Читать книгу Bones and Silence - Reginald Hill - Страница 17

Down at the Black Bull, Dalziel was trying to change the subject.

‘Did you have a look at them letters?’ he interrupted.

‘Which letters?’ said Pascoe.

‘From that barmy woman. I put ’em on your desk. Surely you’ve had time to read a couple of letters?’

Pascoe sighed, recalling the small alp of files which had reared out of his in-tray that morning. In fact he had read the letters, if only for their relative lack of bulk.

‘Yes, I saw them. Very interesting. Now about your statement …’

Having grasped the nettle, and also having paid for the first two rounds despite the official postponement of his celebration, Pascoe was determined not to let go.

‘I just said what I saw, lad.’

‘Which was Swain holding the gun. Then Water-son making a grab for him. Then the gun went off?’

‘I heard the gun going off, didn’t see it,’ corrected Dalziel. ‘Now, about them letters, I’d like your opinion, you being such a clever sod.’

‘Yes, sir. You’re sure about the sequence?’

‘Of course I’m bloody sure!’

‘Then Waterson must be covering up for Swain?’

‘See? I was right. You are a clever sod,’ said Dalziel, finishing his second pint. ‘All we’ve got to do is find the bugger, kick some sense into him, and I get to stay flavour of the month. Now, these letters …’

Pascoe gave up. For the time being.

‘What’s your interest, sir?’ he asked. ‘She says she’ll not be writing again.’

‘She’ll write again, never fear,’ growled Dalziel. ‘Then she’ll top herself, and I don’t want any bugger saying we did bugger-all. So get something down on paper, pass the buck to social services, the Samaritans, anyone so long as we look squeaky clean to the coroner. Here come our hot pies. I’ll have another pint to wash the taste away when you’re ready.’

‘I thought it was a rise in salary I was getting,’ said Pascoe, nursing his half full glass. ‘I didn’t realize it was an entertainment allowance.’

Dalziel thought this so funny he choked on his pie and, his own glass being empty, he finished Pascoe’s.

‘That’s better,’ he gasped. ‘And I see you’re ready now, so how about them drinks?’

It’s pinpricks not principles that engender treason. As Pascoe put the foaming pint before his chief he said casually, ‘Talking of free booze, there’ll be some going on Sunday evening if you’re interested. A little reception at the Kemble in connection with these Mystery Plays they’re putting on in the summer. Ellie’s a mate of Eileen Chung’s and she said they’re keen to have some police liaison. These theatricals pour the plonk like there’s no tomorrow and I don’t see why those blighters in traffic should enjoy all the freebies, so I’ve fixed for us to get invited.’

‘Good thinking, lad. They can come in later and do the work! Chung, eh? I’ve seen her and I’ve heard a lot about her but we’ve never actually met. I’d like that. I think the arts deserve every thinking citizen’s support.’

He squinted over his glass to catch Pascoe’s reaction, then he added, ‘And I’ve always been partial to a bit of dusky chuff,’ and laughed so much he started coughing again.

Back at the station the laughter stopped when Dalziel found the full post-mortem report on Gail Swain on his desk. It confirmed the cause of death as massive brain damage from the .357 Magnum cartridge which had been recovered from Waterson’s converted attic after bursting its way through from the bedroom below. Blood alcohol was present at the level of 155 milligrams per 100 millilitres, which meant, as Dalziel observed, that she was well pissed. Remains of what the pathologist designated as an exotic meal, probably Chinese or Indian, were found in her stomach. She was a heavy smoker, had had her appendix removed, had sustained a fracture of her left tibia not less than three years before, had had no children, and had had sex a couple of hours before her death.

She was also a heroin user.

Dalziel threw back his head and bellowed, ‘Seymour!’

Thirty seconds later a broad-shouldered redhead peered anxiously through the door. Detective-Constable Dennis Seymour’s ear was not refined enough to distinguish furioso from simple fortissimo so he always anticipated the worst.

‘Had a good poke around Swain’s house, did you?’ said Dalziel.

‘Yes, sir. Report’s on your desk, sir.’

‘I’ve read it. It’s not a bad report far as it goes. But I couldn’t see owt in it about drugs.’

‘Drugs?’ Seymour’s good-looking face went rigid with alarm. ‘I wasn’t told to look for drugs, sir.’

‘You weren’t told to look for Barbary apes either, but I dare say if you’d found a pair fornicating on the kitchen floor, you might have mentioned them!’

‘What I meant, sir, was I saw no sign of drugs.’

‘Oh aye? Checked every bottle in the bathroom cabinet, did we? Stuck your finger in every tin and jar in the kitchen and had a lick?’

