Arms and the Women (29 page)

'Hang on,' said Dalziel reaching for another Eccles cake. 'I think I'm going to need to keep my strength up.'

BOOK TWO

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands

What water lapping the bow

And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog

What images return

O my daughter.

T.S. ELIOT:
MARINA

i

strange encounter

'I don't believe it,’ fumed Ellie. 'He's just doing it to annoy me.'

'Peter? Of course, you know your husband better than I do, dear, but that doesn't sound his style. And while not denying the attraction of having some handsome young fellow dancing attendance, another female living cheek by jowl with us in the bothy will attract less comment.'

Ellie, who always preferred a present to an absent foe, turned her irritation on Daphne and said, 'If this bothy of yours is so cramped I can't imagine why you said you could put her up anyway.'

'Well, we are a tad isolated and we can hardly expect the poor child to keep watch on us from up a tree and sleep at nights in her car, can we?' said Daphne. 'I must say that she's no slouch behind the wheel.'

This was apropos a glance in her driving mirror. Daphne drove with what she called aplomb and what her friends called abandon, but the Fiat Uno of Shirley Novello had shown no sign of losing contact along the winding minor roads leading out to Axness.

Ellie glanced back, smiled at Rosie in the rear seat with Tig sleeping on a travelling rug by her side, then let the smile fade as she refocused on the supermini. Why she should feel so antagonistic towards Novello she didn't know. Or maybe it was a case of didn't want to know. She was fairly sure sexual jealousy didn't come into it. If Peter found himself turned on by the woman, he never showed it, which a neurotically jealous wife might have found significant in itself. She, of course, was neither neurotic nor jealous, but sometimes wondered if there weren't worse conditions, worse that is as grounds for personal antagonism. They'd met for the first time only recently when Ellie had called in at the station to thank everybody for all their messages and gifts during Rosie's illness. Novello, Pascoe had told her, had lit a candle in her parish church for the little girl. Ellie, though she hoped she'd have the courage of her lack of conviction never to use God as a last gasp insurance on her own behalf, had no such compunctions when it came to her daughter, and had thanked the young woman warmly. Then, as was natural to her, she'd tried to deformalize the boss's wife/junior officer relationship by suggesting they slipped into first names. She'd seen something shift behind the DC's eyes, and for the rest of the visit, the young woman hadn't called her anything. When next they met, it had been back to Mrs Pascoe.

Now, it would have been OK to think that here was an ambitious young female officer who was being careful not to look as if she hoped to cut corners by chumming up with the DCI's missus. Ellie could have accepted, even applauded, such caution. The rising unto place is even more laborious for females than for fellows. And it's by a whole lot of indignities that policewomen with a bit of luck and a lot of care might one day come to dignities.

But Ellie couldn't rid herself of the feeling that there was more to it than that, or rather,
less
to it than that. What she half suspected she had seen in Novello's eyes was the kind of half-scornful pity she could recall experiencing herself in her younger days when confronted with some middle-aged middle-class woman who’d tried to come on too friendly too quick; not so much a reaction against being patronized as against the poor old sod's assumption that her fixed and finished life had something in common with, or superior to, the empowered, liberated existence of the new generation of females.

'For Christ's sake, I'm not much more than ten years older than her!'

'Sorry?' said Daphne.

Ellie realized she had spoken her thought out loud.

'I was just saying that she looks older than her age, wouldn't you say?' she recovered.

Daphne considered then said, 'No. I'd say . . .'

'What?'

'I'd say she has that extremely rare kind of face which doesn't remind you of anyone else you know. What in particular do you have against the girl, dear?'

'Nothing,' said Ellie, facing the front once more. 'Daphne, has it ever occurred to you that other vehicles, not to mention flocks of cows and herds of sheep, are also permitted to use these narrow country roads?'

Criticizing her friend's driving was an excellent diversionary tactic. Ellie was willing to share much with Daphne, but not the possible selfish triviality of her reasons for disliking Shirley Novello, which she wasn't even willing to share with herself.

'Really, Ellie. What is it you would like me to do?'

'Well, how about slow down for a start?'

'And if as a result of slowing down, I collide with a cow which would not have been there if I'd continued at my preferred speed, how will you feel then?'

This was, like many of Daphne's arguments, unanswerable, unless you had the time, energy, and intellectual resources to attack the assumptions which underpinned it, and as the principle of these seemed to be an assurance of vehicular invulnerability which only a fatal accident could contradict, a QED seemed unreachable, in this life anyway.

In fact, as it now occurred to Ellie, Daphne in driving resembled her husband in life, in possessing a certainty that all would be well so powerful it seemed to be self-fulfilling. Whatever, they reached Axness a good hour before their ETA of noon without even a sniff of danger.

Or perhaps, thought Ellie, it was more accurate to say they
achieved
Axness, for as a reachable place it hardly seemed to exist. She had remarked on this on her only previous visit some three years earlier when Feenie Macallum had hosted a Liberata meeting at Gunnery House. There was no boundary sign, no village green, no pub, no church, very little sign of human habitation at all; even the fields seemed accidental, marked off not so much by hedgerows as by little lines of sportive wood run wild, with the beasts that grazed them looking like members of one long herd stretching for miles as they migrated waterwards under the burning sun.

