Child’s Play

‘Then you must run along,’ he said.

She left, darting from the room with the swiftness of a wren. An appointment? Hairdresser perhaps, though that close crop of indeterminately brown straight hair didn’t look as if it owed much to the coiffeur’s art. Dentist, then. Or boyfriend? Alas, least likely of all, he suspected. Poor little Lexie. He could see her growing old in the service of Messrs Thackeray etcetera. He must do what he could for her. Getting her out of the Old Mill Inn and away from the influence of that awful father of hers would be the first step. But how to manage it?

He sat quietly, applying his mind to the task. It was a good mind and it enjoyed the business of manipulating other people’s destinies.

He heard the building emptying. His nephew and junior partner, Dunstan Thackeray, stuck his head round the door.

‘Coming to the Gents, Uncle Eden?’ he asked.

This was not the odd inquiry it sounded. The Gents was the familiar abbreviation of The Borough Club For Professional Gentlemen, the prestigious Victorian institution which had had a Thackeray on its founding committee and of which Eden was the president-elect. As a liberal modernist, he deplored and detested it. As a senior partner in Messrs Thackeray etcetera he had to keep his mouth shut. But he was not in the mood for the usual Gents diet, conversational as well as culinary, of traditional stodge.

‘Later. I may be in later,’ he said.

He heard his nephew’s feet descend the stairs. Then all was silence. He fell into a reverie which a casual observer might have mistaken for a doze.

When he opened his eyes, it took him a few seconds to realize there actually was a casual observer to make the error.

Seated before him where Lexie had perched a little earlier was a man. There was something familiar about him, and not very pleasantly familiar either.

Suddenly it came to him. This was the same sunburnt intruder who had disturbed Gwendoline Huby’s funeral.

He jumped up, alarmed.

‘Who are you? How did you get in? What the devil do you want?’

The man stared at him as if looking for something in his face.

‘You are Eden Thackeray?’ he said.

He spoke with a certain hesitancy, like a man reassembling old ideas, old words.

‘Yes, I am. And who are you?’ repeated Thackeray.

‘Who am I?’ said the man. ‘In my passport and in my life for the past forty years, it says that I am Alessandro Pontelli of Florence. But the truth is that I am Alexander Lomas Huby and I have come to claim my inheritance!’

Chapter 5 (#ulink_141d27a2-bd96-5208-b447-e5ab4cb8ce77)

‘What’s up with Wield?’ said Dalziel.

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘He’s been sort of distant these last few days, like he’s got something on his mind. Perhaps he’s decided on plastic surgery and can’t decide whether to go for the blow-lamp or the road-drill.’

‘I can’t say I’ve noticed,’ said Pascoe.

‘Insensitivity, that’s always been your trouble,’ said Dalziel. He belched, then raised his voice and cried, ‘Hey, Wieldy, bring us another of them pies, will you? And ask Jolly Jack if it’s my turn to have the one with the meat in this month.’

No one paid any heed. Dalziel and his CID squad were lunchtime regulars in the Black Bull and familiarity had bred discretion. A minute later Wield returned from the bar with two pints of beer.

‘You’ve not forgot my pie?’

The sergeant put the glasses down and reached into his jacket pocket.

‘Christ,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’m glad I didn’t ask for the lasagna. Cheers.’

Pascoe sipped his pint with a sigh. It was his second and he’d been promising both himself and Ellie to cut back on the calories for a few days. At least he’d only had one pie.

‘What’s up with you then, Sergeant? Not having another?’

Dalziel had just noticed Wield had not bought himself a drink.

‘No, I’ll just finish this, then I’ve got to be off.’

‘Off? It’s your lunch hour!’ expostulated Dalziel with the same note of exasperation he sounded if any of his flock showed the slightest sign of demur when told they were working till midnight or had to get up at four A.M.

‘I’ve some catching up to do,’ said Wield vaguely. ‘This shoplifting. And that Kemble business.’

‘Anything new there, Wieldy?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Not much. I’ve been researching back through the old information sheets. There’s this National Front spin-off group, works a lot through university students, bit different from the usual Front lot in that they keep their heads down, infiltrate Conservative student groups, that sort of thing. Not like your usual Front bully-boy who wants the world to admire his jackboots.’

Wield was sounding quite heated for him.

‘What makes you think there could be a link here?’ asked Pascoe.

‘They call themselves White Heat,’ said Wield.

‘White Heat. That rings a bell,’ said Dalziel.

‘James Cagney. Top of the world, ma!’ said Pascoe.

The other two looked at him blankly, clearly not sharing his passion for old Warner Brothers movies.

‘One of the things sprayed on the Kemble was White Heat Burns Blacks,’ said Wield, glancing at his watch.

He finished his beer, stood up and said, ‘Best be off. Cheerio.’

Pascoe watched his departure with a feeling of faint concern. He hadn’t been lying when he told Dalziel he had noticed nothing odd in the sergeant’s behaviour recently, but now his mind had been steered in the right direction, he realized that there were a number of minor variations from the norm which, crushed together, might make a small oddity. It was annoying that Dalziel should have proved more percipient in this than himself. He wouldn’t call Wield a friend, but a bond of respect and also of affection had developed between the men, a closeness signalled perhaps by his growing irritation at Dalziel’s ‘ugly’ jokes.

His mind was diverted from the problem, if problem there was, by the landlord’s voice from the bar.

‘Sorry, love, but you don’t look eighteen to me, and it’s more than me licence is worth to sell you alcohol. You can have a fruit juice, but.’

It was, of course, a stage-loudness for their benefit, thought Pascoe. Though indeed Jolly Jack Mahoney, the licensee, might well have objected even without a police presence to serving this customer, a small bespectacled girl who didn’t look much above thirteen.

Mahoney leaned over the bar and said in a quieter voice, ‘If it’s grub you’re after, love, go through that door, there’s a bit of a dining-room, the girl’ll slip you a glass of wine with your meal, no bother. Them gents over there are the police, so you see my trouble.’

The girl did not move, except to turn her head so that the owl-eye spectacles ringed Dalziel and Pascoe.