On his back, unmoving, and linked to life by tubes and wires, he had somehow remained himself. A beached whale maybe, but still Leviathan.

Now sitting up, pale and frail, talking and moving with visible effort, he was more like a fl ounder, flapping its last on the deck.

But he still had strength enough to make it clear he wanted to know everything that had happened with regard to the Mill Street investigation, so, at fi rst hesitantly then with accelerating fl ow, Pascoe told the story.

Dalziel’s weakness made him a better listener than he normally was. Perhaps even more surprisingly, Ellie scarcely interrupted at all.

Peace had broken out between the Pascoes with his assurance that his flirtation with the murky world of CAT and all its works was defi nitely over. His transgression was forgiven, but not, he suspected, forgotten, and when he reached the point in his story at which he tricked Kentmore, he attempted to glissade over it, but the Fat Man was on it in a fl ash.

“You told him I were dead, and the bugger actually believed you?”

“Well, yes,” said Pascoe.

Dalziel shook his head incredulously. Pascoe caught Ellie’s eye to see if she shared his amusement that in this long twisty tale of death and deceit, the one thing the Fat Man found it hard to credit was that anyone could believe he was dead. She stayed stonyfaced. Forgiven he might be, but it was going to be a long time before she found anything about the deception amusing.

“You must have been bloody convincing,” said Dalziel accus-ingly.

“Well, actually, it was Wieldy who broke the news,” said Pascoe.

“I suppose he’s got the face for it,” said the Fat Man grudgingly.

“So, on you go.”

The climax at the Marrside Grange Hotel Pascoe precised considerably, as he’d done when describing it to Ellie, not caring or, to be fair to himself, not able to explain to her why when Kilda started counting he hadn’t been the first person out of the door.

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

Tottie Sarhadi’s heroic role he did full justice to, however, watching Dalziel keenly to see if there were any reaction to the name, but nothing showed.

Maybe he was being diplomatic with Cap Marvell in the room. Not that there was much chance of Cap hearing anything. Dalziel was in a large comfortable room with all mod cons in the private patient wing of the Central. Pascoe guessed that Cap Marvell was picking up the bill. One of the world’s great organizers, she’d walked all over hospital regulations and installed herself in the room also. At present she was sitting at a table by the wall, earphones on, working at her laptop, probably organizing some direct action of doubtful legality, thought Pascoe as he brought his story to its conclusion with a fittingly upbeat fl ourish, implying that everything was neat and tidy.

But the Fat Man, who had always been able to spot a loose thread on a Black Watch kilt at fifty yards said, “So let’s get things straight.

We’ve definitely got the buggers who put me in this sodding bed?”

“Yes. The Kentmores.”

“Grand. I hope they lock ’em up and throw away the key.”

Pascoe nodded agreement. It wasn’t the time or place to let out a hint of the growing ambiguity of his own feelings about the Kentmores.

They had murdered three men in Mill Street, they had almost killed Dalziel, and it was only the intervention of kismet in the person of Tottie Sarhadi that had prevented Kilda from further slaughter.

Yet when he thought of the two of them what came into his mind were images of Kilda, pale as a waif child and still unconscious, vanishing into the ambulance, and of Maurice’s stricken face as he received the deceitful news of Dalziel’s death.
Bound together on a wheel of fire.

Now permanently bound there. It was a hard way to come to the truth of poetry.

“And this mad SAS bugger, Youngman. You say you’ve got him, but I’ve not heard any mention of him on the news.”

“CAT have taken charge of him.”

“How’d you let that happen? You collared the bugger, didn’t you?

When I had a prisoner, no bugger took him off me ’less I gave the go-ahead.”

Pascoe winced at the unjustness of it all.

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 391

By the time he was done at Marrside, Youngman had been whisked away to the Lube where the mysterious Bernard was doubtless already airbrushing him out of the picture. There was nothing of substance to link him to the Mazraani beheading. As for the attempt on Hector, all they really had there was Hector’s jaguar sketch . . . ! Which left the Kentmores. And how willing would they be to testify against the man who’d helped Christopher in his dying moments?

