Bones and Silence

Now this mention of a gun did really upset me. I knew Gail had guns, of course, but I thought they were safely locked up at the Mid-Yorks Gun Club where she was a member. When Waterson saw my reaction, he began to look really worried again. That was an odd thing. We should have been at each other’s throats, I suppose. Instead we were, temporarily at least, united by our concern for Gail.

We went up together. Perhaps this was a mistake, for when Gail saw us, she began laughing and she gabbled something about all the useless men in her life sticking together, and the only good one she’d ever known being dead. She was drunk and naked, sitting on the bed. She had this revolver in her hands. I asked her to give it to me. She laughed again and held it with the muzzle pressed against her chin. I told her not to be silly. It wasn’t the wisest thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything else. And she just laughed higher and higher and I thought I saw her finger tightening on the trigger. And that’s when I jumped forward to grab at the gun.

What happened then I can’t say precisely, except that the gun went off and then I was standing there holding it, and Gail was lying with her head blown to pieces across the bed, and some time after, I don’t know how long, Mr Dalziel came into the room.

This dreadful accident has devastated my life. I loved my wife. I am sure that it was her dreadful feelings of guilt and unhappiness after her father’s death that drove her to seek solace in infidelity. And I know that despite everything, we could have worked things out.

Signed: Philip Swain.

‘Well,’ said Dalziel. ‘What do you reckon to that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Pascoe slowly. ‘It’s … odd.’

‘Of course it’s bloody odd. Fairy tales usually are! What he still hasn’t twigged is I saw him with the gun in his hand before I heard the shot. Once we get Mr Gregory Waterson’s version, it’ll be two to one, and then I’ll make the bugger squirm!’

This simple scenario did little to assuage Pascoe’s sense of oddness. But he didn’t want to seem to be muddying Dalziel’s triumph so he held his peace and tried for a congratulatory smile. It lacked conviction, however, for Dalziel said, ‘You’ve not changed, have you, lad? In fact, all them weeks lying in bed playing with yourself have likely set you back. What you need is some good solid meat to get your stomach settled. I’ve got just the thing. Football hooligans.’

He regarded Pascoe complacently and received in return a look of surprise. The big clubs in West and South Yorkshire had their share of maniac supporters, but City, Mid-Yorkshire’s only league side, rattling around the lower divisions for years, rarely attracted serious home-grown trouble.

‘I’ve not read about any bother,’ said Pascoe. ‘And anyway crowd control’s uniformed’s business.’

‘Murder isn’t,’ said Dalziel grimly. ‘Saturday before last, young lad vanished travelling back to Peterborough from a visit to his girlfriend in London. They found him next morning with a broken neck at the bottom of an embankment near Huntingdon.’

‘Sad, but what’s it to do with us?’

‘Hold your horses. City were playing in North London that day and it seems there were a lot of complaints about bevvied-up City supporters on the train the dead lad would have caught from King’s Cross.’

‘But you said he’d been visiting his girl, not attending a match. Why should he get picked on?’

‘Colour of his eyes’d be provocation enough for some of these morons,’ declared Dalziel. ‘But it was more likely the colour of his scarf. Royal blue, which some bright spark in Cambridgeshire spotted was the colour of City’s opponents that afternoon. Could be nowt, but there’s been one or two hints lately that our local loonies are keen to get organized like the big boys, so this could be a good excuse to bang a few heads together before they get properly started, right?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Pascoe reluctantly. It didn’t sound a very attractive assignment. He glanced at Wield in search of sympathy, but Dalziel took it as an attempt to pass the buck.

‘No use trying to delegate, lad. The sergeant here’s going to be busy. How’s your bedside manner, Wieldy? Christ, the sight of you coming through the door would get me back on my feet pretty damn quick! Why don’t you get yourself off down to the Infirmary and take this shrinking violet Waterson’s statement so that I can spoil Mr lying bastard Swain’s lunch? No, better still, I’ll leave it till after lunch and give him indigestion. No reason why we should miss opening time at the Black Bull, is there? Not when it’s celebration drinks all round!’

‘You mean you’re in the chair because of this collar?’ asked Pascoe, trying not to sound surprised.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Dalziel, who was not notorious for treating his staff. ‘I’ll let Desperate Dan supply the booze for that. No, it’s you who’ll be in the chair. Peter, unless you crap on the Chief’s carpet when he calls you in.’

