Dalziel And Pascoe: Pictures Of Perfection Part 4

CHAPTER II.

'If I am a wild beast, I cannot help it.'

Less than an hour's sensible driving from Mid-Yorks.h.i.+re Police HQ, Ens...o...b.. is not remote by modern standards. But as the road began to narrow and the valley sides to steepen, Peter Pascoe felt a disproportionate sense of remoteness.

Everywhere there were signs of man's presence - the walls built out of stones painfully cleared from the green pastures alongside the s.h.i.+ning river, the sheep grazing between them, the whitewashed farmhouses, the road itself - but nowhere was there anything to persuade of man's permanence. Good old heartless, witless nature seemed lurking everywhere, ready to rush back in the minute man dropped his guard.

Then he rounded a bend and beheld a Vision of Beauty.

He skidded to a halt and walked back to take a closer look. Beyond a pair of elegant wrought-iron gates set in the thickest thorn hedge he'd ever seen, a gravelled drive arrowed across a daffodilled lawn to a distant house which, though partially hidden by topiaried shrubs, looked as foreign to Yorks.h.i.+re as a Pearly Queen in Barnsley market. No st.u.r.dy bield this, using Nature's materials to resist nature's onslaughts. Here was Art, naked and unashamed. Built of red, no, almost pink brick, with hipped gables, battered chimney b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and a turquoise slated roof along which the creamy ridge tiles seemed to have been piped by a patissier, it stood as bold and as bright as a Gay Rights demonstrator outside a rugby league ground.

He approached to stand near the gates which were themselves worthy of close study. Into the flowing scrolled design were woven the word SCARLETTS and the initials J.H. He reached out a hand to caress the sinuous curves.

Next moment a black shape like a young bullock flung itself against the gates, setting the metal rattling and Pascoe staggering back in terror, which was just as well, as a set of teeth like a rip saw sliced the air where his fingers had been.

'Down, boy!' growled a harsh female voice, and a woman appeared from behind the thorn hedge.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' gasped Pascoe. 'That thing ought to be muzzled!'

'Muzzle's no use for keeping off trespa.s.sers,' said the woman. She was grey-haired, of indeterminate age, with a hooked nose and unrelenting eyes.

'I wasn't trespa.s.sing,' said Pascoe indignantly.

'You were touching,' she said. 'What's your business, mister?'

'I was just admiring the house.'

'Admiring comes afore coveting,' she grated. 'I dare say you was admiring last night as well. Just b.u.g.g.e.r off or I'll mebbe let Fop out for a run.'

Fop! If he couldn't get her under the Fighting Dog legislation, he could certainly have her under the Trades Descriptions Act. But at the moment he could see little alternative to a dignified retreat.

He was moving away when a metallic aubergine cabriolet turned off the road and stopped in front of the gate. The driver stood up and peered over the screen at him. He was at the turn of forty with a mobile, sensual face beneath an aureole of t.i.tian hair. He wore a cordovan jacket which matched his car and round his neck was wound a shot silk scarf just long enough when he drove at speed to give him something of Isadora Duncan's panache without risking sharing her fate.

In fact the first general impression Pascoe got was of a man who judged his effects carefully.

The second impression was that he knew him from somewhere.

'And what, pray, may your business be?'

The voice was light, educated, and redolent of the complacency of one who knows that if things of beauty are a joy forever, he's OK, mate.

'I'm a policeman,' said Pascoe, taking the question literally. 'DCI Pascoe, Mid-Yorks CID.'

'Good Lord,' said the man, leaping lightly (yet with a weighty awareness of his light leaping) out of the car. 'You chaps are taking this seriously. I'm impressed.'

Pascoe took the proffered hand but not the allusion. The shake was firm, warm, dry, and just the right length.

'As you doubtless know, I'm Justin Halavant. Bayle, the gates.'

Bayle! The woman's name was as apt as the dog's wasn't! As for the man's, this confirmed his sense of recognition. This was Justin Halavant who edited the Post's Arts Page and frequently hosted TV's North Light Show.

'Leave your car,' suggested Halavant as the gates rolled open. 'Hop into mine.'

Pascoe, feeling Fop's hungry eye upon him, hopped, and Halavant sent the car shooting up the drive at a speed which suggested he might be intending to enter without bothering to get out.

Happily, a deftly controlled skid brought them to a halt parallel to the facade. Pascoe, determined to show no reaction to these automotive histrionics, climbed out and said, 'Some house! But not exactly the vernacular tradition, is it?'

'Hardly,' smiled Halavant. 'My great-grandfather had it built, partly to disoblige certain of his neighbours, partly to open up this part of darkest Yorks.h.i.+re to the new light of taste. Basically it's a Morris design with a few exuberances added by the architect who was a rather wayward pupil of b.u.t.terfield's.'

'b.u.t.terfield? He did the parsonage at Hensall, didn't he?'

'You know about such things? Come inside and let me give you the quick tour.'

