LITMIR.BIZ

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hard to refuse.

      In fact, guessed Pascoe, what she was probably doing was checking through Andy’s files to see if there was anything there which tied in even remotely with the events in Mill Street. She’d be lucky. Dalziel’s system of paperwork was sibylline.

      Left to himself he would have been reluctant to take over the Fat Man’s seat, but now he refused to play coy.

      He sat down, looked around and said, ‘Some-one’s been tidying up.’

      ‘Me, I’m afraid. The way I work. Set things in order, then you’ll see what they mean. Your Mr Dalziel, from all accounts, belongs to the opposite school. Ignore chaos and ultimately its meaning will come looking for you.’

      ‘I think rather he had…has…the ability to set things in order in his mind, but reckons that chaos has its meaning too,’ said Pascoe.

      ‘Meaning now I’ve put stuff where it ought to be, he won’t be able to find a thing,’ she laughed. ‘Anyway, here’s the deal, Peter. You’ll have full access to my Ops room. I’ll have full access anywhere I care to go in CID. I’ll consult with you first before using anything I think may be relevant. And I expect you to return the courtesy.’

      Seated at Dalziel’s desk, it occurred to Pascoe that the proper response would be to say he didn’t take kindly to folk offering to do him favours on his own CID floor, but he swallowed the words and said as mildly as he could manage, ‘That sounds reasonable. Why don’t we stroll along to your Ops room now and you can bring me up to speed?’

      He rose, went to the door, opened it, and stood there to usher her out.

      For a moment she looked slightly non-plussed at the speed with which he was moving things along, then gave him the open matronly smile again and moved through the doorway.

      The CAT Ops room bore the Glenister trademark. It was as tidy and well organized as she’d left Dalziel’s desk. Three computers had been set up on a trestle table at the far end. Not a spare inch of power cable showed. On a wall-board were pinned six photos, three showing the remains found in the ruins of Mill Street, each connected to a headshot of a man, two of them distinctly Asian in colouring and feature, the third less so. Beneath each photo was a name. Umar Surus, Ali Awan, and Hani Baraniq.

      ‘Surus and Awan are positive ID’s,’ said Glenister. ‘We have dental records and, in Awan’s case, DNA. Baraniq isn’t positive yet but we’re eighty per cent sure.’

      ‘You’ve shown these pics to Hector?’

      ‘Naturally. Could be his “sort of darkie” was Awan, and the other possibly Baraniq, though he’s even vaguer there. I’ve tried to push him beyond “sort of funny, not so much a darkie”, but no luck. I hope we never have to put poor Hec up on the witness stand.’

      She spoke with a smile.

      Pascoe thought, Two minutes on our patch and already she’s making our jokes.

      He said, ‘Look, what Hector doesn’t see is most things. But what he says he does see, you can usually rely on. His shortcomings are verbal rather than optical.’

      This wasn’t just a knee-jerk Hector-might-be-an-idiot-but-he’s-our-idiot reaction. Pascoe had once spotted Hector sitting on a park bench, notebook open on his knee, eyes fixed on a pair of sparrows dining on a discarded cheeseburger.

      ‘Making notes in case you have to arrest them, Hec?’ he’d enquired jocularly as he came 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

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