Arms and the Women

‘Soy yo… si… I did not think so soon… si…poco… not so wide as a barn door… the CP… it has to be… I am sorry… dos horas… quizá tres… si… at the CP… si, bueno… te quiero… adiós.’

He put the phone away and picked up the grip, wincing with pain. As he moved away, he thought he sensed a movement from the vicinity of the jeep and turned with his gun waving menacingly.

All was still. He hadn’t the strength for closer investigation. And in any case, his gun was empty.

He resumed his progress to the truck.

Getting the grip into the driver’s cab and himself after it was an agony. He sat there for a while, leaning against the wheel. Did something move by the jeep or was it his pain giving false life to this deadly tableau? Certainly in the air above, the bats, reassured by the return of stillness, were flitting back into the mouth of the cave.

He dipped into the grip again, sniffed a little more powder.

Then he switched on the engine, engaged gear, and without a backward glance at the gaping cave, the gloomy lake or the bodies that lay between them, he sent the truck rumbling into the dark tunnel curving away through the crowding trees.

High on the sunlit, windswept Snake Pass which links Lancashire with Yorkshire, Peter Pascoe thought, I’m in love.

Even with a trail of blood running from her nose over the double hump of her full lips to peter out on her charming chin, she was grin-like-an-idiot-gorgeous.

‘You OK?’ he said, grinning like an idiot till he realized that in the circumstances this was perhaps not the most appropriate expression.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said impatiently, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. ‘Is this going to take long?’

The driver of her taxi, to whom the question was addressed, looked from the bent and leaking radiator of his vehicle to the jackknifed lorry he had hit and said sarcastically, ‘Soon as I repair this and get that shifted, we’ll be on our way, luv.’

Pascoe, returning from Manchester over the Snake, had been behind the lorry when it jackknifed. Simple humanitarian concern had brought him running to see if anyone was hurt, but now his sense of responsibility as a policeman was taking over. He pulled out his mobile, dialled 999 and gave a succinct account of what had happened.

‘Better set up traffic diversions way back on both sides,’ he said. ‘The road’s completely blocked till you get something up here to shift the lorry. One injury. Passenger in the taxi banged her nose. Lorry driver probably suffering from shock. Better have an ambulance.’

‘Not for me,’ said the woman vehemently. ‘I’m fine.’

She rose from the verge where she’d been sitting and moved forward on long legs, whose slight unsteadiness only added to their sinuous attraction. She looked as if she purposed to move the lorry single-handed. If it had been sentient, she might have managed it, thought Pascoe.

‘Silly cow’d have been all right if she’d put her seat belt on like I told her,’ said the taxi driver.

‘Perhaps you should have been firmer,’ said Pascoe mildly. ‘Who is she? Where’re you headed?’

No reason why he should have asked or the driver answered these questions, but without his being aware of it, over the years Pascoe had developed a quiet authority of manner which most people found harder to resist than mere assertiveness.

The driver pulled out a docket and said, ‘Miss Kelly Cornelius. Manchester Airport. Terminal Three. She’s going to miss her plane.’

He spoke with a satisfaction which identified him as one of that happily vanishing species, the Ur-Yorkshireman, beside whom even Andy Dalziel appeared a creature of sweetness and light. Only a hardcore misogynist could take pleasure in anything which caused young Miss Cornelius distress.

And she was distressed. She returned from her examination of the lorry and gave Pascoe a look of such expressive unhappiness, his empathy almost caused him to burst into tears.

‘Excuse me,’ she said in a melodious voice in which all that was best of American lightness, Celtic darkness, and English woodnotes wild, conjoined to make sweet moan, ‘but your car’s on the other side of this, I guess.’

‘Yes, I’m on my way home to Mid-Yorkshire,’ he said. ‘Looks like I’ll have to turn around and find another way.’

‘That’s what I thought you’d do,’ she said, her voice breathless with delight, as if he’d just confirmed her estimate of his intellectual brilliance. ‘And I was wondering, I know it’s quite a long way back, but how would you feel about taking me to Manchester Airport? I hate to be a nuisance, but you see, I’ve got this plane to catch, and if I miss it, I don’t know what I’ll do.’

Tears brimmed her big dark eyes. Pascoe could imagine their salty taste on his tongue. What she was asking was of course impossible, but (as he absolutely intended to tell Ellie later when he cleansed his conscience by laundering his prurient thoughts in her sight) it was flattering to be asked.

He said, ‘I’m sorry, but my wife’s expecting me.’

‘You could ring her. You’ve got a phone,’ she said with tremulous appeal. ‘I’d be truly, deeply, madly grateful.’

This was breathtaking, in every sense.

He said, ‘Surely there’ll be another plane. Where are you going anyway?’

Silly question. It implied negotiation.

There was just the hint of a hesitation before she answered, ‘Corfu. It’s my holiday, first for years. And it’s a holiday charter, so if I miss it, there won’t be much chance of getting on another, they’re all so crowded this time of year. And I’m meeting my sister and her little boy at the airport, and she’s disabled and won’t get on the plane without me, so it’ll be all our holidays ruined. Please.’

Suddenly he knew he was going to do it. All right, it was crazy, but he was going to have to go back all the way to Glossop anyway and the airport wasn’t much further, well, not very much further…

He said, ‘I’ll need to phone my wife.’

‘That’s marvellous. Oh, thank you, thank you!’

She gave him a smile which made all things seem easy – the drive back, the phone call to Ellie, everything – then dived into the taxi and emerged with a small leather case like a pilot’s flight bag.

Travelling light, thought Pascoe as he stepped back to get some privacy for his call home. The woman was now talking to the taxi driver and presumably paying him off. There seemed to be some disagreement. Pascoe guessed the driver was demanding the full agreed fare on the grounds that it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t got her all the way to Terminal 3.

Terminal 3.

Last time he’d flown out of Manchester, Terminal 3 had been for British Airways and domestic flights only.

You couldn’t fly charter to Corfu from there.

Perhaps the driver had made a mistake.

Or perhaps things had changed at Manchester in the past six months.

But now he was recalling the slight hesitancy before the sob story. And would a young woman on holiday really travel so light…?

Pascoe, he said to himself, you’re developing a nasty suspicious policeman’s mind.

He turned away and began to punch buttons on his phone.

When it was answered he identified himself, talked for a while, then waited.

In the distance he heard the wail of sirens approaching.

A voice spoke in his ear. He listened, asked a couple of questions, then rang off.

When he turned, Kelly Cornelius was standing by the taxi, smiling expectantly at him. A police car pulled up onto the verge beside him. An ambulance wasn’t far behind.

As the driver of the police car opened his door to get out, Pascoe stooped to him. Screened by the car, he pulled out his ID, showed it to the uniformed constable and spoke urgently.