Deadheads

He raised his big brown eyes from the shining blade which he had been examining with fascinated care. The animation had fled from his face and it had become the old, indifferent, watchful mask once more. But not quite the same. There was something new there. Slowly he raised the knife so that the rays of the sun struck full on the burnished steel. He ignored the dead rose she was holding towards him and now she let go of it so that it flapped back into the bush with a force that sent its fading petals fluttering to the ground.

‘Patrick,’ she said taking a step back. ‘Patrick!’

There was a sting on her bare forearm as the thorns of the richly scented bush dug into the flesh. And then further up, along the upper arm and in the armpit, there was a series of sharper, more violent stings which had nothing to do with the barbs of mere roses.

Mrs Aldermann shrieked once, sent a skinny parchment-skinned hand to her shrunken breast and fell backwards into the rose-bed. Petals showered down on her from the shaken bushes.

Patrick watched, expressionless, till all was still.

Then he let the knife fall beside the old woman and set off running up to the house, shouting for his mother.

PART TWO (#ulink_976124ca-bba5-5354-a066-d568cf7c9f0e)

The rose saith in the dewy morn: I am most fair; Yet all my loveliness is born Upon a thorn.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI:

Consider the Lilies of the Field

1 DANDY DICK (#ulink_c75c5066-1eec-5ac9-8542-f7f01f6d528d)

(Floribunda. Clear pink, erect carriage, almost an H.T.)

Richard Elgood was a small dapper man with tiny feet to which his highly polished, fine leather shoes clung like dancing pumps.

Indeed, despite his sixty years, he advanced across the room with a dancer’s grace and lightness, and Peter Pascoe wondered if he should shake the outstretched hand or pirouette beneath it.

He shook the hand and smiled.

‘Sit down, Mr Elgood. How can I help you?’

Elgood did not return the smile, though he had a round cheerful face which Pascoe could imagine being very attractive when lit up with good humour. Clearly whatever had brought him here was no smiling matter.

‘I’m not sure how to begin, Inspector, though begin I must, else there’s not much point in coming here.’

His voice had the ragtime rhythms of industrial South Yorkshire, Pascoe noticed, rather than the oracular resonances of the rural north. He settled back in his chair, put his fingers together in the Dürer position, and nodded encouragingly.

Elgood ran his fingers down his silk tie as if to check the gold pin were still in position, and then appeared to count the mother-of-pearl buttons on the brocaded waistcoat beneath his soberly expensive business suit.

The buttons confirmed, he flirted with his fly for a moment, then said, ‘What I’m going to say is likely libellous, so I’ll not admit to saying it outside this room.’

‘My word against yours, you mean,’ said Pascoe amiably.

He didn’t feel particularly amiable. He’d spent much of the previous night in the midst of a rhododendron bush waiting for a gang of housebreakers who hadn’t kept their date. There’d been three break-ins recently at large houses in the area, all empty while the owners were on holiday, and all protected by alarm systems which had been circumvented by means not yet apparent to the CID. So a ‘hot’ tip on Sunday that Monday night was marked down for this particular house had had to be followed up. Pascoe had crawled out of his bush at dawn, returned to the station where, feeling too weary to write his report immediately, he had caught a couple of hours sleep on a camp bed. A pint of coffee in the canteen had then given him strength to complete his report and he’d just been on the point of heading home for a real sleep when Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel had dropped this refugee from a Warner Brothers musical into his lap.

‘Please, Mr Elgood,’ he said. ‘You can be frank with me, I assure you.’

Elgood took a deep breath.

‘There’s this fellow,’ he said. ‘In our company. I think he’s killing people.’

Pascoe rested his nose on the steeple of his fingers. He would have liked to rest his head on the desk.

‘Killing people,’ he echoed wearily.

‘Dead!’ emphasized Elgood, as if piqued at the lack of response.

Pascoe sighed, took out his pen and poised it above a sheet of paper.

‘Could you be just a touch more specific?’ he wondered.

‘I can,’ said Elgood. ‘I will.’

The affirmation seemed to release the tension in him for suddenly he relaxed, smiled with great charm, displaying two large gold fillings, and produced a matching cigarette case with legerdemainic ease.

‘Smoke?’ he said.

‘I don’t,’ said Pascoe virtuously. ‘But go ahead.’

Elgood fitted his cigarette into an ebony holder with a single gold band. A gold lighter shaped like a lighthouse appeared from nowhere, twinkled briefly and vanished. He drew on his cigarette twice before ejecting it into an ashtray.

‘Mr Dalziel spoke very highly of you when I rang,’ said Elgood. ‘Either you’re very good or you owe him money.’

Again he smiled and Pascoe felt the charm again.

He returned the smile and said, ‘Mr Dalziel’s a very perceptive man. He apologizes again for not being able to see you himself.’

‘Aye, well, I won’t hide that I’d rather be talking to him. I’ve known him a long time, you see.’

‘He’d probably be available tomorrow,’ said Pascoe hopefully.

‘No, I’m here now, and I might as well speak while it’s fresh in my mind. If Andy Dalziel says you’re all right to talk to, then that’s good enough for me.’

‘And Mr Dalziel told me that anything you had to say was bound to be worth listening to,’ said Pascoe, hoping to achieve brevity if he couldn’t manage postponement.

What Dalziel had actually said was, ‘I haven’t got time to waste on Dandy Dick this morning, but he’s bent on seeing someone pretty quick, so I’ve landed him with you. Look after him, will you? I owe him a favour.’

‘I see,’ said Pascoe. ‘And you repay favours by not letting people see you?’

Dalziel’s eyes glittered malevolently in his bastioned face like a pair of medieval defenders wondering where to pour the boiling oil, and Pascoe hastily added, ‘What precisely does this chap Elgood want to talk to us about?’

‘Christ knows,’ said Dalziel, ‘and you’re going to find out. Take him serious, lad. Even if he goes round the houses, as he can sometimes, and you start getting bored, or if you’re tempted to have a superior little laugh at his fancy waistcoats and gold knick-knacks, take him serious. He came up from nowt, he’s sharp, he’s influential, he’s not short of a bob or two, and he’s a devil with the ladies! I’ve bulled you up to him, so don’t let me down by showing your ignorance.’

At that moment Dalziel had been summoned to the urgent meeting with the ACC which was his excuse for not seeing Elgood.

‘Here, I’ll need some background,’ Pascoe had protested in panic. ‘Who is he, anyway? What’s he do?’

But Dalziel had only smiled from the doorway, showing yellow teeth like a reef through sea-mist, ‘You’ll have seen his name, lad,’ he said. ‘I’ll guarantee that.’