Arms and the Women (19 page)

So, from the penal point of view, a success story; a boat floating peacefully in a placid sea which Roote's Scottish parole officer hoped, rather aggressively, DCI Pascoe's visit would not turn gurly.

Rush-hour traffic was so heavy that what should have been a forty-five-minute run to the northern suburb where Roote had his flat turned into an hour and a quarter. If this proved a long-drawn-out interview it was going to be tight for Pascoe to get back to oppose Kelly Cornelius's bail at midday.

On the other hand, if the reason for delay was that he found out Roote really was the man responsible, who gave a toss about Kelly Cornelius?

There'd been a recent photo in the material faxed through from Sheffield. Pascoe had set it alongside his own memory of Roote at twenty-three, a fair young man always dressed in white or cream, a languid cat-like mover with something of a cat's reserve and watchfulness behind the easy smiling manner; a charmer when he wanted to be with women of all sorts and conditions, and with men too an effortless leader.

The man in the photo looked very different, difficult to age between thirty and fifty, gaunt of face and figure, with hair cropped just this side of shavenness.

Only the controlled watchfulness of the eyes remained.

'I'd not have recognized him,' Dalziel had said.

'Oh, I would,' said Pascoe.

You didn't forget people who'd tried to kill you with their bare hands.

The flat was on the top floor of a converted terrace in an area which, by morning light at least, gave an impression of being, if not well-to-do, well-ordered and well-maintained.

He rang the bell. Waited. Rang again. Then knocked hard.

A woman came out of the other flat on this landing.

'He'll be asleep,' she said. 'He works late. Won't it keep till later? Seems a shame to wake him.'

She was in her fifties, maternally defensive. The Roote charm obviously still worked.

'No, it's urgent,' said Pascoe, resuming his knocking, then shouting, 'Mr Roote? It's Peter Pascoe. Could you open the door? Mr Roote? Can you hear me?'

'They can probably hear you in Rotherham, you're making enough noise to wake the dead,' said the woman.

Pascoe looked at her and saw the awareness of what she'd said register in her eyes.

'Does anyone have a spare key,’ he asked.

'Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, I do. I sometimes pop in and tidy up for him.' She blushed faintly as she spoke and Pascoe emended his previous
maternally.

'Could you get it, please?' he said. And when she still looked doubtful he pulled out his ID and said, 'I'm a police officer.'

The door opened onto a small living room. Armchair, table, dining room chair, crowded bookshelf, all very neat and tidy. There were three closed doors.

Pascoe opened one of them. Kitchen. Sink. Draining board, cup and saucer recently washed. Kettle on a small gas stove. He touched it. Still warm.

The woman had opened another door. Bedroom. Bed made up, unslept in.

She turned to the third door.

'No, let me,' said Pascoe.

He pushed it open. Bathroom. Steam. An old chipped enamel bath, filled with water the colour of cherryade. And, sitting up at one end, with an open book on the soap rack in front of him and half leaning sideways as if posing for the Death of Marat, was Franny Roote.

Blood dripped from the wrist of the hand trailed along the floor. The other was beneath the ever darkening water.

His eyes were closed.

The woman started to shriek.

Pascoe said, 'Shut up!', pulled out his mobile and hit 999.

The eyes opened, blinked, focused on him. 'You're late,' said Franny Roote.

xiv

a man's best friend

'A child?' said Edwin Digweed. 'We are going to have a child?'

'Not as such,' said Edgar Wield.

'Not as
such
? As
what,
then? As an entree at supper, fricasseed a la Swift? As a parthenogenetic earnest of Jehovah's good intentions? As an early entry to some new Dotheboys Hall you are planning to found here in Enscombe to finance your dotage? Or is this infant in fact a Mafia dwarf turned Queen's Evidence for whom you are caring under the Witness Protection Programme?'

Wield, accustomed to his partner's blasts of invective fancy, bowed his head meekly before the storm.

When it abated, he said, 'Pete Pascoe's lass, Rosie. I promised I'd show her the menagerie.'

'With a view to joining it, perhaps?'

'Eh?'

'Edgar, since we set up house together, I have put the interests of domestic harmony above my professional calling and pandered to your bibliophobia by making this cottage to all intents and purposes a book-free zone. And what have you brought into our life by way of return? I shall tell you what. First an aerobatic ape. Then a possibly rabid dog. And now a female child. What more need I say? I am speechless. I rest my case.'

It was a long time since a scandalous episode in Digweed's youth had obliged him to give up the law, but he could still sound very forensic. Books, however, were now his livelihood and his life. When Wield first met him he was living in a flat above his antiquarian bookshop in the village High Street, fighting a doomed rearguard action against the relentless advance of dusty old volumes up the stairs. Forewarned is forearmed, and when they agreed to set up house together in Corpse Cottage by the churchyard, Wield had made it a condition of cohabitation that only books for personal use should be admitted to the premises, his own contribution being limited to
Moriarty's Police Law
and the complete works of H. Rider Haggard.

The price of keeping Digweed to his side of the bargain was eternal vigilance. Returning late from a book-buying foray, it seemed perfectly reasonable for him to deposit a couple of cardboard boxes on the kitchen floor with the assurance that he'd move them down to the shop first thing in the morning. And perfectly reasonable too for him to start unpacking some of the books in order to share his delight in his trove with Wield. But reasonability ended two or three days later when the boxes were still there and the sergeant had to eat his cornflakes standing up because all the chairs were occupied by incunabula.

