Nowhere could he see any sign of intrusion, struggle, or search.
Tomkin returned.
'Mr Dekker's on his way,' he said. 'Sir . . .'
'Yes?'
'This is my first . . .'
Pascoe took pity on him. It wasn't fair having a senior officer of uncertain standing muddying the water.
‘It's your case,' he said. 'I'm just a witness. Have you checked she's dead?'
'No, sir. I mean, you . . .'
'You'll need to for your report. Wrist and neck. Fine.
Resuscitation?'
'Do you think we should try? I mean, she's cold, there's nothing . . .'
'I agree. But you'll need to put down that you thought of it and your reason for not trying. First because it was clearly far too late, and second because you wanted to cause as little disturbance as possible till the scene-of-crime officer got here. Those were your reasons, right?'
'Yes, sir. That's right.'
'Then you asked me to make sure no one came in while you escorted Mrs Wright back to her flat and reported in. Now you're asking me to wait outside with you. I've not noticed you using your notebook. Do it now. When Mr Dekker starts asking you questions, you'll be amazed at how much you'll instantly forget!'
They went out. Pascoe paused in the hallway.
If you want to see my life, look around you.
But these photos hadn't been the woman's life, only part of it. Had she been content with her comforts or had the crying of her lost child disturbed her dreams? And why the hell had she gone to visit Cissy Kohler?
Ten minutes later Duck Dekker arrived with a scene-of- crime team. He was a craggily angular man who had played for Yorkshire seconds in his teens till six consecutive ducks had reconstructed both his career and his name. He ignored Pascoe till he had got his team to work, then with a jerk of his head, he invited him to stroll to the far end of the corridor.
'This going to embarrass you with your missus, Pete?' he asked.
'For God's sake!' said Pascoe indignantly. 'You've seen Marsh. She was in her sixties!'
'Aye, well, that'd make it
bloody
embarrassing, wouldn't it?' said Dekker. 'So what's the tale?'
Pascoe told him briefly, concluding, 'So in a way, you're right. Duck. This
is
going to be embarrassing, but not for the reason you thought.'
‘I see that, my boy. You're in deep crap. Best hope is you can come up with sixpence.'
Half an hour later that seemed a vain hope.
'Sorry,' said Dekker. 'This mysterious visitor were probably the man from the Pru. She saw him off, baked some scones, made herself a cuppa, sat down and snuffed it. Our quack found her quack's number and rang him. Seems she had some kind of heart trouble. So looks like you're guilty of the worst crime in the book, my son. Bad timing.'
'Shit,' said Pascoe.
'Can't keep you out of it, I'm afraid. I'll need a statement. You're a witness.'
'OK. But I'd better make sure Dan Trimble hears about this from me first.'
'Bit of advice,' said Dekker. 'You'll get more sympathy from the umpire if the bowler's parted your hair.'
'Hiller doesn't bowl bouncers. He bowls rotten eggs. Hit or miss, you're in a mess.'
But he took the advice and, using Mrs Wright's phone, he rang Hiller first.
His initial response was coldly professional.
'Anything to suggest foul play?'
'Not yet, sir. But I've got a feeling. The way I see it
is -'
'I'm as capable of constructing theories as you, Mr Pascoe,' said Hiller, his words soft and cold as snowfiakes. 'You'll have talked to Mr Trimble?'
'No, sir. Not yet. I rang you first.'
'Ah.' The snow melted a little into surprise. 'Tell Chief Inspector Dekker I'd appreciate a copy of his report and the PM findings at his earliest convenience.'
That was it. No rockets, no explosions.
He rang Trimble with a lighter heart and a few moments later was reeling from the full blast of the little Cornishman's anger.
'What I really want to say to you, Mr Pascoe, I'll say to your face!' he climaxed. 'Be in my office at nine-thirty tomorrow morning!'
The phone went down with a crash which probably disonnected it.
He wandered slowly back to Marsh's flat, empty now except for Dekker.
'How'd it go?'
'There's always emigration.'
'Well, don't go to America. If Andy Dalziel's over there, Yorkshire will have been blacklisted by now! Come on. As you're a mate, I'll seal this place up like a crime's been committed, but it's odds on natural causes.'
'Hold on,' said Pascoe. Someone had been through the escritoire and left the drawer ajar. 'Why have you removed the albums?'
'Albums?'
'Yes. Last time I was here, there were at least two thick photo albums in that drawer.'
'So everything's got to stay the same when you're not around? She could have put them somewhere else or even thrown them out!'
'No. Far too precious. Mind if I look around?'
They weren't anywhere else.
Dekker, impatient, said, 'OK, if someone wanted to steal the albums, it must've been because of the photos, right? Then why not take them pictures in the hall too?'
Pascoe examined the walls.
'Too heavy,' he suggested. 'You could slip the albums in a briefcase. Also, going through the albums would take an age whereas you could check these photos one by one very quickly to see if . . .'
His words tailed off. He approached within six inches of the wall and moved slowly along it.
'Have you ever thought of specs, Pete?' said Dekker.
'I'm looking for . . . Here it is! Look, there's a pinhole here where a hook has been removed.'
'So there's a pinhole. But there's no space where a picture's been removed, is there?'
'Yes, there is! Look here. The photos on this row have been rearranged to hide the space, but the gaps between these three aren't quite right and, look, you can see a faint mark on the paintwork, there was a slightly longer photo here.'
And as he reached this conclusion he remembered what it had been. Miss Marsh and a group of her young gentlemen at Beddington College. The photo she had singled out for his special attention as he left.