He led the way through a series of rooms so full of goodies that Pascoe began to feel as he often did in great museums that the total somehow came to less than the sum of the parts. The saving trick he had discovered was to focus on a single item and absorb all it had to offer, otherwise Art became Everest, b.l.o.o.d.y hard work, and essayed merely because it was there.

He paused in a long drawing-room, blanked his mind, and trawled his gaze around the paintings which crowded the walls. It snagged on a small portrait whose narrow oval frame perfectly echoed the face of its subject. She was a young woman, not beautiful but full of character, with deep brown eyes, a rather long nose, and glowing skin tones. She met his gaze directly but demurely, yet he got a sense of fun, as though laughter were tugging at those modest lips, and wasn't there just a hint that her left eyelid was drooping in a cheeky wink? He looked closer and the impression was gone.

'This is nice,' he said. 'Does she have a name?'

'Probably, I don't recall. Some ancestor, eighteenth-century, of course,' said Halavant vaguely. 'Are you specially interested in portraits, Inspector?'

'No. She just caught my eye. That serious, rather solemn posing expression, yet you get a sense she's amused, almost on the brink of a wink, so to speak.'

'What?' Halavant came to stand alongside him. 'Yes ... yes . . . perhaps . . .'

He turned away abruptly and said, 'You'll forgive me if I don't offer you any hospitality, but having just got back, I have things to do ... so if we could get this business sorted .. .'

Clearly the tour was over. Time to be a policeman again.

'What business would that be, sir?' said Pascoe courteously.

'The false alarm last night, of course.'

'Perhaps you could tell me about it, sir.'

'What can I tell you that you don't know?' he said in some irritation, tugging at an old-fas.h.i.+oned bell-pull by the fireplace. 'I rang Mrs Bayle last night to confirm what time I'd be back today, and she filled me in . . . ah, Mrs Bayle. This incident last night. Tell us what happened.'

The woman, who had appeared with silent speed and, to Pascoe's relief, without Fop, said, 'Bell rang at nine o'clock. I looked through the peephole and when I saw it were him, I opened the door...'

'Him?' interjected Pascoe.

'Him. The constable. Mr Bendish.'

'Ah,' said Pascoe noncommittally, but he felt Halavant's curious gaze on him and guessed he was beginning to suspect something odd here.

Mrs Bayle took the 'ah' as an instruction to proceed.

'I asked what he wanted and he said there'd been a report of a man hanging about, looking suspicious, and had I noticed anything. I said no I hadn't and good night. But he said he'd better take a look inside just to be sure as it were more than his job was worth, and likely mine too, if Mr Halavant came back and found something missing, and he'd been on the doorstep.'

This sudden flood of words was, Pascoe guessed, a pre-emptive justification of having allowed someone across the threshold in her master's absence.

'What happened then?'

'He took a look around. Everything were in order, so he left.'

'And you yourself felt no cause for concern?'

She hesitated and said, 'Well, after he'd gone, I thought mebbe I heard summat outside, more like a nightbird than owt to worry about, but I sent Fop out for a run just in case.'

Pascoe shuddered at the thought and Halavant came in with, 'And naturally there was nothing. And if there had been, my extremely expensive, police-recommended state-of-the-art security system would have alerted the neighbourhood. Mr Pascoe, forgive me but I get a distinct impression that most of what you've just heard is new to you. Now why should that be?'

It was time to come clean, or at least a little less muddied.

'You're right, sir,' he said. 'To tell the truth, I only stopped to admire your lovely house, and things just went on from there.'

Halavant smiled and said, 'I wondered why such a senior officer was spending time on a false alarm. Are you in fact in the area on business . . . ?'

'I'm on my way to Ens...o...b.. to have a word with Constable Bendish, so no doubt I'll get the full story then,' said Pascoe, seeing no reason to fuel rumour. 'You know him, do you, sir? Settled in all right, has he? Old village communities can be difficult.'

'I think you'll find Ens...o...b.. pretty unique,' said Halavant ambiguously, as well as solecistically. if your visit is in any sense an efficiency check, I would say from what I know of the young man that his devotion to duty has been puritanical, and his eye for the depth of a tyre tread is phenomenal.'

As he spoke he had been gently urging Pascoe to the front door. Pascoe's mind was full of interesting speculations, but as the door opened and he looked down the long length of unprotected driveway to the distant gates, they were all swept aside by the single basic question: was Fop loose?

He tried to find a way to phrase it that wouldn't make him sound like a quivering wimp, but the door clunked solidly shut before he could speak.

He set off at high speed, grew ashamed, forced himself to stop and admire a blossoming pear, then strolled to the safety of his car with studied ease.

Once seated and driving, normal service was renewed and all the speculations came flooding back. A puritanical devotion to duty, Halavant said. All the evidence certainly pointed that way. He came off duty at twelve noon yesterday. Twice since then - once when remonstrating with the h.e.l.ls Angel, and again last night at Scarletts - he had been seen in uniform doing his job. Curious.

He got Control on his radio, asking them to check with CID and with Filmer's Section Office whether there'd been any report last night of intruders in the grounds of Scarletts, then set off towards Ens...o...b.. once more.

