Recalled to Life (2 page)

'In the interests of balance? Well, that's certainly a novelty in the
Sphere
, Sally. OK. Last question.'

'Miss Kohler. Cecily. Cissy. If you were innocent, why did you confess?'

This time the preliminary pause goes on and on.

Blindcrake says, 'OK, let me rephrase the question. Not only did you confess, but your alleged confession implicated Ralph Mickledore to such an extent that, along with the other evidence against him, it sent him to the gallows. Was he innocent too?'

Waggs says, 'OK, Sally, I should have known better. That does it, folks . . .'

'No! Hold on. I need an answer, Jay. It was your telly programme that suggested she was so smashed up by little Emily's drowning that she was fair game for anyone. If she's innocent, then who's guilty? And I don't just mean of the murder. Who was it who twisted her arm till she stuck it up?'

Now Waggs is on his feet, drawing Kohler upright too.

Jacklin leans over to the mikes and says, 'I cannot allow my client to answer that question outside of a courtroom. We must remember the law of defamation . . .'

'Defamation nothing! You can't defame the dead,' yells Blindcrake. 'And isn't the guy most likely the late Detective-Superintendent Walter Tallantire, then Head of Mid-Yorkshire CID?'

Waggs is urging Kohler off the platform. Any discipline the press conference might have had is rapidly disappearing. Cameramen and reporters jostle each other in their efforts to get near the woman. They spill out of the body of the hall and get between her and the door. The air is filled with a blizzard of flash bulbs and a babble of voices.

'. . . What about compensation? . . . Will you go back to the States? . . . Are you suing the police? ... Is it true you've written your memoirs? . . . How much are they paying? . . . Have you heard from James Westropp? . . . What's his son Philip doing now? . . . Did you mean to drown the kid? ... Is it true you're going into a nunnery? . . . Was Daphne Bush your lover? . . .'

Three uniformed policemen have appeared. They clear a path to the door. One of them flings it open. A camera peers through, momentarily revealing a long corridor in which several men are standing. Then Kohler and Jacklin are through. Waggs turns in the doorway, helping the police to block pursuit. Someone shouts, 'Hey, Jay. When they make the movie, how about Schwarzenegger playing you?'

Waggs grins and says, 'Thank you for your courtesy, gentlemen, and ladies. That's it. End of story.'

He steps back through the door. A policeman pulls it shut behind him.

The scene fades, to be replaced by a close-up of a woman with dead eyes and a mobile lower lip who says, 'The rest of our programme will be running approximately forty minutes late because of that news conference. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to viewers . .

THREE

'Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate

the fellow.'

Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel of Mid- Yorkshire CID stabbed the off-button of the video remote control as if he wanted to drive it through his knee.

'Bastards!' he said. 'Bitch!'

'The poor woman,' said Maudie Tallantire.

'Poor nowt. She were guilty as hell,' said Dalziel. 'Three people are dead because of her. I'd have thrown away the key! You save your sympathy for yourself, Maudie. You heard what that newspaper cow said about Wally?'

'Wally's been dead nigh on twenty years,' said Maud Tallantire as if explaining something to a simple child. 'He's past harm now and who'd want to harm an old woman like me? Oh, I know the times have changed, and  I reckon us old 'uns had the best of it, war and all. Everyone knew where they were going then, and in the years after. But it all went wrong somewhere, Andy. But human nature doesn't change. At heart people are still as good as ever they were. They'd rather do you a good turn than a bad one. Look at you, Andy, coming all this way just 'cos you got to worrying about me, and no need at all!'

Dalziel shook his head in affectionate exasperation. Anyone who could cite himself as evidence of the basic goodness of human nature was clearly beyond hope. Maudie was over seventy now, grey-haired, slightly lame, but she hadn't changed in essence from the pretty, amiable and rather vague woman he'd met more than thirty years ago, and very little, if report were true, from the wide-eyed lass who'd married Wally Tallantire back in the 'thirties.

