The 'closed' sign was up in the velvet-curtained window, but he could see movement inside. He rapped sharply on the door. And again after a few seconds.
A thin-faced man appeared, stared assessingly at Pascoe for a moment, decided rightly that as a potential customer he did not promise much, and gesticulated at the 'closed' sign.
For answer Pascoe produced his warrant-card, pressed it to the glass and imitated the man's gesture.
The man stepped back, turned and seemed to be saying something to whoever was in the office with him. Then he opened the door.
'Mr Cowley?' asked Pascoe.
'Yes?'
'Detective-Sergeant Pascoe, sir. May I come in?'
Cowley was in his early thirties. He was excessively lean and hungry-looking and he carried his head thrust forward aggressively, putting Pascoe in mind of a beefeater's pike.
'Is it about Matthew? I talked to some of your people yesterday, you know. At length.'
Pascoe stepped by him into the front-office. No vulgar counter here, but a scattering of comfortable chairs and low tables on which gleamed copies of Country Life and Vogue. Three doors opened off this area, one marked Mr Lewis, another Mr Cowley, while the third, the central one, was unmarked and presumably led to their secretary's office.
'I won't take long,' said Pascoe. 'Shall we sit down?'
Cowley glanced towards the door of his room which was slightly ajar. Pascoe courteously suspended his buttocks six inches above the nearest chair and looked up expectantly. Like a dog waiting for a biscuit.
'Oh, all right,' said Cowley.
With an audible sigh of relief, Pascoe sank into the soft leather.
'But make it quick, will you? I do have a client with me at the moment.'
Pascoe felt slightly disappointed the man had admitted someone else was here. Part of the joy of being a detective was having something to detect.
'Business goes on?' he murmured sadly. 'Of course; it must. I'll try not to keep you, sir. Now, as I understand it, Mr Lewis drove down from Scotland on Monday to attend a business conference?'
'That's right.'
'I see. Now, at the conference there were yourself, and Mr Lewis and…?'
'And no one. That was it.'
'Really?' said Pascoe, infusing just a touch of polite surprise into his voice. 'Your secretary, perhaps?'
'No.'
'No. I see. But she would be here… somewhere?'
He waved his hand vaguely towards the central office. He always enjoyed this vague-young-man-from-the-Foreign-Office role.
'No. Monday's our staff half-day. We don't fit in with the shops. That way our girls can go shopping.'
'And shopkeepers can go house-hunting? Convenient. So there were the two of you only?'
'I've told you,' said Cowley, exasperated. 'What's the difficulty?'
'No difficulty. I merely wondered, if just the two of you were involved, why not conduct your conference on the phone? Why break into Mr Lewis's holiday like this? I know how much I value my two weeks' peace and quiet, ho ho.'
'Do you? Well, Matt liked to work. In any case, he was up and down to Scotland half a dozen times a year. He owns – owned – a cottage there, so it was no skin off his nose coming back.'
'A cottage. Nice. Well, I take your point, Mr Cowley, but it still must have been a fairly important matter.'
'Not very. It needed a quick decision, that was all.'
'A business matter?'
'Of course.'
'Routine, but urgent? Timewise, I mean.'
'That's it. You've got it. Now, please, Sergeant, could we get on?'
'Of course. Just another minute, sir.'
Another minute spread to ten. Pascoe could not really say why he was trying to niggle this man, except that his air of chronic impatience seemed to invite such treatment, just as some people look so self-effacing and humble, it is difficult not to tread on them.
But after ten minutes, all Pascoe had was the mixture as before, and Cowley's annoyance was reaching legitimately large proportions. At last Pascoe beat a strategic retreat, feeling he had wasted his time. Despite this, he wasted another fifteen minutes sitting in his car thirty yards up the road until Cowley too came out accompanied by a grey-haired, stocky man in an old tweed suit. Pascoe had never seen him before. It didn't seem very likely he would ever see him again. He glanced at his notebook which held the names and addresses of Lewis and Cowley's two secretary/typists. Doubtless they would be enjoying their unexpected day off, perhaps a little worried about the job now with half their employers dead.
He shut the notebook with a snap and leaned his head hard against the cool glass of the windscreen. It was so easy. So easy to forget what a death could mean to other people. For all he knew, there could have been a close relationship between Lewis and his secretary. Sexual perhaps; such things were commonplace. Or perhaps she just liked him, admired him, shared jokes with him. What did it matter? What did matter was that he, Detective-Sergeant Peter Pascoe, should not so easily brutalize in his mind people he had not met.
He glanced at his book once more. Marjory Clayton, 13 Woodview Drive. Not far from old Sturgeon's place, if his geography were right. He ought to look in and have a word with Sturgeon while he was out that way.
But first things first. He let in the clutch and set off for Woodview Drive.
Sturgeon had been heading steadily south for the past half-hour. He knew he wasn't going fast enough, but his right foot seemed weightless, not able to cope with the job of depressing the accelerator. Ferrybridge and its great cooling towers, the Age of Industry's version of Stonehenge, had moved slowly by a few minutes earlier. The Doncaster bypass was not far ahead, and then the road would split, giving a choice between the Al and the Ml, two great alimentary tracts via which the north voided its products into London.
London still had a sinful sound to him. True, in his sixty-eight years he had been there a couple of dozen times, perhaps more; but always it was the first time he recalled, and his old grandmother who had never been farther south than Newark sewing his purse to his woollen vest as a precaution against pickpockets.
But now the days of such precautions were by. He smiled at the double irony of the thought and glanced at his watch. Mavis, his wife, would be getting home soon. She was rarely late back from shopping because she did not like to leave the cats. Though of course she would not think the house would be empty. But it wouldn't perturb her, not Mavis. Not at first. She'd set about making his tea with swift, deft, long-practised movement. He owed her much. She'd married beneath her, so her relatives had said or plainly hinted. There'd been a bit of brass there. But he'd never taken any; he had shown them; by his own efforts with his own hands. He had shown them.
It had started raining, a fine misty rain out of which a slow lorry suddenly appeared ahead, snapping him back to the present. He swung out sharply to overtake. Behind him a blue van, breaking the speed-limit on the outside lane, bore down on him relentlessly, flashing its lights.
He stamped on the accelerator now, finding his strength. The Rover leapt forward, the loose seat-belt buckle swinging noisily against the door. In a few seconds his speed had doubled.
It was all a question of timing really. He suddenly felt optimistic. It was the right thing to do, there was no alternative. The thing was to do it right. He opened his mouth in triumphant song. The road glistened damply.
Behind him, the driver of the blue van watched in disbelieving horror the beginnings of the skid. This couldn't be happening just because he had flashed his lights. It couldn't be!
The road here was slightly raised above the level of the surrounding countryside. The car slid gracefully off the hard surface, struck the grass-verge, then flipped sideways and over down the embankment.