Next morning Pascoe rose early and had a cold shower to wake himself up.
He hadn’t slept well.
A second reading had been followed by a third.
Then he got up, had another drink from the minibar, and tried to recall all that Ellie had told him about her lunch with Maurice Kentmore.
Once more Dalziel’s deep distrust of coincidence was uppermost in his mind.
OK, it hadn’t been his wife but his brother who Christopher Kentmore had spoken to as he lay dying. But in terms of drama, and of novel sales, a dying man speaking to his wife from the battlefield made a much better story.
He’d riffled through the pages to the end of the book. In the short last chapter, Shack returned to England. It consisted mainly of descriptions of energetic sexual encounters with various old and new flames, and equally energetic encounters with various antiwar protesters. After the last of these, in which he consigned a trio of what he called bearded leftie dickheads to intensive care, he drove north, thinking, Now it was time to go and talk to people who knew from experience what war was really about and why there could be no compromise with the enemy we were fighting. The desert makes you see choices simply. We win or we die.
Me, I intend winning.
If the episode in the book were based on a real incident in which Sergeant Young helped Christopher Kentmore to speak to his brother, what more natural than that Youngman should have called on Maurice to fill him in on the background?
Then later, when he had joined or even founded the Templars to take the fight to the terrorists in the UK, perhaps memory of Kentmore’s reaction had made Youngman think of him as a possible recruit.
Was Kentmore the kind of man who’d get involved in such madness? On the surface, perhaps not, but that’s what surfaces are for, to hide beneath. From his record during the foot and mouth crisis, and his actions on Fidler’s Three, he seemed to be the kind of man who had no trouble moving forward from belief to action.
Which didn’t mean he was equipped to deal with all the consequences of action.
Military experience might inure soldiers to the concept of collateral damage and friendly-fire casualties, but a civilian who got involved, especially outside the supporting framework of the concept of a just war, could be devastated at the thought that his actions, in no matter how good a cause, had shed innocent blood.
Which would explain Kentmore’s interest in maintaining contact with Ellie and through her getting information about the progress of both the injured cops.
Also, how worried might he have been when tabloid speculation about the alarms last Sunday in the Central Hospital made him suspect an attempt had been made to take out Hector? Meeting Ellie for lunch could have seemed a good way to get confirmation or contradiction of this.
And finally, his own theory about Youngman’s reason for backing away from Fidler’s Three could be just as valid if it were Kentmore not Kalim he wanted to avoid.
It all fit together very nicely.
“Like Patrick Fitzwilliam and William Fitzpatrick, the Irish queers,” he heard Dalziel say. “They fit together very nicely but they’re not going to give birth, are they?”
In other words, don’t believe in coincidence, but don’t jump to conclusions either!
He finished his drink and climbed back into bed. If he didn’t get some sleep he’d be a wreck in the morning. When sleep didn’t come, he picked up the Gideon Bible and opened it at random.
Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer; preserve my life from fear of the enemy. Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity. Who whet their tongue like a sword; and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words: That they may shoot in secret at the perfect: suddenly do they shoot at him, and fear not.
But who is the enemy? And who is the perfect? he found himself asking.
And still pondering these questions, he’d fallen into a fitful sleep.
The phone was ringing as he stepped out of the shower.
“Hello,” he said.
“Pete, it’s Dave Freeman. Sandy and I are downstairs. Can we talk?”
“Why not? Stay for breakfast. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Order for me, will you? The full English. Might as well fill my belly before my credit’s canceled.”
As he dried himself, he tried to work out why they were here. Not, he guessed, to tell him all was forgiven and invite him back into the fold. Anyway, he’d had enough of the fold.
He picked up his mobile and rang home.
“Hi,” said Ellie. “I was getting worried. I tried to ring last night but you were switched off.”
“Sorry. I was otherwise engaged.”
“Not running around playing at Action Man again, I hope?”
“No. In fact I was very sedentary. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.”
“Home?” Her voice filled with a hope which touched his heart. “You’re definitely getting back for the weekend?”
“No,” he said. Paused. Then went on, “Bit longer than that. I’m finished here. We can get back to normal.”
“Peter, that’s marvelous! When shall I expect you?”
“Well, you weren’t planning to go out for lunch, were you? I mean, no unexpected summons to appear on television to accept the Nobel Prize for literature or something like that?”
“No! And if there were, I’d cancel it. Talking of which, I’ll give Maurice Kentmore a ring and tell him tomorrow’s off, shall I?”