'Copper's wife has got to be either tough as old boots to put up with the life, or live in a world of her own so she don't notice,' Wally had once confided in him when time and alcohol had matured their relationship. 'That's my Maudie. A rare orchid, Andy. She'll need looking out for if anything ever happens to me. You'll do that for me, won't you, lad? Do I have your word on that?'

Dalziel had given his word gladly, but in the event, when Tallantire died of a heart attack shortly before he was due to retire, Maudie proved quite capable of looking out for herself. Within a year she'd moved back to her native Skipton and quickly gathered up the threads of her young life, broken when she'd moved from West to Mid-Yorkshire all those years ago.

Dalziel visited regularly for a while, then intermittently, and in recent years hardly at all. But when he saw the Kohler press conference on the telly, he knew the time had come for another visit.

He'd been going to suggest that Maudie might like to think about staying with friends for a couple of days just in case the Press came prying, but he wasn't a man to waste breath. Instead he ran his video back a little way, restarted it, and pressed the freeze button when he reached the shot of the corridor through the open door.

'That fellow there remind you of anyone, Maudie?'

'The tall one?' she said looking at the two men touched by his broad forefinger. 'He's a bit like Raymond Massey.'

'No. Someone you know. And I mean the other one. I know who the tall fellow is. Chap called Sempernel. He came sniffing around at the time. Said he were Home Office but he were a funny bugger, no question. You'd not have seen him. But the other one, the skinny runt, remind you of anyone? And don't say Mickey Rooney, luv!'

'He doesn't look a bit like Mickey Rooney,' said the woman, examining the man closely. 'He doesn't really look like anybody, but he does look familiar.'

'Remember a sergeant called Hiller? Adolf, we used to call him? Wally didn't care for him and got shut of him.'

'Vaguely,' she said. 'But what would Sergeant Hiller be doing there?'

'That's what I'd like to know,' said Dalziel grimly. 'And he's not a sergeant now. Deputy Chief Constable down south, last I heard. Well, the higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his behind, eh?'

Maudie Tallantire laughed. 'You don't change, do you, Andy? Now how about a cup of tea?'

'Grand. By the way, Maudie, do you still have any of Wally's personal papers? I seem to recall you said you'd put a lot of stuff together when you moved here just in case there were anything important . . .'

'That's right. And you said you'd look through it some time when you had a moment. But that was donkey's years ago, Andy. And you never had a moment, did you?'

'Sorry,' he said guiltily. 'You know how it is. But if you've still got it, I might as well take a look now.'

'I've probably thrown it out long since,' she said. 'It were in an old blue suitcase, one of them little ones which was all we used to need once when we went away. Now it takes a cabin trunk! It'll be in the boxroom if I've still got it, but it's dusty up there and you don't want to spoil that nice suit.'

'I'll take care.'

She was right about the dust but he spotted the blue case without any difficulty. He picked it up, blew gently, coughed as a dust cloud arose, and went to open the window.

Below in the street, a car drew up. There were two men in it. The one who got out of the driver's side was youngish, dressed in designer casuals, and his elegantly coiffured head moved watchfully this way and that, as though he had debouched in Indian territory rather than suburban Yorkshire.

But it was the other who held Dalziel's attention. Thin-faced, bespectacled, dressed in a crumpled black suit a size too large, he stood quite still looking up at the house like a twice repelled rent-collector.

'Bloody hell. It
is
Adolf!' exclaimed Dalziel, stepping back from the window. 'I should've known that bugger'd move quick.'

Shaking the remaining dust from the case, he went quickly and quietly downstairs. Just inside the front door was a small cloakroom. He slipped the case under the hand- basin, closed the door and returned to the living-room as Maudie came out of the kitchen carrying a laden tray.

'Find what you were looking for, Andy?'

