REGINALD HILL
MIDNIGHT FUGUE

A Dalziel and Pascoe novel

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Copyright © Reginald Hill 2009

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007252701

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2009 ISBN: 9780007292899

Version: 2015-06-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Part One Accelerando

Prelude

Chapter One - 08.10–08.12

Chapter Two - 08.12–08.20

Chapter Three - 08.12–08.21

Chapter Four - 08.12–08.25

Chapter Five - 08.25–08.40

Chapter Six - 08.25–08.40

Chapter Seven - 08.25–08.55

Chapter Eight - 09.00–09.20

Chapter Nine - 08.55–09.15

Chapter Ten - 08.55–09.05

Chapter Eleven - 09.15–09.30

Chapter Twelve - 09.31–09.40

Chapter Thirteen - 09.50–10.30

Chapter Fourteen - 10.45–11.02

Chapter Fifteen - 10.50–11.05

Chapter Sixteen - 10.55–11.20

Part Two Con Forza

Prelude

Chapter Seventeen - 12.00–12.15

Chapter Eighteen - 12.10–12.20

Chapter Nineteen - 12.15–12.25

Chapter Twenty - 12.20–12.30

Chapter Twenty-One - 12.20–12.35

Chapter Twenty-Two - 12.20–12.35

Chapter Twenty-Three - 12.20–12.40

Chapter Twenty-Four - 12.35–13.15

Chapter Twenty-Five - 13.00–13.40

Chapter Twenty-Six - 13.00–13.50

Chapter Twenty-Seven - 13.00–13.30

Part Three Misterioso

Prelude

Chapter Twenty-Eight - 13.45–14.50

Chapter Twenty-Nine - 12.25–15.00

Chapter Thirty - 13.35–15.25

Chapter Thirty-One - 14.45–15.45

Chapter Thirty-Two - 15.20–15.30

Chapter Thirty-Three - 14.45–15.35

Chapter Thirty-Four - 15.50–16.15

Chapter Thirty-Five - 13.35–17.30

Chapter Thirty-Six - 16.35–16.41

Chapter Thirty-Seven - 16.35–17.05

Chapter Thirty-Eight - 16.00–16.30

Chapter Thirty-Nine - 16.30–18.05

Chapter Forty - 16.41–17.15

Chapter Forty-One - 16.42–18.05

Chapter Forty-Two - 17.35–17.55

Chapter Forty-Three - 17.40–17.55

Chapter Forty-Four - 17.10–17.55

Chapter Forty-Five - 17.00–18.00

Part Four Furioso

Prelude

Chapter Forty-Six - 17.55–18.15

Chapter Forty-Seven - 18.10–18.15

Chapter Forty-Eight - 18.15–18.30

Chapter Forty-Nine - 18.05–18.15

Chapter Fifty - 18.33–18.35

Chapter Fifty-One - 18.35–18.50

Chapter Fifty-Two - 18.20–18.48

Chapter Fifty-Three - 18.45–18.52

Chapter Fifty-Four - 18.57–19.22

Chapter Fifty-Five - 18.52–19.23

Chapter Fifty-Six - 19.22–19.30

Chapter Fifty-Seven - 23.15–23.59

Part Five Con Fuoco Poi Smorzando

Postlude

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

The raindrops play their midnight fugue Against my window pane. Could I once more fold you in my arms You should not leave again.

Richard Morland: Night Music

ONE accelerando

PRELUDE

Midnight.

Splintered woodwork, bedroom door flung open, feet pounding across the floor, duvet ripped off, grim faces looking down at him, his wife screaming as she’s dragged naked from his side…

He sits upright and cries, ‘NO!’

The duvet is in place, the room empty, the door closed. And through the thin curtains seeps the grey light of dawn.

As for Gina, she hasn’t been by his side for…days?…weeks?…could be months.

The digital bedside clock reads 5.55. He’s not surprised.

Always some form of Nelson whenever he wakes these days: 1.11 2.22 3.33…

Meaning something bad.

Things go on like this, one morning soon he’s going to wake and the clock will read 6.66…

He is still shaking, his body soaked with sweat, his heart pounding.

He gets out of bed and goes on to the landing.

Even the sight of the front door securely in place can’t slow his pulse, even the shower jets cooling and cleaning his flesh can’t wash away his fear.

He tries to analyse his dream, to get it under control by working out its meaning.

He conjures up the men. Some in uniform, some masked; some familiar, some strangers; some wielding police batons, some swinging hammers…

He gives it up, not because the meaning is too elusive but because it’s too clear.

There is no one to turn to, nowhere to hide.

He looks out of the window into the quiet street, familiar from childhood, whenever that was. Now it seems strange, the houses skewed, the perspectives warped, all colour washed out, like a sepia still from some old horror movie.

He realizes he no longer knows where it leads.

Maybe that’s where salvation lies.

If he doesn’t know, how can they know?

All he has to do is walk away down that street. Once round the corner he’ll be somewhere nobody knows about. He will be free.

Part of his mind is asking, Does this make sense? Are you thinking straight? Is this the only way?

He makes one last effort at coherent thought, trying to find an answer by looking at the past, the trail that has brought him here, but the view is blocked by a small white box. For some reason it’s got a silver ribbon around it, making it look like a wedding present.

Maybe it was.

He tries to look beyond it, but it’s like staring into fog rolling off the ocean at dusk. The harder you look, the darker it gets.

Time to turn his back on that box, that fog, that darkness.

Time to walk away.

08.10–08.12

‘Shit,’ said Andy Dalziel as the phone rang.

In twenty minutes the CID’s monthly case review meeting was due to start, the first since his return. In the old days this wasn’t a problem. He’d have rolled in late and watched them bolt their bacon butties and sit up straight. But if he was late now they’d probably think he’d forgotten the way to the Station. So time was short and Monday-morning traffic was always a pain. Nowt that using his siren and jumping a few red lights couldn’t compensate for, but if he wasn’t on his way in the next couple of minutes, he might have to run over a few pedestrians too.

He grabbed his car keys and headed for the front door.

Behind him the answer machine clicked in and a voice he didn’t recognize faded behind him down the narrow hallway.

‘Andy, hi. Mick Purdy, remember me? We met at Bramshill a few years back. Happy days, eh? So how’re you doing, mate? Still shagging the sheep up there in the frozen north? Listen, if you could give me a bell, I’d really appreciate it. My number’s…’

As the Fat Man slid into his car he dug into his memory bank. These days, especially with recent stuff, it sometimes seemed that the harder he looked, the darker it got. Curiously, deeper often meant clearer, and his Mick Purdy memories were pretty deep.

It wasn’t a few years since he’d been on that Bramshill course; more like eight or nine. Even then, he’d been the oldest officer there by a long way, the reason being that for a decade or more he’d managed to find a way of wriggling out of attendance whenever his name came up. But finally his concentration had lapsed.

It hadn’t been so bad. The official side had been slightly less tedious than anticipated, and there’d been a bunch of convivial colleagues, grateful to find someone they could rely on to get them to bed when their own legs proved less hollow than they’d imagined. DI Mick Purdy had usually been one of the last men standing, and he and Dalziel had struck up a holiday friendship based on shared professional scepticism and divided regional loyalties. They exchanged harmonious anecdotes offering particular instances of the universal truth that most of those in charge of HM Constabulary couldn’t organize a fuck-up in a brothel. Then, when concord got boring, they divided geographically with Purdy claiming to believe that up in Yorkshire in times of dearth they ate their young, and Dalziel countering that down in London they’d produced a younger generation that not even a starving vulture could stomach.

They’d parted with the usual expressions of good will and hope that their paths would cross again. But they never had. And now here was Mick Purdy ringing him at home first thing on a Monday morning, wanting to renew acquaintance.

Meaning, unless he were finally giving way to a long repressed passion, the bugger wanted a favour.

Interesting. But not so interesting it couldn’t wait. Important thing this morning was to be there when his motley crew drifted into the meeting, seated in his chair of state, clearly the monarch of all he surveyed, ready to call them to account for what they’d done with their meagre talents during his absence.

He turned the key in the ignition and heard the familiar ursine growl. The old Rover had much in common with its driver, he thought complacently. Bodywork crap, interior packed with more rubbish than a builder’s skip, but–courtesy of the lads in the police garage–the engine would have graced a vehicle ten times younger and five times more expensive.

He put it into gear and blasted away from the kerb.

08.12–08.20

The speed of Dalziel’s departure took Gina Wolfe by surprise.

She’d been watching the house for signs of life, spotting none till suddenly the front door burst open and a rotund figure emerged. Don’t be put off by his size, she’d been warned, King Henry was fat too, and like the merry monarch Andy Dalziel used his weight to roll over everybody who got in his way. But she wouldn’t have expected anything so fat to move so fast.

He slid into his car like a tarantula going down a drain-hole, the old banger started first time and took off at a speed as surprising as its owner’s. Not that she doubted the ability of her Nissan 350Z to match it, but on unfamiliar streets she needed to keep him in sight.

By the time she belted up, eased out of her parking spot and set off in pursuit, the Rover had reached a T-junction three hundred yards ahead and turned left.

Happily it was still visible when she too turned. A short burst of acceleration closed the distance between them and she settled down three car lengths behind. Her wanderings that morning had given her some sense of the city’s geography and she knew they were heading towards its centre, probably making for the police station.

After seven or eight minutes, he signalled left. She followed him off the main road and found herself in a residential area, old and up-market from the look of it, with occasional glimpses of a massive church tower somewhere at its centre.

Ahead the Rover slowed almost to a stop. Its driver seemed to be talking to a woman walking along the pavement. Gina brought the Nissan to a crawl too. If he noticed, it would just look like a silly female driver terrified to overtake in this rather narrow street. A few seconds later, the Rover drew away once more. She didn’t have far to follow this time. A couple of hundred yards on, he turned into a car park marked Cathedral Use Only.

Another surprise. Nothing she’d been told about the man had hinted devotion.

She pulled in after him, parked in the next row, and slid out of her seat. He was slower exiting his car than getting into it. She studied him across the low roof of the Nissan. He looked preoccupied, anxious even. His gaze took her in. She removed her sunglasses and gave him a tentative smile. If he’d responded, she would have started to speak, but he turned away abruptly and strode towards the cathedral.

Once again his speed caught her unawares and she lost distance as she followed him. When he stopped to speak to someone at the door, she almost caught up. Then he vanished into the building.

Inside she looked for him in the main aisle along which most of the other arrivals were moving towards the High Altar. No sign. He surely couldn’t have spotted her and headed here as a diversion to shake her off? No, that didn’t make sense.

Then she saw him. He’d found a seat in the north aisle where the golden October sunlight filtering through the eastern windows did not penetrate. He sat hunched forward with his head in his hands. Despite his size he looked strangely vulnerable. Something very serious must be troubling him to require prayer of this intensity.

She sat down a couple of rows behind and waited.

08.12–08.21

When Gina Wolfe’s Nissan pulled out to follow Andy Dalziel’s Rover, fifty yards back a blue VW Golf slipped into place behind her. There were two people in it; in the front passenger seat a man, broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced, his skull close-cropped in a gingery stubble; alongside him a woman of similar build and feature, her short fair hair packed tight into curls that could have been sculpted by Praxiteles.

His name was Vincent Delay. The driver was his sister. Her name was Fleur. On first hearing this some people were amused, but rarely for long.

She had no problem keeping the bright red sports car in sight along the relatively straight main road. Not that visual contact mattered. On her brother’s knee was a laptop tuned to a GPS tracker. The bright green spot pulsating across the screen was the Nissan that she could see ahead, signalling left to follow the Rover. Fleur turned off the main road too and half a minute later braked to avoid coming up too close behind the red car. It was the Rover driver causing the hold-up. He’d slowed almost to a halt to exchange words with a female pedestrian. It didn’t take long. Now he was off again.

As they passed the woman, Vincent turned his head to stare at her through the open window. She noticed his interest and glared back, mouthing something inaudible.

‘Up yours too, you old scarecrow,’ growled the man.

‘Vince, don’t draw attention,’ said Fleur.

‘What attention? Must be a hundred. Probably deaf as a post and can’t remember anything that happened more than five minutes ago.’

‘Maybe,’ said the woman, turning into the car park and finding a spot a few cars along from the Nissan. Here they sat and watched as the fat man made his way towards the cathedral followed closely by the blonde.

‘Who the fuck is that?’ said Vince. ‘Can’t possibly be our guy, can it?’

The woman said, ‘Don’t swear, Vince. You know I don’t like it any time and particularly not on a Sunday.’

‘Sorry,’ he said sulkily. ‘Just wondering who Tubby is, that’s all.’

‘And it’s a good question,’ she said in a conciliatory tone. ‘But we know where he lives, so finding out won’t be a problem. Now get after them.’

‘Me?’ said Vince doubtfully. Following was subtle stuff. Usually he didn’t get to do the subtle stuff.

‘Yes. You can manage that, can’t you?’

‘Sure.’

He got out of the car, then stooped to the window.

‘What if they go inside?’

‘Follow them,’ she said in exasperation. ‘Grab a hymn book. Try to look religious. Now go!’

He set off at a rapid pace. Ahead he saw Blondie going into the cathedral.

He followed. Inside he stood still for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the light. Blondie was easy to spot and through her he located Tubby.

When the woman sat down, he took a seat several rows behind her, picked up a hymn book, opened it at random.

His lips moved as he read the words.

The world is very evil, The times are waxing late, Be sober and keep vigil, The Judge is at the gate.

Fucking judges, thought Vince.

08.12–08.25

For the first couple of miles, Andy Dalziel’s reaction to the surprisingly light traffic had been relief. He should get to the meeting in plenty of time and without use of what clever clogs Pascoe called son et lumière.

But by the time he approached the town centre, he was beginning to find the absence of other vehicles suspicious rather than surprising. This after all was Monday morning, when traffic was usually at its worst.

Couldn’t be a Bank Holiday, could it? Hardly. September had just turned into October. Last Bank Holiday, spent in a sea-side convalescent home, had been at the end of August. No more till Christmas, by which time the rest of the European Union would have had another half-dozen. Faintest sniff of no matter how obscure a saint’s day, and them buggers were parading idols, wrestling bulls and throwing donkeys off the Eiffel Tower. No wonder we had to win their wars for them!

