A Clubbable Woman
A Clubbable Woman
Reginald Hill
‘So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ Sunday TelegraphDetective Superintendent Andy Dalziel investigates murder close to home in this first crime novel featuring the much-loved detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe.Home from the Rugby club after taking a nasty knock in a match, Sam Connon finds his wife more uncommunicative than usual. After passing out on his bed for a few hours, he comes downstairs to discover communication has been cut off forever – by a hole in the middle of her forehead.Andy Dalziel, a long-standing member of the club, wants to run the murder investigation along his own lines. But DS Peter Pascoe’s loyalties lie elsewhere and he has quite different ideas about how the case should proceed.
REGINALD HILL
A CLUBBABLE WOMAN
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
Copyright (#ulink_5323b509-68f6-54e4-a5da-1382583ae89c)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 1970
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1970
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN 9780586072585
Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN 9780007390823
Version 2015-06-18
Dedication (#uebec2f68-3c14-53a2-96c6-209794ccbf68)
For Pat
Contents
Cover (#udb48f1d1-1979-5f57-a810-6dee52cc21b9)
Title Page (#ue71b21d9-f1ab-5bf6-984d-ddb4f2d72da6)
Copyright (#u85a06d99-37be-5999-a1e4-e12544c8c1e3)
Dedication (#uc4cdf026-764a-5946-bf9a-7a58513b1d7d)
Chapter 1 (#u8a4f444c-d663-5778-8148-db0f196790b6)
Chapter 2 (#uf487b8f9-6aa9-5eb6-8b2c-70574661db91)
Chapter 3 (#u6f6fc0fb-ad3b-522f-8fec-af9fc553762e)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Envoi (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_ff8f3747-6fde-545f-9f8c-f6f146f900f9)
‘He’s all right. You’ll live for ever, won’t you, Connie?’ said Marcus Felstead.
His head was being pumped up and down by an unknown hand. As he surfaced, his gaze took in an extensive area of mud stretching away to the incredibly distant posts. Then his forehead was brought down almost to his knees. Up again. Fred Slater he saw was resting his sixteen stones, something he did at every opportunity. Down. His knees. The mud. One stocking was down. His tie-up hung loose round his ankle. It was always difficult preserving a balance between support and strangulation of the veins. But it was worth it. Once the mud hardened among the long black hairs, it was the devil’s own job to get it off. Up again. He resisted the next downward stroke.
‘Why do you do that, anyway?’ asked Marcus interestedly.
‘I don’t know,’ said a Welsh voice. ‘It’s what they always do, isn’t it? It seems to bloody well work.’
‘You all right then, Connie?’
Connon slowly got up with assistance from the Welshman whom he now recognized as Arthur Evans, his captain.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
‘It was that big bald bastard in their second row,’ said Arthur. ‘Never you mind. I’ll fix him.’
There was a deprecating little cough from the referee who was lurking behind Connon.
‘I think we must restart.’
Connon shook his head. There was a dull ache above his left ear. Marcus was rather blurred.
‘I think I’d better have a few minutes off, Arthur.’
‘You do that, boyo. Here, Marcus, you give him a hand while I sort this lot out. Not that it matters much when you only get twelve of the sods turning up in the first place.’
Marcus slipped Connon’s arm over his shoulder.
‘Come along, my boy. We’ll deposit you in the bath before the rest of this filthy lot get in.’
They slowly made their way to the wooden hut which served as a pavilion.
‘Get yourself in that bath and mind you don’t drown,’ said Marcus. ‘I’ll get back and avenge you. It must be nearly time anyway.’
Left to himself, Connon began to unlace his boots. The ache suddenly began to turn like a cogwheel meshing with his flesh. He bowed his head between his knees again and it faded away. He stood up, fumbled in his jacket pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. The smoke seemed to help and he took off his other boot. But he couldn’t face the bath, he decided. He wasn’t very dirty and he hadn’t moved fast enough to work up a sweat. He washed the mud off his hands and bathed his face. Then, after towelling himself down, he got dressed.
The others trooped in as he was fastening his tie.
‘You all right, Connie?’ asked Marcus again.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Good-oh!’ said Marcus. ‘Let’s get into that water before Fred gets in.’
He began to tear his rugby kit off. Within seconds the bath was full of naked men and the water was sloshing over the side. There was a general outcry as Fred Slater settled in. Connon looked at the scene with slight distaste.
‘Goodbye, Marcus,’ he said, but his voice was drowned in a burst of singing. He made his way to the door and out into the fresh air.
He picked his way slowly over the muddy grass towards the distant club-house. The hut the fourth team used had originally been all the accommodation the club possessed, but the present of an adjoining field and a large loan from the Rugby Union had enabled them at the same time to develop another two pitches and build the pavilion. But even here the showers could not really cope with more than two teams, so the Fourth soldiered on in the old hut.
Connon thought ruefully that he had rather missed out on the development. The season the club-house was opened had been the season he retired. All those years in the first team had been centered on the old hut. Now when he was stupid enough to let himself be talked into playing, it was back to the old hut again.
He pushed open the glass-panelled door and stepped into the social room. Tea and sandwiches were being served.
‘Hello, Connie,’ called Hurst, the club captain. ‘Been over at the Fourths? How did they get on?’
Connon realized he did not know. He could not even recollect the score when he had left the field.
‘I don’t know how it ended,’ he said. ‘I got a knock and came off early.’
Hurst looked at him in surprise.
‘You haven’t been playing, have you? Good lord. You’d better have a seat.’
Connon helped himself to a cup of tea.
‘I’m only thirty-nine,’ he said. ‘You’re nearly thirty yourself, Peter.’
Hurst smiled. He knew, and he knew that Connon knew, this was his last season as captain.
‘They won’t get me out there, Connie. When I finish, I finish.’
‘Sandwich, Connie?’ asked one of the girl helpers. Connon recognized her as the girl-friend of the second team full-back. He shook his head, remembering when Mary had used to come down on Saturday afternoon. The catering like everything else had been more primitive then. Once they became wives they stopped coming. Then they tried to stop you coming. Then they even stopped that.
‘I won’t do it again in a hurry,’ he said to Hurst. ‘How did you get on?’
But Hurst had turned away to talk to some members of the visiting team.
The ache was turning again in Connon’s head and he put his cup down and went across the room to the door which led into the bar. This was empty except for the club treasurer behind the bar sorting out some bottles.
‘Hello, Connie,’ he said. ‘You’re early. You know we don’t serve till tea’s done and the girls have got cleared up.’
‘That’s all right, Sid. I just feel like a quiet sit down. It’s rather noisy in there.’
He sank into a chair and massaged the side of his head. The treasurer carried on with his work a few moments, then said, ‘Are you feeling all right, Connie?’
‘Fine.’
He lit another cigarette.
‘Make an exception and pass me a scotch, will you, Sid?’
‘Well, all right. Medicinal purposes only. Don’t let those drunkards smell it.’
He poured a scotch and handed it over.
‘Two shillings and sixpence.’
‘Isn’t my credit good?’
‘Your credit’s bloody marvellous. It’s my accounts which are bloody awful. Two and six.’
Connon dug into his pocket and produced the money. He sat down again and sipped his whisky. It didn’t help.
The door opened and Marcus stuck his head in.
‘There you are, then. I saw your car outside so I knew you must be hiding somewhere. How are you feeling?’
‘Not so bad.’
‘Good-oh. I see you’ve got a drink. Hey, Sid!’
‘No.’
‘Right, I’ll have to share yours, Connie.’
He sat down beside Connon. Connon pushed the drink towards him.
‘Have it.’
‘Here. Watch it or I’ll take offence.’
Connon smiled.
Marcus Felstead was short, bald, and fat. His face was not really the face of a fat man, Connie thought, but of a tired saint. He could not recall the name of the tired saint he had in mind but he remembered very clearly the picture in his illustrated Bible which was the source of the idea. The saint, his sanctity advertised by a dome of light which sat round his head like a space helmet, had been leaning on a staff and looking despondently into the distance which seemed to offer nothing but desert. Perhaps the thing about Marcus’s face was that the fleshiness of it formed a framework round rather than belonged to the thin nose and lips and narrow intelligent eyes which peered at him now curiously.
‘Are you sure you’re OK, Connie? You’re not usually knocking the booze back so early.’
‘Well, I did feel a bit groggy. But it’s gone now. How did we get on by the way?’
‘What do you think? Two men short with one of their reserves playing at full-back. Can you imagine? A reserve for a fourth team. Jesus, he made me feel young. They scored another couple after you’d gone. Thirty-two – three it was at the end.’
Connon was surprised. He could not recall any scoring at all, certainly not the kind of regular scores needed to build up a total like that.
‘Who scored for us?’
Marcus looked at him strangely.
‘What are you after? Flattery? You did, you silly bugger. A moment of glory, like the old times.’
Connon drank his whisky absently. He had distinct memories of the game, but they bore no relation to Marcus’s account.
The door burst open and a group of youngsters came in, their faces glowing with exercise and hard towelling.
‘Come along, barman, this isn’t good enough, this bar should be open now!’ one cried.
‘It’ll be open at the proper time,’ said the treasurer, ‘and then I’m not sure you’re old enough to be served.’
‘Me? The best fly-half the Club’s ever had. I’d be playing for England now if I hadn’t got an Irish mother, and for Ireland if I hadn’t got an English father.’
‘And for Wales, if you didn’t fancy Arthur Evans’s old woman.’
Marcus frowned disapprovingly and spoke sharply into their laughter, affecting a Welsh lilt.
‘Somebody talking about me, is there?’
There was an edge of silence for a moment, but only a moment.
‘It’s only Marcus!’
‘It might not have been,’ said Marcus sharply.
Unconcerned, a couple of boys strolled over and sat down at the table. They were only eighteen or nineteen. Still at the stage where they were fit rather than kept fit, thought Connon.
‘Did you play today, Marcus?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great! How did you get on?’
‘Lost.’
‘Pity. We won and the Firsts won.’
‘Not playing for the Firsts yet, a young and fit man like you?’
The youth smiled at this attack on his own condescension. ‘Not yet. But I’m ready. I’m just waiting for the selection committee to spot me.’ He grinned, a little (but not very) shyly, at Connon. ‘Didn’t you like my line-out work today, Connie?’
The boy had never called him Connie before. In fact, he couldn’t recollect the boy’s ever having called him anything. This was the way with these youngsters – noncommittal or familiar, there was no earlier formal stage. Not that I mind, he admonished himself. This is a rugby club, not an office party.
‘I didn’t see it, I’m afraid,’ he replied.
Hurst stuck his head through the hatch which led into the social room.
‘Right, Sid,’ he said. ‘All clear.’
‘Your order, gentlemen. Marcus, you’re on tonight as well, aren’t you?’
‘Christ, so I am. I could have been legitimately behind the bar all this time. Are you staying, Connie?’
Connon shook his head.
‘I’m late already. Mary’s expecting me for tea.’
‘She doesn’t know you were playing, then?’
‘How could she? I didn’t know myself till Arthur grabbed me when I got here and wept Welsh tears all over me.’
‘Best of luck, then. See you tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Come on, Marcus!’ came a cry from the bar. The room was now full and the social room hatch was also crowded with faces. Marcus barged his way through the crowd and was soon serving drinks from the other side of the counter.
Connon held the last of his whisky in his mouth. He felt reluctant to move though he knew he was already late. In fact he tried to catch Arthur Evans’s eye but the little Welshman either missed him or ignored him. Connon smiled at himself, recognizing his own desire to be pressed to stay. A group of young men with their girls crowded round his table and he stood up.
‘Thank you, Mr Connon,’ said one of the girls as she slipped into his chair. Connon nodded vaguely at her, suspecting he recognized one of his daughter’s school-friends under the mysterious net of hair which swayed over her face. She brushed it back and smiled up at him. He was right. Seventeen years old, glowing with unself-conscious beauty. She had a piece of tomato skin stuck in the crack between her two front teeth.
‘You’re a friend of Jenny’s, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘How’s she enjoying college?’
‘Fine,’ he answered, ‘I think she’s very happy there. She’ll soon be home for the holidays. Perhaps we’ll see you at the house. It’s Sheila, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. It depends where I fit into Jenny’s new scale of friends, I suppose. I’d quite like to see her.’
Connon reluctantly digested another piece of the revolting honesty of the young and turned to go. He heard a burst of laughter as he moved to the door. Arthur noticed him this time.
‘Hey, Connie, how are you there, boyo? How’s the head?’
‘It’s all right now.’
‘Good. I settled that fellow’s nonsense anyhow. Time for a drink?’
‘No thanks, Arthur. Gwen coming down tonight?’
‘Why yes, she is. Always does, doesn’t she? Why do you ask?’
‘No reason. I haven’t seen her for a while, that’s all.’
‘That’s because you’re always bloody well rushing off home, isn’t it? Why doesn’t Mary come down nowadays?’
Connon shrugged. For a second he contemplated offering Arthur a long analysis of the complex of reasons governing his wife’s absence.
‘Too busy, I expect,’ he said. ‘I’d better be off. Cheers, Arthur.’
‘Cheer-oh.’
The car park was quite full now and his car was almost boxed in. He had once proposed at a committee meeting that the club-house facilities be restricted to those who at least watched the game but this voluntary restriction of revenue had not won much support. Finally he got clear without trouble and drove away into the early darkness of a winter evening.
He glanced at his watch and realized just how late he was. He increased his speed slightly. Ahead a traffic light glowed green. It turned to amber when he was about twenty yards away. He pressed hard down on the accelerator and crossed as the amber flicked over to red.
There was no danger. There was only one car waiting to cross and it was coming from the right.
But it was a police-car.
Connon swore to himself as the car pulled ahead of him and flashed ‘Stop’. He drew carefully in to the side and switched off his engine. Its throbbing continued in his head somehow and he rubbed his temple, in an effort to dispel the pain. Out of the car ahead climbed two uniformed figures who made their way towards him slowly, weightily. He lowered his window and sucked in the fresh air.
‘Good evening, sir. May I see your licence?’
Silently he drew it out and handed it over with his insurance cover-note and test certificate.
‘Thank you, sir.’
The gears in his head were now grinding viciously together and he could not stop himself from rubbing his brow again.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘No. Well, no. I had one whisky but that’s all.’
‘I see. Would you mind taking a breathalyser test, sir?’
Connon shrugged. The policeman accepted the negative result impassively and returned his documents.
‘Thank you, sir. You will hear from us if any further action is proposed concerning your failure to halt at the traffic lights. Good evening.’
‘Good evening,’ said Connon. The whole business had taken something over fifteen minutes, making him still later. But he drove the remaining five miles home with exaggerated care, partly because of the police, partly because of his headache. As he turned into his own street, his mind cleared and the pain vanished in a matter of seconds.
He drove carefully down the avenue of glowing lampposts. It was a mixed kind of street, its origins contained in its name, Boundary Drive. The solid detached houses on the left had been built for comfort in the ’thirties when they had faced over open countryside stretching away to the Dales. Now they faced a post-war council estate whose name, Woodfield Estate, was the sole reminder of what once had been. This itself merged into a new development so that the boundary was a good four miles removed from the Drive. Mary and her cronies among the neighbours often bemoaned the proximity of the estate, complaining of noise, litter, overcrowded schools, and the comparative lowness of their own house values.
This last was certainly true, but Connon suspected that most of his neighbours were like himself in that only the price-depressing nearness of the estate had enabled him to buy such a house. Even then, it had really been beyond his means. But Mary had wanted a handsome detached house with a decent garden and Boundary Drive had offered an acceptable compromise between the demands of social prestige and economy.
His gates were closed. He halted on the opposite side of the road and went across to open them. While he was at it, he walked up the drive and opened the garage doors. It was quite dark now. The only light in the house was the cold pallor from the television set which glinted through the steamed-up lounge windows.
When he went back to his car a man was standing by it with the driver’s door open. Connon recognized him as the occupier of the house directly opposite his own, a man named Dave Fernie whom he also knew as a chronic grumbler at work.
‘Evening, Mr Connon. You left your engine running. I was just switching it off.’
‘Thank you,’ said Connon. He never knew how to address this man. He worked in the factory of the firm for which Connon was assistant personnel manager. But he was also a neighbour. And in addition, possibly with malice aforethought, Mary had made of Mrs Fernie the only friend she had from the council houses.
‘I was just opening my gates,’ he added, climbing into the car.
‘That’s all right,’ said Fernie graciously. ‘I’ve just been down the match. Were you there?’
‘Yes,’ said Connon. ‘I mean, no. I was at the rugger match.’
‘Oh, that. I meant the football. We won, 3–1. How did your lot come on?’
‘Oh, we did all right.’
‘Good. Rugby, eh? Here, you used to do a bit of that, didn’t you? My wife saw the pictures.’
‘Yes, I did once.’
He turned the key in the ignition and felt the turn in his skull so that the pain in his head shook with the roar of the engine, then settled down as quickly.
‘You OK?’ asked Fernie.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Well, good night then.’
‘Good night.’
He swung the car over the road and into the drive, slamming his foot hard on the brake as the branches of an overgrown laburnum slapped against his wing. He was used to this noise, but tonight it took him completely by surprise. He had stalled the engine and this time it took two or three turns of the starter to get it going again.
At last he rolled gently into the garage. He shut the main doors from the inside and went through the side door which led into the kitchen.
In the sink, dirty, were a cup and saucer, plate and cutlery. From the lounge came music and voices. He listened carefully and satisfied himself that the television was the source of everything. Then he took off his coat and hung it in the cloakroom. He looked at himself in the mirror above the hand basin for a moment and automatically adjusted his tie and ran his comb through the thinning hair. Then, recognizing a desire to delay, he grinned at his reflection and shrugged his shoulders, grimaced self-consciously at the theatricality of the gesture and moved back into the entrance hall.
The lounge door was ajar. The only light within was the flickering brightness of the television picture. A man was singing, while in the background a lot of short-skirted dancers sprang about in carefully choreographed abandon. His wife was sprawled out in the high-backed wing chair he thought of as his own. All he could see of her were her legs and an arm trailed casually down to the floor where an ashtray stood with a half-smoked cigarette burning on its edge. The metal dish was piled full of butt ends, he noticed. The burning cigarette had started another couple of stumps smoking, and Connon wrinkled his nose at the smell.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ still hesitating at the door.
The music and dancing seemed to be approaching a climax. The trailing hand moved slightly; a gesture of acknowledgment; a request for silence, a dismissal.
Connon let his attention be held for a moment by a close-up of a contorted face, male, mixing to a close-up of a shuddering bosom, female. The cigarette smell seemed to catch his throat.
‘I’ll just get a cup of tea, then,’ he said and turned, closing the door behind him.
Back in the kitchen he found a slice of cooked ham, evidently his share of the meal whose débris he had noticed in the sink. He slapped it on a plate and lit the gas under the kettle. Even as he did so, he felt his head begin to turn again and this time his stomach turned with it. He pressed his handkerchief to his mouth and moved shakily upstairs. Distantly the thought passed through his mind that he was well conditioned. Being sick in the downstairs toilet might disturb Mary. Now he was on the landing and his knees buckled and he gagged almost drily. Wiping his mouth, he pulled himself up, one hand on the handle of his bedroom door.
The next time he fell, he fell on to the bed and the wheels in his head went spinning on into darkness.
‘Do we have to have that tripe on?’ asked Dave Fernie.
‘Please yourself,’ said his wife. ‘You usually like it. All those girls. You must be getting old.’
‘Too old for that.’
Alice Fernie glanced across at her husband with a smile, half ironical, half something else.
‘Old enough for what, then?’
‘Aren’t you going to switch it off?’
‘I didn’t switch it on.’
‘No. I did. So you could see your precious football results after you rushed back from your precious match. And when you didn’t come, I even marked them down for you. Don’t you want to see?’
Fernie reached across and took the paper from the arm of his wife’s chair.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
The singer was off again, alone this time; a ballad; his voice vibrant with sincerity.
‘For God’s sake, switch that bloody thing off, will you!’
Angrily she rose and pulled the plug out of its socket.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you these days. I’m getting pretty near the end of my tether with you. Other women wouldn’t put up with what I do.’
Fernie ignored her and peered down at the newspaper, but she sensed he wasn’t really seeing it. She stood in the middle of the room and glowered down at him. He was in his early thirties, the same age as herself, but there was a puffiness about his face and a sagging at the belly which made him look older. Normally the contrast to her own advantage pleased her. Now she screwed up her face in distaste. Then, quickly as it came, her anger drained from her and she sat down again.
‘Are you ready for your tea yet?’
‘No, love. I told you I wasn’t hungry.’
‘Is there anything bothering you, Dave? Are you feeling all right?’
She steeled herself for the irritability her concern for his health always seemed to cause, but unnecessarily.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘You were late tonight.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I got held up. It was a good gate. I met his lordship on my way up the road.’
