An April Shroud

'The what!' asked Ellie.

'Butt was sober enough when he buried Annie to attempt to lay a bit of a false scent. He helped himself to the contents of her purse to make it look like robbery. But as well as her cash he got hold of a notebook she kept which gave details of her relationship with everyone in this house.'

'Oh,' said Ellie, nonplussed. 'I didn't know that. In fact, come to think of it, how do you know that?'

'She's got the makings of a jack,' said Dalziel to Pascoe who had been listening in puzzlement to the conversation. 'No, of course it's not true. But it's not too unlikely a story is it?'

'It is if you know that Butt's lying dead on the other side of the world,' said Pascoe.

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'Fortunately that's not common knowledge in this house. No, I told Bonnie, Mrs Fielding, that Butt was alive and well and waving this notebook under the noses of our interested colleagues at Heathrow.'

It was at best a compromise, he admitted that. And like most compromises, it was a fusion of small betrayals. Lying to Bonnie was one; holding out on Balderstone another. As a trap it was too feeble; he saw this in Pascoe's face. But as a way of treating those who trusted him, it was too brutal; he saw this in Ellie's.

But it was the best he could do. Having decided that, no bugger was going to get in his way.

'What do you think's going to happen, sir?' asked Pascoe in the kindly voice he reserved for lady magistrates and Ellie's relations.

'Likely nothing,' said Dalziel. 'I told Bonnie that the Essex police were pretty satisfied that Butt had nowt to do with the murder and that Balderstone would be coming out here tonight. And I asked her to let everyone know that they should hang around after the bar closes and the customers go home.'

Pascoe glanced at his watch. It was twenty past ten. The bar closed in ten minutes.

'Ellie,' he said. 'Your mum and dad will be wondering where we've got to. It would be kind to reassure them.'

'When policemen start being kind to their in-laws, let wives beware,' said Ellie. 'What are you going to do?'

'I'll hang on here for a while. Look, if they want to head for home, tell them not to worry. I'll cadge a lift into Orburn later.'

Ellie glanced from her husband to the fat man in the floppy hat.

'OK,' she said.

After she had gone the two men kept their silence for a while. Dalziel lit yet another cigarette and Pascoe prowled lightly round the room peering at the old man's books and examining the furniture.

'None of your antiques here,' said Dalziel finally. 'But if yon cupboard's open, you'll mebbe find a drink in it.'

The cupboard was indeed open and Pascoe straightened up with a bottle of Remy Martin in one hand and Glen Grant in the other. Hereward had not put all his money into the business. The scotch had been purchased in recognition of Dalziel's personal taste and the fat man had acknowledged this kindness by spending at least an hour each night sitting here with the old poet drinking and exchanging tales of the criminal and the literary underworlds.

Pascoe poured Dalziel a scotch and helped himself to a generous measure of cognac.

'This man, Balderstone,' said Pascoe. 'What's he like?'

'Not bad.'

'Is he relying much on you? For inside information, I mean?'

'He'd be bloody daft if he was,' said Dalziel acidly.

Pascoe sipped his drink thoughtfully. At least there was no self-deception here.

'So what happens tomorrow when nothing happens tonight?' he asked.

'You're a detective,' said Dalziel. 'They've questioned everyone twice, taken statements. What'd you do?'

'Well, normally I'd go and solve some easier crime, and thank God this one was down to Essex, not me!'

'Now suppose you're the killer. What then?'

Pascoe considered.

'Unless I was very stupid, I'd laugh myself to sleep at this all-revealing diary story. Then when I discovered that Butt was actually dead, I'd laugh myself awake. If I wanted to be really clever, I might just start recollecting that I caught a glimpse of Butt driving away that night with someone beside him in the car. But that'd be gilding the lily a bit.'

'There you are then,' said Dalziel. 'There's nowt to be done.'

'Not quite,' said Pascoe. 'You haven't asked me what I'd do if I were you.'

Dalziel reached up one voluminous sleeve and began to scratch under his armpit.

'No, I bloody haven't,' he said uninvitingly.

'I'd be worried sick,' said Pascoe, 'in case by not telling the investigating officer what I suspected, I was impeding the course of justice.'

'What's suspicion?' asked Dalziel. 'Bugger all. It's what you know that counts.'

'And what makes you think that Balderstone's told you everything he knows?' demanded Pascoe. 'Have you given him cause to take you into his confidence? Put what you suspect and what he knows together and bang! you may have a solution.'

Dalziel glared at him angrily and Pascoe realized he had gone further than he intended. He sank the rest of his drink quickly in an effort to anaesthetize himself, but before the storm could break, the door burst open and another high pressure centre flowed in on a wave of distant noise like the honking of a flight of geese.

'Andy,' cried Bonnie. 'Have you seen that halfwit Charley anywhere? God Almighty, it's like Brand's Hatch out there! Where the hell has he got to?'

The noise he could hear wasn't geese, Pascoe realized, but the gabbling of human voices raised in anger commingled with a variety of car horns.

'What's up?' asked Dalziel.

'It's the car park. He got in such a muddle that he told the last people to arrive just to leave their cars on the drive with the keys in and he'd sort them out. Well, they're still there, blocking the way, but the keys have gone. Some twit tried to go round them across the garden, but it's so wet with all this rain that he's got stuck. God, what a mess!'

'And Charley's gone?' asked Dalziel, very alert.

'I've been telling you, yes! You must have directed traffic sometime, can't you do anything?'

They all make cracks about a cop's job in the end, thought Pascoe. But she was a fine-looking woman. A bit long in the tooth perhaps, but what she'd lost in youthful athleticism she could probably more than make up in expertise. Which was a male chauvinist pig thought he'd do well to keep hidden from Ellie.

'Come on,' said Dalziel, rising and making for the door. Pascoe realized that he was being addressed, not Bonnie, and rudely pushed past her in the fat detective's wake.

'This Charley,' he said. 'Could he be the one?'

Dalziel didn't answer but began to climb the stairs.

If so, he's probably long gone, thought Pascoe. All those cars to choose from. Unless…

He caught Dalziel's green velveteen sleeve.

'Those keys,' he said. 'You've got em!'

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'No bugger drives out of here till I'm done.'

He flung open the door of a room which was in darkness. Neither of them needed the light to know it was empty.

'It doesn't look as if he's taken anything,' said Dalziel, puzzled. 'He won't go far in his fancy dress surely.'

'Where'd he go anyway?' asked Pascoe. 'I mean he'd hardly set off walking to Orburn if he thinks Balderstone's coming driving along that road any moment. Hang on, though. Downstairs when I was looking out of the window, there was someone by the lake.'

'Oh no!' groaned Dalziel.

They turned, met Bonnie looking bewildered half-way up the stairs, pushed by her once more and ran out of the front door.

The night was warm and almost windless. The mist on the lake surface had crept a little further up the garden in the last fifteen minutes and the rail of the landing-stage was barely visible, an indistinct line of faded runes scratched on a limestone wall. Though the noise of the car park chaos was more clearly audible here, its effect was to increase the feeling of isolation, like traffic heard beyond a prison wall.