EQMM, Jan. 2003, page 6
A second set of headlights had appeared, slowed, then turned out of sight into the wooded lane.
“Who the hell's that?” exclaimed Dalziel angrily. “Hello, hello! Wieldy, have you died down there?”
Sergeant Wield's voice came crackling back.
“It's a minibus, sir. Crowded ... there's kids in it ... and women ... they've got lanterns...”
“It's them sodding carol singers!” exclaimed Dalziel. “Stop them! Do you hear me? Stop them! Don't let them past!”
And that was when things started going seriously wrong.
* * *
Down below, Detective Sergeant Edgar Wield had disposed his officers according to Dalziel's instructions. When it came to PC Hector, the instruction had been simple. “Put the bugger out of harm's way!” Hector, once more in his old black suit, looked so completely frozen that Wield had taken pity on him and put him in a tumbledown outhouse with the strict command, “Stay in here unless Mr. Dalziel himself orders you out!”
Hector had spent the next hour studying the instruction sheet on how to use his portable radio. Finally, triumphantly, he managed to switch it on.
And the first thing his frost-numbed brain heard was his master's unmistakable voice screaming, “Stop them! Don't let them past!”
He rushed to the outhouse door and saw a golden glow of headlights pouring down the lane which led to the house.
And he obeyed.
From his vantage point up the slope Pascoe watched in horror.
The Merc came speeding down the snow-covered track to the house. Into its path floundered the cadaverous figure of Hector, waving and shouting. The terrified driver hauled the wheel over, the car skidded in the snow and rammed the festive holly tree. The fairy lights went into spasm and the angel's angle of flight changed from takeoff to nosedive. Steam jetted out of the Merc's bonnet. The doors opened. Four men fell out. Two were clutching suitcases, and one of the others was clutching something Pascoe didn't want to believe in. They all started running towards the house.
Hector tried to grapple with the unencumbered one, a tall athletic-looking figure who with practiced ease caught him in a wristlock and twisted his arm up behind his back.
Edgar Wield appeared from the lane, yelling.
And the man with the something Pascoe now had to acknowledge was a shotgun swung it in his direction and fired.
There was a high-pitched agonized shriek and Wield went face-down in the snow.
The house door had opened. The men with the cases vanished inside, closely followed by the tall man dragging Hector with him, and finally, after one last defiant flourish, the man with the shotgun.
Then all was still below and the only noise Pascoe could hear was his own heavy breathing as he floundered down the snow-covered hillside in his master's steps while his thoughts too floundered through drifts of dreadful speculation.
An unauthorized operation, NCS deceived, a policeman taken hostage, a shot fired, Wieldy lying wounded in the snow ... or worse...
Mother of God! After a career signposted by burnt bridges and downtrodden enemies, was this at last the end of Andy Dalziel?
* * *
The good news was that it wasn't the end of Edgar Wield.
As they reached the bottom of the slope, a figure like the Abominable Snowman rose before them. They each seized an arm and kept on going till they reached the shelter of Hector's outbuilding.
“Right, Wieldy,” gasped Pascoe. “Lie down. Where are you hit?”
“I'm not bloody hit,” said the sergeant with some irritation. “I just took a dive when I heard that gun.”
“So why did you squeal like a stuffed pig?” demanded Dalziel.
“That weren't me, that was some poor sodding owl,” said Wield. “I hope it were just scared.”
“With my luck, I'll likely get done by the RSPB,” said Dalziel gloomily. “Right, sit-rep. What's happened with them sodding singers?”
“Well, they've not showed up down here, so I presume they're safe up the lane.”
“Thank God. What idiot let their coach turn in?”
“That ‘ud be you, sir,” said Wield. “You said, no interference with any vehicle approaching the house.”
Dalziel glowered into the sergeant's famously ugly face and said, “You want to watch it, Wieldy, else I might buy you a mirror for Christmas.”
But the insult lacked its usual force.
