She said, ‘Well, there was one thing that did occur to me about what happened yesterday…’
‘Spit it out, lass, afore I die of thirst.’
‘What if you, that is we, are all barking up the wrong tree? What if it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with the DCI and the people he’s put away or is trying to put away? What if in fact it’s all to do with Ellie, Mrs Pascoe, herself?’
Silence fell and the three men looked at each other with a wild surmise, though Novello feared it had more to do with her sanity than her insight.
Then the phone behind the bar rang and Jack Mahoney, the landlord, after listening a moment, called, ‘Are you buggers here?’
Dalziel said, ‘How many times do you need telling to put your mitt over the mouthpiece first, you thick sod? Ivor.’
For once Novello felt nothing but relief at being appointed gofer.
She went to the phone, identified herself, and listened.
Then she looked towards the waiting men.
‘Well?’ said Dalziel. ‘Have I won the lottery, or wha’?’
But it was to Pascoe that Novello addressed herself, trying and failing to sound neutrally official.
‘Sir,’ she said. ‘It’s Seymour. It’s lousy reception, but there’s been more trouble at your house. I’m sorry, but I think he said he’s following an ambulance to the hospital.’
vi
citizen’s arrest
Ellie Pascoe hadn’t realized just how shaken up she still was until the doorbell startled her so much she knocked a fortunately almost empty cup of coffee over her computer.
Get back to normal, she’d told herself, and then recalled that this was also what she’d told herself after Rosie’s illness and had soon come to an understanding that normal wasn’t just a sequence of repeated activities, but a condition like virginity which could never be regained.
But she’d followed the pattern of her normal day, retreating (a nice religious word for what sometimes felt like a nice religious activity) to the boxroom which she refused to call a study. Real writers had studies and you weren’t a real writer till you got something published. Well, she had hopes. The rejection of her third attempt at a novel might have driven her to despair had it not come at the time of Rosie’s illness when despair wasn’t a place she had any desire to visit, and certainly not for the sake of anything as unimportant as a sodding book!
As Rosie started to recover, Ellie had started to write again, but just as her daughter seemed in her play to have turned away from the games of imagination which had once been her favourite territory, so the mother now found herself toying with characters and situations from long ago rather than the snapshot here-and-now realism she’d hitherto thought of as her forte.
She’d pursued this new line without questioning, even after she realized that it wasn’t likely to lead to anything she could submit for publication. But it was… fun? Yes, it was certainly that. But, like the fun of children, like child’s play, it was learning also. Here was something important to her at that time in those circumstances, but also in other times and future circumstance maybe. During her previous existence as a lecturer, a colleague who ran a Creative Writing course had moaned to her that he spent far too much time dealing with the hang-ups of students who clearly regarded narrative fiction as a branch of therapy rather than a branch of art. Now she knew what he meant. Therapy you kept to yourself. Art took you, trembling, in front of the footlights.
She brought this perspective to bear on her rejected third novel. Suddenly she found herself asking paragraph by paragraph the two essential questions. Is this really so important to me I’ve got to say it? Is this potentially so interesting to readers, they’ll have to read it?
And for a whole week without saying anything to Peter or anyone else, she had launched a savage attack upon her holy script, like Moses going at the tablets with a sledgehammer. The result had been… she had no idea what the result had been, except that before, the book had read clever and now it felt like it read true. A deep distress has humanized my soul…? Well, maybe. Three days ago she’d sent it off to the publisher who’d rejected its previous manifestation. Her accompanying note said, Last time you said it showed promise but… So tell me what it shows now. Only this time I’d appreciate it if you told me quick!
And then she’d returned to the therapy of her tale of old, parodic, far-off things and battles long ago. Self-indulgence is the novelist’s greatest sin, but here she could indulge herself to her heart’s, and her head’s, content. Here she could mock, mimic, talk dirty, wax sentimental, be anarchic, anachronistic, anything she wanted. Here she had power without responsibility, for she was writing solely for herself. No one else was going to read this. She ruled alone in this world, its normalities were whatever she made them. Or, to put it rather less grandiloquently, this was her comfort blanket she could pick up and chew whenever her fragile sensibilities felt the need. So that’s what she called it in her computer. Comfort Blanket. It was still unfinished but so what? The real pleasure was being able to go back over it again and again, changing things, trying new things out.
Nice if life were like that, she thought as she switched on her laptop. Call it up, click on Edit, and cut, copy, find, replace, delete…
Her words suddenly came from nowhere to fill the screen. She smiled. To her essentially non-technological mind, it was still magic.
Now where had she got up to in her revision? Oh yes. There it was.
Chapter 2
As they came down from the headland, the storm died, not a belly-wound death, but quick as an arrow through the heart. One moment the wind off the sea threatened to whirl them along with the racing tatters of low grey cloud, the next the air was still and balmy and the full moon, riding in a star-studded sky, lit the camp site below like a thousand lanterns.
Hadn’t she used that simile before? So what? Homer used his stock images over and over. Get obsessed with novelty and you ended up with a wardrobe full of lovely clothes you could never wear again.
Here, those so tired that they’d slept despite the howling wind were now aroused by the sudden silence. Men began to busy themselves drying off the weapons and armour which had got soaked in the storm, while the women started building up the tiny fires which were all they’d dared kindle in face of the gale. But all activity stopped as they became aware of the approaching procession.
The Greek came first, his hands bound behind his back and the guard commander’s sword resting lightly against his neck. For all that, he managed to look like a returning traveller greeting old friends, head held high, teeth showing bright through the tangle of beard as he smiled this way and that, nose wrinkling appreciatively at the smell of cooking already arising from one or two fires.
But his eyes were never still, drinking in every detail of the camp.
Bringing up the rear was the wounded guard. He gripped his bleeding left wrist tightly with his right hand and his face showed white as moonlight beneath the weather-beaten skin.
‘What’s up, mate?’ called someone.
‘Bloody Greek spy. Nearly took my fucking hand off. Bastard!’
‘That right? Don’t worry, we’ll chop more than his hand off before we’re finished.’
The guard commander said mildly, ‘Glad to see you’re so keen for action, soldier. You can take over up the headland. Go