So he too was in the reassure-Dalziel business. Oh, that tender blossom, that rathe primrose, needing protection from the cold blasts of suspicion playing on his new-found lady love. Could Cap Marvell really be mixed up in the Redcar business? Could antic chance have made her introduce Wendy to the woman who'd killed her brother? Dafter things happened on television. And what did she really know about Cap anyway? Wasn't her gut reaction that she was non-violent based more on the social assumption that ladies of Marvell's class didn't go around breaking skulls than on any real psychological insight? And how would Andy Dalziel react to the growing suspicion that he might have been banging away where he should have been banging up?
Like vulcanologists sailing off Krakatoa, they watched, poised between flight and fascination.
Slowly the great head turned, the slab features and blank eyes concealing whatever lavatic emotions surged and bubbled within, his gaze passing like a dark shadow over Wield and Ellie and Peter, till it came to rest on the bar.
'Jack!' he bellowed. 'Are you exhuming that pie, or what?'
vi
Sergeant Wield groaned as he pulled open the first filing-cabinet drawer and released a gust of that scent of old damp paper which permeated Digweed's shop and which he was determined was not going to tinge the air of Corpse Cottage.
At least, unlike Pascoe, he had come dressed for the job in white police-issue overalls with surgical gloves.
Patten had laughed when he saw him and said, 'What's this? Frankenstein meets the Abominable Snowman?'
His good spirits and the fact that he was the one who'd drawn Pascoe's attention to the cabinets convinced Wield that whatever else he found down here, it wasn't going to have any bearing on any scam TecSec were involved in. Of course, it could be he was completely wrong and TecSec was as clean as a whistle. Unlike Dalziel, Wield had no religious faith in his gut. If licking toads or chewing exotic mushrooms could conjure up visions, no reason why a bit of ripe cheese or dodgy kebab shouldn't provoke a dyspeptic hunch.
But the way that Jimmy Howard had jumped when he bumped into them just now, as Patten was showing Wield the way to the cellar, kept his rumblings loud and clear.
For the moment, however, despite the smell, he was not altogether displeased to be down here out of harm's way. Unfortunately he hadn't had time to give an account of his morning's work to Dalziel before Ellie Pascoe's revelations, which meant that when he did get round to it, every reference to the antagonism between Walker and Marvell came out like another straw on the camel's back.
'And Cap herself, what did you make of her?' Pascoe had asked, before Dalziel could, or couldn't, as the case might be. This was after Ellie had taken her leave.
Nothing to do but give the same answer he'd have given if Dalziel had been able to resist handling the fruit.
'Tough,' he said. 'Able to look after herself, and anything else she cares to look after. Not the kind that you could put anything across, or at least, not for long.'
'You mean, she might have had some suspicions about Wendy Walker?'
'About her real commitment? Yes, it wouldn't surprise me. Though of course the issue was clouded by Walker sounding off about the need for more direct, i.e. violent, action.'
'And Marvell's attitude to more direct action?'
'My impression was, she probably wouldn't set out to hurt anyone, but if it happened more or less by accident, I think she could deal with it.'
'And the others?'
'Jacklin and Walker apart, I reckon she's dominant enough for them to go along with her.'
'Why not Jacklin? She doesn't sound like one of society's strong wills?'
'That's mebbe the trouble.'
He gave details of Jacksie's relationship with the group.
'And being a nurse, of course, night duty means she's not as freely available as the others for evening activities. Cuts both ways. Means that sometimes she misses out, but also that if Cap wanted, it would be easy to miss her out.'
'Arrange something for a night you know she couldn't make it?' said Pascoe. 'Might be interesting to check if she was on duty the nights of the Redcar raid, and the first one at Wanwood.'
'To prove what?' said Dalziel.
'Oh just dotting the i's and crossing the t's,’ said Pascoe vaguely.
'As in shit!' snarled Dalziel. He drained his pint and banged his glass on the table with a crash which would have had many landlords grabbing for their baseball bats, but only got Jolly Jack reaching for the pump.
'All right. Do it,' said Dalziel. 'Owt else from your little tit-a-tit wi' Miss Jacklin?'
It ill behoved a man with his unconcealed mammary obsession with Cap Marvell to make breast jokes with regard to any other woman, thought Wield primly. Perhaps it was time for the little people to stop tippytoeing around the man mountain.
He said, 'Yes, there was, as a matter of fact. That night at Wanwood when they ran amok inside, Jacksie got the impression that Cap knew exactly where she was running to. And she was struck by the way she and Walker seemed to have swopped attitudes when they were locked up together later.'
Taking out his notebook, he quoted Jacksie's precise words.
Dalziel flapped his hand in a dismissive gesture which in central Asia would have destroyed whole fleets of flies.
'She explained that, swinging them wire cutters. Yon bugger Patten suddenly appeared in front of her. Reflex defence. I'd have done the same myself.'
And if a man lay dead at your feet after you'd done it, what then? wondered Wield.
'What about knowing her way around, sir?' he asked. 'I checked the TecSec statements. She almost made it to the labs.'
Pascoe rode to the rescue.
'She sounds to me exactly the kind of person who'd research anything she planned to do very carefully, not just act on girlish impulse.'
His intention was simply to offer another reasonable explanation of the woman's apparent knowledge of the geography of Wanwood, but he realized even as the words were still coming out that their application went far beyond that.
Both Wield and the Fat Man had turned on him gazes which were at once inscrutable and eloquent.
And that was when he said hastily, 'Oh by the by, talking of Wanwood.. ' and told them of his adventures among the filing cabinets.
Now Wield started using that gift which God has dished out to some humans with great generosity because, like a blind man with a jigsaw puzzle, He has only limited use for it Himself — the gift of creating order out of chaos.
First he established which cabinets had not been penetrated by ravening rodents. Using an indelible black marker he put the sign of the cross on those which were beyond his human skills.
Next he divided the others into their two main categories, Patients' Records and Admin correspondence, marking this on the cabinets. And finally he established the date parameters of each set of files and marked this on the side also. With many gaps, they ranged from 1915 to 1946. Pascoe, with that serendipity with which God sometimes compensates those who are Marys rather than Marthas, had stumbled on the earliest almost immediately. His news about the original ownership of Wanwood had been interesting, but Wield couldn't see how it related to their enquiries, nor did he really have any idea what it might be that Pascoe had set him looking for down here. But as a team the three of them, himself, and Fat Andy, and Peter, had long since come to rely on each other's peculiar talents to the extent that each could lead the others a long way down his particular road before they cried, Hold! Enough!
Physically, the cabinets relating to the years 1915-19 were the most accessible. Wield guessed that this was because they were the first to be dumped down here, after the war when the hospital administrators started looking forward to a period of peace and profit. Whoever had lugged them down the stairs had seen no reason to go deeper into the cellar than he needed, so had left them close by the entrance.