Wield caught on before Pascoe and shook his hand, grinning broadly and saying, ‘Well done, sir!’ Dalziel followed suit.

‘One thing but,’ he said. ‘When you give Ellie the glad tidings, point out it’ll be a couple of years before it makes any difference to your pension. Now sod off and start earning your Chief Inspector’s pay!’

CHAPTER TWO

Detective-Sergeant Wield parked his car in the visitors’ car park and set off up the long pathway to the Infirmary. The oldest of the city’s hospitals, it had been built in the days when visitors were regarded as a nuisance even greater than patients and had to prove their fitness by walking a couple of furlongs before they reached the entrance. As recompense, the old red brick glowed in the February sun and a goldheart ivy embraced it as lovingly as any stately home. Also the path ran between flowerbeds white with snowdrops. Spotting a broken stalk, Wield stopped and picked the tiny flower and carefully inserted it in his button-hole.

What a saucy fellow you’re becoming! he mocked himself. You’ll be advertising for friends in the Police Gazette next.

His lips pursed in an almost inaudible whistling as he strode along but inside he was smiling broadly and singing Bunthorne’s song from Patience: ‘… as you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediaeval hand …’

His merry mood lasted along the first straight mile of corridor but by the time he reached his destined ward, the sights, sounds and smells of the place had silenced his inner carolling.

There was no one at the sister’s desk and he went into the open ward.

‘Mr Waterson? First door on your left,’ said a weary nurse who looked as if she should be occupying the bed she was making.

Wield pushed open the door indicated and went in.

It occurred to him instantly that Waterson must have private medical insurance. A nurse in a ward sister’s uniform was leaning over him. Their mouths were locked together and his hands were inside her starched blouse, roaming freely. No way did you get this on the National Health.

Wield coughed. The nurse reacted conventionally, doing the full guilty thing surprised bit, jumping backwards while her fingers scrabbled at her blouse buttons and blood flushed her pale and rather beautiful face like peach sauce over vanilla ice. The man, however, grinned amiably and said, ‘Good morning, Doctor.’

‘It is Mr Waterson, isn’t it?’ said Wield doubtfully.

‘That’s right.’

Wield produced his warrant card.

‘Good lord. It’s the fuzz, dear. I expect you’ve come for a statement? It’s all ready. They wake you at sparrow fart in these places, you know, so I’ve had hours to compose.’

He thrust a single sheet of foolscap bearing the Local Health Authority’s letter-head into Wield’s hand.

The woman meanwhile had reassembled herself into the pattern of a brisk efficient ward sister.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’ll look in later.’

‘Nice, isn’t she?’ said Waterson complacently as the nurse left.

Wield examined the man neutrally. He was approaching thirty, perhaps had even passed it. Nature had tossed youthful good looks into his cradle, and nurture in the form of an artistic hairdresser, an aesthetic dentist and possibly an expensive dermatologist, had made sure the gift wasn’t wasted.

‘The sister is an old friend?’ he ventured. Waterson smiled. There was charm here too.

‘Wash your mind out, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘That was no sister, that was my wife!’

Deciding this was a conundrum best postponed, Wield looked at the statement. It consisted of a single very long paragraph written in a minute but beautiful hand. It wasn’t easy to read but one thing was very quickly clear. It was a lot closer to Swain’s version of events than to Dalziel’s!

Wield began to read it through a second time.