'No, not a sign,' he said, removing the video from the recorder and fitting it into a capacious inner pocket. 'I reckon you must have chucked it out without noticing. No matter. Are them your Eccles cakes I see? You must've known I was coming. What was it Wally used to say? Never say nowt good ever came out of Lancashire till you've tasted our Maudie's Eccles cakes!'

He seized one, devoured it in a couple of bites, and was on his third when the doorbell rang.

'Who can that be?' said Maudie, with the ever fresh surprise of the northern housewife that someone should be at her door.

She went out into the hallway. Dalziel helped himself to another cake and moved to the lounge doorway to catch the conversation.

'Mrs Tallantire, you may not remember me, but we have met a long time back. Geoffrey Hiller. I was a sergeant up here for a while when your husband was head of CID.'

'Hiller? Now isn't that odd? We were just talking about you. Won't you step inside. Sergeant? And your friend.'

'Thank you. Actually, it's Deputy Chief Constable now, Mrs Tallantire. Of the South Thames force. And this is Detective-Inspector Stubbs.'

'Ooh, you have done well. Come on through. Andy, it never rains but it pours. Here's another old friend of Wally's come visiting.'

Dalziel, back in his chair, looked up in polite puzzlement as the dark-suited man stopped short in the doorway, like a parson accidentally ushered into a brothel. Then the fat man's face lit up with the joy of a father at the prodigal's return and he said, 'Geoff? Is that you? Geoff Hiller, by all that's holy! How are you, lad? What fettle? By God, it's good to see you.'

He was on his feet shaking the newcomer's hand like a bushman killing a snake. Hiller had recovered from his shock and was now regarding Dalziel with wary neutrality.

'How are you, er, Andy?' he said.

'I'm grand. And who's your friend?'

'This is Detective-Inspector Stubbs. Stubbs, meet Detective-Superintendent Dalziel, Head of Mid- Yorkshire CID.'

Hiller's tone underlined the title.

Stubbs held out his hand. 'Hi. Glad to meet you, Supe.'

'Supe
?' echoed Dalziel. 'Up here we drink
supe.
Or if it's homemade, we chew it. Will you be staying in West Yorkshire long enough to learn our little ways?'

Stubbs glanced at Hiller, who said, 'Actually, er, Andy, we're on our way to your neck of the woods. This is just in nature of a courtesy call on Mrs Tallantire in passing."

'I see. In passing Skipton? On your way to Mid-Yorks HO? From South Thames?'

As he spoke, Dalziel's finger traced two sides of a rectangle in the air, and he smiled an alligator's smile.

'Now that's what I call courtesy! Maudie, isn't it nice of Geoff here to come so far out of his way just for old time's sake? Incidentally, Geoff, I presume you're expected at my shop? I was talking to the Chief yesterday afternoon and he said nowt.'

'The Home Office should have phoned Mr Trimble this morning,' said Hiller.

'That explains it. It's my day off, which is why I'm here. Social call on an old friend. Mebbe it's your day off too?'

'No,' said Hiller. 'Not really. I'm afraid there is a business element to my call, Mrs Tallantire. You may have heard that some question has arisen as to the safety of the verdict in the Mickledore Hall murder case. In fact, Cecily Kohler has been released and the Home Office has ordered an inquiry into the affair. Your late husband, Detective-Superintendent Tallantire, conducted the original investigation and will naturally figure in the inquiry which I have been instructed to take charge of.'

'Now isn't that funny? Andy and I were only just now talking - '

'And you've come to warn Maudie that the Press will probably be sniffing around,' intervened Dalziel. 'Now that is kind. I leave you in good hands, Maudie. Me, I'd best be off. Geoff, I know it's not a nice job you've got, poking around in other buggers' rubbish bins, but where'd we be without the garbage collectors, eh? I promise you, you'll get nowt but cooperation from my department. I'll see you tomorrow, likely.'

Hiller tried to look suitably grateful but couldn't get beyond the expression of a postman assured the Rottweiler is just a big softy.