Seymour shook his head. He looked so contrite that Dalziel, who was not above admitting an injustice once it had served its turn, said, ‘Not your fault, lad. You weren’t told. Though the way to get on is to do things you’re not told, as long as they’re not things you’ve been told not to, except if you know for sure they need doing. Ask Mr Pascoe to step in here a moment, will you?’

With the mingled relief and bafflement of a supplicant leaving the sibyl’s cave, Seymour departed. Dalziel picked up the phone and spoke to Sergeant Broomfield on the desk below.

‘Get the quack along here, will you, George? I want him to give Swain a going-over for drug abuse.’

‘Yes, sir. What if he don’t want to be gone over, sir?’

‘Tell him it’s routine. A pre-release examination just so he can’t come back with accusations about brutality. He hasn’t fallen off a chair or accidentally banged his head against someone’s boot, has he?’

‘No, sir. Very well behaved. One thing, though: he’s asked to contact his solicitor.’

‘Taken his time, hasn’t he? He got the chance last night, it’s in the record. Which crook acts for him?’

‘Mr Eden Thackeray.’

‘Old Eden? Shit. Get the quack quick as you can, George.’

He put the phone down and looked up at Pascoe who’d just come in.

‘What’s this about drugs, sir?’

‘Seymour been blubbing? I had high hopes of him once, but I reckon he’s not been the same since he started screwing that Irish waitress. Sap your strength, the Irish do. I’d pump bromide into their potatoes. Take a look at this.’

He tossed the PM report over the desk.

‘Take Seymour back to Swain’s house and see what you can find. I doubt it’ll be much, though. He didn’t look to me like a user. A night in the cells and it’d have started to show. Also he’d have been a lot keener to contact his brief to get him out. As for her, if she set out to screw her way back to LA, she’s not likely to have left a cache of scag under the floorboards. But there may be traces. And if he knew, then maybe he can point us at the pusher.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘By the way, these letters you were so concerned about. I thought I’d –’

‘Sod the bloody letters,’ said Dalziel irritably. ‘We’re here to sort out crooks, not piss around with hysterics! I’m surprised at you for wanting to waste my time!’

Half an hour later Pascoe drove into Currthwaite, a village in danger of being annexed into a suburb, albeit a pretty plush suburb. On the town side the invasion was practically complete with the old rolling parkland now dotted with a range of well fortified high-class executive dwellings. Even when he entered the village proper between a Norman church in mellow York stone and a blockhouse chapel in angry brick, the High Street cottages were signalling their surrender with window-boxes without and Sanderson curtains within, and everywhere he looked he saw the greenwellied conquerors marching their labradors in a non-stop victory parade.

Moscow Farm at the far end of the village showed signs of having fallen to the same attack. Snow-cemed, window-boxed, double-glazed, burglar-alarmed, sauna’d, showered, and centrally heated, it bore as much relation to an old working farmhouse as Washington Heights to Wuthering Heights. But when he looked out of the french window at the rear, Pascoe saw there had been an active resistance movement, for the old farmyard after being prettied into a patio had regressed into a builder’s yard.

‘I bet the rest of the village don’t much like it,’ said Seymour. ‘Not with the kind of prices they’re asking round here.’

‘You’re into the property market, are you?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Want to be. I got engaged.’

‘Congratulations. To Bernadette, I take it?’

Bernadette McCrystal was the Irish waitress whose debilitating influence Dalziel so deplored. Pascoe had met and liked her, though he doubted if marrying her was going to herald halcyon weather in Seymour’s voyage through life.

‘Of course,’ said Seymour a touch indignantly.

‘I’ll buy you a drink. Now let’s get on.’

Ninety minutes later to Seymour’s undisguised relief they had found nothing.

‘I didn’t fancy going back to the Super with a barrowload of coke.’

‘Still time,’ observed Pascoe. ‘Out there is where they’ll keep the barrows. I’ll take a look. I’d like a word with his secretary anyway. You take one more look round here.’

He went out into the yard. It was enclosed on two sides by wings of old agricultural buildings, stables, barns and byres, which, red-tiled and white-painted, had something of an almost Mediterranean look in the thin February sunlight. It was a delusion soon shattered as he stepped out into the chilly air.

The firm’s business office was in what must once have been a hayloft above the byre which was now used as a garage. It was reached by a flight of external stairs which Pascoe would not have fancied in icy weather.

He knocked at the door and went in. Behind a desk reading a paperback whose cover promised a bodice-ripper but whose title claimed Jane Eyre, sat a young woman he knew to be Swain’s secretary. She had emerged briefly on their arrival, but on spotting Seymour whom she’d met on his first visit, she had retreated to Mr Rochester.