Without Youngman, Pascoe could see no way of getting to Kewley-Hodge. And the galloping major was the only possible line of contact to St. Bernard.

Pascoe couldn’t even be sure he’d actually met the Templar mole during his time at the Lube. But a copper has to go with what he’s got and those he thought of as the likely suspects had all turned up at the Marrside Grange Hotel within the space of a few minutes, Sandy Glenister and Dave Freeman in one car, Bernie Bloomfield and Lukasz Komorowski separately. Whether they’d all come from the Lubyanka, or whether they’d been dragged from their weekend recreation he did not know.

They sat in the hotel office and listened to Pascoe’s account of events.

“Pete, you’re a very lucky man,” said Glenister when he fi nished.

“Yes, you are,” said Bloomfield. “Didn’t Napoleon try to surround himself with lucky men? I’m not sure if you deserve congratulation or reduction to the ranks, Peter.”

“It is like gardening, the only thing that counts is results,” said Komorowski. “This could hardly have worked out better.”

“Except perhaps,” said Freeman reflectively, “if Pete and Mrs.

Sarhadi had got out of the room with the others and Mrs. Kentmore had blown up herself and the Sheikh . . . ”

To Pascoe this sounded a cynicism too far but when he looked at the other three, he saw that they were all examining the proposition and finding much to agree with.

“Jesus!” he said in disgust. “If that’s what you want, why not just send out one of your own terminators and get the job done, nice and tidy?”

“I think you have been reading too many thrillers, Peter,” said Bloomfield. “We are not in the terminating business, as you put it. On 392 r e g i n a l d h i l l

the other hand,
Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive officiously to
keep alive.
”

He smiled but Pascoe ignored the attempt to lighten the atmo-sphere.

“Officiously keeping people alive was part of a policeman’s job last time I looked,” he said. “As for thrillers, it was reading Youngman’s books that put me on to the Kentmores. Maybe you people at CAT

should do a bit more reading.”

Freeman raised his eyebrows and looked at Bloomfield as if anticipating a sharp riposte, but it was Komorowski’s quiet pedantic voice that spoke next.

“For me, I think things have turned out well. We have smashed this Templar gang and we can put the fact that you were instrumental in saving Al-Hijazi’s life to good use, Mr. Pascoe. Most important of all, this time you have escaped injury. I say well done.”

“Quite right, Lukasz,” said Bloomfield. “Well done, Peter. Now let’s get out of here before the Press become intrusive. We’ll fi nish Peter’s debriefing back at the Lube.”

They had started moving to the door when Pascoe said, “No.”

The movement stopped.

Bloomfield turned and said, “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t work for CAT anymore, remember? Any further questions you want to ask, you’ll find me back home in Mid-Yorkshire. In the company of people I trust.”

“Now you’ve lost me, I’m afraid,” said Bloomfield, his face a landscape of lugubrious uncertainty.

“I very much doubt that, Commander,” said Pascoe crisply. “To say we’ve smashed the Templars is at the very least premature. How many more are there? The one called Archimbaud certainly. And the group who murdered Carradice. Is Youngman going to give you a list of names? I wouldn’t hold my breath. And fi nally, Commander, it must have struck you by now that the Templars couldn’t have functioned without considerable help from someone in CAT. St. Bernard, I believe his code name is. Like yours. Not that I’m casting aspersions. It could be any of you. Or, worse, all of you. Me, I’m heading back to Kansas.

I’ve got an angry wife and a sick friend there.”

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 393

And he’d walked out.

As he drove away, the words of Bacon came into his mind. A man who has wife and children and a pension scheme should be very careful who he gives the fi nger to.

Complete openness was the best road to survival, he decided.

He’d written a detailed account of his activities, conclusions, and suspicions since the Mill Street explosion, and made three copies, one of which he’d given to Dan Trimble, one he’d sent to CAT, and the third he’d put into the hands of his solicitor.

Maybe he was being neurotic but sometimes neurotic felt good.

