Midnight Fugue (36 page)

‘Do you have any more details?’ demanded Maggie. ‘Have they got anyone for it?’

‘He’d have said if they had. He’s really shook up. Never known him like this. He’s even going on about the intrusive fucking press! Listen, hon, I’ve told you all I know, but you’ve heard nothing from me. And one thing more, that’s you and me squared off, OK? Take care.’

The line went dead.

For another minute Maggie Pinchbeck didn’t move.

Then she got up and went into the hallway just in time to see Sling leading Purdy upstairs, presumably for his meeting with Goldie.

The commander looked like a man with something important on his mind. She knew how he felt.

She watched them out of sight then went back into the control room.

18.20–18.48

As the old Rover sped north out of the city, Dalziel told Pascoe about his conversation with Purdy.

‘Tried to hide it at first, but he’s really worried,’ said the Fat Man.

‘Why wouldn’t he be? With his girlfriend missing and these Delays on the loose, that would worry anyone.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Dalziel.

Pascoe frowned and said warningly, ‘Andy, is there something else here, something to do with Purdy? I thought we agreed. No more secrets.’

You
agreed, thought the Fat Man. It’s me as makes the rules, remember?

But he didn’t say it aloud. There would be a time for such reminders. Also it was good to have it confirmed just how fine-tuned his deputy’s sensors were.

He said, ‘I’m not keeping anything secret ’cos I really don’t know anything. Remember, I’ve not seen Purdy for ten years and we weren’t much more than drinking buddies back then. So the way this thing’s panning out, I’m not taking owt for granted.’

‘You think he might be more than romantically involved?’

‘
Romantically involved
? You been at the Barbara Cartland again? I’ve no idea, Pete. There’s one thing, but. That stuff in the note Gina got about the plucky little trooper and the general. Two ways that might have got into circulation. One is the guy boasting in his cups to an old mate, the other is the girl reminiscing in her bed to a new mate. Mick Purdy fits both bills.’

They drove in silence for a while. Then Dalziel’s phone rang. It was lying on the dashboard.

He said, ‘Could you get that, else I might have to arrest myself.’

Pascoe picked up the phone and bellowed, ‘What?’ in a fair parody of the Fat Man’s telephone style. His reward was a verbal assault that made him wince.

He held it away from his ear and said, ‘I think it’s your old chum Chief Constable Glendower, who seems to believe your mother had intercourse with a sow that was badly infected with both foot and mouth disease
and
swine fever.’

Dalziel laughed and said, ‘Pass it here.’

Pascoe frowned and compromised by holding it up to his boss’s ear.

The abusive rant was unabated. Dalziel listened with a widening grin on his face.

‘Hooky, Hooky,’ he interrupted finally. ‘You should be careful, man of your age. Back seats are for teenagers. You’ll give yourself a hernia if you’re not careful. Nay, don’t start up again. Just listen, will you? You know a journalist called Gareth Jones?’

There was a pause. Then Glendower’s voice, more controlled now, said, ‘Yes, I know a muckraker of that name.’

Pascoe, hearing the reference to Gareth Jones, leaned close so that he could catch the caller’s words.

‘And would it surprise you if it turned out he were doing a surveillance job on you while you were enjoying your romantic weekend?’

‘What? The little shit!’ Glendower’s voice was now very alarmed. ‘What’s going on, Andy?’

Dalziel spelled things out with brutal economy.

When he’d finished, Glendower, his tone changed yet again, said, ‘Oh Christ. And it’s definitely Gareth Jones who’s dead, is it?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Poor bastard.’

‘He wasn’t looking to do you any favours, Hooky.’

‘I know that. But he was just a kid. All right, he got on my wick, always hanging around my office, asking cheeky questions, making innuendos. Deserved to have his arse kicked, fair enough. But not this.’

‘Aye well, does you credit, Hooky,’ said Dalziel. ‘But it’s time to look out for yourself. Listen, I’m ahead of the game right now, but my DCI — him you met in the car park — he’s a bright lad, he’ll have to be told.’

He glanced across at Pascoe and winked.

‘But he’s not a blabbermouth,’ he continued. ‘And I’ll do what I can to screw things down at the Keldale. Bit like you, eh? All right, sorry, no time to be frivolous. Listen, Hooky, there’s bound to be some bugger who knows what young Jones were up to, so I doubt you’re going to be able to keep the lid on this. But you can mebbe do a bit of damage limitation, right?’