He jerked his head towards the window which faced the street. Alice affected not to understand.
‘Who’s that you mean?’
‘You know who. Connon. Bloody twat.’
‘Why? What’s he ever done to you?’
‘Nothing,’ he grunted. ‘I just don’t take to him, that’s all. Too bloody standoffish for me.’
‘That’s what he was. A stand-off.’
‘A what?’
‘Stand-off. His position at rugby. Mary told me.’
Fernie laughed. ‘Stand-off, eh? That’s bloody good. Wait till I tell them on the bench. That fits him.’
‘Anyway I think you’re wrong. When I met him he was very nice. Charming. A bit quiet perhaps but he’s just a bit shy, I think.’
‘If he’s shy he shouldn’t be a bloody personnel manager, should he? Anyway he’s more than that. He’s a snob.’
Alice laughed with a slight edge of malice. ‘I’d have thought you could say that about Mary Connon. But not him.’
Fernie shook his head dismissively. ‘Her. That’s different. She’d like to be better, but knows she isn’t. He believes he is. Bloody rugby club.’
‘Oh, Dave, don’t be daft. It’s not like that these days. Anybody plays rugby. Maisie Curtis’s boy next door, Stanley, he’s in the Club.’
‘So what? Things don’t change all that quick. What a game. Organized thuggery, then they all sing dirty songs like little lads. Yet they all tut-tut like mad if one of our lads runs on the field and someone shouts “shit” from the terraces.’
‘There’s no need to get excited, Dave.’
‘No? No, I suppose not. Here, I think I’m ready for my tea now.’
Alice rose and went into the kitchen.
‘I’ll tell you something about your precious stand-offish Mr Connon, though.’ His voice came drifting after her.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘He’d had a couple tonight. He was swaying around a bit. And I thought he was going to drive across his lawn and in through the front door.’
Alice came back to the sitting-room door.
‘That doesn’t sound like him.’
‘Doesn’t it? Don’t tell me that you’ve only heard good of him from Madam Mary?’
‘She doesn’t talk much about him at all.’
‘I don’t know why you bother with her. You’ve only got your age in common.’
Alice took an indignant step forward.
‘What do you mean? I can give her ten years, and more.’
Fernie caught her hand and pulled her down beside him on the settee.
‘As much as that? Mind you, she’s well preserved. And game too, I should think.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice, struggling to get up.
‘She must have caught him young then, very young. He’s only thirty-nine, you know.’
‘How do you know?’
He didn’t answer but went on, ‘And they’ve got that girl of theirs …’
‘Jenny.’
‘Yes, Jenny, at college. He must have been caught young. Very young. She’s a pretty little thing, now.’
‘Don’t you want any tea, Dave?’
Fernie’s brawny arm held his wife in a clamp-like grip round the waist. He looked thoughtfully into her face, then pressed gently with his free hand where it rested on her leg just above the knee.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I think I’ve changed my mind again.’
Jenny Connon hadn’t quite made up her mind what to do about the hand on her knee. Adaptability was an important quality in a teacher, her education tutor had told the class that morning. How to cope with the unexpected.
Though, as she herself had arranged that her roommate should go out and she herself had turned the key in the door to prevent interruption, the situation was not all that unexpected.
‘Do you really want to be a teacher?’ she asked brightly.
Antony (he insisted on the full name) pushed the hair back from his brow with a gesture almost girlish (but he used the hand not on her knee) and smiled.
‘If you mean, have I got a sense of vocation, no. If you mean, are my natural inclinations to be something else being repressed, the answer is equally no. Being at college is less distasteful than most of the alternatives, and it pleased my parents. Anyway, think of the holidays. I have a sense of vacation very strongly developed.’
Antony Wilkes was without doubt the smoothest man in the South Warwickshire College of Education at the moment. As he was in his third year and Jenny was in her first, the opportunities for the relationship to develop were limited. As it was, Jenny had decided to feel flattered that she was the second girl he had chosen from the year’s new supply. Her college ‘mother’ in the second year had assured her (rather sadly) that Antony was most discriminating in his selection. Her room-mate had been even more positive. She had been the first of the year. This gave Jenny the advantage of being well briefed in the Wilkesian technique, but being forewarned she was discovering did not prevent her from being disarmed. Antony was one of the few people she had met who really did talk in long well-organized speeches like people in plays. Most of her acquaintance, she realized, hardly ever strung together more than a couple of dozen words at a time except when telling an anecdote, and in fact the few who did talk at length were down in the catalogue as bores and therefore to be avoided.
But Antony talked eloquently, interestingly, without strain; with none of those changes of direction, grammatical substitutions, syntactical complexities, whose existence her linguistic lecturer assured her was the real framework of the spoken language.
His speech, Jenny decided, was the smooth, reassuring surface of his amatory technique. Even the slight sense of staginess it conveyed worked for him, creating a faintly non-real, therefore non-dangerous, context. But beneath the surface …
The obvious survival tactic was to stay afloat. She seized at a bit of driftwood in his last speech.
‘Is it important to please your parents?’
‘But of course. It’s important to please everyone who deserves it, even a little beyond desert if possible. Financially it’s not important. My father has a strict scale of values. He gave me the precise amount necessary to bring my grant up to the level he has worked out to be sufficient for my well-being. Less would be neglect; more would be luxury. So I never get more or less for any reason. And to use money as punishment or reward is quite out of the question.’
‘He sounds like a Puritan banker.’
‘Not at all. If you wish to combine his religion with his profession, you’d have to call him an Aston Villa butcher. Mind you, my mother slips me the odd note now and then. But, as I say, this has nothing to do with the question. The only real answer is that, despite the fact that in many ways they find me utterly incomprehensible, they have always felt inclined by nature to please me; similarly I them.’
‘You mean you love them?’ asked Jenny, half-consciously trying to embarrass him.
‘Yes, of course. Had I not made that clear? I’m sorry. And you, do you love your parents?’
‘Yes, I think so. My father, I like him a lot and we mean a lot to each other. It’s a matter of talking and understanding, but my mother’s different. Irritating in so many things. I want to scream at her sometimes.’
‘But you never do?’
Jenny grinned. She had tried to stop grinning. She thought it made her face fall apart in the middle, and she still had to count her teeth to assure herself she had not got twice as many as other people. But she kept on forgetting.
Antony Wilkes was glad she forgot.
‘Oh, sometimes. I give a quick forty-second-psycho-analysis. Rather nasty stuff it can be. She’s a bit of a snob; uses me to get at Dad, whom she resents in some odd way. She’s a few years older than he is, though I only use that as a last resort. I don’t know why, I suppose I just know that for her age is the ultimate insult, stuck a long way after vanity and dishonesty! But sometimes I feel I’m a lot more like her than Dad, than I’m like Dad I mean, though I like him more.’
Ruefully she compared her own performance as a speech-maker with Antony’s. Still, it wasn’t all that bad. And her hesitancies arose from uncertainties of emotion. Perhaps it would have flowed more smoothly if she hadn’t been so aware of the tensions, the fight for survival at home.
Antony’s hand patted her knee sympathetically. She realized that her attempt to stop on the surface had somehow gone wrong. She had entered into a conversational intimacy with him without even noticing it. She would have to keep very much on the alert now. His other hand was pressing her shoulders round. She turned to him and he kissed her. She’d have to do something about his other hand. But not yet. Mini-skirts and tights, she thought dreamily. Action and reaction. The invitation to attack might be more compelling than ever before, but the defences were stronger. She grinned again, which produced a very invigorating kind of kiss.
She could postpone her decision for a while yet.
‘Christ, Marcus, where the hell have you been? You just said half an hour. It’s been more like an hour and a half.’
Marcus Felstead manoeuvred his bulk under the flap into the bar.
‘Sorry, Ted, old son. Got held up a bit. Look, have a pint on me and push off now. I’ll spell you when you’ve got a Saturday.’
‘OK. And I’ll have that pint. I’ve been so bloody busy that not a drop’s passed my lips since you left.’
‘It’ll do you good. Give you an edge when they start fighting for the spare.’
‘Some hope. There won’t be much of that around now. See you, Marcus, Sid.’
Sid Hope, the club treasurer, looked askance at Marcus.
‘Nice of you to come back and give us a hand.’
‘Come off it, Sid. I did get Ted to stand in.’
‘Ted! Have you seen him at the till? He’s got some peculiar decimal system of his own. Where have you been to anyway? On the prowl?’
‘Nowhere important. Just out.’
A peal of uninhibited female laughter cut through the noise and fume of the bar. Marcus turned. Sitting in the furthermost corner surrounded by half a dozen men was the woman he expected to see after hearing that laugh. Dressed in a low-cut cocktail dress whose demure whiteness set off the gleaming black of her hair and the shining silver of her tights, she was looking up and smiling at the young man who bent over her, obviously telling a story.
The treasurer followed Marcus’s gaze and shook his head.
‘Trouble,’ he said laconically.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what Arthur is. He’s been hopping around like a cat on hot bricks all evening waiting for his precious wife to turn up. Finally off he goes about half an hour ago to fetch her. Decides she must have forgotten. Forgotten! Well, he’s hardly out of the place before she comes sailing in like the figurehead on the good ship Venus. And of course within two minutes of coming into the most crowded room in the county with a queue six deep at the bar, she’s sitting in the corner surrounded by drinks. Just wait till Arthur gets back.’
Sid drew a couple of pints for a complaining customer, then looked over at Gwen Evans again.
‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘what a pair of bristols, Jesus! There hasn’t been anything like that in here since Nancy Jennings went off with that traveller. And Mary James – Connon, I mean – was the only thing I’ve ever known who could have beaten it.’
‘Connie’s wife?’
‘Yes. She doesn’t get in here much now, does she? Nor does Connie for that matter. But I can remember the days. Jesus! Connie was married when you came to live here, wasn’t he, Marcus?’
‘Yes. Just.’
‘It must have been a full-time business with that one. No wonder he lost his edge after that. God, he once looked a cert for a cap. First we’d have ever had. Never been a sniff since. All for love.’
Marcus poured himself a scotch.
‘He did crack his ankle.’
‘Of course he did. I’m not really suggesting, mind you, that kid of theirs came out pretty smartly. Like Connie’s pass, they said. And the responsibility can’t have helped. But they seemed to make out all right. Didn’t see all that much of Mary after that. But it was before. Like her over there. And Nancy Jennings. Trouble.’
Marcus, his eyes still fixed on the noisy corner, ran his glass along his lower lip.
‘Are you putting forward as a general proposition, Sid, that women with big breasts cause trouble?’
‘Not absolutely. Though there’s a bit of truth in it, isn’t there?’
‘Mary Connon never caused any trouble down here that I saw.’
‘Like I said, after they married, she didn’t get in here so much. Tailed off. That’s an apt phrase if you like. She was six years older than him, you know.’
‘Still is, isn’t she?’
‘You know what I mean. She’d had her fling down here. Not here exactly. That was in the days before this bloody roadhouse came into being. Remember? We had the tea-hut. None of your polished floors. You could get splinters through your shoes if you weren’t careful. Then over to the Bird-in-Hand. No, Mary did the right thing – for her, anyway. Married someone half a dozen years younger. And stopped coming so much. Nancy Jennings, she buggered off. It’s when they marry someone ten years older than themselves and keep their wares in the shop window that the trouble starts. Here, my lad, if you’re going to have another whisky, pay for the last one first.’
‘Sorry, Sid. There it goes; and for this one too. Witnessed?’
But Sid wasn’t paying attention.
‘Here we go,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Here we go.’
Marcus had never seen anyone whose face was really black with rage, but Arthur Evans was pretty close to it as he pushed through the door. A path opened up before him. It led to the corner where his wife sat. She looked up, flashed him a quick smile, then returned her attention to the youngster who had been talking to her. But he had seen Arthur too and seemed disinclined to talk further.
With a tremendous effort, obvious to all who watched, which was about three-quarters of those in the room, Arthur turned to the bar. Marcus could almost feel the man’s will forcing his broad shoulders to turn. Then his trunk followed. And finally his legs.
Quickly Marcus thrust a glass up against the whisky optic. And again.
‘Arthur, old son, I’m in the chair. Wrap yourself round this and tell us about your childhood in the green valleys of old Wales.’
Evans took the drink in one.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
Over his shoulder, Marcus saw Gwen casually disengaging herself from the group in the corner. Exchanging a word here and there as she came, she passed easily across the room till she arrived at her husband’s shoulder.
‘Hello, dear. Going to buy me a drink? I’ve got no money and I can’t sponge off your friends all night.’
‘Where’ve you been, Gwen?’
She smiled ironically.
God, you’re a beauty, thought Marcus. Sid, in an excess of desire to share his admiration of the sight before them, kicked him painfully on the ankle.
‘Oh, I got tired of waiting, so I came on by myself.’
‘But you were supposed to be coming with Dick and Joy.’
‘Was I? Oh, I forgot.’
‘They called for you.’
‘Then I must have left.’
‘To come here? You took your time, didn’t you, girl?’
‘Do you want to quarrel, Arthur?’
She raised her voice just sufficiently to cut into the attention of those immediately adjacent to them.
Marcus looked at Arthur. Surprisingly, he seemed to be considering the question on its merits.
Finally, calmly, ‘No,’ he said.
‘Then let’s have that drink. Marcus, love, see if you can add a bit of gin to that slice of dried-up lemon which seems to be all that’s left of a once proud fruit.’
‘A pleasure, ma’am,’ said Marcus. ‘A real pleasure.’ He meant it.
Two hours or so later, just after eleven, he put the lights out in the bar. Outside he could hear the din of departure. Car doors. Impatient horns. Voices. Song.
As he passed the Gents, the door opened and a large figure fell out.
‘Marcus,’ it said.
‘Ted. Christ, you certainly caught up, didn’t you? Come on, old son. We’d better get you home.’
Arm in arm they walked out into the car park.
Jenny Connon opened the door to let her roommate in.
‘Hello,’ said the newcomer brightly. ‘Not too early, am I? It’s after eleven.’
‘What you really mean is, not too late, you hope. How are you, Helen?’ said Antony. ‘Well, must be off. See you both. Bye.’
Jenny watched him go down the corridor.
‘Had a nice time?’ asked Helen.
‘Oh yes,’ said Jenny noncommittally as she closed the door. She hoped she had done the right thing.
‘The time is ten minutes past eleven,’ said the announcer with evident relief. ‘You are watching …’
Alice Fernie switched him off in mid-sentence and yawned.
‘Well, I’m off to bed. Coming?’
Behind her, her husband stood in the small bay of the window looking out into the front garden.
‘No, dear. You go on. I’ll be up in a minute.’
‘What are you looking at?’
‘Nothing. I thought I saw that bloody black and white cat from next door digging up my lawn. Off you go.’
‘All right, then. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
And over the road, Sam Connon stood pale-faced and trembling in the darkened hall of his house, the telephone in his hand.
Behind him in the lounge, stretched out in the high-backed chair he would never want to call his own again, was his wife.
She was quite, quite dead.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_aec1719d-a626-5a6e-b2e2-94dbe0403332)
Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was a big man. When he took his jacket off and dropped it over the back of a chair it was like a Bedouin pitching camp. He had a big head, greying now; big eyes, short-sighted, but losing nothing of their penetrating force behind a pair of solid-framed spectacles; and he blew his big nose into a khaki handkerchief a foot-and-a-half square. He had been a vicious lock forward in his time, which had been a time before speed and dexterity were placed higher in the list of a pack’s qualities than sheer indestructibility. The same order of priorities had brought him to his present office.
He was a man not difficult to mock. But it was dangerous sport. And perhaps therefore all the more tempting to a detective sergeant who was twenty years younger, had a degree in social sciences and read works of criminology.
Dalziel sank over his chair and scratched himself vigorously between the legs. Not absent-mindedly – nothing he did was mannerism – but with conscious sensuousness. Like scratching a dog to keep it happy, a constable had once said within range of Dalziel’s very sharp hearing. He had liked the simile and therefore ignored it.
‘You should have seen him, Pascoe. He went round their cover like a downhill skier round a line of snowmen. And he was a big lad, mark you. Still is, of course. But even then. Not one of your bloody Welsh dwarfs, but a good solid-built English fly-half. How we roared! He’d have captained the Lions if we’d been selectors.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Pascoe with the resigned condescension of one certain of the intellectual superiority of Association Football.
‘Graceful, too. Ran upright. Always looking for the quickest way to the line. God, he found it that day. He was picked for the final trial, of course. Nearest thing to a certainty since Lily Jones left Crown Street. Then bang! his ankle went. The week before. No one’s fault. He was overtaken by a loose scrum. Never afraid to mix it, was Connie. Solid defender, sharp attacker. But he never came again after that. Played for another eight years. No difficulty in holding his place in the club. Stood up for the County a dozen times. But never sniffed at a cap again. But he was a great runner with the ball, a great player.’
He nodded two or three times and smiled faintly as though at some pleasant memory.
‘A great player.’
‘Then he could hardly commit a murder, could he?’ said Pascoe, hoping by this irony to recall his superior to the realities of their work.
‘No. Probably not. Or not one like this. He’d use his head, that one. Which,’ added Dalziel, standing up and walking to the window, ‘is what you should do, Pascoe, before wrapping up another of your little ironies for me.’
Pascoe refused to be squashed.
‘Perhaps he is using his head, sir. Perhaps he is, in the sporting idiom, selling us a dummy.’
Dalziel flung up the window with a ripping sound from the parts where the paint had fused, and let in a solid cube of icy air which immediately expanded to fit the room.
‘No one ever sold me a dummy. Point yourself at the man and bugger the ball, you can’t go wrong.’
‘But which man?’ said Pascoe.
‘No,’ said Dalziel, slapping his thigh with a crack which made Pascoe wince, ‘at this stage the question is, which bloody ball? Is that enigmatic enough for your scholarship, eh?’
Pascoe had grown used to jokes about his degree when a constable, but Dalziel was the only one who hung his wit on it now.
The trouble is, he thought, looking at the broad slope of the back whose bulk stopped the light but not the draught, the trouble is, deep down he believes that everyone loves him. He thinks he’s bloody irresistible.
‘What did you make of him last night anyway?’
‘Not much. That doctor of his had pumped him full of dope and was hovering around like a guardian angel when I got there.’
Dalziel snorted.
‘At least you saw him. He was tucked up in bed by the time I arrived. I’d have liked a go at him while the iron was hot.’
‘Yes, sir. The early bird …’
‘Only if it knows what it’s all about, Pascoe.’
Pascoe did not let even the ghost of a smile appear on his lips. He went on speaking.
‘In any case, the iron wasn’t all that hot at eleven. She’d been dead at least three hours, possibly five. The room temperature seems to be a rather uncertain factor. Signs of a big fire, but the place was like an ice-box by the time we got there. That was a sharp frost that set in last night.’
‘Bloody science. All it does is give us reasons for being imprecise. I can manage that without logarithms.’
‘The cause of death’s a bit more exact, isn’t it, sir?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Dalziel rippled through the papers scattered on the desk before him. Pascoe tried to show none of the offence this lack of organization caused him.
‘Here we are. Skull fracture … bone splinters into frontal lobes … blow from a metal implement, probably cylindrical … administered with great force to the centre of forehead … perhaps long enough to permit a two-handed grip. That’s a great help. Found anything yet, have they?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I should bloody well think not, eh? Not if you knew and I didn’t. Where is this man, anyway?’
Pascoe pushed back his stiffly laundered white cuffs to glance at his watch.
‘The car went for him half an hour ago.’
‘Waiting for him to finish breakfast, I expect. Hearty, I hope. He’ll need his strength.’
Pascoe raised his eyebrows.
‘I thought you said …’
‘I didn’t think he’d done it? But I might be wrong. It’s been known. Twice. But whether he did it or not, if it wasn’t done casually by an intruder, he’ll probably know why it was done. He might not know he knows. But know he will.’
‘Have we dismissed the possibility of an intruder, sir?’
‘We? We? You’re not my bloody doctor. No, I haven’t. But if you look at your bloody scientifically based reports, you’ll see that she seems to have been sitting very much at her ease.’
‘Could it have been from behind? With, say, a narrow-headed hammer. That way you’d get the force …’
‘Pish and cobbles, Pascoe! Didn’t you see the height of that chair-back? And she was sprawling in it at her ease. You’d need arms like an orang-outang. No, I think it was someone she knew pretty well.’
‘And how narrow does that make the field?’
Dalziel grinned lecherously.
‘Not as narrow as you’d think. Twenty years ago there were a hell of a lot of people down at the Rugby Club who knew Mary James pretty well. I’ve had a bit of a nuzzle there myself. And that kind of acquaintance doesn’t get forgotten all that quickly.’
