was putting his boots on. Finished, he started restoring all the kit which Trotter had strewn over the floor to the bed.
‘Best get yourself ready,’ advised the Fat Man. ‘Tankie said thirty minutes and that’s what it’ll be.’
‘But what do I do?’ appealed Pascoe desperately.
‘Let’s see,’ said Dalziel eyeing him speculatively. ‘There’s all kinds of officers. Brisk efficient adjutant … mebbe not … Grizzled old warhorse … definitely not! Languid … aye, that’s it. Languid and a bit poncey … has trouble wi’ his “r”s, calls other ranks other wanks, and probably means it. That’s you, lad. Call him Mr Trotter like he was an RSM and treat me like I don’t exist. Stand by, he’s here.’
His ears were definitely sharper than Pascoe’s who once again had to move smartly out of the way of the door.
‘Prisoner, ‘SHUN!’ screamed Trotter.
Dalziel snapped to attention.
‘You horrid idle man! You paraplegic or what? Stan’ atease! ‘SHUN! Stan’ atease! ‘SHUN!’
Trotter enjoyed himself making Dalziel move from one position to another till the sweat beaded his huge brow. Pascoe didn’t much mind the sight till it occurred to him that Dalziel dead of a heart attack might not bode well for his own future. He had a vision of himself digging a grave under the close supervision of the Trotter twins, and when he’d finally excavated a hole large enough for that gross body, hearing the instruction, ‘Keep digging.’
He said as languidly as he could manage, ‘Ready when you are, Mr Trotter.’
Trotter’s head came round and those mad grey eyes focused on this intruder. For a second Pascoe thought the game was over and the man had decided he was after all merely surplus to requirements rather than a genuine buckshee, whatever that was.
Then Trotter stiffened, threw up a salute and said, ‘Sir! Prisoner ready for inspection, sir!’
Slowly Pascoe advanced and with an expression of distaste not difficult to simulate he ran his eyes over the Fat Man’s frame. Now what was it officers said as they went round the cookhouse? Oh yes.
‘Any complaints, my man?’
Who was it who, asked the same question shortly after call-up in 1940, replied, ‘Not one in the world, darling. Everything’s perfectly ducky’? He couldn’t recall. He doubted if the Fat Man was about to make the same answer.
‘Nosir!’ bellowed Dalziel.
Pascoe found that, despite the underlying menace of the situation, he quite enjoyed this new relationship. He said, ‘Good. Mr Trotter, has this man been shown the right way to lay out his kit or have regulations changed to permit a certain amount of idiosyncratic choice?’
Trotter said, ‘No, sir. Regulations same as always. You hear what the officer says, you horrible little man?’
He stooped, picked up the mattress and shook the kit to the floor again.
‘Next time get it right or you’ll wish you had never been born!’
He wheeled towards Pascoe and said, ‘Next inspection in twenty minutes, sir?’
The intervals were getting shorter. Must be something he could do to slow the trend. What would happen if he simply used his putative authority to say, no, make it an hour?
He looked into the mad grey eyes and thought, to hell with that! He’d probably cashier me. With his shotgun!
He looked away and saw the Fat Man’s lips forming a word. F … something. He wasn’t swearing at him again surely! No. It was food.
He said, ‘Carry on, Mr Trotter.’
It was almost a pleasure to see the expression of fury which passed over Dalziel’s face like the shadow of a storm cloud over a fell.
He got the thunderous ‘SIR!’ and the big salute from Trotter, then just as the man reached the door, Pascoe said, ‘Oh, by the way. Has the prisoner had any refreshment?’
Trotter came to a halt at the door and turned. It wasn’t a military turn and the look he was giving Pascoe wasn’t a military look.
Oh hell, I’ve bounced him out of character, thought Pascoe.
Trying not to let his languid drawl accelerate into a terrified babble, he said, ‘Regulations, Mr Trotter. Everything must proceed strictly according to regulations, or where are we, eh?’
Dead, he thought. That’s where. Maybe this was the time for the last despairing leap. Hope that one or both of the shotguns jammed. Did shotguns jam? Probably not. All right, hope that the first wound wasn’t totally incapacitating. The adrenalin of fury, or hate, or love, could keep a man going even when full of lead. Like Bill Holden in The Wild Bunch. Or Gary Cooper at the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls. No. Cancel those. They both snuffed it. Think of Shane riding off into the mountains after the big shoot-out, despite having taken one in whatever part of his apparently anaesthetized anatomy he took it in!
He tensed his muscles. All his life should be passing before him now … wouldn’t take long … barely enough of it for a loony ’toon, let alone a full seven reeler.
Trotter too was stiffening up, slowly resuming his military erectness.
He said, ‘Yes, sir. You’re right, sir. I’ll see to it at once. Sir.’
Then he was gone and the door was locked behind him.
Pascoe sat abruptly on the bed. He realized his legs were gently trembling.
Dalziel said, ‘Not bad, lad. Do a bit of acting at this college of thine?’
‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘I was always more interested in films than the theatre. I once auditioned for a part in An Inspector Calls but that was only because there was this girl helping with the production …’
Relief was making him garrulous. Dalziel was grinning.
‘They didn’t put bromide in your tea then?’ he said. ‘An Inspector Calls, tha says? Good play that. It were written by a Yorkshireman, did you know that?’
‘Yes, surprisingly, I did know that,’ said Pascoe.
‘I’m glad to hear it. And there’s a bit of Yorkshire in you too, is there, with this great-granddad of yours in the Wyfies? That why you transferred up here?’
Pascoe thought, shall I tell him that I have no interest whatsoever in my great-grandfather and that my sole reason for applying for transfer was to get away from a fascist superior whose methods and morality I equally deplored (but whom I am now starting to recall with nostalgic fondness) and whose halitosic daughter fancied me rotten?
He said, ‘A man likes to be near his roots, sir.’
Their gazes locked, the younger man’s warm with sincerity, the older man’s steadfast with understanding.
Then Dalziel said, ‘Bollocks. It’ll either be trouble with a tart or your boss. Now give us a hand picking up this lot. What the hell were you playing at? All that idiosyncratic crap, encouraging him to fire it on the floor again?’
‘I thought, sir,’ said Pascoe stooping to pick up the scattered kit, ‘that as he was certainly going to do it anyway, I might as well use the certainty to authenticate my own role.’
‘By God, lad, if tha thinks as long-winded as tha speaks, I’m surprised you ever got out of nappies. Glad you picked me up on the food, but. I bet the bugger has me doubling to the cookhouse to collect it.’
‘Is that why you suggested it, sir? To get a look around, perhaps suss out a way to escape?’ asked Pascoe, impressed.
‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ said Dalziel. ‘I suggested it ’cos I’m bloody starving!’
I believe