Good Morning, Midnight (40 page)

“Right, you lot. Bugger off,” he growled. “Everyone except you, Pete.”

As the other three made for the door, Dalziel called, “Ivor, you’ve earned a break, you and young Bowler both. He’s still on the panel officially so why don’t you ferry him down to the canteen and see if you can lure him back permanent with a mug of tea and a slice of summat tasty? But keep him off the millet. All that ornithology can send a young man blind.”

When they were alone, Pascoe said, “Nice to see Bowler getting back to normal. Meeting Lavinia’s obviously done him a world of good.”

“You reckon? Gives you a warm glow, does it?”

“Well, yes, it does. And I hope it makes you happy too, sir,” said Pascoe.

“Happy? Aye, it might have made me happy if I’d not had a call from Desperate Dan asking if the lad were back on the strength.”

Pascoe turned this inside out looking for hermeneutic clues, gave up, and said, “You mean the Chief noticed him hanging around and wondered if he’d been signed off the sick list?”

“No, I don’t bloody mean that. I mean that some mate of Dan’s at the Yard has been enquiring all unofficial like if DC Bowler was assisting in some delicate CID enquiry under the guise of being off sick.”

This required even more consideration.

“Why should the Yard be interested in Bowler?”

“Not the Yard, dickhead. Some other bugger somewhere had enquired at the Yard for someone who was well placed to make a nice chummy call to Dan and put the question.”

“Some other bugger…?”

“Some other funny bugger is my guess,” said Dalziel grimly.

In Dalziel-speak funny buggers meant anyone working in the shadowy realms of security, whether MI something, or Special Branch, or MoD, or some other area so penumbral it dare not speak its name.

Pascoe was amazed.

“But why on earth… I mean, what’s Bowler been up to that even the neurotics who run these outfits could misconstrue?”

“You heard the lad. He’s been wandering round the woods and having breakfast with this bird lady and her feathered friends. Now it could be that she’s a key figure in a pigeon post network that’s going to take over after all electronic communication’s been nuked out of existence. He did say she don’t have a phone or a radio, didn’t he? But if it’s not that, what are we left with that’s set some funny bugger’s alarm-bell ringing?”

Pascoe said, “The only connexion she’s got to anything vaguely official is she’s Pal Maciver’s aunt.”

“Aye. And then there’s this VAT man, Waverley.”

“But you just sat on Bowler for even suggesting as a long shot that he could be linked to anything… Ah…”

“That’s right,” said Dalziel approvingly. “The lad’s keen as mustard and now he’s getting back to the land of the living, he’ll be eager to impress. Plus he seems to have taken a real shine to the bird lady. If this Waverley does have owt to do with the funny buggers’ interest, the last thing I want is young Bowler sticking his beak in and getting it snapped off. So, what did you reckon to Waverley?”

“I took him at face value. Retired Customs and Excise, on a decent pension-drives a newish Jag, wears a mohair Crombie-so, fairly high-powered-uses a walking cane, heavy silver top-slightly favours his right leg.”

“What’s his relationship with bird lady?”

“Old friend, likes to take care of her. Physically she looked just a touch wobbly, arthritis maybe…”

“MS,” interrupted Dalziel.

“Hat told you that? Then maybe Waverley’s right, she does need looking after.”

“Is that all? Nowt sexual?”

“Who knows? People like them aren’t all over each other. Certainly emotional. They still address each other pretty formally-Mr W and Miss Mac-but that’s probably just a habit which helps preserve the equilibrium of a loving friendship. Look, sir, apart from the fact he wears a trilby, is there anything else to make us take a closer look at Waverley?”

“Gedye,” said Dalziel.

“And to you too, sir,” said Pascoe.

“No. It’s a name. It’s the name of the funny bugger who got Dan’s old mate at the Yard asking questions about Bowler.”

“Ah,” said Pascoe.

“Ah so,” said Dalziel. “Any idea how they met? Not one of them tweeters, is he?”

“Twitchers. Don’t think so… though she did say… yes! I knew there was something!”

Detectives, like Quakers, had their Inner Light too and if you relaxed and didn’t fret about it too much, eventually it would bloom and effulge in speech.