But it had an identity which you could certainly feel. Ellie had forgotten how strange that feeling was, as if when you came away, some mnemonic censor lowered a curtain between the world you were heading back to and the world you were leaving. But now on return, the recollection of that previous visit came flooding back. It had been a chilly day of late winter beneath a lowering sky, grey and cracked like an old plaster ceiling, very different from this dome of Wedgwood-blue soaring to the golden boss of the sun. But that same sense of a changed dimension had been there, that impression of a neutral emptiness waiting to be filled momentarily by whatever you brought to it, but leaving no doubt in your mind that whatever it was, it would drain away ineluctably as soon as you departed.

A large part of this feeling derived from the subtle change in the light ahead which marked the end of land and the start of sea. Long before the first glimpse of water, the sky was preparing you for the change which always comes when humans are reminded what a tenuous grip on existence they have, scratching a living on the spoilheaps the gods threw up when they dug out the oceans . . .

Ellie shook her head to dislodge these irritatingly irrational thoughts. I've been spending too much time with that fat old sod, Odysseus, she told herself. But as the car reached the crest of a ridge and she saw half a mile ahead the blue and silver savannah of the sea, she shuddered. Even on a windless day under a summer sun, there was no mistaking its power and menace. No wonder the Greeks nicknamed Poseidon
the Earth-Shaker.

'Lovely, isn't it?' said Daphne. 'That's one childhood memory you never forget, your first sight of the sea.'

'I've seen it before,' chimed Rosie from the rear, taking this personally. 'Often.'

'Yes, of course you have, dear,' said Daphne. 'But I bet you can still remember the first time.'

Rosie screwed up her eyes in an effort of recollection, then said triumphantly, 'Yes, there were lots of seagulls and some donkeys and a whole lot of sand and Mum and Dad took their clothes off and wrestled on it.'

Daphne shrieked with laughter and Ellie said, 'Jesus. She was nine months old. And we thought she was asleep.'

'I hope at least you didn't frighten the donkeys,' said Daphne. 'Nearly there. And all in one piece, you'll have noticed.'

She paid immediately for her overmod when she turned at speed off the narrow country road into an even narrower high-hedged lane and came into confrontation with an ancient rusty dusty Land Rover. The Audi skidded to a stop only a foot from the other vehicle’s bumper. The seat-belted humans lurched forward against their restraints, but the sleeping dog shot off the back seat, hit the floor, and set up a frenzied barking.

'Oops,' said Daphne. 'You OK, folks?'

Ellie had already turned to check on Rosie who was only concerned for Tig.

'Don't touch him till he's calmed down,' urged Ellie anxiously.

'Oh God, do you see who it is? Ellie, would you care to mollify your giant?' murmured Daphne.

For a second Ellie thought she was referring to the yapping dog. Then she turned her head to see Serafina Macallum climbing out of the Land Rover and approaching the Audi with grave displeasure printed on her face.

She leaned to the open driver's window and said sternly, 'This is not a race track but a public highway . . .' then her monitory gaze widened to take in the passenger seat and she said in a doubtful tone, 'Ellie, can that be you?'

'Hi, Feenie. This is my friend, Daphne Aldermann.'

'Hello, Miss Macallum. We met briefly I think when my husband and I were negotiating for Nosebleed Cottage.'

'Did we? Clearly your driving skills were not a factor in the negotiation. Child, could you ask your dog to bark a little more softly?'

Rosie said anxiously, 'He fell off the seat. I think he might have hurt himself.'

'I don't think so. That doesn't sound like a hurt bark to me. Let me see.'

Feenie went to the rear door, opened it, and picked up Tig who fell silent instantly. She held him up, looked into his eyes, prodded him, then said, 'No, he's fine. I expect he needs a pee after the shock.'

She put him down where he immediately proved her right by cocking his leg against the wheel.

'You should make sure that he is strapped in too,' said Feenie to Rosie. 'His safety is your responsibility, remember that.'

'Yes, I'm sorry,' said Rosie meekly.

'Don't worry, Rosie,' said Daphne. 'My fault, really. I should have thought...’

'No,' said Feenie sternly. 'Your responsibility is for the passage of your vehicle along the highway in a manner which does not endanger the health of other road-users. Your passengers clearly travel with you at their own risk, which I should guess is considerable. Rosie is her mother's responsibility, and the dog is Rosie's. I would advise a safety harness for the beast in future.'

'Yours doesn't have a safety harness,' said Rosie, looking towards the Land Rover.

A black and white collie had scrambled from the rear of the vehicle over the front seat and was now hanging out of the open window, viewing Tig with great interest.

'Mine is a highly educated animal,' said Feenie. 'Carla, down!'

Carla yawned widely, then having established her independence, retreated.

Feenie's attention was now attracted to the entrance to the lane.

'Ellie, is not that the young woman who was on watch outside your house? Did you know you were being followed? My God, I do believe she is armed!'

Ellie got out of the car and looked back to see Shirley Novello standing at the lane entrance, watching them. Feenie's reaction was understandable. Novello, back to her work 'uniform' of baggy brown T-shirt and baggy combats, wore a broad leather belt with a mobile phone clipped to one side and a leather pouch to the other. It did have something of the look of a holster but in fact, as Ellie knew from observation, contained nothing more offensive than the necessaries of a young woman's existence.

'It's all right. She's with us,' said Ellie.

'Indeed.' Feenie looked from Novello to Daphne and back to Ellie, teetered on the edge of some irony about the perils of bad company, but said instead, 'So you intend staying at Nosebleed? I noticed the rather rowdy young men who were there for the past week have moved out.'

Daphne, who had also got out of the car, said coldly, 'That was my son and his friends. Yes, we will be in residence for a few days.'

'Are you going to be around, Feenie?' asked Ellie. 'Maybe I'll wander over later with Rosie and say hello.'