Child’s Play

‘Mr Watmough,’ said Wield, his craggily ugly face even more impressive than usual. It was well known that Dalziel rated Watmough, the present Deputy Chief Constable, as a life form only slightly above amoeba.

‘What? He wants his head looked at! Find out what he’ll give me against our DCC finding his way out of the interview room without a guide dog, Wieldy!’

Wield smiled, though it hardly showed. He was smiling at Dalziel’s abrasive humour, at Pascoe’s faintly pained reaction, and also just for the sheer pleasure of being part of this. Even Dalziel would only speak so abusively of a superior before subordinates he liked and trusted. With a slight shock of surprise, Wield found he was happy. It was not a state he was much used to in recent years, not in fact since he had broken up with Maurice. But here it was at last, the dangerous infection breaking through, a slight but definite case of happiness!

The phone rang. Pascoe picked it up.

‘Hello? Yes. Hang on.’

He held out the phone to the sergeant.

‘For you, they say. Someone asking for Sergeant Mac Wield?’

The note of interrogation came on the Mac. This was not a name he’d ever heard anyone call Wield by.

The sergeant showed no emotion on his rugged face but his hand gripped the receiver so tightly that the tension bunched his forearm muscles against the sleeve of his jacket.

‘Wield,’ he said.

‘Mac Wield? Hi. I’m a friend of Maurice’s. He said if ever I was in this neck of the woods and needed a helping hand, I should look you up.’

Wield said, ‘Where are you?’

‘There’s a caff by the booking office at the bus station. You can’t miss me. I’m the suntanned one.’

‘Wait there,’ said Wield and put down the receiver.

The other two were regarding him queryingly.

‘I’ve got to go out,’ said Wield.

‘Anything we should know about?’ said Dalziel.

Mebbe the end of life as I know it, thought Wield, but all he said was, ‘Could be owt or nowt,’ before turning away abruptly and leaving.

‘Mac,’ said Pascoe. ‘I never knew Wield had Scottish connections.’

‘I don’t suppose they know either. He gives nowt much away, does he?’

‘It was probably a snout and we all like to keep our snouts under wraps,’ said Pascoe defensively.

‘If I looked like Wield, I’d put my snouts on display and keep my face under wraps,’ growled Dalziel.

Thank you, Rupert Brooke, thought Pascoe, regarding the superintendent’s huge balding head which his wife had once likened to a dropsical turnip.

But he was careful to sneeze the thought into his handkerchief, being much less sure than Sergeant Wield of his ability to shut his mind against Dalziel’s gaze, which could root up insubordination like a pig snuffling out truffles.

Wield’s capacity for concealment was far greater than anything Pascoe ever suspected.

Mac, the voice had said. Perhaps it had served him right for relaxing his guard and letting happiness steal in like that, but such instant retribution left the courts for dead! That a voice would one day call to change his life as he had chosen to live it had always been possible, indeed likely. That it should sound so young and speak so simply he had not anticipated.

I’m a friend of Maurice’s. That had been unnecessary. Only Maurice Eaton had ever called him Mac, their private name, short for Macumazahn, the native name of Allan Quatermain, the stocky, ill-favoured hero of the Rider Haggard novels Wield loved. It meant he-who-sleeps-with-one-eye-open and Wield could remember the occasion of his christening as clearly as if … He snapped his mind hard on the nostalgia. What had existed between him and Maurice was dead, should be forgotten. This voice from the grave brought no hope of resurrection, but trouble as sure as a War Office telegram.

When he reached the café, he had no problem in picking out the caller. Blue-streaked hair, leg-hugging green velvet slacks and a tight blue T-shirt with a pair of fluorescent lips pouting across the chest, were in this day and age not out of the ordinary even in Yorkshire. But he’d called himself the suntanned one, and though his smooth olive skin came from mixed blood rather than a Mediterranean beach, the youth would have been impossible to miss even if he hadn’t clearly recognized Wield and smiled at him welcomingly.

Wield ignored him and went to the self-service bar.

‘Keeping you busy, Charley?’ he said.

The man behind the counter answered, ‘It’s the quality of the tea, Mr Wield. They come here in buses to try it. Fancy a cup?’

‘No, thanks. I want a word with that lad in the corner. Can I use the office?’

‘Him that looks like a delphinium? Be my guest. Here’s the key. I’ll send him through.’

Charley, a cheerful chubby fifty-year-old, had performed this service many times for both Wield and Pascoe when the café had been too full for a satisfactory tête-à-tête with an informant. Wield went through a door marked TOILETS, ignored the forked radish logo to his left and the twin-stemmed Christmas tree to his right, and unlocked the door marked Private straight ahead. It was also possible to get into this room from behind the bar, but that would draw too much attention.

Wield sat down on a kitchen chair behind a narrow desk whose age could be read in the tea-rings on its surface. The only window was narrow, high and barred, admitting scarcely more light than limned the edges of things, but he ignored the desk lamp.

A few moments later the door opened to reveal the youth standing uncertainly on the threshold.

‘Come in and shut it,’ said Wield. ‘Then lock it. The key’s in the hole.’

‘Hey, what is this?’

‘Up here we call it a room,’ said Wield. ‘Get a move on!’

The youth obeyed and then advanced towards the desk.

Wield said, ‘Right. Quick as you like, son. I’ve not got all day.’

‘Quick as I like? What do you mean? You don’t mean …? No, I can see you don’t mean …’

His accent was what Wield thought of as Cockney with aitches. His age was anything between sixteen and twenty-two. Wield said, ‘It was you who rang?’

‘Yes, that’s right …’

‘Then you’ve got something to tell me.’

‘No. Not exactly …’

‘No? Listen, son, people who ring me at the station, and don’t give names, and arrange to meet me in dumps like this, they’d better have something to tell me, and it had better be good! So let’s be having it!’

Wield hadn’t planned to play it this way, but it had all seemed to develop naturally from the site and the situation. And after years of a carefully disciplined and structured life, he sensed that what lay ahead was a new era of playing things by ear. Unless, of course, this boy could simply be frightened away.

‘Look, you’ve got it all wrong, or maybe you’re pretending to get it wrong … Like I said, I’m a friend of Maurice’s …’

‘Maurice who? I don’t know any Maurices.’