“What?”

“It was at Moscow House. She said something about seeing or hearing the green woodpeckers the first time she and Waverley met. And she dragged him off to see if they were still in some beech tree which she said had been quite rotten ten years ago. Ten years… that would be at the time of the first Maciver suicide. That’s when she met him.”

“At Moscow House? He never came up in the investigation.”

“Why should he?” said Pascoe, then couldn’t resist adding, “And maybe you were too busy consoling the grieving widow to pay too much attention to irrelevant detail.”

Dalziel gave him a look which reminded him belatedly that kicking some men when they were down could put you in a fair way to breaking your foot.

Hastily he went on, “Look, sir, I’m still not clear precisely how any of this connects with my investigation of Pal Junior’s death, but one thing’s for sure, there’s definitely something here that needs investigating.”

Dalziel sat silent, chins on chest, contemplating his crotch like some parodic Buddha. He still doesn’t want to give it up, thought Pascoe. He’s promised his dear friend Kay Kafka that all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well, and he hates the idea of admitting he’s fallible. I know the feeling. But before I start admitting things, I want the facts.

He pressed on, “One thing I need to know-not because I’m saying it’s relevant, but because sooner or later I’m going to have to know whether it’s relevant or not-and that’s the precise nature of your relationship with Mrs Kafka.”

“Kay? You’ve not listened to the tape I gave you, then?”

“Yes, I have. And it was very interesting. Very moving. But it doesn’t explain your attitude to her. Not fully anyway.”

“You think I’m shagging her, is that it?”

“No, I don’t,” said Pascoe with some irritation. “But there has to be something more, that’s clear.”

Now the Fat Man smiled, almost approvingly.

“The reason behind the reason behind the reason, eh? That’s the name of our game, lad. Always knew you had the real detective nose from the first time I saw you picking it.”

This wasn’t altogether true-or if it were, the Fat Man had concealed his knowledge pretty well.

“I’m flattered,” said Pascoe. “So?”

“Confession time, is it?” said the Fat Man musingly. “Why not? Always felt there were a bit of the priest in you, Pete. But no sacrament without a noggin, eh?”

He reached into his desk cupboard and produced a bottle of Highland Park and two tumblers. He filled them both, passed one across to Pascoe, half-emptied the other.

“Are you sitting comfortable?” he asked. “Then I’ll begin.”

Would you like it formal?

Nay, never shake your gory locks at me, lad-I’ve seen the way you cross your sevens like a kraut-you love formal.

Statement of Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.

Made in the presence of Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe.

I’m definitely not making this statement of my own free will.

Here we go then.

This started a long time back. I were younger then. Not a lot younger but enough. Oh aye, likely looking at me you’d not be able to tell much difference. When you’ve got the bone structure, you don’t lose your looks. But inside, that’s where it counts, and to tell the truth these past couple of years I’ve felt it counting a bloody sight quicker.

I’m not saying I’m getting past it.

No, most of the time I can still feel the old spirit rattling around deep inside.

But it’s a ghost haunting a bloody ruin.

If that’s sympathy on thy face, best wipe it off else I might scrub it clean with a knuckle flannel.

America, that’s where it started.

That’s where most things start these days, good and bad.

Linda Steele were one of the good things. At least I thought so to begin with.

I know it’s over ten years ago, but don’t let on you don’t recall Linda. OK, you never met her, but I bet she’d not been in my house five minutes afore all the station wags were running round saying, “Have you seen yon bit of dusky chuff the super’s brought himself back from the States? Wish I’d asked him to get me one!”

Well, like I always say, if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.

But if ever I get my hands on the sod who wrote that limerick in the bog, I’ll shake him till his teeth rattle like his lousy rhymes.

