Arms and the Women

It was because of Wield that she was here on duty now, dressed in play gear rather than her workaday drabs. She’d been clocking off at four when he’d grabbed her.

‘Shirley, I need a body to spell Seymour watching Mrs Pascoe. Any chance?’

At least he framed it as a question.

She said, ‘Sarge, I’ve got plans for tonight that it’ll cost hearts to break. I can give you till eight if that’s any good.’

‘That’ll do fine. Thanks,’ he’d said.

So he was grateful which was nice. But was he trustworthy? She was due to meet a new boyfriend at a new club, both of which she had high hopes of, at eight thirty. Thirty minutes wasn’t much to get home and changed in even if her relief turned up on time. So, working on the principle that she wasn’t going to be under the gaze of the station neanderthals, she’d come on duty dressed for partying.

Privately she thought this watch on the Pascoe house was overkill. Chummy, who was probably this lad Roote, wasn’t likely to come back for a third go. She’d dug up the case file and he sounded a real nut. It had been back when Pascoe was still an unmarried sergeant and La Pascoe was teaching at a college where the Principal had been topped. Roote had evidently assaulted both Pascoe and the Fat Man, breaking a bottle of Scotch over the latter’s head. Just went to show there was good even in the worst of us! So, bang him up and fix for a patrol car to crawl past maison Pascoe every couple of hours!

Still, overtime was overtime. She turned on Radio One full blast and settled back to fantasize about the muscular young man who was her escort that night.

Then, just before seven, she saw the bag lady.

She was on a bicycle, but she was undoubtedly a bag lady. There were three plastic carriers dangling from the handlebars and another two either side of the saddle. The woman herself was something the far side of seventy, maybe the far side of eighty, with a round leathery face like an under-inflated football and wispy white hair escaping from beneath an unravelling straw hat whose brim looked like a horse had dined on it. Her ample body was draped in several layers of clothing that it would have taken an archaeologist to date. The bike itself was coeval with its rider, or perhaps a little older, its flaking khaki paint suggesting it might have seen service in the Great War.

Novello watched with mild amusement as this figure creaked towards her, then with heightened interest as the machine scraped to a halt, and finally with active alarm as the dismounted woman began to open the Pascoes’ gate.

It was hard to leave the car with dignity, but practise had enabled her to emerge from it with speed. The woman saw her coming and paused by the open gate. It occurred to Novello that if any, or all, of the carriers contained a deadly weapon, she was presenting a pretty unmissable target. A low ornamental wall to her right offered the only real cover and she flinched towards it as the old woman dipped her hand into one of the bags. But all she came out with was a large magnifying glass which she raised to her eyes, the better to study the approaching DC.

‘Excuse me, madam,’ said Novello, pulling out her ID. ‘Detective Constable Novello, Mid-Yorkshire CID. Do you mind telling me who you are and what you’re doing here?’

‘If you experience difficulty in answering these questions yourself, then perhaps you have strayed into the wrong employment, my girl,’ said the woman, in a voice rich with the kind of orotundity Novello only ever heard when she chanced on some ancient actress being interviewed on the telly.

She’ll probably turn out to be the DCI’s gran, she thought, but she persisted. ‘Please, madam. If you could just answer the question.’

‘Very well. I am Serafina Macallum, founder and life president of the Liberata Trust, and I am here to attend, nay, to chair, a meeting of our local group. For the record, and I assume we are being recorded though where the necessary apparatus might be concealed in such a deshabille as yours I cannot imagine, I would like to say that though long resigned to having my phone tapped and my mail interfered with, I had not thought that this so-called democracy of ours had degenerated to such open interference with the free movement of its citizens twice in the space of fifteen minutes.’

‘Twice?’ wondered Novello.

‘When I left my vehicle in the car park of the Gateway public house, I was accosted by a child in uniform under the pretext that he wished to know if I had been there earlier in the day.’

That figured. She’d heard that the landlord of the Gateway had spotted a white Mercedes parked there about midday with a driver fitting Daphne Aldermann’s description of the perp. Wield would have made sure someone went back there to check if any of this evening’s customers had been there at lunchtime and seen or heard anything.

‘And were you?’ asked Novello.

‘Certainly not. You think I do not have better things to do with my time than frequent public houses?’

‘But you’re parked there now,’ said Novello reasonably. ‘Incidentally, why didn’t you just keep on driving and park in the street here?’

‘I drive, reluctantly, on the main highways and some rural byways. But when I reach the environs of the town, I prefer the greater freedom of pedal power, and in addition I do not care to pollute other people’s living space.’

Stark staring, thought Novello. But that doesn’t stop her being the DCI’s gran. In fact, it might be a necessary qualification.

On the other hand, she didn’t have La Pascoe down as being religious which was all that Liberata suggested to her. Still, these days you never could tell.

‘This Liberata thing, that’s as in St Wilgefortis?’ she enquired.

The old woman looked at her sharply, then said, ‘It is good to see how thoroughly your masters brief you.’