But Wield's strong moral position had been considerably weakened by what Digweed referred to as the menagerie. First there'd been Monte, not the great ape of Edwin's fancy, but a marmoset which Wield had 'rescued' from a pharmaceutical research lab. That problem had been solved by the intervention of Girlie Guillemard, the chatelaine of Enscombe Old Hall, who had just added a Children's Animal Park to the visitor attractions of her ancestral home. Monte had first joined the other more tender inmates of the Park in their winter quarters, a heated old barn. But when spring came, he moved out to a treehouse from which he was easily lured by promise of food, and more easily still by the presence of his beloved rescuer, Edgar Wield.

The dog was more problematical. Tig, a mongrel terrier, had belonged to seven-year-old Lorraine Dacre, whose death while out walking her pet had triggered off one of Mid-Yorkshire's most disturbing cases. The animal's noisy entry into the Dacre house had always presaged Lorraine's return home, and now the family found its bark unbearable. Wield had undertaken to take care of it, on a temporary basis, he averred, but it soon became clear that there was no way the Dacres would ever take the beast back. Relocation wasn't going to be easy. The RSPCA rescue centre said they would try, but they couldn't keep the animal indefinitely if a new owner couldn't be found, and Tig's aggressive demeanour towards everyone except Wield, who was just about tolerated, didn't make this likely. Digweed in particular it thoroughly disliked, and the price of his continued tolerance was a proliferation of book boxes in unexpected corners.

That very morning Wield had found some in the bath. They'll be in the bed next if I let him get away with turning Rosie's visit into a major incident, he thought.

He said, 'I mean I'm taking her up to Girlie's animal park. And I would have told you, only you were supposed to be off to York today, so I thought what the mind doesn't know, the heart won't fret over.'

'Sneaking her in behind my back, eh?' sneered Digweed. 'A real CID undercover job.'

Their gazes locked, the bookseller's patrician face wreathed in a haughty sneer, his eyes flashing a challenge. But it was Childe Roland before the Dark Tower. Like shadowed windows in a blank wall, Wield's eyes gave no hint of what lay within.

Finally Digweed passed his hand over his face, erasing hauteur and shaping rue.

'I can't believe I said that. Sorry. It was stupid.'

'Aye,' said Wield. 'That'll be them now. If you want to hide . . .'

A car had drawn up outside.

Digweed strode to the door and flung it open.

'Mrs Pascoe. Ellie,' he cried. 'Welcome to our humble cot. And this must be Rose whose beauty doth outshine report. Step in, my dears, step in.'

Ellie and Rosie came in, the woman mildly amused by the hype of Digweed's welcome, the girl peering up at the tall silver-topped figure with wide-eyed curiosity.

'Coffee, Ellie? Will you have some coffee?
Real
coffee, not Edgar's revolting ersatz.'

Ellie said, 'No, thanks.'

'What about you, Rose? Would you like a glass of barley water? Or perhaps a fizzy drink? Edgar here occasionally smuggles some cans of cola into the fridge to abrade the few remaining flakes of enamel clinging to his teeth.'

Rosie glanced at her mother, who nodded.

'Yes, please,' said the girl. 'A Coke.'

'Of course. Do help yourself. You'll find the fridge through there, first left.'

Rosie went out.

Wield said, 'How do, Ellie. You OK?'

'Yes, thanks.'

'By yourself?' The question casual.

'Except for some Mad Max in a beat-up sports car I can't seem to shake off.'

Wield smiled.

'That'll be DC Bowler. Not long with us. Should have introduced himself.'

'Oh, he did,' said Ellie laughing. 'Nice polite boy. I told him Mid-Yorkshire would soon knock that out of him. Quite a dish too, or haven't you noticed?'

'Happen we'll knock that out of him as well,' said Wield gravely.

Digweed gave him a sharp glance, but before he could follow it with a matching remark there was an outburst of excited barking from somewhere close.

'Oh, God. I forgot the hound from hell was loose in the kitchen,' exclaimed Digweed.

He moved towards the door but Wield was quicker, with Ellie close behind. When the sergeant came to a sudden halt on the kitchen threshold, she tried to push past, but his broad right arm prevented her. Leaning over it like a pop fan at a crush barrier, she saw Rosie on her knees in front of the fridge with her arms around a small brown and white dog which had its forepaws on the girl's shoulders. For a terrible moment, she thought the position was defensive. Then she realized that far from assault, the dog seemed to be trying to lick Rosie's face off, while at the other end its stubby tail was signalling spasms of delight.

'You OK, Rosie?' said Wield lightly.

'Oh yes. Isn't he lovely? What's his name? Is he yours, Wieldy?'

Before Wield could reply, Digweed, demonstrating that his mind as well as his tongue still retained a legal sharpness, said, 'Actually, he's no one's, dear. We're just looking after him till we can find him a good home, aren't we, Edgar? A lovely beast, but we can't keep him here forever. Such a shame if he had to be . . . let go.'

He wouldn't have balked at
put down,
but Wield had turned to look at him, no Dark Tower blankness in his gaze this time, but a volley of arrows.

Rose's face had twisted in alarm, and hope.

'We've got a good home. Could we have him, Mummy? He wouldn't be any bother. I'd take care of him. Please.'

Before Ellie could respond, Wield advanced into the kitchen and said gently, 'We need to do what's best for Tig, luv. He's got a good home here already, you see, and you'd always be welcome to come and play with him. Now, how about that Coke?'

But Ellie could see that the sergeant's placations were falling on stony ground. Her daughter's hands had locked about the dog's spine like a Cumberland wrestler taking hold and her mouth was set in a stubborn line which Ellie had seen before. In her mirror. Across her mind a pack of questions hunted.
Do I want a dog around the house? Does Peter want a dog around the house?
And, leading them all,
Do we want
this
dog around the house?