Remember all the talk about the man without a head during the Profumo thing? I think that poor old Partridge were one of them who had to get his doctor to check his tackle with a slide rule to prove it weren't him in the picture. Well, I don't know if it's the same picture that Westropp had, but this one had a head, and it showed young Scott Rampling looking very proud of himself, not without cause, and being much admired by a select audience, with one or two faces showing which suggest it were taken at one of Stephen Ward's little get-togethers.
Now this 'ud mean that not only was Rampling an enthusiastic orgiast but also he didn't mind doing it in a circle which included a Russian KGB officer. The Yanks are about as hypocritical as us when it comes to sex, and even more neurotic when it comes to security. If that photo got loose and Rampling was identified, he'd not get elected as town dog-catcher!' 'So what did you do with this photo? Give it to Rampling?' ‘I thought about it when I finally got to see him. But he were so bloody rude – told me I was a foreign alien and he could have me deported – that I thought: Stuff it! Let the bugger sweat. I can't abide bad manners, you know that, Peter.' 'Of course. Does that mean you've still got it?' 'Want a peep, do you, lad?' said Dalziel lasciviously. 'It would just give you an inferiority complex and by the sound of it, you've got enough bother in the bonking department already. Nay, I tore it up and stuck it in a litter-bin at Washington airport.' 'Oh,' said Pascoe, feeling this was a little bathetic.
Dalziel laughed and said, 'But first of all, there was this fax machine. You pay your money, just like a telephone. There was a directory. I thumbed through it. You've really got to admire them Yanks. There was this number for the White House. When they talk about open government, they really mean it. So I thought: Why not? Rampling was very young on the photo. Mebbe no one will recognize his face. And if they recognize any other bit of him, then it'll be a real test of patriotic zeal, won't it? So I paid my money and I faxed it to the White House.' Pascoe let out a snort of incredulous laughter which made a couple of distant nurses look round in alarm. He said, it's really good having you back, sir.' 'Nay, don't go sentimental on me,' said Dalziel in surprise. 'Hadn't you best be getting off to see that lass of thine? Can't put it off forever.' 'I don't want to put it off at all,' said Pascoe spiritedly. 'What about you? Where will you be?'
'Oh, I'll mooch around. Give us your car key in case I just want to sit out here. Don't rush. No hurry. Give Ellie my best. And the kiddie. I bought her something. A musical banana. Is she musical at all?' 'Not so's you'd notice.' 'Good. It makes a bloody awful noise." 'I'm sure she'll love it.' Pascoe took a few steps, hesitated, came back. 'Sir, if this is all true, then you'd better really take care.
You don't want to end up like Geoff Hiller.' 'Suspended? Not much chance of that,' said Dalziel grimly. 'Suspended's what you get for knowing fuck-all. Knowing what we know gets you what Mavis Marsh got.
I'll take care, lad. You too. Only reason I told you any of this is so you can forget all of it. Now bugger off and see if you can bang some sense into that wife of thine.' It wasn't the most helpful advice he'd ever received from the Fat Man, however you took it. On the other hand, he hadn't worked out any viable alternative course of action. He introduced himself to a receptionist who directed him to a waiting-room. Through the glass door panel he saw Ellie deep in conversation with a white-coated doctor. Rose was straddling a chairback, looking bored. He pushed open the door. It was Rose who spotted him first. 'Daddy!' she screamed. Fell off the chair. Bounced.
Thought about crying. Decided that tears were not appropriate to the circumstance. And came running towards him, arms stretched wide. He caught her up and swung her round, then folded her tight to his chest.
Ellie had turned and was looking at him. Her face was set in her serious controlled expression, but when she saw her husband, she decided that tears were quite appropriate. He had time to register, thankfully, that these were not tears of grief before he had her in his arms too, with Rosie crushed and protesting between them. 'She's OK, Peter. She's old and arthritic and her blood pressure's terrible, but she's OK! Ninety per cent of this forgetfulness is probably caused by her medication, and the other ten per cent by worry. They're going to try her on other drugs and monitor the side effects. Pete, it's like having her back from the dead, like I've called her out of the tomb!' 'That's great. And what an endorsement for private medicine, eh?' he mocked. 'It just goes to show what a mess those Tory bastards have got the NHS into,' she responded fiercely, then saw he was laughing at her, and laughed too. 'Can we see her?' he asked. 'I was just on my way to bring the car round to pick her up,' said Ellie.
'She's not staying in, then?' 'What? Do you know what these places charge per night? It's bloody extortionate!' exclaimed Ellie, her old antipathies fully reactivated. 'They'll want to monitor her progress but I can fetch her back to outpatients for that. Now tell me how you've been, Peter. I mean really. You're looking pale. That fat bastard working the guts out of you with me out of the way, is he?'
There would come a time to tell her about his sessions with Pottle, but not here, not now. 'The fat bastard is at this moment sitting outside in my car,' he said. 'You'd better say hello and ask him yourself.' They walked across the car park together, Rose swinging happily between them, chattering away in a seamless monologue which bound them like a current of electricity. Pascoe led them confidently to where he had parked, then slowed into uncertainty. 'Where's the car, Daddy?' asked Rose. 'It's there… I think… Between that green van and..’ But it wasn't. The space was empty. Except for his overnight grip which had been neatly deposited between the white lines. 'The bugger's stolen my car!' exclaimed Pascoe. 'In that case,' said Ellie, 'you'd better come back with us and spend the night.' Thus casually are armistices offered. 'All right.' And thus casually accepted. Rose had broken free and run to the bag. The top half was unzipped and she pulled something out. It looked like a plastic boomerang, pimpled in purple and gleaming with gold. 'Good God,' said Ellie. 'I'm away for a few days and you're into appliances!' 'What is it, Daddy?' asked his daughter. 'I've no… Hang on! Of course.
It's for you, love. It's a present from Uncle Andy.' 'I might have known,' said Ellie. 'It's lovely,' said the little girl, examining the garish object closely. 'But what's it for?' Pascoe said gravely, 'I do not doubt that, like Columbus, Uncle Andy has brought back much that is strange and exotic from the New World, but nothing to equal this.
You are holding a musical banana without which, I believe, no American home is complete. You blow into it. But be careful before you accept such a rare gift. It may change civilization as we know it.' Rose nodded, as if registering the full implications of the warning, and examined the strange object with a grave fearlessness that reminded Pascoe so much of her mother that he felt tears prickle his eyes.
Then, dauntless, the banana to her lips she set, and blew. Dalziel had been right. It made a bloody awful noise.
THREE
'It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.' The door jammed on a pile of junk mail and uncancelled papers, and there was a taint of decay on the dank air. As Dalziel squeezed his belly over the threshold, one of his favourite precepts fluttered batlike into his mind. A man got the welcome he deserved. He shook the thought from his head. What the fuck had he expected? The kind of old-fashioned thriller ending yon bugger Stamper might have scripted, with a fire burning in the grate, a stew bubbling on the stove, and Linda Steele, hotter than both, lying open-legged across his bed? He went into the kitchen. On the table was a dusty cardboard box, unearthed from the junk room just before his departure, and half a pork pie with a fungus-fuzzed bite out of it. Gingerly he picked it up, opened the back door and lobbed the pulsating pie into his wheelie bin. Then he sat down at the table and stared at the cardboard box.