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.
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