Reginald Hill - Midnight Fugue

‘Yes. I must remember to tell him,’ said Pascoe, but not in a tone which suggested putting the Fat Man out of his misery was a high priority.

Oh dear, thought the sergeant. He’s really got it in for Andy at the moment. OK, so the fat sod has it coming to him, but the sooner these two get themselves sorted, the better it will be for all of us.

As he mused on how he might contribute to establishing peace in our time, Pascoe’s phone rang.

‘Talk of the devil,’ he said, glancing at it. ‘Hi, Andy. How’s it going?’

Friendly informal, or familiar impertinent? wondered Wield.

Then he saw Pascoe’s expression change as he listened, and he knew it didn’t matter which.

‘No, Andy, for God’s sake, wait for me to…Andy? Andy!’

He took the phone from his ear and said, ‘The bastard’s rung off.’

‘What did he say?’ demanded Wield.

‘He said he thinks he knows who killed Jones and attacked Novello, and the guy’s staying at the Keldale, and he’s on his way there now. He rang off before I could tell him to stay put till I whistled up an Armed Response Unit. You know what that means, Wieldy!’

‘He’s being John Wayne again,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’ll organize the ARU and look after things here. You’ll want to get back to the Keldale quick as you can, Pete.’

Sometimes you didn’t have the time to wait and let them speak for themselves.

‘Right, Wieldy. Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.’

He headed off towards his car, trying not to look in too much of a hurry in case that aroused the watching journalists’ interest.

‘Hey, Pete, don’t forget to tell him Novello’s on the mend,’ Wield called after him.

Over his shoulder Pascoe rasped, ‘I’ll do better than that, Wieldy. I’ll maybe put him in the next bed so he can find out for himself.’

Maggie Pinchbeck sat in her flat, which in total occupied about the same space as Beanie Sample’s bedroom, and downloaded Gwyn Jones’s folder on Goldie Gidman. The greater part of it consisted of confidential police intelligence reports. It occurred to her that you’d probably get a longer sentence for having this stuff on your computer than you would for downloading child pornography.

She had her own file on Gidman, compiled when putting in her application for the post of Dave’s PA. She had confronted the man himself and been impressed by the way he answered her questions. Subsequently she had found much to admire in him and she’d become really fond of his wife, Flo. Personal feelings apart, she knew that, when he became a donor, the Millbank mandarins would have sent in their most experienced investigators to run their beady eyes over him. They would probably have seen everything in Gwyn Jones’s Gidman file and found nothing that came close to usable evidence of wrong-doing.

Nor did Maggie.

Yet underpinning everything in the folder was the unswerving certainty on the part of at least one policeman, Owen Mathias, that Goldie Gidman was a villain. Operation Macavity had been Mathias’s last throw of the dice before Gidman moved lock stock and barrel away from his shadowy beginnings into the sunlit uplands of the commercial Establishment.

And Macavity failed. Either because there was nothing to find, or because someone had been keeping Goldie two steps ahead of the investigation.

Mathias, naturally, had gone for the latter option. Internal Investigations had looked for the man most likely and picked on DI Alex Wolfe, although there did not seem to have been a scrap of real evidence against the man. Even his disappearance was less suggestive than it might have been when you considered the tragic circumstances of his family life.

She Googled Mathias. He had retired from the Met a year after the failure of Macavity. Perhaps that had contributed to his going. Or it might have been ill health as he died just a year later.

She guessed that he had been the source of all these confidential files in Jones’s folder. And from him also she presumed Jones had inherited his strong antipathy towards the Gidmans, pere et fils.

Not that it mattered why Jones was so obsessed. What mattered was where his investigation was going to lead.

She started reading again, this time selectively, making notes.

What she ended up with was just one name to put alongside that of Alex Wolfe.

Mick Purdy.

Purdy’s name occurred only three times.

Thirty-odd years ago DC Purdy, no initial, had taken a witness statement-or rather an alleged witness statement, as the alleged witness denied having seen anything.

Forward a couple of decades and it’s DCI Purdy now answering the questions from Internal Investigations and giving DI Alex Wolfe a glowing testimonial.

Jump to the present and Commander Mick Purdy is in a close relationship with Gina Wolfe, wife or, as she probably imagined until recently, widow of Alex Wolfe, tragic father and/or bent copper, who vanished without trace seven years back.

Did it mean anything? She knew from study and observation that many of the great political scandals arose because someone got spooked into believing that something meant something it didn’t. And by the time the error was realized, it was too late, the hounds were loose, and they were not going to let themselves be whipped back into their kennel before they’d torn something to pieces.

Another chance to quiz Goldie might be helpful, but she could hardly ring him up and demand an interview.

She sipped on a can of orange juice and nibbled at a wedge of cheddar. It seemed a long time since she’d had a real meal. Coffee and a stale muffin for breakfast had been supplemented by a snatched half-sandwich at the Centre opening. She thought of ordering in a pizza. Then her phone rang.

It was Dave Gidman.

‘Maggie, that stuff you said we should do tonight. Is it urgent?’

‘Pretty urgent. Why?’

‘Thing is, I’m not at home. I’m at Windrush House. Thought I’d probably spend the night here, make an early start in the morning. That way I can really explore Pappy’s disgustingly expensive cellar. And I don’t have to worry that my shower is suddenly going to freeze my bollocks off. You’re sure the Chuckle Brothers are coming to fix it in the morning?’

‘Yes, they’ll be there, don’t worry,’ said Maggie. ‘I can come up to Windrush now, if you like. Best we get things done before you start popping corks.’

‘If you’re sure it won’t keep,’ said Dave, without a great deal of enthusiasm.

‘Unlike Goldie’s wine, it certainly won’t improve with keeping,’ said Maggie. ‘I’ll be there about half six.’

She sat still for a moment after the call. Her earlier feeling that she was on some kind of lucky roll had evaporated. Or rather it had changed into a sense of being pushed towards some place she might not want to be. First the lying call from Jones just before she spoke to Beanie on the Shah-Boat. Then the email from Gem Huntley stoking up the Bitch’s resentment again and giving her access to the Goldie folder.

And now, just when she’d been thinking another chat with Goldie Gidman would be useful to clear things up, Dave had given her the chance to revisit Windrush House.

Perhaps the wise move would be to delete the computer folder, ring Dave and say the morning would do after all, and settle down to a night with the telly.

Except she had a job to do, and she’d decided a long time ago that doing your chosen job was the only thing that made sense out of life.

Correction.

The only thing that might for some portion of three score years and ten delude you into thinking life made any sense at all.

furioso

It is like waking.