Death Comes for the Fat Man (50 page)

“No. That’s fine. Look, we’re just finishing off in here, so if you’d like to take some shots of us sitting on this silly platform, that ’ud be grand.”

Behind him, his mother viewed the newcomer narrowly, but said nothing as she continued to muster the few remaining tribute-bearing guests.

Kilda moved around the room selecting different angles and d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 379

pointing her camera at the loving couple from time to time. Finally the last of the guests went into the dining room. Tottie pulled tight the drawstrings on the linen bag into which she’d been dropping all the envelopes containing checks and notes as well as the pouches of coins, flourished it triumphantly to demonstrate its weight and said,

“That’s it, all gathered in except for a couple, and I’ve got them on my list. Who’s this then, Kalim?”

Sarhadi introduced Kilda to his mother, who greeted her with a chilly politeness. She felt that family courtesy had necessitated inviting enough people she didn’t like without welcoming gate-crashers.

Kilda said, “Can I have one of you, Mrs. Sarhadi? You look great in that lovely outfi t.”

“This is for free, is it?” checked Tottie.

“Aye, Mam, it’s for free,” said her son.

“She does the fashion photos in the glossies,” added Jamila.

“Oh, in that case,” said Tottie.

She placed the linen bag on the edge of the dais, patted her hair, then smiled widely at the camera.

“Lovely,” said Kilda. “Now I’m done. Unless there’s any chance of getting a shot of the bride and groom with the imam who conducted the ceremony. Is he still around?”

“Aye,” said Tottie without enthusiasm. “But you’ll not get near him without a note from the Islamic Council and an intimate body search.”

“Mam!” protested Sarhadi. “No need to be like that. Any road, you’re wrong, here he is now.”

The Sheikh had come into the room and was approaching them, smiling.

Kilda stepped into his path, her camera raised.

Get within three feet and you’ll blow his fucking beard off,
Jonty had said.

What about anyone else?
she’d asked.

He’d shrugged and said,
Well, I’d not want to be in good spitting
distance.

How far could he spit? wondered Kilda.

The Sheikh was about six feet away and still advancing.

380 r e g i n a l d h i l l

Then Tottie, revealing the benefit of a good Yorkshire education, said, “Here’s another one barging in. It’ll be the ancient bloody mariner next!”

Everyone’s eyes turned toward the door except Kilda’s.

In the entrance, arguing with the self-appointed guardians, stood Peter Pascoe, his police ID in his hand.

Tiring of talk, he shouldered them aside and strode forward.

“Kilda!” he called.

Now the woman with the camera glanced at him and smiled before taking a step toward the Sheikh, who had come to a halt, sensing something was going on.

“Peter,” she said in a firm clear voice. “Stand still. And make sure everyone else stands still.”

She was right in front of the Sheikh now. The burly banger on the doorway started to advance into the room. Pascoe’s arm swung out and caught him across the midriff with a thud that drove the breath out of his body.

“Everybody stand still!” he yelled. “Dead still!”

Not his best choice of phrase perhaps, but it did the trick.

Everyone froze, the only movement the turmoil of expressions on their faces—bewilderment, alarm, anger, all mingling, each striving for dominance.

And then he added the words which put all other emotions in their pygmy place behind Giant Fear.

“She’s got a bomb,” he said.

8

I T I S W R I T T E N

So you’re the infamous Sheikh Ibrahim,” said Kilda Kentmore.

She’d seen his photograph many times, and of course she’d seen him through the viewfinder of her camera that day she had wandered aimlessly, or at least without any conscious aim, to the Marrside Mosque, then taken that crazy potshot at his car.

How she’d got away with it she did not know, or care. She’d felt as she’d so often felt since Chris’s death, like a wraith drifting silently and unnoticed through a world of meaningless substance. She felt much the same now. Only two people existed in this room, Kilda Kentmore and Ibrahim Al-Hijazi, the destroyer and the soon-to-be-destroyed.

She studied him with a disinterested curiosity. He was quite a good-looking man, though she’d never much cared for beards. Certainly it was a face bearing little resemblance to the crazed caricatures of evil which appeared in the tabloid cartoons.

