Death Comes for the Fat Man (5 page)

She pulled a chair up to the bedside, sat down, produced a mini-cassette recorder from the shoulder bag she was carrying, and switched it on.

“In your own words, Peter. All right to call you Peter? My friends call me Sandy.”

Trying to work out if this were an invitation or a warning, Pascoe launched into an account of his part in the incident, with some judicious editing, in the interest of clarity and brevity he told himself.

“That’s good,” said Glenister, nodding approval. “Succinct, to the point. Just what I need for the record.”

She pressed the Off button on the recorder, sat back in her chair, and took a tube of Smarties out of her shoulder bag.

“Help yourself,” she said. “So long as it’s not blue.”

“No thanks,” said Pascoe.

“Wise man,” she said. “I started on the sweeties when I stopped the ciggies. When I realized five bars of fruit and nut a day were d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 31

going to kill me as surely as forty fags, I tried to go cold turkey and that nearly had me back on the nicotine. Now I treat myself to a Smartie whenever the urge comes on. Just the one. Except if it’s a blue one.

Then I can have another. God knows what I’ll do now they’re stopping the blue ones.”

She gave him that attractive smile, mocking herself. She really should have been a doctor, thought Peter. With a bedside manner like this, she could have sold urine samples at a guinea a bottle.

“Now let’s stray off the record, Peter,” she said, popping one of the tiny sweets into her mouth (a yellow one, he noticed) and settling herself more comfortably into her chair. “Just you and me. Thoughts and impressions this time. And maybe just a wee bit more detail. For a start, why were you really there?”

“I told you. Inspector Ireland rang me and I went to assist.”

“And why did Paddy Ireland ring you?”

“Because of my negotiating experience, I suppose,” said Pascoe.

But even as he spoke he was registering the
Paddy
as a gentle reminder that Glenister had already interviewed the inspector.

“And because I think he felt that as the video shop had been fl agged by you people, Mr. Dalziel might be grateful for some assistance,” he added.

“And was he?”

“I think so.”

“But he hadn’t contacted you himself ?”

“He wouldn’t care to disturb me on my day off,” said Pascoe.

“A most considerate man then. I gather he even offered to obtain refreshment for the people inside number three.”

So she knew about the bit of knockabout with the bullhorn. Hector.

Or Jennison. Or Maycock. Why wouldn’t they describe exactly what had happened? Even if they’d tried to play it down, they’d have been easy meat for this bedside manner.

He said, “Yes, Mr. Dalziel did try to make contact with anyone who might be inside the shop.”

“Who might be? You had doubts?”

“Our information seemed a bit vague.”

“Vague? Not quite with you there. Foot patrol sees an armed man 32 r e g i n a l d h i l l

in number three. Reports it to the car-patrol officers who pass it on to the duty inspector who alerts the station commander. Don’t see where the vagueness lies. All by the book so far.”

“Yes, and that’s the way it continued,” said Pascoe fi rmly. “Knowing that the property was flagged, Mr. Dalziel made sure your people were alerted then proceeded to Mill Street as instructed.”

“As instructed?” Glenister chuckled.

Chuckling was a dying art, thought Pascoe, genuine chuckling that was, not just that pretence of suppressed mirth which politicians still use to make or, more often, avoid a point. But Glenister’s chuckle was the real McCoy.

“My understanding of his instructions,” continued the Chief Superintendent, “is that he was told to withdraw any police vehicles from Mill Street, establish blocks at its ends, maintain observation from a distance, and make no attempt to approach number three.

Which bit of his instructions would you say Mr. Dalziel followed, Peter?”

“I don’t know because I’ve only your say-so that that’s what they were,” retorted Pascoe, consigning to the recycle bin what the Fat Man had told him as they squatted behind the car. “But, if we’re portioning out responsibility, what I’m certain your instructions didn’t contain was any reference to the fact that there was enough explosive in the place to blow up the whole bloody terrace! But I guess you didn’t know that, else why would it have only a bottom-level fl agging?”

