Ruling Passion (27 page)

'I began to wonder. There were lots of things, lots of "ifs". If Colin didn't commit suicide, then  someone wanted us to think he did. If someone  wanted that, then presumably it was to direct suspicion from the real murderer. If it was worth  planting the car and the note, then Colin must  be dead. If Colin was dead, then his body must  be hidden somewhere. And so on. Today when you said that those quotations came from
Eloisa  to Abelard
I was suddenly certain. It was one of  Colin's gags. Rather, it was going to be. You didn't  see the bedroom, did you?'

'No,' said Ellie.

Briefly Pascoe described it, the pillow decoration, the sign.

'He'd been going to add something else. And with his passion for aptness, he picked on Pope's  poem. I found a complete Pope in the bureau. All  the lines in the so-called suicide note had been  marked. Just listen to the stuff!
Soft intercourse. I come, I come! He best can paint 'em who can feel'em most.
Not the outpourings of despair, but all  lovely dirty double meanings! Probably they did it together, Rose and Colin; Timmy and Carlo too.  But he never got any further than jotting a few things down.'

'Why?'

'Oh, nothing dramatic. Dinner perhaps. Or they got a bit drunk. Something. Later of course, it  happened.'

She was trembling, he realized. He stood up, felt  dizzy for a second, then crossed to her and put his  arms around her.

'But why, Peter?' she demanded. 'Why?'

'Perhaps Pelman will tell us that,' he answered.

'You might have been killed too,' she said.

'Perhaps. But I had to go up that stream. I kept on remembering that fellow, Bell, going on and  on about the water, about something polluting  the stream. He said things had suddenly got much worse in the past few days. And I thought of the  heat and the time it takes for . . . well, it filled my  mind and I had to see.'

He laughed uneasily and without humour.

'You know, in a way, I'm glad I was interrupted before I reached the culvert.'

'I'm glad Pelman was interrupted before he reached you,' said Ellie. 'Backhouse asked where you were after the inquest and seemed very keen to get after you. He must have suspected something.'

'What happened at the inquest, by the way?' inquired Pascoe.

'What?' said Ellie. 'Of course, you won't have heard. They brought a verdict of murder against  Colin.'

Sometime later Pascoe was standing looking down at the water-ravaged face of Colin Hopkins. Curiously he felt very little, as if the day's events had  been successfully cathartic.

'Yes,' he replied to Backhouse's question. 'Yes. I can identify him. Colin Hopkins.'

'Fine,' said Backhouse, and the concealing sheet was drawn over the face once more.

'This makes French look a little foolish,' said  Pascoe as they left the mortuary. He felt the need  to nurture his normality with a little idle chatter. Something was over. His interest now would  be professional. And distant. He was ready to  go home.

'Yes,' said Backhouse. He was rather withdrawn, even for him. Pascoe felt there was something he wanted to say, but was equally certain that it was  not going to be said.

Perhaps he wants to thank me for my help, he thought. But he knew it wasn't that. And he wondered again why the man wasn't himself  interrogating Pelman.

'You'll keep me in touch, sir?' he asked.

'Of course. Though you will remember you are just a witness, Inspector? Congratulations on your  promotion, by the way.'

'Thank you.'

'We'll go back to the station now and you can sign your statement. You're heading back to Yorkshire straightaway?'

'Yes. Miss Soper too. We're driving in convoy.  Unless you want me to stay for anything else?'

'No. I don't think so.'

They drove back slowly through the busy streets,  a strong contrast with the quiet thoroughfares of  Thornton Lacey.

Ellie was waiting in Backhouse's office at the  station. A constable appeared with his typewritten statement, handed it to him and murmured something in Backhouse's ear. The superintendent left  the room as Pascoe quickly scanned through the  statement and signed it.

'Ready, love?' he said.

'Ready,' said Ellie. He took her hand.

At the door they met Backhouse looking perturbed.

'Goodbye, sir,' said Pascoe. 'We're on our way.'

'Inspector,' said Backhouse, 'I'm afraid I've got  some rather strange and disturbing news for you.  I've just been checking on a rumour which one of  my sergeants had picked up. Do you know a man  called Burne-Jones?'

'I know of him,' said Pascoe.

'Well, Mr Dalziel has been arrested for assaulting  him and breaking his jaw!'

'Poor old Dalziel,' said Ellie as they headed to  the car-park. 'Do you think he's flipped at last?  Oh, Peter.'