He came out of his Europhobic reverie to discover that, despite being well ahead of the clock, his automatic pilot had directed him via his usual short-cut along Holyclerk Street in defiance of the sign restricting entry ‘within the bell’, i.e. into the area immediately surrounding the cathedral, to residents and worshippers. And now his suspicions about the lightness of traffic began to take on a more sombre hue.

There were people walking towards the cathedral with that anal-retentive demeanour the English tend to adopt when trying to look religious; not great numbers, but a lot more than he’d have expected to see at this time on a Monday morning. Mebbe during his absence there’d been a great conversion in Mid-Yorkshire. In fact, mebbe his absence had caused it!

Slowing to the pace of a little old lady clutching a large square volume bound in leather, its corners reinforced by brass triangles that gleamed like a set of knuckle-dusters, he leaned over to the passenger side and wound down the window.

‘How do, luv. Off to church, are you? Lovely morning for it.’

She turned, fixed him with a rheumy eye, and said, ‘My God, how desperate must you be! I’m seventy-nine. Go away, you pathetic man!’

‘Nay, luv, I just want to know what day it is,’ he protested.

‘A drunkard as well as a lecher! Go away, I say! I can defend myself.’

She took a swing at him with her brass-bound book which, had it connected, might have broken his nose. He accelerated away, but doubt was now strong enough to make him turn into the cathedral car park a hundred yards on.

A sporty red Nissan pulled in behind him. Its driver, a blonde in her late twenties, got out the same time as he did. She was wearing wrap-around shades against the autumn sunlight. She eased them forward on her nose, their eyes met and she gave him a smile. He thought of asking her what day it was but decided against it. This one might have hysterics or spray him with mace, and in any case back along the pavement the little old lady was approaching like the US cavalry. Time to talk to someone official and male.

At the cathedral’s great east door he could see a corpse-faced man in a black cassock acting as commissionaire. No backward collar, so a verger maybe. Or a cross-dressing vampire.

Dalziel moved towards him. As he entered the shadow of the great building his mind drifted back to a time when he’d been hauled along this street as God on top of a medieval pageant wagon and something like an angel had come floating down from the looming tower…

He pushed the disturbing memory from his mind as he reached the holy doorman.

‘So what’s on this morning, mate?’ he asked breezily.

The man gave him a slightly puzzled look as he replied, ‘Holy Communion now, matins at ten.’

Meant nothing, he reassured himself without conviction. The God-squad had services every day, even if all the congregation they could muster was a couple of geriatrics and a church mouse.

‘Owt special?’ he said. ‘I mean, is it a special Sunday, twenty-second afore Pancake Tuesday or summat?’

He hoped to hear something like, ‘Sunday? You must have had a good weekend. This is Monday!’ But he no longer expected it.

‘No, nothing special, sir. If you want it spelled out, it’s the twentieth after Trinity in Ordinary Time. Are you coming in?’

Rather unexpectedly, Dalziel found he was.

Partly because his route back to the car would mean passing the old lady with the knuckle-duster prayer book, but mainly because his legs and his mind were sending from their opposite poles the message that he needed to sit down somewhere quiet and commune with his inner self.

He passed through the cathedral porch and had to pause to let his eyes adjust from the morning brightness outside to the rich gloom of the interior. Its vastness dwindled the waiting worshippers from a significant number to a mere handful, concentrated towards the western end. He turned off the central aisle and found himself a seat in the lee of an ancient tomb topped with what were presumably life-sized effigies of its inmates. Must have been a bit disconcerting for the family to see Mam and Dad lying there every time they came to church, thought Dalziel. Particularly if the sculptor had caught a good likeness, which a very lively looking little dog at their feet suggested he might have done.

His mind was trying to avoid the unattractive mental task that lay before him. But he hadn’t got wherever he’d got by turning aside when the path turned clarty.

He closed his eyes, rested his head on his hands as if in prayer, and focused on one of the great philosophical questions of the twenty-first century.

Didn’t matter if it was Ordinary Time or Extraordinary Time, the question was, how the fuck had he managed to misplace a whole sodding day?

08.25–08.40

Gina Wolfe watched the bowed, still figure with envy.

He no longer looked fat; the cathedral’s vastness had dwindled him to frail mortal flesh like her own.

She did not know what pain had brought him here, but she knew about pain. What she did not know was how to find comfort and help in a place like this.

She hadn’t been inside a church since the funeral. That was seven years ago. And seven years before that she’d been at the same church for her wedding.

Patterns. Could they mean something? Or were they like crop circles, just some joker having a laugh?

At some point during the funeral her mind had started overlaying the two ceremonies. One of her wedding presents had been a vacuum cleaner, beautifully packaged in a gleaming white box. The small white coffin reminded her of this, and as the service progressed she found herself obsessed by the notion that they were burying her Hoover. She tried to tell Alex this, to assure him it was all right, it was just a vacuum cleaner they’d lost, but the face he turned on her did more than anything the words and the music and the place could do to reassert the dreadful reality.

Neither of them had cried, she remembered that. The church had been full of weeping, but they had moved beyond tears. She had knelt when invited to kneel but no prayer had come. She had stood for the hymns but she had not sung. The words that formed in her mind weren’t the words on the page before her, they were words she had seen when she was seventeen and still at school.

It had been a pre-A-level exercise. Compare and contrast the following two poems. One was Milton’s ‘On the Death of a Fair Infant’, the other Edwin Muir’s ‘The Child Dying’.

She’d had great fun mocking the classical formality of the earlier poem.

It began with child-abuse, she wrote, with the God of Winter’s chilly embrace giving the Fair Infant the cough that killed her. And it ended with an attempt at consolation so naff it was almost comic.

Think what a present thou to God hast sent.

Any mother finding comfort in this, she’d written, must have been a touch disappointed it hadn’t been triplets.

Perhaps her pathetic confusion of the coffin and the wedding gift box was a late payback for this mockery.

The other poem, viewing death through a child’s eyes, she’d been much more taken with. In fact the Scot, Muir, had become one of her favourite poets, though now her love for him, sparked by ‘The Child Dying’, seemed peculiarly ill-omened.

Back then its opening lines–Unfriendly friendly universe, I pack your stars into my purse, And bid you, bid you so farewell–had struck her as being at the same time touchingly child-like and cosmically resonant. But she knew now she had been delighting in the skill of the poet rather than the power of his poem.

Then she had been admiring the resonance from outside; now it was in her being.

I did not know death was so strange.

Now she knew.

And she was sure that the Fair Infant’s mother, Milton’s sister, must have known this too, must have felt the cold blast of that air blown from the far side of despair.

But did she wisely learn to curb her sorrows wild? Had she been able to draw warmth from her brother’s poem and wrap herself in its formality? Find support in those stiff folds of words?

Had she been able to sit in a church and bury her grief in these rituals of faith?

If she had, Gina Wolfe envied her. She’d found no such comforts to turn to.

At least she hadn’t fled. Unlike Alex. She had found the strength to stay, to endure, to rebuild.

But was it strength? For years her first thought on waking and her last thought before sleeping had been of lost Lucy. And then it wasn’t. Did a day pass when she didn’t think of her daughter? She couldn’t swear to it. That first time she’d given herself to Mick, she’d pendulum’d between joy and guilt. But later, when they holidayed together in Spain, she recalled the extremes as contentment and ecstasy with never a gap for a ghost to creep through.

Perhaps this meant that Alex had loved so much he could only survive the loss by losing himself, whereas she…

She pushed the thought away. She could do that.

Was that strength?

Alex couldn’t. The thought pushed him away.

Was that weakness?

These were questions beyond her puzzling.

Maybe that portly figure two rows ahead, sitting as still as the statues on the tomb above him, would have the answers.

08.25–08.40

Fleur Delay watched her brother disappear into the cathedral then opened her bag and from it took a small pack of tablets. She slipped one into her mouth and washed it down with a swig of water from a bottle in the door pocket.

Letting Vince loose in a cathedral was not normally an option, but it had seemed marginally better than collapsing in the car park.

She took another tablet. After a while she began to feel a little better. All the car windows were wide open to admit the morning air. Now she closed them and took out her mobile phone. There was no one in hearing distance but minimizing risk was an instinct so deep ingrained it had ceased to be a thought process.

She speed-dialled a number. It took a long time for it to be answered.

‘Buenos días, señor,’ she said. ‘Soy Señora Delay.’

She listened to the response for a while then interrupted in English.

‘Yes, I know it’s Sunday and I know it’s early, but I don’t know where it says in our very expensive agreement that you stop working for me at weekends or before nine o clock. I’ll write it in if you like, but I’ll cut your fee by half, comprende usted?’

She listened again, cut in again.

‘OK, no need to grovel. I just want a progress report. And before you start on with the crappy reasons why things move so slowly over there, you ought to know I’m looking to move in a bit earlier than planned. Four weeks, tops. That means not a day longer than four weeks, OK?’

After she’d finished her call, she opened the windows again and took another drink of water.

This had not been a good idea, but turning down The Man could have been a worse one.

She leaned back in her seat and relaxed. She didn’t fall asleep but drifted into a state of waking reverie that was becoming more and more common as her medication increased proportionately to her illness. The past would come and sit next to her. She could see the world as it was at present with the great cathedral towering over her, but it floated on her retina like a mirage. It was the images nudging her memory that felt like reality.

Among them she could see her father quite clearly, his eyes a shade of blue that was almost green, his lips permanently curved into the promise of a smile, his forefinger flicking his nose as he said, ‘Cheerio, my darlings, keep your noses clean,’ that last sunny day when he strolled out of the house and never came back.

She’d been nine, Vincent twelve.

It had taken her five long years to accept that her father was gone for good.

Their feckless mother had done her poor best, but as she slid down a spiral of substance abuse and bad partner choice, she had little time or will to give her children the attention they needed. Vince readily came to accept that it was his young sister he had to look to for the basics of hot food and clean clothing. And once he got launched on what to a neutral observer looked like a dedicated effort to become the most inefficient criminal of the age, it was Fleur, masquerading as his elder sister, who visited him inside and was waiting for him outside the many prisons he spent a large proportion of his young manhood in.

At sixteen Fleur left school. She could have stayed on. She was a bright girl with a real talent for mathematics, but she’d had enough of classrooms.

Her mother’s current boyfriend, a small-time pimp, offered to find her a job. He and the girl got on quite well, so instead of telling him to take a hike, she thanked him politely and explained she would prefer to earn her money on her bum rather than on her back. He became quite indignant and assured her that he wasn’t inviting her to join his team; her brain was too sharp and her body too shapeless for that. Instead he recommended her for a clerking job in the office of a local finance company.

That sounded almost as dull as school. But she knew the company he referred to and she knew it was run by The Man.

On the appointed day she went along to the company offices, located in what had once been a pet shop in a dingy street north of East India Dock Road. Determined to make a good impression she got there nice and early. The shop space still smelled of animal piss, but there was no sign of human presence. Then she thought she heard voices beyond a door at the back.

As she pushed it open, the voices died or rather disappeared beneath a loud crash and a louder scream.

She was looking into a small office occupied by three men, two black, one white. Or rather, grey.

The grey-faced man was sitting on a chair before a desk. The reason for the greyness and for the scream was that the older of the two black men, standing beside him, was holding his hand flat on the desktop, while the other black man, seated behind the desk, had just smashed the knuckle of his right forefinger with a claw hammer.

She knew who the black men were. The older one was Milton Slingsby, known as Sling, a small-time pro boxer who’d found more profitable employment for his skills as the chief lieutenant of the younger black man who was of course Goldie Gidman, The Man.

Gidman regarded her expressionlessly then made a gesture with the hammer.

Slingsby pulled the grey man upright and dragged him towards the door. As he passed Fleur, he turned his gaze upon her, his eyes wide in pleading or maybe just in pain. She realized she knew him too, at least by sight. His name was Janowski and he ran a small tailoring business just a couple of streets away. Then Slingsby thrust him through the door and heeled it shut behind them.

‘Why’d you not run, girl?’ asked The Man.

He was probably in his thirties but looked younger till you saw his eyes. Good looking, slim, medium build, he wore a pristine white shirt that accentuated the deep black of his skin against which glowed a heavy golden necklet, gold rings on his fingers and a gold bracelet on either wrist.

‘I’m Fleur Delay,’ she said. ‘I’ve come for the interview.’

The hammer made another gesture, and she subsided on to the grey man’s seat. Her eyes took in the desk’s nearer edge. A series of small craters suggested that grey man was not the first to have sat here. She didn’t feel safe, but she felt safer than she would have done running.

The craters vanished beneath a sheet of paper bearing a column of about twenty sums of money ranging from the teens to the thousands.

‘Add it up,’ said The Man. The hammer, she was glad to observe, had vanished.

She took her time. Something told her that accuracy was more important than speed.

‘Nineteen thousand five hundred and sixty-two pounds fourteen pence,’ she said.

‘So you can add up,’ said The Man, pulling the sheet out of her fingers. ‘But can you shut up? The guy who was sitting there when you came in–’

‘What guy?’ she interrupted.

He stared at her with a blankness that could have concealed anything.

‘You know who I am?’ he asked after a while.

‘Never seen you before in my life, Mr Gidman,’ she said.

Slowly the blankness dissolved into a grin, then The Man laughed out loud.

‘Tomorrow, eight thirty, sharp,’ he said.

She stood up and as she reached the door found the courage to say, ‘What about wages?’

‘Let’s wait and see what you’re worth, why don’t we?’ he replied.

At the end of a week what she got wasn’t much more than she could have earned stacking shelves in a supermarket, but she didn’t complain.

A few days later a policeman who didn’t look much older than herself came to her home. Mr Janowski was laying a charge of assault against The Man. He claimed she had been a witness to the assault. He was mistaken, she assured the cop. She knew vaguely who Mr Janowski was, wasn’t sure she’d recognize him if she met him in the street, and certainly had never seen Mr Gidman assault him.

‘That’s OK then,’ said the constable, who had a local accent and a cheeky grin.

‘So I won’t have to go to court?’ she said.

‘Shouldn’t think so, darling. Though maybe Sergeant Mathias will want to talk to you himself. Just tell him what you told me, you’ll be all right.’

Mathias turned up later the same day.

Unlike the constable, the sergeant had a funny accent, like somebody taking the piss out of a Pakki. ‘So what you’re saying is you wouldn’t recognize Mr Janowski if you met him on the street, right? In that case, miss, how can you be sure you never saw Mr Gidman assault him?’

