LITMIR.BIZ

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Tankie would probably have killed the messenger! This way, by letting him work it out for himself …

      It was all a question of timing, of working out when the hints had finally worked. And they had worked. The evidence was there in the woman’s face, floating in the shadows over her brother’s shoulder. One cheek pale as a winter sky, the other flushed like a summer dawn.

      The bastard had hit her. And then Dalziel had summoned him. Why?

      So he could learn about the child, of course!

      This revelation the Fat Man had kept for now, for face to face, guessing that Jude would keep hidden to the end what she valued most, even in face of – especially in face of! – Tankie’s rage. For here was the clincher. A social life, a job, even a fellow, after the first explosion, these could be rationalized away. But a child …

      Even Tankie would know this meant he was relegated to at least second place forever.

      He was looking at her now, seeking confirmation in those eyes which so weirdly mirrored his own.

      Pascoe glanced at Dalziel hoping for some sign of how he wanted to play this. Was the idea to take the chance offered by this moment of distraction and jump the Trotters? Or was he relying on the revelation having some softening effect on Tankie, making him realize that any further development of his crazy vengeance plan would not only destroy himself and his sister, but her child too?

      He’d have betted on violence, but once again he saw he was wrong. The Fat Man was putting his money on psychology, turning now to the locker and taking his suit out.

      ‘I’ll be glad to get back into this,’ he said. ‘Wearing that stuff’s like wiping your bum with sandpaper. Like to avert your eyes, Jude? Or do you reckon, seen one, you’ve seen ’em all?’

      He pushed his fatigue trousers down as he spoke. And Pascoe, watching Trotter’s face in profile, saw that for all his jungle cunning, the Fat Man had miscalculated.

      Perhaps it was Dalziel’s coarseness. Or perhaps it was the confirmation in his sister’s expression of all that she’d kept from him, and why she’d kept it, and the difference it must make to their relationship for evermore.

      Or perhaps it was simply that if fear of your reputation as a wild beast is the nearest you’ve had to respect in a waste of years, then a wild beast’s response is the only option you ever have.

      Reasons didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that he was swinging the gun round to blow the Fat Man away.

      As in the climactic shoot-out in The Wild Bunch, everything slowed down. Dalziel like a Carry-On farceur was immobilized with his trousers round his ankles. Pascoe didn’t have time to pick a role. His body was launching itself through the air towards the Last National Service Man leaving his mind some way back, wondering why the hell he should give a damn about saving the Fat Man for posterity.

      Probably posterity would still have been spared this Grecian gift if Judith hadn’t got in on the act.

      No doubt about her motives. Where she had imagined her brother’s crazy game could lead was never clearly established. Later she claimed that the mental intimidation from her dominant twin, plus the trauma of childhood abuse, not forgetting her fear for her own child, had combined to bring her to this point almost without any conscious thought. Now all she saw was that if the Fat Man were blown away, with him went everything in her life that made any sense of it.

      She jumped on her brother’s back, flinging both arms round his neck and wrapping her legs around his body in a grip as sexual as a Freudian could have desired as she tried to topple him backwards. He staggered and twisted. The gun wavered away from the overhang of Dalziel’s belly, and Pascoe grabbed the barrel and dragged it even further round.

      Perhaps Trotter deliberately squeezed the trigger, though later, naturally, he denied it. Perhaps it was a finger-jerk reaction caused by the shock of his sister’s assault. Or perhaps Pascoe himself, by pulling on the barrel, literally triggered the explosion.

      Whoever or whatever, it went off.

      There was no pain, just a sense of some tremendous change in his relation with the universe. Then came a couple of seconds’ out-of-body experience, in which he hovered somewhere around the single light bulb, watching Dalziel step out of his trousers, advance three paces across the room and deal Trotter a blow on the temple which felled him like a blasted pylon. As he hit the ground, the whole room dissolved under a tidal wave of white light which bore Peter Pascoe out through the cottage roof and carried him at breakneck speed towards the boundary of the universe.

      Later he claimed never to have lost consciousness or even the power of rational thought. For a moment, or a millennium, he even had hopes of passing through a 2001 type stargate and ending up in a nice hotel room. But gradually the white light faded and the speed diminished till finally he was simply tumbling slowly through space.

      Far below he spotted the twin orbs of the earth and its circling moon. He recalled in childhood his mother trying to get him to see the man in the latter, but he’d never managed it. Now however he could see his features quite clearly in the broad bright orb, and it came as no surprise how closely they resembled those of Andy Dalziel.

      The mouth was opening and shutting as if the Fat Man had something to say. Might even be worth hearing, admitted Pascoe, who was not afraid to learn from experience.

      He grabbed a passing star, swung himself into a comfortable position along one of its radials, and settled down to listen.

      ‘Think he’ll make it, Wieldy?’

      ‘They say there’s no reason why not, sir.’

      ‘Well, he better bloody had.’

      ‘Yes sir. Any particular reason, apart from general humanity, sir?’

      ‘He owes me ten bob, that particular enough for you?’

      ‘Oh yes. What’ll you do with him if he does make it?’

      ‘Likely I’ll keep him. It’ll be a challenge.’

      ‘And if he doesn’t want to be kept?’

      ‘Nay, Wieldy, you don’t imagine I want anybody working for me who’s daft enough to want to work for me, do you? A scared cop is a good cop, as long as it don’t stop him thinking. And this bugger kept on thinking.’

      ‘Yes, sir. I think he’ll do a lot of that. But I shouldn’t bank on him staying scared forever.’

      ‘No? Mebbe not. But there’s one bugger who should be running scared for the rest of his life. That’s the stupid sod who told Tankie where to find me!’

      ‘Sorry, sir?’

      ‘I asked Tankie when he woke up how come he knew I’d be down at the courts. He said he rang the station and asked to speak to me, and some stupid bastard told him I was away for a while, but I’d be back that morning to give evidence. Can you credit it, Wieldy? No idea who he were speaking to, and this bumbrain gives chapter and verse where I can be found!’

      Peter Pascoe, who’d been thinking he might try dropping off his star onto the earth next time it rolled past, decided that maybe he’d give it another couple of whirls.

      Andy Dalziel said, ‘I could murder a cup of tea, Wieldy. And a bun if you can find one.’

      The door opened and shut. The Fat Man leaned over the bed and glowered into Pascoe’s pale face.

      ‘Anyone at home?’ he asked. ‘If there is, here’s the deal. It’ll be grapes and gruel for a bit, then it’ll be hard bloody graft for evermore. ’Cos I’m going to make a man out of you, my son. You’re going to be the very last National Service Man. Only it’s no soft two-year stint for you. Serve with me and you’re in for the bloody duration. I’ll badger you, and I’ll bully you, and I’ll bugger you about something rotten. But I’ll not take advantage of you or make a dickhead out of you or fob you off with a load of lies. And when I’ve

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