‘Hello,’ said Pascoe. ‘Busy?’

She rested her book against the typewriter on her desk and said, ‘Can I help you?’

She was rather square-featured and plumply built, had straight brown hair, almost shoulder length, wore no discernible make-up and spoke in a husky contralto voice with a strong local accent.

Pascoe picked up the book and examined the illustration which showed a terrified young woman whose bodice was undoubtedly ripped fleeing from a burning house in whose doorway stood a Munster-like figure.

‘I don’t remember that bit,’ he said.

‘Makes you want to read the book,’ she explained. ‘More than them bloody teachers ever did.’

It was a point, perhaps two.

He put the book down on the typewriter and looked around. He found he was shivering slightly. The house had been warm and he’d taken off his topcoat, but here, despite a double-barred electric wall heater, the atmosphere was still dank and chilly. The woman at the desk on second inspection proved to be less plump than he’d thought. She had insulated herself with at least two sweaters and a cardigan.

‘It’s a bit nippy in here,’ he said, touching the whitewashed wall. The stones were probably three feet thick and colder on the inside than on the out. ‘With all that room in the house, you’d have thought Mr Swain would have had his office in there rather than out here.’

‘Mrs Swain wouldn’t have it,’ said the woman.

‘Did he tell you that?’

She considered.

‘No,’ she said.

‘How do you know, then?’

She considered once more, then said indifferently, ‘Don’t know, but I know.’

Pascoe sorted this out. Surprisingly it made sense.

‘How long have you been working here, Miss … I’m sorry …?’

‘Shirley Appleyard. And it’s Mrs.’

‘Sorry. You look so young,’ he said with full flarch. It was like shining a torch into a black hole.

‘I’m nineteen,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here two years.’

‘Do you like it?’

She shrugged and said, ‘It’s a job. Better than nowt, these days.’

‘Yes, they’re hard to come by,’ said Pascoe, switching to the sympathetic concerned approach. ‘You did well, there was probably a lot of competition.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I got it because me dad’s Mr Swain’s partner.’

‘Mr Stringer, you mean? That’s handy,’ said Pascoe.

‘You mean I should give thanks to God for being so lucky? Don’t worry, I get told that at least twice a day and three times on Sundays.’

She spoke with a dull indifference worse than resentment. Pascoe, as always curious beyond professional need, said, ‘I met your father this morning. He seemed a little out of sorts …’

‘You mean he didn’t strike you as being full of Christian charity?’ she said with an ironic grimace. ‘He’s not that kind of Christian. Didn’t you notice the chapel over from the church as you came through the village? Red brick. That’s Dad. All the way through.’

Pascoe smiled and said, ‘You live in the village still? With your parents?’

‘Aye. Holly Cottage. That’s it you can see at the corner of the field.’

Pascoe looked out of the window. Visible through the open end of the yard was a small cottage about fifty yards away.

‘You’ve not far to come,’ he said. ‘Your husband lives there too, does he?’

‘He’s away working, if it’s any of your business,’ she retorted with sudden anger. ‘And what’s all this to do with Mrs Swain getting shot?’

‘Shot? Now where did you hear that?’ wondered Pascoe. The media so far hadn’t got past the general story of a shooting in Hambleton Road, and he was reluctant to think that Seymour had been indiscreet on his earlier visit.

‘Dad rang up this morning to say there’d been some bother, something about Mrs Swain and a shooting, he didn’t seem very clear, but he was just ringing to tell me to say nowt if anyone got on to me at work and started asking questions about the Swains.’

‘Excluding the police, of course,’ smiled Pascoe.

‘He didn’t say that,’ she answered without returning his smile. ‘So she has been shot, then? Dead?’

Pascoe said carefully, ‘There has been a shooting, yes. And yes, I’m afraid Mrs Swain is dead. And I hope, despite your father, you’ll feel able to answer a couple of questions, Mrs Appleyard.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as, what did you reckon to Mrs Swain?’ said Pascoe.

‘She were all right,’ said Shirley Appleyard. ‘Bit stuck up, but always polite enough when we met.’

‘She seemed a nice-looking woman from her photos,’ said Pascoe. He was thinking of the wedding album they’d found in the house, and trying not to think of the bloody ruin on the official police pictures.

‘Not bad,’ said the girl. ‘And she knew how to make the best of herself. Clothes and jewels and make-up, I mean. Nothing flashy, but you could tell just by looking it cost an arm and a leg.’

The labels in the clothes brought from Hambleton Road confirmed this. And there’d been an engagement ring and a matching pendant which, if the stones were real, must have cost a few thousand at the least.

