A Pinch of Snuff. Reginald Hill

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 blow. It might all be special effects but the reality beneath the image was valid none the less. If only it could be explained …

      ‘There is still, well, evil,’ he essayed.

      ‘Oh God. Religion, is it, now? The last refuge of egocentricity. I’m off to bed. I’m driving down to Lincolnshire tomorrow, so I should prefer to pass the night undisturbed.’

      She stalked from the room.

      ‘So should I,’ shouted Pascoe after her.

      Their wishes went unanswered.

      At five o’clock in the morning he was roused from the unmade-up spare bed by Ellie pulling his hair and demanding that he answer the bloody telephone.

      It was the station.

      There had been a break-in at Wilkinson House, premises of the Calliope Kinema Club. The proprietor had been attacked and injured. Mr Dalziel wondered if Mr Pascoe, in view of his special interest in the place, would care to watch over the investigation.

      ‘Tell him,’ said Pascoe. ‘Tell him to …’

      ‘Yes?’ prompted the voice.

      ‘Tell him I’m on my way.’

       Chapter 5

      The Calli was a wreck.

      As far as Pascoe could make out, person or persons unknown had entered by forcing the basement area door which fronted on to Upper Maltgate. They had then proceeded to wreck the house and beat up Gilbert Haggard, not necessarily in that order. That would be established when Haggard was fit enough to talk. A not very efficient attempt to start a fire had produced a lot of smoke, but fortunately very little flame, and a Panda patrol checking shop doorways on Maltgate had spotted the fumes escaping from a first-floor window.

      When they entered the house, they had found Haggard on the second-floor landing, badly beaten round the face and abdomen. A combination of the blows and fumes had rendered him unconscious.

      Pascoe wandered disconsolately around the house accompanied by a taciturn Sergeant Wield and an apologetic Fire Officer.

      ‘Was there any need to pump so much water into the place?’ asked Pascoe. ‘My men say there was next to no fire.’

      ‘Can’t be too careful, not where there’s inflammable material like film about,’ said the FO, smiling wanly at the staircase which was still running like the brook Kerith. ‘Sorry if we’ve dampened any clues.’

      ‘Clues!’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ll need frogmen to bring up clues from this lot. Where did the fire start?’

      ‘In a store room on the first floor. There’s a couple of filing cabinets in there, and that’s where they kept their cans of film as well. Someone scattered everything all over the place, then had the bright idea of dropping a match into it on their way out.’

      ‘Can we get in there without a bathysphere?’ asked Pascoe.

      The FO didn’t answer but led the way upstairs.

      There was a sound of movement inside the storage room and Pascoe expected to find either a policeman or a fireman bent on completing the destruction his colleagues had begun. Instead in the cone of light from a bare bulb which had miraculously survived the visiting firemen, he found Maurice Arany.

      ‘Mr Arany,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

      ‘I own half of this,’ said Arany sharply, indicating the sodden debris through which he appeared to have been picking.

      ‘I don’t like the look of your half,’ said Pascoe. ‘You got here quickly.’

      Arany considered.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘You got here slowly. I live quite close by. I have a flat above Trimble’s, the bakers, on Lower Maltgate.’

      ‘Who called you?’ asked Pascoe.

      ‘No one. I am a poor sleeper. I was awake when I heard the fire-engine going up the street. I looked out, became aware they were stopping by the Square, so I dressed and came out to investigate. After the firemen had finished, I came in. No one stopped me. Should they have done so?’

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Pascoe. ‘I should have thought you would be more concerned with Mr Haggard’s health than checking on damage here.’

      ‘I saw him being put in the ambulance. He looked all right,’ said Arany indifferently. ‘I tried to ring through a moment ago. The phones seem not to be working.’

      ‘Check that,’ Pascoe said to Wield. ‘See what’s wrong with them. Probably an excess of moisture.’

      Turning back to Arany, he said, ‘It would be useful, Mr Arany, if you could check if there’s anything missing from the house.’

      ‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said Arany, dropping the goulash of charred paper and shrivelled celluloid he held in his hands. ‘Of course, I cannot answer for Gilbert’s apartments. But on this floor and in the club rooms, I think I can help.’

      ‘Well, start here,’ said Pascoe. ‘Anything missing?’

      ‘Who can tell? So much is burned. We kept old files of business correspondence here. Nothing of importance.’

      ‘And the films?’

      ‘And the films. Yes, they are finished. Still, the insurance will cover that.’

      ‘Someone’s going to be disappointed,’ СКАЧАТЬ