Reginald Hill - An April Shroud

'Excuse me, Mr… er…?''Dalziel. Superintendent.'

'Superintendent. I'd rather you didn't use my Christian name. I've studied a bit of criminology and I know it helps to establish a proper subordinate and familiar relationship with a suspect, but you know who I am now and I'd prefer to talk at the level of equals. We're colleagues in a sense after all, don't you know, you in the public, me in the private sector.'

The words came at a rush and Dalziel's first impulse was to laugh. But the man's attempt at dignity was not merely comic. In any case Dalziel wanted information and wanted it fast. He should be in the coffee shop now.

'I'm sorry, Mr Spinx. It is Mister? Good. But just a few questions if you'd be so kind. What precisely is the case you're working on at this moment.'

'The same as you, I imagine, Superintendent,' said Spinx. 'Mr Conrad Fielding's death.'

'Why should that interest you?'

'Any insurance company looks closely at any large claim on it, you must know that. We're probably even more suspicious than the police.' He spoke with pride.

'And there was the phone call,' prompted Dalziel.

'Yes. You'd know all about that, of course. Such things cannot be ignored, you understand.'

'Tell me about it again,' commanded Dalziel.

'Certainly. Wait a moment. Here we are. My book of words.'

He produced a plastic-covered notebook from his inside pocket, thumbed through it, his lips pattering together in time to the riffled pages, finally pursing in a reluctantly proffered kiss as he found his place.

'Here we are. It was a woman who phoned. Or so the oral evidence suggests. Hello.''

'What?' said Dalziel.

That's me,' explained Spinx. 'I've got the whole conversation. Hello! Then she said, You thinking of paying any insurance money on Conrad Fielding? Well, I wouldn't. Then I said, Hello! I was playing for time, you understand. Who's that speaking? She said, Never mind that. Just ask yourself what a man like that would be doing up a ladder in his condition. I said Hello! and she rang off.'

He shut the book and looked hopefully at Dalziel like a dog waiting to be patted. The fat man reached forward and plucked the book from his hands.

'Let's have a look,' he said opening it. 'Christ! What's this? Egyptian?'

'No,' said Spinx with pride, peering at the line of minute matchstick men which marched over the paper. 'My own shorthand code. A method I devised to preserve confidentiality, you understand.'

'It does that, right enough,' said Dalziel returning the book. 'So you told the police like a good citizen and did a bit of looking round yourself. That's what you were doing at the Lady Hamilton, was it? Keeping tabs on the family?'

'It was a last fling. I thought a little close observation might lead me to something,' admitted Spinx. 'It didn't and I'm having terrible trouble with my expenses. I only had an omelette, but the prices there are really shocking.'

'So you found nowt,' said Dalziel, impatiently glancing at his watch again. He was late. They were at the corner of the square in which the car was parked and he halted there, restraining Spinx with one brutish paw. 'The inquest said accident. So now you pay?'

'Well, we would have done,' said Spinx. 'Indeed the letter had been written and was ready for dispatch yesterday. Then I heard about you.'

'About me?' said Dalziel in surprise. He recalled

Spinx's reaction in the phone-box. So it's you he had said when Dalziel identified himself. Which must mean…

'She phoned again, yesterday afternoon.'

The book was opened once more.

'Hello /' said Spinx.

'Just the gist,' growled Dalziel. 'Forget the witty interchange.'

'She said that if we were thinking of paying the money, we ought to know that the police were still looking into the business. There was one actually staying in the house at present. That was all. So we decided to bide our time again, you understand.'

'Well bloody well,' said Dalziel. 'It was the same woman?'

'I believe so.'

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'Listen, Mr Spinx, I've got to go now but I may want to talk to you again.'

'If you ring the number on my card, they'll find me,' said Spinx. 'Before you go, Superintendent, without breaching professional ethics, can you give me any hint of how your investigations are going?'

Dalziel examined the eager face before him. He didn't like small men and he didn't like private investigation and he didn't like the assumption that he had anything in common with this pathetic shadow. On the other hand Spinx wouldn't believe the truth and there was no point in antagonizing him by the rude rejoinder which was ever ready to leap from his tongue.

'Can't say,' said Dalziel. 'You understand?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Good. Now we mustn't be seen together. Cheerio!'

He stepped smartly into the square and strode towards the baker's shop. As he approached Bonnie emerged from the doorway with Tillotson and Mavis close behind.

'Hello,' said Bonnie. 'We thought you must have got lost, though God knows how in this place!'

'No, I just went a bit farther than I thought,' said Dalziel. 'Got your shopping?'

'Yes. We're ready for off, if you don't mind missing your coffee.'

They moved towards the car.

'Look,' said Tillotson. 'There's Sphincter.'

They followed his gaze. Standing at the corner of the street from which Dalziel hoped they had not seen him emerge was Spinx who stepped back furtively when he realized they were looking at him.

'Who?'

'His name's Spinx,' said Bonnie. 'He works for the insurance company that's being so bloody about coughing up for Conrad. The children call him Sphincter. Very apt.'

'He's just doing his job,' protested Mavis.

'He shouldn't have chosen such a nauseating job,' said Bonnie calmly. 'Strange, isn't it, Mr Dalziel, how little bankruptcy means to those with nothing to lose?'

It was hard to tell if she were getting at Spinx or at Mavis.

The drive home was silent, but when they reached the house they found plenty to talk about. The representatives of the Gumbelow Foundation had rung and confirmed they would be coming that afternoon bringing with them a photographer, a freelance feature-writer whom Dalziel had never heard of, and a couple of men from the BBC with sound-recording equipment. For a while it was touch and go whether Hereward Fielding would include this under the interdict he had placed upon television, but recollection of an unnamed kindness offered to him by a Third Programme producer in 1952 swayed the balance.

'But I will not recite for them,' Fielding averred fiercely. 'I never have done. Have you heard Eliot? Like an old man straining on a bedpan.'

Dalziel left them to their excitements and, pausing only to pick up a meat pie and a bottle of stout from the do-it-yourself lunch offering in the kitchen, he made his way towards the Banqueting Hall. When the investigatory mood was upon him he regarded open doors as invitations and closed doors as affronts and he peered into everywhere that wasn't locked. He found nothing of interest except a couple of rooms which looked as if some large and short-sighted squirrel had decided to use them as store houses. They were piled high with junk, old furniture, planks, tree branches even, and festooned with moth-eaten curtains and old clothes which would have been rejected by even the most desperate jumble sale.

The Banqueting Hall promised even less in the way of stimulation. He peered down at the patch of floor on which his memory of Cross's photograph told him Conrad Fielding had lain with an electric drill burrowing through his rib cage. A bit of gristly pork had got stuck in his teeth and he picked it out with a fingernail and burped. The floor had obviously been well scrubbed. Who by? he wondered as he placed his bottle and the remnants of the pie carefully on a wooden trestle and dragged a ladder from the shadows under the gallery. He was a careful man and after he had placed it against the wall, he wedged the trestle against the bottom rungs for extra stability before beginning his ascent. By the time he reached the level of the gallery he was wishing he hadn't bothered. The rungs felt far from secure under his bulk and the floor seemed a long way away. He reached across to the balustrade running across the gallery and felt somewhat reassured by the extra support.