He opened the door, still wearing his Guns 'n' Roses and cut-downs.
"Hello, Mr. Roberts," I began. "DI Priest. I was just passing. Been to a meeting, you know how it is, and thought I'd call to give you the latest."
"Oh, er, right," he replied. "You'd, er, better come in."
The carpets were deep and well-laid, as you might expect, but the colour was out of your nightmares. Day-glo orange and brow ny-orange in geometric patterns that shimmered and swayed like a Bridget Riley painting. The fireplace with its copper canopy dominated the room and the pictures on the walls were numbers one to five in the World's Most Sentimental Prints. The kid with a snotty nose, the Malaysian woman who's just eaten a badly cleaned puffer fish, and so on. Shaz was curled on the settee in a fluffy pink cardigan, watching TV and looking like an inflatable Barbie doll with a slow leak. I rested my eyes on the fish tank bubbling in the corner and sat down.
"Hope I'm not disturbing you," I began, 'but I thought you'd like to know what's happening."
"No, that's all right," he replied. She threw me a smile, on and straight off, and made a token effort to pull the hem of her miniskirt towards her knees.
"There've been a few developments," I began, 'but we're still working on it." I was competing against a peroxide-blonde creep who had a good line in third-form humour and a tits fixation. "Whether your brother Duncan started the fire is uncertain, but if he did he was most certainly put up to it by a girl. We're convinced he was just being used. She's in America at the moment, but we'll be having words with her. The house belonged to Keith Crosby at the time of the fire, and he was sacked. He was an MP, as you know. Apparently there was some bad blood between him and a prominent businessman, someone really famous, but I can't tell you his name just yet. We're talking to him a week on Tuesday and hoping he'll throw some light on things. He's promised to give us his full co-operation. One theory is that the girl did it to please him. So…" I stood up to leave,"… watch the news on telly and hope that he keeps his promise."
"Right," he said, rising. Tanks for coming."
At the door I turned and said: "Isn't young DJ at home?"
"No," he replied. "E's at college."
"I thought it was the holidays."
"Yeah, well, you know how it is. "Spect he has a bird up there or somefmg. He's at Lancaster University. Takes after his uncle in that re spec not me."
"What's he studying?"
"Mechanical engineering. He's a whiz wiv anyfing mechanical."
"He rang me," I told him, 'to ask about Uncle Duncan."
"Who? DJ?" He sounded surprised.
"Mmm. I think he cared about him more than you realised. I was hoping he'd be here, so I'd be grateful if you could pass on what I've told you."
"Yeah, right, I'll give 'im a bell an' tell 'im."
"Week on Tuesday," I said. "Watch the papers."
"Will do. Fanks."
I started the engine and did a three-point turn at the end of their cul-de-sac. He'd gone in before I drove by so I didn't wave. That's put the Fox amongst the chickens, I thought. This hadn't been in the game plan, and Tregellis would probably eat his desk if he found out, but sometimes it helps to stir things up a little. I tried to blink away the green spots that were swirling before my eyes and headed back towards the M1.
"That's where Percy Shaw lived," Sparky said, presumably pointing down a lane end we'd just passed.
Here we go, I thought. He's in one of those moods.
"Who's Percy Shaw?" Nigel asked, dead on cue. He'll never learn.
"Percy Shaw? You've never heard of Percy Shaw?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Blimey, and I thought you were educated. Percy's a local hero, and his product is used on nearly every road in the country; in the world, probably."
"Oh, I know who you mean," Nigel realised. "The Catseye man. He was clever, no doubt about it."
Sparky was driving my car and I was dozing in the back. We were making our way towards the M62 and then on to Bridlington. It was six thirty a.m." the sun was shining and in the North Sea the fish were swimming on borrowed time.
"He was more than clever, Nigel," Dave asserted. "He was a genius."
"Well, I wouldn't say a genius," Nigel argued.
"Of course he was. It was on this very road that he had his inspiration. He was driving along, one foggy night, and this cat was coming towards him. Percy saw how its eyes glowed in his headlights and when he got home he invented the Catseye.
Nigel didn't comment, but Dave was undeterred. "Next morning," he continued, 'he was driving back from the patent office when he saw the very same cat, but this time it was walking away from him. Percy dashed straight home and invented the pencil sharpener."
I'd heard it eight times before but I had to smile, or maybe Nigel's guffaws were infectious, or perhaps it was just that I was pleased they got on so well together. At first, when Nigel joined us, it was open warfare between them. Then they learned each other's strengths and weaknesses and now they ganged up against me. I regarded it as one of my successes. Dave went through my selection of cassettes, ejecting each after a short burst. "God, you don't half listen to some crap," he pronounced.
The rustling of paper told me that Nigel was struggling with the Telegraph we'd had to stop for. After a while he said: "Hey, this sounds a bargain! P amp; O are doing two on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander for seventy-nine pounds, and that includes a car!"
"Sounds good," Dave agreed. "I wonder what sort of car it is?"
I wasn't going to get any sleep so I opened my eyes and sat up. Nigel folded his paper and offered it to me, but I declined, so he stuffed it in the door pocket. We were on the motorway, south of Leeds, overtaking a string of lorries through the semipermanent roadworks near the M1 junction.
"Speed cameras, Dave," I warned. "Slow down, or the bastards'll get you."
"No," he stated, 'they'll get you:
"Well slow down the nV He slowed down. We left the roadworks behind and Nigel was admiring the view. "What are those?" he asked, looking out of his window. "I seem them every time I come this way and wonder what they are."
Dave glanced across and I peered out of the back window. "What are what?" Dave said.
"Those buildings, in that field."
Long and low, red brick with slate roofs, they were a familiar sight to me, but to Nigel, from Berkshire, they were a novelty.
Tusky sheds," Dave stated.
Tusky sheds?"
"Rhubarb sheds," I explained. "They grow rhubarb in them. Norfolk has its windmills, Kent has its oast houses, and we have rhubarb sheds."
"Right!" Nigel exclaimed. "Right! And I suppose that's a toothpaste quarry over there, and that old mill is where they used to make blue steam!" He pulled the Telegraph out again and started reading the obituaries.
"They're rhubarb sheds!" Dave snapped at him. "Like he told you."
"Just once," Nigel pronounced, 'just once it'd be nice to get a sensible answer to a sensible question." He read a few more deaths then pretended to be asleep.
"Nigel," I said, assuming my mantle of authority. "They are rhubarb sheds. It grows best in the dark. This area south of Leeds is the country's major producer of rhubarb."
"Have you ever had rhubarb crumble?" Dave asked him.
"No," he snarled.
Dave glanced back over his shoulder. "Ring our Shirl," he told me, 'and tell her to get a rhubarb crumble out of the freezer. Nigel's in for a treat."
The arrangement was that the three of us were going back to Dave's house for fresh-caught fish, and chips made with his home-grown potatoes. I asked Nigel to pass me my phone and dialled Shirley.