Reginald Hill: Deadheads

'Deadheading,' he echoed.

'Yes,' she said, beginning to enjoy the pedagogic mood. 'Because you cut off the deadheads, you see.'

'So the young flowers can grow?' he said, frowning.

'That's right.'

This was the first time she had ever seen the boy really interested in anything. His expression was almost animated as he watched her work. She felt quite pleased with herself, like a scientist making an unexpected break-through. Not that she had ever felt it as a loss that she and the boy did not communicate. On the contrary, it suited her very well. But this particular form of intercourse which underlined her own superiority was far from unpleasant. She almost forgot to be angry, though the evidence of old Caldicott's indolence was there in her plastic bucket to keep her wrath nicely warm. As though touched by her thought, the boy held up the bucket to catch the falling blooms.

She regarded him with the beginnings of approval. It occurred to her that she might by chance have stumbled on the key to his soul. Surprised by such a fanciful metaphor, she hesitated for a moment. But then her unexpected fantasy, like a bird released from the narrow cage in which it has been all its life confined, went soaring. Suppose that in Patrick's urban bed-sit-conditioned body there lurked a natural gardener, longing to be called forth? This would make him in the instant a valuable — and costless — labourer! Then, as he grew richer in experience and knowledge, he could take over more and more responsibility for the real work of planning and propagation. In a few short years, perhaps, old Caldicott's surly reign could be brought to a satisfying abrupt end, and with it the assumed succession of the gangling Dick and the unspeakable Brent.

For the first time in her life, she bestowed the full glow of her smile on the small boy and said in a tone of unprecedented warmth, 'Would you like to try, Patrick? Here, let me show you. You take hold of the deadhead firmly so that you don't let any petals fall and at the same time you have a good grip on the stem. Then look down the stem till you see a leaf, preferably with five leaflets and pointing out from the centre of the bush. There's one, you see? And look, just where the leaf joins the stem you can see a tiny bud. That's the bud we want to encourage to grow. So about a quarter-inch above it, we cut the stem at an angle, with one clean slice of the knife. So. There. You see? No raggedness to encourage disease. A clean cut. Some people use secateurs but I think that no matter how good they are, there's always the risk of some crushing. I prefer a knife. The very finest steel — never stint on your tools, Patrick — and with the keenest edge. Here now, would you like to try? Take the knife, but be careful. It's very sharp indeed. It was your Great-uncle Eddie's. He planted most of these roses all by himself, did you know that? And he never used anything but this knife for pruning and deadheading. Here, take the handle and see what you can do.'

She handed the boy the pruning knife. He took it gingerly and examined it with a pleasing reverence.

'Now let's see you remove this deadhead,' she commanded. 'Remember what I've told you. Grasp the flower firmly. Patrick! Grasp the flower. Patrick! Are you listening, boy?'

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.

(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 Dűrer 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.