Gail Swain and I became lovers about a month ago. It was difficult to see as much of each other as we would have liked, so when Gail came up with a plan for us to have a longer period together I was delighted. She was going back to America on a visit to see her mother and she rearranged things so that she wouldn’t need to get there till much later than she’d told her husband. I wanted to fix up a hotel somewhere but she said no, she would come to me as soon as she could and she preferred to stay with me in town. I think the idea of stopping so close to her home excited her in some way. She turned up at my house in Hambleton Road last Thursday. I know she had allegedly left for America on the Sunday but what she had been doing in the meantime she never said. She was in a rather strange mood when she arrived and though things went well enough at first, by the time the weekend was over I was seriously worried. She never left the house but stayed inside all the time, drinking heavily, watching television, playing records, and talking wildly. Sexually she made increasingly bizarre demands upon me, not I felt for her own physical satisfaction so much as my humiliation. When I suggested she ought to be thinking about leaving, she became abusive and said things like, they would need to carry her out of there for all the neighbours to see. Last night she was the worst I had seen her. When I tried to reason with her, she produced this gun and said something about this being the only thing that spoke any sense. I know nothing about guns so I had no idea if it was real or loaded or anything. She aimed it at me and said it would be nice to have some company when she went. Just then the doorbell went and when I went downstairs to answer it, I found it was Philip Swain, her husband. I was naturally taken aback but also in a strange way I was quite relieved to have someone else to share the responsibility with. It just all came spilling out how worried I was and it must have got across as genuine, for instead of throwing a jealous fit, he came upstairs to see for himself. As soon as she saw us together, she became quite hysterical. She was laughing madly and screaming abuse and waving the gun, first at us, then at herself. I went towards her to pacify her and she put the gun under her chin and said if I came any closer she would kill herself. I was still uncertain whether the gun was real or not but I could see that she was in such a state she was likely to press the trigger unawares so I made a dive at her. Next thing the gun went off and there was blood and flesh and bone everywhere. I’m afraid I just collapsed and after that everything was a blur until I awoke this morning and found myself in the Infirmary. I can see now that Gail was a highly disturbed woman and was always capable of doing damage to herself or others. But I blame myself entirely for what happened last night. If I had acted differently and called for professional help instead of trying to disarm her myself, perhaps none of this would have happened.

Signed: Gregory Waterson.

After his second reading, Wield stood in silence for a while.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Waterson. ‘Not the right format? Get it typed up any which way you like, Sergeant, and I’ll sign it.’

Gathering his wits, Wield said, ‘No, sir, it’s fine. Will you excuse me?’

He went out. A ward sister had appeared at the desk, a stout woman with a smile of great sweetness which switched on as he approached and identified himself.

‘I met Mrs Waterson a moment ago,’ he said. ‘Is she not on this ward?’

‘No. Women’s surgery. Did you want her?’

‘No. At least not now. I’d like a telephone, if I could.’

‘In my office, just down there.’

‘Thanks. Any idea when Mr Waterson will be discharged?’

‘You’ll need to ask Dr Marwood. Shall I get him? He’s just down the ward.’

‘Yes, please.’

He went into the tiny office and dialled. He identified himself to the switchboard operator and asked to be put through to Dalziel. A moment later Pascoe answered the phone.

‘That you, Wieldy? Look, the Super’s in with the Chief. Anything I can do to help?’

Quickly Wield filled him in.

‘Oh dear,’ said Pascoe. ‘No wonder you sounded relieved to get me.’

‘It’s not quite the same story as Swain’s,’ said Wield, in search of a silver lining.

‘No. But it’s a bloody sight closer to it than Fat Andy’s version,’ said Pascoe.

‘You don’t think he could have got it wrong?’

‘Are you going to tell him that?’

‘I’m only a sergeant. Chief Inspectors get the danger money,’ said Wield. ‘Went all right, did it, your big moment? Corks popping and such?’

‘I got a cup of instant coffee. Is Waterson fit enough to come down here for a bit of close questioning?’

‘He looks in rude health to me but I’m just going to check with the doctor.’

As Wield replaced the receiver, the door opened and a black man in a white coat came in. He was in his late twenties, with a hairline further back and a waistline further forward than they ought to be.

‘Marwood,’ he said. ‘You the one wanting to know if Waterson’s fit to go? The answer’s yes. Sooner the better.’

This sounded like something more than a medical opinion.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Wield. ‘Were you on when he was admitted?’

‘No, but I’ve seen the notes. Shock; sedation. Well, the sedation’s worn off. Never lasts long with his type. Same with shock, I’d say.’

‘His type?’

‘Volatile,’ said the doctor. ‘At least that’s one way of putting it.’

Wield said, ‘Do you know Mr Waterson, sir? I mean, not just as a patient?’

‘We’ve met. His wife works here.’

‘And it was through her …?’

‘Staff parties, that sort of thing. He turned up a couple of times.’

‘And how did he strike you?’ asked Wield.

‘Did I take to him, you mean? No way! He struck me as an opinionated little shit, and crypto-racist with it. I wasn’t surprised when she left him.’

