'Are you saying it's not?' asked Wield.
'Yes, I mean, no … I mean, I've only been there since September, sarge, and I can put my hand on my heart and say that since I joined, I've not noticed anything dodgy.'
'Probably because there's nothing to notice,' said Wield. 'But if anything did come up, well, think on, Jimmy. You know the score from your time in the Force. With information, there's before and after. Before, and you're on the side of the angels. After, and you're just another lowlife trying to cut a deal.'
Wield was glad Pascoe wasn't here to hear him talking like something out of an American cop movie.
'Well, I know nowt,' said Howard firmly. 'There's been nowt, not since September when I joined. And if there was, I'd get in touch, sarge, you can rely on it. Once a cop, eh?'
'Right,' said Wield. 'Hurry and you'll make the second race, Jimmy.'
He sat a little longer, staring into the murky depths of his untouched tea. The café prop, came over and looked angrily at the twisted spoon.
'What the hell happened to that?' he demanded.
Wield looked at him coldly, still not out of his tough guy role.
'It got knotted,' he said. 'Why don't you do the same?'
v
Peter Pascoe was a conscientious man, but there were several factors which made him able to head for Kirkton via the unlikely route of the University Staff Club without too bruising a moral struggle.
Firstly, as Ellie could testify with some bitterness, the job owed him for uncountable hours, days, even weeks of unpaid overtime.
Secondly, he had a strong suspicion based on a certain evasiveness of speech that Dalziel's alleged 'interrogation' was taking place between consenting adults without reference to the rules of PACE.
Thirdly, though his criminological acquaintance with patterns of obsessional behaviour kept nagging at his mind, he couldn't escape the feeling of being guided, or perhaps pushed, if not by an external divinity, then at least by personal intuitions whose roots lay too deep for rational excavation.
So when he'd rung the History Department to leave a message for Professor Pollinger and the antipodally twanged respondent had announced she was Andrea Pollinger and if he wanted to talk to her it had better be in the next couple of hours as she'd be away from campus for a week or so starting that afternoon, he hadn't hesitated to make a date.
As he entered the Staff Club, a small man with a heavily nicotined moustache said, 'Peter, hello, not looking for me, are you?'
This was Dr Pottle, Head of the Psychiatry Unit at the Central Hospital and occasional lecturer at the university. Pascoe had a double-pronged relationship with him — first as a professional consultant to the police, and second as a personal consultant to himself. Some weeks had passed since contact in either mode had been necessary.
'No,' said Pascoe. 'Should I be?'
'That's for you to say and me to confirm,' said Pottle. He smiled as he spoke but his shrewd eyes were quartering Pascoe's face.
'I'm just meeting someone here. Sorry, don't have time to talk.'
'Me neither, not now,' said Pottle. 'But if you did fancy a chat, I think I've got a window between say four and five. Take care.'
He was gone. Damn the man, thought Pascoe. It's really come to something when the psychiatrists are drumming up business in the street!
He went in search of Pollinger.
Ellie had prepared him to some extent but the professor still surprised. Clad as though for a safari in a bosom-billowed khaki shirt and floppy shorts out of which erupted a positive torrent of leg, she invited him to join her in a glass of lager in terms which suggested refusal would be injury and any alternative drink insult. She should have been a parody, but how could anyone be a parody who was so exuberantly herself?
'Ellie, my wife, whom you met last night. .' began Pascoe.
'Great girl. No bullshit. You got yourself a gem there, Pete.'
She'd already instructed him to call her Poll. He tried it now.
'Yes, er, Poll, I know it. Ellie tells me you're writing a book about the Passchendaele campaign, Third Ypres?'
'That's right. You interested in that particular cockup?'
'In a way. More specifically in World War One military executions. I wondered if you might have any specialized knowledge in that area?'
She wasn't looking quite so friendly now.
'Well, I know what everyone knows, that you bastard Poms shot an average of one of your own men every week of the war. Maybe if they'd shot a fucking staff officer a week too, the war would have been over a lot sooner, but I doubt it. Seems to be an inexhaustible supply of dickheads from your officer classes.'
'Indeed,' said Pascoe, glancing round the Staff Club to see how this academic analysis was going down. Fortunately the few other inmates seemed to be in that state of intellectual contemplation which a non-initiate might have mistaken for sleep.
'So spit it out, Pete. Why exactly do you want to talk to me?' she asked.
'Well, it's in reference to a sort of private investigation I'm engaged in — is something the matter?'
She definitely had the look of a sunbather who has noticed a crocodile in the swimming pool.
'This is the way I always look when I find some jackaroo sniffing around to pick the titbits out of my hard-sweated research,' she said. 'By a peculiar coincidence, I'm thinking about doing my next book on Great War court martials. Did I maybe let this slip to Ellie last night? And this private investigation of yours, is that maybe cop-speak for writing a book? Ellie said you were a jack, but I don't suppose you've still got a case open eighty years on.'
Pascoe had forgotten how neurotic academics could be about their research. They made the world of industrial espionage seem like shoplifting from Woollies.
He said, 'This really is private and personal. I've just discovered that my great-grandfather was one of the poor bastards you mentioned. I'd like to find out the details but if this is going to cause you some professional difficulty..'
'Don't get your Y-fronts in a twist,' she said. 'This is sensitive stuff we're talking about here. I just about had to sell my body to get sight of it, and a nice sensational story in the tabloids traceable to me would slam all kinds of doors on my tits.'
'Isn't it in the public domain then?'
'Sure. Like Prince Charlie's dong's in the open air when he goes for a slash, but that doesn't mean we're all going to get a look at it. So why exactly do you want to get hold of these details, Pete?'
'Oh you know. . family interest…'
'Yeah, yeah, I know that one. Look up the family tree and see who's hanging there. You'll need to do better than that.'
Pascoe sipped his lager, then said, 'I'm sorry. I'm not sure I really know why … or what I want to do. . Like I said, I've only just found out, but since I found out, I've hardly been able to think about anything else. I suppose I want to understand how.. why.. and if there was a miscarriage of justice..'
'You for capital punishment, Pete?' she interrupted.
He looked at her in surprise, then tried to answer.
'No, it's barbarity. But it's a barbarity that has been written into our legal system from time to time and while I'm glad it's behind us, I wouldn't use its existence to argue that men should get away with murder.'
'Nicely fielded, Pete. And if that's the way you think, your worries are over. Your own beloved PM has said as much in Parliament. No grounds for issuing retrospective free pardons to any of those poor bastards 'cos whatever we may think about the punishment, that's what they had coming to them under the laws and conditions of service prevailing at the time. Go down that road, he implied, and you end up pardoning a hell of a lot of sheep stealers. You go along with that, Pete?'