Glenister shook her head and said sadly, “You’re so right, Peter. We should have known that. But you’re completely wrong if you think I’m here to off-load blame. Wrists will be slapped at CAT, have no fear. If your Mr. Dalziel got it wrong, then we got it wrong just as much, and he’s paid a far higher price. I hope he comes through, but the signs aren’t good. So the only person I’ve got who can give me a close-up account of what took place is you. All I want is to be absolutely sure about everything you saw during your time outside number three Mill Street.”

“That’s easy,” said Pascoe. “From my arrival to the explosion, I saw absolutely no sign of life in the house, or anywhere else in the terrace.

Full stop.”

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 33

“Fine, that’s good enough for me,” said Glenister, standing up and offering her hand. “We’ll talk again when you’re back on your feet. I hope that will be very soon.”

“But can’t you tell me what you think happened in there?” demanded Pascoe, holding on to the hand.

Glenister hesitated then said, “Why not? I hear you’re a discreet man. In fact, you might turn vain if you knew how highly you’re rated.

Quite the Blue Smartie yourself.”

She smiled at her joke. Pascoe gave her a token fl icker and said, “So?”

“We had the shop flagged as a meeting place, at best a casual message center, for a group who showed little inclination to move from dialectic to destruction. At some time in the past few days a decision must have been taken to upgrade it to a storehouse for explosive in preparation for an event. We had some nonspecific intelligence that something big was being planned in the north.”

“Like blowing up Mill Street?” said Pascoe incredulously. “Not exactly the Houses of Parliament, is it?”

“I said number three was just the storehouse,” said Glenister.

“Though it won’t have escaped your notice that the terrace backs onto the embankment carrying the main London line, and your fair city is being honored with a royal visit the week after next. Be that as it may, suddenly there is a large quantity of explosive on-site, harmless enough when being handled by experts. But as I say, the group who had hitherto made use of the shop were anything but experts. Your Constable Hector disturbed them, your Mr. Dalziel made them panic. Perhaps they were simply trying to conceal the explosive more thoroughly and something went wrong. Or perhaps when they saw you and Mr. Dalziel moving forward, they weighed a long night in an interview room with you against an eternity in Paradise with a martyr’s promised houris.

Either way, boom!”

She gently disengaged his hand, which Pascoe now realized he’d been clinging onto like an ancient mariner eager for a chat.

“You take care of yourself now, Peter,” said Glenister. “The Force can’t spare its Blue Smarties in these troubled times. I hope you’re back at work really soon.”

34 r e g i n a l d h i l l

She went out of the room. Pascoe stared at the closed door for a while, then shoved back the sheet and swung his legs onto the fl oor.

He was surprised to find how weak this simple movement left him and he was still sitting on the bed, nerving himself to test his knee, when Wield came in.

“Where do you think you’re going?” demanded the sergeant.

“I’m going to see Andy.”

“Not now you’re not,” said Wield.

Something in his tone alerted Pascoe that the sergeant wasn’t just coming the nurse substitute.

“Why? What’s happened?” he demanded.

“I asked the ward sister to check how Andy was doing in Intensive Care,” said Wield. “She was talking to someone there when all hell broke loose at the other end of the phone. Pete, his heart stopped.

They’ve got the crash team working on him now, but from what the sister said, it’s not looking good. Pete, we need to face it. This could be the end for Fat Andy.”

7

D A N C I N G W I T H D E AT H

Andy Dalziel is in the Mecca Ballroom, locked in a tango with Tottie Truman from Donny.

He feels as light as a feather. His feet hardly seem to be in contact with the floor, his muscles responding to every modulation of the music, as if the notes were vibrating along his arteries rather than through his ears. And he can feel the blood pulsing through Tottie’s veins in a perfect counterpoint to his own rhythms as they move inexorably toward that blissfully explosive moment of complete fusion…

But not on the dance floor! It’s all a question of timing. In search of delay, he makes his mind step back and take in his surroundings.

The Mirely Mecca has changed a lot since his last visit, which was

. . . he can’t recall when. Never mind. The ceiling’s higher now and the soaring windows, spring bright with colored glass, wouldn’t disgrace a cathedral. The walls are lined with long tables, covered in white linen cloths on which rests a royal banquet of everything he loves—on one table crowns of lamb, barons of beef, loins of pork ridged with crackling, honey glazed hams; on another roasted geese, Christmas turkeys, duck with cherries, pheasant adorned with their own feathers; on a third whole salmon, pickled herring, mountain ranges of oysters and mussels. Yet another is crowded with desserts, bread-and-butter pudding, rhubarb crumble, spotted dick, and his childhood favorite, Eve’s Pudding.