‘Because,’ she retorted, ‘I’ve never seen Mr Gidman assault anyone, that’s how.’

The sergeant looked as if he’d have liked to give her a good shaking, but she saw the young constable hide a grin behind his hand, and as he left he gave her a big wink.

She said nothing of this to Gidman but presumably someone did, for next pay-day her wage packet tripled and stayed tripled.

One night not long after, a fire broke out in Mr Janowski’s workshop, quickly spreading to the flat above where the tailor lived with his wife and infant daughter. The firemen fought their way through the blaze to the smoke-filled bathroom where they found the Janowskis crouched over the bath. The mother was already dead through smoke inhalation. Janowski, who had third-degree burns, died four days later. But under a dampened blanket stretched across the bathtub, they found the child unburnt and still breathing.

At least, thought Fleur, she wouldn’t have to face the pains and problems parents could inflict on their growing daughters.

Whether she would be spared the pains and problems life itself inflicted on most women was another matter.

She was feeling much better now. The past dwindled into its proper space, the cathedral descended from the sky and took its rightful place at ground level, still huge but now firmly anchored to the earth.

God’s house they called it. If there were a God, then it was presumably Him who did all that inflicting, she thought. Maybe I should go inside and have a quiet word, let Him know I’ve decided to change his plans a bit.

But He probably got the message when He saw Vince taking a seat.

What was going on in there? she wondered.

Like so much of life, there was nothing to do but wait.

08.25–08.55

For a few seconds Andy Dalziel had felt his mind going into free fall as he contemplated his temporal aberration.

Thoughts of Alzheimer’s, brain tumours, even, God help him, post-traumatic stress disorder, shrieked like bats around the tower of his understanding and the easiest solution seemed to be to jump off into the welcoming darkness.

Jesus! he told himself. It’s this place putting them daft thoughts into your mind. You’re a detective. Detect! Doesn’t matter what you find, so long as you’re strong enough not to run away from it.

First things first. This morning he’d woken up. He tried to reconstruct the waking process. It had seemed pretty normal, the mind surfacing from sleep’s dark depths, thrashing around on the surface for a few moments, grabbing at flotsam and jetsam from pre-sleep memory, identifying them as belonging to such and such a day…

That’s where it had started to go wrong.

Somehow he’d assembled these shards of memory not into the Saturday they belonged to, but into a Sunday that hadn’t yet happened!

Had he simply made it up then? He tried to project himself back a day, found clear-cut details hard to come by. Instead, cloudy images of sitting around, doing nothing, going nowhere floated across his mind.

That felt like Sunday all right, but a Sunday from extremely auld lang syne, the sort of Sunday he’d sometimes experienced on childhood holidays with his Scottish cousins. They’d been really happy days, most of them. His dad’s family knew how to treat kids–feed them jam pieces and mutton pies till they come out of their ears, then turn them loose to roam at will, confident that they’ll find their way home for the next meal. But it all stopped on Sundays. Here the will of Granny Dalziel ruled supreme. Here the bairns were expected to keep the Sabbath as she had kept it back in the mists of time. Faces scrubbed, hair slicked, bound in the strait jacket of best clothes, they were marched to the kirk in the morning and sat around with an improving book, seen and definitely not heard, for the rest of the endless day.

And that had been his Sunday…no, that had been his Saturday, his yesterday! Or something like it.

But why? He needed to dig deeper, go back further.

He’d returned to work a week earlier, at his own insistence and against medical and domestic advice. But he’d insisted angrily that he felt fine and was more than ready to pick up the traces where he’d dropped them over three months ago.

He hadn’t been lying. Trouble was, the traces weren’t there any more.

If anywhere, they were in Peter Pascoe’s hands, and it had taken him a couple of days to realize the DCI’s reluctance to hand them over immediately was as much protective as presumptuous.

Things had changed, both externally and internally. There might have been a sharp intake of breath across Mid-Yorkshire when he was admitted comatose to hospital, but it clearly hadn’t been held for long. The old truism was true. Life went on. Criminal life certainly did, and nature abhors a vacuum.

He no longer had his finger on the pulse of things. He had a deal of catching up to do, not just in knowledge but in reputation. His famed omniscience depended on an extensive web of information and influence spun over many years, and in a couple of months this had fallen into serious disrepair. His underlings still tiptoed around him, but now their deference struck him as therapeutic rather than theocentric. He realized he was going to have to work hard to get back to where he’d been before the big bang, when he could have breezed in late to the case-review meeting, supremely confident of being able to prove yet again, as he’d once overheard Pascoe say with mingled admiration and irritation, that, like God, the Fat Man was always in the squad!

Not now. And as well as the shock of realizing how out of touch he was, he’d been dismayed to find himself completely knackered after three or four hours on the job. When Pascoe had assured him that a new roster system imposed from above required that he should have the forthcoming weekend off, he hadn’t resisted. Cap Marvell, his non-live-in partner, was away that weekend, but no matter. Saturday was an easy day to fill. Long lie-in, then off down the rugger club to see some old mates. Couple of pints of lunch, watch the match in the afternoon, couple more pints after, then mebbe wander into town with a few convivial chums for a curry. Perfect.

Except the day had dawned wet and windy. Everything seemed an effort, even though everything consisted of next to nothing. Noon arrived and he was still wandering round his house, undressed and unshaven. Going out to stand in wind and rain to shout at thirty young men wrestling in mud seemed pointless. There was a match on the telly he could watch. He fell asleep shortly after kick-off and woke to find the screen full of speedway bikes. Wasn’t worth getting dressed now. He summoned up the energy to put a mug of soup in the microwave and scalded his lip. Even that didn’t jerk him out of his trance-like state. In fact his chosen remedy, the litre bottle of Highland Park he’d found empty on his pillow this morning, had sucked him in deeper.

And so the long hours had dragged by. Granny Dalziel would have been outraged by his dress and his demeanour, but her strict Sabbatarianism could not have faulted his state of mind. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

And there was the explanation. This morning his mind, recalling the previous day as a long, vacuous, will-to-live-sapping Scots Sabbath and unwilling to thole the notion of enduring such another, had decided it had to be Monday.

Simple. Dead logical, really. Nowt to worry about there.

Except that things like that didn’t happen to him. To other men maybe. There were a lot of weak, woolly, wobbly, wanked-out losers in the world, their minds in such a whirl they didn’t know their arses from their elbows. But not Andy Dalziel. It had taken half a ton of Semtex to put him on his back and he’d risen up again, shaken himself down, and returned to the fray, a bit bruised and battered and mud-bespattered, but ready and able to play out the rest of the game till the ref called no side!

At least he hadn’t made it to the Station this morning. He shuddered to think what his colleagues would have made of the mighty Dalziel turning up for Monday’s meeting twenty-four hours early! They never come back, that’s what popular wisdom said about champion boxers. They try, they sometimes flatter to deceive, but they never really come back. He was going to prove them wrong, wasn’t he? He was going to delight his friends, scatter his enemies, and leave all the dismal doubters with enough egg on their faces to make a Spanish omelette.

He’d been vaguely aware of a continuo of faint religious murmuring beneath his thoughts, but now it stopped and was replaced by the sound of footsteps as the worshippers, unburdened of their sins, tripped lightly back down the long aisle. Service must be over already. Mebbe in this age of Fast Food and Speed Dating, the Church had brought in Quick Confession and Accelerated Absolution.

More likely, his thought processes had just slowed to a crawl.

The footsteps receded, finally there was silence, and then the organ started playing. He wasn’t a great fan of organ music, something a little ponderous about it, something too diffused to cut to the emotional heart of a good tune. But here in the great cathedral, whose dim and vast prismoids of space felt as if they might have been imported from beyond the stars, it was easy to think of it as the voice of God.

He straightened up and the voice spoke.

‘Mr Dalziel?’

He rolled his eyes upward. What was it going to be–the blinding light, or just a shower of dove crap?

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ said the voice of God. ‘I’m Gina Wolfe.’

That God should be female didn’t surprise him. That she, or She, should be called Gina did.

He turned his head to the right and found himself looking at the blonde from the red Nissan. Would God drive Japanese? He didn’t think so. This was flesh and blood, and very nice flesh and blood at that.

‘Gina Wolfe?’ she repeated with a faintly interrogative inflexion, as if anticipating the name would mean something to him.

To the best of his recollection, he’d never seen her before in his life.

On the other hand, a man whose recollection could dump whole days on a whim couldn’t be too dogmatic. Best to box clever till he worked out the circumstances and degree of their acquaintance.

‘Nice to see you again, Gina Wolfe,’ he said, thinking by the use of the whole name to cover all possible gradations of intimacy.

Her expression told him he’d failed before she said, ‘Oh dear. You’ve no idea who I am, have you? I’m sorry. Mick Purdy said he was going to ring you…’

‘Mick?’ With relief he found a context for this name. ‘Oh aye, Mick! He did ring, just afore I came out this morning, left a message. I were in a bit of a hurry.’

‘I noticed. I really had to put my foot down to keep up with you. Look, I’m sorry to interrupt your devotions. If you like, I can wait for you outside.’

Dalziel was pleased to feel his mind clicking back into gear, not top maybe but a good third, which was enough to extrapolate two slightly disturbing pieces of information from what she’d just said.

The first was, she’d been following him.

The second, and more worrying, was she thought he’d been in a hurry to get to the cathedral to pray. Couldn’t have her telling Mick Purdy that. Important operational information could vanish without trace in the mazy communications network that allegedly linked the regional police forces. But news that Andy Dalziel had got religion would be disseminated with the speed of light.

He said, ‘Nay, I weren’t devoting, luv. Just like to come here and listen to the music sometimes.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, rather doubtfully. ‘It’s Bach, isn’t it? “The Art of the Fugue”.’

‘Spot on,’ he said heartily. ‘Can’t get enough of them fugues, me.’

A cop could survive worse things than a taste for the baroque. There was that hard bastard down in the Midlands who collected beetles and nobody messed with him. But get a reputation for religion and you were marked down as bonkers. Even Tony Blair knew that, though in his case mebbe he really was bonkers!

‘Right, luv,’ he went on. ‘Grab a pew, I mean a chair, not many pews left these days. Then you can tell me what it is Mick would have told me if I’d answered my phone.’

She sat by his side. Though not quite recovered to his full fighting weight, his flesh still overspread the limits of the chair and he could feel the warmth of her thigh against his. She was wearing a perfume that would probably have got her burned during the Reformation.

He raised his eyes not in supplication but simply to focus his mind away from these distractions. His gaze met that of the little marble dog who was peering over the end of the tomb as if in hope that after so many centuries of immobility at last someone was going to cry, ‘Walkies!’

‘OK,’ said Dalziel. ‘We’re in the right place. Confession time!’

09.00–09.20

David Gidman the Third awoke.

It was Sunday. That was something being brought up in England did for you. Maybe it was some ancient race-memory maybe all those church bells set up a vibration of the air even when you were well out of ear-shot; whatever it was, physical or metaphysical, it was strong enough to make itself felt no matter how many supermarkets were open, no matter how many football matches were being played.

You woke, you knew it was Sunday. And that was good.

He rolled over and came up against naked flesh.

He felt it cautiously. A woman.

That was even better.

She responded to his touch by saying sleepily, ‘Hi, Dave.’

He grunted, not risking more till he was certain who it was.

Like a blind man reading Braille, his fingers traced round her nipples and spelt out her name. He gave her a gentle tweak and breathed, ‘Hi, Sophie.’

She turned to him and they kissed.

This was better and better.

‘So how shall we spend today?’ she murmured.

The bedside phone rang before he could answer.

He rolled away and grabbed the receiver.

‘Hello,’ he said.

He knew who it was before he heard the voice. Like Sunday, his PA, Maggie Pinchbeck, created her own vibes.

‘Just checking you’re awake and functioning. I’ll be round in an hour.’

‘An hour?’

‘To go over the timetable. Then at half ten I’ll drive you to St Osith’s. OK?’

‘Oh shit.’

‘You haven’t forgotten?’

‘Of course I haven’t bloody well forgotten.’

He put the phone down and turned back to the woman. An hour. Long enough, but he was no longer in the mood and anyway she was regarding him with suspicion.

‘What haven’t you forgotten?’ she demanded.

No point poncing around.

‘I’m opening a community centre this lunchtime,’ he said.

‘You’re what? I’ve cleared the whole day, remember? George is in Liverpool; a.m. in the cathedral, p.m. at a footie match.’

‘I know. Looking to get the credit if they win, eh?’

Her husband, George Harbott MP, known familiarly as Holy George, was the Labour spokesman on religious affairs.

He saw at once his joke had fallen on stony ground.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘And I’m really sorry about today. Early Alzheimer’s.’

He began to get out of bed.

‘What’s the hurry anyway?’ she queried. ‘Lunchtime’s hours away. And you could always ring them up and cancel, tell them you’ve got a cold or something. Come here and I’ll persuade you.’

‘I don’t doubt you could,’ he said, standing up out of her reach. ‘But no way I can cancel. This is my granpappy’s memorial community centre I’m opening.’

‘So? Your father’s still alive, if we can believe the Tory major contributors list. Why jump a generation? Let him open it.’

‘He says it’s a good vote-catcher for me,’ he replied. ‘And it’s not just lunchtime. I’ve got to go to church first.’

‘Church? You? Whose idea was that?’

‘Holy George’s, in a way. He rattles on so much about Christian values and getting back to the good old-fashioned Sabbath that Cameron’s getting edgy. What with your lot wallowing in Catholic converts and Scottish Presbyterianism, he feels he can’t rely on the old religious vote any more. His last newsletter stopped just short of establishing compulsory church parades. But it was Maggie who came up with this.’

‘Pinchbeck? Jesus, Dave, that woman’s got you by the pecker!’

The image itself was absurd, but he couldn’t deny its truth. Whatever his leader said, church was the last place he wanted to be on a Sunday. In fact when Maggie had suggested opening the new community centre on Sunday rather than on Monday as proposed by the council, he’d told her she must be mad.

She’d replied, ‘Monday there’s showers forecast, plus most people will be at work. You’ll get the council freeloaders and maybe a few bored mums with their wailing kids. Sunday’s the day for good works and this is a good work you’re doing. In fact, go to church first. St Osith’s is perfect. Just a mile down the road, plenty of room there and I know the vicar, Stephen Prendergast. He’ll be delighted to get the publicity. Service will be over by midday, so if we schedule the opening for one you should get most of the congregation along too, plus a whole gang of others with nothing better to do on a Sunday lunchtime.’