'Yes?'

'Something I remembered. It got submerged in  all this and it's probably irrelevant anyway. You  said something about a diabetic? Well, Etherege,  when he came and talked to us in the Jockey that  day, he was holding a bottle of tonic water specially prepared for diabetics. Could it be important?'

Pascoe stopped and turned back to the police  station.

'It might,' he said. 'I'd better get them to pass  the word. Better to be safe than sorry!'

Chapter 6

The first person Pascoe met on his return was  Inspector Headingley who laughed heartily at his  anxious inquiry.

'No, he's not in the cells. He's upstairs. He'll be  pleased to see you. We got your message about  Etherege. Very grateful Mr Dalziel was!'

He found the fat man in his office watching a couple of detective-constables unpack the contents of several cardboard boxes which had a ripe  fishy smell.

'Welcome back,' said Dalziel. 'A bit late, aren't  you?'

'Things happened,' said Pascoe.

'And here. If you'd had your flash of insight a bit  earlier, you might have saved a great deal of pain.'

For one moment Pascoe thought that Dalziel was referring sympathetically to Burne-Jones. Then he  held up a bandaged right hand.

'I broke my bloody thumb,' he said. 'And I found  out about Etherege the hard way.'

'He's our man then?'

'Certainly. He stuck a bloody great hypodermic  needle into me to prove it. That turned out to be  a mistake. Evidently a dose of insulin can make a  non-diabetic irritable to the point of irrationality,  particularly if he's got an empty gut. Me, I'm on  a short fuse at best. And I've been starving myself  for days. So when Burne-Jones grabbed me from  behind, I hammered him.'

'He's hurt?'

'Nothing much. A cracked jaw. It was quite  comic.' The fat man laughed heartily at the  memory, pressing himself against a desk edge  to get a free scratch on his shaking buttocks.  'There was an old couple there. They called the  police and an ambulance. A right officious little  snot turned up. He didn't know me and I was still  far from normal! So the silly bugger arrested me!  It was soon sorted out when the quack had a look  at me and heard what had happened. There may  still be an inquiry, but I'll survive.'

'I'm sure,' said Pascoe looking with interest at  the assortment of articles the DCs were taking  out of the fishy boxes. Some of it he recognized,  though seeing it for the first time.

'You found some of the loot then?' he said. 'At  Etherege's?'

'Not on your life! He's not daft, that one. No,  we had a stroke of luck. Burne-Jones was in on  it too. Not actively, he claims, but we'll see about  that. Anyway, my right hook softened him up a lot and when he heard his partner had got himself  under a murder charge while he was on holiday,  it was only his broken jaw that slowed him down  to a gabble! And guess what? You remember my  little idea about the kennels?'

Suddenly everything jumped together in Pascoe's  mind. He sniffed the fishy odour and nodded.

'Jim Jones, the cat-meat man!' he said. 'Who is  he? His brother?'

'Cousin,' said Dalziel grumpily. 'It's getting to  be a nasty habit, this being wise after the event.  You're right, though. Burne-Jones is really just  plain Jones. Jim Jones travels round a dozen or  more kennels, delivering food. Plenty of chance  to glance at the list of inmates. I believe a lot  of the silly sods put placards with name and  address of owner on the bloody animals' cages!  He'd pass it on. His cousin and Etherege would  pick out what they thought was worthwhile and  do it. Easy.'

'What about disposal?' asked Pascoe.

'Etherege and Burne-Jones probably did quite a  bit themselves through the trade. But we reckon  the really hot stuff was moved through a third  man. Burne-Jones clammed up here. I think he  was regretting talking so much and his jaw was  beginning to hurt. But he said enough. Jones-  the-cat-meat claims to know nothing about him except that he exists. He sounds to me like a  middle-man who knows interested and not too  curious purchasers for a certain kind of item. At a signal from Etherege he comes along and pokes  around in the latest haul.'

'Any chance of getting on to him?' asked Pascoe,  looking sadly at the little array of items which  seemed to match stuff stolen from Sturgeon's  house. There was little of real worth there. And no sign of the most valuable article, the old man's  stamp-album.

'A good one, I reckon,' said Dalziel gleefully. He  picked up a small diary from a desk top.

'As you'd expect, there was precious little at  Etherege's shop, but this we did find. His diary.  Nothing incriminating, but look at this.'