‘You make her sound like a professional.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, son. She wasn’t that. Not even an enthusiastic amateur. She just liked the gay life. There’s one in every club. Where the booze is strongest, the dancing wildest. The girl who doesn’t flinch when the songs get dirty. Who can even join in. It’s the gay crowd she likes, not the slap and tickle in the dark corners. But her image demands she has a large following. And she’s bound to be overtaken from time to time.’
‘Was Connon an overtaker?’
‘Oh no. He was taken over. Your old stager begins to smell danger when the gaiety girl passes the quarter-century with no strong ties. Your young lad’s easy meat, though. Easily frightened too.’
‘Frightened?’
‘They got married at a dead run. Their girl appeared eight months later. Premature, they called it.’
Pascoe listened with distaste to the rasp of laughter which followed.
‘But you’ll find out all about that, my lad. Have a walk down there this lunchtime. They always get a good crowd in. Have a chat with one or two of them. See if anything’s known. They’ll all be eager to natter. Here, I’ve scribbled out a list of who’s who down there. It’s not definitive by any means, but it’ll tell you whether you’re talking to a mate of his – or hers – or not.’
He passed over a scruffy sheet of foolscap, one corner of which looked as if it had been used for lighting a cigarette.
‘You’re best at this stage. If we haven’t sorted this lot out in a couple of days, I’ll drop in for a social drink myself. The tension’ll have gone by then and they’ll all imagine they’re pumping me for information.’
Whereas you pump stuff into barrels, not out of them, thought Pascoe.
Dalziel turned to the window again and took a couple of deep breaths. His fingers drummed impatiently on the sill.
‘Anything in from house-to-house yet?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘They’ll all be in bed. Christ. Bloody Sundays!’
There was a long pause. Then …
‘Here he comes,’ said Dalziel, slamming the window shut with even more violence than he had used to open it. ‘Anything you want here, laddie?’
‘Well, no; I mean yes,’ said Pascoe in puzzlement.
‘Grab it and go, then. What’s the matter? Did you hope to see the master at work?’
‘No. But I thought that as you know him – I mean, you are a vice-president of the Rugby Club and something of a friend …’
‘A friend?’ said the superintendent, twisting his fingers in one pouchy cheek so that his big mouth was dragged sinisterly out of shape. ‘You’ve jumped to conclusions, Sergeant. Perhaps I better had let you watch the master some time. He’s a great player, but I never said I liked him. Nor he me. Oh no, I never said I liked him. Push off now. We’ll save you for later if need be.’
Quickly Pascoe gathered a couple of files and some papers together and made for the door. There was a knock and it opened just as he reached it.
‘Mr Connon, sir,’ said the uniformed sergeant standing there.
‘How are you, Mr Connon?’ said Pascoe looking at the pale-faced man who stood a pace or two behind the sergeant.
Solid. Yes, he looked solid all right. Still firm. No flabbiness in the face. Just the paleness of fatigue. But what is it that has drained your blood, Mr Connon? Grief? Or …
‘Please come in, Mr Connon.’ The loud voice broke his thoughts. He glanced round. Dalziel, his face a mask of sympathy so obviously spurious that Pascoe shuddered, was advancing with his hand outstretched. He stood aside to let Connon enter, then stepped out into the corridor leaving them together.
‘He’s like Henry Irving,’ he said to the sergeant, shaking his head.
‘Which one?’
‘Which one? I don’t know. Perhaps both. I’ll be in here if I’m wanted.’
And for all his resentment at his dismissal, he found he wished that he had been wanted.
‘It might be nice to see the master at work.’
The sergeant turned round, but Pascoe had closed the door of his temporary office behind him with a bang.
The sergeant went back to his desk whistling, ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’.
It was, after all, Sunday.
‘Sorry to get you out of bed, Mrs Fernie,’ said Detective-Constable Edwards.
‘Don’t apologize,’ interjected Fernie. ‘I told her this might happen last night.’
‘Last night? Why was that, Mr Fernie?’
‘Well, I happened to notice your cars pull up outside Connon’s house …’
‘Happened to notice!’ sneered Alice Fernie, pulling her nylon housecoat closer round her. ‘You must have been stood at that window for half an hour or more.’
Fernie started to reply but the constable interrupted them.
‘The important point to ask both of you is, did you notice anything earlier on?’
‘Anything? What kind of thing? How much earlier?’ asked Alice.
‘Anything at all concerned with the Connons or their house. Any time yesterday.’
‘Well, no. I was over there in the afternoon …’
‘Over there?’ The constable leaned forward.
‘Did you know the Connons well, then?’
‘Mary Connon, I know – knew her very well. We were friends,’ said Alice; then, ‘We were friends,’ she repeated softly to herself, as though the import of the comment was just beginning to sink in.
‘And how did Mrs Connon seem to you then?’
‘Oh fine, fine. Just the same as ever. Nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘Did she say anything that struck you as unusual?’
‘No.’
‘Were there any phone calls? Any callers?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘Shortly after four. I don’t know exactly. I came back to get Dave’s tea ready.’
‘What were Mrs Connon’s last words?’
‘Last words?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound … what did Mrs Connon say as you left?’
‘Well, nothing really. Cheerio. And something about getting Mr Connon’s tea ready, if he got home in time for it.’
‘What did she mean by that?’
‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘I’m not sure …’
‘Come off it, Alice,’ said Fernie. ‘She meant that if he didn’t get home on time he’d get his own tea. She was a stickler for that, you’ve often told me. And he didn’t get home on time either.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I saw him. About half past six. And I’ll tell you something else.’
‘Dave!’ said Alice with real annoyance in her voice.
‘What’s that?’
‘He was drunk. Could hardly stand.’
The constable scribbled assiduously in his notebook.
‘You’re certain of that?’
‘Dave!’ said his wife again.
‘Oh yes,’ said Fernie, looking at his wife. She ignored his glance.
‘If you’re finished with me, I think I’ll go back to bed,’ said Alice, standing up so that her housecoat fell open revealing her thin nightdress.
‘Thank you very much, Mrs Fernie,’ said Edwards. ‘You’ve been most helpful. We might want to see you again.’
‘I’ll be ready.’
She went out, leaving the constable smiling and her husband scowling.
‘Now, Mr Fernie. What exactly happened when you met Mr Connon last night?’
‘So that’s all you can tell me, Mr Connon?’
‘That’s right, Superintendent.’
‘You got home about half past six. How positive is that time?’
‘I don’t know. Pretty approximate.’
‘That’s a help. You say the television was on when you stuck your head into the lounge?’
‘That’s right. I see what you mean. There was some variety show. Dancers, girls, not much on. Dancing behind a singer. Big youth, rather Italianate, singing something about flowers.’
Dalziel smiled sardonically.
‘So you were out for four hours?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Nasty that. What’d your doctor say?’
‘I don’t know what his diagnosis was. He just seemed concerned with getting me to bed.’
‘You’ll be seeing him again?’
‘Of course.’
‘I wonder if you’d mind if our man cast his eye over you while you’re down here? It might save your McManus a crisis of conscience.’
Connon smiled wanly.
‘Again I see what you mean. I have no objection.’
‘Good. Good. But first, there’s one thing that puzzles me. You felt sick in the kitchen. You end up by passing out on your bed. Why not be sick downstairs? The kitchen-sink. Or if your notions of hygiene are so strong, why not use the downstairs toilet? I noticed you had one.’
Connon spoke the words of his reply very slowly and distinctly as if learned by rote from a linguaphone record.
‘I did not wish to disturb my wife.’
Dalziel crossed his legs cumbersomely and started prying into his nostrils with thumb and forefinger.
‘Tell me, Mr Connon, Connie, I always think of you as Connie, do you mind?’
‘I always think of you as Bruiser, Superintendent.’
Dalziel was amused and gave a few snorts of laughter.
‘If the name fits, wear it, eh? Give a dog, eh? But yours doesn’t tell us much. Doesn’t fit, does it? Connie. A bit girlish. Which reminds me. You did not wish to disturb your wife. Now me, I’m a blunt Scottish lad by birth, a blunter Northcountryman by domicile. So perhaps the finer points of marital diplomacy have passed me by. (I wish my lad Pascoe could hear me!) But I don’t quite follow the workings of your mind here. You come home, you’re a bit under the weather, your wife ignores you, you’ve got to make your own tea. And you don’t want to disturb her. There are some men would’ve disturbed her. Men you’ve played rugby with who’d have put their boots through the telly screen.’
‘Men who have no respect for their wives do not deserve to keep them, Superintendent.’
That was a mistake, thought Connon. He’s taking it personally.
Dalziel’s wife, now divorced, had gone off with a milkman fifteen years before. At least, she had gone off. The milkman might have been malicious invention.
‘Yes, Mr Connon. You’re right. We should respect those who are weaker than us. Or older. Of course we should. Like forgiving our enemies.’
The phone rang.
‘Excuse me,’ said Dalziel. He listened for a moment.
‘The doctor’s ready for you now, if that’s OK.’
Connon stood up.
‘He won’t keep you long, I expect. Like the Army. Just a cough and a piddle.’
‘Will you want to see me again, Superintendent?’
Dalziel opened the door for him.
‘Just for a moment perhaps. Sergeant!’
The uniformed sergeant who had brought Connon to the room appeared. The expression of unctuous sympathy with which Connon had been greeted reappeared on Dalziel’s face for the first time since the interview began.
‘This is very good of you. It’s a trying time. Sergeant, show Mr Connon to the doctor. And get him a cup of tea, or coffee if you prefer it.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Connon and set off after the sergeant.
‘No,’ said Dalziel to himself as he watched them go. ‘I expect you’ll manage a piddle without it. Or I’m losing my touch. Sergeant Pascoe!’
‘You’re not intending to go down to the Club in that rig, are you, girl?’
Gwen Evans turned before the mirror and peered back over her shoulder.
‘What’s the matter? My bum’s not too big, is it?’
She was wearing a tight-fitting dress of flowered silk, whose style was distantly Chinese in origin.
‘No, but if that slit went any further up the side, you’d be able to see your belly-button.’
‘Don’t be vulgar, Arthur. What’s the matter? Don’t you want me to go to the Club?’
‘No, it’s not that at all …’
‘No? I think you’d much rather have me here slaving over roast beef and two veg, waiting for you to come back full of love and beer.’
‘Be fair, Gwen. Most of the time you complain that I’m too keen to get you down there.’
‘Oh ay. Where you can keep an eye on me at night. But it doesn’t seem to worry you at lunchtime. Do you think I’ve got a time switch on it, then, and can’t get it to work in hours of daylight? You should know better.’
Evans crossed to her in three swift strides. Instinctively she cowered back, holding her hands before her face, but he made no move to strike her. Instead he reached down, seized the hem of her dress and tugged violently upwards.
There was a tearing noise as stitching came apart and the oriental split up the side extended to the waist.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you can really see your belly.’
She relaxed, leaned against the wall and began to laugh. At first there was a very faint note of hysteria in it, but this rapidly faded and the laugh deepened to genuine amusement.
‘Give us a fag, will you, Arthur?’ she said finally, regarding her husband with something like real affection. ‘You’re not such a bad old faggot when you’re roused.’
Evans sat on the bed and lit two cigarettes, one of which he passed over to his wife.
‘Thanks,’ she said, drew on it deeply and placed it carefully on the edge of the dressing-table while she began to remove her ruined dress.
Evans watched her impassively.
She went to the wardrobe in her slip and opened its door.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s it to be? Club-wear, or kitchen-wear?’
‘Where were you last night, Gwen?’
‘At the Club with you, dear. Remember?’
She smiled sweetly.
‘Gwen,’ he said, ‘you’re right. It’s a daft question, isn’t it, girl? I know where you were. Or at least who you were with.’
She stiffened and reached down a dress from the hanging rail.
‘Oh, do you?’
‘Yes, of course I do, Gwen. And I suppose if I know, every other sod in the Club has known for months. But I don’t understand you, Gwen. I can see why you encourage all those young lads who come sniffing around you. That’d be flattering to any woman. But a man of my own age. And a friend. What made you pick him, Gwen? What made you pick Connie?’
‘A-1, I hope,’ said Dalziel when Connon reappeared.
‘I hope not, Superintendent. That would mean I couldn’t get better. And I don’t think I’ve recovered from that knock yet. I hope we won’t be much longer.’
‘This is a murder enquiry, Mr Connon. We need your help. Your wife is dead.’
I think that I am at least as aware of that as you, Superintendent. My daughter will be arriving home some time this morning. I’d like to be there to meet her.’
Dalziel looked sympathetic.
‘Of course. A father’s feelings. But have no worries on that score. My sergeant was just telling me. Your daughter’s got here safe and sound. We were able to assist a little there.’
Connon stood up.
‘Jenny? Here? You mean, here?’
‘Oh no. Never worry yourself. I mean at home, of course. We wouldn’t bring her here.’
‘At home. Then I must go.’
Dalziel let him reach the door.
‘Just one question, Mr Connon.’
‘If you must.’
‘You left the Club at twenty to six, and got home about six-thirty. Rather a long time isn’t it? It’s only seven or eight miles at the most. And there’s not much traffic about at that time.’
‘There was enough.’
Dalziel, expert at detecting ironies, thought he heard one here.
‘You didn’t stop for any reason? A drink perhaps? Or had you had enough at the Club?’
‘Why do you ask?’ said Connon quietly.
‘Well, it’s just that we’ve had a statement. Not guaranteed reliable, mark you. But admissible, and voluntary, and therefore carrying some weight. This man …’
‘Which man?’
‘A man called Fernie, says he met you last night. Is that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘About six-thirty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Outside your house?’
‘Yes again.’
‘He says that you were acting oddly. In various ways. He says, in fact he was willing to swear, but we introduced a degree of moderation, as is our wont. He says he got the distinct impression that you were drunk. Very drunk.’
‘Thank you for telling me, Superintendent. Now I must go. Goodbye.’
‘Wait!’ bellowed Dalziel.
Connon turned once more, half out of the door.
‘If you want a fairly precise statement of the amount of alcohol I had taken up to about ten past six, I suggest you contact the constables who administered a breathalyser test to me at that time in Longtrees Road. I thought that this was what you were going on about, not malicious gossip. Good day. I must get to my daughter.’
Dalziel sat for a minute looking at the open door. Then he stood up and walked slowly over to it, scratching the back of his neck with an intensity that made his skin glow redly through the grey stubble.
‘Sergeant,’ he called, pitching his voice low, but with an intensity which easily carried it along the corridor to the desk. ‘Would you step along here for a moment, if you’d be so kind? To discuss an organizational point.’
At the desk, the sergeant stopped whistling.
‘Sorry, we don’t start selling till twelve.’
‘I’m a police officer,’ said Pascoe. ‘I don’t start buying till I’m off duty.’
Sid Hope slowly rose from his crouching position behind the bar.
‘Oh yes? I’m Hope, the club treasurer. What can I do for you? Is there some trouble? About the licence, I mean?’
‘Should there be?’ said Pascoe. ‘You don’t allow non-members to buy drinks, do you? Normally?’
‘Of course not. When we know, that is. But I didn’t know who you were. On my knees, trying to set up a new keg. It’s like a bloody heart-transplant operation getting one of these things operational.’
Pascoe merely looked thoughtful at this attempt to bring in a lighter note.
‘Anyway, I don’t know them all. You could be a member. There’s one or two from the police who are. Superintendent Dalziel for one.’
‘Is that so? How do you run the bar, Mr Hope? A duty roster?’
Sid looked happy to get on to more general ground. ‘That’s right. We have a committee, me in charge, plus half a dozen others. We take it in turn to look after things for a week.’
‘Just one of you? By himself?’
Sid laughed.
‘Not bloody likely. No, we get some of the boys to help us when it’s very busy, like weekends. Or even take over for a couple of nights. Some of us are married, you know. But, like I say, weekends the committee man in charge has really got to be here all the time. It’s not just the serving, but the stock, and the till.’
‘Sounds like hard work.’
‘It is. Like now. Getting things set up for the great rush.’
‘Popular, is it?’
‘Christ, yes. It’s our main source of income. Apart from the odd dance or raffle. We’ve just about paid back our loan now and …’
Pascoe turned on his heel. The man was beginning to be at his ease. He stopped talking at the sight of Pascoe’s back.
‘How many do you get in here on a Saturday night?’
‘I don’t know. Sixty, seventy, and there’s the other …’
‘You’d be on last night?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Busy?’
‘Very.’
‘Was Mr Connon in at all, Mr Sam Connon?’
‘Connie? No. Well, yes. I mean he was in at the beginning of the evening right after the match. Look, what’s all this about? Have you got any proof you really are a policeman?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Pascoe produced his warrant card. Sid examined it closely.
‘What time did Connon leave?’
‘I’m not sure. About five-thirty. Quarter to six, I think. I can’t say for certain. He stopped to have a word with Arthur on his way out, but he might just have gone through into the other room.’
‘Arthur?’
‘Evans. Captain of the Fourths. That’s right. Connie had been playing. Got a knock. Wanted a medicinal scotch. Hello, Marcus.’
Pascoe looked to the doorway. Standing there was a short fleshy man dressed in slacks and a polo-neck sweater. Pascoe felt that he had been standing there for some time.
Now he came into the room.
‘Hello, Sid. Sorry I’m late again.’
‘That’s all right. I’ve been managing. As long as you didn’t send Ted.’
Marcus didn’t look at Pascoe but went behind the bar as though he wasn’t there and began to busy himself with bottles.
‘Marcus,’ said Sid, ‘this is – who is it?’
‘Sergeant Pascoe.’
‘Sergeant Pascoe. He’s asking about Connie.’
Marcus looked at Pascoe now.
‘What about Connie?’
‘You know his wife?’
‘Mary? Yes. What about her?’
‘Was she a friend?’
Sid and Marcus looked at each other.
‘Not exactly. But I know her pretty well. Connie’s a close friend,’ said Marcus.
‘Why do you say “was”?’ asked Sid.
‘She’s dead I’m afraid.’
You learn nothing from their faces, thought Pascoe. A split second of surprise, incredulity, shock; perhaps not even that. Then they’re all busy arranging their features to the right expression.
‘She was killed last night. I’d like to ask a few more questions, please.’
Marcus sank down on a bar stool. His left foot hooked repeatedly at a non-existing cross-rail.
‘Where is Connie?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. Home by now, I expect. His daughter’s arriving.’
‘Jenny. That’s good. That’s good.’
But the look on his face didn’t seem to go with the words somehow.
‘Daddy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that you?’
‘Yes.’
She was sitting on the edge of a dining-room chair like a nervous candidate for interview.
For a moment they looked at each other as though this indeed was why she was there.
Then she ran to his arms and sobbed once into the wool of his overcoat, then rested there quietly for a long minute.
‘Come and sit down, Jenny,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
They sat side by side at the table.
‘Why don’t you take your coat off?’ he said.
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Yes. I will.’
He stood up and undid the buttons. Jenny glanced down at the white and brown mock-fur coat she wore.
‘It’s all I had. I had to wear something, it was so cold coming. There was nothing else. And I was so worried about people seeing me in this. It’s a bit gay, isn’t it? That’s all I thought as I walked up the path. But I don’t have anything darker. Jesus! I never thought I’d give a damn about the neighbours.’
‘You never used to. Some of the things you’d lie around the garden in when it was hot.’
‘Oh yes. Do you remember old Mr Hawkins? He’d go in to get behind the curtain. But Mr Hall would come rushing out with his lawn-mower. All to look at my bumps.’
She laughed, then stopped in mid-note.
‘We’re talking about them as if they’re all dead.’
He laid his coat on the table and put his arm round her shoulders.
‘No, my dear. Not them. Just those days.’
She stood up away from his arm and took off her coat. He looked at her, long-legged, short-skirted, well-rounded.
‘They were wise to look,’ he said with a smile.
She trailed her coat along the floor as she walked to the window and ran her finger along the sill.
‘Tell me about it, Daddy.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘Not much. My mother’s dead! And that’s not much?’
‘No, I mean …’
She sat down on the sill.
‘I’m sorry. I know what you mean.’
‘I came home. I was late. I’d let myself be talked into playing and I got a bit of a knock. Your mother had had her tea and was sitting watching the television. I just stuck my head into the room and said hello. She didn’t say anything. I could feel the atmosphere. You know how she hated anything to spoil her timetable, no matter how unimportant. So I went into the kitchen to get myself some tea.’
He stopped and after a moment Jenny turned from the window which she had been staring out of since he started talking. Connon was resting his head in his hands, his elbows on the table.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes. It’s just this pain again. That’s what happened on Saturday. It came on then, in the kitchen. I couldn’t eat. I felt sick, so I went upstairs. And I passed out on the bed.’
‘What is this pain? Have you seen about it?’
‘Not really. McManus has had a look. And a police doctor, but he didn’t give me a diagnosis. I told you I got a knock during the game. Anyway, when I awoke it was nearly eleven. I still felt a bit groggy, but I remember thinking it was rather odd your mother hadn’t been up to look for me. I came downstairs. The telly was still going in the lounge. I went in.’
