Recalled to Life (15 page)

She walked out, splay-footed in her riding boots, her jodhpured haunches swaying centaurishly. Pascoe regarded Partridge blankly, waiting to see if he intended to follow his wife down this patrician road or whether the politician would still hold sway.

'Some more cocoa, Mr Pascoe? No? I think I will.'

The rum bottle gurgled. He drank deep, sighed with pleasure.

'Good stuff. My family has old West Indian connections. I spent a long period out there in my youth. This was one of the better habits I picked up.'

'You took your family out to Antigua after the Mickledore affair, didn't you, sir?'

'You
have
been doing your homework. Good. I approve. That's right. I had come to accept the kind of assault on privacy that government service opens one up to, but I saw no reason why my family should have to put up with it.'

It was nobly spoken but with a sufficient hint of self-mockery to make Pascoe risk a familiarity.

'And it must have been easier to speak with one voice when there was only one voice speaking?'

'What? Oh yes. I get you. My wife is an understanding woman, Mr Pascoe. But a private understanding is not the same as a public complacency. No way I could trot Jessica out as the loyal little wife like so many of them did. No, those were dangerous days, desperate days. The Press had been after us all, of course, ever since Jack Profumo talked himself into a corner. There was a new rumour a day; headless men, men in masks, congas of copulating ministers stretching from Whitehall to Westminster! I came in for my fair share of attention, being young and sociable. But once the word got out about me and Elsbeth, I was everyone's favourite fucker. God, the indignities I had to undergo to prove that at least I didn't figure in anyone's snapshots. Looking back, I sometimes think it was all a mistake. Did you ever see the photo of the Headless Man? He was hung like a Hereford bull. If, instead of driving myself to distraction proving I was basically a good family man who occasionally erred, I'd said, yes, that's me all right, and pleaded guilty to every excess laid at my door, I would probably have swept the country before me and been Prime Minister for the last twenty years!'

He laughed and Pascoe joined in, partly from policy and partly because of the disarming charm of the man's racy self-mockery, whose very openness invited his own.

'So tell me, young man,' continued Partridge, more serious now. 'Did I sacrifice a career merely to help an innocent man on to the gallows?'

'Couldn't say, sir. Like I said, my only concern is to see that Mr Tallantire gets a fair crack of the whip.'

'Oh yes. Did you know him?'

'No.'

'I did. I remember him as a bang-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key cop of the old school. Not the kind of chap I'd expect an educated yonker like yourself to get sentimental over. You're unofficial, you say? Which means you're vulnerable. Perhaps you ought to ask yourself, is the reputation of an old cop you didn't know and probably wouldn't have liked worth risking your career for?'

'So what can they do to me?' said Pascoe with an indifference not altogether assumed. 'Turn me into a civilian and make me earn a living that doesn't keep me awake at nights?'

Partridge pursed his lips, then said, 'Word of advice, young man. Not giving a damn's only a strength if your enemies
do
give a damn. So how far have you got? You've talked to Nanny Marsh, you say? Last I heard she was matron at Beddington College. I think I gave her a reference.'

'Even though your wife fired her?' said Pascoe.

'Oh, that,' said Partridge dismissively. 'Some silly domestic tiff. Fact was we'd run out of kids for her to nanny and Jessica was clearly past farrowing. Was she any help?'

'Not really. Wanted to talk about the past but not necessarily the parts of the past I wanted to talk about.'

'That's what age does to you, Mr Pascoe,' said Partridge, rising. 'More the future shrinks, the more time you spend contemplating your backside.'

Clearly the interview was over. Only Andy Dalziel would have had the brass neck to go on sitting as if it weren't. He let himself be ushered towards the door.

'Anything comes to my mind, I'll give you a ring,' continued Partridge. 'I've still got connections. I'll see what I can find out about Home Office thinking on this one.'

'That's kind of you,' said Pascoe.

He must have let his scepticism show for Partridge laughed and said, 'Quite right, young man. There's no such thing as a free cocoa, in or out of Westminster. Remember, I've got a personal stake in this. Did I, or did I not, help put an innocent man's neck in a noose? So I'd expect you to keep me updated on anything you unearth. Swaps?'

Man shouldn't make promises he can't keep, but it's OK for a cop to make promises he's no intention of keeping. The Gospel according to St Andrew.

'Swaps,' said Pascoe. 'One thing you maybe could tell me, just out of curiosity. What happened to Westropp after all this?'

'Sank right out of sight as far as I know. It must have hit him tremendously hard, wife, daughter, all in a couple of days. He resigned from the Diplomatic . . . went abroad. I believe there were family business interests in South Africa. Or was it South America?'

'And the boy, Philip?'

'Now there I did hear something. Got sent back to school here. Only natural. Abroad's all right for the sun and
la dolce vita
, but you can't let the blighters educate your kids, can you? It's been nice meeting you, Mr Pascoe.'

He offered his hand. Pascoe took it. When he tried to withdraw it after a brief shake, Partridge held on.

'Aren't you forgetting something?' he said.

He wants perhaps that I should kiss his ring and swear fealty? wondered Pascoe.

He said, 'Sorry?'

'The book,' said Partridge holding up
In A Pear Tree
which he held in his other hand. 'After all, that was the main purpose of your visit, wasn't it? To get it signed.'

'Of course,' smiled Pascoe. 'Thanks a lot. An autographed first edition. That must be worth something.'

'Never believe it,' said Partridge drily. 'An unautographed second edition is much rarer. All I've done is stop you taking it back for a refund.'

Pascoe opened the book and read the inscription.