Reassured about his friend's condition, Pascoe now took stock of their situation. It wasn't good. Moonlight spilled through the fractured roof of the tumbledown outhouse to put its otherworldly touch on rusty garden tools, broken deck chairs, a slightly deflated red and yellow football. And there was something def lated about Andy Dalziel, too. After his crack at Wield, he relapsed into a sullen silence, staring down at the rubbish-strewn floor as if he saw there some image of his own future.
Pascoe said urgently, “Sir, we can't just stand here doing nothing. We need to let NCS know what's happened, and we need to get an armed response team deployed as soon as possible. As for the carol singers, we should get them moved back to the village, then set up a one-mile exclusion zone, traffic diversions, the lot.”
Each point seemed to punch another hole in the Fat Man's casing. He continued standing there, head down, for another long minute.
Finally he took a deep breath, as if trying to restore his old bulk, and said, “You're right. No use freezing here like three brass monkeys. Wieldy, tell the lads to hold their positions but do nowt without my say-so. We don't want dead heroes.”
“You think they might make a break for it?” said Pascoe, who'd already been examining the possibility.
“Doubt it. They'd need to go cross-country on foot. Their car's knackered, and all the Penders have got is a sporty two-seater.”
“Who the hell are the Penders?” asked Pascoe.
“Couple who rent Hollybush. You'll have seen ‘em on the Helm security video. Homework, that's the secret of success, lad,” said Dalziel. “Have I learned you nowt?”
The thought of asking the Fat Man what particular success he believed this bit of homework was the secret of f lashed across Pascoe's mind, but kicking Andy Dalziel when he was down was likely to break your toe.
“Very good, sir,” he said. “But they're armed and have a hostage. What if they threaten to cut up Hector unless we supply transport?”
“Tell them to start with his brain,” said Dalziel. “That should take time to find. Ivor, that you skulking out there?”
WDC Shirley Novello, who'd been lurking in the doorway observing the discomfiture of the Holy Trinity not without a little schadenfreude, stepped into the moonlight.
“Get yourself up the lane to them carol singers,” commanded the Fat Man. “Tell them there's nowt to worry about, bit of trouble with poachers in case they heard the shotgun. Oh, and while you're at it, give them this,"—he took a couple of notes out of his wallet and handed them over—"and ask them if they'd sing us a carol afore they go. ‘Silent Night’ ‘ud be nice. My favorite.”
He's gone mad, thought Pascoe. Uncle Hamish has come to haunt him.
Novello looked at Pascoe, who nodded. She left. Then he turned his attention to Dalziel, who gave him what looked like an approving wink.
“Andy,” he said pleadingly. “Shouldn't you be ringing the Squad? We're running out of time.”
For answer, the Fat Man picked up the brightly colored football and started bouncing it off the wall. It can't have been punctured, and as the air inside got warmer, it began to recover its old shape and resilience.
Like Dalziel in the past, thought Pascoe. Hit him hard and he reinf lates! But there was no way he could bounce back from this situation.
“Sir,” he said in a harsh formal tone, “I've got to warn you, if you won't ring the Squad, I will.”
He hadn't wanted to utter the threat, but it had to be spoken. The Titanic was going down. Unless something was done, they could all be sucked under by the turbulence.
“Well, thank you kindly, Mr. Christian,” said Dalziel. “You follow your conscience, Pete. Me, I've got other things to do.”
“What, for God's sake!” demanded Pascoe.
There was a second of confrontational silence. Then distantly, eerily, a sound came floating through the air.
Silent night ... holy night...
“How about a little game of footie for starters?” said Dalziel.
And before they could stop him, he stepped out of the outhouse, booted the ball towards Hollybush, and trotted after it.
“What the hell's he doing?” demanded Wield.
“Oh God,” groaned Pascoe. “He thinks he can declare a truce like they did in the Great War!”
“You going to ring the squad, Pete?”
Pascoe knew he should. But he knew he couldn't. Not yet, not with that pathetic figure out there, trying to keep the ball in the air.
“Anything else happens, you ring them, Wieldy.”
“What'll you be doing?”
“Showing the terror of Twickers how to play a real ball game.”