He stopped and made a gesture which might have been a shudder, or a shrug, or an incipient reaching out to his daughter. Jenny didn’t move and Connon became still again.
‘Go on.’
‘She was sitting in the big chair. Sprawled out. She was dead.’
He was silent again, studying his daughter from between half-closed lashes. As if making a decision, he stood up and walked over to her so that he was standing close to her, not touching, not offering to touch, but there if required.
‘Her eyes were open. Her forehead was smashed in just above her nose. She was obviously dead. I stood there for a minute. It was odd. I was quite calm. I thought, I mustn’t touch anything. And I walked out into the hall and picked up the telephone. Then this thing in my head started again. I could hardly dial. But I managed.’
‘Who did you ring?’
‘Old Dr McManus first. Then the police. McManus was more interested in me than your mother. Just took one look at her. But gave me a shot of something and put me to bed. There were police all over the place, but they didn’t get far with asking me questions. I was out like a light.’
‘And this morning?’
‘They were round first thing. That’s where I’ve been. They told you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s that fellow Dalziel. I know him vaguely from down at the Club. He’s a brute of a fellow. I don’t know what they expected him to find out.’
‘Have they any ideas?’
‘Yes, I think so. A couple.’
‘What are they?’
‘Firstly, that I am lying about this pain in my head and passing out. I came in last night, smashed your mother’s head in and waited a few hours before calling the police.’
‘Secondly?’
‘That I’m telling the truth about passing out. But, unknown to me or forgotten by me, I nevertheless killed your mother.’
Now there was the longest silence of all. Finally Jenny opened her mouth to speak but her father gently laid his index finger across her lips.
‘You needn’t ask, Jenny. The answer is no, I did not consciously kill her.’
‘And unconsciously?’
‘I don’t think so. What else can I say?’
Now she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. Connon looked fondly down at her flowing golden-brown hair.
He ran his fingers through its softness; it was a happy mixture of her mother’s once vivid red and his own light brown.
‘Don’t worry, darling. It’ll soon pass over, all this. Perhaps we can go away. It’s almost your Christmas holidays. Would you like that, to go away, I mean?’
She looked up at him.
‘Is that what you want? To go away, I mean?’
He rolled the question round in his mind for a moment, trying to read her thoughts. But nothing of them appeared in her face.
Finally he settled for the truth.
‘No, I don’t think so. No. It isn’t.’
She nodded her head in serious accord.
‘No. Neither do I. We’ll stay. There’ll be lots to do here. We’ll stay and do whatever we have to. Together.’
She kept on nodding her head till her hair fell in a golden curtain over her white face.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_4326b11e-1847-5475-8d2c-51362790216f)
It was a glorious day. The sun laid a deep shadow obliquely across the polished oak of the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. The sky was cloudless, its blue more thinly painted than the blue of summer but the sun was too bright to stare in the eye. The air was just cold enough to make activity pleasant and the mourners shifted gently, almost imperceptibly, under their coats from time to time.
Only Connon and Jenny stood in absolute stillness.
Dalziel was scratching his left breast, his hand inside his coat moving rhythmically.
‘Ironical,’ he whispered loudly. ‘Suit you, my boy. Subtle.’
‘What?’ said Pascoe.
‘This,’ he said. ‘Nature.’
‘Human nature? Or red in tooth and claw?’
‘Don’t get bloody metaphysical with me. The day, I mean. Fine day for a funeral. Sun. No wind blowing dead leaves or any of that. Fine day for golf.’
‘What are you doing here then, sir?’
Dalziel sniffed loudly. A few heads turned and turned away. He obviously wasn’t about to break down.
‘Me? Friend of the family. Last respects must be paid. Heartfelt sympathy.’
He fluttered his hand inside his coat so that the cloth pulsated ludicrously.
‘What’s more to the point, what are you doing here? I come within smelling distance of having a reason. You’re a non-starter. Bloody policeman, that’s all. You’ll get the force a bad name. Intrusion of grief, it could be grounds for complaint.’
‘In his master’s steps he trod,’ murmured Pascoe softly.
‘Which of us does that make the very sod? And what are you looking for, Pascoe? You’re not nursing any nice little theories, are you? And not telling me?’
‘No,’ said Pascoe, ‘of course not.’
Not bloody much, thought Dalziel. You keep working at it, lad. Nothing like the competitive spirit for sharpening the wits.
‘Not a bad gate,’ whispered Arthur Evans to Marcus.
‘Arthur!’
Evans looked sideways at his wife. She had put hardly any make-up on in deference to the occasion and wore a plain black coat, loose-fitting. But the bite in the air had brought the red blood to her lips and cheeks and the looseness of the coat just made it more obvious where it did touch.
Dressed like that, thought Evans with bitter admiration, she wouldn’t stay a widow long.
Marcus, on his other side, looked pale beyond the remedy of frost. He swayed slightly.
‘You all right, boyo?’
Jesus, on and off the field, I spend half my life nursing them.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit cold. Poor Connie.’
Poor Connie. Poor bastard. Evans remembered the shock last Sunday when they had finally got to the Club, arguments buried for an hour. That detective had been there, he was somewhere around now, bloody ghouls, one of Dalziel’s lackeys, there’s a right thug for you, like all these Scotsmen, no finesse, first up first down, feet feet feet. Sid had got in first. Snipped his indirect line, gave the news right out, loud and clear. Mary Connon’s dead. And all I could do was look at Gwen, watch Gwen, see her age beneath the words, then gradually come back to life with awareness of her own life.
Poor Connie. He deserves sympathy. He deserves … perhaps he will get what he deserves. There he stands with that little girl of his. Not so little. She’s a pretty little thing.
She’s a pretty little thing.
The service was over. Out of the corner of his eye Pascoe had noticed two men with spades move tentatively forward from the cover of a clump of trees, then retreat. Their movement startled half-a-dozen crows whose caws had been a harsh burden to the words of the prayer-book and they went winging from the tree tops in ragged grace, as the black-coated mourners moved in twos and threes away from the grave-side, silent at first, but speaking more and more freely as the distance grew between themselves and the motionless couple who remained.
At the car park they formed little groups before dispersing. Dalziel convened with three or four elder statesmen of the Club, his face and manner serious. He produced a cigarette-case and passed it round.
Black Russian perhaps, thought Pascoe. That would amuse Dalziel if I could tell him. Do I want to amuse Dalziel? And if I do, is it to keep him sweet so I can manipulate him, like I pretend? Or is it because he puts the fear of God into me? Just how good is he anyway? Or is he just a ruthless sucker of other men’s blood? ‘Don’t get bloody metaphysical with me!’ But said quite nicely really. Like a jocular uncle. Uncle Andrew. You had to laugh. But not here. It’s colder now. Christ, I’m holding conversations with myself about the weather, the mental Englishman, that’s me. Now there’s something to warm us all up, that woman getting into the back seat, back seat’s the place for you, dear, are you sitting comfortably, now get them off. Don’t be shocked, love, that’s what all the detectives are thinking this year, you’ll be giving yourself a scratch in a minute Andrew, you randy old devil. Randy Andy. Now if she’d been killed, her, Gwen, wasn’t it? Evans, that would have been easy. Jealous husband, spurned lover, or one of those tumescent young men who’d been hanging around her from the moment she set foot in the bar, yes, one of those provoked just that bit too far, just over the edge where playing starts to be for real. But not Mary Connon, not that parcel of middle-aged lumber they’d just stored away. Though why not? She’d been built on the same lines, streamlines, take a hundred lines, so they said. Forty-five. Inches. Years. Was forty-five too old? No kind of age at all these days.
And she wasn’t looking her best when I saw her, was she? There’s something about a hole in the head …
So who knows? But I don’t quite see the young men … more like one of these old fogies Randy Andy’s chatting up, best prop-forward the Old Sodomites ever had, don’t you know; or perhaps the best fly-half who never played for England, himself perhaps, selling us all a dummy as he stands there remembering how he smashed her head in so he could look for it inside, for the years lost, the place out in the glow of the crowd at Twickenham, could a man love a game that much? And smashed her with what, for God’s sake? Where was it? I’d like a look round that house. Whatever it is could be lying at the bottom of his wardrobe. He’d get used to it after a while, like an egg-stain on a waistcoat, you get used to anything after a while. Lying there for someone to find, a friend, Felstead, Marcus, what’s he got to look so sick about? And what’d he be doing in Connon’s wardrobe anyway? Homosexual jealousy, that’s the answer, I’ll try it on Dalziel for a giggle. More likely his daughter, she’ll find anything there is. Christ, what a thing to find out about your father, she’d do all right in the back seat too, I wouldn’t mind carrying her away at a student riot. Here they come. And there goes fat Marcus, I come to bury Mary not to, he’s taken his time about extending heartfelt sympathy though there’s always the phone. Still, for a nearest and dearest friend …
‘Hello, Connie, Jenny.’
‘Marcus.’
‘Hello, Uncle Marcus.’
Marcus had invited her to stop calling him ‘Uncle’ about three years earlier when she had flourished into young womanhood. ‘It makes me feel old and you sound young.’ So he had become plain Marcus.
Till now.
I have reverted to my old role, thought Marcus.
‘I would have called round,’ he said apologetically, addressing himself to Jenny rather than Connon. ‘But you know how things … how are you both?’
‘Well,’ said Connon. He did not look as if he was really listening, but glanced back to the grave.
‘What will you do now, Jenny? Is your term over?’
‘No, there’s another couple of weeks yet, but I’ve got leave of absence. I needn’t go back till after Christmas.’
‘How is it? Are you liking the life?’
‘It’s not bad. A bit crowded. There’s more students than space. I can sympathize a bit more with these people who write indignantly to the Express about “smelly students”.’
Thank God for the resilience of youth, thought Marcus. No damage there, or not that’s going to show. But you, Connie, out of the cage at last, you look as if another sniff of free air will shrivel your lungs. No bloody wonder, the shock, the strain of investigation. There’s a new life waiting, if only you’ll believe that, I must make him believe it before it’s too late …
Jenny made a move down the path towards the car park. Marcus touched her arm.
‘I’ll stay here and chat to your father a bit till the others have thinned out. We’ll catch you up. You’d better go and sit in the car out of the cold.’
Jenny was surprised to find herself resenting Marcus slightly as she moved away.
She was my mother after all, and he’s my father. Why should he be treated like the sensitive plant and me chucked down to face this lot?
Because you can think like this at a moment like this, she admonished herself humorously and the shadow of a smile must have run over her face for she caught ‘Bruiser’ Dalziel eyeing her sharply as she stepped on to the car park.
Standing a little behind Dalziel she saw a tall young man, elegantly dressed, with a thin intelligent face – the kind of actor-type who played ambitious young Foreign Office men on the telly. She thought momentarily of Antony. She hadn’t had time to see him before she left, everything had happened in such a hurry. But no doubt Helen would have passed on the news to him. Perhaps even made a come-back in her original starring role.
Definitely her last appearance, thought Jenny, but didn’t find it particularly funny. She intended to make straight for the car and shut the door firmly on all condolences, sympathetic noises, keen-edged questionings probing for vicarious pain. But her arm was taken firmly and she was brought to a halt.
‘I just wanted to say that I shall miss your mother, Jenny,’ said Alice Fernie.
The annoyance that had tightened her lips for a moment eased away. She could not remember anyone else saying this. They were all ‘dreadfully sorry’, it had come as a terrible shock to them, but no one had really suggested that Mary Connon would be missed.
‘Yes, I shall too,’ she replied, then feeling this was a bit too cold she squeezed the gloved hand which still rested on her arm and went on, ‘I know how much she relied on you.’
This was nothing more than the simple truth, she realized, as the words came out. Mary Connon had rarely mentioned Alice Fernie to her except in faintly disparaging or patronizing terms. Her lack of taste; the unfairly large wage her husband earned on the factory floor; the excessive subsidization by the ratepayers of council-house rents. She was capable of blaming the Fernies (‘and all those like them,’ she would say inclusively) for the very existence of the Woodfield estate. It had only been a very few years previously that Jenny had realized that the council estate had been there already when her parents bought the house. She had come to accept a picture of rolling countryside being savaged before her mother’s eyes as the bulldozers rolled in, prompted by the Fernies and ‘all those like them’. But Alice Fernie had been, perhaps by the mere accident of proximity, the nearest thing to a real friend she had. And now Jenny felt real gratitude that this large handsome woman who could only be in her early thirties had thought enough of her mother to accept the condescension of manner and get closer to her.
Closer than me perhaps, she thought.
‘How did you get here, Mrs Fernie?’ she asked. ‘Can we give you a lift back?’
There were no funeral cars other than the hearse. ‘I will judge what is fitting,’ she had heard her father say to the oblique remonstrances of the man from the undertakers.
‘No, thank you, dear. You’ll want to be with your dad. And I’m not going straight back anyway. ’Bye now.’
‘Goodbye. Please call round, won’t you? I shan’t be going back to college till next month.’
I’ll have to watch myself there, she thought as she watched Alice move away with long confident strides, I could become as patronizing as Mum.
As she got into the car, she glanced back and caught the eye of the young man who could have been from the Foreign Office. He took a step forward. She thought he was going to come across and talk to her. But a rumbling, phlegmy cough from Fat Dalziel caught both their attentions and the young man turned away.
Policemen, she thought, angry at her disappointment, and slammed the car door.
Connon watched Marcus walk away from him down the path through the rank and file of headstones.
The car park was nearly empty now. The Evanses’ car was just pulling away. He looked after it thoughtfully. Gwendoline. He formed the syllables deliberately in his mind and smiled. All those youngsters competing to provoke the loudest laugh, craning forward to get the deepest view of bosom, pressing close to feel the warmth of calf or thigh, and imagining a returned pressure. Tales to be blown up into triumphs over a couple of pints. But the real triumphs were never boasted of, but remembered in secret; first with reminiscent delight, but soon with fear and cold panic.
Dalziel was gone, he observed, and his puppy-dog, Pascoe. Mentally he corrected himself. He had no reason for thinking Pascoe was merely that, though he was sure Dalziel would make him that if he got the chance.
And me, what would he make of me if he got the chance? he thought.
A parcel for the lawyers. Strongly wrapped, neatly labelled.
Samuel Connon. Wife-killer. There must be some long Latin word for a man who killed his wife. Dalziel might know it, though he probably wouldn’t admit to it if he did. Pascoe would know. He seemed a highly educated kind of cop. The new image. Get your degree, join the force, the Yard’s the limit. Or … leave school at sixteen, start as office boy. You can be assistant personnel manager by the time you’re forty. If you’re lucky. And if the general manager is a big rugby fan.
I’d better be getting down to Jenny. Poor Jenny. I wish I knew how hard this has hit her. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps we should get away for a bit. Where? What on? There’s not all that much spare in the account. All this costs a bit. Even if you haggled over headstones. Now if I’d gone first, Mary’d have been sitting pretty. But what kind of man insures against his wife’s death?
At least they can’t say I killed her for profit. But it’d be nice to get away. Soon. When things had quietened down. It’d be nice to get far, far away. To somewhere as unlike this as possible.
Back to the desert.
Over twenty years earlier, Connon had been sent to join his unit in Egypt at the start of his National Service. He had only been out there a couple of months when the regiment returned home, and at the time the few weeks he spent there seemed to consist of nothing but endless liquid motions of the bowels. He had been as delighted as the rest to return to England and it was this period that saw the blossoming of his rugby career. He had played only a couple of times since leaving school but now he became quickly aware of the advantages traditionally enjoyed by the athlete in His Majesty’s forces. His natural talent exploded into consummate artistry in these conditions and only the simultaneous service, as officer, of the current Welsh stand-off kept him out of the Army XV.
But something of his brief acquaintance with the desert did not easily die. It remained with him as dreams of luxury hotels in the remote Bermudas haunt some men. He read anything he could get hold of on the desert. Any desert. He collected colour brochures and handouts from the travel agents. Fifteen days in Morocco. Three weeks in Tunisia. Amazing value. But always too much for him.
In any case the desert Connon really wanted to visit was not in any of the brochures, not even the most expensive. He recognized it by its absence, that is, he knew what he wanted was something out of the reach of a camera; something untranslatable into colour photography and glossy paper. He wanted rock that had absorbed terrible, endless heat for a million years, that had writhed in infinitely slow violence till its raw bowels lay on the surface, yet without a single movement noticed by man. He wanted sand which rose and fell like the sea, but so slowly that it was only when it drowned his own civilization that a man recognized its tides.
It was a vision he confided to no one. Least of all Mary, who had found his collection of travel brochures nuisance enough.
Perhaps Jenny …
Hs saw that she had got out of the car again and was standing against the bonnet looking up towards him. Otherwise the car park was now completely empty.
He began to walk towards her.
‘I wasn’t going to ask her anything,’ repeated Pascoe. ‘Not then. Not there. I felt sorry for her. Just standing there. She looked, I don’t know, helpless somehow.’
This, he thought, is a turn up for the book. Bruiser Dalziel lecturing me on tact and diplomacy. It was like Henry the Eighth preaching about marital constancy.
‘Well, watch it. We don’t harry people at funerals. At least not unless we think they did it. And we don’t think young Jenny Connon did it, do we?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You checked, of course?’
‘Of course. She was nearly a hundred miles away. We know that.’
‘It’s about all we bloody well do know. The only thing we make any progress with is the list of things we don’t know. Item: who had a strong motive to kill her? No one we know, not even the great Connie as far as we know.’
‘Strength of motive is in the mind of the murderer, sir.’
‘Confucius, he bloody well say. To continue. Item: what did he kill her with? A metal object or at least an object with a metal end, cylindrical in shape, long enough to be grasped probably with both hands and smashed right between the eyes of a victim who sits there smiling and doesn’t even try to duck.’
‘The pathologist’s report did say that Mrs Connon had unusually fragile bones, sir. Perhaps we’re overestimating the strength needed.’
‘So what? Thanks for nothing. And Mary Connon fragile? I don’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. With tits like those she’d have broken her collar-bone every time she stood up. To continue again. Item: who saw anything suspicious or even anyone anywhere near the house that night? Not a soul. Not even the eyes and ears of the Woodfield Estate, your friend Fernie. All he can swear is that Connon was rolling drunk. Which Connon can disprove with con-bloody-siderable ease.’
‘It does fit with Connon’s account, though. About his giddiness, I mean. Makes his story that bit stronger, don’t you think? And our doctor did find signs of a slight concussion. He’s still seeing his own man, too. I checked.’
Dalziel slammed his fist so hard on the desk that Pascoe broke his rule of stony non-reaction to his superior and started in his chair.
‘I’m not interested in the bloody man’s health. If he’s innocent, he can drop dead tomorrow for all I care.’
‘A sentiment that does you credit, sir. But there is one thing about this injury to Connon that’s a little bit odd.’
‘What’s that, and why isn’t it in your report?’ asked Dalziel suspiciously.
‘Apparently irrelevant. But I felt you might like it, sir.’
Dalziel licked his lips and looked as if the task of strangling Pascoe personally and instantly might not be unattractive.
‘It’s just that when I was down at the Club, I talked among others to a chap called Slater.’
‘Fat Fred. I know him.’
‘Slater remembered Connon being laid out. But, he added casually and as far as I could see without malice, that he reckoned the boot that did the damage belonged to Evans, his own captain. He seemed to think it was just a case of mistaken identity.’
‘Fred would. He’s thick as pigshit, that one. But Arthur Evans isn’t made that way. He plays hard, but he’d never put the boot in.’
‘So?’
‘So Fred Slater should start wearing his glasses on the field. Or better still, give up. It’s indecent a man that size exposing himself in public. I don’t know how his wife manages him.’
He chuckled to himself at the thought and murmured, ‘Levers, I should think.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Sergeant,’ he said quietly, ‘is there anything we’ve left undone which we ought to have done?’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
‘Right. Then somewhere, in some area we are covering, or have covered, lies the clue.’
‘The clue?’
‘There’s always a clue, boy. Don’t you read the Sunday papers? All this started somewhere and it wasn’t Boundary Drive. Or if it was, we’re not going to get much help there. Now where’s our best bet?’
Pascoe spoke like a bored actor who was thinking of things other than his lines.
‘At the Club.’
‘That’s right. I think I’ll just drop in there tonight. No, tomorrow. That’s a training night. They’ll all be there. Socially, I mean, for a pot of ale. If there’s anything known, they’ll tell me by chucking-out time. They’ll tell me.’
