'Hector? He's reckoned to be one of our high fliers.'
'He'll fly high if he comes within kicking distance of my boot,' said Hiller.
A joke, thought Dalziel. Adolf had really come a long way.
'That all, is it?' he inquired politely.
'Just one more thing. While I was talking to Mrs Tallantire yesterday, she let slip that you'd been asking her about Wally's personal papers.'
'Oh aye? Then she'll have told you that there weren't any,' said Dalziel.
'Yes, that's what she said you said,' replied Hiller.
'You're not implying I'd try to hide summat as important as that?' said Dalziel indignantly.
'I'm implying nothing. I'm saying loud and clear that if I get any proof that you're attempting to interfere with or obstruct my inquiry in any way, I'll bury you, Andy.'
'You'd need to scratch a big hole, Geoff,' said Dalziel, his fingers mining his groin as if in illustration.
Hiller smiled thinly.
'I don't do my own digging any more,' he said. 'By the way, I've asked Mr Trimble if your DCI Pascoe can act as liaison between us. Like I said before, he seems a sensible sort of fellow, and I think it's in all our interests to keep things on an even keel.'
'Right,' said Dalziel. 'Pascoe's your man for even keels. Full of ballast. It'll be plain sailing with him.'
'Plain sailing's what we all want, isn't it?' said Hiller.
Dalziel showed him out with all the surface regret of a society host losing a favourite guest. He watched him out of sight along the corridor then he said, 'You can come out now.'
The door to the storeroom opposite opened and Pascoe emerged.
'Saw you lurking a few minutes back,' said Dalziel. 'Hear all that, did you?'
'The door was open,' said Pascoe defensively.
'Don't apologize. There's three things a good copper never passes up on, and one of 'em's a chance to eavesdrop.'
Pascoe didn't care to inquire as to the other two. He followed Dalziel into his room and said, 'In this case, eavesdropping hasn't left me much the wiser. I'd appreciate being told what's really going off here.'
'You've stopped reading the papers and watching the telly, have you?'
'I've not had much time recently.'
'Oh aye? Family all right, are they?'
Why was it so hard to tell Dalziel anything without getting the sense he knew it already? Pascoe said as casually as he could, 'Fine. Well, in fact, Ellie's away visiting her mother for a couple of days. And Rosie too, of course. The old girl's been a bit under the weather. The strain of looking after Ellie's father. He's got Alzheimer's, remember? He's gone totally now, no memory, never speaks, incontinent, the works. So they got him into a home last month and now Ellie's gone down just to check her mum's coping . . .'
He was talking too much.
Dalziel said, 'OK, is she?'
'Yes. I think so. I mean, Ellie rang just to say they'd got there OK . . .'
A message on his answering machine. 'Peter, we've arrived safely. Rosie sends her love. I'll ring again tomorrow.' He hadn't tried to ring back.
'Well, it's an ill wind,' said Dalziel. 'Lots of time on your hands now to catch up with what's going off. You must've seen that telly programme yon Yank, Waggs, made, a while back? The one that caused the big stink?'
Pascoe shook his head.
'Well, no great loss. Them TV twats get carried away. Funny angles, fancy music, all film festival stuff without the titties in the sand. I've got a video of it I'll show you some time, but best for background is this radio thing they did a couple of years back before they started this miscarriage of justice crap. I don't suppose you heard that either?'
He rummaged in a drawer, brought out an audio cassette.
'You listen to that. That was the truth for twenty-five years. Now they're telling us it's a load of lies.'
Pascoe took the cassette and said, 'I gather you know Mr Hiller from way back.'
'Oh aye. He got dumped on us but Wally soon saw him off. I reckon that's how he's got on so well. Everyone he worked for'd be so keen to get shot of the bugger, they'd give him a glowing testimonial to get him on his way! Big mistake. You don't get rid of a snake by pushing it into someone else's garden. You keep it close where you can stamp on it.'
'It's a nice theory,' said Pascoe. 'But he must have some ability.'
'Too true. The ability to dig up whatever bones the Emmies have buried for him and come running back with them, wagging his tiny tail behind him.'
'I'm sorry?' said Pascoe, baffled. 'Emmies? I don't quite follow . . .'
'Emmies!' said Dalziel in exasperation. 'MI this, MI that. The funny buggers.'
'The Security Services, you mean? Come on, sir! Why the hell should Security be interested in Mickledore Hall?'
Dalziel shook his head. 'You'd be better off sniffing glue than going to them colleges. Do they teach you nowt? Think about it! There was a government minister there that weekend. Partridge, Lord Partridge now. And the dead woman's husband was one of their own. And there was a Yank, Rampling, he's something important over in the States, and getting more important, by the sound of it. And there was Noddy Stamper, top industrialist. Sir Noddy now, Maggie gave him a knighthood soon as she got in, so you can see what he was made of. Just listen to the tape. It's all there. Well, soon after it happened this long thin fellow, all sweet and pink, like a stick of Edinburgh Rock, turned up. Name of Sempernel, he said.
Osbert
Sempernel. Pimpernel, we called him, he were so hard to pin down. Said he was from the Home Office but I reckon if I could have snapped him in half, I'd have found dirty tricks printed all the way through. I saw him again this morning when I were watching the press conference on the box. Hanging around outside with Adolf. It all made sense.'
'Not to me,' said Pascoe, sceptically but not overly so. Dalziel's delusions had an X-certificate habit of fleshing themselves out into reality. 'Are you saying that Hiller will heap all the blame on Wally Tallantire just because this chap Sempernel tells him to?'
'Certainly. He'd hang his own granny if the orders came from high enough, especially if it meant getting up another rung of the ladder.'
'Adolf Eichmann rather than Adolf Hitler, then?'
