A Clubbable Woman

Hs saw that she had got out of the car again and was standing against the bonnet looking up towards him. Otherwise the car park was now completely empty.

He began to walk towards her.

‘I wasn’t going to ask her anything,’ repeated Pascoe. ‘Not then. Not there. I felt sorry for her. Just standing there. She looked, I don’t know, helpless somehow.’

This, he thought, is a turn up for the book. Bruiser Dalziel lecturing me on tact and diplomacy. It was like Henry the Eighth preaching about marital constancy.

‘Well, watch it. We don’t harry people at funerals. At least not unless we think they did it. And we don’t think young Jenny Connon did it, do we?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You checked, of course?’

‘Of course. She was nearly a hundred miles away. We know that.’

‘It’s about all we bloody well do know. The only thing we make any progress with is the list of things we don’t know. Item: who had a strong motive to kill her? No one we know, not even the great Connie as far as we know.’

‘Strength of motive is in the mind of the murderer, sir.’

‘Confucius, he bloody well say. To continue. Item: what did he kill her with? A metal object or at least an object with a metal end, cylindrical in shape, long enough to be grasped probably with both hands and smashed right between the eyes of a victim who sits there smiling and doesn’t even try to duck.’

‘The pathologist’s report did say that Mrs Connon had unusually fragile bones, sir. Perhaps we’re overestimating the strength needed.’

‘So what? Thanks for nothing. And Mary Connon fragile? I don’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. With tits like those she’d have broken her collar-bone every time she stood up. To continue again. Item: who saw anything suspicious or even anyone anywhere near the house that night? Not a soul. Not even the eyes and ears of the Woodfield Estate, your friend Fernie. All he can swear is that Connon was rolling drunk. Which Connon can disprove with con-bloody-siderable ease.’

‘It does fit with Connon’s account, though. About his giddiness, I mean. Makes his story that bit stronger, don’t you think? And our doctor did find signs of a slight concussion. He’s still seeing his own man, too. I checked.’

Dalziel slammed his fist so hard on the desk that Pascoe broke his rule of stony non-reaction to his superior and started in his chair.

‘I’m not interested in the bloody man’s health. If he’s innocent, he can drop dead tomorrow for all I care.’

‘A sentiment that does you credit, sir. But there is one thing about this injury to Connon that’s a little bit odd.’

‘What’s that, and why isn’t it in your report?’ asked Dalziel suspiciously.

‘Apparently irrelevant. But I felt you might like it, sir.’

Dalziel licked his lips and looked as if the task of strangling Pascoe personally and instantly might not be unattractive.

‘It’s just that when I was down at the Club, I talked among others to a chap called Slater.’

‘Fat Fred. I know him.’

‘Slater remembered Connon being laid out. But, he added casually and as far as I could see without malice, that he reckoned the boot that did the damage belonged to Evans, his own captain. He seemed to think it was just a case of mistaken identity.’

‘Fred would. He’s thick as pigshit, that one. But Arthur Evans isn’t made that way. He plays hard, but he’d never put the boot in.’

‘So?’

‘So Fred Slater should start wearing his glasses on the field. Or better still, give up. It’s indecent a man that size exposing himself in public. I don’t know how his wife manages him.’

He chuckled to himself at the thought and murmured, ‘Levers, I should think.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Sergeant,’ he said quietly, ‘is there anything we’ve left undone which we ought to have done?’

‘I don’t think so, sir.’

‘Right. Then somewhere, in some area we are covering, or have covered, lies the clue.’

‘The clue?’

‘There’s always a clue, boy. Don’t you read the Sunday papers? All this started somewhere and it wasn’t Boundary Drive. Or if it was, we’re not going to get much help there. Now where’s our best bet?’

Pascoe spoke like a bored actor who was thinking of things other than his lines.

‘At the Club.’

‘That’s right. I think I’ll just drop in there tonight. No, tomorrow. That’s a training night. They’ll all be there. Socially, I mean, for a pot of ale. If there’s anything known, they’ll tell me by chucking-out time. They’ll tell me.’