Reginald Hill - Good Morning, Midnight

“Precautions?”

“He refers to your relationship with Kay at least five times. So who apart from ourselves are we going to play it to?”

“You could have burnt it, said nowt.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was concerned some future situation might arise in which I wished I had played it to you.”

Dalziel whistled again, this time the breath going in not out, then said, “You any idea what he’s talking about, Wieldy?”

The sergeant thought for a moment.

“Yes,” he said.

“Bloody hell. If this were a sodding democracy, I’d be outvoted. All right, let’s play the democratic game. We’ve all heard it. What next?”

“Now we burn it,” said Pascoe.

“Why?”

“Because, like I said, we can’t use it. And because we don’t know how much of it is true.”

“Which bit in particular?”

“Any of it. For instance, we don’t know what really happened between Kay and her husband. Did he lay hands on her? Was there an accident? Or did she take the ice axe and hit him in self-defence? Or was she so angry and fearful when he threatened to keep her and Helen permanently apart that she deliberately and with premeditation drove the axe into his head?”

“Or mebbe he wasn’t dead at all,” said Wield.

“Eh?” said Dalziel.

“Waverley’s right about an axe falling on you from a wall. Could knock you out, leave a lot of blood, but chances of it killing you are pretty small. Even a single blow by a woman isn’t all that likely to do the trick. Top of the head’s one of the hardest parts of the body. When Waverley realizes Maciver’s just unconscious, he’s got a problem. Call ambulance and police? Suddenly him and Gallipot have got to explain themselves. It’s going to be a headline case, this business about the wife trying to shag the son, all that. Very messy once the papers get their big yellow teeth into it. But if Maciver’s dead, and he can fake it as suicide, all the problems go away. And Kay thinking she did it means her co-operation is guaranteed for ever.”

“So it’s not a corpse he fakes the suicide on,” said Pascoe. “That would be a lot easier than fooling a pathologist about the cause and time of death. Which means all that stuff about the central heating was just a smoke screen for my benefit.”

“Yes. He’d be willing to admit a lot to get you off his back, but likely he reckoned that murder would be an admission too far. Which is what it was if he just tied Pal Senior up and came back to finish the job a day or two later.”

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Dalziel. “You two have got more stories than yon Arabian bint who didn’t want to get topped. How about it’s all a lie, and Maciver really did kill himself, and Waverley just thinks he can make me run scared, thinking I’ve got myself involved in a cover-up?”

“Possible,” said Pascoe. “Possibly also Waverley really is just a VAT inspector with a very active fantasy life and an obsession with Miss Maciver. We don’t know. In fact we’ve got a whole bunch of statements from just about everyone involved in this business, and I’ll tell you what, there’s not a one of them I’m one hundred per cent certain of. And that includes even those I think believe they’re telling the truth.”

“So what are we going to do?” said Wield.

Pascoe liked the we. A lesser man would have said you.

He looked at Dalziel and said, “Sir?”

He said, “There’s nowt we can do about any of the big stuff, sanction busting, politics, all that shit. And despite your fancy theories about murder, I reckon this guy Waverley’s untouchable. The best we could do by hassling him is get his boss, Mr sodding Gedye, nervous enough to have Waverley permanently retired. But we’re all happy that Pal Junior actually did kill himself, right? For which in my book he deserves a vote of thanks. Always had him marked for a right nasty bastard.”

“The blue beer and the bullshit were quite amusing,” ventured Pascoe.

“I give you that. Yon so-called captain had it coming,” agreed Dalziel. “But it don’t make up for trying to destroy his kid sister’s marriage, does it?”

“I didn’t say that. His mental condition was, to say the least, suspect. But in fairness to him, I don’t believe he ever thought there was a real chance of getting Kay sent down for murdering him. Embarrass her, piss her off, yes. But in the end he knew we were bound to work it out. His real aim was to make us think seriously about the circumstances of his father’s death.”

“So why not come to us with his suspicions? Or leave a letter detailing them?” asked Wield.

“Perhaps because he thought that with Kay having such good friends in high places, any suggestion that Ash-Mac’s management might have been involved would be kicked into touch without a second thought. In any case, accusations contained in suicide notes are always treated with a pinch of salt and he had no real evidence to offer. So he set out to show us how it could be done. By imitating the exact circumstances, he ensured that any investigation of his own death would be an investigation of his father’s also. He dropped the letter addressed to the Officer i/c the Maciver Murder Enquiry in the post after the last pick-up on Wednesday evening so that it wouldn’t reach us till Friday. He left Gallipot’s card in his wallet so that we’d be straight on to him. And he’d given Gallipot a key to Casa Alba and instructed him to e-mail any incriminating photo he got to Mrs Lockridge, to give us another possible link to the man.”

“Some link, with the bugger dead,” growled Dalziel. “You saying that was down to Waverley?”

“That would be my guess,” said Pascoe. “The funny buggers, certainly. Pal knew that when they caught on what was happening, Gallipot would be at risk, but he thought we’d get to him before they did, and that Jake would reckon the best way to defuse a potentially deadly secret was to share it.”

“So everyone’s been jerking us about,” said Wield. “And we don’t know the half of it. I don’t much care for being kept in the dark.”

“Aye, where do we go from here, Pete?” said Dalziel. “You started with one suspicious death and now you seem to be saying there could be at least two more, Gallipot and Pal Senior.”

“And what about Tony Kafka? Is he on the run, or what?” said Wield.

Tony Kafka who wanted to be a good American…

In his mind’s eye Pascoe was seeing Kay Kafka run out of Cothersley Hall to embrace her husband as he left the previous afternoon. There had been something very final in that embrace. She had clung to him as if she meant to keep him with her by main force. He had turned away from the intensity of the scene, feeling like a voyeur. When she came back into the room she’d said, “Tony is a good man. He wants to be a good American,” as if this were an aim fraught with difficulty and peril.

He pushed the scene out of his mind like a slide and replaced it with another.

After talking with Waverley, he had watched the Jag drive away and then returned to the cottage.

“Time to be off, Hat,” he’d said.

“So soon, Mr Pascoe?” said Miss Mac. “Wasn’t there something you wanted to ask me about?”

“No need. Just a small matter that Mr Waverley was able to clear up. Ready, Hat?”

Bowler clearly wasn’t. He began to rise with all the reluctance of a small boy told it was time to abandon his computer game and go to bed.

Miss Mac said, “I must say I don’t reckon much to the youth of today, Mr Pascoe. In my time, if I’d offered to help a poor old pensioner with her garden, I’d have been too ashamed to leave the job half-done. What do you say?”

Pascoe said, “I think it would be most reprehensible behaviour. What on earth are you thinking of, Bowler? But I’ve got to go so you won’t have a lift.”