There was a silence.

‘Yes, Andy. You’re right. Damage limitation it is,’ said Glendower finally. ‘Thanks, mate. Sorry I blew my top. I thought you were just having a laugh at my expense.’

‘Nay, Hooky, if us old stagers can’t look out for each other, who will? Listen, first thing I’d do is take a close look at your staff. You did the hotel booking and everything from your office, I suppose?’

‘Yes. Well, I wasn’t going to do it from home,’ said Glendower defensively.

‘Very considerate of you. But it means some bugger at work has probably been checking out your computer and phone and feeding this young reporter tit-bits. I’d look for someone who goes to chapel three times on a Sunday, sings in the choir, and reckons Sodom and Gomorrah are villages in Shropshire. But I expect you’ve got a lot of them.’

‘Oh yes, but I reckon I know which one it is,’ said Glendower vengefully. ‘And with luck I’ll have time to get the bugger sorted before I’m clearing my desk.’

‘Nay, Hooky, it needn’t come to that. A man’s entitled to a private life. Unless you’ve been charging your naughties to expenses. You’ve not been doing that, have you? Tell me you’ve not been doing that.’

‘There may have been some overlaps,’ said Glendower reluctantly.

‘Oh, Hooky, Hooky. First rule of the game is pay for your own naughties else you really will end up paying for them. Listen, I’ve got to go. Got a murder case to investigate, remember?’

‘Of course you have. Best of luck with that. I hope you catch the bugger. And, Andy, thanks again. Like I say, I thought that… well I thought some pretty uncharitable things… sorry. I’ll not forget this.’

‘Good luck, Hooky,’ said Dalziel. ‘By the by, signing in for your mucky weekend as Mr and Mrs Rowan Williams — loved it!’

He glanced at Pascoe again, looking to share a smile, but the DCI’s face could have belonged to a Scottish Nationalist at the Glasgow Empire listening to an English comic telling kilt jokes on a Saturday night.

‘So that’s how you guessed the dead man might be a Welsh journalist,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ said the Fat Man. ‘Remember that bint in the white Mondeo? I clocked it had the same registration letters as Hooky’s tank. So I checked if there were a wedding on at the Keldale over the weekend. There weren’t. And when I saw there was no Glendower in the registration book, just a Mr and Mrs Rowan Williams, I rang our Control and put out a call on Hooky here and in Lancs. Guessed he’d be heading west.’

‘You wanted to warn him,’ said Pascoe accusingly.

‘Aye. Why not?’ said Dalziel. ‘I’d do the same for you, and hope you would for me.’

‘Maybe,’ said Pascoe. ‘But this is really going to turn a spotlight on us. The press will love it. Top cop’s dirty weekend gets teenage reporter killed. Jesus.’

‘It’s not Hooky’s fault,’ protested Dalziel. ‘Any more than it’s my fault for getting him bumped off that table. Any more than it’s your fault for not checking up on me yesterday like you promised Cap you would.’

Pascoe looked at him in alarm and puzzlement.

‘Did she tell you that she’d asked me?’

‘No, but I’d lay money on it she did. You were too busy, though. Right?’

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact. But I don’t see what on earth this has to do with anything.’

Dalziel thought of explaining that if he hadn’t spent such a miserable Saturday he might not have woken on Sunday thinking it must be Monday… but it didn’t seem worth the effort.

He said, ‘All I mean is, if there’s only one guy this is all down to, I reckon it has to be yon Tory milch-cow, Goldie Gidman.’

Before Pascoe could deconstruct this, his phone rang.

He said, ‘Hi, Wieldy,’ listened, said, ‘OK. I’ll let you know what we find,’ and switched off. Dalziel wasn’t surprised. A Wield call to give information was inevitably compact and comprehensive.

Pascoe said, ‘Gwyn Jones has turned up. That idiot Watkins managed to give him the bad news before Wieldy could get to him. He’s gone from being shattered to screaming that it’s all down to Goldie Gidman and why aren’t we sticking red-hot needles under his nails to get him to talk?’

‘Don’t often agree with a journalist, but maybe he’s got something,’ said Dalziel. ‘Here we go!’

He swung across the carriageway to a fanfare of horns from the oncoming traffic and turned eastward down a narrow unclassified road.

‘You’re sure this is right?’ said Pascoe a few minutes later, after he’d recovered his composure sufficiently to speak without a tremolo.