'Both,' said Dalziel. 'And the bugger's taken a fancy to you, so mebbe you should start asking questions about yourself. Any road, you're to act as liaison. Now, you'll get nowt out of Adolf, but yon primped-up fancy pants might start yapping after a couple of port-and-lemons.'
'Stubbs? He seems a decent sort of chap.'
'SS was full of decent sorts of chap,' said Dalziel. 'You just keep your ears flapping.'
'You mean spy?'
'If that's what you like to call it.'
Pascoe wrinkled his face in distaste and said, 'At least I should be glad there's not a war on. They shoot spies in wartime, don't they?'
He left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Dalziel reached into the drawer for his whisky, shaking his head sadly. Under his tutelage Pascoe had taken long strides towards becoming a good cop, mebbe even a great one.
But if he didn't know there was always a war on, he still had a long way to go.
FIVE
‘I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.'
Cissy Kohler lay on a patchwork quilt and thought: The way I feel, this ought to make me invisible. Bits and pieces of past lives, some hers, some not, stitched together in a show of wholeness. Through the chintz curtains she could see the branches of a wych elm swaying in the wind. In the room below she could hear voices but she didn't strain her ears, for she knew they couldn't be saying anything that mattered.
'Charming place,' said the tall man in the dark suit whose impeccable cut was a foil to a stringy tie which looked as if it had been dropped in a bowl of Brown Windsor and wrung out by hand.
'Yeah, very quaint,' said Jay Waggs. 'How can I help you, Mr Sempernel?'
'Belongs to Jacklin, I gather? Decent of him to let you have it.'
'I figure it'll be on his bill.'
'What? Oh, quite. These solicitors. But it's ideal. Good security. Just the one track down. And that wall behind. Perfect.'
He was looking out of the window into the small rear garden.
The cottage stood in the U-shaped nook which some peasant who knew his rights had indented in the twelve-foot boundary wall of an extensive country estate.
'Perfect,' agreed Waggs. 'The wall and the guard, they make Cissy feel really at home.'
'Ha-ha. Droll. Though the guard, as you call him, is of course positioned here to keep the media hounds out, not to keep Miss Kohler in.'
'So she's free to come and go.'
'But naturally. Within the limits of our agreement, of course, which I do not doubt that Mr Jacklin has spelt out in tedious detail. Nevertheless, let me recap. Miss Kohler's early release – ‘
'Early!'
‘Indeed. HM Government has agreed for humanitarian reasons to anticipate the proper legal process, but not without undertakings on your part. These are principally that Miss Kohler has agreed that neither she nor her advisers will make any public comment, nor publish any form of memoir of this unhappy business, without the approval of the authorities. In return for this undertaking, HM Government has indicated it will offer no resistance to any legitimate claim for compensation.'
'Big of them.'
'I think so. Also Miss Kohler has agreed to remain in this country until the completion of the official inquiry into the circumstances leading up to this unfortunate miscarriage.'
'Which could take years!'
'No. I assure you matters are moving fast. Deputy Chief Constable Hiller whom you have met has the business in hand and we anticipate a speedy conclusion. Incidentally, Mr Hiller tells me that if by chance Miss Kohler had kept any written record of the events at Mickledore Hall, sight of it, on loan of course, might speed matters up and obviate the need of any further interview with her.'
Waggs laughed.
'Come on, Sempernel! You know there's no record. You guys went through her cell like a pack of rats before she got out.'
The long man smiled thinly.
'The papers seem to think she may have had some ally through whom such a memoir may have been smuggled out to a place of security.'
'Like me, you mean? Well, I don't deny that, given the chance, I'd have been glad to help. But I wasn't and I didn't.'
'I'm happy to accept your word on that, Mr Waggs,' said Sempernel. 'There are other possible sources of assistance, of course. She was after all inside for a long time, and could hardly avoid forming relationships. The unfortunate Miss Bush, for instance . . .'
'That was long before my time,' said Waggs. 'The only memoir I'm aware of is in Cissy's head and I don't know how easy it's going to be to pry that out.'
'No? You've met with quite a lot of success so far,' murmured Sempernel. 'Rest, quiet, and above all time are great healers. They are all at your disposal here. Enjoy them.'
He made for the door, stooping to avoid the sagging lintel. Beneath it he paused, looking like Alice in the White Rabbit's house.
'One last thing,' he said, 'Jacklin has, I hope, made it clear that any grant of a Free Pardon will be in respect of the Mickledore Hall affair only. In respect of the killing of Daphne Bush, there is no doubt about Miss Kohler's culpability. Her release from that sentence is therefore merely under licence which may be revoked in the event of any breach of its terms. You follow me, Mr Waggs?'
'You mean you've got a string you can twitch whenever you feel like it? I follow.'
'Good.' Sempernel passed through the doorway and straightened up so that his face was visible only from the long nose down. I’ll say cheerio, then.'
Protected from the Englishman's watery gaze, Waggs pushed his middle finger into the air as he said, 'Yeah. Goodbye.'
He watched from the window till he saw the lanky figure negotiate the muddy path, then he picked up the phone and dialled.
'Mr Jacklin, please. It's Jay Waggs. Jacklin? Hi. How're you doing? We're fine. Yeah, she's resting. Listen, Sempernel's been here. Lots of that slippery Whitehall stuff, but all he's doing is making sure my thick American mind understands the ground rules. Just thought I'd let you know. How are things your end? No change? That's good. Well, keep in touch. Ciao.'
He listened for a while longer before putting the receiver down. It might be mere neurosis to imagine he heard significant clicks, but Sempernel struck him as a good man to be neurotic around. And if the phone, then why not everywhere?
He went into the kitchen, blew a kiss at the kettle and switched it on. A few moments later he tapped on the bedroom door and entered with a cup of coffee.