Good Morning, Midnight (25 page)

She saw his blank expression and glossed, “Multiple sclerosis. You didn’t know? Why should you? Don’t look so shocked. It’s not going to kill me. Not for a long while yet. Excuse me a moment.”

She went back up the corridor, turning into one of the front rooms. A moment later he heard the strike of a match. Perhaps she was lighting a fire against the chill morning air. It was warm enough here in the kitchen but perhaps if you had MS you felt the cold. He knew very little about the illness. Except that there was no cure.

Unable to rest in his chair he stood up and looked out of the window. Waverley was standing in the middle of the garden, taking his call. With his smart town clothes, he should have cut a slightly ludicrous figure but he didn’t. Snatches of his conversation drifted through the open window. Good day… yes, yes, I see… yes, that I can do immediately… no problem, if it comes to it, which I hope it won’t

… yes, as for the other, a little assistance would be helpful there just for the heavy work… I’ll wait till I hear from you… oh and there’s one more thing… At this point he glanced round, caught Hat’s eye, smiled, and moved further away out of earshot.

Hat sat down again and a couple of minutes later Waverley re-entered the kitchen, followed shortly by Miss Mac. To Hat’s relief and pleasure she looked a lot better and said, “That tea must be cold and stewed by now, let’s get some more on the go, shall we?” and set about refilling the kettle.

Waverley said, “Sorry, Miss Mac, but I won’t be able to accept your kind invitation. In any case I only called to confirm that you were well, which I see you are, and in good hands too. So I shall say good morning. Nice to meet you again, Mr Bowler.”

He turned and moved away swiftly, his slight limp masked almost completely by the use of his hawk-headed stick.

Miss Mac didn’t see him out but sat herself down at the table and said, “Now, Mr Hat, it’s only thee and me, as they say in these parts.”

“Yes. I’m sorry to… look, I really only drove out here because…”

She smiled encouragingly at him and said, “Because…?”

He reached for a reason, found one.

“Because I noticed your kitchen garden needed a bit of digging over to get it ready for planting and I wondered if you might need a hand… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean because you can’t do it yourself… I mean, I didn’t know about… and maybe you can…”

She laughed out loud at the tangle he was getting into and said, “If we’re to be friends, you’ll have to stop being embarrassed by my state of health. Yes, you’re quite right, my MS does make it much harder for me to look after my patch of garden. On the other hand, I’m rather particular who I let loose in it. I’ve got friends living out there, you see. So before I give you a spade, and while we’re waiting for the kettle to boil, why don’t you tell me something about yourself?”

“I don’t know… what is it you’d like to know?”

“Anything you’d care to tell.”

He inhaled a deep breath, not sure what words it was going to carry when it came out.

“First off,” he said, “my name’s not actually Mr Hat-Hat’s just something friends call me, because of my surname, which is Bowler…”

He paused, recollecting that Waverley had just used his name in farewell, and trying to remember when he’d mentioned it to him. Miss Mac didn’t seem to notice the pause but came in, smiling, with, “Hat Bowler! How very droll. But Miss Mac is equally droll in its own way, and I am content to remain Miss Mac so I hope you’ll be happy to remain Mr Hat. Names make things real, which is why it’s best only to name the things you love or at least like. I know Scuttle is Scuttle. I am completely unable to name my Member of Parliament.”

They shared a smile, then Hat recommenced, still with some uncertainty.

“OK. I’m Mr Hat and if I seem to have been behaving a bit odd both times we met, it’s because…”

He paused again, uncertain how detailed an explanation he was expected, or wanted, to give, and again she came in.

“Because you have been very unhappy, doubtless through some deep personal loss which you will never forget but are beginning to get over. I haven’t learnt a lot about human beings during my life, Mr Hat, or not a lot that I care to remember, but what I do know is that where the appetite is healthy, the hurt body or mind is healing. I am not so impertinent to be curious about the details of your loss, but I am delighted to note how much bread you have put away. Talking of which…”

She stooped to the oven, pulled open the door and, using a tea towel to protect her hands, took out a huge cob, brown as a chestnut. As she set it on the table she said, “While this cools, what I’d really like to hear about yourself is how you came to get interested in birds.”