He was returning her gaze with a gentle inquiring smile.

“Yes, I am Sheikh Ibrahim,” he replied. “How can I help you, lady?”

“You can help me to be reunited with my husband,” she said.

“I should be pleased to do so, but I am not sure how you imagine I can.”

“Don’t you tell your followers that if they die in the act of destroying the enemies of your religion, their reward will be translation to paradise and the company of I forget how many young virgins?”

“I believe that seventy-two is the conventional number,” said the Sheikh.

“That seems a bit excessive,” said Kilda. “But by the rules of propor-tionality, it makes my own hope that by dying in the act of destroying 382 r e g i n a l d h i l l

an enemy of my religion I will be reunited with my own dear husband seem very reasonable, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s certainly a hypothesis worthy of examination,” said the Sheikh.

“Could we perhaps sit down quietly and talk it over?”

He’s trying to get me not to hate him, thought Kilda. Silly man.

Doesn’t he realize that hate has nothing to do with it? Except the hate I feel for my life.

“Sorry,” she said. “Time’s up. For you. For me.”

She held her camera up, her forefinger poised over the button.

“Kilda!” cried Pascoe, taking a step forward. “Do you want to kill all of us?”

“You saying this bomb’s in the camera?” said Tottie Sarhadi. “Bloody hell. And there was me smiling like a loon when she pointed it my way.”

The spell of petrifaction woven by the interchange between the Sheikh and Kilda was broken. Sarhadi drew Jamila close toward him and in the doorway the bangers began to chatter excitedly till Pascoe shut them up with a glance.

“You don’t want to kill everybody, do you?” Pascoe went on, desperate to engage Kilda’s attention. “Did Jonty tell you how much explosive he put in there? Did he?”

He thought he’d failed. She didn’t turn her head and nothing in her body language suggested she’d heard him. But the fi nger stayed poised and when she spoke it was in answer to his question.

“Enough,” she said.

“Enough for what?”

“To kill him and me.”

“In what circumstances? At what range? Ten feet away? Cheek to cheek? In the same room? Kilda, knowing Jonty, wouldn’t he give you a good margin for error? It could be if you set that device off now, it would take out everyone in this room.”

Again a pause, this time to consider what he’d said.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“But you don’t know! Do you really want to kill or maim these two young people? They’ve just got married, for God’s sake! They’ve got their whole life in front of them!”

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 383

“That’s what I thought when I got married,” she said. “At least they would go together.”

“I don’t believe you want them to go at all,” said Pascoe with quiet urgency. “Or Mrs. Sarhadi. Or these other young men. Or even me.”

Now she glanced quickly his way before returning her attention to the Sheikh. It’s working, thought Pascoe. Get them engaged in an apparently rational discussion no matter how irrational it really is. Avoid anything that sounds patronizing or merely conciliatory, but persuade them you’re taking their madness seriously.

“Frankly I don’t give a toss about those young men,” she said. “In fact, I suspect we’d be a lot better off without them. As for you, Peter, I nearly did for you once, didn’t I? Perhaps it is written, as the Sheikh might say. Right, Sheikh?”

“Everything is written,” said Sheikh Ibrahim, who’d been listening to the exchange with the alert interest of a tutor conducting a seminar.

Pascoe didn’t want him involved. This had to be between himself and Kilda, but there was worse disruption to come.

“Written, is it?” exclaimed Tottie Sarhadi. “Aye, well, I daresay it is, but if you’ve got a gun, Mr. Copper, I reckon it’s written that now ’ud be a good time to pull it out and shoot her.”

This was addressed to Pascoe, who tried by force of will and expression to convey to the woman the lesson he’d learnt on his negotiators’

course, that you didn’t meet threats of violence with threats of violence. But now came a new diversion, the sound of distant sirens getting nearer, welcome in one way but in another merely screwing up the tension several notches.

And Tottie was all too ready to help the process.

“About bloody time,” she said. “You hear that, luv? Talk time’s over.

Soon this place’ll be full of boys in blue with popguns. And one thing I’ve learned is, give a little boy a popgun and he’ll not be happy till he’s used it.”

Kilda glanced toward her and smiled.

