A pinch of snuff

'How do you know you can trust me?' asked Pascoe.

'For a start you wouldn't be pussyfooting around about promising if it didn't mean anything,' she answered.

'A psychologist already,' mocked Pascoe. 'All right. I promise. But all bets off if she's just stuck a knife into her boy-friend or robbed a bank. OK?'

'Now we're talking about crimes,' said Penelope Latimer. 'Hold on.'

While he waited Pascoe picked up his internal phone and got through to Wield.

'You ever heard of something called a snuff- film?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Wield.

'Don't keep it to yourself, Sergeant,' said Pascoe in his best Dalziel manner.

'In the States mainly,' said Wield. 'Though there are rumours on the Continent. No one's ever picked one up as far as I know, so obviously there's no prosecution recorded yet.'

'Yes, but what are they?'

'What they're said to be is films made of someone dying. Usually some tart from, say, one of the big South American sea ports who no one's going to miss in a hurry. She thinks it's a straightforward skin-flick. By the time she finds out wrong, it's too late. The scareder she gets, the more she tries to run, the better the picture.'

'Better! Who for?'

'For the bent bastards who want to see 'em. And for the guys who make the charge.'

'Jesus!'

'Hello? You there?' said the woman's voice from the other phone.

'Thanks, Sergeant,' said Pascoe. 'Yes, Miss Latimer?'

'It's Linda Abbott. Address is 25 Hampole Lane, Borage Hill. That's a big new estate about twelve miles south of here, just north of Leeds.'

'Local, eh?'

'What do you think, we fetch them from Hollywood?'

'No, but I reckoned you might cast your net as far as South Shields, say, or Scunthorpe.'

Penelope Latimer chuckled.

'Come up and see us some time, Inspector,' she said throatily. "Bye.'

'I might, I might,' said Pascoe to the dead phone. But he doubted if he would. Harrogate, Leeds, they were off his patch and Dalziel didn't sound as if he was about to let him go drifting west on a wild goose chase. No, he'd have to get someone local to check that this woman, Linda Abbott, had all her teeth. On the other hand, he'd promised Penelope Latimer that he'd handle it with tact. What he needed was an excuse to find himself in the area.

The phone rang.

'Have you got paralysis?' bellowed Dalziel.

Thirty seconds later he was in the fat man's office.

'There's a meeting this afternoon. Inter-divisional liaison. Waste of fucking time so I've told 'em I can't go, but I'll send a boy to observe.'

'And you want me to suggest a boy?' said Pascoe brightly.

'Funny. It's four-thirty. Watch the bastards. Some of them are right sneaky.'

'One thing,’ said Pascoe. 'Where is it?'

'Do I have to tell you everything?' groaned Dalziel. 'Harrogate.'

Chapter 4

Pascoe had no direct experience of the polygamous East, but he supposed that, with arranged marriages thrown in, it was possible for a man to know a woman only in her wedding dress and total nudity. But would he recognize her if he met her in the street? Pascoe doubted it. He regarded the gaggle of women hanging around outside the school gates and mentally coated each in turn with blood. It didn't help.

He'd come to see Linda Abbott hoping that the law-breaking forecast by Penny Latimer would not be too blatant. Now he wished that he'd found the woman leaning against a lamp post smoking a reefer and making obscene suggestions to passers-by. Instead he'd found himself at the front door of a neat little semi, talking to an angry Mr Abbott who had been roused from the sleep of the just and the night-shift worker by Pascoe's policeman's thumb on the bell push.

Having mentally prepared himself to turn a blind eye to Mrs Abbott's misdemeanours, Pascoe now became the guardian of her reputation and pretended to be in washing-machines. Mrs Abbott, he learned, had a washing-machine, didn't want another, wasn't about to get another, and cared perhaps even less than Mr Abbott to deal with poofy commercials at the door. But he also learned that Mrs Abbott had gone down to the school to collect her daughter and, having noticed what he took to be the school two streets away, Pascoe had made his way there to intercept.

He spotted Linda Abbott as the mums began to break off, clutching their spoil. A bold face, heavily made up; a wide loud mouth remonstrating with her small girl for some damage she'd done to her person or clothes. The camera didn't lie after all.

'Mrs Abbott?' said Pascoe. 'Could I have a word with you?'

'As many as you like, love,' said the woman, looking him up and down. 'Only, my name's Mackenzie. Yon's Mrs Abbott, her with the little blonde lass.'

Mrs Abbott was dumpy, untidy and plain. Her daughter on the other hand was a beauty. Another ten years if she maintained her present progress and… I'll probably be too old to care, thought Pascoe.

'Mrs Abbott,' he tried again. 'Could I have a word?'

'Yes?'

'Mam, is this one of them funny buggers?' asked the angelic six-year-old.

'Shut up, our Lorraine,' said Mrs Abbott.

'Funny…?' said Pascoe.

'I tell her not to talk with strangers,' explained Mrs Abbott.

"Cos there's a lot of funny buggers about,' completed Lorraine happily.

'Well, I'm not one of them,' said Pascoe. 'I hope.'

He showed his warrant card, taking care to keep it masked from the few remaining mums.

'You might well hope,' said Mrs Abbott. 'What's up?'

'May I walk along with you?' he asked.

'It's a free street. Lorraine, don't you run on the road now!'

'It's about a film you made,' said Pascoe. 'Droit de Seigneur.'

'Oh aye. Which was that one?'

'Can't you remember?'

'They don't often have titles when we're making them, not real titles, any road.'

Briefly Pascoe outlined the plot.

'Oh, that one,' said Mrs Abbott. 'What's up?'

'It's been suggested,' said Pascoe, 'that undue violence may have been used in some scenes.'

'What?'

'Especially in the scene where the squire beats you up, just before the US cavalry arrive.'

'You sure you're not mixing it up with the Big Big Horn?' said Mrs Abbott.

'I don't think so,' said Pascoe. 'I was speaking figuratively. Before your boy-friend rescues you. You remember that sequence? Were you in fact struck?'

'I don't think so,' said Mrs Abbott. 'It's six months ago, of course. How do you mean, struck?'

'Hit on the face. So hard that you'd bleed. Lose a few teeth even,' said Pascoe, feeling as daft as she obviously thought he was.

'You are one of them funny buggers,' she said, laughing. 'Do I look as if I'd let meself get beaten up for a picture? Here, can you see any scars? And take a look at them. Them's all me own, I've taken good care on 'em.'

Pascoe looked at her un-made-up and unblemished face, then examined her teeth which, a couple of fillings apart, were in a very healthy state.

'Yes, I see,' he said. 'Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Abbott. You saw nothing at all during the making of the film that surprised you?'

'You stop being surprised after a bit,' she said. 'But there was nowt unusual, if that's what you mean. It's all done with props and paint, love, didn't you know?'

'Even the sex?' answered Pascoe sharply, stung by her irony.

'Is that what it's all about then?' she said. 'I might have known.'

'No, really, it isn't,' assured Pascoe, adding, in an attempt to re-ingratiate himself, 'I've been at your house by the way. I said I was a washing-machine salesman.'

'Why?'

'I didn't want to stir anything up,' he said, feeling noble.

'For crying out loud!' said Mrs Abbott. 'You don't reckon I could do me job without Bert knowing?'

'No, I suppose not,' said Pascoe, discomfited.