‘But what about the press?’

‘Leave the press to me. It will do that heathen bunch good to go to church.’

‘Won’t I risk alienating the ethnic vote?’

‘The Muslims, you mean? No. The moderates will be delighted to see you’re a man of faith. The extremists will want to blow you up whatever you do.’

She had an answer for everything, and the trouble was it usually turned out to be the right answer.

The woman was out of bed now and gathering up her clothes.

‘Hey, Sofe,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get mad. No need to rush off. Stay for some breakfast…’

‘You want I should still be hanging round here like this when Pinchbeck turns up? I can feel those beady little eyes tracking over every inch of flesh, looking for bite marks. You knew about this when I rang yesterday afternoon, right? But you didn’t say a thing in case I told you I didn’t care to be kicked out of bed at sparrowfart like some cheap tart. Well, I bloody well don’t!’

She disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the new power shower switch on. Half a minute later there was an enraged scream and Sophie appeared dripping water in the doorway.

‘You some kind of masochist, or what?’ she demanded. ‘That shower, it’s gone from red hot to icy cold of its own accord.’

He regarded her indifferently. Even a nicely put together body like hers ceased to be a turn-on when it was wet and goose-pimpled and topped by a face contorted by anger.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been having some problems. Maggie got me a couple of Poles to fix things. Looks like I’ll need to have them back.’

‘Maggie!’ she spat. ‘I might have known she’d have something to do with it!’

She vanished.

David Gidman the Third yawned then picked up a remote from the dressing table and clicked it at a mini hi-fi system on top of a chest of drawers. Terfel’s sumptuous voice started singing ‘Ich habe genug’.

‘Now that’s what I call serendipity,’ he said.

He turned to a full-length mirror set in the wardrobe door and sang along for a while, studying himself in the glass.

Golden-skinned, craggily handsome, muscularly slim, reasonably well hung, and above all youthful; David Gidman the Third MP, the Tory Party’s Great Oil-white Hope.

He stopped singing, dropped his voice, uttered a couple of gorilla grunts, scratched his balls, leered prognathically into the mirror, and said huskily, ‘The next PM but one–here’s looking at you, baby!’

08.55–09.15

For what felt like a good minute the woman called Gina Wolfe said nothing, but stared down at her hands, which were nervously plucking at the hem of her short skirt. Then suddenly out came a tumble of words.

‘Look,’ she said, ’the thing is, I’d like to make it clear from the start, I don’t want Alex dead…OK, I know that’s the way it started out, me needing to prove he was dead, but what I mean is if I found him alive I wouldn’t want him to be killed

‘Just as well, missus,’ interrupted Dalziel. “Cos I need to know folk really well afore I start doing favours like that.’

That stemmed the flow. Her hands stopped their movement and she looked him straight in the face. Then she smiled weakly.

‘I’m gabbling, aren’t I? It’s just that I didn’t think I was going to have to start at the start, so to speak.’

‘Because Mick Purdy would have put me in the picture, right? OK, let’s see if I can get you on track with a couple of questions. First, who’s Alex?’

‘Of course. Sorry. Alex Wolfe. My husband.’

‘And he left you?’

‘Yes. Well, no, I suppose strictly speaking I left him. But not really. I never abandoned him…I never thought of it as permanent…things had just got so bad that I needed space…we both did. And in a sense, he’d left me a long time before…’

‘Whoa!’ said Dalziel. ‘Lots of things I need to get straight afore we get into the blame game. Where was this? When was this? What did Alex Wolfe do for a living? Why did you leave him? I think that’ll do for starters.’

‘It was in Ilford, we lived in Ilford. I still do. That’s part of the problem…sorry. What did Alex do? He was like you. A policeman. Not as important. A detective inspector.’

Ilford. He’d heard of Ilford. It was in Essex. DI Mick Purdy had been with the Essex division of the Met. And Alex the walkabout husband had been a cop. Things were beginning to join up, but he was still a lot of lines short of a picture.

‘And you leaving him? What was that about? A woman?’

‘No! That would have been easy. Easier. It was a very bad time. For both of us. We lost…there was a bereavement…our daughter, Lucy…’

He could feel the effort she was making to keep herself together. Oh shit, he thought, me and my big boots. He’d have known about this presumably if he’d listened to Purdy on the phone.

On the other hand, not knowing meant he was getting everything up front, no pre-judgments.

He said, ‘I’m sorry, luv. Didn’t know. Must have been terrible.’

She said with unconvincing matter-of-factness, ‘Yes. Terrible just about sums it up. Certainly not the best of times to have this other stuff at work start up. Not that it seemed to bother Alex. He just didn’t seem to care. About anything. I got angry with him. I needed someone, but all he wanted was to be left alone. So I left him alone. I didn’t abandon him…we were in it together…except we weren’t…so I thought if left him alone…no I didn’t think that, I didn’t really think anything. I just had to be with people who would listen to me talking, and going into a room where Alex was felt like going into an empty room

She was off again. Dalziel could only see one thing in this turmoil that might have anything to do with him. If it helped the woman to focus, that would be a plus too.

This work stuff, what was that about?’ he interrupted.

She stopped talking and took a deep breath. Refocusing from her bereavement to her husband’s work problems seemed to bring a measure of genuine control. Her voice was stronger, less tremulous as she said, ‘They called it a leak enquiry, but it was actually about corruption. Alex was second in charge of a team targeting this businessman. It was called Operation Macavity That was a joke. From T.S. Eliot’s poem. You know, Cats, the musical.’

Dalziel was untroubled by the presumption that the only way he was likely to have heard of Eliot was via Cats. There were a lot of smart people spending a lot of hard time behind bars because they’d made similar presumptions.

‘Yeah, loved it,’ he said. ‘Because he was never there, right?’

‘Yes. But this time they had high hopes of getting to the man. It didn’t work out. I don’t know any details, but he always seemed to be several steps ahead of them. And while things were going wrong at work, at home things went into a nose dive…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Dalziel, determined not to drift back towards the dead child. ‘So the powers that be started wondering how the hell this Macavity always knew what was going on.’

‘I suppose so. Why the rat pack–sorry, that’s what Mick Purdy calls Internal Investigations–why they focused on Alex, I don’t know. But they did.’

‘Did they suspend him?’ said Dalziel.

‘Didn’t need to. This all blew up at the same time as…the rest, and he was on compassionate leave, so he wasn’t going into work anyway’

‘So he’s at home, on compassionate leave, he’s in a state, the rat pack’s sniffing around, and eventually you leave him. Then…what? He takes off?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you looked for him?’

‘Of course I looked for him!’ she exclaimed. ‘I got in touch with his friends, his relations. I talked to the neighbours. I checked out everywhere I thought he was likely to have gone, places we’d been on holiday, that sort of thing. I rang round hospitals. I did everything I could.’

‘Including telling the police, I suppose?’

‘Obviously,’ she snapped. ‘They were just about the first people I contacted. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Well,’ said the Fat Man, ‘for a start, they’re investigating him, right? It must have crossed your mind maybe they’re the ones he’s running from. Not sure, in your shoes, they’re the first buggers I’d tell.’

She said tightly, ‘I knew Alex. I believed in him. He was confused, desperate maybe. But he certainly wasn’t corrupt. All I could think was he was out there somewhere, alone. So I called Mick Purdy. They were friends, so naturally I called Mick.’

He’d anticipated this was probably Purdy’s connection. How had he reacted to the news? he wondered. Like a friend or like a cop?

‘And what did good old Mick say?’

‘He said to leave it with him, he’d make sure everything that could be done to trace Alex was done. Look, Mr Dalziel, I’m not sure how relevant all this is. We’re talking seven years ago. It’s here and now that I need help.’

‘Aye, seven years. And there’s been no sign of your husband all that time?’

‘Not a whisper. Nothing from his bank account, no use of credit cards. Nothing.’

‘Did he take his car?’

‘No, it was still in the garage. In fact, he took nothing, so far as I could see. No spare clothes, not even his toothbrush. Nothing.’

‘And the police? They turned up nothing?’

‘The police, the Salvation Army, every organization I could think of, none of them found any trace.’

‘So, apart from being kidnapped by aliens, what did that leave you thinking happened to him?’

He watched her reaction carefully and let her see he was watching.

She met his gaze straight on and said, ‘You mean it seems obvious to you he was probably dead, right?’

He shrugged but didn’t speak.

She said, ‘That’s what Mick thought too, but I couldn’t get my head round the idea. Even when I’d finally accepted he was never going to come back, I found it hard to contemplate applying for a legal presumption of death. That seemed…I don’t know, disloyal almost, even though I really needed it.’

‘Oh aye. Why was that?’

She said, ‘Lots of reasons, mainly financial. The house we lived in is Alex’s family house. It’s in his name, so I can’t sell it. There are various insurances that I can’t access without proof of death. Even his police pension is being paid into a bank account in his sole name, so it piles up and I can’t touch a penny of it.’

‘So they’re still paying his pension?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? Nothing was ever proved against him, no charges were brought,’ she said indignantly.

Dalziel glanced at his watch. The organ was still burping out bits of tunes that chased each other round and round without ever catching up. He knew how they felt.

He said, ‘I’ve been listening to you for a quarter of an hour, luv, and I’m no closer to understanding what any of this has got to do with me. What the hell are you doing up here in Yorkshire anyway?’

She said, ‘It’s simple. Next month it will be seven years since Alex vanished. My solicitor told me that after seven years we’d get a presumption of death on the nod. That made up my mind for me, so I said, let’s do it. And everything was going fine, then yesterday morning I got this.’

She opened her shoulder bag and took out a C5 envelope which she passed over to Dalziel. He put his glasses on to study it. It had a Mid-York postmark and was addressed in black ink to Gina Wolfe, 28 Lombard Way, Ilford.

The envelope contained a sheet of notepaper headed The Keldale Hotel, attached by a paper clip to a folded page from the September edition of MY Life, the glossy news, views and previews monthly magazine published by the Mid-Yorks Evening News.

On the notepaper were typed the words The General reviews his troops.

A good half of the page from MY Life was occupied by a photograph recording the recent visit of a minor royal to the city. She was shown receiving a posy of freesias from a small girl across a crush barrier during a walkabout. A thick red circle had been drawn around the head of a man just beyond the child.

‘This your husband?’ guessed Dalziel.

‘Yes.’

The photo was very clear. It showed a man somewhere between late twenties and mid thirties, his blond hair tousled by the breeze as he observed the Royal with an expression more quizzical than enthusiastic.

‘You sure?’

‘It’s Alex or his double,’ she said.

‘Right,’ he said, turning his attention to the hotel notepaper.

The Keldale was the town’s premier hotel, priding itself, with its spacious rooms, traditional menus and extensive gardens, on offering luxury in the old style.

‘The General reviews his troops,’ he read. ‘That means summat special, does it?’

She said, ‘Alex’s family always liked to claim a family connection with General Wolfe…’

He saw her hesitating whether she needed to explain who General Wolfe was.

He said, ‘The one who’d rather have written Gray’s Elegy than whupped the Frogs, right?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Alex was rather proud of the connection and I used to make fun of him because of it, and we started playing this game…I was a plucky little trooper and he was General Wolfe reviewing his troops, and…’

She was blushing. It became her.

Dalziel handed back the magazine page and said, ‘Spare me the details, luv. This something your Alex would have boasted about to his mates after a couple of pints?’

‘No!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘Definitely not.’

Dalziel noted the certainty without necessarily accepting it.

‘So you were convinced this was your man. What did you do?’

‘I rang Mick.’

‘Purdy? Oh aye. And what did he have to say?’

‘Nothing. I couldn’t get him. I knew he was going to be busy this weekend. He’s been running some big Met op, he’s a commander now. They’ve got to the arrest stage, so that probably meant all mobiles switched off. Anyway, I left him a message.’

Dalziel digested this. Purdy a commander. The lad had done well, but he’d had the look of a high-flier back when they’d met all those year ago. More puzzling was the woman’s knowledge of him; not his promotion, that was understandable, but the details of his operational timetable.

He said, ‘Sorry, luv, I’m not getting this. Seven years on you’re trying to get your husband declared dead, then you get his picture through the post, and the first thing you do is ring his old boss? Why not your best friend, if it’s a bit of emotional support you want? Or your solicitor, if it’s professional advice. Why dig right back into the past and come up with your man’s old boss?’

She said, ‘Sorry, Mr Dalziel, I keep forgetting you didn’t actually speak to Mick. I should have told you right away. There’s another reason I need to get a presumption of death. Mick and I are going to be married.’

08.55–09.05

Vince Delay watched Tubby stand up then sit down again and start talking to Blondie.

Briefly he had a full-frontal view of the fat guy and now he dropped his eyes to compare what he’d seen with a photograph he was holding in his hymn book. It was a full-length shot of a man lounging against a tree, thirtyish, blond hair ruffled by a breeze, with the slightly mocking half-smile of a guy who knows what he wants and has no doubts about his ability to get it.

The only time Vince had seen him in the flesh, trouble had wiped that smile from his face but otherwise he’d looked the same.

Fleur had said, stick to Blondie and she’ll lead us to him, and this is where she’d led.

He let his gaze drift from the photo to the bulky figure sitting close to the tart. Question was, could anything have changed this to that in seven years?

Didn’t seem likely.

Pity, he thought. Would have been nice if things had turned out so easy. Not that it bothered him. Not his responsibility, not since Fleur took him in hand. Would have been nice for Fleur though. Or maybe not. Fleur was clever and for some reason clever people often seemed to prefer things a bit complicated. Himself, he’d have been delighted if it had been Tubby. Whack! And then back down the motorway, leaving this northern dump to fall to pieces in its own time.

One thing was sure: whoever Tubby was, all that praying, he had some heavy stuff on his mind. And now it looked like Blondie was laying some more on him. This surveillance stuff was real boring.

Couldn’t even light up. Not many places you could these days. No laws to stop the bastards lighting candles though. Back in the car he guessed Fleur would be on her second or third ciggie by now, probably having a coffee from the flask. Maybe a little nip in it. No, scrub that. Not Fleur. On a job you had rules and you stuck to them. You look after the rules and the rules would look after you, she was fond of saying. And if she caught you breaking the rules–her rules–then retribution was instant and unpleasant.

