'I hope the grub's better than the jokes,' said Dalziel, rising.
It was. He got himself a couple of monumental sandwiches and a matching bourbon. It wasn't the Caledonian cream, of course, but it certainly made your teeth tingle.
Then, the inner man refreshed, he turned his attention to the papers Thatcher had given him.
A quick examination revealed that what he had here was the life and hard times of Jay Waggs as told to a computer. Or rather, a whole family of computers. Some chum of Thatcher's must have accessed all the data storage systems by which the modern pilgrim's progress is charted. Tax, health, education, credit rating, the law, God knows what else. At a glance the picture seemed complete, but a second glance revealed what Thatcher must have spotted on the platform, that none of these mighty memory banks had recorded Waggs's last known address. It had taken Miss Linda Steele to put him on that trail, presumably at the instigation of Scott Rampling.
He shelved speculation as to Rampling's motives and concentrated on Waggs's life. First thing that caught his attention was that the man used two names, but not necessarily for criminal purposes. Born 1957, christened John, the only son of Mr and Mrs Paul Petersen of New York City, he had been orphaned when six and brought up thereafter by his aunt, Mrs Tess Heffernan.
Mrs Heffernan got divorced two years later (cause and effect? wondered Dalziel) and in 1966 married John Waggs of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The couple formally adopted the boy, changing his surname to Waggs, and it was presumably now that he also became Jay to differentiate him from his adoptive father. His recorded life now ran smoothly till he got to college age. He enrolled in a business studies course under his former name of Petersen, switched after a short time to a film-making course, stayed with that rather longer, then completed his formal education with a spell at drama school. Armed with this variety of experience but without any formal qualifications, he now launched himself on the entertainment industry, ready to be anything in the expectation of being rich, wheeling and dealing and picking up flotsam and jetsam along the foreshore of illegality, and only occasionally getting his feet wet.
All this Dalziel was able to decode, not because he knew much about the media world, but because he was long acquainted with the life-patterns of those who exist on the shadowy edges of things. A good pointer was the degree to which Waggs clearly found it useful to have
some legal entitlement to two names. He moved between them with great facility, though generally favouring Petersen till about three years earlier.
His bank balance was low, though his credit rating was OK. He'd had an appendectomy, some expensive dental work (what was it with these people and their teeth?), wasn't HIV positive, was a registered Democrat, had one conviction for attempted fraud (selling an option he didn't own - fine and suspended sentence), several outstanding traffic violations, and a security rating which seemed incredibly low for a man who hadn't actually tried to booby-trap the President's private bog. He was unmarried.
So what did it all add up to? Not a lot, thought Dalziel gloomily.
Sodding useless things computers! The only vague glimmer of light was that security rating, and not all glimmers were equally welcome, as the condemned man said just before dawn.
He shoved the paper in his pocket and took out instead Kohler's Bible. He'd looked at it the previous night but it was slow tedious work following this trail of minute dots, especially when all you got out of it was the introspective ramblings of a woman at the edge of reason. If she had tucked any amazing confessions away in here, it was going to need a steady analytical mind to mine them out. Someone like Wield. He had the patience. Or mebbe the boy Pascoe. He could probably get a computer to do it. But as for himself ... He groaned as he checked the size of the task ahead.
'Lordy, lordy, you
are
full of surprises!' It was the conductor again. That's a good book you've got there. A really good book.'
Oh aye? I suppose you've read it from cover to cover?' growled Dalziel.
'On my mammie's knee. But don't you worry. I won't spoil it for you by telling how it comes out.'
'Thanks,' said Dalziel. 'Hold on, sunshine, before you run off, you know so much about the Bible, what's your favourite bit?'
'Now there's a question. Now let me see. Psalms, I love the psalms. One-three-seven, that's my favourite. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.'
'Thanks,' said Dalziel, riffling through the pages till he reached the psalms. The dots were crowding thick here as Kohler refined her system and it was easy to get lost, but he persevered and after a while a smile spread across his face. When systems fail, ride your luck. When women stop weeping, they start giving you their life-story.
'Thanks a lot,' said Dalziel.
Shaking his head at these Anglo-Saxon oddities, the conductor went on his way, leaving the smiling man to his task. But the smile did not last long.
Midnight I heard the youngest Partridge child cry. I looked in, then went to tell Marsh. She wasn't in her room. I thought I heard a noise from the next door where Tommy was sleeping. Like a cry or gasp of pain. Opened door quietly and looked in. Saw but at first could not believe. Boy naked on bed, kneeling astride him naked woman, his cock in her mouth. She saw me, got off, came to me, spoke. Didn't recognize her till then. It was Marsh. Smiling, her mouth wet. I hit her. Blood from her nose spurted over my hand. Ran from room back to my room, washed hands.
'Jesus wept,' murmured Dalziel. Tommy Partridge, now the Right Honourable Thomas Partridge, MP, Minister of State in the Home Office, then the twelve-year-old son and heir of Thomas Partridge Senior, MP, Minister of State in the War Office. Had Kohler told her story then to anyone? Certainly not to Tallantire. Wally was a bastard when it came to harming kids. Little Emily Westropp's death had removed any sympathy he might have had for Kohler. But if she'd told him about Marsh, he'd have jumped on the Scots nanny from such a height, she'd have made a new tartan.
He read haltingly on.
I sat on my bed in a daze, I don't know how long. It was the stable clock starting to strike midnight that roused me. Had to talk to someone. Ran down side stairs to guest floor. Don't know why but it seemed important I got there while chimes still sounding. Turned corner by gunroom as last stroke rang out. The door opened and Mick appeared. Looked terrible, clothes disarrayed, face shocked till he saw it was me. Thank God it's you, he said, something awful's happened. I tried to push by and he held me, but I could see her. Pam, covered with blood.