‘Not masters. Mistresses. I went to a convent school. For a while anyway. The nuns were very keen to hammer home the important things like the lives of the saints. I’ve still got the broken knuckles to prove it.’

Why am I telling this old bat the story of my schooldays? she wondered. I’ll be telling her why I got thrown out next.

She said abruptly, ‘So Mrs Pascoe’s expecting you?’

‘Of course she is, though no doubt to maximize the harassment, you will wish to go through the motions of ascertaining that for yourself.’

She was right there, thought Novello, following the bicycle up the drive.

She rang the bell while Miss Macallum disengaged her bags from her bike. They were full of cardboard files, clipboards, sheets of newspaper, and other varieties of stationery. Novello noted with amusement that supermarket names printed on the bags had been scored over with a black marker pen.

Catching her gaze, Miss Macallum said, ‘I see no reason why the moguls of Mammon should make me the instrument of their aggrandizement.’

The door opened and Ellie Pascoe appeared.

Her expression gave Novello the information she required without need of question, and more besides.

Yes, Miss Macallum was telling the truth about the meeting, but Ellie Pascoe had forgotten all about it and found the prospect as appealing as a day-old hard-fried egg, an image which came to Novello’s mind as this was the only edible substance she’d found in her flat that morning when she started to prepare breakfast.

She risked a wry sympathetic smile and wished she hadn’t bothered. La P. gave her the cold cut, then her face blossomed into a welcoming smile as she said, ‘Feenie, good to see you. Come on in. Let me help you with your bags.’

Novello waited till the door was closing before saying, ‘Will there be many others, Mrs Pascoe?’

‘Three, maybe four. All women. And I’d prefer it if you didn’t march them all up to the door.’

‘I need to check them out,’ said Novello. ‘Maybe you could give a little signal before you let them in, just to confirm you know them?’

‘A signal?’ said Ellie, with an intonation normally reserved for A handbag? ‘What had you in mind?’

‘Nothing complicated. Just a little wave maybe.’

Ellie nodded and closed the door.

‘You do know how to wave, don’t you, Mrs Pascoe?’ said Novello to the woodwork.

Over the next ten minutes four more women arrived, all looking disappointingly normal after Feenie Macallum. The first three were admitted with a perfunctorily dismissive gesture of La P.’s hand. Only with the fourth was there a hesitation. Then the bag lady appeared behind La P. and spoke, the hand fluttered, the newcomer stepped inside and the door closed.

Novello settled down to pass the remainder of her stag with dreams of her stag to come, but about twenty minutes later she saw the DCI’s car turn into the drive. Pascoe got out and came back through the gateway towards her and she slid out of the Uno once more.

She saw him clocking her legs and the gear, but guessed he’d be too politically correct, or at least too polite, to comment.

‘Hi, Shirley,’ he said. ‘Anything happening?’

‘Yeah. Some kind of prayer meeting, I think.’

She told him about the Liberata Trust. He smiled as if she’d said something funny, but she also saw him repress the cold-fried-egg reaction. Not in front of the servants.

He said, ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Took over from Dennis at four.’

‘Good. I appreciate it.’

He gave her the Pascoe smile. Does he think we won’t be claiming the overtime? she wondered. But then he rubbed his hand across his face and suddenly looked very tired, very vulnerable, and Novello felt a pang of sympathy, but recalling his wife’s dusty response, she didn’t let it show.

‘Any development on the car spotted in the Gateway car park?’ she asked.

‘Not on the car, but one of the two men, the one in the pub, we got a print off his newspaper.’

‘That’s good. Known, sir?’

He hesitated. Wondering whether he wants to share this with underlings, thought Novello resentfully. But when he did reply, her resentment quickly faded.

‘Yes. Patrick Ducannon. He’s IRA, got a twelve-year stretch but out in two after the Good Friday Agreement. Word is he’s given up the cause. Certainly he’s blotted his copybook in Republican circles.’

‘Jesus,’ said Novello. ‘This is serious stuff. And the other guy…?’

‘Nothing. Doesn’t fit any known associate, at least not on our books.’

Meaning it might on somebody else’s? Like the security services whom all regular cops regarded as anal-retentive gits.

‘So this guy parks at the pub because he doesn’t want to be spotted sitting in his car, watching your house, and takes a stroll, thinking he’s safe, only Mrs Aldermann spots him…’

‘That’s how it looks,’ said Pascoe, suddenly impatient. ‘OK, Shirley, you can clock off now.’

‘Sir? I mean, I’m on till eight, then Seymour…’

‘I’ve cancelled Dennis already,’ said Pascoe firmly. ‘When I’m home, I’ll take care of things.’

Things being your wife and daughter, thought Novello. Then told herself, Stop that, Shirley! Why do you find it so hard to be nice to one of the few guys in the Force who’s gone out of his way to see you get an even break?

Answer: because anyone who has to think about treating you equally is treating you differently.

In other words, I’ll only accept help from people who don’t offer it. Which makes me nana of the month!

