'Bloody right it wasn't,' said Dalziel with relish. 'They've a lot to answer for. This fellow was heading for the good life, back to Mother Earth, do-it-yourself, all that crap, right?'
'Yes. Up in the Orkneys, I think.'
'That's right,' said Dalziel. 'One of the little islands. Him, a few natives, a lot of sheep; and his wife.'
'His wife?'
'Oh yes. Only, suppose she wasn't his wife! They don't take kindly to living in sin up there, so it'd be better for community relations to call her his wife. But suppose that on that Friday your Kate packed her few things, put on her new blonde wig and set off for the Orkneys!'
Pascoe shook his head to fight back the waves of fatigue, and something else, too.
'Why the wig?' he asked.
'She was meeting her boy-friend at King's Cross, on the train. She had the wit to guess there might be mutual acquaintance there to see him off and she didn't want to be spotted. As it happened, the whole bloody party came along, including hubby, so she was very wise. Imagine, there's Swithenbank shooting all that shit about how he wished he had the guts to up and leave everything, meaning his missus, for a better life, and there she is sitting only a few carriages away, doing just that!'
'Oh Christ,' said Pascoe. 'Is this just hypothesis, or have you checked it out?'
'What do you think I am, bloody Sherlock Holmes?' exploded Dalziel. 'No, there's no way any of us could have worked out any of that. It was up to Dove and his mates, as I'll make bloody clear! What we've got is this. Arrived this morning.'
He handed Pascoe the sheet of paper he had been carrying.
It was a request for assistance from Orkney Police HQ in Kirkwall. They were holding one David Cunliffe on suspicion of murdering his 'wife', whom he now claimed was not his wife but Katherine Swithenbank, formerly of Wearton in the county of Yorkshire, where, he suggested, it was most likely she would return after leaving him.
It was clear the Orkney constabulary had no great faith in his claim. No one had seen her leave the small island on which their croft was situated. No one had spotted her on the ferry from Stromness or on a plane from Kirkwall Airport. Pascoe got a distinct impression that the croft which Cunliffe had so lovingly repaired was now being taken down again, stone by stone, and the land which he had tilled was now being dug over again, spadeful after hard-turned spadeful.
'She was a right little expert at the disappearing trick,' said Dalziel admiringly. 'When she gets fed up she just packs her bag and goes. And no one ever notices!'
'Someone noticed this time,' said Pascoe.
'Belt up! Think on – there's going to be some red faces this morning! Which do you want to do – Enfield or Orkney?
Best you do Orkney; Dove'll try to shrug it off, well, the bugger won't shrug me off in a hurry!'
He sounded really delighted, as though the whole of the Wearton business had been arranged just so that he could crow over the inefficiency of the effete south.
But before he left the room, he made one more effort to cheer up his dull and defeated-looking inspector, who was sitting with his head bowed over his open notebook.
Til say it one last time, Peter,' he said. 'It wasn't your fault. You reckoned she was dead, everyone reckoned she was dead, her brother, her husband, that Enfield lot. You had to go ahead as you did. You'd have needed second sight to know where she was hiding herself. I mean, inspired guesses are one thing, but to work out she was in the Orkneys on the basis of what you knew, you'd have needed a miracle. Right?'
'Right,' said Pascoe.
'Good,' said Dalziel. 'Come twelve, you can buy me a pint for being right. Again.'
He went out.
Pascoe closed his eyes and saw again the white-clad woman floating up the path from the lych-gate.
Why had she come back? What had she hoped for?
He shook his head and opened his eyes.
He would never know and he had no intention of trying an inspired guess. Dalziel was right. A detective should have no truck with feelings and intuitions.
He looked at his notebook, which still lay open at the first page of his scribblings on the Swithenbank case, made as he talked to Dove on the telephone two days before.
On the left-hand page there were two words only. One was hairdresser?
The other lightly scored through was Orkney?
He took his pen now and scratched at the word till it was totally obliterated.
Then he closed the book.
DALZIEL'S GHOST
'Well, this is very cosy,' said Detective-Superintendent Dalziel, scratching his buttocks sensuously before the huge log fire.
'It is for some,' said Pascoe, shivering still from the frosty November night.
But Dalziel was right, he thought as he looked round the room. It was cosy, probably as cosy as it had been in the three hundred years since it was built. It was doubtful if any previous owner, even the most recent, would have recognized the old living-room of Stanstone Rigg farmhouse. Eliot had done a good job, stripping the beams, opening up the mean little fireplace and replacing the splintered uneven floorboards with smooth dark oak; and Giselle had broken the plain white walls with richly coloured, voluminous curtaining and substituted everywhere the ornaments of art for the detritus of utility.
Outside, though, when night fell, and darkness dissolved the telephone poles, and the mist lay too thick to be pierced by the rare headlight on the distant road, then the former owners peering from their little cube of warmth and light would not have felt much difference,
Not the kind of thoughts a ghost-hunter should have! he told himself reprovingly. Cool calm scepticism was the right state of mind.
And his heart jumped violently as behind him the telephone rang.
Dalziel, now pouring himself a large scotch from the goodly array of bottles on the huge sideboard, made no move towards the phone though he was the nearer. Detective-superintendents save their strength for important things and leave their underlings to deal with trivia.
'Hello,' said Pascoe.
'Peter, you're there!'
'Ellie love,' he answered. 'Sometimes the sharpness of your mind makes me feel unworthy to be married to you.'
'What are you doing?'
'We've just arrived. I'm talking to you. The super's having a drink.'
'Oh God! You did warn the Eliots, didn't you?'
'Not really, dear. I felt the detailed case-history you doubtless gave to Giselle needed no embellishment.'
'I'm not sure this is such a good idea.'
'Me neither. On the contrary. In fact, you may recall that on several occasions in the past three days I've said as much to you, whose not such a good idea it was in the first place.'
'All you're worried about is your dignity!' said Ellie. 'I'm worried about that lovely house. What's he doing now?'
Pascoe looked across the room to where Dalziel had bent his massive bulk so that his balding close-cropped head was on a level with a small figurine of a shepherd chastely dallying with a milkmaid. His broad right hand was on the point of picking it up.
'He's not touching anything,' said Pascoe hastily. 'Was there any other reason you phoned?'
'Other than what?'
'Concern for the Eliots' booze and knick-knacks.'
'Oh, Peter, don't be so half-witted. It seemed a laugh at The Old Mill, but now I don't like you being there with him, and I don't like me being here by myself. Come home and we'll screw till someone cries Hold! Enough. ^1*
'You interest me strangely,' said Pascoe. 'What about Aim and the Eliots' house?'
'Oh, sod him and sod the Eliots! Decent people don't have ghosts!' exclaimed Ellie.
'Or if they do, they call in priests, not policemen,' said Pascoe. 'I quite agree. I said as much, remember…?'
'All right, all right. You please yourself, buster. I'm off to bed now with a hot-water bottle and a glass of milk. Clearly I must be in my dotage. Shall I ring you later?'