'It's your turn,' said Pascoe, rising from the floor. 'I just want to make a phone call.'
He returned a couple of minutes later and Ellie said casually, 'By the way, you'll let me know if you change your mind again, won't you?'
'About what?'
'About whether you're seriously investigating Patrick Aldermann.'
'Because of seeing his wife, you mean?'
'I suppose I mean that.'
'Yes, of course I'd tell you.'
'So that I'd stop seeing her?'
Pascoe grinned and said, 'I see tiger-traps. No, so that you'd know. Nothing more.'
'So you don't mind me seeing her again?'
'I mind your asking,' said Pascoe. 'Or rather, I'm suspicious of it, as I'm suspicious of anything that smacks of wifely dutifulness. What's it mean?'
Ellie rose from the happily re-nappied baby and went to open the cupboard of an old oak dresser from which she took a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.
'Tit for tat, I suppose,' she said. 'It struck me that not so long ago I might not even have known that Daphne was the wife of a man you were interested in. You've been a lot more forthcoming about your work since I stopped mine.'
Ellie had been, in fact still officially was, a lecturer in the social science department of the local Liberal Arts College. The period of her maternity leave was now expired but as there had not been much for her to do at this fag-end of the academic year, by mutual agreement she had merely made a token return by undertaking some examination marking. Ironically, her resumption of 'work' was in reality likely to be quickly followed by a resumption of being out of work, as the following year the college's pleasant country site was to be sold off and the staff lumped with the staff of the local town-based College of Technology in an Institute of Higher Education. Most of the courses Ellie was interested in teaching would disappear, and as it was rumoured that the local authority were offering trading stamps to staff willing to become voluntarily redundant, Ellie was contemplating perpetual retirement with whatever compensation she was entitled to, so that she could settle to finishing her second novel (the first having remained obstinately unpublished).
'So I've gone gabby?' said Pascoe. 'I'll have to watch that.'
Ellie set his whisky down beside him and sipped her own.
'Faced,' she continued, 'with a choice between regarding this new garrulity as a rather tardy recognition of my strong intellect, rational judgment and complete trustworthiness, and taking it as a condescending, sexist attempt to give the little woman a sop for having to vegetate at home all day, rooted by the brat, I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.'
'You hear that, Rose?' said Pascoe, picking up the baby and holding her face up to his. 'My life has not been in vain. I may not have much, but I have the benefit of the doubt.'
'Renegotiate on a weekly basis,' added Ellie. 'This week I've taken into account that Andy Dalziel is obviously being an even bigger pain in the arse than usual.'
'Not bigger,' corrected Pascoe. 'Different. I get worried about him sometimes. At his best he's been a great cop. But times are a-changing.'
'And he's not changing with them? Well, when the dinosaurs had to go, they had to go. And there in the wings ready to take over is Homo erectus!
'You flatter yourself,' grinned Pascoe.
'But you are ready to take over, aren't you, Peter?' said Ellie thoughtfully. 'I don't mean Andy's job specifically, but you do feel the dinosaurs have been hanging on just a bit too long, don't you?'
'Do I? Mebbe so. But I also worry about them. I mean, I sometimes even suspect Fat Andy's got some powers of self-awareness, and deep down grasps what's going on. Perhaps this is why he's seemed a bit uncertain lately. Then other times I'm certain he's just making sure I look the idiot in all this daft Aldermann business. With a bit of luck, it'll all blow over before he gets back.'
'He's going away? Andy?'
'Oh yes. I forgot to tell you. Obviously the ACC thinks Andy's got to bend to the modern world too. He summoned him yesterday to say that circumstances were preventing him from attending the conference at the Yard next week, so he wanted Andy to be our representative.'
'Not this conference on community policing in mixed societies? The one the Yanks are coming to?'
'Not to mention Frogs, Krauts and Dagoes, as Dalziel puts it,' said Pascoe.
'God help us all. Dalziel will have them going home to train in the use of tactical nuclear weapons!'
The baby, annoyed at not being central to the conversation, gave a sudden struggle in Pascoe's arms.
'Come here, darling,' said Ellie taking her. 'Time for you to be nodding off, I think. How about a drop of Scotch to see you through the night?'
As she went up the stairs the telephone rang.
Pascoe said, 'I'll get it.'
He picked up the receiver, spoke briefly, listened rather longer and was back in the lounge by the time Ellie returned.
'Anything important?' she asked, retrieving her whisky.
'Probably not. Just sheer curiosity on my part. Though on the other hand it is rather odd.'
'Do I get three guesses?' enquired Ellie after a moment.
'Sorry,' said Pascoe. 'I was just thinking deep thoughts, that's all. No, it was your mentioning that chap Burke. I knew it rang a bell. I rang the station and asked them to check if they could. It didn't take long. Someone there was actually on the case.'