He told Dekker, who said, 'Grasping at straws now, is it?'
'Not straws,' said Pascoe, returning to the kitchen. 'But scones maybe. Look at that tray. How many scones would you say she baked? From the position of these two and the marks on the tray, I'd say at least six. One on her plate half-eaten. That leaves three to account for.'
'So she had a good appetite.'
'Maybe. Or maybe she sat down with her visitor, offered him a cup of tea . . . The teapot! Let's have a look.'
Pascoe picked up the pot, removed the lid, fished inside.
'Three teabags,' he said triumphantly. 'She made a full pot. And it's almost empty. She gave her visitor tea and scones!'
'So what?'
So what kind of man when his hostess has a heart attack, reacts by washing up his cup and his plate and sloping off with a briefcase full of photos? What he can't manage, of course, is to put the chain on behind him as Miss Marsh would certainly have done.'
Dekker shook his head.
Pete, I can think of a dozen simple explanations.'
'Me too,' admitted Pascoe. 'All I'm asking is, dig deep on this one. Make sure the PM's a really searching, suspicious-circs job, not just a quick natural. For a start, ask 'em to check exactly how many scones she'd had. Tell 'em to count the currants.' He crumbled one of the remaining scones in his fingers. 'See. Six . . . seven . . . eight ... I bet she kept a steady average! Will you do that?'
'Why not?' said Dekker. 'I've nowt but a couple of thousand better things to do. You'll be off home now to a hot supper? Lucky bugger!'
Pascoe was able to smile, but his investigatory euphoria quickly faded as he drove east. He tried to revive it by stopping off at a nice little country pub he knew for a pint and a steak, but the last time he'd been here had been with Ellie, and he left both his meal and his drink half finished.
It was still fairly early when he got home. There was no mail, nothing on his answer machine. He didn't give himself time for thought, fearful of where thought might lead him, but washed two sleeping tablets down with a tumblerful of whisky and went straight to bed.
EIGHT
'. . . you know there really is so much too much of you!'
Dalziel awoke.
He had a pain, not in his neck where he'd been struck, but more frighteningly in his chest.
Was this it? The fat man's last farewell?
He began to move cautiously, thought: Sod this for a lark; if I've got to go, let's get it over with! and pushed himself violently upright.
The pain vanished. He looked down at the bed and saw the cause. Religion, always a pain in the arse, was also a pain in the chest. He had been lying on top of a Bible.
Now his head began to ache. He looked at his watch. He'd been out for about fifteen minutes. All around were signs of hasty departure.
He went into the living-room and was glad to discover they'd moved too quickly to take the booze. A three-inch gargle of bourbon made him sit down rather suddenly, but another inch and a half brought him back to life and his feet.
He found a notepad by the telephone and started scribbling down everything he could recall of the half-heard conversation. Then he did a thorough search of the flat in case their haste had made them overlook something important.
It hadn't, perhaps because they'd brought so little with them. The only personal relic was Kohler's Bible. He picked it up, opened it and read the inscription on the flyleaf.
To Cecily. 'The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. From your loving mother. Christmas 1951.
The Lord hadn't done such a great job so far, thought Dalziel as he riffled through the pages to make sure there was nothing interleaved. There wasn't. He tossed it back on the bed and made for the door.
And stopped.
He went back to the bed, picked up the Bible again and opened it at the first chapter of
Genesis.
He'd been right. There were marks on the page.
At first it was an underlining of whole words God . . . void . . . darkness . . .face. . . waters . . . As if in despair the woman had started seeking divine comfort and found instead (it can't have been hard) some crazy cipher through which God sent his special condemnation. But gradually this underlining stopped to be replaced from Chapter 12 by small dots under individual letters.
Now the Lord had saịd unto Abram, Get thee out of the country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I ẉịll ṣḥew thee: And Ị ẉill makẹ of thee a gṛẹat nation, ạnd I will blẹss thee, ạnḍ make thy name great; ạṇḍ thou shalt be a blessing: And I ẉịll bless ṭḥeṃ that bless thee, and curse hịm that çurseth thee: ạṇḍ in thẹe shall all faṃilies of the earth be blessed.
I wish I were dead and with Mic and Em.
She had moved from trying to get a divine message out to putting her own in.
He flicked through the pages. The dots proliferated. By
Samuel
1
they were appearing both under and over letters, and he worked out this meant she was no longer bound by strict sequence, but could move back and forward on the same line which was much more economical. By
Ecclesiastes
there was a system of annotation almost musical and he guessed that this form of writing had become as natural to her as typing to a trained secretary.
It would take some deciphering, but he guessed that here were those memoirs, that journal of her life and thoughts, which the tabloid scavengers would give their best friends' balls to get their hands on. Waggs would probably kick his own if he knew what his panicky haste had made Kohler leave behind. And Kohler herself? How was she going to feel when it dawned on her what had happened?
For the first time in twenty-seven years Dalziel felt almost sorry for the woman.
He heard the apartment door open.
This time he wasn't going to be caught unprepared. He moved silently behind the bedroom door. Footsteps approached cautiously. Paused. Then someone stepped into the room. The second the figure registered on his sight, he moved, launching himself in the kind of tackle which had once turned fleet-footed half-backs into stretcher cases. Fortunately time had slowed his impetus, and place offered a soft bed for landing on rather than a solid patch of earth. Even so, there was no strength for resistance left in the limp body crushed into the mattress beneath his bulk.