Reginald Hill - An April Shroud

'It sounds promising,' said Balderstone. 'When's he come back?'

'He has a return flight booked for a week on Saturday,' said Cross. 'But they won't wait that long, will they?'

Dalziel shrugged.

'I don't know. They won't want to alarm him. There's no extradition treaty with Brazil, remember. And after that balls-up with Biggs, everyone will be treading very carefully.'

'In any case,' added Balderstone, 'they haven't finished their tests yet. Mind you, it would all fit very nicely. Very nicely indeed. Now we must be off, Sergeant. Mr Dalziel will be wanting his dinner. Goodbye, sir. We'll keep in touch.'

Dalziel walked with them to the front door and watched them drive away with much unprofessional relief. When he turned to re-enter the house, Bertie was standing there.

'All right, Dalziel,' he said. 'You've got your car back now, so there's nothing to stop you following your friends.'

Dalziel pushed by him with enough force to make the stout youth stagger. He made for the kitchen, followed closely by Bertie who talked incessantly.

'This isn't a fascist state, Dalziel. You can't go around bullying people and slandering them without being made to pay for it. Just shove off, get out of our lives, go and decompose somewhere else.'

They were all in the kitchen except Hereward. There was a smell of roast duck in the air and Louisa was setting the table.

'Have they gone?' asked Bonnie.

'Yes, just,' said Dalziel. 'They asked me to say cheerioh and thank you for the tea.'

'How frightfully polite,' mocked Uniff.

'Wasn't it?' agreed Dalziel. 'More than I can say for laughing boy here.'

He sat down and smiled at Louisa.

'Don't forget to lay a place for me.'

Bonnie looked coldly at Bertie.

'What have you been saying?'

'I told him he'd outstayed his welcome. His car's back on the road and there's nothing to keep him here. There's enough to bother us without having to lock our doors because we've let a nasty creeping spy into the house.'

'He's right, you know, Andy baby,' said Uniff. 'Nothing personal, but, hell, we'd be crazy to keep you.'

'Wait a minute!' interjected Louisa. 'Who's giving orders? Let me remind you whose house you're in. If anyone decides who goes, who stays, it's Bonnie and me.'

'And what do you say, love?' asked Dalziel.

'I'm not sure.'

'Well, while you're deciding, shall we eat?' asked Dalziel.

He almost fell out of his chair as Bertie seized it from behind and pulled.

'To hell with this!' cried the stout youth. 'Just get packed, Dalziel, and get out.'

'Quieten down, lad,' said Dalziel soothingly. 'It's ill-mannered to talk like that to a guest. It's downright stupid to talk that way to a business associate.'

Something in his voice quenched Bertie's wrath. 'What do you mean?' he asked uneasily.

'What I say,' Dalziel said. 'Earlier this afternoon I accepted your chairman's invitation to invest a couple of thousand of my hard-earned savings in your business. Ask your mam. So you're no longer just my friends, you're my colleagues. And I'll tell you what, Bertie. I'll be worth my weight in fire-insurance.'

No one spoke for a moment, then Uniff began to laugh.

'Bonnie!' cried Bertie. 'It's not true?'

Slowly his mother nodded.

'Right,' said Dalziel, seizing a knife and fork and holding them in clenched hands. 'Madam Chairman, if the meeting has been called to order I think I'm ready for item number one.'

It is a truth universally acknowledged by all married men that their wives are rational, understanding, submissive and amiable only in proportion as they are distanced from their mothers.

'For God's sake, Ellie,' protested Peter Pascoe. 'We've only called in to pick up the presents. It's Saturday. I start work on Monday. I need all of tomorrow to get myself organized!'

'We can still be home by mid-morning,' said Ellie firmly. 'If you keep off the booze, that is. Which might not be a bad thing.'

'What's that mean?'

'Well,' said Ellie maliciously, 'that was a nasty case of brewer's droop you caught last Tuesday. I understood CID men were immune. You'll be back in uniform if you're not careful.'

'It was that southern beer,' protested Pascoe, grinning. 'That's why I want to get home really. Surely they'd understand?'

'No,' said Ellie. 'Mum and Dad have gone to a lot of bother. Just look at the way they've done up this bedroom. As for tonight, the table's booked and it's not been cheap, I can tell you. They're not all that well off and I'm not going to let their efforts be wasted. So resign yourself to it. And let's go downstairs before they start worrying. In my family decent folk don't screw in the afternoon.'

'All right,' sighed Pascoe. 'They said it would be like this but I never believed them. You know, I wouldn't mind so much if we were being treated to the best French cuisine in Lincolnshire. But a medieval banquet! Jesus wept!'

It was even more hideous than he anticipated. For a start the car parking was chaotic. A tall blond youth in a see-through tunic and knee-breeches was directing operations with a fine disregard for the laws of space, time and dynamics. Leaving the car was almost as dangerous as remaining in it, but they finally reached the bar where even Ellie's isn't-this-nice expression fractured momentarily when she found they were attached to a gaggle of Townswomen's Guild members, many of whom insisted on dredging up anecdotal treasures from her distant childhood. Fortunately their simultaneity made them mostly incomprehensible.

Pascoe caught Ellie's expression and smiled; and smiled yet again when he saw his father-in-law demand confirmation of the exorbitant prices the striking middle-aged barmaid had charged him for their aperitifs. He suddenly felt that the evening might prove ghastly enough for an objective student of the social sciences to be able to enjoy himself.

Inside the alleged medieval Banqueting Hall, which was more like a parody than an imitation, goodies continued to spill out of the cornucopia. The room was illuminated by electric candles whose dim religious light showed rows of benches and tables set with wooden platters, plastic-handled daggers and goblets made of some alloy so light that once filled to the brim with unctuous mead they became dangerously unstable. Which, decided Pascoe after a careful sip, was more than he was likely to do. The diners were packed close on the benches. Pascoe had Ellie's mother on one side and on the other a statuesque townswoman from whose close-pressed thighs he might have derived much harmless pleasure had it not felt strangely corrugated.

From a gallery at the far end of the hall came music vaguely Elizabethan in style, and a girl so slightly built that in the best Elizabethan tradition she might have been a boy was singing about the pleasures of her hey- nonny-nonny-no. The assembled diners, who seemed not to have been much deterred by the price of pre-dinner drinks, joined in the chorus with prurient enthusiasm.

Pascoe leaned over to Ellie who sat opposite.

'I was wrong,' he bellowed. 'I think I shall enjoy this.'

Behind him someone was beating a tin plate and a strangely familiar voice was shouting, 'My lords and ladies, pray be silent for the entry of the first course.'

No one took much notice except Ellie who ignored Pascoe's words and stared over his shoulder with an expression of pantomimic incredulity.

'Peter,' she said. 'You'll never believe this.'

Slowly Pascoe turned. What he saw came as such a shock he had to use the townswoman's thigh as a support.

'My God!' he said.

Standing at the far end of the hall clad in a green velvet gown and wearing a floppy blue cap embellished with a peacock's feather was Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.