Reginald Hill: A pinch of snuff

Pascoe went into the house.

Dalziel hit him across the face.

'Peter! Peter!' he said.

'Get stuffed,' choked Pascoe.

'You OK? Here, have a drink of water.'

'I'm OK, I'm OK,' said Pascoe.

'I'll get you something stronger just now. For Christ's sake, lad, you've seen worse than that, and in the flesh too.'

'I know it, I know it,' said Pascoe.

He had too. He had seen bruised and battered flesh; shot-gun wounds like spoon-holes in a bramble pie; bodies ballooned with long immersion or devoured by long decay. But these he had somehow dealt with, somehow reduced to facts, somehow eventually controlled with his intellect. But this girl dying silently on the screen in the half light of the Calli viewing-room had slipped through his defences as though they didn't exist.

'OK now?' repeated Dalziel. 'If you're going to honk, do it under the carpet. I'll get back and tell that lot in there you were caught short. Can't have them thinking you're soft. Though it might not harm. There's some as reckons the ACC's as bent as a Boxing Day turd.'

Dalziel went out.

Thanks, mouthed Pascoe after him. He meant it. He'd sat through as much of the film as he could but in the end he'd had to make for the exit. Once through, he had relaxed the effort of will which had carried him thus far and folded up into the arms of Dalziel who'd followed him out.

He rose now and went to the window. Wilkinson Square looked peaceful and well ordered in the spring dusk. If the vigilantes knew what had just been shown in the Calliope Kinema Club, they would surely have come running out to tear the place down brick by brick. At least Pascoe hoped they would. But there was no certainty. We all like it, Ray Crabtree had said. It's just a matter of degree. Well, that was just special pleading, Pascoe now recognized. But for any plea whatsoever to be possible in defence of this made a mockery of civilization.

Crabtree. He shook his head wearily, but was glad to have something else to concentrate his thoughts on. Dalziel had used him there. Sooner or later there must be a confrontation about that, but Pascoe could already map out the route via which he would be conveyed to a state of indignant impotence.

It was clear now that Crabtree and Homeric had been under investigation for some time. Normally when suspicion falls upon a police officer, action is swift and open. Fellow officers are naturally reluctant to become involved in any clandestine investigation of one of their own number. Whose turn will it be next? But when a neighbouring Task Force in the process of closing down its own local pornography industry had chanced on a trail which led to Homeric and eventually to Crabtree, it had been decided to keep things very quiet till the full extent of the business could be seen.

'Great thing about Homeric is that they admit pornography's their business,' Dalziel had said as they drove away from Hay Hall. 'Disarming, that. Please, sir, tell us if we go too far.'

'How far's too far?' Pascoe had asked.

'Not for me to say, lad,' said Dalziel grimly. 'But if there is a too far then Homeric must be going it, for we reckoned they were going all the way.'

He turned in his seat as he spoke and looked at Pascoe.

'I don't really mean we,' he said. 'Not my investigation, you understand that? I had to know, of course. But I wasn't running things.'

When Pascoe had come along with Shorter's story, Dalziel had tried to wet-blanket it. In any case it seemed too far-fetched to be possible. But once Pascoe had struck out on his own by contacting Homeric direct, Dalziel had pushed him on.

'I knew if you went to Harrogate, you'd start chatting to Crabtree. Now, the Homeric lot would be having a go at him too, asking what the hell was going on. There had to be something for him to say. Old mate P. Pascoe being a bit over-conscientious, that fitted the book nicely.'

'You could have told me,' said Pascoe sourly.

'Would you have done it?'

Pascoe considered.

'In any case,' continued Dalziel, 'you might have turned something up. You certainly stirred something up. At the Calli.'

The connection between Homeric and the Calli had been vague.

'We knew that Arany was tied up with Homeric in some way, but you've got to remember that they were openly in the porn game. Arany was an agent. Also he had got a share in a Film Club. So what was more natural? But just how much he was mixed up in the under-the-counter stuff we didn't know. All that fuss by the fuddy-duddies gave us an excuse to take a close look at the Calli and old Gilbert. But it was looking pretty well OK till two things happened. Miss Alice and you.'

'Look, sir,' said Pascoe. 'Can we just get two things straight. Who killed Haggard?'

'Arany, of course,' said Dalziel in exasperation. 'I don't think he meant to, but he did. And those stupid sods let him slip through.'

This was the only fly in his ointment. Despite Trumper's assurances, Arany had got out of the grounds of Hay Hall with no bother at all. On the credit side, his tip about the fireplace had proved very helpful and the boot of the car was laden with material they had found stored away there.

'Second thing,' said Pascoe. 'Why doesn't Burkill want to mangle Arany? They acted like old mates.'

'They are,' said Dalziel. 'Thing is, Arany knew nothing about Sandra doing that film, though he was instrumental in getting her involved. She'd met Toms and the Homeric lot a couple of times when Arany had taken her out to Hay Hall to see some filming in process. The clean bits, let me add. He was very careful of her morals, poor bastard. Toms spotted her potential, though. I suspect she very much played the little girl with Uncle Maurice, you know how ruthless kids can be, milking him for all he was worth. But with other men, she could be very different. And Toms, the big film man, all that glamour – well, it was a crazy thing to do on both sides, but they did it, made the film, then she came along and said she'd got herself knocked up.'

'Who by?' asked Pascoe.

'Who knows?' said Dalziel. 'She made it clear that if the balloon went up, she'd blame Toms or her fellow stars. He promised to fix up an abortion. Then her mother cottoned on.'

'So she dropped Shorter in it?'

'Aye. That might have been a fail-safe story devised by Toms. Probably was.'

Pascoe nodded vigorously and assumed an I-told-you-so expression.

'Don't get too cocky, Peter,' warned Dalziel. 'Ask yourself why they concocted that particular story.'

'For God's sake!' snapped Pascoe. 'You're not going to go on with that business, are you?'

'Of course not. No jury on earth'd convict him when this other lot came out,' said Dalziel. 'But that doesn't make him innocent. But where was I? Oh aye. You start probing. Toms rings Penny Latimer who's far from clean, but I don't think she's in the muck much beyond her thighs. Christ, can you imagine them thighs? One of those across you and you wouldn't be up for breakfast.'

'So Toms rings,' said Pascoe impatiently.

'Right. Penny tells him about you sniffing around. Toms is worried. First of all the film Droit de Seigneur does have something in it that he didn't think anyone would notice. He's evidently a great one for patching things together

'I told you that,' said Pascoe.

'So you did. Also he's worried about the actual film. Now Blengdale had this.'

'How do you know?'

The fat man chortled in glee.

'It's surprising how much he was able to spill out just for me keeping Brian Burkill from working him over again.'

This then was the explanation of Dalziel's long delay at Hay Hall. A little torture session in the woods. Pascoe knew he ought to feel disgusted.

'Next he rings Haggard. No answer. Alice cuts the wire. Finally he rings Arany, tells him what's up, says he's worried something may be going on at the Calli, would he slip round and take a look.'