Ruling Passion

'Put her through to me,' he said on impulse.

'Hello?'

'Hello, Miss Soper. Dalziel here.'

'Oh.'

'Sergeant Pascoe's not here at present, but I hope to be seeing him later. Was it urgent?'

'No. No, not really.'

'Forgive me asking, Miss Soper, but is it a private matter? Or is it police business?'

'I didn't realize you drew a distinction, Superintendent.'

That's better, thought Dalziel. That's the authentic liberal radical left-wing pinko Dalziel-hating note.

'If it's police business, Miss Soper, I'm sure the sergeant would want you to tell me.'

'What kind of police business had you in mind?'

Dalziel poured himself another scotch with his free hand.

'You are linked with a current inquiry, Miss Soper. Please accept my sincere condolences on what happened at the week-end. It must have been very trying for you.'

'Oh yes. I was very tried. Very tried indeed.'

Dalziel sighed and drank deeply.

'But, please, if any pertinent information should come your way, think carefully before you burden Pascoe with the weight of it. It's wrong to put overmuch strain on a man's loyalties. Wrong for everyone.'

'Let's chuck the circumlocutions, shall we? What're you trying to say, Superintendent?'

'I'm trying to suggest,' said Dalziel, his voice rising in spite of himself, 'that if for instance the man, Hopkins, should get in touch with you, it's your plain duty to inform the authorities. It would be wrong, and stupid, and bloody selfish to tell Pascoe and then try to get him to conceal the information. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Miss Soper. Not that you ought to need to be told, you're supposed to be so damn clever. Pascoe's a good lad, he's got a fine career in front of him if no one starts screwing him up. You stick to giving him soldiers' comforts in the night and leave him to do the job he's paid for. That's what I'm trying to tell you.'

He stopped and listened, waiting for a verbal explosion in reply or the sound of the phone being hammered down. Instead of either, he heard a soft rhythmic sound like a broken humming. It might have been either weeping or laughter.

'Miss Soper?' he said. 'Miss Soper.'

The line went dead.

He poured another inch of whisky. As usual, he had been right, he thought, staring down into the glass. This outbreak of heart was spreading widely. It was going to be difficult to avoid the contagion.

'Hello, Eric, or little by little,' said Angus Pelman, smiling through the Land-Rover window at the very damp boy on the grass verge.

Eric Bell was unamused by the facetious form of address. He hadn't been amused the first time he'd heard it and since then had found no reason to adjust his reaction.

'Hello, Mr Pelman,' he said politely. The man after all was a friend of his parents, though the word 'friend' seemed to have a rather odd meaning in the adult world. His mother and father always seemed delighted with Mr Pelman's company, made much of him, plied him with drink. But after his departure, the things they said about him though not always comprehensible were clearly far from complimentary.

'You'd better get in,' said Pelman. 'Though you couldn't get much wetter.'

Eric climbed in.

'No school today?' asked Pelman.

'No. The teachers are having a meeting.'

'Oh? With the holidays they get, you'd think they could meet in their own time. Don't you think so, Eric?'

Eric didn't bother to answer, ignoring his number one dictum, it pays to be polite to adults. He was going to pay the price he realized almost immediately.

'Was that you I saw earlier going up Poplar Ridge?' said Pelman casually.

'Up Poplar Ridge?'

'That's right.'

'It might have been.'

'Oh. There's not a great deal up there, is there?'

'Not much.’

‘No,’ said Pelman. 'Except the clay-pit.'

Eric fixed his eyes on the rain-pustuled glass in front of him. The windscreen-wiper was defunct on the passenger side and could only flick spasmodically like the broken wing of a shot bird.

His mind worked quickly. He saw no reason at all to trust Pelman. He hadn't laughed at his jokes, which is the biggest of anti-male sins. Therefore Pelman was almost certain to put the idea of the pit in his mother's mind. And that would be that. When it came to extracting information, Chinese inquisitors were mere unsubtle blockheads by comparison with his mother.

The best hope was to create a diversion.

'Yes,' he said. 'The clay-pit is up there. But that wasn't why I went. I went to look at the car.'

'The car?'

'Yes. There's a car up there. I went to see if it was still there.'

'What kind of car?' asked Pelman, slowing down.

'A blue car. A Mini.'

The Land-Rover came to a gentle halt by the roadside. Pelman peered closely at the boy.

'A blue Mini, Eric. Did you find it, or did somebody tell you about it?'

Eric thought quickly. It sounded better for him if he'd merely gone to investigate someone else's report, he decided.

'Someone told me,' he said, adding virtuously, 'I wouldn't have gone up there.'

'That's very interesting,’ said Pelman, setting the Land-Rover in motion again. 'Then we'd better tell somebody else, hadn't we?'

On the surface, Jane Collinwood was even more upset at the loss of her employer than her fellow secretary had been, but Pascoe suspected she was thoroughly enjoying the thrill of being so closely connected with a real life murder. She was a pretty girl, except for rather crooked teeth, not much more than seventeen, and full of the careless vigour of youth which overflowed even into the little bouts of weeping she thought the fitting punctuation of her speech.

He asked the obvious questions without much hope. Anything odd she'd noticed? Any reason to think someone might want to hurt Lewis? Everything she replied discouraged him more and more in his theory that there might have been something personal in this killing. Dalziel was right, as always. The house-breaker had been disturbed and lashed out in panic. Tough on Lewis.

'Do you know why Mr Lewis came back on Monday?' he asked finally, preparatory to leaving.

'Oh no. Not exactly.'

'Not exactly? But you've got some idea?' asked Pascoe, suddenly interested. 'You heard something in the morning?'

'No, I didn't hear anything. I'd no idea he was coming back. It was just later when I heard… the news…'

'Blow your nose,' said Pascoe with headmistressly firmness. It seemed to work.

'I presume it was something to do with Mr Atkinson.'

'Who's he?' said Pascoe puzzled. The name rang some kind of bell, but not one connected with Lewis.

'I don't really know,' said the girl.

Pascoe was beginning to feel irritated, but he kept it in check. The girl's blether was far too near her eyeballs, as he had heard Dalziel say in one of his more Scottish moments.

'Then why do you say… well, whatever it is you do say?'

He thought he'd done it again, but she recovered. It was very hard being sympathetic for long, he suddenly realized. Grief was so anti-life. It is a relationship with the dead, emotional necrophilia.

'Mr Atkinson and Mr James and Mr Matt…’

'Who?'

'Mr Cowley and Mr Lewis. I always called them…'

'All right. Go on.'

'Well, they had been doing some business together for a long time. It seemed to be private, I mean there wasn't any correspondence, not that I was asked to do anyway.'

'Miss Clayton perhaps?'

'Perhaps. She was senior.'

She made seniority sound like a disease thought Pascoe.

'Anyway, I knew Mr Atkinson by sight. He always said hello when he came into the office.'

'And what makes you think that it was this business that brought Mr Lewis back on Monday?'

She looked at him in exasperation.

'I'm telling you. Mr Atkinson went along to the office that afternoon. That's why it was probably about their business. Why else should he go to the office when it was closed?'