Though sending him to do the tailing was breaking the rules, wasn’t it?

Maybe it meant she’d decided he wasn’t just muscle, he could think for himself.

The idea was both flattering and disturbing. It suggested a change in their relationship and he didn’t like change.

She’d laid down the terms pretty categorically in the prison visiting room as his last and longest stretch came within sight of the end. He’d served them years the hard way and he’d got respect, but at a price. Fleur was the only person he could share his horror with at the prospect of going back inside. In another sort of man this admission might have been linked to a resolve to go straight. Delay’s resolve was different.

‘I’ll top myself first,’ he said.

Fleur had given him the look that since she was nine had reversed the three years between them and made him feel like her kid brother.

‘Don’t talk stupid, Vince,’ she’d said brusquely. ‘Now, where are you going when you get out?’

He looked at her, puzzled, and said, ‘Thought I’d come home to start with…’

‘Home’s gone, Vince. I’ve got my own place now. You’re welcome to come and live with me, but there’s rules. You do things my way, in or out of the flat. Break the rules, and you’re on your own. For good. What do you say? Yes or no?’

‘Well, sounds all right, sis, but a guy’s got to have a bit of choice, know what I mean…’

‘Yes or no, Vince. That’s one of the rules. I ask yes or no, you answer yes or no.’

‘OK, keep your hair on. I mean yes.’

‘Something else. I think I can get you a job.’

‘You mean, like…a job?’ he said, horrified.

She shook her head. She knew her limitations.

‘I mean like the kind of job you’re good at,’ she said. ‘Except that what you’re not good at is not getting caught. So if you come to live with me, you come to work for me too, OK? No branching out on your own. I call the shots, OK?’

‘Is that a yes or no question, sis?’

‘It’s a yes or yes question, Vince. If you want to live with me, that is.’

‘Then yes.’

It had been a good decision. There’d been a couple of rebellious moments–like he’d said, a man’s got to have a bit of independence–but they’d all got sorted, and Fleur had one great argument to support that her way was the best way: for more than a dozen years now he’d stayed out of jail!

He put the photo back in his wallet and for want of anything better to do let his gaze focus on the open hymn book once more. Some of this stuff was dead easy, but a lot of it was like reading the instruction book for a computer.

A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine. Who sweeps a room as for thy laws Makes that and the action fine.

What the hell was that all about?

He sighed and shifted in the chair whose wickerwork seat felt as if it was stamping its imprint on his behind. The thought took him back to his first time inside. They’d made him strip and take a shower. One of the screws had said mockingly, ‘Nice arse, Delay. You’re going to enjoy yourself here.’

It had taken half a dozen of the bastards to drag him off the man and then they’d given him a good kicking. But he’d been limping round the yard a couple of days later, an object of respect, and the screw had still been in hospital.

Happy days.

But not the kind of happy days he ever wanted to enjoy again. He was going to stay out whatever it took. And if ever Fleur’s way looked like failing, then he’d just have to do things his own way.

09.15–09.30

Normally Andy Dalziel was to diplomacy what Alexander the Great was to knots, but this time he hesitated the cutting edge and essayed a bit of gentle plucking.

‘So you and Mick, this a long-standing engagement…?’

She laughed, a pleasant sound which the old cathedral absorbed with indifference though a few human heads turned in surprise.

‘What you mean is, how long have we been at it? Or even more bluntly, were we at it while Alex was still around? Very much not. Mick stayed in touch, we became good friends, we were close, I could tell he was interested romantically, so to speak, but it wasn’t till the end of last year that I finally acknowledged that Alex was gone for good. Mick’s told me since he was starting to think I’d never get Alex out of my system. It came as a real shock to him when I finally made the break.’

Hearing himself proposing marriage must have come as a bit of a shock to Mick, too, thought Dalziel. He recalled Purdy declaring one boozy night that the only woman worth marrying was a billionairess with huge tits, no family, and an hour to live.

Still, men often change their views on marriage. He certainly had.

He went on, ‘So you left Mick a message telling him to ring you. And then…?’

‘I called my solicitor. He wasn’t all that pleased, it being Saturday. That didn’t bother me. I’m paying the louse and no doubt he’ll charge me double time.’

‘Good lass,’ said Dalziel, who loved anybody who hated lawyers. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said he wished I hadn’t told him about the photo. Because now I had, he was bound to include knowledge of it in his plea for assumption of death.’

‘Covering himself in case it later came out that Alex was alive, right?’

‘Right. I asked him what I should do. He said that all I could do was make every reasonable effort to check out the possibility that my husband was alive and living in Mid-Yorkshire. He said that on receipt of my written assurance that such an effort had been made, he would go ahead with the application.’

‘Lawyers,’ said Dalziel, ‘I’ve shit ’em. So what did you do then?’

‘I rang the Keldale Hotel.’

‘Oh aye. Why’d you do that?’

‘Because I wanted somewhere to stay when I got here and it was the obvious place. Why use the hotel’s notepaper unless it meant something?’

Mebbe because it meant nothing, thought Dalziel, nodding as if in agreement and saying, ‘And then?’

‘Then I threw some stuff in a case and drove up here,’ she said.

‘Don’t hang around, do you?’ said Dalziel admiringly.

‘You might say I’ve been hanging around for seven years,’ she said. ‘But no more. I was determined to get this thing settled one way or another.’

‘So you’d worked out a plan of action, had you?’

‘That makes it sound a bit grand,’ she said ruefully. ‘At the Keldale reception, I showed them a photo of Alex, but it didn’t ring any bells. The only other idea I had was to run a small ad in the local paper using the same photo of Alex and offering a reward to anyone supplying information. But it was too late when I got here, the newspaper office was closed.’

‘Aye, we like to keep civilized hours up here,’ said Dalziel. ‘We don’t let news happen at the weekend. So what did Mick Purdy have to say about all this? You must have got to speak with him if he’s ringing me.’

‘Yes, I did, but not till last night after I’d arrived here. When he realized where I was, he didn’t sound very happy. And when I told him what I planned to do, he sort of groaned. I wasn’t in the mood to be groaned at and I’m afraid I snapped at him. To tell the truth, I was really frustrated I couldn’t get on with things straight away.’

‘Should have thought about that afore you came rushing up here,’ said Dalziel portentously. ‘Could have saved yourself a couple of night’s rent at the Keldale, which won’t be peanuts.’

‘You know, you sound just like Mick!’ she said. ‘It ended with me saying one thing I could do on Sunday was call in at the local cop shop and check if they were any more helpful up here than down in the Met. He asked me–asked, not told–he’s a quick learner–he asked me not to do anything till he got back to me. Then he had to rush off–he was still in the middle of his op.’

‘And you sat up anxiously all night waiting for your wise fiancé to call with instructions like any good girl would,’ said Dalziel.

She smiled and said, ‘Naturally. Actually I didn’t sleep so well and I was up and out not long after seven, driving around. I know it’s stupid, but I thought I might just happen to spot Alex on the street or something.’

‘Aye, I’ve had daft buggers in the CID who thought that was how it worked,’ said Dalziel. ‘But not for long!’

He expected that to provoke a rueful smile. Instead she frowned and looked away.

‘Come on!’ he said. ‘You’re not saying you clocked him!’

She shook her head and said, ‘No. Worse than that. I thought I did. Three times. I even followed a car for half a mile, and the driver who looked like Alex turned out to be a woman!’

‘Could have had a sex change, I suppose,’ said Dalziel. ‘But I shouldn’t let it bother you, luv. Your mind can play funny tricks when you’re not quite right with yourself. Look at Blair and Bush and all them weapons of mass destruction. And I once thought I saw England win the world cup.’

That got a smile and she went on, ‘Anyway, chasing that woman driver convinced me I was acting stupidly. Then my mobile rang and it was Mick. When I told him what I’d been doing, I heard him start that groaning again, but he managed to choke it off. Then he told me about you.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Dalziel. ‘He said he had this old mucker who was top-man on the Mid-Yorkshire Force and he was just the guy to make a few discreet enquiries afore you started your public manhunt, right?’

It made some kind of sense.

She said, ‘More or less. That was about eight o’clock, He said it was probably better to contact you at home because this wasn’t really official police business. He said he was going to ring you there to put you in the picture and would let me know as soon as he’d made contact. I told him I’d wait for his call at the hotel, but soon as he rang off I stuck the address he gave me in my sat-nav and headed round to your street. I just had to be doing something, even if I thought…’

She tailed off and he said, ‘Even if you thought I’d probably be a waste of time. So, soon as Mick rang and said he’d talked to me, you were going to be ringing my bell!’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Sorry. Anyway, it didn’t work out. Suddenly you shot out, jumped in your car and drove here like you were late for a funeral.’

‘How’d you know it was me?’

‘Mick described you.’

‘Oh aye. Young, slim and sexy, was it? Don’t answer that.’

Time to review the situation. He’d been weighing up the woman as she talked. A few years older than his first assessment, well into her thirties, but she knew how to use her make-up and she kept herself in good shape. Very good shape. Bright blue eyes, teeth in good nick, hair naturally blonde and elegantly arranged by someone who probably charged a tenner a snip. Clothes to match, expensive but not designer expensive, though her shoes (he knew a lot about shoes; they were Cap’s sartorial weakness and she had enough fancy footwear to kit a WAGs convention) probably cost more than he’d paid for his last suit. But then he did get very good discounts.

As for personality, she was strong. She’d come close to losing control a couple of times–and from the sound of what she’d been through, it would have been understandable if she had–but she’d managed to pull back from the brink. She was, he judged, a woman who felt that action was the better part of reaction. Heading straight up to Mid-Yorkshire in response to that weird missive, driving around the streets first thing this morning then camping outside his door, all this suggested someone who would rather do something than sit around doing nothing.

Or perhaps, rather do anything than sit around thinking about what the past had held and what the future might hold.

All in all, he liked her. Not that that signified. His life was punctuated with trouble spots that had started with women he liked.

So, decision time.

He couldn’t see what this could have to do with him professionally, but it was his day off, and having someone else’s confusions dumped in his lap had certainly diverted his mind from his own.

On the other hand, his knight-errant days were long past, he wasn’t about to rush into anything, not even for a damsel in distress as tasty as this.

He said, ‘I’ll need to brood on this a bit, luv. Tell you what, why don’t we meet up later? Have a bit of grub mebbe?’

Giving her the chance to say thanks but no thanks. If after meeting him she didn’t care to pursue the acquaintance, it was no skin off his nose.

‘OK. Where?’ she said without hesitation. So he must have made an impression. Or she were really desperate!

He said, ‘You’re at the Keldale, right? All the best folk take Sunday lunch on the terrace there. Tell them you want a table overlooking the gardens. Any problem, tell Lionel Lee, the manager, you’re meeting me.’

‘Mick said you were a man of influence,’ she said.

‘Did he now?’

For perhaps the first time since his return, he actually felt like it.

He stood up. She remained sitting.

‘You not leaving?’ he said.

‘I think I’ll sit and listen to the music for a while,’ she said.

‘Oh aye?’ Then recalling he was allegedly here because he was fond of this chase-me-round-the-houses stuff, he added, ‘You a fan of old Bach then?’

‘Very much so. Occupational hazard. I’m a music teacher by profession.’

That surprised him. His notion of music teachers involved wire-rimmed spectacles, scrubbed cheeks, and hair in a bun. Mebbe he should get out more.

‘Grand job,’ he said, overcompensating for his uncharitable thoughts. ‘Kids can’t get too much music’

‘Indeed,’ she said, smiling at him warmly. ‘It’s good to know we have music in common, Mr Dalziel. It wasn’t something I anticipated from the way Mick spoke of you. Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude…’

‘Forget to mention I was Renaissance Man, did he?’ said Dalziel. ‘Mind you, all I can recall of his tastes is he fancied himself as Rod Stewart on the karaoke.’

‘Still does. And he can’t tell a fugue from a fandango.’

She smiled again. She really was fine-looking woman. Mebbe his knight-errant days weren’t done and dusted after all. Mebbe Sir Andy of the Drooping Lance had one last tilt in him.

He began to walk away but had only gone half a dozen steps when she called after him.

‘Mr Dalziel, you didn’t say what time for lunch.’

His stomach rumbled as if in response, reminding him he’d skimped on breakfast in his rush to not be late.

‘Best make it twelvish,’ he said. ‘Folks up here stick to the old timetables, even when they’re eating at the Keldale.’

And I’d not like to get there and find the roast beef had run out, he added to himself as he turned away.

He wasn’t unhappy to be getting out of the cathedral. There was something weird and disturbing about all that space. But he had a curious fancy as he strode towards the door that he could hear little feet pattering behind him.

He glanced back and met the eager eyes of the marble dog peering over the edge of the tomb.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Another time, eh? I’ll be back.’

And to his surprise he found he actually meant it.

09.31–09.40

Fleur Delay watched the fat guy come out of the cathedral.

No sign of Vince.

She guessed he’d be suffering an agony of indecision about whether to follow the man or stick with the woman. Vince didn’t do structured thinking. Rationalizing his way to a choice was like walking across hot coals.

What he might be now if she hadn’t finally decided that taking her big brother in hand was a full-time job didn’t bear thinking of. Looking back, it seemed as if she’d been training for it the whole of her life, or at least since the age of nine when their father left.

To start with there’d been a lot of self-interest here. If the family fell apart, the only route for herself was into care. Someone had to hold things together, and she didn’t need to be told that neither her mother nor her brother was up to the job. By the time she left school and got her job with The Man, she’d become expert at dealing with social workers who expressed doubts about the set-up. An hour in Fleur’s company saw them persuaded, not without relief, that she was much better qualified than they were to save her mother from the worst consequences of her own excesses while at the same time trying with diminishing success to keep her brother out of jail and making sure he had a home to return to on release.

She’d been working for Gidman for nine years when her mother finally succumbed to a cocktail of alcohol and chemicals. Not long after the funeral, the other half of her family responsibility was put on hold by a judge deciding short sharp shocks were clearly having no effect on Vince and sending him down for a ten stretch.

His behaviour inside ensured he did the full term and, as his release date approached, Fleur found herself having to work out a strategy for the future not only for her brother but herself.

