The Chief Inspector looked into cabinets of china, along shelves of books, at pictures and photographs. He carried his hands loosely at his sides. Years and years ago he would have held them away from his body, maybe be even slightly in the air to remind him not to reach out or handle anything.
As a young constable he had been seconded to a fire-eating DCI who had simply terrified him. Once, arriving at the scene of a murder and finding the body, a wretched half-naked young woman lying face down in a muddy ditch, Barnaby, unthinking, jumped into it and pulled her dress down. He had received a tongue-lashing that almost brought tears to his eyes. (What do you think she wants? Her arse covered or the shithead who did this put away?) For months afterwards he had been made to keep his hands in his pockets until the first stage of any investigation was completed. Jeeringly called “Tommy Billiards” by the rest of the team, the humiliation paid off, for he never did it again.
At the front of the house his own bag carrier, having made the necessary calls, was getting out of the car. Aware that the local talent was huffing and puffing down the lane, Troy waited until Perrot was a few yards away then turned and walked briskly off. The constable, scarlet-faced and perspiring heavily, caught up with him on the patio.
“Um, good morning, Sergeant.”
“Well, hullo, Polly.”
Perrot eyed the smashed windows with dismay. “What’s happened?”
Troy grinned, shrugged, and said, “We thought you’d taken the day off.”
“Call of nature, Sergeant,” said Perrot.
In truth, after standing sentry for over two hours and finding himself absolutely ravenous, he had popped up to Ostlers for a double Twix and a cold drink. The chocolate was now melting in his pocket, the aluminium can thrown into some bushes when he spotted the DCI’s car.
“What’d you think that’s for then?” Troy jerked his head towards the Hollingsworths’ charming little fish pond then said, “You’re in deep do-do, Poll. And not just for leaving this place unguarded.”
Unsure how to respond but already resigned to the prospect of endless parrot jokes, the policeman remained silent. Troy crossed to the French windows. As his black shadow fell across the creamy carpet, Barnaby looked up.
“He’s just drifted back, sir.” Standing aside, Sergeant Troy indicated to Perrot that he should enter the room.
PC Perrot stepped over the threshold and stopped dead. He stared at the body on the hearth rug. Barnaby watched the colour drain from his face and saw that there was no need to spell out the seriousness of the policeman’s position.
“Is this the man you know as Alan Hollingsworth, Perrot?”
The constable moved a few steps to the left and slightly forward so that the dead man’s profile was in his line of vision.
“Yes, sir.”
Perrot hadn’t fainted since he was twelve years old. A scorching day very much like this when he had had to have a tetanus jab after scraping his leg on a rusty fence. Standing waiting, dizzy in the heat, afraid of the needle, he had passed out cold. He must not do that now even though he felt a thousand times worse. Not with the sneering sergeant at his back and cold condemnation flowing across the carpet to his face.
How was he even to handle, let alone survive, this appalling situation? What sort of fool, the foolish Perrot now asked himself, would stand for hours in front of a building simply because his knock had been unanswered? Surely a quick check around the place would be the next step? Then the dead man would have been found. Or, unspeakably harder to bear, a man who might not have been quite dead. A dying man whose life could have been saved.
Scourging deeper, Perrot recalled the report that he had not marked urgent or put directly on some senior officer’s desk. Would doing so have made a difference? Immediately Perrot convinced himself that it would. After all, hadn’t the CID heavy mob come over to Fawcett Green almost straightaway?
His offence was indeed monstrous. Perrot tried to stiffen his face muscles lest they should quiver and hung his head. His ears hummed. The foetid air was rank with accusation.
Just as he felt he would not be able to remain upright another minute, the Chief Inspector said, “Outside, you. The less trampling about the better.”
“Sir.”
A car drew up at the main gates. Two doors slammed, two sets of footsteps crossed the gravel. Someone rapped the front door and Sergeant Troy shouted, “Round this way!”
Police Surgeon for years, now mysteriously restyled Force Medical Examiner, Dr. George Bullard, had noted wryly when so informed that, though the designation might change, the raw material showed a tendency to remain as unprepossessing as ever. He was accompanied by a young man in a Stone Roses T-shirt, jeans and filthy sneakers with a camera round his neck, one under his arm, assorted lenses and a light meter.
As the photographer worked taking shots from all angles, balancing on his toes at one point on the very edge of the fireplace, Perrot, as instructed, retreated to the patio and further persecution. Barnaby and George, old friends as well as old colleagues, stood to one side passing on the latest station gossip, putting the world to rights, talking about their families. Doc Bullard had just had his first grandchild. Barnaby and his wife longed to be in the same position but did not hold out much hope. Recently their daughter Cully had pointed out that Juliet Stevenson, an actor she greatly admired, had just had her first baby at thirty-eight. A mere thirteen years to go, her parents noted sadly when Cully and Nicholas, her husband, had left. We’ll be too old to pick it up, Joyce said. And she was only half joking.
“Just the stiffy, is it?” asked the photographer, indicating that he was through.
“For now,” said the Chief Inspector.
If he sounded confident, that was because he was confident. Perhaps because Nightingales already appeared to be at the centre of a mystery, Barnaby felt certain that Alan Hollingsworth had not succumbed to a stroke or heart attack. Or alcohol poisoning even though, according to Perrot, he’d been lowering gallons of the stuff for days.
Even so, Barnaby felt it would be prudent to wait until the postmortem before getting Scenes of Crime out. Cuts and more cuts were the order of the day and even a straight-forward investigation with a modest team cost money. Though a mere droplet in the ocean which formed the Thames Valley budget, he would nevertheless be, quite rightly, reprimanded should it be spent unnecessarily.
On the other hand if murder was eventually proven and evidence had been lost or damaged under the day-to-day business of cleaning and tidying up the house and Hollingsworth’s effects and sorting out his affairs then he would be in much deeper trouble. The worst, in fact, for such an error could well result in a killer getting clean away.
The Chief Inspector suddenly became aware he was being spoken to.
“Sorry, George.”
Dr. Bullard was kneeling on the hearth rug, having unpacked his bag, spread out the tools of his trade and pulled on thin latex gloves. Obligingly he repeated himself.
“I’d say, from the look of the pupils, he took a whacking great overdose.” He loosened the waistband and undid the flies of the dead man’s trousers. When he picked up the rectal thermometer Barnaby, out of respect, turned away.
He caught sight of his sergeant, swinging in the daisy hammock, smoking, his face turned to the sun. He knew that Troy would be bewildered by this attitude. Respect for the dead had always struck the sergeant as pointless. Barnaby wondered if this was a generation thing or a question of individual temperament and decided probably the latter.
He pondered on the division between people with imagination, those able to put themselves in another’s place, and people without. This had always struck him as perhaps the most unbridgeable gap of all. All other differences, given willing hearts and minds, could be reconciled. But how to bestow a gift that nature had unkindly (or, some might argue, kindly) withheld?