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Reginald Hill
‘So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ Sunday TelegraphDetective Superintendent Andy Dalziel investigates murder close to home in this first crime novel featuring the much-loved detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe.Home from the Rugby club after taking a nasty knock in a match, Sam Connon finds his wife more uncommunicative than usual. After passing out on his bed for a few hours, he comes downstairs to discover communication has been cut off forever – by a hole in the middle of her forehead.Andy Dalziel, a long-standing member of the club, wants to run the murder investigation along his own lines. But DS Peter Pascoe’s loyalties lie elsewhere and he has quite different ideas about how the case should proceed.
REGINALD HILL
A CLUBBABLE WOMAN
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
Copyright (#ulink_5323b509-68f6-54e4-a5da-1382583ae89c)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 1970
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1970
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN 9780586072585
Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN 9780007390823
Version 2015-06-18
Dedication (#uebec2f68-3c14-53a2-96c6-209794ccbf68)
For Pat
Contents
Cover (#udb48f1d1-1979-5f57-a810-6dee52cc21b9)
Title Page (#ue71b21d9-f1ab-5bf6-984d-ddb4f2d72da6)
Copyright (#u85a06d99-37be-5999-a1e4-e12544c8c1e3)
Dedication (#uc4cdf026-764a-5946-bf9a-7a58513b1d7d)
Chapter 1 (#u8a4f444c-d663-5778-8148-db0f196790b6)
Chapter 2 (#uf487b8f9-6aa9-5eb6-8b2c-70574661db91)
Chapter 3 (#u6f6fc0fb-ad3b-522f-8fec-af9fc553762e)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Envoi (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_ff8f3747-6fde-545f-9f8c-f6f146f900f9)
‘He’s all right. You’ll live for ever, won’t you, Connie?’ said Marcus Felstead.
His head was being pumped up and down by an unknown hand. As he surfaced, his gaze took in an extensive area of mud stretching away to the incredibly distant posts. Then his forehead was brought down almost to his knees. Up again. Fred Slater he saw was resting his sixteen stones, something he did at every opportunity. Down. His knees. The mud. One stocking was down. His tie-up hung loose round his ankle. It was always difficult preserving a balance between support and strangulation of the veins. But it was worth it. Once the mud hardened among the long black hairs, it was the devil’s own job to get it off. Up again. He resisted the next downward stroke.
‘Why do you do that, anyway?’ asked Marcus interestedly.
‘I don’t know,’ said a Welsh voice. ‘It’s what they always do, isn’t it? It seems to bloody well work.’
‘You all right then, Connie?’
Connon slowly got up with assistance from the Welshman whom he now recognized as Arthur Evans, his captain.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
‘It was that big bald bastard in their second row,’ said Arthur. ‘Never you mind. I’ll fix him.’
There was a deprecating little cough from the referee who was lurking behind Connon.
‘I think we must restart.’
Connon shook his head. There was a dull ache above his left ear. Marcus was rather blurred.
‘I think I’d better have a few minutes off, Arthur.’
‘You do that, boyo. Here, Marcus, you give him a hand while I sort this lot out. Not that it matters much when you only get twelve of the sods turning up in the first place.’
Marcus slipped Connon’s arm over his shoulder.
‘Come along, my boy. We’ll deposit you in the bath before the rest of this filthy lot get in.’
They slowly made their way to the wooden hut which served as a pavilion.
‘Get yourself in that bath and mind you don’t drown,’ said Marcus. ‘I’ll get back and avenge you. It must be nearly time anyway.’
Left to himself, Connon began to unlace his boots. The ache suddenly began to turn like a cogwheel meshing with his flesh. He bowed his head between his knees again and it faded away. He stood up, fumbled in his jacket pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. The smoke seemed to help and he took off his other boot. But he couldn’t face the bath, he decided. He wasn’t very dirty and he hadn’t moved fast enough to work up a sweat. He washed the mud off his hands and bathed his face. Then, after towelling himself down, he got dressed.
The others trooped in as he was fastening his tie.
‘You all right, Connie?’ asked Marcus again.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Good-oh!’ said Marcus. ‘Let’s get into that water before Fred gets in.’
He began to tear his rugby kit off. Within seconds the bath was full of naked men and the water was sloshing over the side. There was a general outcry as Fred Slater settled in. Connon looked at the scene with slight distaste.
‘Goodbye, Marcus,’ he said, but his voice was drowned in a burst of singing. He made his way to the door and out into the fresh air.
He picked his way slowly over the muddy grass towards the distant club-house. The hut the fourth team used had originally been all the accommodation the club possessed, but the present of an adjoining field and a large loan from the Rugby Union had enabled them at the same time to develop another two pitches and build the pavilion. But even here the showers could not really cope with more than two teams, so the Fourth soldiered on in the old hut.
Connon thought ruefully that he had rather missed out on the development. The season the club-house was opened had been the season he retired. All those years in the first team had been centered on the old hut. Now when he was stupid enough to let himself be talked into playing, it was back to the old hut again.
He pushed open the glass-panelled door and stepped into the social room. Tea and sandwiches were being served.
‘Hello, Connie,’ called Hurst, the club captain. ‘Been over at the Fourths? How did they get on?’
Connon realized he did not know. He could not even recollect the score when he had left the field.
‘I don’t know how it ended,’ he said. ‘I got a knock and came off early.’
Hurst looked at him in surprise.
‘You haven’t been playing, have you? Good lord. You’d better have a seat.’
Connon helped himself to a cup of tea.
‘I’m only thirty-nine,’ he said. ‘You’re nearly thirty yourself, Peter.’
Hurst smiled. He knew, and he knew that Connon knew, this was his last season as captain.
‘They won’t get me out there, Connie. When I finish, I finish.’
‘Sandwich, Connie?’ asked one of the girl helpers. Connon recognized her as the girl-friend of the second team full-back. He shook his head, remembering when Mary had used to come down on Saturday afternoon. The catering like everything else had been more primitive then. Once they became wives they stopped coming. Then they tried to stop you coming. Then they even stopped that.
‘I won’t do it again in a hurry,’ he said to Hurst. ‘How did you get on?’
But Hurst had turned away to talk to some members of the visiting team.
The ache was turning again in Connon’s head and he put his cup down and went across the room to the door which led into the bar. This was empty except for the club treasurer behind the bar sorting out some bottles.
‘Hello, Connie,’ he said. ‘You’re early. You know we don’t serve till tea’s done and the girls have got cleared up.’
‘That’s all right, Sid. I just feel like a quiet sit down. It’s rather noisy in there.’
He sank into a chair and massaged the side of his head. The treasurer carried on with his work a few moments, then said, ‘Are you feeling all right, Connie?’
‘Fine.’
He lit another cigarette.
‘Make an exception and pass me a scotch, will you, Sid?’
‘Well, all right. Medicinal purposes only. Don’t let those drunkards smell it.’
He poured a scotch and handed it over.
‘Two shillings and sixpence.’
‘Isn’t my credit good?’
‘Your credit’s bloody marvellous. It’s my accounts which are bloody awful. Two and six.’
Connon dug into his pocket and produced the money. He sat down again and sipped his whisky. It didn’t help.
The door opened and Marcus stuck his head in.
‘There you are, then. I saw your car outside so I knew you must be hiding somewhere. How are you feeling?’
‘Not so bad.’
‘Good-oh. I see you’ve got a drink. Hey, Sid!’
‘No.’
‘Right, I’ll have to share yours, Connie.’
He sat down beside Connon. Connon pushed the drink towards him.
‘Have it.’
‘Here. Watch it or I’ll take offence.’
Connon smiled.
Marcus Felstead was short, bald, and fat. His face was not really the face of a fat man, Connie thought, but of a tired saint. He could not recall the name of the tired saint he had in mind but he remembered very clearly the picture in his illustrated Bible which was the source of the idea. The saint, his sanctity advertised by a dome of light which sat round his head like a space helmet, had been leaning on a staff and looking despondently into the distance which seemed to offer nothing but desert. Perhaps the thing about Marcus’s face was that the fleshiness of it formed a framework round rather than belonged to the thin nose and lips and narrow intelligent eyes which peered at him now curiously.
‘Are you sure you’re OK, Connie? You’re not usually knocking the booze back so early.’
‘Well, I did feel a bit groggy. But it’s gone now. How did we get on by the way?’
‘What do you think? Two men short with one of their reserves playing at full-back. Can you imagine? A reserve for a fourth team. Jesus, he made me feel young. They scored another couple after you’d gone. Thirty-two – three it was at the end.’
Connon was surprised. He could not recall any scoring at all, certainly not the kind of regular scores needed to build up a total like that.
‘Who scored for us?’
Marcus looked at him strangely.
‘What are you after? Flattery? You did, you silly bugger. A moment of glory, like the old times.’
Connon drank his whisky absently. He had distinct memories of the game, but they bore no relation to Marcus’s account.
The door burst open and a group of youngsters came in, their faces glowing with exercise and hard towelling.
‘Come along, barman, this isn’t good enough, this bar should be open now!’ one cried.
‘It’ll be open at the proper time,’ said the treasurer, ‘and then I’m not sure you’re old enough to be served.’
‘Me? The best fly-half the Club’s ever had. I’d be playing for England now if I hadn’t got an Irish mother, and for Ireland if I hadn’t got an English father.’
‘And for Wales, if you didn’t fancy Arthur Evans’s old woman.’
Marcus frowned disapprovingly and spoke sharply into their laughter, affecting a Welsh lilt.
‘Somebody talking about me, is there?’
There was an edge of silence for a moment, but only a moment.
‘It’s only Marcus!’
‘It might not have been,’ said Marcus sharply.
Unconcerned, a couple of boys strolled over and sat down at the table. They were only eighteen or nineteen. Still at the stage where they were fit rather than kept fit, thought Connon.
‘Did you play today, Marcus?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great! How did you get on?’
‘Lost.’
‘Pity. We won and the Firsts won.’
‘Not playing for the Firsts yet, a young and fit man like you?’
The youth smiled at this attack on his own condescension. ‘Not yet. But I’m ready. I’m just waiting for the selection committee to spot me.’ He grinned, a little (but not very) shyly, at Connon. ‘Didn’t you like my line-out work today, Connie?’
The boy had never called him Connie before. In fact, he couldn’t recollect the boy’s ever having called him anything. This was the way with these youngsters – noncommittal or familiar, there was no earlier formal stage. Not that I mind, he admonished himself. This is a rugby club, not an office party.
‘I didn’t see it, I’m afraid,’ he replied.
Hurst stuck his head through the hatch which led into the social room.
‘Right, Sid,’ he said. ‘All clear.’
‘Your order, gentlemen. Marcus, you’re on tonight as well, aren’t you?’
‘Christ, so I am. I could have been legitimately behind the bar all this time. Are you staying, Connie?’
Connon shook his head.
‘I’m late already. Mary’s expecting me for tea.’
‘She doesn’t know you were playing, then?’
‘How could she? I didn’t know myself till Arthur grabbed me when I got here and wept Welsh tears all over me.’
‘Best of luck, then. See you tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Come on, Marcus!’ came a cry from the bar. The room was now full and the social room hatch was also crowded with faces. Marcus barged his way through the crowd and was soon serving drinks from the other side of the counter.
Connon held the last of his whisky in his mouth. He felt reluctant to move though he knew he was already late. In fact he tried to catch Arthur Evans’s eye but the little Welshman either missed him or ignored him. Connon smiled at himself, recognizing his own desire to be pressed to stay. A group of young men with their girls crowded round his table and he stood up.
‘Thank you, Mr Connon,’ said one of the girls as she slipped into his chair. Connon nodded vaguely at her, suspecting he recognized one of his daughter’s school-friends under the mysterious net of hair which swayed over her face. She brushed it back and smiled up at him. He was right. Seventeen years old, glowing with unself-conscious beauty. She had a piece of tomato skin stuck in the crack between her two front teeth.
‘You’re a friend of Jenny’s, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘How’s she enjoying college?’
‘Fine,’ he answered, ‘I think she’s very happy there. She’ll soon be home for the holidays. Perhaps we’ll see you at the house. It’s Sheila, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. It depends where I fit into Jenny’s new scale of friends, I suppose. I’d quite like to see her.’
Connon reluctantly digested another piece of the revolting honesty of the young and turned to go. He heard a burst of laughter as he moved to the door. Arthur noticed him this time.
‘Hey, Connie, how are you there, boyo? How’s the head?’
‘It’s all right now.’
‘Good. I settled that fellow’s nonsense anyhow. Time for a drink?’
‘No thanks, Arthur. Gwen coming down tonight?’
‘Why yes, she is. Always does, doesn’t she? Why do you ask?’
‘No reason. I haven’t seen her for a while, that’s all.’
‘That’s because you’re always bloody well rushing off home, isn’t it? Why doesn’t Mary come down nowadays?’
Connon shrugged. For a second he contemplated offering Arthur a long analysis of the complex of reasons governing his wife’s absence.
‘Too busy, I expect,’ he said. ‘I’d better be off. Cheers, Arthur.’
‘Cheer-oh.’
The car park was quite full now and his car was almost boxed in. He had once proposed at a committee meeting that the club-house facilities be restricted to those who at least watched the game but this voluntary restriction of revenue had not won much support. Finally he got clear without trouble and drove away into the early darkness of a winter evening.
He glanced at his watch and realized just how late he was. He increased his speed slightly. Ahead a traffic light glowed green. It turned to amber when he was about twenty yards away. He pressed hard down on the accelerator and crossed as the amber flicked over to red.
There was no danger. There was only one car waiting to cross and it was coming from the right.
But it was a police-car.
Connon swore to himself as the car pulled ahead of him and flashed ‘Stop’. He drew carefully in to the side and switched off his engine. Its throbbing continued in his head somehow and he rubbed his temple, in an effort to dispel the pain. Out of the car ahead climbed two uniformed figures who made their way towards him slowly, weightily. He lowered his window and sucked in the fresh air.
‘Good evening, sir. May I see your licence?’
Silently he drew it out and handed it over with his insurance cover-note and test certificate.
‘Thank you, sir.’
The gears in his head were now grinding viciously together and he could not stop himself from rubbing his brow again.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘No. Well, no. I had one whisky but that’s all.’
‘I see. Would you mind taking a breathalyser test, sir?’
Connon shrugged. The policeman accepted the negative result impassively and returned his documents.
‘Thank you, sir. You will hear from us if any further action is proposed concerning your failure to halt at the traffic lights. Good evening.’
‘Good evening,’ said Connon. The whole business had taken something over fifteen minutes, making him still later. But he drove the remaining five miles home with exaggerated care, partly because of the police, partly because of his headache. As he turned into his own street, his mind cleared and the pain vanished in a matter of seconds.
He drove carefully down the avenue of glowing lampposts. It was a mixed kind of street, its origins contained in its name, Boundary Drive. The solid detached houses on the left had been built for comfort in the ’thirties when they had faced over open countryside stretching away to the Dales. Now they faced a post-war council estate whose name, Woodfield Estate, was the sole reminder of what once had been. This itself merged into a new development so that the boundary was a good four miles removed from the Drive. Mary and her cronies among the neighbours often bemoaned the proximity of the estate, complaining of noise, litter, overcrowded schools, and the comparative lowness of their own house values.
This last was certainly true, but Connon suspected that most of his neighbours were like himself in that only the price-depressing nearness of the estate had enabled him to buy such a house. Even then, it had really been beyond his means. But Mary had wanted a handsome detached house with a decent garden and Boundary Drive had offered an acceptable compromise between the demands of social prestige and economy.
His gates were closed. He halted on the opposite side of the road and went across to open them. While he was at it, he walked up the drive and opened the garage doors. It was quite dark now. The only light in the house was the cold pallor from the television set which glinted through the steamed-up lounge windows.
When he went back to his car a man was standing by it with the driver’s door open. Connon recognized him as the occupier of the house directly opposite his own, a man named Dave Fernie whom he also knew as a chronic grumbler at work.
‘Evening, Mr Connon. You left your engine running. I was just switching it off.’
‘Thank you,’ said Connon. He never knew how to address this man. He worked in the factory of the firm for which Connon was assistant personnel manager. But he was also a neighbour. And in addition, possibly with malice aforethought, Mary had made of Mrs Fernie the only friend she had from the council houses.
‘I was just opening my gates,’ he added, climbing into the car.
‘That’s all right,’ said Fernie graciously. ‘I’ve just been down the match. Were you there?’
‘Yes,’ said Connon. ‘I mean, no. I was at the rugger match.’
‘Oh, that. I meant the football. We won, 3–1. How did your lot come on?’
‘Oh, we did all right.’
‘Good. Rugby, eh? Here, you used to do a bit of that, didn’t you? My wife saw the pictures.’
‘Yes, I did once.’
He turned the key in the ignition and felt the turn in his skull so that the pain in his head shook with the roar of the engine, then settled down as quickly.
‘You OK?’ asked Fernie.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Well, good night then.’
‘Good night.’
He swung the car over the road and into the drive, slamming his foot hard on the brake as the branches of an overgrown laburnum slapped against his wing. He was used to this noise, but tonight it took him completely by surprise. He had stalled the engine and this time it took two or three turns of the starter to get it going again.
At last he rolled gently into the garage. He shut the main doors from the inside and went through the side door which led into the kitchen.
In the sink, dirty, were a cup and saucer, plate and cutlery. From the lounge came music and voices. He listened carefully and satisfied himself that the television was the source of everything. Then he took off his coat and hung it in the cloakroom. He looked at himself in the mirror above the hand basin for a moment and automatically adjusted his tie and ran his comb through the thinning hair. Then, recognizing a desire to delay, he grinned at his reflection and shrugged his shoulders, grimaced self-consciously at the theatricality of the gesture and moved back into the entrance hall.
The lounge door was ajar. The only light within was the flickering brightness of the television picture. A man was singing, while in the background a lot of short-skirted dancers sprang about in carefully choreographed abandon. His wife was sprawled out in the high-backed wing chair he thought of as his own. All he could see of her were her legs and an arm trailed casually down to the floor where an ashtray stood with a half-smoked cigarette burning on its edge. The metal dish was piled full of butt ends, he noticed. The burning cigarette had started another couple of stumps smoking, and Connon wrinkled his nose at the smell.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ still hesitating at the door.
The music and dancing seemed to be approaching a climax. The trailing hand moved slightly; a gesture of acknowledgment; a request for silence, a dismissal.
Connon let his attention be held for a moment by a close-up of a contorted face, male, mixing to a close-up of a shuddering bosom, female. The cigarette smell seemed to catch his throat.
‘I’ll just get a cup of tea, then,’ he said and turned, closing the door behind him.
Back in the kitchen he found a slice of cooked ham, evidently his share of the meal whose débris he had noticed in the sink. He slapped it on a plate and lit the gas under the kettle. Even as he did so, he felt his head begin to turn again and this time his stomach turned with it. He pressed his handkerchief to his mouth and moved shakily upstairs. Distantly the thought passed through his mind that he was well conditioned. Being sick in the downstairs toilet might disturb Mary. Now he was on the landing and his knees buckled and he gagged almost drily. Wiping his mouth, he pulled himself up, one hand on the handle of his bedroom door.
The next time he fell, he fell on to the bed and the wheels in his head went spinning on into darkness.
‘Do we have to have that tripe on?’ asked Dave Fernie.
‘Please yourself,’ said his wife. ‘You usually like it. All those girls. You must be getting old.’
‘Too old for that.’
Alice Fernie glanced across at her husband with a smile, half ironical, half something else.
‘Old enough for what, then?’
‘Aren’t you going to switch it off?’
‘I didn’t switch it on.’
‘No. I did. So you could see your precious football results after you rushed back from your precious match. And when you didn’t come, I even marked them down for you. Don’t you want to see?’
Fernie reached across and took the paper from the arm of his wife’s chair.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
The singer was off again, alone this time; a ballad; his voice vibrant with sincerity.
‘For God’s sake, switch that bloody thing off, will you!’
Angrily she rose and pulled the plug out of its socket.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you these days. I’m getting pretty near the end of my tether with you. Other women wouldn’t put up with what I do.’
Fernie ignored her and peered down at the newspaper, but she sensed he wasn’t really seeing it. She stood in the middle of the room and glowered down at him. He was in his early thirties, the same age as herself, but there was a puffiness about his face and a sagging at the belly which made him look older. Normally the contrast to her own advantage pleased her. Now she screwed up her face in distaste. Then, quickly as it came, her anger drained from her and she sat down again.
‘Are you ready for your tea yet?’
‘No, love. I told you I wasn’t hungry.’
‘Is there anything bothering you, Dave? Are you feeling all right?’
She steeled herself for the irritability her concern for his health always seemed to cause, but unnecessarily.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘You were late tonight.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I got held up. It was a good gate. I met his lordship on my way up the road.’
He jerked his head towards the window which faced the street. Alice affected not to understand.
‘Who’s that you mean?’
‘You know who. Connon. Bloody twat.’
‘Why? What’s he ever done to you?’
‘Nothing,’ he grunted. ‘I just don’t take to him, that’s all. Too bloody standoffish for me.’