And with the deep sigh of a man who knows he's doing something unbelievably stupid, Pascoe trotted slowly forward.
“This ball's the wrong sodding shape,” complained the Fat Man, who was a rugger man through and through.
“Give it here,” ordered Pascoe.
Dalziel threw it to him. He caught it on his thigh, bounced it on his right knee a couple of times, and then, as the skills of his youth gradually creaked back into life, he lofted it high and got in three headers before it dropped into the snow.
“By God, I'd love to have seen you in Swan Lake," mocked Dalziel, taking out a hip flask and putting it to his lips.
“Belt up,” said Pascoe. “We've got company.”
The house door had opened and a man stepped out. It was the tall athletic man who'd seized Hector. He was in his thirties and dressed in black trousers and a rather sharp black jacket over a black turtleneck. He held his arms wide, probably to show he was unarmed, but Pascoe took it as an invitation for a pass and lobbed the ball to him. He took it on his head, nodded it down, and volleyed it with great force straight at Dalziel. The Fat Man didn't flinch but caught it one-handed in front of his face.
Now the three of them stood still while high above them through the cold bright air floated the lyrics of “Silent Night.”
“Gentlemen, please introduce yourselves,” said the man in a faintly Germanic accent.
“I'm Detective Superintendent Dalziel of Mid-Yorkshire CID,” said the Fat Man. “This is Chief Inspector Pascoe, and the man you've kidnapped is Police Constable Hector, and I'd like him back.”
“Good Lord,” said the tall man. “Is the man who attacked us really a policeman? He keeps on claiming so, but I found it hard to believe.”
Dalziel laughed. “Me too, sometimes. Is he okay?”
“A little incoherent. He keeps telling us we are surrounded by cruise missiles and the SAS. But I think he has the wrong war. With the snow and the football and the carols, this is more like Christmas in no man's land in nineteen fourteen, eh?”
“A historian, are you?” said Dalziel.
“I try to learn from history,” said the man. “So tell me what you want, Superintendent. It's very cold.”
“Aye, what we call brass-monkey weather,” said Dalziel, taking a swig from his flask. “In fact, it's so cold, my brain's half frozen, which is why I've got to think aloud. And what I'm thinking is this. What are we all doing here? I can tell you why I'm here. A tipoff. We get ‘em all the time. Most of ‘em are a waste of time, but we've got to follow them up. So I'm here ‘cos I got told I might see summat to my advantage. All I've seen so far is four men turning up with suitcases. Question is, why are they here? Could be they've come to spend Christmas with friends. Could be they're hoping to do a bit of rough shooting, which ‘ud explain why they brought a shotgun.”
He paused to take another drink.
“Thirsty work, thinking aloud,” he said, proffering the flask.
“And listening, too,” said the man, taking it. “Go on.”
“So what have we got?” resumed Dalziel. “Gents turn up for a Christmas break and suddenly there's a lot of shouting and people jumping out of the bushes. If that happened to me, I wouldn't ask questions, I'd reckon I were being mugged and head for cover. Gun goes off in self-defense, someone makes a citizen's arrest on one of the attackers, that would be perfectly understandable, too.”
Pascoe couldn't believe this. He stepped forward to speak but the Fat Man's elbow in his ribs silenced him.
The man in black nodded emphatically. “Precisely what happened to me and my friends,” he said. “But the police I think would still want to ask questions, make searches?”
“Oh aye. Cops ask, lawyers answer, everyone goes home,” said Dalziel. “It's the way of the world. As for searches, you can't find what's not there. God, but it's chill! Goes right to your bladder, this air. I expect after a long drive you and your friends will be all queuing up for the bog.”
“The bog?” echoed the man.
“Bathroom. Lavatory. Loo. I daresay you'd need to use it quite a bit to make yourselves feel comfortable afore we go off to meet your lawyer. No need to rush.”
The man in black was regarding him speculatively. “You are local police, you say?”
“What else would we be?”