He jabbed his forefinger at the page for February 8th. All that was written there was a time. 11 a.m.  He flicked over the pages. March 1st 6 p.m. March  23rd 1 p.m. April 20th 9.30 a.m.

'And so it goes on,' he said.

'So?' asked Pascoe.

'So all these dates fall around the periods during which we know the break-ins happened. On the couple of the occasions when we know the exact date, these dates in the diary come three days later. Now I reckon these are appointments with  his distributor, someone who would take the more  valuable and identifiable stuff away. It's clever, really. You see, generally the stuff would be moved before the house-owners came back from holiday  and even discovered they'd been robbed. No risk!'

'I see,' said Pascoe thoughtfully. 'Now Lewis's house was done last Monday, which would mean there should have been a meeting last Wednesday or Thursday.'

'Well done!' said Dalziel condescendingly. 'One was made for Wednesday, it's been crossed out.  See. Now it seems it was remade for this morning,  but see, it's been crossed out again.'

'They were having difficulties. Perhaps it was  just as well, sir. Even with insulin, you might have  found it hard to take on three of them.'

'Very funny,' said Dalziel. 'Tomorrow morning I'm going to be alone though. And there'll only be one.'

'Sorry?' said Pascoe. Then it dawned on him.  'You mean that . . . ?'

'That's right, Inspector. 10 a.m. Tomorrow. Care to come along?'

'Excuse me, sir,' said one of the detective-constables.

'Yes, Ferguson?'

The youngster pointed at by far the largest group  of articles.

'This lot seems to have come from the Lewis house, sir. It's almost all there. They can't have had time to dispose of it.'

Dalziel gave Pascoe his mock awe-stricken look.

'The future's safe, Inspector!' he said.

The young man was unperturbed. He picked  up an ornately inlaid cedarwood box of Oriental origin.

'There's some papers in here, sir. They look  interesting.'

They were. Matthew Lewis had felt the need to keep a detailed financial record of his Scottish  transactions. It was all here. The amount paid  for the Callander land by the mysterious Archie Selkirk, the sum (more than twenty times larger) paid by Sturgeon for the same land, details of  solicitor's fees, hotel and other expenses for 'A'  ('Atkinson,' said Dalziel) and, most interestingly of  all, expenses to be set against gross profit by 'C'.

'Well now. This could be useful to the fraud boys,' said Dalziel, rubbing his hands. 'Certainly  it should stand up nicely in court.'

'Court?' said Pascoe, puzzled.

'Yes. When Sturgeon sues Lewis's estate, as I  presume he's going to. There wasn't much before, you know.'

'It might establish something else as well,' said  Pascoe, pointing at the 'C'.

Dalziel shrugged.

'I doubt it. There's precious little in a name, and  there's bugger all in an initial. No. If Cowley was  in on this deal, it's going to take more than this to  trip him up. There's been a lot of quiet checking going on and there's nowhere obvious that he's  got forty thousand stacked away. Anyway, what  the hell would his job have been? I can't imagine  Lewis cutting him in for love.'

Pascoe was reluctant to give up. He studied the  papers again.

'There's something else here,' he said. 'Or something not here. Look, sir. At "C"'s expenses. Right? Now what's missing?'

'Selkirk's expenses,' interrupted Ferguson brightly. 'Which could mean "C" and Selkirk are the same person.'

'And I used to think
you
were bright, young and  horrid,' said Dalziel to Pascoe. 'All right. But you  realize this cuts out Cowley altogether?'

'Why, sir?' asked Ferguson. Pascoe did not need to ask. In fact he answered.

'Because not only does Cowley deny he's ever been anywhere near Lochart, on the week-end Sturgeon actually met Selkirk he's got a nice alibi.'

'Nor does he fit Sturgeon's description,' said  Dalziel.

'Still, we never showed him a picture of Cowley,  did we? Wasn't there once in the
Evening News
bit  on Lewis's murder? Ferguson, cut along and see if  you can dig a copy up. Has Sturgeon been moved  up from Doncaster yet?'

'Yes, they reckoned he was up to being transferred to the General today,' said Dalziel.

'Good. Then we'll go and see him.'

'Will we?' asked Dalziel. 'I suppose we will. Do  you know, I think that injection of insulin did me  good. I used to have these delusions that I was  a detective-superintendent in authority over all kinds of people. Strange, wasn't it?'