He laughed uneasily and without humour.
'You know, in a way, I'm glad I was interrupted before I reached the culvert.'
'I'm glad Pelman was interrupted before he reached you,' said Ellie. 'Backhouse asked where you were after the inquest and seemed very keen to get after you. He must have suspected something.'
'What happened at the inquest, by the way?' inquired Pascoe.
'What?' said Ellie. 'Of course, you won't have heard. They brought a verdict of murder against Colin.'
Sometime later Pascoe was standing looking down at the water-ravaged face of Colin Hopkins. Curiously he felt very little, as if the day's events had been successfully cathartic.
'Yes,' he replied to Backhouse's question. 'Yes. I can identify him. Colin Hopkins.'
'Fine,' said Backhouse, and the concealing sheet was drawn over the face once more.
'This makes French look a little foolish,' said Pascoe as they left the mortuary. He felt the need to nurture his normality with a little idle chatter. Something was over. His interest now would be professional. And distant. He was ready to go home.
'Yes,' said Backhouse. He was rather withdrawn, even for him. Pascoe felt there was something he wanted to say, but was equally certain that it was not going to be said.
Perhaps he wants to thank me for my help, he thought. But he knew it wasn't that. And he wondered again why the man wasn't himself interrogating Pelman.
'You'll keep me in touch, sir?' he asked.
'Of course. Though you will remember you are just a witness, Inspector? Congratulations on your promotion, by the way.'
'Thank you.'
'We'll go back to the station now and you can sign your statement. You're heading back to Yorkshire straightaway?'
'Yes. Miss Soper too. We're driving in convoy. Unless you want me to stay for anything else?'
'No. I don't think so.'
They drove back slowly through the busy streets, a strong contrast with the quiet thoroughfares of Thornton Lacey.
Ellie was waiting in Backhouse's office at the station. A constable appeared with his typewritten statement, handed it to him and murmured something in Backhouse's ear. The superintendent left the room as Pascoe quickly scanned through the statement and signed it.
'Ready, love?' he said.
'Ready,' said Ellie. He took her hand.
At the door they met Backhouse looking perturbed.
'Goodbye, sir,' said Pascoe. 'We're on our way.'
'Inspector,' said Backhouse, 'I'm afraid I've got some rather strange and disturbing news for you. I've just been checking on a rumour which one of my sergeants had picked up. Do you know a man called Burne-Jones?'
'I know of him,' said Pascoe.
'Well, Mr Dalziel has been arrested for assaulting him and breaking his jaw!'
'Poor old Dalziel,' said Ellie as they headed to the car-park. 'Do you think he's flipped at last? Oh, Peter.'
'Yes?'
'Something I remembered. It got submerged in all this and it's probably irrelevant anyway. You said something about a diabetic? Well, Etherege, when he came and talked to us in the Jockey that day, he was holding a bottle of tonic water specially prepared for diabetics. Could it be important?'
Pascoe stopped and turned back to the police station.
'It might,' he said. 'I'd better get them to pass the word. Better to be safe than sorry!'
Chapter 6
The first person Pascoe met on his return was Inspector Headingley who laughed heartily at his anxious inquiry.
'No, he's not in the cells. He's upstairs. He'll be pleased to see you. We got your message about Etherege. Very grateful Mr Dalziel was!'
He found the fat man in his office watching a couple of detective-constables unpack the contents of several cardboard boxes which had a ripe fishy smell.
'Welcome back,' said Dalziel. 'A bit late, aren't you?'
'Things happened,' said Pascoe.
'And here. If you'd had your flash of insight a bit earlier, you might have saved a great deal of pain.'
For one moment Pascoe thought that Dalziel was referring sympathetically to Burne-Jones. Then he held up a bandaged right hand.
'I broke my bloody thumb,' he said. 'And I found out about Etherege the hard way.'
'He's our man then?'
'Certainly. He stuck a bloody great hypodermic needle into me to prove it. That turned out to be a mistake. Evidently a dose of insulin can make a non-diabetic irritable to the point of irrationality, particularly if he's got an empty gut. Me, I'm on a short fuse at best. And I've been starving myself for days. So when Burne-Jones grabbed me from behind, I hammered him.'
'He's hurt?'
'Nothing much. A cracked jaw. It was quite comic.' The fat man laughed heartily at the memory, pressing himself against a desk edge to get a free scratch on his shaking buttocks. 'There was an old couple there. They called the police and an ambulance. A right officious little snot turned up. He didn't know me and I was still far from normal! So the silly bugger arrested me! It was soon sorted out when the quack had a look at me and heard what had happened. There may still be an inquiry, but I'll survive.'
'I'm sure,' said Pascoe looking with interest at the assortment of articles the DCs were taking out of the fishy boxes. Some of it he recognized, though seeing it for the first time.
'You found some of the loot then?' he said. 'At Etherege's?'
'Not on your life! He's not daft, that one. No, we had a stroke of luck. Burne-Jones was in on it too. Not actively, he claims, but we'll see about that. Anyway, my right hook softened him up a lot and when he heard his partner had got himself under a murder charge while he was on holiday, it was only his broken jaw that slowed him down to a gabble! And guess what? You remember my little idea about the kennels?'
Suddenly everything jumped together in Pascoe's mind. He sniffed the fishy odour and nodded.
'Jim Jones, the cat-meat man!' he said. 'Who is he? His brother?'
'Cousin,' said Dalziel grumpily. 'It's getting to be a nasty habit, this being wise after the event. You're right, though. Burne-Jones is really just plain Jones. Jim Jones travels round a dozen or more kennels, delivering food. Plenty of chance to glance at the list of inmates. I believe a lot of the silly sods put placards with name and address of owner on the bloody animals' cages! He'd pass it on. His cousin and Etherege would pick out what they thought was worthwhile and do it. Easy.'
'What about disposal?' asked Pascoe.
'Etherege and Burne-Jones probably did quite a bit themselves through the trade. But we reckon the really hot stuff was moved through a third man. Burne-Jones clammed up here. I think he was regretting talking so much and his jaw was beginning to hurt. But he said enough. Jones- the-cat-meat claims to know nothing about him except that he exists. He sounds to me like a middle-man who knows interested and not too curious purchasers for a certain kind of item. At a signal from Etherege he comes along and pokes around in the latest haul.'
'Any chance of getting on to him?' asked Pascoe, looking sadly at the little array of items which seemed to match stuff stolen from Sturgeon's house. There was little of real worth there. And no sign of the most valuable article, the old man's stamp-album.
'A good one, I reckon,' said Dalziel gleefully. He picked up a small diary from a desk top.
'As you'd expect, there was precious little at Etherege's shop, but this we did find. His diary. Nothing incriminating, but look at this.'
He jabbed his forefinger at the page for February 8th. All that was written there was a time. 11 a.m. He flicked over the pages. March 1st 6 p.m. March 23rd 1 p.m. April 20th 9.30 a.m.
'And so it goes on,' he said.
'So?' asked Pascoe.
'So all these dates fall around the periods during which we know the break-ins happened. On the couple of the occasions when we know the exact date, these dates in the diary come three days later. Now I reckon these are appointments with his distributor, someone who would take the more valuable and identifiable stuff away. It's clever, really. You see, generally the stuff would be moved before the house-owners came back from holiday and even discovered they'd been robbed. No risk!'