During her twenty years working for The Man her reliability and ingenuity had won golden opinions and rapid advancement. But Goldie Gidman’s career horizons had widened considerably too.

Fleur’s career running The Man’s financial affairs had begun shortly before Margaret Thatcher began to run the country’s. During the Thatcher years Goldie Gidman had come to see that this brave new world of free market enterprise offered opportunities to become stinking rich that did not involve the use of a hammer. Though the implement had changed, the principle was one he was very familiar with. Human need and greed left people vulnerable. Looking west out of the East End into the City he saw a feeding frenzy that made his own localized pickings seem very Lenten fare. And so began the moves, both geographical and commercial, that were to turn him into a financial giant.

But changes of direction can be dangerous.

It was Fleur who had pointed out to him the paradox that going completely legit left him much more exposed than staying completely bent. The movement from crookedness to cleanliness meant abandoning a lot of old associates whose faces and attitudes were at odds with the new glossy picture of himself and his activities he was preparing for the world. The trick was to make sure that, as new doors opened before him, the old doors were firmly locked and double barred behind. Fortunately he’d always tidied up as he went along and those who knew enough to do him active harm were few and far between. Now once more he scrutinized them very carefully and those he had any doubts about got visited by his long-time associate and enforcer, Milton Slingsby.

No one knew more about The Man’s affairs than Fleur Delay. Her record should have made her invulnerable. But the trouble was that her professional usefulness had more or less come to an end. Her talent for manipulative accountancy had been invaluable in the days when his main financial enemies were local tax inspectors and VAT men, and she had been helpful during the early moves into legitimate areas of speculation. But as Goldie prospered, he had turned more and more to the specialized tax accountants without whom a man could sink without trace in the mazy morass of the modern markets. In their company she was like an abacus among computers, but an abacus whose database was very computer-like. While she did not believe she was in imminent danger of a visit from Sling, she knew that Goldie valued people in proportion to their usefulness, and to have dangerous knowledge but no positive function was potentially a fatal combination.

As Vince’s release date approached, she saw a way to solve both her problems.

The key was Milton Slingsby.

Sling’s great merit was total loyalty. Whatever Goldie told him to do, he did. But he was nearly ten years older than Goldie and his early years in the boxing ring, where he was renowned for blocking his opponents’ punches with his head, were starting to take their toll. With Goldie by his side telling him what to do he could function as well as ever. But now the new respectable Goldie wanted to be as far away as possible from the kind of thing he usually told Sling to do.

So Fleur brought up the subject of her brother with The Man, not as her problem, but as his opportunity. Vince, she averred, would do the heavy work. She would do the planning, guaranteeing speed, discretion, and absolutely no lines back to The Man.

To employ someone like Vince Delay directly wasn’t an option for Goldie. Such men were by their very nature likely to prove as unreliable as the unreliables they were seeing off. But the prospect of having someone as heavy as Vince under the control of someone he still trusted as implicitly as Fleur was not unattractive.

He agreed to a trial run. Three days later the designated target fell while out walking his dog and cracked his skull against a fence post with fatal results.

That had been thirteen years ago and up till now neither party had had occasion to complain about the arrangement. Rapidly the Delays’ reputation for reliability and discretion drew in offers from elsewhere, some of which Fleur accepted, though as a Gidman pensioner, she had sufficient income to permit her to be choosy. But on the increasingly rare occasions The Man put work their way, she dropped everything else and came running.

It was important to please The Man, partly for pride, principally for preservation.

Her policy of keeping Vince as ignorant of the fine detail of their jobs as possible seemed to work. As a notorious ex-con, he got pulled in from time to time when the police had nothing better to do. Silence underpinned by ignorance and bolstered by the rapid arrival of a top-class brief had kept him safe. She used these occasions to point out to The Man just how ignorant Vince was. She felt pretty certain that as long as she was around and functioning efficiently, there would be no problem.

But take her out of the picture, and she knew beyond doubt that Goldie Gidman would be running his cold eyes over her brother.

She ran her own eyes over him as finally he emerged from the cathedral and headed towards the VW.

The fat guy was already getting into his ancient Rover.

Vince slid into the passenger seat beside his sister.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘Where’s the woman?’

‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he said. ‘She’s still inside. They’re meeting up later for lunch at the hotel. Twelve o’clock. I heard them fixing it.’

The Rover was nosing its way out of the car park. She started the VW and followed it out into Holyclerk Street.

‘We not tailing Blondie any more then?’ asked Vince.

‘We’ll let the bug do that for us. If she stops anywhere, we can check it out. You keep an eye on the laptop. Now tell me exactly what you saw and heard in the cathedral.’

When he finished, she squeezed his arm and said, ‘You done well, Vince.’

He basked in the glow of pleasure that praise from Fleur always gave him.

They had left the cathedral area behind them and were approaching the main urban highway. The Rover signalled left towards the town centre. Fleur signalled right.

‘We not going to see where’s he’s heading?’ said Vince, puzzled.

‘I’m starting to have a good idea where he’s heading,’ said Fleur. ‘What I want to see is where he’s coming from.’

09.50–10.30

It was funny, thought the Fat Man. Turning up at the Station by mistake on his day off would have been disastrous, but striding in now and taking them all by surprise felt like old times.

‘Morning, Wieldy,’ he said breezily. ‘Got a couple of little jobs for you.’

Detective Sergeant Edgar Wield had the kind of face that didn’t do surprise, but there was a slight pause for adjustment before he said, ‘Morning, sir. Be right with you.’

Dalziel noted the pause and thought, Gotcha! as he flung open the door of his office.

The evidence of his uncertain return to work was visible in the room’s relative tidiness. Pascoe had been using it latterly and the bugger had got everything ship-shape and Bristol fashion. The Fat Man had found himself thinking it was a shame not to benefit from this orderliness and for ten days he’d been replacing files in the cabinet, closing drawers, removing clutter from his desk, and even striving to keep the decibel level of his farts under control.

That he could take care of instantly. As he sank into his chair he let rip a rattler.

‘Didn’t quite catch that, sir,’ said Wield from the doorway.

‘Would probably have broken your wrist if you had,’ said Dalziel. ‘Seven years back there were a DI in the Met, Alex Wolfe, under investigation for corruption or summat; resigned, I think, then disappeared. I’d like all you can find about him. Same with Mick Purdy; DCI back then, now he’s Commander. But softly softly, eh? Don’t want to set any alarm bells ringing.’

‘What sort of alarm is that likely to be, sir?’ said Wield.

‘No idea. Probably none. But you know me, discretion’s my middle name.’

No it’s not, it’s Hamish, thought Wield. But that was a piece of knowledge he didn’t care to flaunt.

‘This something likely to come up at tomorrow’s case review, sir?’ he asked.

The Fat Man glanced at him sharply. The bugger can’t have picked up on me mistaking the day, can he? No way! But that blank, unyielding face could make a nun check if her lacy knickers were showing.

‘Nowt official yet. That’s why I’m here on my day off,’ he said. ‘Pete around?’

‘No, sir. His day off, too. He’s going to a christening.’

‘Eh? Ellie’s not dropped another? I weren’t out of the loop that long, surely.’

‘No. They’re guests. Like you, seeing as you’re not official.’

‘Don’t get cheeky. Was a time when I’d be met with smiles and coffee.’

‘Was there, sir? Can’t bring it to mind. Shall I organize a coffee?’

‘I’d rather have it than one of thy smiles, Wieldy. No, you get right on to Wolfe. I’ll wake one of them idle buggers out there.’

He followed the sergeant to the door and looked around.

His gaze lit on DC Shirley Novello, engrossed in her computer screen.

‘Ivor!’ he bellowed. ‘Coffee!’

The young woman looked up and replied, ‘No thanks, sir. I’ve just had one.’

Something that on another face might have been called a grin touched Wield’s lips, then he moved away swiftly.

‘Now!’ bellowed Dalziel. ‘Why else do you think we let women into the Force?’

He went back into his office and sat at his desk. The encounter with the blonde at the cathedral had kick-started his day but he still felt a bit out of sorts. He’d got the problem of the lost day sorted, so what was left to bug him? If he did any more internal digging, he’d be looking at his belly button from the inside, so he changed his point of view and looked around the room. After a few moments, he got it.

Problem solved, or just about to be!

Six or seven minutes later Wield dead heated with a coffee-bearing Novello at the Fat Man’s door. No plastic beaker from the machine this; she’d have had to go down to the canteen to get half a pint of the Super’s favourite blend in his own mug. It smelled good, but from the look on Novello’s face, Wield thought it might be wise if Dalziel got her to taste it before touching it himself.

He opened the door for her and followed her into the room.

It had changed. Most of the drawers on the desk and filing cabinet were pulled out, a dented metal waste bin lay on its side against a dented wall, and in the furthermost corner as if hurled there with great force lay a file that the sergeant recognized as the one containing Pascoe’s briefing notes for the case-review meeting. The window was wide open and the breeze so admitted was having a great time rustling through various loose sheets scattered across the floor.

Dalziel noted him noticing and said, ‘Been doing a bit of tidying up. Ivor, you can’t have much to do if you’ve time to fetch coffee. Run me this number will you?’

He scribbled Gina Wolfe’s car number on the back of an unopened envelope that bore the Chief Constable’s insignia and the words Urgent and Confidential.

Novello took it, turned, rolled her eyes when she had her back to the Fat Man and went out.

‘Right, sunshine, what’ve you got?’

Wield said, ‘Seven years back, DI Alex Wolfe was targeted by the Met’s Internal Investigations. He was a key man in a team investigating a financier, David known as Goldie Gidman.’

‘So Wolfe was a paper-chaser,’ said Dalziel with the muted scorn of the front-line cop for the Fraud Squad. In the Fat Man’s eyes, boardroom crime was to real crime what soft-porn movies were to child prostitution.

‘Foot in both camps; he’d done his share of hard-end stuff,’ said Wield. ‘Commendation for bravery during the Millennium siege. Also I get the impression this weren’t straight Fraud Squad stuff. The officer initiating it was a deputy assistant commissioner. Owen Mathias. You know him?’

‘Heard of him,’ said Dalziel. ‘Took early retirement and died. Dicky heart.’

‘That’s right. Seems to have had Gidman in his sights for a long long time, but never laid a finger on him. That’s likely why he called this op Macavity. Turned out a bit too accurate. All trails banged up against a dead end, or a smart lawyer with a writ. Conclusion, Mathias’s at least, someone was leaking. So he set Internal Investigations on it and they focused on Wolfe.’

‘What do you mean, Mathias’s at least?’

‘Get the impression there were a lot who reckoned that Macavity were a waste of time and money. They’d not been able to touch Gidman in his early days in the East End. Now he were out of the mucky back streets and into the City, he were so squeaky clean, the Tories were accepting donations from him.’

‘Proving what?’ grunted Dalziel. ‘So you’re saying this Macavity op were a grudge thing between Mathias and Gidman?’

‘I’m saying it feels like that’s what a lot of people thought.’

‘Did this mean Internal Investigations just went through the motions?’

‘Can’t say. Certainly nowt were ever proven against Wolfe. He happened to be on compassionate leave at the time, so they didn’t even need to suspend him. Then he resigned. Bit later he vanished. Estranged wife reported it, they looked at it, no evidence of foul play, he was a grown man, no charges had been brought so he wasn’t a fugitive. I got the impression they were glad to be shot of him without the fuss of a full-blown corruption enquiry.’

‘OK. What about Purdy?

‘Wolfe’s DI back when he was a sergeant. Paths parted when he went up to DCI and Wolfe to DI. Wolfe more into the paper-chase side of things, Purdy stayed hands on. Did well. Current job, Commander in some Major Crime Unit at the Yard.’

‘Right. Operation Macavity, things improve there after Wolfe vanished?’

‘Seems not. Shelved soon after. No evidence, no action.’

‘And nowt since?’

‘Not a word. Looks like the records have been hoovered clean. Like they’d feel embarrassed at it coming out how much time and money they’d wasted. Not surprising, considering how things have worked out for Gidman.’

‘Eh? Hang about, you’re not saying we’re talking about yon Dave the Turd MP? No, can’t be, he’s still in his twenties, isn’t he?’

‘Goldie Gidman’s his father.’

Shit, thought Dalziel. His brain really was creaking. Though in fact, he reassured himself, no reason why he should have made the leap as soon as he heard the name. In living memory he’d helped send down a Brown and a Cameron, the former for offing his boss’s wife, the latter for identity theft, and in neither case had he looked at a Westminster connection.

Come to think of it, maybe he should have done.

Now he recollected a TV documentary he’d watched during his recent convalescence. It had been called Golden Boy–The Face of the Future?

Two years ago, David Gidman the Third had overturned a Labour majority of ten thousand in the Lea Valley West bye-election. He was a Tory golden boy in every sense. His mixed parentage had given him the kind of skin glow that footballers’ wives pay match fees for. His grandfather, a Jamaican immigrant who worked on the railways, had been greatly respected as a community leader. His father was a self-made million-some said billion-aire whose predilection for investments involving gold had left him better placed than most to survive the plunging markets. Goldie Gidman was big in charity, giving generously of his wealth to educational, social and cultural projects in the East End of his upbringing. And also to the Conservative Party. No honours came his way. He did not want letters after his name, just after his son’s. And if his son’s nomination for Lea Valley West was his reward, then the Tories felt they’d made a good bargain, for, besides ticking all the right ethnic and cultural boxes, David Gidman was proving an attractive and energetic MR

In right-wing journals, he was already crayoned in as a possible future leader, while in Private Eye his insistence on calling himself David Gidman the Third to remind everyone of his humble origins inevitably won him the witty sobriquet of Dave the Turd.

One thing was certain, thought the Fat Man. Guilty, innocent, in the modern political climate, Goldie Gidman’s finances would have been gone over by the Millbank sniffer dogs before they accepted first his gift of money and then his gift of a son. With their long experience of fraud, graft, and corruption, if they ticked your approval box, you could give the finger to the police and the press. No wonder the Met felt shy about Operation Macavity.

Dalziel said, ‘That it, Wieldy?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Wield.

‘Thanks, lad. Don’t bother to close the door. This place needs an airing.’

Another man might have been offended, but Wield knew he wasn’t being got at. The through-draught riffling the scattered papers was bearing away the last traces of Pascoe’s ordered universe.