And there, by a table laden with bottles of every kind of malt whisky he’d ever tasted, stands Peter Pascoe, an open bottle of Highland Park in one hand and in the other a king-size crystal tumbler full to the brim which he is holding out in smiling invitation . . .

36 r e g i n a l d h i l l

Later, lad, he mouths. Later. First things first. Dance till the music reaches its climax, then straight out of the door into that dark alcove at the end of the corridor to reach his and hers . . .

After which, being a gentleman, he’ll wait a decent interval of mebbe a minute and a half, before heading back inside for another helping of Eve’s Pudding . . .

But just as he begins to wonder if he can hold out any longer, the music changes, accelerating from the sensuous pulse of the tango into the mad whirl of a Viennese waltz. His muscles obey the new commands effortlessly though his mind wonders what the fuck the band leader’s playing at. Round and round and round he spins, till the high walls and colored windows and laden tables retreat to a blur of Arctic whiteness and Tottie’s body, which during the tango had been a comfortable armful of warm softness molding itself ever closer to his, begins to feel like a sackful of old bones.

Now he too is beginning to feel tired, as if age and exertion and all the excesses of a life spent in mad pursuit of God knows what are at last catching up with him. He wants to rest. Surely Tottie would want to sit this one out too? He nuzzles his lips against her ear to whisper the suggestion, but he can’t find it. The cheek pressed against his no longer feels soft and warm but cold and hard and smooth.

He moves his head back to look into his partner’s face. Instead of the lustrous brown bedroom eyes of Tottie Truman, he fi nds himself peering into the deep shadowy sockets of a skull whose toothy leer and vacant gaze have something familiar about them.

Then recognition dawns.

Dalziel laughs.

“Hector, lad,” he cries. “I always said tha’d be the death of me, but I never meant it so literal!”

The skeletal figure does not reply but its grip tightens round the Fat Man’s broad frame and he finds his weary legs being urged into an even wilder dance which feels as if it will end only when those bony arms have squeezed out of him everything that makes up the life force—sun and wind and air and rain, good grub and mellow whisky, light and laughter—and whirled what little remains away into some icy eternity.

d e a t h c o m e s f o r t h e fa t m a n 37

For a moment he is lost. He, the great Dalziel, who on his day has danced from dusk to dawn and then washed down the Full English Breakfast with a tumbler of whisky, has no strength to resist as Death, or Hector, bears him off to oblivion.

Then at the very point of submission, something happens.

New resolve seems to course through his weary limbs like an electric shock. Then another, even stronger. A third . . . a fourth . . . a fifth . . .

Sod this for a lark! he thinks. I’ll give this bugger a run for his money afore I let him dance me off my feet!

Pressing Death or Hector even closer to his chest, he rises onto his toes and goes whirling round the room, once more the leader not the led, faster and faster, till he leaves the wild music trailing in his wake.

And this time, instead of blurring out his surroundings, the speed of the dance seems to bring them back into focus. First the high windows with their multicolored lights, and then white-clothed tables laden with provender, and finally he becomes aware that the brittle bones in his arms are once more clothed in the warm and yielding flesh of Tottie Truman from Donny.

8

B L A M E

He’s stable now, but it was a close-run thing,” said Dr. John Sowden. “With anyone else I’d have called it after the fi fth shock. But I looked down at the fat old bastard lying there and I thought, I’m not going to risk being haunted by you! And I gave him one more go.”

Dr. Sowden was an old acquaintance of the Pascoes, a relationship which had started way back in a close encounter with Andy Dalziel under suspicion of causing death by drunk driving.

“And that did the trick?” said Ellie Pascoe.

“It started his heart beating again. Which is something, but don’t get your hopes up. He’s only back to where he was. Still showing no sign of regaining consciousness. And we’ve still no idea what state he’ll be in if and when that happens. You, Peter, on the other hand are looking remarkably spry, considering.”