Linda were a journalist who doubled up working for the CIA, which is like a tick hanging out with crab lice. But, you know me, I’m not judgmental, and we came to a working arrangement. I admit I were a bit surprised when she turned up here. Even with my magnetic personality, you don’t expect a gorgeous young blackbird like Linda to come flapping across the Atlantic just to get a second helping of nuts. But she came clean, or at least so I thought. Seems she’d told her funny bugger boss she wanted out and was proposing to take a trip to Europe, and he said that were fine, no problem his side, but could she do him one last favour and check up that I weren’t going to give anyone any grief shooting off my mouth about what had happened in the States. Me, the arsehole of discretion! Any road, even if I’d wanted to blab, I’d been heavily sat on by our funny buggers soon as I landed. You’ll likely recall that. You were there, remember?

So I told Linda she could set her boss’s mind at rest. She were really grateful. Also she’d got nowhere to stay till she got her plans sorted, so pretty soon we’d got our old working arrangement going again.

I liked her a lot, even more now she said she’d resigned from the funny buggers. She told me stuff about the CIA would make your hair stand on end. But when I said nowt the Yanks did would surprise me, she said I shouldn’t be so goddam superior, our lot were just as bad. Only difference was that over there, they had so much information they kept tripping over it, while over here they had so little they had to make it up.

Aye, we had many a good laugh, and she liked a drink, and in bed she-but a pillar of the community like you don’t want to hear stuff like that. I thought me birthday had come every day. I’d wake up and look at that lovely black face lying on the pillow next to me, and think, You’re a lucky bugger, Andy Dalziel!

And I’d tickle her ear and whisper summat daft like, “Good morning, Midnight.”

Then she’d open her eyes and smile and show me all those lovely white teeth and say, “Hi.”

And it never ever crossed my mind to wonder what she were thinking when she woke up and the first thing she saw in the morning was me…

Good stuff this. You want a fill-up? Please yourself.

Well, I knew it couldn’t go on forever but Linda seemed in no hurry to move on and I could see no reason to rock the boat by asking her what her plans were. She said she liked it here, the folk were real friendly and it was the first time in years she’d been able to relax, no deadlines to meet, no bosses snapping at her heels, nobody to please but herself. And me.

Oh aye. She were very good at pleasing me.

Sometimes I felt so pleased, I could hardly get out of bed in the morning.

When I were out at work she’d go wandering off by herself. She hired herself a car and drove around all over the place, sightseeing, shopping, going to a movie. She never seemed to get bored and when I got back home she’d tell me all about it, excited, like a kid, making daft ordinary things sound interesting.

One day she told me she’d almost had an accident. Daydreaming, she forgot she were driving on the left and found herself heading straight for another car. They both hit the brakes and stopped, no damage done. Linda got out to apologize and explain, but far from being narked, the other driver just laughed and said it was OK, she understood, she were American too, and it had taken her forever to get used to driving on the left.

Aye, you’ve guessed it. The other driver were Kay. Kay Maciver as she was then.

They chatted a bit then went their ways. Couple of days later Linda went into yon Yankee coffee-shop in the High, you know the one, costs a fortune, coffee all tastes like owl piss. Kay were sitting there. Linda said hello, place were a bit crowded so she asked if Kay would mind if she joined her, they got talking, liked the look of each other and the upshot was they arranged to meet again. I knew Pal Maciver, not close, but we’d met, and I knew all about the Yanks taking over Maciver’s, of course, and him getting himself a Yankee wife as part of the deal, leastways that’s how the jokers down the rugby club saw it, so I were able to fill Linda in with what I knew, and I were dead chuffed she’d found a mate as it seemed likely to make her hang around up here a bit longer.

So everything in the garden were lovely. But it doesn’t matter how green the grass grows and how sweet the flowers smell, a man in our line don’t stop being a cop just because he enjoys a bit of gardening. That’s where some women get it wrong.

They think just because they can switch you to any channel they want by pressing the right buttons, they can do the same trick by remote control, but a man’s bollocks aren’t tuned to a zapper, and once her hands are off the controls, his brain clicks back in.

Two things began bothering me. One was I were pretty sure Linda was doing drugs. She weren’t blatant but I’d been in the business too long not to spot the signs. Can’t say I was surprised. Back then, recreational drugs weren’t a big problem yet in Mid-Yorkshire, but over in the States I’d seen and heard enough to know that if you lived in what they call the fast lane, they were there for the asking.