Alone, Dalziel sat back in his chair, clasped his hands on his lap, closed his eyes and set his mind to meditate how this changed things re Gina Wolfe, if at all.

Novello, entering a couple of minutes later, thought he looked like that huge statue of Buddha the Taliban had tried to shell to pieces, and felt some rare sympathy with the extremists.

She coughed gently.

Without opening his eyes, he said, ‘You’re not a bloody butler. Just tell me what you got.’

She said, ‘Nissan 350Z GT, registered owner Gina Wolfe, 28 Lombard Way, Ilford, Essex. Three speeding points on her licence, no convictions.’

‘Grand,’ said Dalziel. ‘Owt else?’

‘Not on Ms Wolfe.’

‘Who then?’

‘While I was running this plate, I saw Sergeant Naseby. He said they’d had a call CID might be interested in. A Mrs Esmé Sheridan rang in to complain about a succession of kerb-crawlers in Holyclerk Street. She gave a description of the first one: A gross creature with close-set eyes and a simian brow who made salacious suggestions.’

‘Sounds like a nut to me. Why’d Naseby think it was owt to interest us?’

‘Mrs Sheridan took this gross creature’s number. Couldn’t be too sure of it because the number plate was as filthy as its owner–her words. The sergeant ran a check. Oddly enough, one of the possibles that came up was your number. Sir.’

‘Dementia,’ said Dalziel. ‘Tell him to check the care homes for runaways.’

He opened his eyes and smiled as if seeing Novello for the first time.

‘Ivor, you’re looking well, lass. Take a seat. What time do you knock off?’

‘Just got a report to finish then I’m done, sir.’

‘Been on all night, eh?’ he said sympathetically. ‘So what are your plans?’

‘Get a bit of shut-eye then meet up with some mates this evening,’ she said, slightly surprised. This level of interest in her personal life was unusual in the Fat Man.

‘Aye, but you’ll need to eat,’ he said, running his eyes over her frame as if assessing her weight. ‘Growing girl needs her grub. Tell you what, how do you fancy the terrace at the Keldale?’

This was a shock to Novello. Sexist the fat old sod could be if he felt like it, but one thing he’d never been was predatory. Could an unforeseen effect of his hospitalization be that he was going to turn into a dirty old man?

‘Don’t think I’m dressed for that, sir,’ she said, glancing down at the loose olive green T-shirt and the baggy combat trousers which she habitually wore to work. On the whole her CID colleagues were fairly civilized, but there were still a few Neanderthals in the Station whose onanistic fantasies she didn’t care to feed.

‘Nay, tha’s fine. You see some real sights around these days. Scruffy’s the new smart, right?’ said Dalziel. ‘Any road, I don’t mean right off. Thing is, I’m meeting this lass for lunch there. Twelve o’clock, high noon. What I’d like you to do is watch us.’

‘Watch you?’ she said. This could be worse than she’d imagined.

‘Aye. Well no. What I mean is, I’d like you to keep your eyes skinned and see if there’s any other sod watching us. Or watching her, more likely. Mebbe wanting to sit close enough to listen in on us. Moving when we move. Can you manage that?’

Not hitting on her then, but asking for her assistance.

Which was a considerable relief, but still odd. In matters constabulary, the old Andy didn’t ask, he simply commanded.

‘I suppose so,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Sir, is this…I mean, it’s not a domestic, is it?’

‘Like, am I having it off with a married woman and want to check if her husband’s put a tail on her?’ said Dalziel grinning. ‘Wash your mind out, lass! Nowt like that. But it’s not official, not yet. So let’s keep it private. It’s you doing me a favour in your lunch break. No official chitties either, so you’d best take this to cover expenses.’

He took out a roll of notes and peeled off a couple of twenties.

She looked at them in amazement–the Fat Man was not famous for his liberality–and said, ‘Like I say, I normally just have a sandwich, sir.’

‘On the Keldale terrace this’ll just about cover that, specially if you have a glass of something nice to wash it down with,’ he said.

She took the money and said, ‘If I did spot someone and they moved off…’

‘Follow ’em,’ he said. ‘Get a name and address; tha’ll be top name on my Christmas card list. Right, twelve noon. Don’t be late. Wouldn’t surprise if my date gets there early; the keen ones usually do. Good-looking blonde, shoulder-length hair, thirty summat, looks younger from a distance, she’ll be at a table at the edge of the terrace overlooking the gardens, so try to get sat where you can cover us and most of the other tables. Off you go now. And remember, mum’s the word.’

He watched her leave. Nice bum, for all her efforts to hide it. Suddenly he realized how much better he was feeling. Mebbe it was the prospect of lunch with an attractive blonde. He wasn’t yet sure what he was doing, but it definitely felt good to be doing it.

Some words popped into his mind, he couldn’t remember their source, Churchill maybe, or Joe Stalin:

When the old order changeth, make sure you’re the bugger who changeth it.

He got up, went out and found Wield working at his desk.

‘Wieldy, I’m off,’ he said. ‘Man should enjoy his day of rest, eh?’

‘That’s right, sir. Though it’s always good to see you.’

‘Is it? Mebbe I really have been away too long.’

Wield watched his progress across the CID room. He looked very positive. Like some stately ship heading confidently towards the western horizon. The Mayflower perhaps. Or the Titanic.

Time would tell.

10.45–11.02

Ellie Pascoe studied the baby carefully.

It was, so far as she could see, unexceptionable. Two eyes, brown, not quite focused; a squashed-up rather pug-like nose; a broad head crossed by a few strands of fairish hair; rosy cheeks and a dampish mouth from which emerged gurgles of what was presumably contentment; the usual number of limbs which waved spasmodically in the air like those of a bouleversed beetle.

Ellie had friends who, confronted by such a phenomenon, would have dissolved into raptures of hyperbolical praise punctuated by enough cooing to deafen a dovecote.

It was an art she lacked. Yet, recalling how much she had adored her own baby, and seeing the pride and joy shining on the faces of the infant’s parents, she did her best.

‘Isn’t she adorable!’ she cried. ‘What a darling. Goo goo goo goo goo.’

The parents, Alicia Wintershine and Ed Muir, seemed to find her performance acceptable, but she could feel the critical gaze of her husband and daughter at her back and did not doubt she was being marked out of ten for style and content.

She got a small revenge by turning and saying, ‘Rosie, isn’t she lovely! So pretty. Not like you, dear. You were the weirdest-looking little thing.’

‘Thanks a bunch, Mum,’ said her daughter, advancing and greeting the baby like an old friend. ‘Have you got her doing scales yet, Ali?’

Alicia Wintershine was Rosie Pascoe’s clarinet tutor. At some point in their relationship she had moved from being Miss Wintershine, musical dominatrix, to my friend Ali. Ellie Pascoe took this as a mark of her daughter’s progress on the instrument. Her husband, less convinced of Rosie’s virtuosity, had enquired a little sourly whether dear old Ali gave a discount to her friends. But when he finally met the tutor and discovered she bore no resemblance to her lean, polished instrument but was softly rounded with big brown eyes, billows of chestnut hair, sexy lips and a laugh to match, all bundled in a package that looked ten years younger than her admitted thirty, he proved himself a reasonable man by admitting that his daughter could sometimes get as many as half a dozen consecutive notes in any given melody right, and in any case there were worse things a young girl could be putting in her mouth than a clarinet reed.

Ellie watched this softening of her husband’s attitude with some amusement. He for his part was equally amused when, despite her spirited defence in public debate of the proposition that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, she set about putting eligible young bachelors of her acquaintance in the nubile Miss Wintershine’s way. Accused of attempted matchmaking, she of course denied it hotly but was caught out by her response to Peter’s casual offer to trawl the corridors of Police HQ in search of possible candidates.

‘A copper!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Do you think I could live with myself if I got another woman hitched to a copper? No, they come below estate agents and company directors, and only slightly above Tory politicians and pimps on my list.’

‘So you do have a list!’ said Pascoe triumphantly.

In the event, Ellie’s efforts had been rendered redundant just over a year ago when Rosie came home from a lesson to say that Ali had got herself a fellow and she’d met him and he looked very nice. This news was confirmed later the same Saturday morning when Ali rang up to apologize. It turned out that Rosie’s encounter with the new fellow had taken place on the landing of Miss Wintershine’s house on St Margaret Street when Ed Muir, the fellow in question, had emerged from the bathroom wearing nothing but one of Ali’s Funky Beethoven T-shirts.

It wouldn’t happen again, Ali assured Ellie. You mean he’s just passing through? enquired Ellie. Oh no, said Ali, he’s here to stay, I hope. I’d love you to meet him.

And he had stayed. And Ellie had met him. And reported that he was a nice guy, quiet but bright with it, catering manager at the Arts Centre where the Mid-Yorkshire Sinfonietta, of which Ali was a leading member, gave frequent concerts.

‘That was how they met,’ said Ellie. ‘I really like what I’ve seen of him.’

‘Which is not as much as Rosie, I hope,’ said Pascoe.

If ever Rosie glimpsed him déshabillé again, she kept as quiet about it as she had the first time.

Now here they were, a year later, guests at the christening. Pascoe had had to park a good quarter mile from St Margaret’s and as they hurried past the Wintershine house, which was just fifty yards from the church, the door opened and the christening party emerged. Like the Magi, the Pascoe trio had turned aside for a brief moment of adoration.

This done, they went ahead and took their seats well to the rear of the fairly crowded church.

‘Jesus,’ said Pascoe. ‘The whole of the orchestra must have been invited.’

‘Not everyone will be a guest,’ said Ellie. ‘There’ll be the usual parishioners along for the morning service.’

‘Yes? That should account for six at least,’ said Pascoe. ‘And we’re going on to the Keldale afterwards? Must be costing a fortune. You’d have thought a catering manager could have knocked up a nice little buffet in their back garden.’

‘It’s their first child!’ said Ellie. ‘You could see how excited they were. There are some things you don’t even expect a copper to look for a discount on!’

‘Sshh!’ commanded Rosie, sitting between them. ’Can’t you two behave yourselves? You’re in church, remember!

10.50–11.05

The moment the dusty, slightly battered Vauxhall Corsa pulled into the one remaining parking space in front of St Osith’s, an officious policeman advanced to repel the intruder.

As he stooped to the passenger door, it opened, and the weighty reprimand about to be launched jammed in his throat.

With a commendably swift change of language, both body and actual, he said, ‘Welcome, Mr Gidman,’ and threw a smart salute as he pulled the door wide to let the elegant figure of David Gidman the Third step out on to the pavement.

There was a smatter of applause from the small crowd waiting by the church gate, and even a couple of wolf whistles. Gidman smiled and waved. He didn’t mind the whistles. Like Byron said, When you’ve got it, baby, flaunt it.

‘But not your wealth,’ Maggie had decreed. ‘You only flaunt your wealth in front of Russians and Arabs to let them know they’ll have to offer you more than money to get you onside. You should never turn up at an English church in a limo unless you’re getting married there.’

He’d let himself be persuaded, but he still had doubts as he walked up the path to the church door where the vicar was waiting for him.

‘Stephen,’ murmured Maggie in his ear as they approached.

He felt a pang of irritation. Didn’t she think he was capable of remembering the guy’s name? Perhaps he should address him as Stanley just to get a rise out of her.

But of course he didn’t.

‘Stephen, how good to see you. And what a lovely day you’ve arranged for us.’

‘I can hardly take credit for that,’ said the vicar, smiling.

They talked for a moment, long enough for Gidman to reassure the man that of course he’d have time after the service to meet a few of the more important parishioners in the vicarage garden before going on to the opening.

Now the churchwarden took him in tow and they moved out of the sunshine into the shady interior of the church.

This was the moment of truth. Two possible bad scenarios; one, there would be only a dozen or so in the congregation; two, there would be a decent crowd, but they’d all be black.

Maggie had reassured him on both counts, and it took only a second to appreciate that she’d been right again.

The church was packed. And the faces that turned to look at him as the churchwarden led him to his place in the foremost pew were as varied in colour as a box of liquorice allsorts. Maybe Maggie had called in a lot of favours, all them immigrant kids she’d helped. Maybe that pair of so called Polish craftsmen who’d fucked up his shower were here. Had to admit they were quick and they were cheap, though. And they’d certainly cooled Sophie’s ardour!

The thought made him smile as he took his seat alongside the mayor and mayoress, giving them a friendly nod, before leaning forward in the attitude of prayer.

Maggie would be in the seat reserved for her directly behind him. He did not doubt that if he hesitated for a moment when the time came for him to read the lesson, he would hear her dry cough or even feel a gentle prod between the shoulder blades.

He thought nostalgically of Maggie’s predecessor, Nikki. She’d been a perfect example of what he thought of as the two-metre model of PA: one metre of leg and another of bust, with shampoo-ad hair, pouting lips and a vibrator tongue. Unhappily, her tongue had been put to uses other than assisting him to the acme of pleasure. He’d been taken aback when she’d suddenly quit her job the previous year, and devastated when he started hearing rumours that she was negotiating a deal with the Daily Messenger for her steamy reminiscences of life under, and on top of, the Tory Golden Boy.

Dave didn’t turn to his father for help immediately. A strange mixture of love and resentment kept him away. He loved and admired Goldie and had every confidence he could fix things, but at the same time he wanted to affirm his own independence.

Put another way, he was a big boy now and big boys fought their own fights.

Except, he was eventually forced to admit, when they were up against the Daily Messenger, which specialized in chopping big boys down to size.

Goldie listened in silence. But he wasn’t silent two days later when he summoned his son to tell him the crisis was over.

Dave the Third, the Great Off-white Hope of the Tory Party and the next prime minister but one, had to stand before his father like an errant schoolboy and listen to a long analysis of all his shortcomings without right of reply.

‘Best thing for you, boy,’ Goldie had concluded, ‘is to get yourself a wife, someone like your mammy: loyal, home-loving, hardworking. But till you do that, if you can’t keep your dick in your pants, don’t stick it into anyone who doesn’t have at least as much to lose as you do if word gets out. And one last thing. When you advertise for a new PA, I’ll draw up the shortlist.’

That had been a year ago. The shortlist had consisted of three young men whom he’d dismissed out of hand and three singularly unattractive women, of whom Maggie Pinchbeck was undoubtedly the worst.

