He caught Myra's eye again and read the message clearly. Favourite! So what? Boy with two bossy elder sisters needed an edge somewhere. Another eye was catching his, the crem. super's, reminding him of his warning that despite the nanny state, dank Novembers still meant frequent hearses and any overrun could quickly blacken up the bypass. Time to wrap it up. Pity. He just felt he was getting into his stride.
'Even after retirement, she remained at the centre of things, as a school governor, a member of innumerable committees, and a tireless campaigner in the corridors of power and on the pavements of protest.'
Now he was really motoring! Great phrase, that was. Even though getting the rhythm right meant a solecistic drift from the nounal trochee to the verbal iamb. How old Ada would have rapped his knuckles. The crem. super too looked close to physical violence. Big finish!
'I doubt if she went gentle into her good night, but gone she has, and the world is a sadder place for her going. But she left it a better place than she found it, and that would have been the only epitaph she wished.'
Big finish nothing. Big cop-out was more like it. Ada had had no illusions about progress. Watching the telly peepshow of famine and disaster and war, she used to rage, 'They've learned nothing. Absolutely nothing!' Oh well. At least he'd taken his poppy out.
Time for the final music. Myra had gone for Elgar's Enigma which to Ada's tin ear probably sounded like bovine eructation. The crem.'s alternatives were all just as classically solemn. Then Pascoe had recalled the one time Ada ever talked about her father, the day he found the photo in the secretaire, and he'd rummaged through the tapes in his car and come up with Scott Joplin. He saw the shock on Myra's face as 'The Strenuous Life' came floating out of the speakers. He'd explain later, sharing his secret knowledge that Ada's sole recollection of her father — indeed her first recollection of anything — had been of a shadowy figure sitting at an upright piano picking out a ragtime melody.
So the circle closes … so the circle closes.
iv
'At his grandmother's funeral?' said Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel. 'You'd think a bugger wi' letters after his name could come up with a better excuse than that.'
'He did tell you about it, sir,' said Sergeant Wield, shouting to make himself heard above the lashing rain.
Dalziel viewed him gloomily through the bespattered car window which he'd lowered by half an inch in the interests of more efficient communication. He was not a man totally insensitive to the comforts of his inferiors, but the sergeant was swathed in oilskins and the Fat Man could see no reason why the torrents niagaraing around their folds should be diverted to his vehicle's upholstery.
'Aye and my gran told me not to mess around wi' mucky women and I paid no heed to her either,' he said. 'Still, last time he were here, he wasn't much use, was he? OK, lad. Let's have it. What've we got?'
'Remains, sir.'
'Man? Woman? Child? Dog? Politician?'
'Remains to be seen,' said Wield.
Dalziel groaned and said, 'I hope you're not letting happiness turn you humorous, Wieldy. You've not got the face for it and I'm not in the mood. I were driving home to a warm bed when I were silly enough to switch me radio on and pick up the tail end of this shout. All Control could tell me was there was a body and there was a bunch of animal libbers and it was out at Wanwood. So is this another Redcar or what?'
Six months earlier in May there'd been an animal rights raid on the laboratories of Fraser Greenleaf, the international pharmaceutical conglomerate, located near Redcar on the North Yorkshire coast. As well as releasing the experimental animals, the raiders had vandalized the premises and, most seriously of all, left security officer Mark Shufflebottom, father of two, lying dead with severe wounds to the head. Several weeks later there'd been another raid, bearing all the hallmarks of the same group, on the research labs of ALBA Pharmaceuticals located on Mid-Yorks territory in a converted mansion called Wanwood House. Happily this time no one had been injured. Unhappily neither the Teeside CID in whose jurisdiction Redcar fell, nor the Mid-Yorkshire team led by Peter Pascoe, had met with any success in tracking down the culprits.
'No, sir. This body's been here long enough to turn into bones. That's not to say this couldn't be the same lot as were here in the summer, though of course it was never established for certain they were the same bunch that raided FG.'
Wield was a stickler for accuracy, a natural bent refined paradoxically by years of deception. Concealing you were gay in the police force meant weighing with scrupulous care everything you said or did, and this habit of precise scrutiny had turned him into one of the most reliable colleagues Dalziel had.
But sometimes his nit-picking could get on your wick.
'Just tell us what happened, Wieldy,' sighed the Fat Man long-sufferingly.
'Right, sir. This group — I gather they call themselves ANIMA by the way — the name's known to us but not the personnel — sorry — they entered the grounds with the clear intention of breaking into the labs and releasing any animals they found there. But if they were the same lot who were here in the summer, they must have got a bit of a shock as ALBA's taken some extra precautions since then.'
'Precautions?'
'You'll see, sir,' said Wield not without a certain well- concealed glee. 'And on their way through the grounds they sort of stumbled across these bones.'
'Couldn't have brought them with them just to get a bit of publicity?' said Dalziel hopefully.
'Doesn't look like it, sir,' said Wield. 'They kicked up such a hullabaloo that the security guards finally took heed and came out. When they realized what was going off, they took the demonstrators inside. Gather there was a bit of trouble then. They got loose and ran riot for a bit before they were brought under control.'
'Violent, eh? So there could be a link with Redcar?'
'Can't really comment, sir. Mr Headingley's up at the house interviewing them. He told me to sort things out down here.'
'Good old George,' said Dalziel. 'Perk of being a DI, Wieldy. Start taking an interest in your promotion exams and you could be up there in the dry and warm.'
Wield shrugged indifferently, his features showing as little reaction to horizontal sleet as the crags of Scafell.
He knew you didn't learn things from books, you learned them from people. Like that other George, Creed. He'd pay a lot more attention to his weather forecasts from now on in! Also he knew for a fact that not all the elevated rank in the world was going to keep the Fat Man dry and warm.
He said, 'Yes, sir. I expect you'll be wanting to view the scene before you head up there yourself.'
It was a simple statement of fact not a challenging question.
Dalziel sighed and said, 'If that's what you expect, Wieldy, I expect I'd better do it. Get me waterproofs out of the boot, will you, else I'll be sodden afore I start.'
Watching Dalziel getting into oilskins and wellies through the streaming glass, Wield was reminded of a film he'd seen of Houdini wriggling out of his bonds while submerged in a huge glass jar.
The car gave one last convulsive shake and the Fat Man was free.
'Right,' he said. 'Where's it at?'
'This way,' said Wield.
At this moment Nature, with the perfect timing due to the entry of a major figure on her stage, shut off the wind machine for a moment and let the curtain of sleet shimmer to transparency.