'Case?'
'Well, not a case, exactly. But there was an inquest. This chap Burke fell off a decorator's ladder outside his house and broke his neck. Verdict, accidental death. No suspicious circumstances.'
'So?'
'Well, as you said, it's a bit odd, coming on top of what Elgood's been saying. Particularly as it seems that Mr Burke was assistant to Mr Eagles, the Chief Accountant.'
'And Aldermann got that job?'
'That's right,' said Pascoe. 'Of course, it doesn't mean anything.'
'No, it probably doesn't,' said Ellie. 'Elgood didn't even mention it, did he?'
'No. That's true. I'll mention it to him though,' said Pascoe. 'By the way, as a matter of interest, when are you seeing this Aldermann woman again.'
'Daphne? We're having coffee together tomorrow. Why?'
'Nothing. What was your impression, by the way.'
'I told you. I liked her. Lively and bright, blinkered of course, but far from stupid. Why do you ask?'
'It's just that Wield described her as a very pleasant, ordinary, upper-middle-class wife, almost a stereotype. She didn't sound your cup of tea, that's all.'
'Wield said that? Well, I suppose the presence of the fuzz is always inhibiting. Did he tell you how sexy she was?'
'Sexy?' said Pascoe, surprised. 'No, there wasn't the slightest suggestion in fact, he seemed to think she was rather plain and homely. You thought her sexy?'
'Oh yes. Not in a moist-mouth-look-at-me-shaking-my-great-tits way, but definitely sexy. Of course, Wield might well not notice.'
'Why not?'
But Ellie only smiled and rose to pour some more whisky into her glass.
8
(Hybrid tea. Richly-scented, lilac-blue blossoms, perhaps an acquired taste.)
When Pascoe arrived at the Perfecta plant early the following afternoon, he found it as silent as a Welsh Sunday.
He hung around a small foyer for a few minutes, coughing loudly as he pretended to examine a small display of lavatorial artefacts, many of them with the Elgoodware insignium. Finally an early-middle-aged woman in a severe black and white outfit arrived and said in a matching voice. 'Mr Pascoe? I'm Bridget Dominic, Mr Elgood's secretary. Would you follow me, please?'
Pascoe obeyed, feeling like a hen-pecked husband as he lengthened his stride to keep up with the swift-walking woman, a picture reinforced by the large plastic carrier bag he was carrying. After Dalziel's hints of Dandy Dick's sultanic habits, he found Miss Dominic a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps advancing age had brought Elgood into the realm of erotic discipline. Miss Dominic wasn't a bad name for a good whipper.
They went up several flights of stairs (didn't they have lifts?) and arrived at a door with Elgood's name writ large on the frosted glass. This opened on to what was clearly Miss Dominic's own office. Pascoe was surprised at its dinginess. He'd have expected Dandy Dick to put on a bit more of a display. Or perhaps it was simply a delayer, like a landscape gardener's tortuous and narrow path before the trees open wide for the surprise view. Miss Dominic knocked. The door was flung open. The view was a surprise.
Elgood, looking most undandified, stood there jacketless, with his waistcoat undone, his tie awry, his hair ruffled, and an amber-liquored glass in his hand.
For one moment Pascoe thought they must have caught him how had Dalziel put it? tupping a typist in his in-tray.
'Come in, come in,' said Elgood irritably. 'Thank you, Miss Dominic.'
The secretary retreated. Elgood closed the door behind her and said, 'Have a chair. Have a drink. And don't say "not on duty". It's Lucozade. I like to keep my energy up. Sit down. Sit down.'
Pascoe sat down. The room was bigger and pleasanter than the outer office, but still no state apartment. Nice carpet; pretty curtains framing a pleasant view once the eye travelled beyond the industrialized foreground and the suburbanized middle-distance to the rich blue-green of the pastoral horizon; walls papered a bit like an Indian restaurant and hung with some rather gaudy still-lifes and a big photograph of a fiftyish-suited group formally arranged outside a works gate over which arched in letters of wrought iron the name Elgood.
Elgood poured Pascoe a Lucozade and sat himself behind an old-fashioned, very sturdy desk. There was a sheet of newspaper opened on it and on the paper a half-eaten pork pie.
'Lunch,' said Elgood, following his gaze. 'You've eaten? Lucky man. You've come at a bloody inconvenient time, I tell you. I may have to chuck you out a bit rapid. On the other hand, I may be able to sit and rabbit on with you all day. You never can tell.'
'About what?' enquired Pascoe.
'About workers' meetings. We're having to make cutbacks like everyone else. I had the shop stewards in on Wednesday to tell 'em how the Board sees things. They've spent two days deliberating and this lunch-hour they called a full-scale meeting in the works canteen. It's still going on. So that's it, plant and offices idle till they get through yakking.'