It also felt good to be talking to Andy Dalziel again, even if the old sod seemed inclined to blame him personally for the problems he fore-saw in making charges stick.

“I’m sorry, Andy,” he said finally. “Though it hurts me to say it, there’s nothing more I can do.”

“It doesn’t hurt me to hear it,” said Ellie. “The further removed you are from those people, the better. Andy, we want you back on your feet soon as possible. Since you’ve been in here he’s bounced from one lot of trouble to another.”

“Never you worry, luv,” said Dalziel. “Couple of weeks and I’ll be right as rain. Then Youngman and yon Kewley-Hodge wanker had better look out.”

There was the sound of a chair being pushed back. Cap Marvell had removed her headphones in time to catch Dalziel’s last remarks.

“Right as rain?” she said scornfully. “Andy, if in a couple of weeks you’ve reached the stage where you can wipe your own bum, you’ll be doing well.”

The Pascoes grinned. Cap Marvell had a line in upper-class coarseness which was more than a match for the Fat Man’s vernacular bawdry.

Cap went on, “This Kewley-Hodge you mentioned, would he be one of the Derbyshire Kewley-Hodges, or Kewleys as were?”

“That’s right,” said Pascoe. “Of Kewley Castle, near Hathersage.

You know the family?”

“If they live in a sodding castle, of course she’d know the family,”

said Dalziel, clearly stung by the bum-wiping comment. “Had to have 394 r e g i n a l d h i l l

an op to get the silver spoon out of her mouth when she took up with me. On private insurance, of course.”

They were made for each other, these two, thought Pascoe.

“Not really,” said Cap, ignoring the Fat Man, which was another of her rare talents. “But Edie Hodge, whose name got tagged onto theirs, was at St. Dot’s when I was there.”

“St. Dot’s?”

“St. Dorothy’s Academy, near Matlock.”

“I think we used to play them at rugger,” said Dalziel.

“She must have been a lot older than you,” said Pascoe.

Cap laughed and said, “Ellie, you’ve trained your husband well.

Yes, but only a couple of years. Of course that makes a lot of difference at that age, but she was a legend in her own lunch hour. Our answer to Lady Chatterley.”

“That sounds interesting,” said Pascoe, recalling Hot Rod’s assurance that Edie was a very sexy lady.

“It was. Kitbag—that’s Dame Kitty Bagnold, our head—caught her bonking in the potting shed with the college gardener. Or rather with his son and assistant who was, I recall, quite dishy. Sex-on-a-shovel we used to call him.”

“Bloody male hamster wouldn’t be safe in them places,” muttered Dalziel.

“So what happened?” asked Pascoe.

“Boy vanished. I think his dad sent him out on other jobs thereafter. As for Edie, it was pack your bags and never darken this doorstep again.”

“Working-class employee gets off scot free, rich fee-paying pupil is sent down the road. Bet the Tory tabloids loved that!” said Ellie, hoping to steer the conversation into more general areas, away from anything no matter how distantly connected with CAT.

It didn’t work.

Cap said, “Kitbag must have decided that good gardeners were harder to come by than rich kids and Edie only had a couple of terms to go anyway. She was a real school heroine till she ruined her image a couple of months later by marrying Alexander Kewley.”

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 395

“What was wrong with that?” asked Pascoe.

“For a start he was nearly thirty years older than she was and it wasn’t as if he were stinking rich or had a title or anything. He was a trustee of the school and he’d show up at Speech Day and Founder’s Day and Sports Day, especially at Sports Day. Wherever young fl esh was being flashed, there would Alexander the Great be also. He was always chatting up Edie—I think he knew her father—and she’d do her cock-teasing thing. But no one imagined she would ever let him get closer than teasing distance.”

“So why did she do it?” wondered Pascoe.

Why is he always so fucking curious? Ellie asked herself.

Cap smiled reminiscently and went on, “Maybe so she could turn up at the next Founder’s Day with doting hubby and gurgling infant and queen it over Kitbag. I remember at one point Edie gave her the baby to hold while she tucked into the buffet, and the brat immediately filled his nappy.”