Reginald Hill - An Advancement of Learning

“Is it important, without a motive?”

“You’ve changed your tune, lad.”

Pascoe shrugged.

“I’ve given him up for Girling. But I think he’s a strong runner for Anita.”

“And no connection between the two?”

“No, sir. Coincidence. Or perhaps the connection is merely that the discovery of the body under the statue put the idea of murder before everybody. You could get away with it well, nearly. The body had lain there all those years and might have lain there for ever if it hadn’t been for a turn of fate.”

Dalziel yawned mightily, sunlight glistening off his fillings.

“You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘ know, I’m sick of this place and most of the people in it. I don’t understand it, that’s my trouble. My generation, most of ‘, worked bloody hard, and accepted deprivation, and fought a bloody war, and put our trust in politicians, so our kids could have the right to come to places like this. And after a few days here, I wonder if it was bloody well worth it.”

He was silent. Pascoe felt obliged to say something.

“These places don’t just train people, you know. They help them to grow up in the right kind of mental environment.”

Dalziel looked at him more coldly than ever before.

“I bet you grew up more in your first six months with the force than in the twenty years before.”

Pascoe shrugged again. There were arguments, he knew; but he couldn’t be bothered, didn’t have the energy or inclination, to use them now.

“To get back to the case,’ he said, ‘ now?” The,’ said Dalziel, ”m going to sit here, and see who comes to talk to me. Then I’m going to drive into Headquarters just to liven things up there. As for you, well, there’re just two or three things that bother me still about Fallowfield. Why no note? Who had a go at his cottage before Disney? And why did he come all the way to college before killing himself? Let me know the answers before supper. And then I’ll tell you who killed everybody.”

He closed his eyes and began snoring so realistically that it was hard to tell whether he was really asleep or not.

Some hope, thought Pascoe. This is one that won’t be solved before Christmas. Girling’s perhaps never.

One of Dalziel’s questions kept running through his head. Why did Fallowfield come all the way to college to kill himself? I know the answer to that, he thought. But if he did, he wasn’t telling himself.

Stuff it, he thought and snatched half an hour to read the Sunday papers. There was nothing about the previous night’s events. Too late perhaps. The murders themselves got a bit of space though the dailies had picked most of the meat from the bones. Dalziel was mentioned. They made him sound quite good. I suppose he is quite good, thought Pascoe reluctantly.

Out of the window he saw the fat man stir and stretch himself. It was time, he decided, that he should do the same.

The rest of the afternoon he wasted, talking first to Disney, then to Sandra. Both denied absolutely removing any suicide note. Disney was back in her old form. A couple of hours’ meditation had rinsed any Vestigial traces of guilt from her lily-white soul. Pascoe could have gladly pushed her teeth down her throat, but he had to admit he was convinced by the time he left her. An after-effect of the Disney treatment was that he was twice as rough with Sandra as he might else have been, bringing her close to tears, but again coming away convinced she had been telling the truth.

He then spent more than an hour searching and researching the cottage and, after that, the laboratory. Both searches were doomed to failure, he knew before he started. But something in himself demanded that they should be done again.

When he returned to the study, it was fast approaching dinner time and Dalziel, red as a Victoria plum, had just come back from town. He noted Pascoe’s frame of mind and for once exercised some tact. From somewhere he had obtained a jugful of ice-cubes and a soda syphon. He splashed an ounce of Glen Grant into a glass, followed it with a handful of ice and a jet of soda, and handed it silently to his sergeant.

“No luck?’ he said.

“No.”

The neither. You’d think I had the plague. Every bugger at HQ thinks I’m having the time of my life.”

He emptied his glass and said diffidently, ”ll have looked in his clothes, of course.”

“I should think so.”

Pascoe too finished his drink, taking an ice-cube into his mouth and crushing it between his teeth.

“But I’ll go and see.”

“As you will. You could phone.”

“No. I’ll look for myself. It’s absurd. There’s something, I’ll swear.

Perhaps when I’ve cleared away all these impossible possibilities

… And I’ll check with the ambulance men just in case.”

“You think this note’s important.”

Pascoe stared at his superior.

“You said he seemed the kind of man who would want to explain himself.”

“Did I? Then it must be true.”

After Pascoe had left, the fat man hefted thoughtfully in his hand the set of master keys he had taken from Sandra Firth.

The,’ he murmured to himself, I’ll just have my dinner and do a bit of pedigree checking.”

Dinner was particularly good and he washed it down with the rest of his Glen Grant, which in its turn brought on the need to rest. It was almost nine o’clock when he finally let himself stealthily into the admin, block.

After all, he told himself, as he gently eased open a filing cabinet drawer in the registrar’s office, half the bloody students in the place have seen them, so why not me?

Them were the staffs’ confidential files. He skipped lightly through them, pausing here and there, till he came to Fallowfield’s. Now he lit a cigarette, sat back at his ease and began to read slowly and thoroughly.

His academic qualifications he had already seen on the curriculum vitae.

They were excellent, a very good first degree and a couple of high post-graduate qualifications. But it was in the comments made by those who taught and employed him that Dalziel was most interested. He read the letter from the headmaster of Coltsfoot College twice. It was couched in terms of high praise. Great stress was laid on Fallowfield’s ability to influence thought, his progressive thinking and his pre-eminent suitability to work with older students. Almost too much stress, thought Dalziel. He had many years’ experience of reading and hearing between the lines.

On an impulse he picked up the phone and when he got the operator, gave her the number of Coltsfoot College. You never knew your luck.

While she was trying to establish a connection, he helped himself to a few select student files and began to read them. He didn’t know his luck.

Pascoe knew his luck. It was rotten. The clothes had contained nothing helpful, the doctor who had examined Fallowfield could offer no useful contribution other than reiterating the cause and probable time of death; and the ambulance men, who were off-duty and had to be tracked to their homes, were no help either and in fact took umbrage at the suggestion that something other than the body might have been removed from the lab.

Pascoe realized he had not been as diplomatic as was his wont and after looking in at Headquarters where the heavy ironies of his mock-envious colleagues did not help, he went round to his flat for a change of clothing and a bite to eat. There was a stack of mail, mostly circulars, and he tossed them on the table beside the telephone. He made himself a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich and sat down in the ancient but extremely comfortable armchair which stood beneath the open window.

An hour later he woke with the cup of cold tea miraculously unspilt on the arm of the chair and the sandwich, one bite missing, still clutched in his right hand. He saw the time, groaned and pushed himself unsteadily out of the chair, knocking the teacup on to the floor.