LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Don’t sound so disappointed, dear. What now? Would you still like to see Gerry?’

      ‘I don’t know. Not unless I really have to. But you never know.’

      ‘You could spend an interesting day on the set,’ she said. ‘Really. I mean it. Do you good.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘For a start, it’d bore you to tears. You might find it distasteful but you wouldn’t find it illegal. And at the end of the day you might even agree that though it’s not your way of earning a living, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be somebody else’s.’

      Pascoe downed his second half in one and said, ‘You’re very defensive.’

      ‘And I know it. You’re bloody aggressive, and I don’t think you do.’

      ‘I don’t mean to be,’ said Pascoe.

      ‘No. It’s your job. Like one of your cars stopping some kid on a flash motor-bike. His licence is in order, but he’s young, and he’s wearing fancy gear, and he doesn’t look humble, so he gets the full treatment. Finally, reluctantly, he gets sent on his way with a warning against breathing, and the Panda-car tracks him for the next ten miles.’

      ‘I grasp your analogy,’ said Pascoe.

      ‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ she answered. Their gazes locked and after a moment they started to laugh.

      ‘Watch her,’ said Crabtree plonking down a tray with a large gin, with whatever it was with, and another four halves. ‘She’ll have you starring in a remake of the Keystone Cops – naked.’

      ‘I doubt it,’ said the woman. ‘The Inspector don’t approve of us beautiful people. Not like you, Ray. Ray recognizes that police and film people have a lot in common. They exist because of human nature, not in spite of it. But Ray has slain the beast, ambition, and now takes comfort in the arms of the beauty, philosophy. You should try it, Inspector.’

      ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ was the smartest reply Pascoe could manage.

      ‘You do. And don’t forget my invitation. Homeric’s the company, Penelope’s the name. I’ll be weaving and watching for you, sailor. ’Bye, Ray. Thanks for the drink.’

      She rose and returned to her companions.

      ‘Interesting woman,’ said Crabtree, regarding Pascoe with amusement.

      ‘Yes. Is she like that through choice or chance?’

      ‘Glandular, they tell me. Used to be a beauty. Now she has to live off eggs and spinach and no good it does her.’

      ‘Tough,’ said Pascoe. ‘Tell me, Ray, what’s a joint like Homeric doing in a nice town like this?’

      Crabtree shrugged.

      ‘They have an office. They pay their rates. They give no offence. The only way that most people are going to know what their precise business is would be to see their films, or take part in one of them. Either way, you’re not going to complain. Things have changed since I was a callow constable, but one thing I’ve learned in my low-trajectory meteoric career: if it’s all right with top brass, it’s all right with me.’

      ‘But why come here at all? What’s wrong with the Big Smoke?’

      ‘Dear, dear,’ said Crabtree. ‘I bet you still think Soho’s full of opium dens and sinister Orientals. Up here it’s cheaper, healthier and the beer’s better. Do you never read the ads?’

      ‘Everyone’s talking smart today and putting me down,’ said Pascoe. ‘Time for another?’

      ‘Hang on,’ said Crabtree. ‘I’ll phone in.’

      He returned with another four halves.

      ‘Plenty of time,’ he said. ‘It’s been put back again.’

      ‘When to?’

      ‘Next week.’

      ‘Oh shit,’ said Pascoe.

      He regarded the half-pints dubiously, then went and rang Ellie again. There was no reply. Perhaps after all she had rung an old boy-friend.

      ‘Left you, has she?’ said Crabtree. ‘Wise girl. Now, what do you fancy – drown your sorrows or a bit of spare?’

      He arrived home at midnight to find a strange car in his drive and a strange man drinking his whisky. Closer examination revealed it was not a strange man but one of Ellie’s colleagues, Arthur Halfdane, a historian and once a sort of rival for Ellie’s favours.

      ‘I didn’t recognize you,’ said Pascoe. ‘You look younger.’

      ‘Well thanks,’ said Halfdane in a mid-Atlantic drawl.

      ‘On second thoughts,’ said Pascoe belligerently, ‘you don’t look younger. It’s your clothes that look younger.’

      Halfdane glanced down at his denim suit, looked ironically at Pascoe’s crumpled worsted, and smiled at Ellie.

      ‘Time to go, I think,’ he said, rising.

      Perhaps I should punch him on the nose, thought Pascoe. Man alone with my wife at midnight … I’m entitled.

      When Ellie returned from the front door Pascoe essayed a smile.

      ‘You’re drunk,’ she said.

      ‘I’ve had a couple.’

      ‘I thought you were at a meeting.’

      ‘It was cancelled,’ he said. ‘I rang you. You were out. So I made a night of it.’

      ‘Me too,’ she said.

      ‘Difference was, my companion was a man,’ said Pascoe heavily.

      ‘No difference,’ said Ellie. ‘So was mine.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Pascoe, a little nonplussed. ‘Have a good evening, did you?’

      ‘Yes. Very sexy.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Sexy. We went to see your dirty film. Our interest was socio-historical, of course.’

      ‘He took you to the Calli?’ said Pascoe indignantly. ‘Well, bugger me!’

      ‘It was all right,’ said Ellie sweetly. ‘Full of respectable people. You know who I saw there? Mr Godfrey Blengdale, no less. So it must be all right.’

      ‘He shouldn’t have taken you,’ said Pascoe, feeling absurd and incoherent and nevertheless right.

      ‘Get it straight, Peter,’ said Ellie coldly. ‘Dalziel may have got you trained like a retriever, but I still make my own decisions.’

      ‘Oh yes,’ sneered Pascoe. ‘It’s working in that elephants’ graveyard that does it. All that rational discourse where the failed intellectuals go to die. The sooner they close that stately pleasure-dome down and dump you back in reality, the better!’

      ‘You’ve got the infection,’ she said sadly. ‘Work in a leper colony and in the end you start falling to bits.’

      ‘Schweitzer worked with lepers,’ countered Pascoe.

      ‘Yes. And he was a fascist too.’

      He looked at her hopelessly. There were other planets somewhere with life-forms he had more chance of understanding and making understand.

      ‘It’s your failures I put in gaol,’ he said.

      ‘So, blame education, is that it? All right, but how can it work with kids when intelligent adults can still be so thick!’ she demanded.

      ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. He suddenly saw in his mind’s eye the girl in the film. The face fell apart under the massive

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