Ruling Passion

A white Rover passed them in the opposite direction and turned south on the Al. Pascoe did not even notice it pass.

Chapter 4

Back at the office Pascoe found a message on his desk. Sturgeon had rung several times that morning. 'Sounded urgent,' said the note cryptically, 'but wouldn't say what.'

Silly old sod! thought Pascoe. Does he think I've nothing better to do than make stupid bloody telephone calls to Scotland?

But he reached for the phone, at the same time digging into his breast pocket for Sturgeon's scrap of paper. He sorted it out with some difficulty from the large collection of frayed and folded stationery the pocket contained. It was a kind of portable (and permanent) filing cabinet. A sergeant's pay did not encourage the wearing of any great variety of clothes.

The phone rang for more than a minute before it was answered.

'Can you no' wait?' demanded a Scots voice, the owner of which then apparently dropped the receiver to the floor and went back to whatever business had been interrupted. It seemed to involve drawing a metal edge down a sheet of glass.

Eventually he returned and after some coaxing revealed himself as Sergeant Lauder. He was even more reluctant to accept that Pascoe was, in fact, Pascoe; and only an exasperated invitation to him to replace the receiver and make further investigations at Mid-Yorkshire HQ persuaded him to concede the point. As soon as Pascoe mentioned Archie Selkirk of Strath Farm, Lauder's doubts seemed to reassert themselves.

'Is that you?' he demanded. 'Is it you again, man?'

'It's me. Sergeant Pascoe. For God's sake! Can't you understand?'

'No need to blaspheme, whomever you are. Then you're no' the one who phoned yesterday?'

'No, I'm not. If I'd phoned yesterday, I wouldn't be… oh, forget it! What about Archie Selkirk?'

'Ay, well, Archie Selkirk, is it? That's what the one yesterday was asking about too.'

'What?' Pascoe was suddenly interested. 'Didn't he give a name?'

'No. No name.'

'Yorkshire accent?'

'Perhaps. Perhaps. But you all sound much the same to me.'

'Well, what did you tell him?' demanded Pascoe.

'Just the same as I'm going to tell you, Sergeant Pascoe,' answered Lauder, still by his intonation managing to infuse a great deal of incredulity into the last two words.

'And what's that.'

'Simply, there's no such man. Not farming round here, that is.'

'You're sure?'

Lauder indicated by his heavily scornful silence that he was sure.

'And Strath Farm?'

'No.'

'No such farm.'

'Aye.'

'And you told this to the man yesterday.'

'Aye.'

The pips went.

'This must be costing the ratepayers a mint of money,' said Lauder, stung out of monosyllables.

'Aye,' said Pascoe. 'Thanks.'

He pressed the rest, got the dialling tone, and dialled Sturgeon's number.

The old sod must have got impatient and decided to do it himself, thought Pascoe. Why he couldn't do it in the first place, God knows. And why had he rung so urgently that morning?

The phone was still ringing. He glanced at his watch and groaned. Time was marching by and there was work to be done. Sturgeon would have to wait. In any case, he almost certainly knew what Pascoe had to tell him. Though what it could mean teased the mind. But there was a murder waiting to be solved.

He replaced the receiver and set off for the late Matthew Lewis's office.

Dalziel came from behind the screen with all the demureness and probably the total volume of Gilbert's three little maids from school. He pulled himself together as he caught the glint of amusement in the eyes of the solitary witness and removed his instinctively modest hand from his crotch.

'You'd think someone as rich as you could keep this bloody place warm!' he snapped, blowing into his hands. 'Let's get it over with before I freeze to death.'

'Now you know how it feels to be one of those poor bastards you torture in your cells,' grunted Grainger, the doctor.

He and Dalziel were old acquaintances. Each affected to believe the other embodied all the public misconceptions and suspicions of his profession. Secretly they were not altogether convinced this was not in fact true.

Grainger began his examination. It had seemed an excellent opportunity to give Dalziel a thorough overhaul when the other man had made this, his first appointment in half a dozen years. Now, ignoring Dalziel's impatient protests, he took his time as he moved from one part of the test-sequence to the next.

'Do they pay you by the hour?' grumbled the superintendent. 'Look, while I'm here, you might as well make yourself useful. What can you tell me about diabetes? Or didn't they discover it till after you graduated from the barber's shop?'

'You don't think you've got diabetes, do you?' asked Grainger. 'You haven't. God knows what else is wrong with you, but you're not diabetic.'

'Thanks. No. There's someone we're anxious to see and he's got diabetes.'

'How do you know?' asked Grainger. 'Turn over, will you, if you can manage without a lever.'

'He left a kettleful of piss behind him.'

'Jesus!' said Grainger, pausing with his stethoscope poised. 'I thought my job brought me life in the raw.'

'You don't know you're living. Come on then. Diabetes. What can you tell me about our man?'

'It's not as simple as that,' answered Grainger, 'as I'm sure your police-surgeon would be only too pleased to tell you. There are three types of diabetes for a start, Type A, Type B…'

'And Type C. Christ, is that what you spend five years learning? The bloody alphabet?'

'… and Type AB,' continued Grainger, unperturbed. 'Type A's the most popularly known form, though by no means the commonest. If you've got Type A it means you're dependent on insulin injections for the rest of your life. It usually manifests itself in young people. Classified symptoms are excessive hunger and thirst and frequent urination.'

'In a kettle,' said Dalziel, interested.

'That might be a symptom of something to a psychologist, not to me,' said the doctor. 'Sit up. My God, what a gut you've got, Andy. If you were going to get diabetes, it'd be Type B. It usually doesn't strike till middle-age and the victims are nearly always overweight. It's the most common form of the disease and is usually treated orally rather than through insulin injections.'

'You mean they drink the stuff?'

'No! Insulin's got to be injected. They take something else, a hypoglycaemic agent – that means something which lowers the amount of sugar in the blood.'

'And Type AB?'

'Stress diabetes. This is a form bought on by an undue emotional or physical stress. People in their thirties or forties get it. Symptoms in its mild form are much for Type B, only the victim's not overweight. On the contrary, he's often underweight. But violent stress can bring on a violent reaction and make the patient insulin-dependent, for a while at least. Stand up now.'

Dalziel obeyed, groaning.

'Well, you've been a great help. We're looking for a thin man of thirty or forty, or a fat man of forty or fifty, or a thin or fat man of almost any age at all.'

'It could be a woman,' suggested the doctor.

'Get stuffed. Look, for God's sake, how long are you going to be? I've got work to do.'

'Another twenty minutes. Here, that is,' answered Grainger. 'Then I've fixed up for you to be X-rayed at the hospital. You'll be done by tea-time.'

'What the hell do you think I've got?' demanded Dalziel with an aggression meant to be comic.

But he heard in his voice the frightened plea of the suspect demanding to be told the nature of the charge.

Lewis and Cowley Estates was the kind of firm which did not put the prices of its property in the window. Rare for Yorkshire, thought Pascoe. They generally liked a price-tag on everything. Brass was a matter of general public concern.