Dalziel 03 Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill

Author:Reginald Hill [Hill, Reginald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-09-03T12:41:55+00:00

'Hello! Peter?' said Ellie uncertainly, standing at the open front door.

'Hello, love,' said Pascoe, stepping into the hall-way. 'Come on in.'

Ellie entered, still looking puzzled, and followed him into a comfortable sitting-room furnished in a period-less old-fashioned style.

'What are you doing here?' she asked. 'Or more important, what are we doing here? This isn't a subtle way of setting the scene for a marriage-proposal, is it? Because if this is your idea of home, I refuse!'

'It's not bad,' protested Pascoe. 'Very cosy.'

'So it's cosy! It also reeks of a-woman's-place-is-in-the-home. You've got a very Victorian paterfamilias look about you.'

'There are worse fates,' said Pascoe.

'What are we doing here, Peter?'

'Looking for cats. Or rather a cat. I've got the other two locked in the kitchen. Let me explain.'

'I wish you would.'

Pascoe had called to see Mavis Sturgeon in hospital. She was confined to bed, but much more alert now. Her main concern had naturally been for her husband, but she seemed ready to accept assurances that he was all right, but too weak to be visited even had she been fit. Pascoe had delicately probed to see if there were anything she could tell him, but the names of Cowley and Atkinson meant nothing to her. Lewis she had read about in the paper and she had an idea he was a member of the Liberal Club which Edgar had belonged to for more than forty years. She confirmed that her husband had been withdrawn and irritable for the past week or more, following a period of unexplained high spirits and excitement.

'I was worried about his retirement at first,' she said. 'He missed the business a lot. But then he seemed to come round, start taking an interest in things. I thought that ... I thought . . .'

She blinked back tears. Pascoe intervened swiftly.

'Do you know where he might have been going today?' he asked.

'No. That's what makes it so odd. He'd no reason at all to be on that road. I've never liked that road, never. Always accidents, always something.'

Pascoe had risen to go, making an automatic promise to do anything he could to help and being surprised to find himself instantly put to the test.

'It's her cats. The neighbours will feed them, she knows, but she'd be happier if they went into their usual kennels. So I said I'd take them. And as it's no job for a singlehanded man, I left the message for you.'

'Thanks a lot.'

'Why did you ring me earlier?' asked Pascoe casually.

'Oh, nothing. I just felt like a chat,' she replied.

'I gather you had one with Dalziel.'

'We talked.'

'What did he say?'

'He advised me of my constitutional rights. And duties. And suggested strongly that a woman's place was around the home. Particularly the bedroom.'

'Did he?'

'Yes.'

'Let's find that cat, shall we?'

Ellie took a china ashtray from the mantelpiece and rattled it energetically against the wall. Ten seconds later a sleek ginger shape slid casually from beneath the chair on the arm of which Pascoe was squatting. The animal purred as Ellie picked him up.

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