‘Left him?’

‘You didn’t know?’ Marwood laughed. ‘If I try to operate without knowing my patient’s a haemophiliac, I get struck off. But you guys just muddle through and no one gives a damn! What’s he done anyway?’

‘Just helping us, sir,’ said Wield, wondering how Marwood would have reacted to the scene he had interrupted minutes earlier. ‘How long have they been separated?’

‘Not long. She moved into a room in our nurses’ annexe. Excuse me.’

A bleeper had started up in his pocket. He switched it off and picked up the phone.

‘Right,’ he said after a moment. Replacing the receiver, he said, ‘I’ve got to go. Listen, medically, Waterson’s fit to go. But personally and off the record, I’d say the guy should be put out to pasture at the funny farm.’

He left. Wield pondered what he had heard for a while. Clearly Marwood felt about Waterson as Dalziel felt about Swain. Such strong antipathies bred bias and clouded the judgement. Wield knew all about bias, hoped he would speak out against it if necessary. But for the moment all that he was required to do was deliver Waterson safe into Dalziel’s eager hands.

He went back to the small side ward.

It was empty.

Suddenly his heart felt in need of intensive care. He went out to the nurse’s station. The plump sister gave him her smile.

‘Where’s Mr Waterson, sister?’ he asked.

‘Is he not in his bed?’

‘No.’

‘He might be in the lavvy. Or perhaps he’s gone to have a shower.’

‘You didn’t see him? Have you been here all the time, since we talked, I mean?’

He must have sounded accusatory.

‘Of course I haven’t. I went off to fetch Dr Marwood to see you, didn’t I?’ she retorted.

‘Where’s the lavatory? And the shower?’

The lavatory was the nearer. It was empty. But in the shower Wield found a pair of pyjamas draped over a cubicle.

Either Waterson was wandering around naked, or …

He returned to the sister.

‘What would happen to his clothes when he was admitted?’

‘They’d be folded and put in his bedside locker,’ she said.

The locker was empty.

‘Shit,’ said Wield. Only a few months earlier during the case on which Pascoe had hurt his leg, a suspect had made his escape from a hospital bed and Dalziel had rated the officer responsible a couple of points lower than PC Hector. But no reasonable person could have anticipated that a mere witness who’d volunteered a statement would do a bunk!

Then Dalziel’s features flashed upon Wield’s inward eye and reason slept.

‘Oh shit,’ he said again. Something made him glance down at his lapel. The tiny snowdrop had already wilted and died. He took it out and crushed it in his hand. Then with wandering steps and slow he made his way back to the telephone.

CHAPTER THREE

The Reverend Eustace Horncastle was a precise man. It was through exactitude rather than excellence that he had risen to the minor eminence of minor canon, so when he said to his wife, ‘The woman is pagan,’ she knew the word was not lightly chosen.

Nevertheless she dared a show of opposition.

‘Surely she is merely exuberant, dramatic, full of life,’ she said with the wistful envy of one who knew that whatever she herself had once been full of had seeped away years since.

‘Pagan,’ repeated the Canon with an emphasis which in a lesser man might almost have been relish.

Looking at the object of their discussion who was striding vigorously across the Market Square ahead of them, Dorothy Horncastle could not muster a second wave of disagreement. Eileen Chung’s silver lurex snood was a nod in the direction of religiosity, and there was perhaps something cope-like in the purple striped poncho draped round her shoulders. But devil-detection begins at the feet, and those zodiac-printed moccasins with leather thongs biting into golden calves each separately sufficient to seduce a Chosen People, were a dead giveaway. Here was essence of pagan. If you could have bottled it, the Canon’s wife might have bought some.

The clerical couple were almost at a canter to keep up with those endless legs, so when Chung stopped suddenly there was a small collision.

‘Whoa, Canon,’ said Chung amiably.

‘A canon indeed, but little woe,’ said Horncastle to his wife’s amazement. He rarely aimed at wit and when he did was more likely to try a Ciceronian trope than plunge into a Shakespearean pun. A suspicion formed in Dorothy’s mind, to be brushed away like a naughty thought at Communion, that her husband might have invited her presence this morning not simply to represent the views of the laity (his phrase), but because he felt the need of a chaperone!