Someone took the seat next to him. He looked up in surprise and irritation. There was plenty of room in the carriage without squeezing alongside the broadest bum in transit. But his irritation turned to surprise and suspicion when he recognized the man next to him. Well-groomed now and smartly dressed in a grey business suit, he was still unmistakably the young hotel mugger who'd slipped so easily out of police custody.
Before he could speak, a hand tapped his shoulder and a familiar voice said, 'Hi, Andy. Running out on me, huh?'
He twisted round to see Linda Steele leaning over the seat behind him. At the same time he felt the Bible pulled from beneath his fingers and the young mugger was on his feet and moving swiftly away down the aisle. As Dalziel rose to give chase, Linda Steele slipped into the vacated seat and barred his passage with her lissom body.
'Why bother?' she asked. 'It's not worth it, believe me.'
He watched the grey suit vanish into the next coach, shrugged and subsided. It was, in any case, picky work, translating those dots, and he didn't much like what he'd been reading either.
'Next time I get yon bugger within reach, I'll break bones first and ask questions after,' he said, subsiding. 'So you're a funny bugger too. Never slept with one of them before, not as I know of. If you were taking pictures, will you send me a set of prints?'
She laughed joyously, then became serious and said, 'Andy, I don't sleep around with anyone. It's not in my job description. I really took a shine to you.'
'Don't worry about bruising my ego, luv,' he said. 'Nowt wrong with mixing business and pleasure. I doubt if there's been a fuck since the world began that hasn't been paid for eventually, one way or another.'
She studied his face so closely he felt her warm breath.
'I have hurt you, haven't I?'
'I can thole a lot of that kind of pain,' he said, if anything, I'm relieved I can't be accused of bedding a reporter. That'd really knacker my reputation back home.'
'I'm sorry to disappoint you, Andy, but I really am a journalist. I just happen to be working for the government too.'
'Oh, it's the government, is it? They're the buggers who're sending people to rob me? Threaten me? Search my luggage? I thought that was why folk came to America, so's they could get away from places where officials robbed and threatened them?'
‘I don't follow. Who's threatened you?'
'Your young mate back there, he was the guy who came into my room with a gun, or didn't you know that?'
'No. Truly. He's just a guy I was told to work with.'
She looked genuinely perturbed but Dalziel reminded himself that they probably wouldn't be talking like this if she hadn't spotted him with Dave Thatcher on the platform and guessed her cover was blown.
'So what are you doing, luv? Just following orders?' he said.
'That's right. But don't worry, Andy. If anyone starts telling me to push people into a gas chamber, I'll tell them to take a hike.'
'Glad to hear it. And next time you're in England and someone robs you in broad daylight on a train, you be sure to give me a ring. Better still, call round in person and we'll continue this full, frank and fearless discussion over a hot mattress mebbe.'
She said very seriously, 'I'll remember that, Andy. Believe me, I'm new to this kind of work and there are a lot of things about it I question.'
'Glad to hear it,' he said again. 'And here's another question you might like to bend your mind to. Where exactly do I send my expenses claim to?'
For a second she looked blank, then she laughed again, joyously, toothily.
'I really do love you, Andy. You take care of yourself, hear?'
Still laughing, she flowed away down the aisle.
Dalziel watched her go. Funny thing about these Yanks, he thought. They took you serious when you were joking and they fell about laughing when you were dead serious.
Sighing at the problems of foreign travel, he made his way to the buffet.
The rest of the journey passed swiftly, punctuated by large sandwiches and long drinks. They passed through Washington and he
thought he glimpsed the mugger on the platform. He also thought he glimpsed the Capitol but it might just have been someone's summerhouse.
From time to time he thought about the passage he'd translated from Kohler's memoirs. He tried to make sense of it but didn't like some of the sense he was making. Marsh ending up being kept in comfort by the man whose son she had abused . . . Well, he could fit that into the scheme of things easy enough. But Kohler running into Mickledore by accident
after
the killing. Kohler guilty of nothing more than helping him cover up the crime . . .
Perhaps the real question was how much reliance he could place on the ciphered ramblings of an incarcerated woman desperately trying to reassemble the scattered jigsaw of her life? He liked that. Scattered jigsaw. Sort of thing the boy Pascoe might say. Where the fuck had he been last night? He felt the need stronger than ever to speak to someone whose mind he knew, who knew his own mind, who'd laugh at his jokes or at least recognize when he was joking.
He fell asleep and was awoken by a hand squeezing his shoulder and the conductor's voice saying, 'Time to pretty up, sir. Next stop, Williamsburg.'
Still yawning on the platform, Dalziel reached up and shook the man's hand.
'Bye-bye, Blackbird,' he said.
'Now I got you!' exclaimed the conductor, ‘It's been an honour to have you aboard, Mr Greenstreet. You keep chasing that falcon, you hear?'
Laughing, Dalziel turned away. The temperature was a pleasant change after the damp chilliness of New York. It was like a balmy English summer evening. And the pleasant surprises continued with his taxi-driver. Taciturn but courteous, he drove with a painstaking attention to legality and safety that won Dalziel's heart and a large tip which he examined doubtfully.
‘It's all right, friend,' said Dalziel. 'I've been saving it up.'
At the hotel he was processed with friendly efficiency. Quickly unpacked, he consulted his corporeal needs and decided what he'd like best after the long journey was to stretch his legs and inhale some fresh air. Always suspicious of any urge to exercise for its own sake, he thought he might combine it with a recce and asked the desk clerk for directions to Golden Grove.
The man was impressed. 'Nice address,' he said.