‘When did you last see her?’ he asked.

‘Week last Friday. I bumped into her in the yard. She said ta-ra.’

‘Just that?’

‘She didn’t actually say ta-ra,’ said the girl impatiently. ‘It were something like, we’d likely not see each other before she went off that weekend, so goodbye.’

‘I thought she was just going on a trip. Didn’t that sound a bit final to you, as if she didn’t think she’d be coming back?’

‘Mebbe,’ said Shirley Appleyard. ‘Or mebbe she just didn’t expect to find me here when she came back.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘Business weren’t good. Once this job for you lot’s done, there’s nowt else on the books. So it could be she reckoned the whole thing would have folded by then.’

‘But she had money, didn’t she?’ prompted Pascoe.

‘Oh aye, but not to pour into this sort of thing.’ She gestured at the yard. ‘She were generous enough by all accounts with things like art and music, wildlife and restoration funds, you know, all the posh sort of things where you meet the top people. I don’t think she’d have been sorry to stop being a builder’s wife.’

‘Well, she’s managed that,’ said Pascoe. ‘Did she strike you as a moody kind of person: you know, on top of the world sometimes, then down in the dumps a bit later?’

His effort to put the question casually failed completely.

‘Drugs, you mean,’ said the girl. ‘Is that what you’re looking for?’

Pascoe thought of reading the Riot Act, of lying through his teeth, then decided that neither of these courses was going to get him anywhere.

‘Would it surprise you?’ he asked.

‘Why should it?’ she asked. ‘People’ll do owt for a bit of pleasure these days. But Mrs Swain, I’d not have said she was more up and down than most, though with her money, she’d be able to afford a steady enough supply for it not to show, wouldn’t she?’

It was a reasonable answer. The more he talked to this girl, the more he felt the need for a sharp mental reprimand. On first sight he’d been ready to categorize her as being as lumpy mentally as she looked physically. Now he realized he’d been very wrong on both counts.

He said, ‘From what you say, Mrs Swain wouldn’t have much to do with the day-to-day running of the business?’

‘Nowt at all.’

He went on, ‘Might she bump into any of your customers, though?’

‘Not in a big room she wouldn’t. There were never that many.’

Pascoe laughed out loud and this natural response was far more effective than his earlier hackneyed attempt at charm, for the girl gave him her first smile.

‘A Mr Gregory Waterson, for instance?’ he went on. ‘Do you know if she ever met him?’

‘Him who had the studio conversion? Oh yes, she met him.’

‘You saw them together?’

‘He came here a couple of times about the job. Once neither Mr Swain nor Dad were around, but he met Mrs Swain in the yard and went into the house with her.’

‘Oh?’

‘Not what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘Not that I reckon he didn’t try his hand.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I’d been roughing out some figures for him and I went to the house myself to give him them and I got the impression he’d been coming on strong and Mrs Swain had told him where to get off.’

‘I see. Did you get the impression he’d persist?’

‘Oh aye. Thought he were God’s gift.’

‘But you didn’t agree with his estimate?’

She shrugged. ‘Funny kind of gift for God to make, I’d say.’

‘But a matter of taste perhaps? Would Mrs Swain perhaps be more interested than she let herself show at first?’

‘How should I know that?’ she asked scornfully.

‘Sorry,’ repeated Pascoe. ‘But as an observer, how would you say things were generally between the Swains?’

Again she shrugged.

‘It was a marriage,’ she said. ‘Anything’s possible.’

Pascoe laughed and said, ‘That’s a touch cynical, isn’t it? If you don’t believe in the power of true love, I think you’ve got the wrong book.’

She picked up her discarded Jane Eyre.

‘You mean it ends happy?’ she said. She sounded disappointed.

‘Afraid so. You’ll need to try men for unhappy endings,’ said Pascoe with gentle mockery. ‘Try Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Or Anna Karenina. Now they’re really miserable!’

He grinned as he spoke and was rewarded with a second faint smile.

‘What’s the rest of this building used for?’ he asked.

‘Down below, you mean? That was the old byre and stables, I think. Now it’s used for garages and to store stuff they don’t like to leave out in the wet.’

‘Is it open? I’d like to take a look.’

‘It’ll be locked. Dad doesn’t trust anybody.’

She picked up a bunch of keys, rose and led the way down the outside stair. She was right. All the doors were padlocked. She stood and watched as Pascoe poked around in a desultory fashion. He had little hope that he was going to find a barrowful of dope out here, and if it were hidden by the thimbleful, it would take a trained dog to sniff it out.

Finished, he walked out into the yard again.

