Bones and Silence

‘What’s your interest, sir?’ he asked. ‘She says she’ll not be writing again.’

‘She’ll write again, never fear,’ growled Dalziel. ‘Then she’ll top herself, and I don’t want any bugger saying we did bugger-all. So get something down on paper, pass the buck to social services, the Samaritans, anyone so long as we look squeaky clean to the coroner. Here come our hot pies. I’ll have another pint to wash the taste away when you’re ready.’

‘I thought it was a rise in salary I was getting,’ said Pascoe, nursing his half full glass. ‘I didn’t realize it was an entertainment allowance.’

Dalziel thought this so funny he choked on his pie and, his own glass being empty, he finished Pascoe’s.

‘That’s better,’ he gasped. ‘And I see you’re ready now, so how about them drinks?’

It’s pinpricks not principles that engender treason. As Pascoe put the foaming pint before his chief he said casually, ‘Talking of free booze, there’ll be some going on Sunday evening if you’re interested. A little reception at the Kemble in connection with these Mystery Plays they’re putting on in the summer. Ellie’s a mate of Eileen Chung’s and she said they’re keen to have some police liaison. These theatricals pour the plonk like there’s no tomorrow and I don’t see why those blighters in traffic should enjoy all the freebies, so I’ve fixed for us to get invited.’

‘Good thinking, lad. They can come in later and do the work! Chung, eh? I’ve seen her and I’ve heard a lot about her but we’ve never actually met. I’d like that. I think the arts deserve every thinking citizen’s support.’

He squinted over his glass to catch Pascoe’s reaction, then he added, ‘And I’ve always been partial to a bit of dusky chuff,’ and laughed so much he started coughing again.

Back at the station the laughter stopped when Dalziel found the full post-mortem report on Gail Swain on his desk. It confirmed the cause of death as massive brain damage from the .357 Magnum cartridge which had been recovered from Waterson’s converted attic after bursting its way through from the bedroom below. Blood alcohol was present at the level of 155 milligrams per 100 millilitres, which meant, as Dalziel observed, that she was well pissed. Remains of what the pathologist designated as an exotic meal, probably Chinese or Indian, were found in her stomach. She was a heavy smoker, had had her appendix removed, had sustained a fracture of her left tibia not less than three years before, had had no children, and had had sex a couple of hours before her death.

She was also a heroin user.

Dalziel threw back his head and bellowed, ‘Seymour!’

Thirty seconds later a broad-shouldered redhead peered anxiously through the door. Detective-Constable Dennis Seymour’s ear was not refined enough to distinguish furioso from simple fortissimo so he always anticipated the worst.

‘Had a good poke around Swain’s house, did you?’ said Dalziel.

‘Yes, sir. Report’s on your desk, sir.’

‘I’ve read it. It’s not a bad report far as it goes. But I couldn’t see owt in it about drugs.’

‘Drugs?’ Seymour’s good-looking face went rigid with alarm. ‘I wasn’t told to look for drugs, sir.’

‘You weren’t told to look for Barbary apes either, but I dare say if you’d found a pair fornicating on the kitchen floor, you might have mentioned them!’

‘What I meant, sir, was I saw no sign of drugs.’

‘Oh aye? Checked every bottle in the bathroom cabinet, did we? Stuck your finger in every tin and jar in the kitchen and had a lick?’

Seymour shook his head. He looked so contrite that Dalziel, who was not above admitting an injustice once it had served its turn, said, ‘Not your fault, lad. You weren’t told. Though the way to get on is to do things you’re not told, as long as they’re not things you’ve been told not to, except if you know for sure they need doing. Ask Mr Pascoe to step in here a moment, will you?’

With the mingled relief and bafflement of a supplicant leaving the sibyl’s cave, Seymour departed. Dalziel picked up the phone and spoke to Sergeant Broomfield on the desk below.

‘Get the quack along here, will you, George? I want him to give Swain a going-over for drug abuse.’

‘Yes, sir. What if he don’t want to be gone over, sir?’