‘That’s what he was. A stand-off.’
‘A what?’
‘Stand-off. His position at rugby. Mary told me.’
Fernie laughed. ‘Stand-off, eh? That’s bloody good. Wait till I tell them on the bench. That fits him.’
‘Anyway I think you’re wrong. When I met him he was very nice. Charming. A bit quiet perhaps but he’s just a bit shy, I think.’
‘If he’s shy he shouldn’t be a bloody personnel manager, should he? Anyway he’s more than that. He’s a snob.’
Alice laughed with a slight edge of malice. ‘I’d have thought you could say that about Mary Connon. But not him.’
Fernie shook his head dismissively. ‘Her. That’s different. She’d like to be better, but knows she isn’t. He believes he is. Bloody rugby club.’
‘Oh, Dave, don’t be daft. It’s not like that these days. Anybody plays rugby. Maisie Curtis’s boy next door, Stanley, he’s in the Club.’
‘So what? Things don’t change all that quick. What a game. Organized thuggery, then they all sing dirty songs like little lads. Yet they all tut-tut like mad if one of our lads runs on the field and someone shouts “shit” from the terraces.’
‘There’s no need to get excited, Dave.’
‘No? No, I suppose not. Here, I think I’m ready for my tea now.’
Alice rose and went into the kitchen.
‘I’ll tell you something about your precious stand-offish Mr Connon, though.’ His voice came drifting after her.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘He’d had a couple tonight. He was swaying around a bit. And I thought he was going to drive across his lawn and in through the front door.’
Alice came back to the sitting-room door.
‘That doesn’t sound like him.’
‘Doesn’t it? Don’t tell me that you’ve only heard good of him from Madam Mary?’
‘She doesn’t talk much about him at all.’
‘I don’t know why you bother with her. You’ve only got your age in common.’
Alice took an indignant step forward.
‘What do you mean? I can give her ten years, and more.’
Fernie caught her hand and pulled her down beside him on the settee.
‘As much as that? Mind you, she’s well preserved. And game too, I should think.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice, struggling to get up.
‘She must have caught him young then, very young. He’s only thirty-nine, you know.’
‘How do you know?’
He didn’t answer but went on, ‘And they’ve got that girl of theirs …’
‘Jenny.’
‘Yes, Jenny, at college. He must have been caught young. Very young. She’s a pretty little thing, now.’
‘Don’t you want any tea, Dave?’
Fernie’s brawny arm held his wife in a clamp-like grip round the waist. He looked thoughtfully into her face, then pressed gently with his free hand where it rested on her leg just above the knee.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I think I’ve changed my mind again.’
Jenny Connon hadn’t quite made up her mind what to do about the hand on her knee. Adaptability was an important quality in a teacher, her education tutor had told the class that morning. How to cope with the unexpected.
Though, as she herself had arranged that her roommate should go out and she herself had turned the key in the door to prevent interruption, the situation was not all that unexpected.
‘Do you really want to be a teacher?’ she asked brightly.
Antony (he insisted on the full name) pushed the hair back from his brow with a gesture almost girlish (but he used the hand not on her knee) and smiled.
‘If you mean, have I got a sense of vocation, no. If you mean, are my natural inclinations to be something else being repressed, the answer is equally no. Being at college is less distasteful than most of the alternatives, and it pleased my parents. Anyway, think of the holidays. I have a sense of vacation very strongly developed.’
Antony Wilkes was without doubt the smoothest man in the South Warwickshire College of Education at the moment. As he was in his third year and Jenny was in her first, the opportunities for the relationship to develop were limited. As it was, Jenny had decided to feel flattered that she was the second girl he had chosen from the year’s new supply. Her college ‘mother’ in the second year had assured her (rather sadly) that Antony was most discriminating in his selection. Her room-mate had been even more positive. She had been the first of the year. This gave Jenny the advantage of being well briefed in the Wilkesian technique, but being forewarned she was discovering did not prevent her from being disarmed. Antony was one of the few people she had met who really did talk in long well-organized speeches like people in plays. Most of her acquaintance, she realized, hardly ever strung together more than a couple of dozen words at a time except when telling an anecdote, and in fact the few who did talk at length were down in the catalogue as bores and therefore to be avoided.
But Antony talked eloquently, interestingly, without strain; with none of those changes of direction, grammatical substitutions, syntactical complexities, whose existence her linguistic lecturer assured her was the real framework of the spoken language.
His speech, Jenny decided, was the smooth, reassuring surface of his amatory technique. Even the slight sense of staginess it conveyed worked for him, creating a faintly non-real, therefore non-dangerous, context. But beneath the surface …
The obvious survival tactic was to stay afloat. She seized at a bit of driftwood in his last speech.
‘Is it important to please your parents?’
‘But of course. It’s important to please everyone who deserves it, even a little beyond desert if possible. Financially it’s not important. My father has a strict scale of values. He gave me the precise amount necessary to bring my grant up to the level he has worked out to be sufficient for my well-being. Less would be neglect; more would be luxury. So I never get more or less for any reason. And to use money as punishment or reward is quite out of the question.’
‘He sounds like a Puritan banker.’
‘Not at all. If you wish to combine his religion with his profession, you’d have to call him an Aston Villa butcher. Mind you, my mother slips me the odd note now and then. But, as I say, this has nothing to do with the question. The only real answer is that, despite the fact that in many ways they find me utterly incomprehensible, they have always felt inclined by nature to please me; similarly I them.’
‘You mean you love them?’ asked Jenny, half-consciously trying to embarrass him.
‘Yes, of course. Had I not made that clear? I’m sorry. And you, do you love your parents?’
‘Yes, I think so. My father, I like him a lot and we mean a lot to each other. It’s a matter of talking and understanding, but my mother’s different. Irritating in so many things. I want to scream at her sometimes.’
‘But you never do?’
Jenny grinned. She had tried to stop grinning. She thought it made her face fall apart in the middle, and she still had to count her teeth to assure herself she had not got twice as many as other people. But she kept on forgetting.
Antony Wilkes was glad she forgot.
‘Oh, sometimes. I give a quick forty-second-psycho-analysis. Rather nasty stuff it can be. She’s a bit of a snob; uses me to get at Dad, whom she resents in some odd way. She’s a few years older than he is, though I only use that as a last resort. I don’t know why, I suppose I just know that for her age is the ultimate insult, stuck a long way after vanity and dishonesty! But sometimes I feel I’m a lot more like her than Dad, than I’m like Dad I mean, though I like him more.’
Ruefully she compared her own performance as a speech-maker with Antony’s. Still, it wasn’t all that bad. And her hesitancies arose from uncertainties of emotion. Perhaps it would have flowed more smoothly if she hadn’t been so aware of the tensions, the fight for survival at home.
Antony’s hand patted her knee sympathetically. She realized that her attempt to stop on the surface had somehow gone wrong. She had entered into a conversational intimacy with him without even noticing it. She would have to keep very much on the alert now. His other hand was pressing her shoulders round. She turned to him and he kissed her. She’d have to do something about his other hand. But not yet. Mini-skirts and tights, she thought dreamily. Action and reaction. The invitation to attack might be more compelling than ever before, but the defences were stronger. She grinned again, which produced a very invigorating kind of kiss.
She could postpone her decision for a while yet.
‘Christ, Marcus, where the hell have you been? You just said half an hour. It’s been more like an hour and a half.’
Marcus Felstead manoeuvred his bulk under the flap into the bar.
‘Sorry, Ted, old son. Got held up a bit. Look, have a pint on me and push off now. I’ll spell you when you’ve got a Saturday.’
‘OK. And I’ll have that pint. I’ve been so bloody busy that not a drop’s passed my lips since you left.’
‘It’ll do you good. Give you an edge when they start fighting for the spare.’
‘Some hope. There won’t be much of that around now. See you, Marcus, Sid.’
Sid Hope, the club treasurer, looked askance at Marcus.
‘Nice of you to come back and give us a hand.’
‘Come off it, Sid. I did get Ted to stand in.’
‘Ted! Have you seen him at the till? He’s got some peculiar decimal system of his own. Where have you been to anyway? On the prowl?’
‘Nowhere important. Just out.’
A peal of uninhibited female laughter cut through the noise and fume of the bar. Marcus turned. Sitting in the furthermost corner surrounded by half a dozen men was the woman he expected to see after hearing that laugh. Dressed in a low-cut cocktail dress whose demure whiteness set off the gleaming black of her hair and the shining silver of her tights, she was looking up and smiling at the young man who bent over her, obviously telling a story.
The treasurer followed Marcus’s gaze and shook his head.
‘Trouble,’ he said laconically.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what Arthur is. He’s been hopping around like a cat on hot bricks all evening waiting for his precious wife to turn up. Finally off he goes about half an hour ago to fetch her. Decides she must have forgotten. Forgotten! Well, he’s hardly out of the place before she comes sailing in like the figurehead on the good ship Venus. And of course within two minutes of coming into the most crowded room in the county with a queue six deep at the bar, she’s sitting in the corner surrounded by drinks. Just wait till Arthur gets back.’
Sid drew a couple of pints for a complaining customer, then looked over at Gwen Evans again.
‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘what a pair of bristols, Jesus! There hasn’t been anything like that in here since Nancy Jennings went off with that traveller. And Mary James – Connon, I mean – was the only thing I’ve ever known who could have beaten it.’
‘Connie’s wife?’
‘Yes. She doesn’t get in here much now, does she? Nor does Connie for that matter. But I can remember the days. Jesus! Connie was married when you came to live here, wasn’t he, Marcus?’
‘Yes. Just.’
‘It must have been a full-time business with that one. No wonder he lost his edge after that. God, he once looked a cert for a cap. First we’d have ever had. Never been a sniff since. All for love.’
Marcus poured himself a scotch.
‘He did crack his ankle.’
‘Of course he did. I’m not really suggesting, mind you, that kid of theirs came out pretty smartly. Like Connie’s pass, they said. And the responsibility can’t have helped. But they seemed to make out all right. Didn’t see all that much of Mary after that. But it was before. Like her over there. And Nancy Jennings. Trouble.’
Marcus, his eyes still fixed on the noisy corner, ran his glass along his lower lip.
‘Are you putting forward as a general proposition, Sid, that women with big breasts cause trouble?’
‘Not absolutely. Though there’s a bit of truth in it, isn’t there?’
‘Mary Connon never caused any trouble down here that I saw.’
‘Like I said, after they married, she didn’t get in here so much. Tailed off. That’s an apt phrase if you like. She was six years older than him, you know.’
‘Still is, isn’t she?’
‘You know what I mean. She’d had her fling down here. Not here exactly. That was in the days before this bloody roadhouse came into being. Remember? We had the tea-hut. None of your polished floors. You could get splinters through your shoes if you weren’t careful. Then over to the Bird-in-Hand. No, Mary did the right thing – for her, anyway. Married someone half a dozen years younger. And stopped coming so much. Nancy Jennings, she buggered off. It’s when they marry someone ten years older than themselves and keep their wares in the shop window that the trouble starts. Here, my lad, if you’re going to have another whisky, pay for the last one first.’
‘Sorry, Sid. There it goes; and for this one too. Witnessed?’
But Sid wasn’t paying attention.
‘Here we go,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Here we go.’
Marcus had never seen anyone whose face was really black with rage, but Arthur Evans was pretty close to it as he pushed through the door. A path opened up before him. It led to the corner where his wife sat. She looked up, flashed him a quick smile, then returned her attention to the youngster who had been talking to her. But he had seen Arthur too and seemed disinclined to talk further.
With a tremendous effort, obvious to all who watched, which was about three-quarters of those in the room, Arthur turned to the bar. Marcus could almost feel the man’s will forcing his broad shoulders to turn. Then his trunk followed. And finally his legs.
Quickly Marcus thrust a glass up against the whisky optic. And again.
‘Arthur, old son, I’m in the chair. Wrap yourself round this and tell us about your childhood in the green valleys of old Wales.’
Evans took the drink in one.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
Over his shoulder, Marcus saw Gwen casually disengaging herself from the group in the corner. Exchanging a word here and there as she came, she passed easily across the room till she arrived at her husband’s shoulder.
‘Hello, dear. Going to buy me a drink? I’ve got no money and I can’t sponge off your friends all night.’
‘Where’ve you been, Gwen?’
She smiled ironically.
God, you’re a beauty, thought Marcus. Sid, in an excess of desire to share his admiration of the sight before them, kicked him painfully on the ankle.
‘Oh, I got tired of waiting, so I came on by myself.’
‘But you were supposed to be coming with Dick and Joy.’
‘Was I? Oh, I forgot.’
‘They called for you.’
‘Then I must have left.’
‘To come here? You took your time, didn’t you, girl?’
‘Do you want to quarrel, Arthur?’
She raised her voice just sufficiently to cut into the attention of those immediately adjacent to them.
Marcus looked at Arthur. Surprisingly, he seemed to be considering the question on its merits.
Finally, calmly, ‘No,’ he said.
‘Then let’s have that drink. Marcus, love, see if you can add a bit of gin to that slice of dried-up lemon which seems to be all that’s left of a once proud fruit.’
‘A pleasure, ma’am,’ said Marcus. ‘A real pleasure.’ He meant it.
Two hours or so later, just after eleven, he put the lights out in the bar. Outside he could hear the din of departure. Car doors. Impatient horns. Voices. Song.
As he passed the Gents, the door opened and a large figure fell out.
‘Marcus,’ it said.
‘Ted. Christ, you certainly caught up, didn’t you? Come on, old son. We’d better get you home.’
Arm in arm they walked out into the car park.
Jenny Connon opened the door to let her roommate in.
‘Hello,’ said the newcomer brightly. ‘Not too early, am I? It’s after eleven.’
‘What you really mean is, not too late, you hope. How are you, Helen?’ said Antony. ‘Well, must be off. See you both. Bye.’
Jenny watched him go down the corridor.
‘Had a nice time?’ asked Helen.
‘Oh yes,’ said Jenny noncommittally as she closed the door. She hoped she had done the right thing.
‘The time is ten minutes past eleven,’ said the announcer with evident relief. ‘You are watching …’
Alice Fernie switched him off in mid-sentence and yawned.
‘Well, I’m off to bed. Coming?’
Behind her, her husband stood in the small bay of the window looking out into the front garden.
‘No, dear. You go on. I’ll be up in a minute.’
‘What are you looking at?’
‘Nothing. I thought I saw that bloody black and white cat from next door digging up my lawn. Off you go.’
‘All right, then. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
And over the road, Sam Connon stood pale-faced and trembling in the darkened hall of his house, the telephone in his hand.
Behind him in the lounge, stretched out in the high-backed chair he would never want to call his own again, was his wife.
She was quite, quite dead.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_aec1719d-a626-5a6e-b2e2-94dbe0403332)
Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was a big man. When he took his jacket off and dropped it over the back of a chair it was like a Bedouin pitching camp. He had a big head, greying now; big eyes, short-sighted, but losing nothing of their penetrating force behind a pair of solid-framed spectacles; and he blew his big nose into a khaki handkerchief a foot-and-a-half square. He had been a vicious lock forward in his time, which had been a time before speed and dexterity were placed higher in the list of a pack’s qualities than sheer indestructibility. The same order of priorities had brought him to his present office.
He was a man not difficult to mock. But it was dangerous sport. And perhaps therefore all the more tempting to a detective sergeant who was twenty years younger, had a degree in social sciences and read works of criminology.
Dalziel sank over his chair and scratched himself vigorously between the legs. Not absent-mindedly – nothing he did was mannerism – but with conscious sensuousness. Like scratching a dog to keep it happy, a constable had once said within range of Dalziel’s very sharp hearing. He had liked the simile and therefore ignored it.
‘You should have seen him, Pascoe. He went round their cover like a downhill skier round a line of snowmen. And he was a big lad, mark you. Still is, of course. But even then. Not one of your bloody Welsh dwarfs, but a good solid-built English fly-half. How we roared! He’d have captained the Lions if we’d been selectors.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Pascoe with the resigned condescension of one certain of the intellectual superiority of Association Football.
‘Graceful, too. Ran upright. Always looking for the quickest way to the line. God, he found it that day. He was picked for the final trial, of course. Nearest thing to a certainty since Lily Jones left Crown Street. Then bang! his ankle went. The week before. No one’s fault. He was overtaken by a loose scrum. Never afraid to mix it, was Connie. Solid defender, sharp attacker. But he never came again after that. Played for another eight years. No difficulty in holding his place in the club. Stood up for the County a dozen times. But never sniffed at a cap again. But he was a great runner with the ball, a great player.’
He nodded two or three times and smiled faintly as though at some pleasant memory.
‘A great player.’
‘Then he could hardly commit a murder, could he?’ said Pascoe, hoping by this irony to recall his superior to the realities of their work.
‘No. Probably not. Or not one like this. He’d use his head, that one. Which,’ added Dalziel, standing up and walking to the window, ‘is what you should do, Pascoe, before wrapping up another of your little ironies for me.’
Pascoe refused to be squashed.
‘Perhaps he is using his head, sir. Perhaps he is, in the sporting idiom, selling us a dummy.’
Dalziel flung up the window with a ripping sound from the parts where the paint had fused, and let in a solid cube of icy air which immediately expanded to fit the room.
‘No one ever sold me a dummy. Point yourself at the man and bugger the ball, you can’t go wrong.’
‘But which man?’ said Pascoe.
‘No,’ said Dalziel, slapping his thigh with a crack which made Pascoe wince, ‘at this stage the question is, which bloody ball? Is that enigmatic enough for your scholarship, eh?’
Pascoe had grown used to jokes about his degree when a constable, but Dalziel was the only one who hung his wit on it now.
The trouble is, he thought, looking at the broad slope of the back whose bulk stopped the light but not the draught, the trouble is, deep down he believes that everyone loves him. He thinks he’s bloody irresistible.
‘What did you make of him last night anyway?’
‘Not much. That doctor of his had pumped him full of dope and was hovering around like a guardian angel when I got there.’
Dalziel snorted.
‘At least you saw him. He was tucked up in bed by the time I arrived. I’d have liked a go at him while the iron was hot.’
‘Yes, sir. The early bird …’
‘Only if it knows what it’s all about, Pascoe.’
Pascoe did not let even the ghost of a smile appear on his lips. He went on speaking.
‘In any case, the iron wasn’t all that hot at eleven. She’d been dead at least three hours, possibly five. The room temperature seems to be a rather uncertain factor. Signs of a big fire, but the place was like an ice-box by the time we got there. That was a sharp frost that set in last night.’
‘Bloody science. All it does is give us reasons for being imprecise. I can manage that without logarithms.’
‘The cause of death’s a bit more exact, isn’t it, sir?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Dalziel rippled through the papers scattered on the desk before him. Pascoe tried to show none of the offence this lack of organization caused him.
‘Here we are. Skull fracture … bone splinters into frontal lobes … blow from a metal implement, probably cylindrical … administered with great force to the centre of forehead … perhaps long enough to permit a two-handed grip. That’s a great help. Found anything yet, have they?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I should bloody well think not, eh? Not if you knew and I didn’t. Where is this man, anyway?’
Pascoe pushed back his stiffly laundered white cuffs to glance at his watch.
‘The car went for him half an hour ago.’
‘Waiting for him to finish breakfast, I expect. Hearty, I hope. He’ll need his strength.’
Pascoe raised his eyebrows.
‘I thought you said …’
‘I didn’t think he’d done it? But I might be wrong. It’s been known. Twice. But whether he did it or not, if it wasn’t done casually by an intruder, he’ll probably know why it was done. He might not know he knows. But know he will.’
‘Have we dismissed the possibility of an intruder, sir?’
‘We? We? You’re not my bloody doctor. No, I haven’t. But if you look at your bloody scientifically based reports, you’ll see that she seems to have been sitting very much at her ease.’
‘Could it have been from behind? With, say, a narrow-headed hammer. That way you’d get the force …’
‘Pish and cobbles, Pascoe! Didn’t you see the height of that chair-back? And she was sprawling in it at her ease. You’d need arms like an orang-outang. No, I think it was someone she knew pretty well.’
‘And how narrow does that make the field?’
Dalziel grinned lecherously.
‘Not as narrow as you’d think. Twenty years ago there were a hell of a lot of people down at the Rugby Club who knew Mary James pretty well. I’ve had a bit of a nuzzle there myself. And that kind of acquaintance doesn’t get forgotten all that quickly.’
‘You make her sound like a professional.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, son. She wasn’t that. Not even an enthusiastic amateur. She just liked the gay life. There’s one in every club. Where the booze is strongest, the dancing wildest. The girl who doesn’t flinch when the songs get dirty. Who can even join in. It’s the gay crowd she likes, not the slap and tickle in the dark corners. But her image demands she has a large following. And she’s bound to be overtaken from time to time.’
‘Was Connon an overtaker?’
