ELEVEN
'For as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning.' Sergeant Wield said, 'You want your head looked.' Pascoe was taken aback. It had bothered him from the start, keeping Wield in the dark, even with the argument that it was for his own good. Now that all his cards were on Trimble's table, he saw no reason not to bring the Sergeant up to date. While he hadn't expected fulsome thanks, he'd anticipated at least a gratified neutrality. 'Why so?' he said defensively. 'Look, OK, perhaps I was silly to let Andy involve me in sneaking around. But now it's all in the open, there can be a real investigation without having to worry that maybe someone's trying to fix the results.' 'I reckon you were better off sneaking,' said Wield grimly. 'Where've you been? It's not just results that get fixed, it's people.' This echoed his own earlier fears too closely to be comfortable. 'Openness is our best protection,' he proclaimed. 'You've been pulling too many Christmas crackers,' said Wield. 'What I can't understand is why Fat Andy's got himself so het up. He knows the way things work.' 'Loyalty to Wally Tallantire,' said Pascoe. 'I explained all that.' 'So you did. Dalziel defending the dead. He'll be into table-rapping next.' This echo of Pottle's speculation about the Fat Man's motive was disturbing. Was he naive in accepting simple loyalty to a dead colleague as sufficient?
Anyway, it no longer mattered. Did it? He got down to some work. About five in the afternoon, there was a tap at the door and Stubbs came in.
'Hi,' said Pascoe, smiling a welcome. 'We never got that drink.' 'No.
Busy busy busy. You know how it is.' 'Any chance this evening? They'll be open in an hour.' 'Maybe.' Stubbs was examining his reflection in the glass of a Chagall print. 'Christ, this hard water plays hell with your hair.' He had something on his mind. He'd get round to it sooner or later. Pascoe said, 'You want the name of my barber?' Stubbs turned his gaze on Pascoe's head, dropped it slowly to his chain store suit, and said, 'Know how old you are? Same age as me, only a fortnight in it. I punched up your record on the screen.' 'So?' 'So nothing. Maybe the older look's the way to get on round here.' 'You've got to be inconspicuous,' said Pascoe mildly. 'Like your boss? He wears a suit but he's about as inconspicuous as a rapist in a nunnery.' To say whatever he wanted to say, he needed to provoke a reaction. Pascoe said, 'How come you were looking at my record? That's supposed to be confidential.' 'Not once you started sticking your nose into our business.' 'Now hold on,' said Pascoe. 'All right, so I might have got out of line a bit, but that's all sorted between me and Mr Hiller now.' 'Sorted for you maybe,' said Stubbs. 'Listen, I can't stand people who fart and run. Couple of things you ought to get straight about Geoff Hiller. First is, he's dead straight. OK, he'd win no prizes in a charm school, though maybe he'd come out ahead of your Mr Dalziel. But he doesn't work to orders. He got picked for this job because anyone who knows him knows he wouldn't try to cover up police incompetence.' 'And if he found there was something more than police incompetence being covered up?' 'He wouldn't back off from that either,' said Stubbs. 'That's what I mean. You and your boss have gone creeping around behind Geoff's back. Now it's starting to look as if something really nasty might turn up, where are you? Safe in your pits while Geoff's out there in the open, taking the flak.' 'What flak?' ‘I don't know. But that's how I know it's coming. He's loyal to his troops. When the heavy shit starts flying he gets us out of the way.
You've started something, you and that fat bastard, and I just wanted to be sure you knew what you'd done.' 'Now hang about!' said Pascoe, genuinely provoked now. But Stubbs wasn't in the mood for hanging about. The door shut behind him with a bang. ‘Shit,' said Pascoe. He tried to argue with himself that whatever hole Hiller found himself in, he would have reached anyway, unless he hadn't managed to dig up what Dalziel had managed to dig up, in which case it was just as well the Fat Man had gone sneaking about. But still he felt guilty. Finally he reached for the phone and dialled. ‘Hello? I would like to speak to Lord Partridge, please. Tell him it's Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe.' There was a long pause. He pictured his lordship debating whether noble disdain or noblesse oblige was the more profitable reaction. 'Partridge here. How nice to hear from you, Mr Pascoe. How can I help you?' 'You've heard about Miss Marsh?' 'Yes indeed.
Dreadfully sad. Still, time and tide wait for no one, not even Scottish nannies.' 'But they do have considerable control over other natural forces. Conception, for instance. The pathologist's report states conclusively that she never had a child. Not even an abortion.
Was never pregnant.' Now the pause felt as if it might last forever.
'Now what makes you think I might be interested in that rather esoteric piece of information, Mr Pascoe?' said Partridge at last in a level voice. 'I recall you talking about your interest in law and order,' said Pascoe. 'I presume that Miss Marsh, in pursuit of both verisimilitude and profit, presented you with some form of medical bill. An abortion clinic, was it? Or did she go the whole hog and claim to have had the child? That would up the ante considerably. Now you, my lord, are not a simple man, ready to dole out cash on the evidence of a few figures on the back of a fag packet. You would need to see a properly receipted account, and in order to get that, Miss Marsh would have needed an accomplice, possibly a nurse or a clerical worker in the relevant medical establishment. Surely as a big law and order man, you want to see this person brought to justice?' He could hear himself speaking in the measured reasonable voice Dalziel accused him of always using as his flights of fancy spiralled into the inane.
He finished and waited for Partridge to shoot him back to earth with anger, amazement, threats of phoning the Chief Constable, petitioning Parliament, bringing back the cat. What the hell! It was worth it just to know that the old bugger knew that he knew. Also the realization that he'd been doling out cash all these years on the basis of a phantom pregnancy would probably haunt him forever! He heard a sound at the other end of the line. The splutterings of inarticulate rage perhaps? It increased in volume. Now there was no mistaking it. Not rage, but laughter. And not the forced laughter of a man trying to put a good face on things, but the wholehearted laughter that came from relief and genuine amusement. 'Mr Pascoe, I thank you. It was a great kindness, in the midst of your busy life, to find time to ring me.
Many thanks. If you're ever up this way again, do call in. We'll always be glad to see you. Goodbye now.' The phone went dead. 'Well, bugger me,' said Pascoe. There was a discreet cough from the doorway.
It was Wield with a cardboard folder in his hands and a faint smile on his craggy features. 'Trouble?' he said. 'No. But that's the trouble,' said Pascoe. Such antilogy required explication. Wield listened, sighed, and said, 'You can't leave it alone, can you?' 'If Partridge had got mad, maybe I could.' 'But he sounded relieved? Well, he's got a problem off his hands, hasn't he? With Marsh's death, I mean.' He knew that before I rang him. Maybe he knew it before anyone rang him.'