“I agree with you, Mrs. Sarhadi,” she said. “Time’s up.”

She held the camera up to the Sheikh’s face.

“Kilda!” cried Pascoe. “Think about the young people!”

384 r e g i n a l d h i l l

“I’ve thought,” said Kilda. “I’ll count up to fi ve. Anyone not out of the room by then will just have to take their chances. Except, of course, you, Sheikh Ibrahim. You stay still. It’s virgin countdown time for you. ONE.”

Pascoe screamed at the young couple, “Go! Go!”

“TWO.”

Sarhadi pulled his young bride to her feet. She seemed to have lost the use of her legs. The bodyguards began to move uncertainly this way and that. In case any of them might be thinking the promise of virgins made a suicidal charge worthwhile, Pascoe turned and screamed at them, “Get out! Now!”

“THREE.”

The guards turned and retreated. Sarhadi half-dragged, half-carried Jamila off the dais and headed toward the doorway after them. Behind him his mother stepped off the dais.

“FOUR.”

What am I still doing here? Pascoe asked himself. I have a wife and daughter. What’s keeping me here? Concern for a crazy woman who wants to die and a religious fanatic whose death will cause rejoicing in high places? I must be mad!

He commanded his legs to carry him towards the door but they seemed to be functioning even less efficiently than the young bride’s.

Tottie Sarhadi was having difficulty dragging herself away too, but her motives were at least mercenary. She’d taken a couple of paces forward when she realized she’d forgotten the money bag. She turned and stooped to pick it up from the edge of the dais. As she took hold of the bag by its drawstrings, Pascoe could see the muscles across her back bulging visibly beneath the tautened silk of her dress.

“FIVE.”

Time to run! But he found himself hypnotized by the chunky Yorkshirewoman who may have worked her rough magic on Andy Dalziel in the Mirely Mecca all those years ago. Could such coincidences happen and not be significant? wondered Pascoe as he watched Tottie, still half crouched on her haunches, begin to spin round like a hammer thrower in the circle. She had space for one and a half revo-lutions. Her feet did a series of intricate little dance steps, her arms d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 385

straightened out as she rose to her full height, and she brought the heavy money bag, moving centrifugally at a speed not even a mathematician could have calculated in the split second available, slamming into Kilda’s pale slender neck, just below the right ear.

Pascoe had never visited an abattoir but he hoped that the effect of a humane killer was as final and instantaneous as this. There was no hint of stagger, no delay into which any form of awareness of what was happening could creep. Kilda just slid straight to the ground like a dress slipping off a hanger.

The Sheikh reached out and dextrously caught the camera as it dropped from her nerveless fi ngers.

Tottie slung the bag over her shoulder, and without even a glance at the fallen women, headed for the door through which her son and his beautiful bride had just made their exit.

As she passed Pascoe she said in a tone more pitying than scornful, “Everything’s written, right enough, but even Allah needs a pen.

Men!
”

QPART SEVEN

So a cried out, “God, God, God,” three or four times. Now I to comfort him, bid him a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet.

— W I L L I A M S H A K E S P E A R E ,
H E N RY V
, A C T T W O , S C E N E T H R E E

1

T H E E N D

You told him I were dead and the bugger actually believed you?”

said Andy Dalziel.

Peter and Ellie Pascoe were sitting at his bedside. A week had passed since his return to consciousness. At first his days consisted of short bouts of confused wakefulness interspersed with long periods of sleep, some natural, some drug induced. But by day three the waking periods were longer and less confused. On day six he was moved out of intensive care and on day seven he demanded a gill of Highland Park and six bacon butties, which some of the staff took to be evidence of incipient dementia. Happily John Sowden, who knew him of old, was able to assure his colleagues that what it actually demonstrated was that Dalziel had taken a large step on the road to recovery.

“But it’s a long road and precisely how far along it he will move is impossible to say,” Sowden warned Cap Marvell. “He is not a young man. Any return to work will only be possible after an extended period of convalescence. In fact, were he that way inclined, I could not see any problem about retirement on medical grounds . . . what?”

Cap, who’d let out a hoot of amusement, said, “Why don’t you suggest that to him, Doctor? But I’d have your crash team on alert.”