up behind.
Hector had reacted as if caught committing an indecent act, jumping up so fast he dropped his pencil stub, all the while regarding Pascoe as if he carried a flaming sword. At the same time, he was ripping the page out of his notebook, but not before Pascoe glimpsed what looked like a sketch of the two birds.
‘Can I have a look?’ Pascoe had asked.
With great reluctance Hector had handed the sheet over.
Smoothed out, it revealed what proved to be a lively and accurate depiction of the feeding sparrows.
‘Please, sir, you won’t tell anyone, please,’ said Hector tremulously.
‘This is good,’ said Pascoe, returning the sketch. ‘I didn’t know you could draw, Hec.’
‘But you won’t tell anyone,’ repeated the constable anxiously.
It now struck Pascoe that it wasn’t being reported for misuse of his official notebook that bothered Hector so much as the idea of his colleagues knowing that he drew pictures. Everyone needs a secret, he thought. Most of us have too many. But if you’ve only got the one, how precious must that be.
‘Of course I won’t,’ he said. ‘Carry on, Constable!’
And he’d kept his word, not even sharing Hector’s secret with Ellie.
So he certainly wasn’t going to be specific with Glenister, who said doubtfully, ‘If you say so, Peter. Now, is there anything else we can bring you up to speed on?’
‘Maybe…’
He went to the computer table and tapped the shoulder of the operator who looked to have least happening on his screen.
‘Could you bring me up the Mill Street SOCO file?’ he said.
The man glanced up at him, blank faced. Blank was the right word here. He had a regularity of feature which made you think android. His mirror and photographic images were probably indistinguishable. In his thirties, Pascoe guessed, but metro-thirties rather than up-north-thirties. The jacket draped over the back of the chair and his open-necked shirt said bet-you-can’t-afford-me loud and clear. His blond hair had more gel in it than Dalziel would have let pass without some crack about an oil change. And he had eyes the colour of slate and just as hard.
The eyes held Pascoe’s for a moment then the man turned to look at Glenister.
Pascoe also turned to face her, his head cocked to one side, his lips pursed in exasperation, his eyebrows raised interrogatively.
She said, ‘Listen in, laddies. This is DCI Pascoe. What he asks for, you give him. No need to come running to me like I’m your mam and you need your nose wiped. OK?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the other two responded with a crispness born, Pascoe guessed, of past refusals by their boss to hear anything that wasn’t loud and clear, but the blond’s only response was to bring up the file. He then rose and offered Pascoe his chair.
Glenister said, ‘Peter, meet Dave Freeman. He has been known to speak.’
A smile touched Freeman’s lips without getting a grip and he said, ‘Hi.’
‘And hi to you too,’ said Pascoe, sitting down.
Though not in the same super-league as Edgar Wield, who it was rumoured could hack into Downing Street to check out what anti-wrinkle cream the PM used, Pascoe regarded himself as premier division, IT-speaking. As he gingerly accessed the file and realized just how extensive and comprehensive it was, the sense of an audience made him a touch nervous and he found himself bogged down in photos, both still and moving, of the rubble. He lingered here a while as if this were where he wanted to be before moving on to his real goal, a lengthy list of every recognizable item recovered from the ruins.
After scrolling through it twice, he asked, ‘Where’s the gun?’
‘Sorry?’ said Freeman at his shoulder.
Pascoe got in a bit of payback, blanking him for a second before swivelling round in search of Glenister who he discovered had moved across to the wall-board.
‘Where’s the gun?’ he said. ‘Hector reported that one of the men he saw had a gun. There’s no gun mentioned here.’
‘Peter,’ said the woman, ‘despite your admirable loyalty to Constable Hector, you’ve admitted yourself that, when it comes to detail, he’s not the most reliable of witnesses. In fact, wasn’t it Hector’s involvement that made Mr Dalziel so sure there was no man with a gun on the premises that he took the reckless action he did?’
Reckless. Shit on Dalziel, shit on Hector, in fact, shit on Mid-Yorkshire policework generally. He thought he was getting the message.
He stood up and said, ‘Thanks, Dave,’ to Freeman.
‘Any time, Pete.’
Pete. Was this kid his own rank? Or just a cheeky sergeant?
Neither, the answer came to him. The C in CAT stood for combined. Freeman was a spook. Did Trimble know that Glenister had imported non-police personnel into the Station? Of course he did! Pascoe answered himself angrily. He was getting as paranoid as Andy Dalziel about the security services.
Glenister was observing him as if his reactions were scrolling across his forehead.
He went up to her and said brusquely, ‘So what’s the state of play now?’
‘Complex. We’re working backwards and forwards at the same time, trying to trace where all this explosive we didn’t know about came from, and what it was they planned to do with it. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Peter. I’ll get your PC linked to our network here so you’ll have everything at your fingertips and not need to wear a hole in the corridor running along here every time you need an update. But do drop in any time you need to. For obvious reasons we need to have a bit of a firewall between us and the rest of the Station. But as far as you’re concerned, you’re fireproof. And I’m hoping it will be two-way traffic. Anything you think may help, don’t hesitate. You’re the man on the spot. Your input could be invaluable.’
It was an exit-cue if ever he’d heard one.
But for all her vibrantly sincere assurances, as Pascoe returned to his own office he felt less like a protagonist with big speeches still to come than an attendant lord, fit to swell a progress or start a scene or two.
In fact it occurred to him as his ribs twinged and his knee began to ache that at the moment he didn’t actually feel fit enough even for those walk-on roles.
And when Edgar Wield looked in twenty minutes later and found him half slumped across his desk, he made no protest as the sergeant escorted him down the stairs to the car park and drove him home.
Archambaud de St Agnan said, ‘Aren’t we too close?’
‘For what?’ said
