Reginald Hill - Arms and the Women

She returned her attention to the letter.

How much of her recent trauma should she lay out here? Feenie’s words came back to her. ‘Tell them everything about yourself,’ she commanded. ‘However trite, however tragic. That way they’ll know you really care, you’re not just dishing up nourishing broth for the peasants. What you’re doing is letting them know there is a real world still going on beyond their prison walls, there are real people still living their lives beyond the blank faces of their guards and torturers.’

But when Ellie had asked for information about Bruna, Feenie had shaken her head.

‘Best you don’t know,’ she said. ‘These women live under regimes and in circumstances you can’t imagine. Sometimes they are totally innocent, but sometimes they may have done things which you in your ignorance could find hard to understand or justify. All you need to know is that they are suffering cruel and unnatural treatment. It is your task to give them hope. What they give you in return is up to them.’

Ellie began typing again.

My little girl Rosie was taken ill…

The phone rang.

Irritated, she went next door into the bedroom and picked up the receiver.

‘What?’ she bellowed.

‘Charming. I wish I hadn’t bothered.’

‘Daphne, is that you? What’s up? You forget something?’

‘Only how brusque you can be. Listen, I just thought I’d ring you to tell you you’re being watched.’

‘Yes, I know. Dennis Seymour. I thought you said he spoke to you…’

‘Don’t be so dim, Ellie. I don’t mean him. You know those plane trees on that little triangle of no-man’s-land at the corner of your road? Well, I noticed this fellow hanging about there when I drove past earlier. Only then, not knowing anything about yesterday’s punch-up at the Pascoe corral, I didn’t pay much heed. But when I passed the trees just now and saw he was still there, still looking towards your house, I thought, Hello-Hello-Hello, this looks like one for a citizen’s arrest.’

‘Daphne, don’t you dare! Don’t do anything. I’ll get the guy on watch to deal.’

‘So what are you going to do? Run out of the house and point this way? No, listen, untwist your knickers. Count up to a hundred. All I’m going to do is get out of the car and stroll back towards him and distract him with brilliant conversation. When you get to a hundred, then head out to your guardian angel and send him winging this way as quick as he likes. And if chummy here tries to do a runner, I’ll stick my leg out and send him sprawling, a tactic for which I was once renowned in Mid-Yorkshire girls’ hockey circles.’

‘No,’ insisted Ellie. ‘Do nothing. I’ll –’

‘Start counting. One, two, three…’

The phone went dead.

Ellie didn’t hesitate. She went sprinting down the stairs, out of the house, down the drive, waving and calling to the watching Seymour. He spotted her and started to get out of the car.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Stay there! Start up!’

He was, God be thanked, quick-witted enough to obey.

‘Turn, turn, turn! Go, go, go!’ commanded Ellie, scrambling into the passenger seat.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked calmly as he accelerated through a U-turn, getting the car up to sixty in about nine seconds.

‘We’re there!’ she yelled. ‘Stop. Oh, sweet Jesus.’

The car snaked to a halt alongside the plane trees.

A figure slumped against one of them, head thrown back to show a face which was a mask of blood.

‘Call an ambulance,’ cried Ellie, leaping from the car and rushing towards her friend. ‘Daphne, are you all right?’

The woman made a gasping noise which may or may not have been an answer, but at least her eyes were open and she was moving and breathing.

‘Why didn’t you wait?’ Ellie couldn’t stop herself from asking as she knelt to examine the damage. ‘Oh Jesus. What a mess. Is it just your face or are you hurt anywhere else?’

‘…aar…’ gasped Daphne.

‘What? Where?’

‘Car. Bastard took my car. Oh God. Look at the state of this blouse.’

‘That’s two days in succession our street’s been full of police cars,’ said Ellie. ‘The neighbours are going to start complaining about you bringing your work home.’

‘They should think themselves lucky I’m not a rock star,’ said Pascoe.

‘We should all think ourselves lucky for that,’ said Ellie.

They were at the hospital, to which Ellie had accompanied Daphne in the ambulance. Pascoe had arrived almost simultaneously. He could see she was seriously stressed, but coping by dint of having someone else to look after. Activity had always been her way of dealing with life’s ambushes.

She’d told him what little she knew. Daphne had gasped out her car number and the policeman on watch had put out an alert. Apart from that, she had on Ellie’s insistence concentrated on using her mouth for breathing.

‘Peter, how’re you doing? You here for Mrs Aldermann?’

Dr John Sowden was an old acquaintance, almost an old friend, of Pascoe’s. They had first met at the intersection of a police and medical case and perhaps because that had marked out so clearly the parameters of their areas of common ground, their friendship had somehow only flourished in miniature, like a bonsai tree.

‘That’s right. How is she?’

‘Fine, considering someone’s given her a fair bang on the nose. Broken but I think we’ll get away without surgery.’

‘Any other injuries?’

‘No. Some shock from the assault and the loss of blood, but nothing that a good night’s rest won’t put right. I’ve got a nurse cleaning her up now, then she’ll be ready to go home. What is it? Your friendly neighbourhood mugging? Were you with her when it happened, Ellie? Can check you out as well, if you like.’

He was looking at the blood on her T-shirt.

‘No, thanks,’ said Ellie. ‘This is Daphne’s. I got there later. I’m fine.’

It wasn’t a complete lie. She consulted her body and mind and found that she felt a lot better than she thought she ought to. Perhaps like a vampire I need blood to feed on, she thought, watching as Pascoe, with an apologetic smile in her direction, drew Sowden a little way along the corridor and spoke to him in a low voice.

When he rejoined her she said, ‘So?’

‘So you heard it all. He wasn’t keeping anything back for my ears only.’

‘Well, I’m pleased about that, else this new, violent doppelgänger of mine might have been tempted to break his nose too.’

But she smiled as she said it. She liked John Sowden. He was pretty sound on issues like abortion and euthanasia and he had a mouth to die for.

A few moments later they were allowed into the treatment room where they found Daphne sitting on the edge of a bed, drinking tea.

She said, ‘Ellie, have you seen the state of me? I shall have to go into purdah for a month at least.’

‘No, you look fine, honestly. You’ll have those English-rose looks back in no time.’

‘An English rose I don’t mind but not when I’m wearing it bang in the middle of my face. Oh God, has anyone been in touch with Patrick? No way I can go to the garden centre like this. They’d probably spray me with an anti-black-spot mixture.’

‘I tried your home number on my mobile,’ said Pascoe. ‘No reply. Give us the name of this garden centre and I’ll make sure he gets a message to come here and collect you.’

‘No, please. Just say I can’t make it to lunch, I’ll see him at home later,’ said Daphne firmly. ‘It’s called Mossy Bank. Thank you, Peter, you’re a darling.’