‘When I were a young cop, you had to do the Mid-Yorkshire Knowledge,’ said Dalziel. ‘Find your way to every pub within twenty miles of the town centre. There. Told you.’

Ahead they saw a roadside pub with a sign swinging in the evening breeze. On the sign was painted a dejected-looking figure sitting at the foot of a bald hill.

‘
The Lost Traveller
,’ Pascoe read. ‘After Blake, do you think?’

‘As in, “I’ve lost me way, send for Sexton Blake,” you mean?’ said Dalziel.

Pursuit of this interesting literary divagation was prevented by the sight of a red car parked at the bottom of the steep hill that fell away from the pub.

Dalziel pulled in to the side and dug up a pair of binoculars from the clutter on the back seat.

‘No sign of life,’ he said.

He let the car roll down the hill and braked a few yards short of the Nissan.

The two detectives got out and approached cautiously.

The car was unlocked and empty, a mobile phone sat in its holder.

They looked at each other then went round to the rear.

Pascoe opened the boot and they both let out a sigh of relief when they saw nothing but luggage.

Dalziel headed back to his car while Pascoe got on the phone to Wield and told him what was happening. As they spoke, his eyes were on the Fat Man who was studying a map. Suddenly he nodded, hurled the map unfolded into the back of the car and called, ‘Right, come on!’

‘Where? Why? Andy, we should wait here. The ARU will be here in a couple of minutes…’

The Fat Man ignored him and bellowed in the general direction of the phone, ‘Wieldy, tell ’em to follow us. Straight on down past the red car, T-junction, turn left, quarter mile on right, small quarry.’

When the flow turns into a tsunami, you’ve no choice but to go with it.

‘Wieldy, you get that?’ said Pascoe.

‘Think they likely got it in Shetland,’ said Wield.

The car was moving already as Pascoe scrambled in.

‘Andy, where are we going?’ he gasped.

‘The sort of nice quiet spot a pair of psychos might take a woman to ask her some personal questions,’ said Dalziel, leaning his considerable weight on the accelerator. In a less solid car, his foot might well have gone through the floor and hit the road.

‘We can’t know for sure the Delays have got her, and even if they have, they’re certainly not going to hang around here,’ protested Pascoe.

‘Wrong,’ said Dalziel. ‘They’ll be in a hurry, no time for subtlety. It’ll be water-boarding from the start, or if they’re short of water, they’ll slap her around a bit to show they’re serious, then stick a gun up her jaxy and start counting down from ten.’

Pascoe still looked dubious.

‘You don’t even know what direction they went in,’ he said.

‘They didn’t drive back, else we’d have seen them. No, this is where they’ll be, mark my words.’

He spoke with all the oracular authority of his prime, that long period during which his judgments, though often cloudily mysterious, almost inevitably turned out to be correct, a period that some posited had come to an end when he walked with godlike certainty straight into the blast of a terrorist explosion.

Pascoe felt the man’s old power, but he also recalled the moment not long before when his legs had given way on hearing the news of Novello’s recovery. That burden of responsibility had clearly weighed heavy. Was he now feeling the same sense of having let the Wolfe woman down? And was it himself he was trying to reassure by this assertion of confidence in what at best had to be a fairly wild guess?

The next few minutes would tell.

And which would be worse? Dalziel proved wrong and the quarry empty?

Or Dalziel proved right and the two unarmed policemen confronted by a killer with a shotgun?

Though perhaps, thought Pascoe with a kind of hysterical merriment as they approached the T-junction with no perceptible diminution of speed, perhaps the fat bastard’s driving will kill us both first!

18.45–18.52

I’m not thinking straight, thought Fleur Delay. Too much pressure, too many pills.

The laptop had shown the Nissan standing still on an unclassified road.

A rendezvous, she’d decided. If they got there in time, they’d find the Wolfes sitting together in the car, talking. Or maybe in his car. When they separated, follow him and grab him. She didn’t want any truck with the woman. Disappearing a guy who has already disappeared was no problem. Disappearing the blonde was going to raise complications.

Then they’d driven past the Lost Traveller over the brow of the hill, and a couple of hundred yards ahead of them there she was, just reaching her car.

Fleur had worked things out instantly.

She’d met Wolfe at the pub. They’d talked and separated. She’d walked back to her car, he’d driven off in his. They’d probably crossed with him as they drove towards the pub. She tried to remember the cars they’d passed after they left the arterial. There’d been two, maybe three. A year ago she’d have remembered details, but not today.