He said, “Kentmore? I’d forgotten that. No, it’s a bit late to cancel, isn’t it? And now I’m going to be back permanently, not just for a couple of days, it doesn’t matter so much. Let him come.”
In his own ears his words rang as false as a TV soap star upgrading to Hamlet.
“You mean, let them come. It’s not the prospect of seeing lean and hungry Kilda again that’s made you change your tune, is it?” mocked Ellie.
“Could be. You’ll just have to make sure I’m too exhausted to take an interest. Now I’m off to eat my last all-expenses-paid breakfast. Love to Rosie. ’Bye.”
He felt guilty at deceiving her, but the knowledge of how very much he was looking forward to getting home salved his conscience. And the deceit element wasn’t so significant, was it? All he wanted to do was have another close-up look at Kentmore for himself. Nothing wrong in that. Probably his suspicions would evaporate in a cloud of conversation about Yorkshire cricket and prize pigs.
He went down to the oak-paneled breakfast room where he found Freeman and Glenister sitting at a table, drinking coffee.
Freeman greeted him with a smile. Glenister looked more serious.
She said “Peter, I didn’t want you to go without speaking to you.”
“So I’m definitely going?” he said.
“The Commander says he has no choice. Believe me, as a cop he understands the value of playing it by ear now and then. He says he’d have been surprised if someone who’d flourished under Superintendent Dalziel didn’t take a strong independent line from time to time. But our work is such a web of complexities, there are some rules you can’t break. Shoot off by yourself and you never know what damage you may be doing.”
“You’re a cop,” he said.
“Yes, and I learned the hard way.”
“But you don’t think I can?”
“Peter, I’m sure you could. But you were never going to be anything but a temporary attachment,” she said gently. “So what’s the point of prolonging things? You’ve trod on sensitive toes, that’s all.”
“So whose sensitive toe is it I feel up my backside?” he asked, looking at Freeman. “Sounds as if it’s definitely spooky. You, Dave? Lukasz? Were Tim and Rod asked for their assessment?”
Before Freeman could reply, Glenister said, “It was a unanimous decision. There are no sides here, Peter. We all have the greatest respect for you. At a personal level, I haven’t encountered anyone at the Lube who hasn’t liked you.”
“I can second that,” said Freeman.
“Well, I’m touched,” said Pascoe. “So is this what you’ve come to tell me, that I’m a nice guy, much loved by little children everywhere? Or are you going to hang around to see me safely off the premises?”
His sarcasms seemed to bounce off them.
A waiter approached and set a huge plateful of breakfast down before Pascoe.
“You two not joining me then?” he said.
“I’m a muesli man myself,” said Freeman. “Just looking at that clogs my arteries.”
“So we’ll leave you to enjoy it,” said Glenister. “Peter, my main reason for coming this morning was I wanted you to know, nothing that’s happened over here will leave the slightest mark on your record. I understand your deep personal interest in parts of this investigation and I’ll make sure you are kept in the loop. Mainly though, I didn’t want to miss the chance of saying good-bye to you personally. I hope we get the chance to work together again. You’re my kind of cop. A real blue Smartie. Thanks for everything.”
“I’ll second that, Pete,” said Freeman. “It’s been really good working with you. You’d have made a great spook. Any time you think of changing careers, be sure to let me know. In the meantime, the very best of luck to you.”
The two of them pushed their chairs back from the table as though preparing to rise, and regarded him with warm smiles.
They’re waiting for me to say something, thought Pascoe.
Despite himself he felt quite flattered by their unsolicited testimonial. The courteous and the sensible response would be to accept their praise modestly, then confirm its accuracy by telling them about his discovery of the possible link between Kentmore and Youngman. Unless there were a broad conspiracy in CAT to support the Templars, the fact that there were two of them should ensure his suspicions got acted on. So, let it be someone else’s job to check out the connection. He could then ring Ellie again, tell her he was on his way, and say he’d changed his mind about having the Kentmores to lunch. That way he could really get his life back.
That would be the sensible and the courteous thing to do, the natural response one would look for from the famous silver-tongued, blue-Smartie rope-dancer, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe.
His blunt and brutish ringmaster, Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel, on the other hand, would probably have ruined the friendly almost sentimental moment by saying something totally inappropriate like, “Get fucked.”
He looked down with patriotic pride at the Full English before him, picked up the sauce bottle, gave it a St. George’s cross of ketchup, stabbed a sausage, and began to eat.
Now they rose from their seats, still smiling, though a trifle uneasily.
He looked up at them, chewed, swallowed, and said, “Get fucked.”