‘Oh no. He was taken over. Your old stager begins to smell danger when the gaiety girl passes the quarter-century with no strong ties. Your young lad’s easy meat, though. Easily frightened too.’
‘Frightened?’
‘They got married at a dead run. Their girl appeared eight months later. Premature, they called it.’
Pascoe listened with distaste to the rasp of laughter which followed.
‘But you’ll find out all about that, my lad. Have a walk down there this lunchtime. They always get a good crowd in. Have a chat with one or two of them. See if anything’s known. They’ll all be eager to natter. Here, I’ve scribbled out a list of who’s who down there. It’s not definitive by any means, but it’ll tell you whether you’re talking to a mate of his – or hers – or not.’
He passed over a scruffy sheet of foolscap, one corner of which looked as if it had been used for lighting a cigarette.
‘You’re best at this stage. If we haven’t sorted this lot out in a couple of days, I’ll drop in for a social drink myself. The tension’ll have gone by then and they’ll all imagine they’re pumping me for information.’
Whereas you pump stuff into barrels, not out of them, thought Pascoe.
Dalziel turned to the window again and took a couple of deep breaths. His fingers drummed impatiently on the sill.
‘Anything in from house-to-house yet?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘They’ll all be in bed. Christ. Bloody Sundays!’
There was a long pause. Then …
‘Here he comes,’ said Dalziel, slamming the window shut with even more violence than he had used to open it. ‘Anything you want here, laddie?’
‘Well, no; I mean yes,’ said Pascoe in puzzlement.
‘Grab it and go, then. What’s the matter? Did you hope to see the master at work?’
‘No. But I thought that as you know him – I mean, you are a vice-president of the Rugby Club and something of a friend …’
‘A friend?’ said the superintendent, twisting his fingers in one pouchy cheek so that his big mouth was dragged sinisterly out of shape. ‘You’ve jumped to conclusions, Sergeant. Perhaps I better had let you watch the master some time. He’s a great player, but I never said I liked him. Nor he me. Oh no, I never said I liked him. Push off now. We’ll save you for later if need be.’
Quickly Pascoe gathered a couple of files and some papers together and made for the door. There was a knock and it opened just as he reached it.
‘Mr Connon, sir,’ said the uniformed sergeant standing there.
‘How are you, Mr Connon?’ said Pascoe looking at the pale-faced man who stood a pace or two behind the sergeant.
Solid. Yes, he looked solid all right. Still firm. No flabbiness in the face. Just the paleness of fatigue. But what is it that has drained your blood, Mr Connon? Grief? Or …
‘Please come in, Mr Connon.’ The loud voice broke his thoughts. He glanced round. Dalziel, his face a mask of sympathy so obviously spurious that Pascoe shuddered, was advancing with his hand outstretched. He stood aside to let Connon enter, then stepped out into the corridor leaving them together.
‘He’s like Henry Irving,’ he said to the sergeant, shaking his head.
‘Which one?’
‘Which one? I don’t know. Perhaps both. I’ll be in here if I’m wanted.’
And for all his resentment at his dismissal, he found he wished that he had been wanted.
‘It might be nice to see the master at work.’
The sergeant turned round, but Pascoe had closed the door of his temporary office behind him with a bang.
The sergeant went back to his desk whistling, ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’.
It was, after all, Sunday.
‘Sorry to get you out of bed, Mrs Fernie,’ said Detective-Constable Edwards.
‘Don’t apologize,’ interjected Fernie. ‘I told her this might happen last night.’
‘Last night? Why was that, Mr Fernie?’
‘Well, I happened to notice your cars pull up outside Connon’s house …’
‘Happened to notice!’ sneered Alice Fernie, pulling her nylon housecoat closer round her. ‘You must have been stood at that window for half an hour or more.’
Fernie started to reply but the constable interrupted them.
‘The important point to ask both of you is, did you notice anything earlier on?’
‘Anything? What kind of thing? How much earlier?’ asked Alice.
‘Anything at all concerned with the Connons or their house. Any time yesterday.’
‘Well, no. I was over there in the afternoon …’
‘Over there?’ The constable leaned forward.
‘Did you know the Connons well, then?’
‘Mary Connon, I know – knew her very well. We were friends,’ said Alice; then, ‘We were friends,’ she repeated softly to herself, as though the import of the comment was just beginning to sink in.
‘And how did Mrs Connon seem to you then?’
‘Oh fine, fine. Just the same as ever. Nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘Did she say anything that struck you as unusual?’
‘No.’
‘Were there any phone calls? Any callers?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘Shortly after four. I don’t know exactly. I came back to get Dave’s tea ready.’
‘What were Mrs Connon’s last words?’
‘Last words?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound … what did Mrs Connon say as you left?’
‘Well, nothing really. Cheerio. And something about getting Mr Connon’s tea ready, if he got home in time for it.’
‘What did she mean by that?’
‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘I’m not sure …’
‘Come off it, Alice,’ said Fernie. ‘She meant that if he didn’t get home on time he’d get his own tea. She was a stickler for that, you’ve often told me. And he didn’t get home on time either.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I saw him. About half past six. And I’ll tell you something else.’
‘Dave!’ said Alice with real annoyance in her voice.
‘What’s that?’
‘He was drunk. Could hardly stand.’
The constable scribbled assiduously in his notebook.
‘You’re certain of that?’
‘Dave!’ said his wife again.
‘Oh yes,’ said Fernie, looking at his wife. She ignored his glance.
‘If you’re finished with me, I think I’ll go back to bed,’ said Alice, standing up so that her housecoat fell open revealing her thin nightdress.
‘Thank you very much, Mrs Fernie,’ said Edwards. ‘You’ve been most helpful. We might want to see you again.’
‘I’ll be ready.’
She went out, leaving the constable smiling and her husband scowling.
‘Now, Mr Fernie. What exactly happened when you met Mr Connon last night?’
‘So that’s all you can tell me, Mr Connon?’
‘That’s right, Superintendent.’
‘You got home about half past six. How positive is that time?’
‘I don’t know. Pretty approximate.’
‘That’s a help. You say the television was on when you stuck your head into the lounge?’
‘That’s right. I see what you mean. There was some variety show. Dancers, girls, not much on. Dancing behind a singer. Big youth, rather Italianate, singing something about flowers.’
Dalziel smiled sardonically.
‘So you were out for four hours?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Nasty that. What’d your doctor say?’
‘I don’t know what his diagnosis was. He just seemed concerned with getting me to bed.’
‘You’ll be seeing him again?’
‘Of course.’
‘I wonder if you’d mind if our man cast his eye over you while you’re down here? It might save your McManus a crisis of conscience.’
Connon smiled wanly.
‘Again I see what you mean. I have no objection.’
‘Good. Good. But first, there’s one thing that puzzles me. You felt sick in the kitchen. You end up by passing out on your bed. Why not be sick downstairs? The kitchen-sink. Or if your notions of hygiene are so strong, why not use the downstairs toilet? I noticed you had one.’
Connon spoke the words of his reply very slowly and distinctly as if learned by rote from a linguaphone record.
‘I did not wish to disturb my wife.’
Dalziel crossed his legs cumbersomely and started prying into his nostrils with thumb and forefinger.
‘Tell me, Mr Connon, Connie, I always think of you as Connie, do you mind?’
‘I always think of you as Bruiser, Superintendent.’
Dalziel was amused and gave a few snorts of laughter.
‘If the name fits, wear it, eh? Give a dog, eh? But yours doesn’t tell us much. Doesn’t fit, does it? Connie. A bit girlish. Which reminds me. You did not wish to disturb your wife. Now me, I’m a blunt Scottish lad by birth, a blunter Northcountryman by domicile. So perhaps the finer points of marital diplomacy have passed me by. (I wish my lad Pascoe could hear me!) But I don’t quite follow the workings of your mind here. You come home, you’re a bit under the weather, your wife ignores you, you’ve got to make your own tea. And you don’t want to disturb her. There are some men would’ve disturbed her. Men you’ve played rugby with who’d have put their boots through the telly screen.’
‘Men who have no respect for their wives do not deserve to keep them, Superintendent.’
That was a mistake, thought Connon. He’s taking it personally.
Dalziel’s wife, now divorced, had gone off with a milkman fifteen years before. At least, she had gone off. The milkman might have been malicious invention.
‘Yes, Mr Connon. You’re right. We should respect those who are weaker than us. Or older. Of course we should. Like forgiving our enemies.’
The phone rang.
‘Excuse me,’ said Dalziel. He listened for a moment.
‘The doctor’s ready for you now, if that’s OK.’
Connon stood up.
‘He won’t keep you long, I expect. Like the Army. Just a cough and a piddle.’
‘Will you want to see me again, Superintendent?’
Dalziel opened the door for him.
‘Just for a moment perhaps. Sergeant!’
The uniformed sergeant who had brought Connon to the room appeared. The expression of unctuous sympathy with which Connon had been greeted reappeared on Dalziel’s face for the first time since the interview began.
‘This is very good of you. It’s a trying time. Sergeant, show Mr Connon to the doctor. And get him a cup of tea, or coffee if you prefer it.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Connon and set off after the sergeant.
‘No,’ said Dalziel to himself as he watched them go. ‘I expect you’ll manage a piddle without it. Or I’m losing my touch. Sergeant Pascoe!’
‘You’re not intending to go down to the Club in that rig, are you, girl?’
Gwen Evans turned before the mirror and peered back over her shoulder.
‘What’s the matter? My bum’s not too big, is it?’
She was wearing a tight-fitting dress of flowered silk, whose style was distantly Chinese in origin.
‘No, but if that slit went any further up the side, you’d be able to see your belly-button.’
‘Don’t be vulgar, Arthur. What’s the matter? Don’t you want me to go to the Club?’
‘No, it’s not that at all …’
‘No? I think you’d much rather have me here slaving over roast beef and two veg, waiting for you to come back full of love and beer.’
‘Be fair, Gwen. Most of the time you complain that I’m too keen to get you down there.’
‘Oh ay. Where you can keep an eye on me at night. But it doesn’t seem to worry you at lunchtime. Do you think I’ve got a time switch on it, then, and can’t get it to work in hours of daylight? You should know better.’
Evans crossed to her in three swift strides. Instinctively she cowered back, holding her hands before her face, but he made no move to strike her. Instead he reached down, seized the hem of her dress and tugged violently upwards.
There was a tearing noise as stitching came apart and the oriental split up the side extended to the waist.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you can really see your belly.’
She relaxed, leaned against the wall and began to laugh. At first there was a very faint note of hysteria in it, but this rapidly faded and the laugh deepened to genuine amusement.
‘Give us a fag, will you, Arthur?’ she said finally, regarding her husband with something like real affection. ‘You’re not such a bad old faggot when you’re roused.’
Evans sat on the bed and lit two cigarettes, one of which he passed over to his wife.
‘Thanks,’ she said, drew on it deeply and placed it carefully on the edge of the dressing-table while she began to remove her ruined dress.
Evans watched her impassively.
She went to the wardrobe in her slip and opened its door.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s it to be? Club-wear, or kitchen-wear?’
‘Where were you last night, Gwen?’
‘At the Club with you, dear. Remember?’
She smiled sweetly.
‘Gwen,’ he said, ‘you’re right. It’s a daft question, isn’t it, girl? I know where you were. Or at least who you were with.’
She stiffened and reached down a dress from the hanging rail.
‘Oh, do you?’
‘Yes, of course I do, Gwen. And I suppose if I know, every other sod in the Club has known for months. But I don’t understand you, Gwen. I can see why you encourage all those young lads who come sniffing around you. That’d be flattering to any woman. But a man of my own age. And a friend. What made you pick him, Gwen? What made you pick Connie?’
‘A-1, I hope,’ said Dalziel when Connon reappeared.
‘I hope not, Superintendent. That would mean I couldn’t get better. And I don’t think I’ve recovered from that knock yet. I hope we won’t be much longer.’
‘This is a murder enquiry, Mr Connon. We need your help. Your wife is dead.’
I think that I am at least as aware of that as you, Superintendent. My daughter will be arriving home some time this morning. I’d like to be there to meet her.’
Dalziel looked sympathetic.
‘Of course. A father’s feelings. But have no worries on that score. My sergeant was just telling me. Your daughter’s got here safe and sound. We were able to assist a little there.’
Connon stood up.
‘Jenny? Here? You mean, here?’
‘Oh no. Never worry yourself. I mean at home, of course. We wouldn’t bring her here.’
‘At home. Then I must go.’
Dalziel let him reach the door.
‘Just one question, Mr Connon.’
‘If you must.’
‘You left the Club at twenty to six, and got home about six-thirty. Rather a long time isn’t it? It’s only seven or eight miles at the most. And there’s not much traffic about at that time.’
‘There was enough.’
Dalziel, expert at detecting ironies, thought he heard one here.
‘You didn’t stop for any reason? A drink perhaps? Or had you had enough at the Club?’
‘Why do you ask?’ said Connon quietly.
‘Well, it’s just that we’ve had a statement. Not guaranteed reliable, mark you. But admissible, and voluntary, and therefore carrying some weight. This man …’
‘Which man?’
‘A man called Fernie, says he met you last night. Is that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘About six-thirty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Outside your house?’
‘Yes again.’
‘He says that you were acting oddly. In various ways. He says, in fact he was willing to swear, but we introduced a degree of moderation, as is our wont. He says he got the distinct impression that you were drunk. Very drunk.’
‘Thank you for telling me, Superintendent. Now I must go. Goodbye.’
‘Wait!’ bellowed Dalziel.
Connon turned once more, half out of the door.
‘If you want a fairly precise statement of the amount of alcohol I had taken up to about ten past six, I suggest you contact the constables who administered a breathalyser test to me at that time in Longtrees Road. I thought that this was what you were going on about, not malicious gossip. Good day. I must get to my daughter.’
Dalziel sat for a minute looking at the open door. Then he stood up and walked slowly over to it, scratching the back of his neck with an intensity that made his skin glow redly through the grey stubble.
‘Sergeant,’ he called, pitching his voice low, but with an intensity which easily carried it along the corridor to the desk. ‘Would you step along here for a moment, if you’d be so kind? To discuss an organizational point.’
At the desk, the sergeant stopped whistling.
‘Sorry, we don’t start selling till twelve.’
‘I’m a police officer,’ said Pascoe. ‘I don’t start buying till I’m off duty.’
Sid Hope slowly rose from his crouching position behind the bar.
‘Oh yes? I’m Hope, the club treasurer. What can I do for you? Is there some trouble? About the licence, I mean?’
‘Should there be?’ said Pascoe. ‘You don’t allow non-members to buy drinks, do you? Normally?’
‘Of course not. When we know, that is. But I didn’t know who you were. On my knees, trying to set up a new keg. It’s like a bloody heart-transplant operation getting one of these things operational.’
Pascoe merely looked thoughtful at this attempt to bring in a lighter note.
‘Anyway, I don’t know them all. You could be a member. There’s one or two from the police who are. Superintendent Dalziel for one.’
‘Is that so? How do you run the bar, Mr Hope? A duty roster?’
Sid looked happy to get on to more general ground. ‘That’s right. We have a committee, me in charge, plus half a dozen others. We take it in turn to look after things for a week.’
‘Just one of you? By himself?’
Sid laughed.
‘Not bloody likely. No, we get some of the boys to help us when it’s very busy, like weekends. Or even take over for a couple of nights. Some of us are married, you know. But, like I say, weekends the committee man in charge has really got to be here all the time. It’s not just the serving, but the stock, and the till.’
‘Sounds like hard work.’
‘It is. Like now. Getting things set up for the great rush.’
‘Popular, is it?’
‘Christ, yes. It’s our main source of income. Apart from the odd dance or raffle. We’ve just about paid back our loan now and …’
Pascoe turned on his heel. The man was beginning to be at his ease. He stopped talking at the sight of Pascoe’s back.
‘How many do you get in here on a Saturday night?’
‘I don’t know. Sixty, seventy, and there’s the other …’
‘You’d be on last night?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Busy?’
‘Very.’
‘Was Mr Connon in at all, Mr Sam Connon?’
‘Connie? No. Well, yes. I mean he was in at the beginning of the evening right after the match. Look, what’s all this about? Have you got any proof you really are a policeman?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
Pascoe produced his warrant card. Sid examined it closely.
‘What time did Connon leave?’
‘I’m not sure. About five-thirty. Quarter to six, I think. I can’t say for certain. He stopped to have a word with Arthur on his way out, but he might just have gone through into the other room.’
‘Arthur?’
‘Evans. Captain of the Fourths. That’s right. Connie had been playing. Got a knock. Wanted a medicinal scotch. Hello, Marcus.’
Pascoe looked to the doorway. Standing there was a short fleshy man dressed in slacks and a polo-neck sweater. Pascoe felt that he had been standing there for some time.
Now he came into the room.
‘Hello, Sid. Sorry I’m late again.’
‘That’s all right. I’ve been managing. As long as you didn’t send Ted.’
Marcus didn’t look at Pascoe but went behind the bar as though he wasn’t there and began to busy himself with bottles.
‘Marcus,’ said Sid, ‘this is – who is it?’
‘Sergeant Pascoe.’
‘Sergeant Pascoe. He’s asking about Connie.’
Marcus looked at Pascoe now.
‘What about Connie?’
‘You know his wife?’
‘Mary? Yes. What about her?’
‘Was she a friend?’
Sid and Marcus looked at each other.
‘Not exactly. But I know her pretty well. Connie’s a close friend,’ said Marcus.
‘Why do you say “was”?’ asked Sid.
‘She’s dead I’m afraid.’
You learn nothing from their faces, thought Pascoe. A split second of surprise, incredulity, shock; perhaps not even that. Then they’re all busy arranging their features to the right expression.
‘She was killed last night. I’d like to ask a few more questions, please.’
Marcus sank down on a bar stool. His left foot hooked repeatedly at a non-existing cross-rail.
‘Where is Connie?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. Home by now, I expect. His daughter’s arriving.’
‘Jenny. That’s good. That’s good.’
But the look on his face didn’t seem to go with the words somehow.
‘Daddy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that you?’
‘Yes.’
She was sitting on the edge of a dining-room chair like a nervous candidate for interview.
For a moment they looked at each other as though this indeed was why she was there.
Then she ran to his arms and sobbed once into the wool of his overcoat, then rested there quietly for a long minute.
‘Come and sit down, Jenny,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
They sat side by side at the table.
‘Why don’t you take your coat off?’ he said.
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Yes. I will.’
He stood up and undid the buttons. Jenny glanced down at the white and brown mock-fur coat she wore.
‘It’s all I had. I had to wear something, it was so cold coming. There was nothing else. And I was so worried about people seeing me in this. It’s a bit gay, isn’t it? That’s all I thought as I walked up the path. But I don’t have anything darker. Jesus! I never thought I’d give a damn about the neighbours.’
‘You never used to. Some of the things you’d lie around the garden in when it was hot.’
‘Oh yes. Do you remember old Mr Hawkins? He’d go in to get behind the curtain. But Mr Hall would come rushing out with his lawn-mower. All to look at my bumps.’
She laughed, then stopped in mid-note.
‘We’re talking about them as if they’re all dead.’
He laid his coat on the table and put his arm round her shoulders.
‘No, my dear. Not them. Just those days.’
She stood up away from his arm and took off her coat. He looked at her, long-legged, short-skirted, well-rounded.
‘They were wise to look,’ he said with a smile.
She trailed her coat along the floor as she walked to the window and ran her finger along the sill.
‘Tell me about it, Daddy.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘Not much. My mother’s dead! And that’s not much?’
‘No, I mean …’
She sat down on the sill.
‘I’m sorry. I know what you mean.’
‘I came home. I was late. I’d let myself be talked into playing and I got a bit of a knock. Your mother had had her tea and was sitting watching the television. I just stuck my head into the room and said hello. She didn’t say anything. I could feel the atmosphere. You know how she hated anything to spoil her timetable, no matter how unimportant. So I went into the kitchen to get myself some tea.’
He stopped and after a moment Jenny turned from the window which she had been staring out of since he started talking. Connon was resting his head in his hands, his elbows on the table.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes. It’s just this pain again. That’s what happened on Saturday. It came on then, in the kitchen. I couldn’t eat. I felt sick, so I went upstairs. And I passed out on the bed.’
‘What is this pain? Have you seen about it?’
‘Not really. McManus has had a look. And a police doctor, but he didn’t give me a diagnosis. I told you I got a knock during the game. Anyway, when I awoke it was nearly eleven. I still felt a bit groggy, but I remember thinking it was rather odd your mother hadn’t been up to look for me. I came downstairs. The telly was still going in the lounge. I went in.’
He stopped and made a gesture which might have been a shudder, or a shrug, or an incipient reaching out to his daughter. Jenny didn’t move and Connon became still again.
‘Go on.’