Hat smiled.

“The important stuff, you mean.”

“That’s it, Mr Hat,” she said gravely. “The important stuff.”

She sat down opposite him once more. The two blue tits, Impy and Lopside, fluttered down to sit one on each shoulder, and looked at him expectantly. He knew it was food they were hoping for, but they felt like an audience.

He said, “I think it really began when I was six and we were on holiday on the Pembrokeshire coast and one day I was sitting on the beach and the sea was quite rough and I saw this pair of cormorants hurtle along, only a foot or so above the waves. I remember trying to be them, trying to feel in my imagination what it must be like, moving through the air at that speed and every time you look down, seeing that wild ocean surging and frothing and foaming beneath you, so close that whenever a wave breaks, it must seem like it’s reaching up to pull you under and you can feel the spray spattering cold against your belly…”

“And did you succeed in finding out what it must feel like, doing that?”

“I think I just about imagined it physically,” he said slowly. “But since I grew up, I’ve come to know exactly what it’s like. It’s like living. That’s what it’s like.”

Like living.

She looked at him compassionately for a moment then said, “And then, Mr Hat? Back in Pembrokeshire. What happened next?”

“I suppose I went paddling with my brothers, or we went to buy an ice-cream. But I never forgot. And after that whenever I saw a bird, any kind of bird, I tried to see things as it saw them, and after a while I got interested in what they were really doing rather than just what I liked to pretend they were doing. And that was great too, learning all that stuff. But I’ve never forgotten the cormorants, never forgotten that when I was six I flew with them for a little while. Does that make sense, Miss Mac?”

On the hob the kettle began to sing and the tits, as if recognizing this was a signal for renewed feasting, joined in.

“Oh yes, Mr Hat,” said Miss Mac, standing up to make the tea. “It makes more sense than almost anything else I’ve heard in the last few days. Much more sense.”

“A poem?” cried Dalziel, infusing the word with an astonishment that made Edith Evans’ handbag sound like polite enquiry. “You want me to read a poem? What comes next? Listen to a sonata for two kazoos and a flugelhorn?”

But he read it, and examined the envelope, and checked out the PM report, and listened with nothing more than a steady volcanic rumbling to Pascoe’s account of the other things that bothered him.

Then for a space there fell between them that silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird, which in this case was the Fat Man’s fingernails being dragged along his trouser gusset.

Finally he said, with menacing softness, “Twenty-four hours. That’s what you’ve got. To the sodding second.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Pascoe, making for the door.

“Hang about. I’ve not said what I expect you to do in them twenty-four hours.”

“Sorry, sir. I assumed it was to discover whether or not there was any criminal element in Pal Maciver’s death.”

“Nay, lad. Nowt you’ve said makes me change my mind about that. Suicide, plain as the face on your nose, and that’s penny plain. What I need you to do is find me the skulking bastard who sent that letter. There’s someone out there trying to stir things up and I want the pleasure of seeing them face to face.”

“Yes, sir. Then I’d better start at Cothersley, I suppose.”

“Cothersley? Why?”

“Because that’s where Maciver lived.”

Also where Kay Kafka lived. He’d spotted the Fat Man reacting.

“Then it would be bloody funny if you didn’t go there to chat to the grieving widow. Shouldn’t bother with the pub, but. Dog and Duck. Used to serve a decent pint, still came in a jug first time I went there, but it’s all been fancified like the rest of the fucking place. Six kinds of foreign lager, all so cold they taste like penguin piss, and not a pork scratching in the house. So take heed.”

“Engraved on my heart, sir,” said Pascoe. “Any other tips?”

“Aye, just the one. Don’t get carried away. It’s a lot easier to stir crap up than to get it to settle. You might like to engrave that on your arse so every time you sit down, you’ll remember.”

“I surely will, sir. And if I need expert advice on sitting on anything else I might find embarrassing, I’ll certainly know where to come.”

The not very subtle reference to the Maciver tape popped out like a blown fuse button before he could control it.

Far from being provoked, Dalziel reacted as if this were merely confirmation of some course of action he’d been undecided about.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cassette and tossed it to Pascoe.