There had been one full meeting of the Mysteries committee which had been as long as an uncut Hamlet and not nearly as jolly. The combined verbosity of a city councillor, a union leader, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, a mediaeval historian, a journalist and Canon Horncastle, had defeated even Chung’s directorial expertise and she had resolved thereafter to pick them off singly as she had picked them on singly in the first place. The diocese contained many worldlier, merrier clerics who would have given half their tithes to be religious advisers on such a project, but Chung’s homework had told her Horncastle was the man. Heir apparent to the senescent Dean, he was the key figure in the Cathedral Chapter on matters relating to sacred sites and buildings, and the Bishop was said to respect his views highly, which her interpreter assured her was Anglican for being shit-scared of him.

‘I thought this might be a good site for one of the pageants,’ said Chung. ‘The sun will be coming round behind the Corn Market at that time of day and it’ll light up the wagon like a spot.’

‘If the weather is clement,’ said the Canon.

‘I’ll rely on your good offices for that,’ laughed Chung.

Dorothy Horncastle waited for her husband’s expected rebuke at this meteorological blasphemy but it didn’t come. Instead something horribly like a simper touched his narrow lips. The unbelievable notion rose again that perhaps he really did need protection! Not sexually, for the frost in those loins was surely proof against the most torrid touch, but there were other temptations in this pagan’s armoury. She’d been mildly puzzled when at breakfast this morning Eustace had started reminiscing about his seminary triumph in the chorus line of Samson Agonistes. If Lucifer could fall, why not a minor canon?

It was time for a dutiful wife to come to the rescue.

She said, ‘Won’t the market stallholders object to their customers being turned into an audience?’

Horncastle turned his cold gaze upon her, no simper now deflecting the straight line of those lips.

‘Monday is not a market day in normal circumstances, I think you’ll find. When it happens also to be a Bank Holiday, it seems more than ever unlikely that there should be any commercial activity, wouldn’t you say, my dear?’

The heavy sarcasm, though hardly novel, still had power to bruise. Chung, sensitive to drama, stepped in swiftly.

‘Hasn’t he told you that we finalized our timetable at the meeting, Mrs Horncastle? That’s a man for you, thinks we’re all psychic! Well, we’re going for the first week in June, which has the feast of Corpus Christi in it, that’s the traditional time when these Mysteries were performed, and also this year it happens to be the week of the Spring Bank Holiday which means we can use the holiday Monday for our grand opening procession without getting snarled up with all the usual commercial traffic. So, this way everyone’s happy, Church, holiday-makers, shop-keepers, historians and traffic cops!’

‘It must be gratifying to make so many people happy,’ said Dorothy Horncastle, smiling wanly.

She’s really rather pretty, thought Chung. Ten minutes with the Leichner box, an auburn wig to match those eyes, plus a rich red gown with a fret of mourning black lace at the throat, and she’d make a perfectly presentable Olivia. Instead, unmade-up, her fine features skeletally honed by the biting wind, her hair invisible under a shapeless wool hat and her body unguessable under a shapeless tweed coat, she looked like a Village Thespians’ shot at Mother Courage.

They moved on, entering the narrow skein of mediaeval streets which curled around the cathedral. Chung modified her pace so that she came between the Horncastles and modified her tone also, talking earnestly of her desire to recapture those days when the spiritual and temporal were inextricably intertwined and the Church was the one true centre of civic life. At the same time her eyes were taking in every detail of the winding cobbled ways flanked by close-crowded shops and houses whose timbered gables often threatened to meet overhead. And through her mind’s eye, heavily screened so that not the slightest verbal hint should slip out to give the Canon pause, ran pictures brimming with colour and excitement of the great pageant wagons rumbling over the cobbles, heralded by music and dancers and trailing a long wash of jugglers, tumblers, fire-eaters, fools, flagellants, giants, dwarves, dancing bears, merry monks, cut-price pardoners, knights on horseback, Saracens in chains, nubile Nubians … At about this point in his solo session, her university mediaevalist had demurred but she had silenced him with a cry of, ‘Shit, man! This show’s for your person-in-the-street. Ask yourself, do they want it authentic, or do they want it fun?’ And then had won his cooperation by squeezing him well above the knee and laughing, ‘OK. So maybe we’ll hold the Nubians. That make you happy?’ And, as she squeezed again, he could not but agree that it did.