A pinch of snuff

'Of course it's about Jack,' she snapped. 'I hoped I'd find you here. You're a friend of his, aren't you? Well, tell me what's going on. I've rung and rung the station. I managed to get a few words with that awful fat man who called last night, but he was no help. And when I asked for you, all that I got was you were out. That's no way for a friend to act, Mr Pascoe.'

'I'd no idea you'd phoned, believe me,' said Pascoe. 'On the other hand, I think it might be a perfectly reasonable way for a friend to act in the circumstances.'

'What does that mean?'

'There's nothing I can do, really. And any suggestion that I was trying to do anything could just work against Jack.'

'Why?' she demanded angrily. 'Can't you just tell this slut's family that she'd better pick on someone of her own kind to slander?'

'And stop bothering decent folk? I'm sorry, Mrs Shorter. The allegation must be investigated, I'm sure you see that. Then it'll be decided whether there's enough supporting evidence to merit a charge. Really, that's all I can tell you.'

'Thank you,' she said, nodding vigorously. 'I see how things are.'

'I didn't mean that,' said Pascoe. 'Only…'

'I must go now. I see your friends are arriving.'

'How is Jack?' asked Pascoe, but already she was moving off, forcing a passage between his 'friends' who were coming from the bar.

'Good day, Mrs Shorter,' cried Dalziel genially. 'Hello, Inspector Pascoe, surprise, surprise. The sergeant said you were close behind. Thirsty morning?'

'You fat bastard,' said Emma Shorter venomously.

'Cheerio, Mrs Shorter,' said Dalziel, his geniality undiminished. He led the two men to an empty table and sat down. After swallowing a gill of beer and belching contentedly, he sank his teeth into the best half of a pork pie and washed it down with the second gill.

'What's she want?' he asked through the resultant sludge. 'Offering you her lily-white body to save her husband's reputation? Don't be tempted. Not if she had tits like the Taj Mahal, she couldn't do it. I guessed she'd be after you when she started on me this morning, so I told the switchboard you were permanently out to her.'

'How kind,' said Pascoe. 'Is there something new?'

'Nothing dramatic. That nurse's statement, I just had a quick glance. Sounds vague with a faint smell of cover-up. How did she strike you?'

'A bit like that,' admitted Pascoe. 'But it's just loyalty, I reckon.'

'Perhaps. You didn't get any hint that she's been having a whirl on Shorter's high-speed drill too, did you?'

'Christ, what do you think he is? Some kind of satyr?'

'That's one of them hairy buggers that lurk in bushes, isn't it? Like at the Art School. No, I'm not saying he's indiscriminate, but being married to that cactus must leave a lot of water in his well. Do you think the EEC know about these pies?'

He was in high spirits, thought Pascoe, which boded ill for Shorter or anyone else whose case he'd been investigating that morning.

'Even if he has been at Alison, what's it signify?' asked Pascoe.

'The more some men get, the more they want. It's well known,' said Dalziel. 'The jury would lap it up. Makes the women feel threatened, the men feel proud.'

'So you think there's definitely a case?'

'Well, fair do's. I haven't seen Shorter yet. He may come up with some startling new evidence like he was castrated when he got engaged to Emma. I'm going round there this afternoon. Want to come?'

'I thought you'd warned me off.'

'Peter, lad, I don't think it matters a toss now. It's my bet it'll go to court. It could be better for him if it did. Burkill might go berserk else.'

Pascoe shook his head.

'I'll see him some time then. But by myself. Maybe I'll drop in this evening.'

'You haven't forgotten we're seeing Johnny Hope, sir?' said Wield.

'No. But there'd be time.'

'Hope?' said Dalziel. 'The Club man?'

'Yes, sir. I thought he might be able to give us something on Haggard and Arany.'

'Oh, you're still chasing that hare, are you?' said Dalziel. 'Well, you may be right. Interesting fellow, that Arany. Do you reckon he thinks in English or Hungarian? Never mind. Let's have another pint and you can tell me everything you've been up to and why none of it's been any fucking use so far! Barman!'

Pascoe hated beery lunch-times. He hated the feeling of vague benevolence with which he returned to his office, he hated the visits to the loo, and he hated the mid-afternoon drowsiness with its sour aftermath.

Above all he hated the thought that he might come to be as unaffected by them as Dalziel, who for the moment seemed to be taking a breather from his diet.

He excused himself after the third pint and set off at a brisk walk heading away from the station. His intention was to exercise the beer out of his system but he was distressed to find himself beginning to puff slightly after only a couple of minutes. It was time to dig out his old track suit and amuse Ellie by taking some regular exercise. He recalled how a couple of years ago he'd been entertained by Dalziel's commencement of a course of Canadian Air Force exercises. The fat man had given up at the bottom level of the first chart, remarking that if God had wanted Canadians to fly, he'd have fitted rockets to Rose Marie's arse.

Perhaps he still had the book.

Suddenly Pascoe saw his future ahead as clearly as the pavement along which he was walking. A steady rise in the police force till he reached his level of incompetence. Investigation after investigation, with more failures than successes unless he managed miraculously to beat the statistics. Streets like these in towns like this. Intermittent worries about his physical condition, but a gradual acceptance of decline. Intermittent worries about his intellectual and spiritual condition…

He almost bumped into someone and they did a little mirror dance in their efforts to pass each other.

'Sorry,’ said Pascoe.

She was a girl of twenty, probably heading back to work. She smiled widely at him. She had a round, pretty face.

A steel-clad fist would drive bone and teeth through the ruin of that soft-fleshed cheek.

There was an equation here somewhere.

But three-pint solutions were just the froth on bar-room philosophy. What he needed now was a pee and a coffee and a flash of creative intuition. He had the first two, rang Ellie to announce he would not be home for dinner, and was still awaiting the third when at half past five after an afternoon of solid paper work he closed his eyes for a well-earned forty winks and dreamt most sentimentally of his wedding day.

Chapter 13

The bells that awoke him were not the church bells of his dream but the more strident peals of the telephone.

'Hello, hello,' he croaked, half asleep. It was Ray Crabtree with a background of muzak. 'Peter? You sound half doped! Well, at least you're not one of those cops who head for lounge bars in posh hotels on the stroke of opening time.'

'There's a lot of them about,' said Pascoe.

'Indeed. Well, duty's dragged me here, of course. Penny Latimer and some of her mates are here. I had a word. I was right, they've been out on the job – sorry, on location – all day.'

'You asked about the film?'

'I did. They looked at each other a bit blankly. No one seemed to know if there was another print of Droit de Seigneur, but Penny says she'll check in the morning.'

'Who else is with her?'

'Gerry Toms, for one. He got back at the weekend.'

Pascoe thought hard. This still felt and smelt like a red herring. He had neither the time nor perhaps the right to go shooting off at a tangent when there was so much else to do. It was arrogant, self-indulgent, all caused by an undigested image irritating the lining of his imagination.

But perhaps it was its very indigestibility which made it so important. A policeman must treasure and preserve what is most sensitive and vulnerable in him against the day when someone tries to find his price.