His call sign crackled just as he reached the beginnings of the village and he pulled up in front of a steep-roofed single-storey building inscribed Village Hall and Reading Room to acknowledge. Next moment Andrew Dalziel's voice filled the car like thunder.

'What's all this about an incident?'

Pascoe explained.

'Well, there's nowt on anyone's records,' said Dalziel.

'That's a bit odd, don't you think, sir?'

'No, I don't. The lad's off duty, remember? Gets called out, finds it's a wind-up, he's not going to waste more of his own time putting in a report, is he? In fact, it probably decides him to make himself scarce for the rest of his time off. He'll likely turn up later, all apologetic about not letting Filmer know where he was. End of story.'

'From what Halavant told me he sounds a lot more conscientious than that,' said Pascoe. 'What about the stains in the car?'

'Seems they're blood all right, they're checking the group. But I can think of a dozen explanations, none of 'em sinister. And another thing. You can scratch the a.s.sault by the mad h.e.l.ls Angel. Wieldy'll tell you all about it. Try not to laugh.'

'He's coming out here too, is he?' said Pascoe, surprised.

'Someone had to ferry Filmer and Digweed back,' said Dalziel defensively. 'Any road, two heads should get this lot sorted out in no time, especially when one on 'em would frighten a confession out of a village pump. But take care, the pair of you. Don't stir things up. We'll look right Herberts if we blow this up into a dogs and divers job and it turns out young Bendish is banging the vicar's wife and has just s.h.a.gged himself unconscious in the vestry!'

'Thank you for that, sir. Any other advice?' said Pascoe.

'Don't get on your high horse! Listen, you want local colour, try Thomas Wapshare at the local. He'll talk your hind legs off if you let him. Knows how to keep a good pint does Thomas, but be warned. His black pudding doesn't half make you fart!'

Interesting, thought Pascoe as he replaced the mike. Dalziel was obviously just a little bit more worried than he wanted to be.

Like a good cop, he decided to take his superior's advice, though his motivation was mixed. Dalziel's intimate acquaintance with the hostelries of Yorks.h.i.+re was famous and the Fat Man's recommendation of a beer was not to be missed. But where was the pub?

A cyclist had come down the High Street as he talked on the radio and was leaning his bike against the wall of a substantial granite-built house directly opposite the village hall.

Pascoe wound down his window and called. 'Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where the village pub is?'

The young man looked towards him. He had a pale thin face, unshaven, though the resultant fuzz was more down than stubble, and amber eyes which gave an unsettling impression they were used for looking through rather than seeing with. Even more unsettlingly, his hands were occupied untying a shotgun from his crossbar and a gunny bag from his pillion. Something was dripping from the bag. It looked like blood.

Pascoe recalled Dalziel's warning about making himself look a right Herbert by stirring things up unnecessarily. On the other hand he would look a righter Herbert if he let this youngster pa.s.s unchallenged and it turned out he'd got Bendish's head in his gunny.

He got out of the car, glanced left and right to make sure he wasn't going to be knocked down by a speeding tractor or stampeding bullock, and when he looked back, the youngster had vanished. It was incredible. Perhaps the camouflage jacket the youth had been wearing was a new advanced model! Then he saw the red droplets glistening up to the closed door.

Pascoe crossed the street. Above the door was a large wooden square which he'd registered vaguely as some form of weatherboarding. But closer, he realized here was a partial explanation of the strange non-response to his question. It was an inn sign, weathered almost to illegibility.

In fact, more than weathered. It looked as if at some time in its existence it had been a.s.saulted with an axe and roasted over a bonfire. The once gilded lettering spelled out in the black of its own decay the just readable words THE MORRIS MEN'S REST above the bubbled, flaking portrait of a portly bearded gent, though identification was not possible beyond his hairiness as the best part of his face looked as if it had been blown away with a blunderbuss.

Pascoe pushed the door. It swung open and he found himself in a shadowy vestibule with four doors off. The spoor of blood led into the second on the left.

He went through and found himself in a large farmhouse kitchen. The young man had vanished, presumably through the open door which led into a rear yard and garden. His gunny bag lay on a broad, well-scrubbed table.

Seeing a chance to check without looking foolish, Pascoe moved quickly forward, undid the lace round the bag's neck, pulled it open, and peered inside.

A pair of big bright eyes peered back at him.

And a voice said, 'Who the h.e.l.l are you, then?'

Happily the voice didn't come from the bag. Unhappily, it came from a broad-built man standing in the doorway and clutching a huge bloodstained knife in his right hand.

Pascoe took two rapid steps back and another two sideways to put the table between himself and the newcomer, who gestured with his weapon and cried, 'Watch it!'

Too late he recognized the words as a warning not a threat. His s.h.i.+n caught against a galvanized bucket half hidden under the table. Over it went, spilling its contents all over the floor. He staggered, slipped, fell, put his hands into something warm.

And when he held them up to look at them, they were as red and sticky as the broad blade in the hand of the menacing figure looming over him.