Reginald Hill - Death Comes for the Fat Man

“Never you worry, luv,” said Dalziel. “Couple of weeks and I’ll be right as rain. Then Youngman and yon Kewley-Hodge wanker had better look out.”

There was the sound of a chair being pushed back. Cap Marvell had removed her headphones in time to catch Dalziel’s last remarks.

“Right as rain?” she said scornfully. “Andy, if in a couple of weeks you’ve reached the stage where you can wipe your own bum, you’ll be doing well.”

The Pascoes grinned. Cap Marvell had a line in upper-class coarseness which was more than a match for the Fat Man’s vernacular bawdry.

Cap went on, “This Kewley-Hodge you mentioned, would he be one of the Derbyshire Kewley-Hodges, or Kewleys as were?”

“That’s right,” said Pascoe. “Of Kewley Castle, near Hathersage. You know the family?”

“If they live in a sodding castle, of course she’d know the family,” said Dalziel, clearly stung by the bum-wiping comment. “Had to have an op to get the silver spoon out of her mouth when she took up with me. On private insurance, of course.”

They were made for each other, these two, thought Pascoe.

“Not really,” said Cap, ignoring the Fat Man, which was another of her rare talents. “But Edie Hodge, whose name got tagged onto theirs, was at St. Dot’s when I was there.”

“St. Dot’s?”

“St. Dorothy’s Academy, near Matlock.”

“I think we used to play them at rugger,” said Dalziel.

“She must have been a lot older than you,” said Pascoe.

Cap laughed and said, “Ellie, you’ve trained your husband well. Yes, but only a couple of years. Of course that makes a lot of difference at that age, but she was a legend in her own lunch hour. Our answer to Lady Chatterley.”

“That sounds interesting,” said Pascoe, recalling Hot Rod’s assurance that Edie was a very sexy lady.

“It was. Kitbag-that’s Dame Kitty Bagnold, our head-caught her bonking in the potting shed with the college gardener. Or rather with his son and assistant who was, I recall, quite dishy. Sex-on-a-shovel we used to call him.”

“Bloody male hamster wouldn’t be safe in them places,” muttered Dalziel.

“So what happened?” asked Pascoe.

“Boy vanished. I think his dad sent him out on other jobs thereafter. As for Edie, it was pack your bags and never darken this doorstep again.”

“Working-class employee gets off scot free, rich fee-paying pupil is sent down the road. Bet the Tory tabloids loved that!” said Ellie, hoping to steer the conversation into more general areas, away from anything no matter how distantly connected with CAT.

It didn’t work.

Cap said, “Kitbag must have decided that good gardeners were harder to come by than rich kids and Edie only had a couple of terms to go anyway. She was a real school heroine till she ruined her image a couple of months later by marrying Alexander Kewley.”

“What was wrong with that?” asked Pascoe.

“For a start he was nearly thirty years older than she was and it wasn’t as if he were stinking rich or had a title or anything. He was a trustee of the school and he’d show up at Speech Day and Founder’s Day and Sports Day, especially at Sports Day. Wherever young flesh was being flashed, there would Alexander the Great be also. He was always chatting up Edie-I think he knew her father-and she’d do her cock-teasing thing. But no one imagined she would ever let him get closer than teasing distance.”

“So why did she do it?” wondered Pascoe.

Why is he always so fucking curious? Ellie asked herself.

Cap smiled reminiscently and went on, “Maybe so she could turn up at the next Founder’s Day with doting hubby and gurgling infant and queen it over Kitbag. I remember at one point Edie gave her the baby to hold while she tucked into the buffet, and the brat immediately filled his nappy.”

There was a loud snore from the bed. Dalziel was pretending to have gone to sleep. Or perhaps the poor old sod wasn’t pretending.

Ellie saw her chance and said softly, “Peter, I think perhaps we ought to go.”

“Yes, of course.”

Cap pressed a button to lower the bed’s backrest. Supine, he looked even paler and frailer. They moved quietly to the door. Cap followed them into the corridor.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “Bring Rosie next time. He’s very keen to see her.”

“We practically had to lock her up to stop her coming today,” said Ellie. “But we thought, best leave it till we saw how he looked. How do you think he’s doing, Cap?”

“Fine,” said Cap. “But not half as fine as he wants to pretend. It’s going to be a long haul to get him back to where he was, and you know Andy, he’s a one-mighty-leap man. But don’t worry, we’ll get him there eventually.”

Her breezy confidence was reassuring, and Pascoe needed to be reassured. While there’d been flashes of the old Dalziel, what had been disturbingly constant was the sense of change, his fear that something had happened inside to dilute the Fat Man’s essence, perhaps that something was broken beyond repair.

He tried to dislodge the distressing notion from his mind by returning to the niggle provoked by what Cap had told them.

“Why do you think Alexander Kewley agreed to change his name?” he asked.

“Don’t know. Maybe because he was seriously strapped for cash and the Hodges had it dripping out of their ears,” said Cap.

“That makes it sound like a deal,” said Pascoe.

Ellie said, trying not very successfully to hide her irritation, “Stop being a cop!”

Cap said, “I’m still in touch with old Kitbag. Could ask her about Edie Hodge if you like.”

Ellie gave him her Gorgon glare and Pascoe began to mutter, “No really, don’t bother,” when a thin reedy voice called from within the room, bringing to all their minds memories of past Dalzielesque summonses that could drown all church bells within an acre.

Cap pushed open the door and went back inside.

Ellie said, “Peter, you are going to leave it alone, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course I am. Honest. Normal service resumed. I promised, didn’t I?”

She looked at him distrustingly but before she could respond, Cap reappeared.

“He woke up and realized you’d gone and he says there’s something he wanted to say to you, Peter. Do you mind?”

“Of course not.”

As the door closed behind Pascoe, Cap looked at Ellie curiously and said, “You two OK, are you?”

“Yes. Fine,” said Ellie shortly. Then she added, because she disliked prevarication, and Cap though not close was a friend, “He promised me all this business with CAT was behind him. He’s lucky to have got out of it as lightly as he did. I just think that he ought to give it a rest and settle back into things here.”

“It was Andy who wanted to hear all about it,” said Cap.

“That’s what Peter said, but I can tell, it’s stirred it all up again.”

“Ellie,” said Cap gently. “One thing I’ve learned since I partnered up with Andy is we need to be linked together by a long and loose rope.”

“Peter’s not Andy.”

“Of course he isn’t. But the rope linking them is in some ways a lot shorter and tighter than ours.”

The two women found things to look at in the empty corridor. They knew they were in a minefield where even a cautious step might end in an explosion, and so they stood in a silence waiting for rescue.

There was a saving silence too at Dalziel’s bedside. To Pascoe it seemed that the Fat Man had gone to sleep again, and he felt relieved, suspecting that anything that was said now was merely going to confirm his worst fears.

He began to turn away.

A sound from the bed stopped him and he leaned over the still figure.