A pinch of snuff

'I doubt it,' said the woman. 'The Inspector don't approve of us beautiful people. Not like you, Ray. Ray recognizes that police and film people have a lot in common. They exist because of human nature, not in spite of it. But Ray has slain the beast, ambition, and now takes comfort in the arms of the beauty, philosophy. You should try it, Inspector.'

'I'll bear it in mind,' was the smartest reply Pascoe could manage.

'You do. And don't forget my invitation. Homeric's the company, Penelope's the name. I'll be weaving and watching for you, sailor. 'Bye, Ray. Thanks for the drink.'

She rose and returned to her companions.

'Interesting woman,' said Crabtree, regarding Pascoe with amusement.

'Yes. Is she like that through choice or chance?'

'Glandular, they tell me. Used to be a beauty. Now she has to live off eggs and spinach and no good it does her.'

'Tough,' said Pascoe. 'Tell me, Ray, what's a joint like Homeric doing in a nice town like this?'

Crabtree shrugged.

'They have an office. They pay their rates. They give no offence. The only way that most people are going to know what their precise business is would be to see their films, or take part in one of them. Either way, you're not going to complain. Things have changed since I was a callow constable, but one thing I've learned in my low-trajectory meteoric career: if it's all right with top brass, it's all right with me.'

'But why come here at all? What's wrong with the Big Smoke?'

'Dear, dear,' said Crabtree. 'I bet you still think Soho's full of opium dens and sinister Orientals. Up here it's cheaper, healthier and the beer's better. Do you never read the ads?'

'Everyone's talking smart today and putting me down,' said Pascoe. 'Time for another?'

'Hang on,' said Crabtree. 'I'll phone in.'

He returned with another four halves.

'Plenty of time,' he said. 'It's been put back again.'

'When to?'

'Next week.'

'Oh shit,' said Pascoe.

He regarded the half-pints dubiously, then went and rang Ellie again. There was no reply. Perhaps after all she had rung an old boy-friend.

'Left you, has she?' said Crabtree. 'Wise girl. Now, what do you fancy – drown your sorrows or a bit of spare?'

He arrived home at midnight to find a strange car in his drive and a strange man drinking his whisky. Closer examination revealed it was not a strange man but one of Ellie's colleagues, Arthur Halfdane, a historian and once a sort of rival for Ellie's favours.

'I didn't recognize you,' said Pascoe. 'You look younger.'

'Well thanks,' said Halfdane in a mid-Atlantic drawl.

'On second thoughts,' said Pascoe belligerently, 'you don't look younger. It's your clothes that look younger.'

Halfdane glanced down at his denim suit, looked ironically at Pascoe's crumpled worsted, and smiled at Ellie.

'Time to go, I think,' he said, rising.

Perhaps I should punch him on the nose, thought Pascoe. Man alone with my wife at midnight… I'm entitled.

When Ellie returned from the front door Pascoe essayed a smile.

'You're drunk,' she said.

'I've had a couple.'

'I thought you were at a meeting.'

'It was cancelled,’ he said. 'I rang you. You were out. So I made a night of it.'

'Me too,' she said.

'Difference was, my companion was a man,' said Pascoe heavily.

'No difference,' said Ellie. 'So was mine.'

'Oh,' said Pascoe, a little nonplussed. 'Have a good evening, did you?'

'Yes. Very sexy.'

'What?'

'Sexy. We went to see your dirty film. Our interest was socio-historical, of course.'

'He took you to the Calli?' said Pascoe indignantly. 'Well, bugger me!'

'It was all right,' said Ellie sweetly. 'Full of respectable people. You know who I saw there? Mr Godfrey Blengdale, no less. So it must be all right.'

'He shouldn't have taken you,' said Pascoe, feeling absurd and incoherent and nevertheless right.

'Get it straight, Peter,' said Ellie coldly. 'Dalziel may have got you trained like a retriever, but I still make my own decisions.'

'Oh yes,' sneered Pascoe. 'It's working in that elephants' graveyard that does it. All that rational discourse where the failed intellectuals go to die. The sooner they close that stately pleasure-dome down and dump you back in reality, the better!'

'You've got the infection,' she said sadly. 'Workin a leper colony and in the end you start falling to bits.'

'Schweitzer worked with lepers,’ countered Pascoe.

'Yes. And he was a fascist too.'

He looked at her hopelessly. There were other planets somewhere with life-forms he had more chance of understanding and making understand.

'It's your failures I put in gaol,’ he said.

'So, blame education, is that it? All right, but how can it work with kids when intelligent adults can still be so thick!' she demanded.

'I didn't mean that,' he said. He suddenly saw in his mind's eye the girl in the film. The face fell apart under the massive blow. It might all be special effects but the reality beneath the image was valid none the less. If only it could be explained…

'There is still, well, evil,' he essayed.

'Oh God. Religion, is it, now? The last refuge of egocentricity. I'm off to bed. I'm driving down to Lincolnshire tomorrow, so I should prefer to pass the night undisturbed.'

She stalked from the room.

'So should I,’ shouted Pascoe after her.

Their wishes went unanswered.

At five o'clock in the morning he was roused from the unmade-up spare bed by Ellie pulling his hair and demanding that he answer the bloody telephone.

It was the station.

There had been a break-in at Wilkinson House, premises of the Calliope Kinema Club. The proprietor had been attacked and injured. Mr Dalziel wondered if Mr Pascoe, in view of his special interest in the place, would care to watch over the investigation.

'Tell him,' said Pascoe. 'Tell him to…'

'Yes?' prompted the voice.

'Tell him I'm on my way.'

Chapter 5

The Calli was a wreck.

As far as Pascoe could make out, person or persons unknown had entered by forcing the basement area door which fronted on to Upper Maltgate. They had then proceeded to wreck the house and beat up Gilbert Haggard, not necessarily in that order. That would be established when Haggard was fit enough to talk. A not very efficient attempt to start a fire had produced a lot of smoke, but fortunately very little flame, and a Panda patrol checking shop doorways on Maltgate had spotted the fumes escaping from a first-floor window.

When they entered the house, they had found Haggard on the second-floor landing, badly beaten round the face and abdomen. A combination of the blows and fumes had rendered him unconscious.

Pascoe wandered disconsolately around the house accompanied by a taciturn Sergeant Wield and an apologetic Fire Officer.

'Was there any need to pump so much water into the place?' asked Pascoe. 'My men say there was next to no fire.'

'Can't be too careful, not where there's inflammable material like film about,' said the FO, smiling wanly at the staircase which was still running like the brook Kerith. 'Sorry if we've dampened any clues.'

'Clues!' said Pascoe. 'I'll need frogmen to bring up clues from this lot. Where did the fire start?'

'In a store room on the first floor. There's a couple of filing cabinets in there, and that's where they kept their cans of film as well. Someone scattered everything all over the place, then had the bright idea of dropping a match into it on their way out.'

'Can we get in there without a bathysphere?' asked Pascoe.

The FO didn't answer but led the way upstairs.

There was a sound of movement inside the storage room and Pascoe expected to find either a policeman or a fireman bent on completing the destruction his colleagues had begun. Instead in the cone of light from a bare bulb which had miraculously survived the visiting firemen, he found Maurice Arany.