‘Tell him it’s routine. A pre-release examination just so he can’t come back with accusations about brutality. He hasn’t fallen off a chair or accidentally banged his head against someone’s boot, has he?’

‘No, sir. Very well behaved. One thing, though: he’s asked to contact his solicitor.’

‘Taken his time, hasn’t he? He got the chance last night, it’s in the record. Which crook acts for him?’

‘Mr Eden Thackeray.’

‘Old Eden? Shit. Get the quack quick as you can, George.’

He put the phone down and looked up at Pascoe who’d just come in.

‘What’s this about drugs, sir?’

‘Seymour been blubbing? I had high hopes of him once, but I reckon he’s not been the same since he started screwing that Irish waitress. Sap your strength, the Irish do. I’d pump bromide into their potatoes. Take a look at this.’

He tossed the PM report over the desk.

‘Take Seymour back to Swain’s house and see what you can find. I doubt it’ll be much, though. He didn’t look to me like a user. A night in the cells and it’d have started to show. Also he’d have been a lot keener to contact his brief to get him out. As for her, if she set out to screw her way back to LA, she’s not likely to have left a cache of scag under the floorboards. But there may be traces. And if he knew, then maybe he can point us at the pusher.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘By the way, these letters you were so concerned about. I thought I’d –’

‘Sod the bloody letters,’ said Dalziel irritably. ‘We’re here to sort out crooks, not piss around with hysterics! I’m surprised at you for wanting to waste my time!’

Half an hour later Pascoe drove into Currthwaite, a village in danger of being annexed into a suburb, albeit a pretty plush suburb. On the town side the invasion was practically complete with the old rolling parkland now dotted with a range of well fortified high-class executive dwellings. Even when he entered the village proper between a Norman church in mellow York stone and a blockhouse chapel in angry brick, the High Street cottages were signalling their surrender with window-boxes without and Sanderson curtains within, and everywhere he looked he saw the greenwellied conquerors marching their labradors in a non-stop victory parade.

Moscow Farm at the far end of the village showed signs of having fallen to the same attack. Snow-cemed, window-boxed, double-glazed, burglar-alarmed, sauna’d, showered, and centrally heated, it bore as much relation to an old working farmhouse as Washington Heights to Wuthering Heights. But when he looked out of the french window at the rear, Pascoe saw there had been an active resistance movement, for the old farmyard after being prettied into a patio had regressed into a builder’s yard.

‘I bet the rest of the village don’t much like it,’ said Seymour. ‘Not with the kind of prices they’re asking round here.’

‘You’re into the property market, are you?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Want to be. I got engaged.’

‘Congratulations. To Bernadette, I take it?’

Bernadette McCrystal was the Irish waitress whose debilitating influence Dalziel so deplored. Pascoe had met and liked her, though he doubted if marrying her was going to herald halcyon weather in Seymour’s voyage through life.

‘Of course,’ said Seymour a touch indignantly.

‘I’ll buy you a drink. Now let’s get on.’

Ninety minutes later to Seymour’s undisguised relief they had found nothing.

‘I didn’t fancy going back to the Super with a barrowload of coke.’

‘Still time,’ observed Pascoe. ‘Out there is where they’ll keep the barrows. I’ll take a look. I’d like a word with his secretary anyway. You take one more look round here.’

He went out into the yard. It was enclosed on two sides by wings of old agricultural buildings, stables, barns and byres, which, red-tiled and white-painted, had something of an almost Mediterranean look in the thin February sunlight. It was a delusion soon shattered as he stepped out into the chilly air.

The firm’s business office was in what must once have been a hayloft above the byre which was now used as a garage. It was reached by a flight of external stairs which Pascoe would not have fancied in icy weather.

He knocked at the door and went in. Behind a desk reading a paperback whose cover promised a bodice-ripper but whose title claimed Jane Eyre, sat a young woman he knew to be Swain’s secretary. She had emerged briefly on their arrival, but on spotting Seymour whom she’d met on his first visit, she had retreated to Mr Rochester.