Reginald Hill - An April Shroud

Pascoe glanced at his watch. It was twenty past ten. The bar closed in ten minutes.

'Ellie,' he said. 'Your mum and dad will be wondering where we've got to. It would be kind to reassure them.'

'When policemen start being kind to their in-laws, let wives beware,' said Ellie. 'What are you going to do?'

'I'll hang on here for a while. Look, if they want to head for home, tell them not to worry. I'll cadge a lift into Orburn later.'

Ellie glanced from her husband to the fat man in the floppy hat.

'OK,' she said.

After she had gone the two men kept their silence for a while. Dalziel lit yet another cigarette and Pascoe prowled lightly round the room peering at the old man's books and examining the furniture.

'None of your antiques here,' said Dalziel finally. 'But if yon cupboard's open, you'll mebbe find a drink in it.'

The cupboard was indeed open and Pascoe straightened up with a bottle of Remy Martin in one hand and Glen Grant in the other. Hereward had not put all his money into the business. The scotch had been purchased in recognition of Dalziel's personal taste and the fat man had acknowledged this kindness by spending at least an hour each night sitting here with the old poet drinking and exchanging tales of the criminal and the literary underworlds.

Pascoe poured Dalziel a scotch and helped himself to a generous measure of cognac.

'This man, Balderstone,' said Pascoe. 'What's he like?'

'Not bad.'

'Is he relying much on you? For inside information, I mean?'

'He'd be bloody daft if he was,' said Dalziel acidly.

Pascoe sipped his drink thoughtfully. At least there was no self-deception here.

'So what happens tomorrow when nothing happens tonight?' he asked.

'You're a detective,' said Dalziel. 'They've questioned everyone twice, taken statements. What'd you do?'

'Well, normally I'd go and solve some easier crime, and thank God this one was down to Essex, not me!'

'Now suppose you're the killer. What then?'

Pascoe considered.

'Unless I was very stupid, I'd laugh myself to sleep at this all-revealing diary story. Then when I discovered that Butt was actually dead, I'd laugh myself awake. If I wanted to be really clever, I might just start recollecting that I caught a glimpse of Butt driving away that night with someone beside him in the car. But that'd be gilding the lily a bit.'

'There you are then,' said Dalziel. 'There's nowt to be done.'

'Not quite,' said Pascoe. 'You haven't asked me what I'd do if I were you.'

Dalziel reached up one voluminous sleeve and began to scratch under his armpit.

'No, I bloody haven't,' he said uninvitingly.

'I'd be worried sick,' said Pascoe, 'in case by not telling the investigating officer what I suspected, I was impeding the course of justice.'

'What's suspicion?' asked Dalziel. 'Bugger all. It's what you know that counts.'

'And what makes you think that Balderstone's told you everything he knows?' demanded Pascoe. 'Have you given him cause to take you into his confidence? Put what you suspect and what he knows together and bang! you may have a solution.'

Dalziel glared at him angrily and Pascoe realized he had gone further than he intended. He sank the rest of his drink quickly in an effort to anaesthetize himself, but before the storm could break, the door burst open and another high pressure centre flowed in on a wave of distant noise like the honking of a flight of geese.

'Andy,' cried Bonnie. 'Have you seen that halfwit Charley anywhere? God Almighty, it's like Brand's Hatch out there! Where the hell has he got to?'

The noise he could hear wasn't geese, Pascoe realized, but the gabbling of human voices raised in anger commingled with a variety of car horns.

'What's up?' asked Dalziel.

'It's the car park. He got in such a muddle that he told the last people to arrive just to leave their cars on the drive with the keys in and he'd sort them out. Well, they're still there, blocking the way, but the keys have gone. Some twit tried to go round them across the garden, but it's so wet with all this rain that he's got stuck. God, what a mess!'

'And Charley's gone?' asked Dalziel, very alert.

'I've been telling you, yes! You must have directed traffic sometime, can't you do anything?'

They all make cracks about a cop's job in the end, thought Pascoe. But she was a fine-looking woman. A bit long in the tooth perhaps, but what she'd lost in youthful athleticism she could probably more than make up in expertise. Which was a male chauvinist pig thought he'd do well to keep hidden from Ellie.

'Come on,' said Dalziel, rising and making for the door. Pascoe realized that he was being addressed, not Bonnie, and rudely pushed past her in the fat detective's wake.

'This Charley,' he said. 'Could he be the one?'

Dalziel didn't answer but began to climb the stairs.

If so, he's probably long gone, thought Pascoe. All those cars to choose from. Unless…

He caught Dalziel's green velveteen sleeve.

'Those keys,' he said. 'You've got em!'

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'No bugger drives out of here till I'm done.'

He flung open the door of a room which was in darkness. Neither of them needed the light to know it was empty.

'It doesn't look as if he's taken anything,' said Dalziel, puzzled. 'He won't go far in his fancy dress surely.'

'Where'd he go anyway?' asked Pascoe. 'I mean he'd hardly set off walking to Orburn if he thinks Balderstone's coming driving along that road any moment. Hang on, though. Downstairs when I was looking out of the window, there was someone by the lake.'

'Oh no!' groaned Dalziel.

They turned, met Bonnie looking bewildered half-way up the stairs, pushed by her once more and ran out of the front door.

The night was warm and almost windless. The mist on the lake surface had crept a little further up the garden in the last fifteen minutes and the rail of the landing-stage was barely visible, an indistinct line of faded runes scratched on a limestone wall. Though the noise of the car park chaos was more clearly audible here, its effect was to increase the feeling of isolation, like traffic heard beyond a prison wall.

'Andy!' called Bonnie from the doorway. But Dalziel did not pause.

'Careful!' he said to Pascoe as he ventured out on the landing-stage. 'This stuffs rotten.'

With sixteen stone going before me, what have I got to worry about, thought Pascoe.

Dalziel stopped short of the broken and still-unmended section beneath which he had discovered Spinx. The duck punt had gone.

Pascoe began to speak but Dalziel gestured impatiently and peered out across the lake, his head cocked to one side. Like a St Bernard on an Alpine rescue mission, imaged Pascoe.

'Do you hear anything?' asked Dalziel.

'Only the waters wappe and the waves wanne.'

'Come on.'

Grasping Pascoe's arm for support, the fat man clambered down into the rowing-boat which rocked dangerously under his weight.

'You want me to come in that?' asked Pascoe incredulously.

'Someone's got to row,' said Dalziel.

'But what's the point?' protested Pascoe as he stepped down. 'If you think he's out there, just get the locals to start a search. I mean, what's at the far side?'

'America,' said Dalziel. 'Just row.'

Grumbling, Pascoe unshipped the oars and began to pull away from the shore while Dalziel sat in the stern with the tiller in his hand. It took only a few strokes to put the house and garden out of view and the sense of being alone on a limitless expanse of water grew rapidly.

'I'm sorry, sir, but what are we doing?' demanded Pascoe for the sake of hearing his own voice rather than in hope of an answer. But to his surprise, Dalziel laughed, a short bark reminding him once more of his St Bernard image.