He recalled his first sight of her at interview, a small, mousey-haired creature who for all the clues her face, figure or even her drab trouser suit provided, could have been male or female; and undesirable in either gender. Her present job was as a senior PR officer at ChildSave, one of the big international child-protection charities. She looked the type who should be out in the desert digging latrines for fuzzy-wuzzies, he thought. This wouldn’t take long.

He’d been forced to admit she interviewed well, answering every question he asked with intelligence and economy. But he still hadn’t the slightest notion of employing her, a feeling reinforced when in conclusion he asked if she had any questions of her own.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘From time to time doubts have been expressed about the way your father acquired his fortune. In what degree do you share these doubts?’

Jesus! he thought. You take no prisoners.

He said, ‘I take it you’re referring to the scandal sheets in general and the Messenger in particular? Naturally those sad wankers would like to put a spoke in my wheel, and as I haven’t offered much ammunition, they reckon that smearing my father will serve their purpose just as well. I should point out that whenever these muckrakers have dared move beyond innuendo, my pa’s lawyers have made them pay heavily.’

‘You haven’t answered my question, Mr Gidman. Do you yourself have any doubts about the methods used by your father in establishing the basis of his fortune?’

He was tempted to tell her to sod off back to kiddy-land, then he had a better idea.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you ask him yourself?’

This had seemed an amusing way of getting back at Pappy. He’d brought together this gang of inadequates, let him see for himself the kind of creature his efforts had dug up. At the same time it would be a fitting punishment for this epicene dwarf’s insolence. Questioning his early career always put Goldie in a bad mood. He would chew her up and spit her out!

He put the woman in his Audi A8 and watched her covertly as he drove north. To his disappointment she showed neither alarm nor surprise when he didn’t head for the Gresham Street offices of Gidman Enterprises, and they had proceeded in silence till a couple of miles before Waltham Abbey he turned off on to a narrow country road. A few minutes later they pulled up before a set of imposing gates, one column of which bore the name Windrush House, while on the other a CCTV camera tilted down towards them.

Gidman waved at it, the gates swung silently open and he drove sedately up a long gravelled drive winding through an avenue of plane trees towards an imposing Victorian mansion in dull red brick that not even bright sunlight could render welcoming.

‘This the family estate then?’ said Maggie. ‘How long has your father had it?’

‘Ten years. And it’s hardly an estate.’

‘Whatever. Must have been quite a change relocating here from the East End.’

‘It’s still in Essex,’ said Gidman, a touch defensively.

‘Stayed true to his roots then,’ she observed blandly.

At the front door a woman in a headscarf and slacks, on her knees to polish the already mirror-like brass letter box, looked up with a toothy smile and said, ‘Dave, my lovely, now this is nice. We wasn’t expecting you.’

Maggie assumed she was a domestic with enough service to give her familiarity rights till Gidman stooped and kissed her and said, ‘Hi, Mom. This is Ms Pinchbeck, who wants to work for me.’

‘Rather you than me, ducks,’ said the woman. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘And you, Mrs Gidman,’ said Maggie.

‘Call me Flo,’ said the woman. ‘In you go. I expect you’re dying for a cup of tea.’

Maggie’s pre-interview researches had told her that Flo had been a sixteen-year-old waitress in a London café when Goldie met her. By all accounts, it had been a marriage few on either side had approved and even fewer had forecast would prosper. Yet here she was, nearly half a century later, a bit plumper but with her old East End accent unrefined. ‘And still doing everything around the house,’ her son proclaimed proudly. ‘She gets some help with the cleaning these days, but she’s in total charge of the kitchen.’

The only live-in staff, Maggie later discovered, were Goldie’s old assistant, Milton Slingsby, and Sling’s nephew, an out-going young man called Dean who controlled the gate and other house security from a hi-tech office just off the entrance hall.

Already at this first visit Maggie was finding her expectations of baronial pretentiousness disappointed.

Goldie Gidman, in his late sixties, was as imposing a figure as his house, but a lot more welcoming. He had aged well, his lean muscular frame was supple rather than sagging, and the contrast between his vigorous white locks and almost black skin was something a lot of women might find very attractive.

To his son he said, ‘Hope you haven’t been spewing gravel over my lawn with that Panzer of yours.’

Maggie Pinchbeck he greeted with grave courtesy and sat there quietly observing her as Flo fussed about with teacups and home-made chocolate sponge.

Satisfied at last, Flo withdrew. She had done her job well, thought her son. If you came to see Goldie with expectations of being confronted by a jumped-up yardie, five minutes of exposure to Flo made you do a rethink.

He sat back to watch the fun.

‘Dave says you got some questions to ask me, Miss Pinchbeck,’ said Goldie.

She didn’t hang about.

‘How did you make your money, Mr Gidman? In the beginning, I mean.’

‘Like most entrepreneurs, started with a little, invested wisely till I’d got a lot.’

‘Were you ever a loan shark?’

‘I did spend time in the personal credit business, yes.’

‘You mean, you were a loan shark?’

‘A loan shark being someone who loans out money to poor people at exorbitant interest rates and terrorizes them if they renege on repayments?’

‘That sounds a reasonable definition.’

‘No, I wasn’t one of them. My father was what is now called a community leader. Back then it just meant his reputation for good sense and honesty led other West Indian immigrants to turn to him for help and advice.’

‘You saying you were a community leader too?’ interrupted Maggie.

Goldie Gidman smiled.

‘Not me. I was the first black yuppie, before there were white yuppies, I make no bones. But I loved my pa and when he told me members of our community found it difficult to get credit through the usual channels, I organized a neighbourhood credit club. Folk could borrow small sums on easy terms for purposes approved by the club’s advisory committee. This way they kept out of the jaws of them loan sharks you talk about.’

‘So where do all the rumours that you were one of the sharks come from?’

Another extremely attractive smile.

‘Back then, Miss Pinchbeck, half a century ago, things were very different in Britain. Black people were expected to know their place. Physically, that place was usually a slum. Professionally it was a low-paid manual job. Sexually it was with their own kind. You saw a black man who complained about living accommodation, a black man who understood how money could be made to work, a black man who married a white girl, what you saw was an uppity nigger who needed to be put back in his place. He makes money, it must be ’cos he’s a crook. He marries out of his race, that’s because like all black men he has this insatiable lust to bang a white woman. As for the white woman in question, everybody knows that she has to be a whore who’s turned on by the thought of his eighteen-inch bone. I hope I don’t shock you, Miss Pinchbeck.’

‘No, Mr Gidman, you don’t shock me. So all the rumours about your early career are malicious? But weren’t you investigated by the police?’

‘All the time! Malice don’t dry up. Like floodwater, it can’t find one way of getting under your defences, it looks for another. If it can’t get under, it just mounts up, looking either to come in at you over the top or to break through by sheer pressure alone.’

‘You sound bitter, Mr Gidman.’

‘Not for myself. I’ve fought against it for too long. I’ve got its measure. In fact, I thought I’d won the battle a few years ago. But then my son comes of age and begins to make his mark in the world and suddenly the floodwaters see what looks like a breach. The rumours start again. But I’m not the target now. I’m out of reach. They tried everything they know to blacken my name, but you check the records, Miss Pinchbeck. I have no convictions for anything. Not surprising, as I never got charged with anything. My business accounts have been picked over by people more picky than hens in a coop at feeding time, and none of them ever found a single decimal point out of place.’

‘So why are the rumours so persistent?’

‘Like I say, because of David here. Me they can’t touch because they need proof to touch me. But they don’t need no proof to harm David. Let the rumours grow strong enough and they will do the trick. Look at him, people will say, throwing his money around to buy advantages for himself. And we all know where that dirty money came from. You hear what I’m saying, Miss Pinchbeck?’

‘Yes, I do, Mr Gidman. But I’m wondering why you’re bothering to say it to me.’

Now at last she’d asked a question Dave the Third was interested in. He couldn’t believe that Pappy was letting this chit of a girl get away with her impudence. His father’s answer was even harder to believe.

‘I’ll tell you why. Because my boy needs taking care of. He don’t like me saying that, but he can pull faces all he wants, it’s the truth. I’ve been out there in that world and I know what it’s like. He’ll find out eventually, but I’d like him to find out without too much pain. I haven’t worked hard all these years and put up with all the crap I’ve put up with to sit back and see my son suffer the same. He needs someone like you, Miss Pinchbeck. That’s why I’m talking to you.’

‘I think you are mistaking me for someone else; I’m not a bodyguard!’

‘Bodyguards I can buy ten a penny. You’re the kind of guard he needs the kind of places he goes, the kind of people he meets. I know, I’ve had you checked out. No need to look offended. I bet you’ve spent a bit of time checking me out too–am I right?’

‘I did do a bit of checking, yes.’

‘And you found nothing bad, else you wouldn’t be here. And I found plenty that was good, else you wouldn’t be here either!’

He glanced down at a sheet of paper on the arm of his chair.

Maggie said, ‘That my life story you’ve got there, Mr Gidman?’

‘Not all of it,’ he answered, unperturbed. ‘Just from the age of eighteen. You were doing one of them gap years, working with VSO in Africa, when you got news that your mammy and daddy had been killed in a car accident, right?’

She went very still.

He leaned forward and looked into her eyes.

‘You miss them, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Mr Gidman,’ she said quietly. ‘I miss my parents very much.’

‘I can see that, and I’m truly sorry for your loss. Theirs too, not getting the chance to see what a great job they’d done bringing you up. But what I want to ask is, why, after you done your college course, did you go for an office job at ChildSave rather than heading back out to Africa or somewhere to work on the ground?’

Good question, thought Dave, recalling his own uncharitable thoughts about her suitability for a career of digging latrines for fuzzy-wuzzies.

‘I don’t see that it’s relevant, Mr Gidman,’ she replied, ‘but I looked at my abilities, such as they were, and decided I could do more good by looking after ChildSave’s profile at home than being a general dogsbody in a Third World village.’

‘Good answer, Miss Pinchbeck,’ said Gidman. ‘And by all accounts, you done so well at ChildSave, I bet that soon as they got a notion you were getting restless, they started throwing money at you to try and keep you. Which brings me to my next question. You such a bright girl, knowing your own abilities like you do, why would you want to leave ChildSave and work for my boy? Whatever else he is, he ain’t no charity!’

The pair of them, the dignified old man and the slight, unprepossessing young woman, exchanged a smile.

‘No, he’s not,’ said Maggie. ‘But from what I read, your son could end up having more power to do good than all the UK charities put together, if he’s steered right. And I’d like to be around to help with the steering. So, pure self-interest, Mr Gidman.’

‘Hey, you two, I am still here,’ protested Dave the Third, feeling excluded.

‘We know that, boy,’ said his father. ‘And if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll be about to offer this young lady the job. If she doesn’t like the salary, up it and I’ll pay the difference, OK?’

‘I’m not worried about the money, Mr Gidman,’ said Maggie.

‘Maybe you’re not, but how you value yourself is one thing, how other folk value you is something else. If I thought you could be bought, I wouldn’t waste a penny on you. So why don’t you go and have a think while I talk to my boy? You got some deciding to do. Either you believe all them rumours, in which case I’m sorry. Or you think they’re crap and you’d like the job. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you. You’ll find Flo in the kitchen. With luck she’ll be doing apple turnovers. Try one. You won’t have tasted better. So remember this before you decide. Work for my son, and you’ll never be further than a phone call from them turnovers!’

Maggie left the room, looking slightly shell-shocked.

Dave, always keen to learn, said, ‘Why’d you tell her to see Mom before we left?’

“Cos after ten minutes talking to your mother, sometimes I find myself believing I can’t be all that bad! You hire her, boy. She’s what you need. Bright as a button and she’ll work for you ‘cos she believes in you.’

And so it had proved. And now she was indispensable.

But like the song says, sometimes the honesty’s too much. Having someone to keep you straight’s fine. But straight can get boring; occasionally a man needs to stray.

Once, early on in her employment, he’d asked her to factor a diversion into a Continental trip so that he could contrive an assignation with the wife of a British Embassy official. She had simply refused, leaving it up to him to react as he would.

If she’d preached about the dangers of such activities, he’d have carried on regardless. But she said nothing. After that he didn’t try to involve her in his private life.

He’d come to see what his father had spotted at once. Maggie Pinchbeck had all the qualifications. Super efficient, very bright, a smoother of paths, a sniffer of perils, an organizer sans pareil, she knew all the tricks common to PR and politics–the spinning, the wheeling and dealing, the compromising, the short-cutting. But she was only willing to play those ambiguous games if and when she believed the end was just. That was the quality that Goldie had spotted. You couldn’t buy that.

But sometimes he still found himself fantasizing about those two-metre models…

As now, when that dry cough, which others probably never noticed but which rang out to him like the Lutine Bell, warned him he’d spent long enough in prayer. Any longer and people would be wondering what he had to pray about.

He straightened up. As if this were a signal, the organ boomed, and the congregation rose as the vicar and the choir made their way up the aisle singing the processional hymn, ‘Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices’.

David Gidman the Third joined in lustily, aware that he had much to be thankful for. Already blessed through birth with countless gifts of love, wealth and opportunity, he could not doubt that it was his destiny to enjoy many more wondrous things.

Truly his future shone so bright it took the eye of an eagle to look into it.

Bring it on!

10.55–11.20

As soon as Andy Dalziel entered his living room, he knew something was wrong.

He stood in the doorway and tried to isolate it. But his mind, though building up to its old speeds, was not quite there yet. He moved from intuition to examination. By the time he’d checked everything off and found nothing missing, nothing moved, nothing open that had been shut, or shut that had been open, no muddy footprints on the carpet, no greasy fingerprints on the door handle, he had to admit that everything was exactly as he’d left it, which meant that his sense of something not right was a load of bollocks, just another example of the continuing fragility of his mental processes.

‘Oh well, Rome weren’t rebuilt in a fortnight,’ he reassured himself, and sat down next to the answer machine with the intention of listening to Mick Purdy’s message.

But as his finger hovered over the playback button, it came to him.

Yes, everything was exactly as he’d left it, but it shouldn’t have been!

He’d heard the start of Purdy’s message as he made for the front door. When Purdy rang off, the presence of a new message on the machine should have been registered by a red light around the play button.

There was no light, meaning someone had played the message.

Or maybe the red bulb had simply failed.

He pressed the button and found himself listening not to Purdy but to a message Cap had left six days ago, reminding him to eat a casserole she’d put in his fridge.

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