‘She was sitting in the big chair. Sprawled out. She was dead.’
He was silent again, studying his daughter from between half-closed lashes. As if making a decision, he stood up and walked over to her so that he was standing close to her, not touching, not offering to touch, but there if required.
‘Her eyes were open. Her forehead was smashed in just above her nose. She was obviously dead. I stood there for a minute. It was odd. I was quite calm. I thought, I mustn’t touch anything. And I walked out into the hall and picked up the telephone. Then this thing in my head started again. I could hardly dial. But I managed.’
‘Who did you ring?’
‘Old Dr McManus first. Then the police. McManus was more interested in me than your mother. Just took one look at her. But gave me a shot of something and put me to bed. There were police all over the place, but they didn’t get far with asking me questions. I was out like a light.’
‘And this morning?’
‘They were round first thing. That’s where I’ve been. They told you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s that fellow Dalziel. I know him vaguely from down at the Club. He’s a brute of a fellow. I don’t know what they expected him to find out.’
‘Have they any ideas?’
‘Yes, I think so. A couple.’
‘What are they?’
‘Firstly, that I am lying about this pain in my head and passing out. I came in last night, smashed your mother’s head in and waited a few hours before calling the police.’
‘Secondly?’
‘That I’m telling the truth about passing out. But, unknown to me or forgotten by me, I nevertheless killed your mother.’
Now there was the longest silence of all. Finally Jenny opened her mouth to speak but her father gently laid his index finger across her lips.
‘You needn’t ask, Jenny. The answer is no, I did not consciously kill her.’
‘And unconsciously?’
‘I don’t think so. What else can I say?’
Now she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. Connon looked fondly down at her flowing golden-brown hair.
He ran his fingers through its softness; it was a happy mixture of her mother’s once vivid red and his own light brown.
‘Don’t worry, darling. It’ll soon pass over, all this. Perhaps we can go away. It’s almost your Christmas holidays. Would you like that, to go away, I mean?’
She looked up at him.
‘Is that what you want? To go away, I mean?’
He rolled the question round in his mind for a moment, trying to read her thoughts. But nothing of them appeared in her face.
Finally he settled for the truth.
‘No, I don’t think so. No. It isn’t.’
She nodded her head in serious accord.
‘No. Neither do I. We’ll stay. There’ll be lots to do here. We’ll stay and do whatever we have to. Together.’
She kept on nodding her head till her hair fell in a golden curtain over her white face.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_4326b11e-1847-5475-8d2c-51362790216f)
It was a glorious day. The sun laid a deep shadow obliquely across the polished oak of the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. The sky was cloudless, its blue more thinly painted than the blue of summer but the sun was too bright to stare in the eye. The air was just cold enough to make activity pleasant and the mourners shifted gently, almost imperceptibly, under their coats from time to time.
Only Connon and Jenny stood in absolute stillness.
Dalziel was scratching his left breast, his hand inside his coat moving rhythmically.
‘Ironical,’ he whispered loudly. ‘Suit you, my boy. Subtle.’
‘What?’ said Pascoe.
‘This,’ he said. ‘Nature.’
‘Human nature? Or red in tooth and claw?’
‘Don’t get bloody metaphysical with me. The day, I mean. Fine day for a funeral. Sun. No wind blowing dead leaves or any of that. Fine day for golf.’
‘What are you doing here then, sir?’
Dalziel sniffed loudly. A few heads turned and turned away. He obviously wasn’t about to break down.
‘Me? Friend of the family. Last respects must be paid. Heartfelt sympathy.’
He fluttered his hand inside his coat so that the cloth pulsated ludicrously.
‘What’s more to the point, what are you doing here? I come within smelling distance of having a reason. You’re a non-starter. Bloody policeman, that’s all. You’ll get the force a bad name. Intrusion of grief, it could be grounds for complaint.’
‘In his master’s steps he trod,’ murmured Pascoe softly.
‘Which of us does that make the very sod? And what are you looking for, Pascoe? You’re not nursing any nice little theories, are you? And not telling me?’
‘No,’ said Pascoe, ‘of course not.’
Not bloody much, thought Dalziel. You keep working at it, lad. Nothing like the competitive spirit for sharpening the wits.
‘Not a bad gate,’ whispered Arthur Evans to Marcus.
‘Arthur!’
Evans looked sideways at his wife. She had put hardly any make-up on in deference to the occasion and wore a plain black coat, loose-fitting. But the bite in the air had brought the red blood to her lips and cheeks and the looseness of the coat just made it more obvious where it did touch.
Dressed like that, thought Evans with bitter admiration, she wouldn’t stay a widow long.
Marcus, on his other side, looked pale beyond the remedy of frost. He swayed slightly.
‘You all right, boyo?’
Jesus, on and off the field, I spend half my life nursing them.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit cold. Poor Connie.’
Poor Connie. Poor bastard. Evans remembered the shock last Sunday when they had finally got to the Club, arguments buried for an hour. That detective had been there, he was somewhere around now, bloody ghouls, one of Dalziel’s lackeys, there’s a right thug for you, like all these Scotsmen, no finesse, first up first down, feet feet feet. Sid had got in first. Snipped his indirect line, gave the news right out, loud and clear. Mary Connon’s dead. And all I could do was look at Gwen, watch Gwen, see her age beneath the words, then gradually come back to life with awareness of her own life.
Poor Connie. He deserves sympathy. He deserves … perhaps he will get what he deserves. There he stands with that little girl of his. Not so little. She’s a pretty little thing.
She’s a pretty little thing.
The service was over. Out of the corner of his eye Pascoe had noticed two men with spades move tentatively forward from the cover of a clump of trees, then retreat. Their movement startled half-a-dozen crows whose caws had been a harsh burden to the words of the prayer-book and they went winging from the tree tops in ragged grace, as the black-coated mourners moved in twos and threes away from the grave-side, silent at first, but speaking more and more freely as the distance grew between themselves and the motionless couple who remained.
At the car park they formed little groups before dispersing. Dalziel convened with three or four elder statesmen of the Club, his face and manner serious. He produced a cigarette-case and passed it round.
Black Russian perhaps, thought Pascoe. That would amuse Dalziel if I could tell him. Do I want to amuse Dalziel? And if I do, is it to keep him sweet so I can manipulate him, like I pretend? Or is it because he puts the fear of God into me? Just how good is he anyway? Or is he just a ruthless sucker of other men’s blood? ‘Don’t get bloody metaphysical with me!’ But said quite nicely really. Like a jocular uncle. Uncle Andrew. You had to laugh. But not here. It’s colder now. Christ, I’m holding conversations with myself about the weather, the mental Englishman, that’s me. Now there’s something to warm us all up, that woman getting into the back seat, back seat’s the place for you, dear, are you sitting comfortably, now get them off. Don’t be shocked, love, that’s what all the detectives are thinking this year, you’ll be giving yourself a scratch in a minute Andrew, you randy old devil. Randy Andy. Now if she’d been killed, her, Gwen, wasn’t it? Evans, that would have been easy. Jealous husband, spurned lover, or one of those tumescent young men who’d been hanging around her from the moment she set foot in the bar, yes, one of those provoked just that bit too far, just over the edge where playing starts to be for real. But not Mary Connon, not that parcel of middle-aged lumber they’d just stored away. Though why not? She’d been built on the same lines, streamlines, take a hundred lines, so they said. Forty-five. Inches. Years. Was forty-five too old? No kind of age at all these days.
And she wasn’t looking her best when I saw her, was she? There’s something about a hole in the head …
So who knows? But I don’t quite see the young men … more like one of these old fogies Randy Andy’s chatting up, best prop-forward the Old Sodomites ever had, don’t you know; or perhaps the best fly-half who never played for England, himself perhaps, selling us all a dummy as he stands there remembering how he smashed her head in so he could look for it inside, for the years lost, the place out in the glow of the crowd at Twickenham, could a man love a game that much? And smashed her with what, for God’s sake? Where was it? I’d like a look round that house. Whatever it is could be lying at the bottom of his wardrobe. He’d get used to it after a while, like an egg-stain on a waistcoat, you get used to anything after a while. Lying there for someone to find, a friend, Felstead, Marcus, what’s he got to look so sick about? And what’d he be doing in Connon’s wardrobe anyway? Homosexual jealousy, that’s the answer, I’ll try it on Dalziel for a giggle. More likely his daughter, she’ll find anything there is. Christ, what a thing to find out about your father, she’d do all right in the back seat too, I wouldn’t mind carrying her away at a student riot. Here they come. And there goes fat Marcus, I come to bury Mary not to, he’s taken his time about extending heartfelt sympathy though there’s always the phone. Still, for a nearest and dearest friend …
‘Hello, Connie, Jenny.’
‘Marcus.’
‘Hello, Uncle Marcus.’
Marcus had invited her to stop calling him ‘Uncle’ about three years earlier when she had flourished into young womanhood. ‘It makes me feel old and you sound young.’ So he had become plain Marcus.
Till now.
I have reverted to my old role, thought Marcus.
‘I would have called round,’ he said apologetically, addressing himself to Jenny rather than Connon. ‘But you know how things … how are you both?’
‘Well,’ said Connon. He did not look as if he was really listening, but glanced back to the grave.
‘What will you do now, Jenny? Is your term over?’
‘No, there’s another couple of weeks yet, but I’ve got leave of absence. I needn’t go back till after Christmas.’
‘How is it? Are you liking the life?’
‘It’s not bad. A bit crowded. There’s more students than space. I can sympathize a bit more with these people who write indignantly to the Express about “smelly students”.’
Thank God for the resilience of youth, thought Marcus. No damage there, or not that’s going to show. But you, Connie, out of the cage at last, you look as if another sniff of free air will shrivel your lungs. No bloody wonder, the shock, the strain of investigation. There’s a new life waiting, if only you’ll believe that, I must make him believe it before it’s too late …
Jenny made a move down the path towards the car park. Marcus touched her arm.
‘I’ll stay here and chat to your father a bit till the others have thinned out. We’ll catch you up. You’d better go and sit in the car out of the cold.’
Jenny was surprised to find herself resenting Marcus slightly as she moved away.
She was my mother after all, and he’s my father. Why should he be treated like the sensitive plant and me chucked down to face this lot?
Because you can think like this at a moment like this, she admonished herself humorously and the shadow of a smile must have run over her face for she caught ‘Bruiser’ Dalziel eyeing her sharply as she stepped on to the car park.
Standing a little behind Dalziel she saw a tall young man, elegantly dressed, with a thin intelligent face – the kind of actor-type who played ambitious young Foreign Office men on the telly. She thought momentarily of Antony. She hadn’t had time to see him before she left, everything had happened in such a hurry. But no doubt Helen would have passed on the news to him. Perhaps even made a come-back in her original starring role.
Definitely her last appearance, thought Jenny, but didn’t find it particularly funny. She intended to make straight for the car and shut the door firmly on all condolences, sympathetic noises, keen-edged questionings probing for vicarious pain. But her arm was taken firmly and she was brought to a halt.
‘I just wanted to say that I shall miss your mother, Jenny,’ said Alice Fernie.
The annoyance that had tightened her lips for a moment eased away. She could not remember anyone else saying this. They were all ‘dreadfully sorry’, it had come as a terrible shock to them, but no one had really suggested that Mary Connon would be missed.
‘Yes, I shall too,’ she replied, then feeling this was a bit too cold she squeezed the gloved hand which still rested on her arm and went on, ‘I know how much she relied on you.’
This was nothing more than the simple truth, she realized, as the words came out. Mary Connon had rarely mentioned Alice Fernie to her except in faintly disparaging or patronizing terms. Her lack of taste; the unfairly large wage her husband earned on the factory floor; the excessive subsidization by the ratepayers of council-house rents. She was capable of blaming the Fernies (‘and all those like them,’ she would say inclusively) for the very existence of the Woodfield estate. It had only been a very few years previously that Jenny had realized that the council estate had been there already when her parents bought the house. She had come to accept a picture of rolling countryside being savaged before her mother’s eyes as the bulldozers rolled in, prompted by the Fernies and ‘all those like them’. But Alice Fernie had been, perhaps by the mere accident of proximity, the nearest thing to a real friend she had. And now Jenny felt real gratitude that this large handsome woman who could only be in her early thirties had thought enough of her mother to accept the condescension of manner and get closer to her.
Closer than me perhaps, she thought.
‘How did you get here, Mrs Fernie?’ she asked. ‘Can we give you a lift back?’
There were no funeral cars other than the hearse. ‘I will judge what is fitting,’ she had heard her father say to the oblique remonstrances of the man from the undertakers.
‘No, thank you, dear. You’ll want to be with your dad. And I’m not going straight back anyway. ’Bye now.’
‘Goodbye. Please call round, won’t you? I shan’t be going back to college till next month.’
I’ll have to watch myself there, she thought as she watched Alice move away with long confident strides, I could become as patronizing as Mum.
As she got into the car, she glanced back and caught the eye of the young man who could have been from the Foreign Office. He took a step forward. She thought he was going to come across and talk to her. But a rumbling, phlegmy cough from Fat Dalziel caught both their attentions and the young man turned away.
Policemen, she thought, angry at her disappointment, and slammed the car door.
Connon watched Marcus walk away from him down the path through the rank and file of headstones.
The car park was nearly empty now. The Evanses’ car was just pulling away. He looked after it thoughtfully. Gwendoline. He formed the syllables deliberately in his mind and smiled. All those youngsters competing to provoke the loudest laugh, craning forward to get the deepest view of bosom, pressing close to feel the warmth of calf or thigh, and imagining a returned pressure. Tales to be blown up into triumphs over a couple of pints. But the real triumphs were never boasted of, but remembered in secret; first with reminiscent delight, but soon with fear and cold panic.
Dalziel was gone, he observed, and his puppy-dog, Pascoe. Mentally he corrected himself. He had no reason for thinking Pascoe was merely that, though he was sure Dalziel would make him that if he got the chance.
And me, what would he make of me if he got the chance? he thought.
A parcel for the lawyers. Strongly wrapped, neatly labelled.
Samuel Connon. Wife-killer. There must be some long Latin word for a man who killed his wife. Dalziel might know it, though he probably wouldn’t admit to it if he did. Pascoe would know. He seemed a highly educated kind of cop. The new image. Get your degree, join the force, the Yard’s the limit. Or … leave school at sixteen, start as office boy. You can be assistant personnel manager by the time you’re forty. If you’re lucky. And if the general manager is a big rugby fan.
I’d better be getting down to Jenny. Poor Jenny. I wish I knew how hard this has hit her. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps we should get away for a bit. Where? What on? There’s not all that much spare in the account. All this costs a bit. Even if you haggled over headstones. Now if I’d gone first, Mary’d have been sitting pretty. But what kind of man insures against his wife’s death?
At least they can’t say I killed her for profit. But it’d be nice to get away. Soon. When things had quietened down. It’d be nice to get far, far away. To somewhere as unlike this as possible.
Back to the desert.
Over twenty years earlier, Connon had been sent to join his unit in Egypt at the start of his National Service. He had only been out there a couple of months when the regiment returned home, and at the time the few weeks he spent there seemed to consist of nothing but endless liquid motions of the bowels. He had been as delighted as the rest to return to England and it was this period that saw the blossoming of his rugby career. He had played only a couple of times since leaving school but now he became quickly aware of the advantages traditionally enjoyed by the athlete in His Majesty’s forces. His natural talent exploded into consummate artistry in these conditions and only the simultaneous service, as officer, of the current Welsh stand-off kept him out of the Army XV.
But something of his brief acquaintance with the desert did not easily die. It remained with him as dreams of luxury hotels in the remote Bermudas haunt some men. He read anything he could get hold of on the desert. Any desert. He collected colour brochures and handouts from the travel agents. Fifteen days in Morocco. Three weeks in Tunisia. Amazing value. But always too much for him.
In any case the desert Connon really wanted to visit was not in any of the brochures, not even the most expensive. He recognized it by its absence, that is, he knew what he wanted was something out of the reach of a camera; something untranslatable into colour photography and glossy paper. He wanted rock that had absorbed terrible, endless heat for a million years, that had writhed in infinitely slow violence till its raw bowels lay on the surface, yet without a single movement noticed by man. He wanted sand which rose and fell like the sea, but so slowly that it was only when it drowned his own civilization that a man recognized its tides.
It was a vision he confided to no one. Least of all Mary, who had found his collection of travel brochures nuisance enough.
Perhaps Jenny …
Hs saw that she had got out of the car again and was standing against the bonnet looking up towards him. Otherwise the car park was now completely empty.
He began to walk towards her.
‘I wasn’t going to ask her anything,’ repeated Pascoe. ‘Not then. Not there. I felt sorry for her. Just standing there. She looked, I don’t know, helpless somehow.’
This, he thought, is a turn up for the book. Bruiser Dalziel lecturing me on tact and diplomacy. It was like Henry the Eighth preaching about marital constancy.
‘Well, watch it. We don’t harry people at funerals. At least not unless we think they did it. And we don’t think young Jenny Connon did it, do we?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You checked, of course?’
‘Of course. She was nearly a hundred miles away. We know that.’
‘It’s about all we bloody well do know. The only thing we make any progress with is the list of things we don’t know. Item: who had a strong motive to kill her? No one we know, not even the great Connie as far as we know.’
‘Strength of motive is in the mind of the murderer, sir.’
‘Confucius, he bloody well say. To continue. Item: what did he kill her with? A metal object or at least an object with a metal end, cylindrical in shape, long enough to be grasped probably with both hands and smashed right between the eyes of a victim who sits there smiling and doesn’t even try to duck.’
‘The pathologist’s report did say that Mrs Connon had unusually fragile bones, sir. Perhaps we’re overestimating the strength needed.’
‘So what? Thanks for nothing. And Mary Connon fragile? I don’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. With tits like those she’d have broken her collar-bone every time she stood up. To continue again. Item: who saw anything suspicious or even anyone anywhere near the house that night? Not a soul. Not even the eyes and ears of the Woodfield Estate, your friend Fernie. All he can swear is that Connon was rolling drunk. Which Connon can disprove with con-bloody-siderable ease.’
‘It does fit with Connon’s account, though. About his giddiness, I mean. Makes his story that bit stronger, don’t you think? And our doctor did find signs of a slight concussion. He’s still seeing his own man, too. I checked.’
Dalziel slammed his fist so hard on the desk that Pascoe broke his rule of stony non-reaction to his superior and started in his chair.
‘I’m not interested in the bloody man’s health. If he’s innocent, he can drop dead tomorrow for all I care.’
‘A sentiment that does you credit, sir. But there is one thing about this injury to Connon that’s a little bit odd.’
‘What’s that, and why isn’t it in your report?’ asked Dalziel suspiciously.
‘Apparently irrelevant. But I felt you might like it, sir.’
Dalziel licked his lips and looked as if the task of strangling Pascoe personally and instantly might not be unattractive.
‘It’s just that when I was down at the Club, I talked among others to a chap called Slater.’
‘Fat Fred. I know him.’
‘Slater remembered Connon being laid out. But, he added casually and as far as I could see without malice, that he reckoned the boot that did the damage belonged to Evans, his own captain. He seemed to think it was just a case of mistaken identity.’
‘Fred would. He’s thick as pigshit, that one. But Arthur Evans isn’t made that way. He plays hard, but he’d never put the boot in.’
‘So?’
‘So Fred Slater should start wearing his glasses on the field. Or better still, give up. It’s indecent a man that size exposing himself in public. I don’t know how his wife manages him.’
He chuckled to himself at the thought and murmured, ‘Levers, I should think.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Sergeant,’ he said quietly, ‘is there anything we’ve left undone which we ought to have done?’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
‘Right. Then somewhere, in some area we are covering, or have covered, lies the clue.’
‘The clue?’
‘There’s always a clue, boy. Don’t you read the Sunday papers? All this started somewhere and it wasn’t Boundary Drive. Or if it was, we’re not going to get much help there. Now where’s our best bet?’
Pascoe spoke like a bored actor who was thinking of things other than his lines.
‘At the Club.’
‘That’s right. I think I’ll just drop in there tonight. No, tomorrow. That’s a training night. They’ll all be there. Socially, I mean, for a pot of ale. If there’s anything known, they’ll tell me by chucking-out time. They’ll tell me.’
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Reginald Hill
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: ‘So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ Sunday TelegraphDetective Superintendent Andy Dalziel investigates murder close to home in this first crime novel featuring the much-loved detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe.Home from the Rugby club after taking a nasty knock in a match, Sam Connon finds his wife more uncommunicative than usual. After passing out on his bed for a few hours, he comes downstairs to discover communication has been cut off forever – by a hole in the middle of her forehead.Andy Dalziel, a long-standing member of the club, wants to run the murder investigation along his own lines. But DS Peter Pascoe’s loyalties lie elsewhere and he has quite different ideas about how the case should proceed.