For Peter Pascoe, good luck with your assays of bias, from Partridge (an attendant lord.)

'Oh no,' he said. 'I think this is very valuable indeed.'

And had the pleasure, rare as sex in a submarine, of seeing a flicker of self-doubt pass over a politician's face.

FOUR

'He told me that he was travelling on business of a

delicate and difficult nature, which might get people

into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling

under an assumed name.'

Getting out of London was like getting out of long johns. It took forever.

Dalziel, who liked to be able to step quickly away from both his cities and his underwear, said, 'You're not a spare-time taxi-driver, are you?'

'What?'

'Nowt. Just that you seem to be going all round the houses, which doesn't make sense unless you've got a meter running.'

'You know a better route, you take it,' retorted Stamper.

'Don't get your knickers in a twist,' said Dalziel, ‘it's these bloody streets. And all these cars. Wasn't like this when I were a lad.'

'No?' Stamper laughed. 'All ponies and traps then, I suppose.'

'You still saw horses pulling carts,' agreed Dalziel. 'Better for the roses, and better for the rest of us too, I reckon.'

'You say so? I'd not have put you down for the nostalgic type,' said Stamper.

'You're a fine one to talk,' said Dalziel. 'That radio thing you did, it were fuller of nostalgia than an Old Boys' dinner.'

'That was what the producer wanted, I suppose,' said Stamper.

'Sounded like you meant it to me.'

'Perhaps. I was looking back to a time when I was only eight, before I found out what a pain life really is. That must have coloured things.'

'Your dad's oddities didn't bother you then?'

'I don't suppose he'd given up on me then.'

Dalziel nodded his understanding, then said, 'Funny how things get to look different. Your dad must've been the same kind of jumped-up twat then as you reckon he is now. Me, I didn't notice. You were all just a load of silly sods pissing about in yon bloody great house like you were living inside a film. But the other guests must've known what he was. And if they knew, then I ask myself, how come Mickledore and his mates got so friendly with a prat like your dad?'

He watched Stamper keenly in search of a defensive reaction, but the man simply considered the question seriously.

'Money's the answer, of course,' he said. 'Making it was his single great talent. Mickledore needed a non-stop supply by the sound of it. And Tory Party funds too. But there was another attraction for Partridge, I'd guess. My father had invested in TV when the franchises came up for grabs and I think it was about then he got his first local paper, so Partridge would see him as a potential manipulator of the masses.'

'First
local paper?' said Dalziel. 'He's got a lot then?'

Stamper grimaced and said, 'A lot of everything. Inkerstamm, that's his conglomerate, have got their grubby fingers in all kinds of pies.'

‘Inkerstamm? Their head office is near Sheffield, isn't it? At least he's stuck close to his roots.'

'Oh, sure. But just so that every time he looks out of the window, he'll be reminded how far he's travelled!'

This sounded a bit metaphysical to Dalziel. He said, 'How about Westropp? What was he after, money or manipulation?'

Stamper said, 'I think he was probably just Mickledore's guest, too well bred to check his host's guest list.'

He sounded oddly defensive, especially about a man whose profession probably trained him to check bathwater for sharks.

Dalziel said, 'And of course there was your mam.'

'What the hell does that mean?' demanded Stamper.

'She struck me as a very nice lady, that's all, the kind of lass anyone would be pleased to have to stay.'

'I'm sorry,' said Stamper. 'Yes, you're quite right. She's something else. Everyone loved her. I took it for granted as a kid. It was only later I got to realize how much rarer a talent that is than mere capacity for getting rich.'

'Everyone loved her? But she chose your father.'

'Why not? When you don't have to work at being loved, perhaps you don't need to develop powers of judgement.'

Dalziel yawned and said, 'So, to put it short, your mam and dad got asked out because he had the chinks and she had the charm. But she saw through him in the end.'

'Oh yes. She may not be judgemental, but she is neither insensitive nor stupid. Unfortunately, by the time she realized her mistake, she'd had me and Wendy.'

'Now that were real bad luck,' said Dalziel drily.

'I mean, she was trapped.'

‘Why? Women usually get custody. Any road, she were a Yank. Once she'd got you over there, he'd not have got you back in a hurry.'

‘My mother's mind didn't work like that. Also, my father kept such a tight rein on her and on us that it would have taken an SAS operation to break us free.'

'Probably've got you shot too. What's young Wendy doing now?'

'She's in PR,' said Stamper shortly.

Something in his tone alerted that inner ear which stops good cops from buying time-shares.

'She doesn't work for Inkerstamm, does she?'

'So what if she does?' demanded Stamper.

'Nowt, except I thought you and her would be on the same wavelength.'

Stamper shrugged in an effort at unconcern and said, 'In the end, daughters get from their fathers whatever they want. It's sons who have to make do with what their fathers want.'

They were moving much faster now and Dalziel realized that they had got on to a motorway. It must be the M1l. He reached into his inside pocket and took out the large-scale OS sheet he had bought on his way to Stamper's flat. As far as he could make out, the cottage where he hoped to find Kohler was close up against the boundary wall of something called the Ongar Estate, and well off the beaten track. When Stamper turned off the motorway on to the main road leading to the town of Ongar, he said, 'Slow down, it gets a bit complicated soon.'

He gave directions in clear unambiguous terms with plenty of time for Stamper to adjust. After a series of twists and turns on to progressively narrower roads, Dalziel said, 'All right, pull over.'

Stamper obeyed, bringing the car to a halt on a grass verge. He got out and looked over the hedge across empty fields.