She said hesitantly, ‘Maybe I should check that out, sir.’

He said, ‘I don’t think so,’ very pleasantly, but with a finality that brooked no denial.

Please yourself, she thought, getting back into her car. Means I can get to the club all that earlier and stop anyone else trying to put a brand on my hunk of beef.

But best to play it safe, and as she drove away, she called Control and put it on record that she was abandoning her watch in response to a direct order from the DCI.

And finally, because she was a good cop as well as an ambitious one, she made a mental note to check out if possible what made the old bag lady so unsurprised to find herself, as she imagined, under surveillance. Probably a waste of time. What could someone as comically decrepit as Feenie Macallum have to do with the real world that a smart young cop lived in? But she’d noticed the DCI’s flicker of amusement when she’d talked about a prayer meeting, and certainly she couldn’t see religion playing a large part in La Pascoe’s profile.

Then she closed her mental notebook, hit the accelerator, and as the tiny engine shook and roared, she gave herself entirely to a matching anticipation of the delights which lay ahead.

x

spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

Feenie Macallum…

A blast from the past. Dear old Feenie, whose first entry was probably made with a quill pen on parchment. Box file, card index, microfiche, this Serafina has flown through the lot and here she is, wings neatly folded, sleeping in my casket waiting for the kiss of Sir Gawain to awaken her.

fighting the world with a protest that no one will heed…

except those in need…

What does Daddy think as he looks down upon, or perhaps up at, his beloved daughter? Mungo Macallum, whose Celtic beginnings not even my little electronic moles have been able to dig up. The working classes of the nineteenth century still offered that option which all classes of the twenty-first century would give their eye teeth for – impenetrable obscurity.

But there he was, an exile in Yorkshire at the turn of the century, already a man of brass, busy turning himself into a man of steel.

But not knives and forks and spoons for Mungo. Oh no. He didn’t let himself be dazzled by the bright dawn of this new Edwardian age, he looked beyond that last long garden party of privilege and class, he saw the approaching darkness and knew that this was to be the century of the gun.

Mungo Macallum, the armaments king.

There are some who say that you were the model for Undershaft in Major Barbara, Mungo. Great wealth from a morally dubious source, yet not without your own moral concerns. Poverty you saw as a cause of evil, not an effect. You paid, by the standards of the time, fair wages, and you underwrote the establishment of a savings bank to encourage providence among your workers, and a building society to give those who desired it the chance of buying their own homes.

And you led by example, showing the world how money wisely invested was the basis of prosperity.

In 1914 you were already rich. By 1918 you had wealth beyond computation.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

While westward eighty miles or so,

In England’s fields the profits grow.

And in a Yorkshire field, in that remote and peaceful wedge of coastal land called Axness, you found Granary House, a bat-infested, rat-infested ruin of a mansion looking out across the sea, far far away from the glow of the furnaces and the dust of the spoilheaps. Not that you were ever ashamed of the source of your wealth. And when you heard as you rebuilt and refurbished Granary House that your mocking friends were referring to it as Gunnery House, that’s what you officially renamed it.

Here at Gunnery you hoped to found a dynasty in a world which your own weaponry had made safe for your descendants. Lord Macallum of Axness. Oh, your title was all chosen, your coat of arms prepared. Cleverly you forbore to stoop for the windfalls the dying storm of war shook from the many branches of the new and Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. The golden fruit you wanted was not to be scabbed with war-profiteering sneers. Through the twenties you paved the way with charitable deeds. But you could not forbear to make assurance doubly sure by crossing the palms of those who claimed to be able to tell your noble future with gold and silver, and all your hopes died in the Honours for Sale scandal of 1933.

One plan had failed. Another looked like to fail. Three wives (by death, not divorce) had left you with a single child. But not the son you needed to lead off your dynasty.

Yet a man may do something, may do much, with a biddable daughter.

Alas, poor Mungo, what you had was not a biddable daughter.

What you had was Serafina, born as one war ended to come of age as another began.

Serafina, the passionate one.

And, for a while, Serafina, one of us.

For they were all ours for a while, those brave boys and girls who played their merry games in the enemy’s own yard. So many going, so few returning. But for that few, such a bright future, such a world of profit and delight lay ahead in those years after the shooting stopped and the real war, our kind of war, began.

But by that time you, Serafina, had been too long away, had caught a foreign infection, had gone native.

What you saw was not a world in the glorious turmoil of necessary recreation, with populations shifting, new battle lines being drawn up, new alliances formed, a glorious opportunity to play a part in the last and greatest crusade. No, what you saw was individuals suffering pain and deprivation and loss and injustice. Instead of population patterns, you saw refugees. Instead of demographic trends, you saw orphaned children. Instead of the forest, you saw the trees.

Oh, here it all is, Serafina, in your little casket. The charities, the agencies, the foundations, the movements, the causes, and hardly a one of them, to start with, whose strings were not being pulled by us. Or someone somewhere very like us.

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