Ruling Passion

'It'll be cold in an hour,' he said.

'What will be?'

‘It didn't do to start lusting after subordinates' womenfolk, he thought. Especially when they were sharp-tongued and ill-disposed.

'What'll you drink?' he asked, sitting down abruptly. 'Sam!'

'Yes, Mr Dalziel?' said the barman, appearing with great smartness.

'Gin and tonic,' said Ellie. 'It must be nice to be known.'

'Not always. It's nice here though.' He nodded approvingly at the village of Birkham.

'It's convenient,' said Ellie. 'It's half-way. I like to meet people half-way.'

What am I doing here? wondered Dalziel.

'Now, what are we doing here?' asked Ellie.

'Christ knows,' grunted Dalziel. 'I'm giving an explanation. You might like to think it's an apology.'

'As long as it's just that. I get suspicious when middle-aged men start ringing me up as soon as my boy-friend's gone away for the night.'

'Don't flatter yourself,' said Dalziel. He scratched his armpit. If they thought he was bloody repulsive, he might as well look bloody repulsive.

'It's the inquest tomorrow then.'

'Yes.'

'You know why they've reopened it? Normally nothing'd happen. The police would get a man, he'd be tried, found guilty. The registrar of deaths would put it in his book. Murder, manslaughter, whatever. This lot's different. They'll bring in a verdict of murder and name Colin Hopkins.'

'But why?'

'No one down there thinks the body's ever going to come up. At least it might not. It's hard to do things in law without a body. But they've got three others for the coroner to work on.'

Ellie's drink arrived. The barman looked in mock amazement at Dalziel's still untouched glass.

'On the wagon, Mr Dalziel?'

'I'm being dragged behind, Sam.'

'Well, don't forget, there's a big one in the bottle for you.'

Dalziel waited till he had left their table.

'There was a note, you know. It'll be read. Conclusions drawn. Hopkins named. Everyone sleeps happy in their neighbour's bed.'

'But what if Colin's still alive?' protested Ellie.

'What's the odds? A fake suicide note's as good an admission as a real one.'

'I see,' said Ellie hopelessly. 'Peter thought much the same.'

'He would,' said Dalziel approvingly. 'You know his promotion's through? It'll be official tomorrow.'

'I heard. You're not building up to another warning, are you?'

Dalziel laughed.

'Not really. No. We had a few words about that. I must be getting soft. I can take anything from these lads now. Anything.'

'So I've heard,' said Ellie drily.

'But it made me think. I shouldn't have talked to you on the phone the way I did.

‘No. You bloody well shouldn't.'

'No,’ agreed Dalziel.

'So you're sorry?'

'No point in being sorry. It's past now.'

'Jesus! So?'

'So what?'

'So what are we doing here?'

Abstractedly, Dalziel downed his drink in one swallow then stared at the glass defiantly.

'Listen, I'm good. Of my kind of policeman, I'm probably one of the best Pascoe will ever know. Mind you, I've peed behind too many doors to get much farther. Pascoe, I reckon, of his kind, which looks like being the new kind, can potentially be very good too. Excellent. If I live that long and he keeps going, I could be sirring him before we're finished. So my interest in him is self-interest in a way.'

'You couldn't perhaps like him just a bit as well?' inquired Ellie. She had softened a little but was still very suspicious of this fat bastard.

'He amuses me sometimes,' said Dalziel. 'There's not many as do that.'

'I think I may marry him,' said Ellie thoughtfully.

'Good,' said Dalziel. 'Good. That would be best. I'm glad to hear you say that. Good.'

'Good?' repeated Ellie. 'Why, you fat bastard, that's what you want, isn't it? If you can't get us apart, you might as well get us respectable!'

'I told you I belonged to the old school. There's nowt wrong with a woman that can't be cured by colour telly, wall-to-wall carpeting and a couple of rounds up the spout,' he said with exaggerated coarseness.

Ellie thought of kicking him in the crotch. Then she started laughing. She laughed so much that people turned and stared and the dogs in the nearby kennels started barking wildly as though in reply.

'Let's have another drink,' Dalziel said when she had recovered.

'All right. Just one. Peter's going to phone me at eight. We can breathe heavily down the phone before we're married, can't we?'

She started laughing again. This time Dalziel laughed too.

Pascoe slept for an hour and woke up feeling rotten. He got out of bed to take another pill, felt slightly better and decided to ring Ellie. The phone rang a dozen times. No one answered. He glanced at his watch. Seven o'clock. She'd be having dinner. He went back to bed.

Ellie was enjoying herself. Her previous encounters with Dalziel had always been in polarizing situations. This evening they were keeping steadily on neutral ground and she was finding it a pleasant experience. Like football in no-man's-land during a Great War Christmas.

He was talking about Sturgeon.

'There's only one crime and that's being poor,' he asserted.

'Shaw,' said Ellie, through her fourth large gin. Dalziel took it as an expression of drunken agreement.

'You can grade men according to the way they react to being without money,' he continued.

'You're not going to tell me that the more you've had, the worse it is?' asked Ellie suspiciously. 'More sympathy for the rich, that kind of bullshit?'

'Not at all. Some people can take it. Some are so fond of luxury and position they'll do anything to conceal it. Others have been there before and are absolutely resolved they'll never be there again.'

'Scarlett,' said Ellie. Even making allowances for gin, the chatter of people and the howling of dogs, Dalziel couldn't make sense of this.

'O'Hara,' said Ellie. 'End of Gone With The Wind part one before the intermission.'

'Yes,' said Dalziel. 'Great movie. Sturgeon was like this. Not for himself, mind you. For his wife. He decided she would be better off with the insurance money. She didn't think so.'

'Get his money back.'

'What?'

She leaned towards him, exquisite in the darkling air.

'Get his bloody money back. That's what you're paid for, isn't it?'

'I wish it was as easy as that.'

The Fraud Squad's preliminary report had arrived that afternoon. Quite simply, they could find no case to answer, and as Dalziel could find no one to answer this non-existent case, things were at a stand-still.

It appeared that land had been bought, legitimately bought, from the fringes of the Earl of Callander's huge estate near Lochart. It was land fit for little except grazing sheep and by the terms of the sale not usable for anything else either. A fair price had been given. The land agent who negotiated the sale was acting for a Mr Archibald Selkirk about whom he knew nothing except that he had placed at his disposal an amount of money sufficient to cover the land price and expenses.

On the land was a small dilapidated croft. In the record of the sale Archibald Selkirk had inserted after the single mention of the croft the words hereinafter known as Strath Farm.

So the land Edgar Sturgeon had purchased for something like thirty times its original value had legally been the property of Archie Selkirk of Strath Farm.

Where Archie Selkirk was now, or the money for that matter, was impossible to determine. No papers Sturgeon possessed were anything other than strictly legal. The only evidence of fraud was the extortionate price paid by Sturgeon for the land. And, of course, Sturgeon's story.

'So the poor sod's had it!' exclaimed Ellie indignantly.

'Not altogether. If we can trace the man Atkinson, or Selkirk, we'll have something to work on. But our best bet's dead, of course. Lewis.'