“Two sides to every tale, Peter. Have a listen to this when you’ve got a spare moment. Which you don’t have. Twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes, that’s what you’ve got. Now sod off.”

Pascoe looked at the cassette in his hand as he left the room. It was brand new, so probably a copy of… what? Two sides, he’d said, so this had to be Kay Kafka, which made it very interesting, but it could be very dangerous too. Putting the Maciver tape into his mental recycle bin hadn’t been too hard on his professional conscience. But what if this new tape revealed even more serious breaches of procedure … or worse…?

In any case, he had no time to spare for it now. When the Fat Man gave you a time limit, you took it seriously.

He thrust the cassette into his pocket and bellowed Wield’s and Novello’s names as he passed through the CID room. A Pascoe bellow was a phenomenon unusual enough to make people jump, but by the time the sergeant and DC appeared in his office, he was already on the phone, despatching the SOCO team back to Moscow House with orders to give the whole house a thorough going over, and get everything moveable out of the study down to the lab.

Replacing the phone, he filled them in on the new situation.

“It may still be nothing,” he said, “but I want to be sure everything’s been covered. Let’s give Maciver the full treatment: bank and phone records, credit rating, business deals, the lot. Shirley, you get on to that. Wieldy, that Harrogate PI, Gallipot, check him out, find what that was all about. And get someone talking to the Avenue working girls tonight just in case anyone noticed anything. Oh, and Joker Jennison mentioned one in particular-Dolores, she called herself-who seemed very interested in what was happening in Moscow. I told him to track her down. See what he’s done about it and kick his arse if it’s not enough.”

Novello, looking as if she’d gladly volunteer for the last job, went out.

Pascoe said, “And ring the lab, too, Wieldy. Tell them that everything to do with Moscow House is a priority. Tell them the super wants it done yesterday or he’ll be down there himself to see what’s holding things up.”

“Right,” said Wield. “Any hint what you’ll be doing while me and Novello are working ourselves into a muck sweat for you?”

“Coming on a bit strong, am I, Wieldy?” said Pascoe. “Sorry, but the fat sod’s given me twenty-four hours and I suspect he’s using a stopwatch. Me, I’m off to Cothersley to talk to the widow. And this time, I don’t care how many clerics or medics get in the way, I’ll gallop right over them if I have to!”

Wield watched him go with a fond smile. Pascoe with a bit between his teeth was as formidable in his way as the Fat Man; not quite so hot at breaking down brick walls perhaps, but certainly better fitted for slipping through narrow gaps.

Novello he was pleased to see was already talking to the phone company.

“No,” she was saying. “This is urgent. I thought people in your line of business might have heard of things like computers and fax machines. Yes, thank you. And some time this morning if it’s not disturbing your social life too much.”

Good telephone manner! he thought.

He went to his own phone and rang the lab. The use of Dalziel’s name got a cheeky reply, but when he offered to bring the Fat Man to the phone in person, the tone changed. Then, being a thorough man, he double-checked that the SOCO team had taken Pascoe’s exhortations as to speed and thoroughness to heart.

Next he found the card with the name Jake Gallipot on it and rang the number.

The phone rang five times before it was answered. Good technique. Never let them think you’ve nothing better to do.

“Gallipot,” said the kind of dark brown baritone that sells things on the telly.

“Jake,” he said. “This is Edgar Wield. Mid-Yorkshire. We met way back when you were in the job…”

“Wieldy! How’re you doing? Great to hear from you, old son. I was just sitting here thinking about the good old days, and how I’d been silly to lose touch with so many old chums, then the phone rings and it’s you! Psychic or what?”

Or what, thought Wield. Old chums? He’d never aspired to such a standing. He recalled him as a tall, craggily handsome man with the sort of reassuring smile that could have sold a lot of insurance if he hadn’t opted for a police career that looked set to spiral onwards and upwards. Rumour and gossip had provided a plenitude of explanation for its abrupt termination, ranging from slipping one to the Chief Constable’s wife to difficulty in explaining a wardrobe full of designer suits and a second car which, as asserted by the comic sticker in the window of his old Ford Prefect, really was a Porsche.