‘Same kind of stuff over there?’ he asked, looking at the barn on the far side.

‘No. That’s empty.’

‘Better have a glance all the same.’

Again she was right. The stone floor was swept clean. He looked up into the rafters, screwing his eyes up against the darkness. He thought he saw a movement. There were certainly patches of darker darkness against the dull grey of the slates.

‘Bats,’ said the girl.

‘What?’

‘Bats. Pipistrelles, I think they call them.’

He took an involuntary step backwards. Dark places he’d never cared much for, even less since his experience down the mine. And the creatures of darkness, in particular bats, made him shudder. Ellie, in whom he detected a definite green shift in recent months, had become a member of a local Bat Preservation Group. Had she opted for whales or wild orchids, he could have gone along with her in passion, perhaps even in person; but while intellectually one hundred per cent in favour of the rights of bats, the thought of actually touching them filled him with horror.

‘It’s all right. They’re hibernating,’ said Shirley Appleyard.

Ashamed of being detected in this unmanly behaviour, Pascoe said brusquely, ‘Why’s this place not used for anything?’

‘Don’t know. There was some talk of Mrs Swain turning it into an indoor shooting gallery.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Came to nowt. Mebbe because of the bats. You can’t disturb them, you know. Or mebbe Mr Swain didn’t like the idea because of his brother.’

‘His brother?’

‘The one who used to own this place. Tom Swain.’

It rang a faint bell.

‘Didn’t he …?’

‘Shot himself a few years back. In here,’ said the girl, deadpan.

‘In here? Not very lucky with guns, the Swains, are they?’

The girl didn’t reply. Pascoe looked around the barn. Bats and a ghost. He couldn’t blame Swain for objecting to his wife’s proposal.

He said, ‘It looks as if someone’s got some plan for it now.’

‘Because it’s been cleared out?’ The girl shrugged. ‘There was nothing but a load of rusty old farm stuff here. Mr Swain got rid of it a couple of weeks back.’

‘So he is planning to use it?’

‘Mebbe. I think he were more interested in the money he got for the scrap.’

‘Really?’ said Pascoe, alert to this hint of financial problems. ‘Money a bit short, is it?’

‘You’d need to ask Mr Swain or my dad about that,’ said the girl.

‘Sorry. I’m not going behind their backs, but you did mention the scrap,’ he said conciliatorily.

‘Yes, I did,’ she admitted. ‘It were just that it amused me at the time.’

She looked the kind of person who might well treasure up anything which proved a source of amusement.

‘What was funny about it?’ he asked.

‘Just the name of the dealer, that was all. They called him Swindles.’

‘Joe Swindles?’ said Pascoe.

‘That’s right. You know him? That figures.’

It was true that the police and Joe Swindles were long acquainted, but the old boy had gone for some years now without overstepping the mark, and in fairness Pascoe said, ‘Just socially. There’s nothing against him.’

‘Too clever, is he?’

Pascoe laughed, then stopped as he was sure he heard a respondent squeaking from up in the rafters.

He said, ‘Well, that’ll do, I think,’ and stepped out into the sunlight.

The girl took this as her dismissal and went back up the stairway to her office without saying anything more.

He watched her, frowning, then went back into the house.

Seymour was on his knees in the kitchen with his head in the electric oven.

‘If you’re trying to kill yourself,’ said Pascoe, ‘I’d opt for gas. If not, then pack up. I’ll just ring in, then we’re on our way to the gun club.’

He dialled the station and got through to Wield.

‘Is he in?’ he asked.

‘Eden Thackeray’s turned up to see Swain,’ said the Sergeant. ‘The Super’s taken him upstairs for a chat and a drink.’

‘Will he be long?’

‘Depends,’ said Wield. ‘You know he fixed up for Swain to be checked out for drugs? Well, the doctor’s been held up on some emergency and the Super won’t be wanting to let old Eden at his client before he’s been given the once over. Is it anything important?’

‘Just a negative on drugs at Moscow,’ said Pascoe. ‘But the business doesn’t look too healthy financially. Send him a note in, will you? How’d you get on?’

Wield gave him a brief account of his interview with Mrs Waterson. As he listened Pascoe flicked through the pages of the wedding album which he’d laid on the table by the phone. Shirley Appleyard had been a little ungenerous. Certainly at the time she was married, Gail Swain had been rather more than all right. He paused at an all-female group photograph by the side of a palm-fringed swimming pool. Even among those tanned and cosseted women she stood out, slim, radiant, her fair hair glowing like a candle flame.

But as he drove away from Moscow Farm a few moments later it was an image of a stocky, unkempt, pale-faced woman reading Jane Eyre that he took with him.