“I am a foreign national, Mr. Dalziel, a totally innocent foreign national, of course, but I have read somewhere that here in England serious crimes, especially those with an international dimension, have been taken out of the hands of local forces and are now dealt with by what I think is called your National Crime Squad.”
“You're certainly well informed, sir,” said Dalziel admiringly. “But I don't see any reason for the National Crime Squad to be involved in a little local mix-up, do you? Getting them down here flexing their muscles wouldn't do either of us much good, would it?”
Suddenly the man smiled as if everything had become clear.
“Prosit,” he said, taking another swig from the flask before handing it back. “Yes, fifteen minutes should be fine.”
Then he turned on his heel and went back inside.
“Sir!” exploded Pascoe.
“Not in front of the servants, lad,” said Dalziel, striding back to the outhouse.
Once inside he said, “All right, spit it out afore you choke on it.”
“You can't do this, sir. It's just plain wrong.”
“Wrong? They've got Hector in there, remember?”
“Come off it! This isn't about Hector. This is about saving your skin! There's a gang of drug dealers in there flushing the evidence down the pan on your instructions so you can keep your job!”
“Nobody's perfect,” said Dalziel.
“It won't even work!” said Pascoe desperately. “Not for you, anyway. Yes, some sharp brief will probably get them clear, but everyone in the job will know the truth. You don't imagine Davison and his masters are going to let you get away scot-free? Screwing up is bad, but there's some dignity in putting up your hand for it. Trying to cover up by letting these scumbags walk free is unforgivable.”
“You'll not be contributing to my going-away prezzie then?” said Dalziel.
For a moment the two old colleagues stood toe-to-toe like a pair of bare-knuckle pugilists.
Then Wield, who'd stepped outside when the row began, called, “The door's opening. He's chucked the shotgun out. He's waving us over.”
* * *
Inside the warm house, Pascoe's feet began to thaw, but that was the least of his pains.
They were met by the tenants of Hollybush, the Penders, a handsome young couple with cut-glass accents whose reaction to events was a carefully judged mixture of righteous indignation and noblesse oblige. They confirmed that the Germans were old friends and honored guests, come to enjoy an English Christmas and do a bit of rough shooting over the holiday. Pascoe tried to spot some usable resemblance between them and the couple on the Helm security video, but found none. Not even the remarkable sight of Fat Andy grovelling in apology could divert his mind from its growing sense of angry frustration.
As expected, the suitcases contained nothing but clothing. Hector was no help whatsoever. He couldn't recall anything incriminating being said in his presence, but he did report that there'd been a great deal of toilet flushing during the last fifteen minutes of his ordeal. “Thought they must be getting worried because of what I told them about the penalties for kidnapping a police officer,” he concluded proudly.
The Germans, meanwhile, sat at their ease in front of a roaring fire, drinking brandy and chatting away about football.
“So how much of your money's gone down the drain then?” interrupted Pascoe, desperate to score some kind of hit. “Half a mil? More?”
The man in black laughed and said, “Don't know what you mean, but in any case, what's money? What is it you English say? Money doesn't grow on trees? I have news for you. In some parts of the world, it really does!”
He had to translate his bon mot to one of his compatriots whose English wasn't so good, and the four of them fell about laughing.
Their self-possession remained undented even when Dalziel apologetically invited them to let themselves be taken down to police headquarters to tie up some loose ends. The man in black smilingly replied that in anticipation of this he'd already arranged for his lawyer to rendezvous with them there.
Assuring their hosts they'd be back soon, they departed.
Pascoe, without consulting the Fat Man, had requested the Penders’ permission to search the house. They gave it without a moment's hesitation, which didn't fill him with much hope of a successful outcome.
He left Wield to supervise the search. He wanted to stick close to Dalziel, who'd sunk into a big chair by the roaring fire. At the moment, he didn't trust him not to offer the Penders some sort of deal. Not that they seemed in the mood for negotiation. In fact, everything about their manner suggested they were completely unworried.
“What on earth are you looking for, anyway?” enquired the woman. “Or is that an official secret?”
“You'll laugh,” said Dalziel. “It's a monkey. The brass monkey, we call it.”
