A Clubbable Woman

‘Yes, I think so. A couple.’

‘What are they?’

‘Firstly, that I am lying about this pain in my head and passing out. I came in last night, smashed your mother’s head in and waited a few hours before calling the police.’

‘Secondly?’

‘That I’m telling the truth about passing out. But, unknown to me or forgotten by me, I nevertheless killed your mother.’

Now there was the longest silence of all. Finally Jenny opened her mouth to speak but her father gently laid his index finger across her lips.

‘You needn’t ask, Jenny. The answer is no, I did not consciously kill her.’

‘And unconsciously?’

‘I don’t think so. What else can I say?’

Now she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. Connon looked fondly down at her flowing golden-brown hair.

He ran his fingers through its softness; it was a happy mixture of her mother’s once vivid red and his own light brown.

‘Don’t worry, darling. It’ll soon pass over, all this. Perhaps we can go away. It’s almost your Christmas holidays. Would you like that, to go away, I mean?’

She looked up at him.

‘Is that what you want? To go away, I mean?’

He rolled the question round in his mind for a moment, trying to read her thoughts. But nothing of them appeared in her face.

Finally he settled for the truth.

‘No, I don’t think so. No. It isn’t.’

She nodded her head in serious accord.

‘No. Neither do I. We’ll stay. There’ll be lots to do here. We’ll stay and do whatever we have to. Together.’

She kept on nodding her head till her hair fell in a golden curtain over her white face.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_4326b11e-1847-5475-8d2c-51362790216f)

It was a glorious day. The sun laid a deep shadow obliquely across the polished oak of the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. The sky was cloudless, its blue more thinly painted than the blue of summer but the sun was too bright to stare in the eye. The air was just cold enough to make activity pleasant and the mourners shifted gently, almost imperceptibly, under their coats from time to time.

Only Connon and Jenny stood in absolute stillness.

Dalziel was scratching his left breast, his hand inside his coat moving rhythmically.

‘Ironical,’ he whispered loudly. ‘Suit you, my boy. Subtle.’

‘What?’ said Pascoe.

‘This,’ he said. ‘Nature.’

‘Human nature? Or red in tooth and claw?’

‘Don’t get bloody metaphysical with me. The day, I mean. Fine day for a funeral. Sun. No wind blowing dead leaves or any of that. Fine day for golf.’

‘What are you doing here then, sir?’

Dalziel sniffed loudly. A few heads turned and turned away. He obviously wasn’t about to break down.

‘Me? Friend of the family. Last respects must be paid. Heartfelt sympathy.’

He fluttered his hand inside his coat so that the cloth pulsated ludicrously.

‘What’s more to the point, what are you doing here? I come within smelling distance of having a reason. You’re a non-starter. Bloody policeman, that’s all. You’ll get the force a bad name. Intrusion of grief, it could be grounds for complaint.’

‘In his master’s steps he trod,’ murmured Pascoe softly.

‘Which of us does that make the very sod? And what are you looking for, Pascoe? You’re not nursing any nice little theories, are you? And not telling me?’

‘No,’ said Pascoe, ‘of course not.’

Not bloody much, thought Dalziel. You keep working at it, lad. Nothing like the competitive spirit for sharpening the wits.

‘Not a bad gate,’ whispered Arthur Evans to Marcus.

‘Arthur!’

Evans looked sideways at his wife. She had put hardly any make-up on in deference to the occasion and wore a plain black coat, loose-fitting. But the bite in the air had brought the red blood to her lips and cheeks and the looseness of the coat just made it more obvious where it did touch.

Dressed like that, thought Evans with bitter admiration, she wouldn’t stay a widow long.

Marcus, on his other side, looked pale beyond the remedy of frost. He swayed slightly.

‘You all right, boyo?’

Jesus, on and off the field, I spend half my life nursing them.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit cold. Poor Connie.’

Poor Connie. Poor bastard. Evans remembered the shock last Sunday when they had finally got to the Club, arguments buried for an hour. That detective had been there, he was somewhere around now, bloody ghouls, one of Dalziel’s lackeys, there’s a right thug for you, like all these Scotsmen, no finesse, first up first down, feet feet feet. Sid had got in first. Snipped his indirect line, gave the news right out, loud and clear. Mary Connon’s dead. And all I could do was look at Gwen, watch Gwen, see her age beneath the words, then gradually come back to life with awareness of her own life.

Poor Connie. He deserves sympathy. He deserves … perhaps he will get what he deserves. There he stands with that little girl of his. Not so little. She’s a pretty little thing.

She’s a pretty little thing.

The service was over. Out of the corner of his eye Pascoe had noticed two men with spades move tentatively forward from the cover of a clump of trees, then retreat. Their movement startled half-a-dozen crows whose caws had been a harsh burden to the words of the prayer-book and they went winging from the tree tops in ragged grace, as the black-coated mourners moved in twos and threes away from the grave-side, silent at first, but speaking more and more freely as the distance grew between themselves and the motionless couple who remained.