Chapter 2

      Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was a big man. When he took his jacket off and dropped it over the back of a chair it was like a Bedouin pitching camp. He had a big head, greying now; big eyes, short-sighted, but losing nothing of their penetrating force behind a pair of solid-framed spectacles; and he blew his big nose into a khaki handkerchief a foot-and-a-half square. He had been a vicious lock forward in his time, which had been a time before speed and dexterity were placed higher in the list of a pack’s qualities than sheer indestructibility. The same order of priorities had brought him to his present office.

      He was a man not difficult to mock. But it was dangerous sport. And perhaps therefore all the more tempting to a detective sergeant who was twenty years younger, had a degree in social sciences and read works of criminology.

      Dalziel sank over his chair and scratched himself vigorously between the legs. Not absent-mindedly – nothing he did was mannerism – but with conscious sensuousness. Like scratching a dog to keep it happy, a constable had once said within range of Dalziel’s very sharp hearing. He had liked the simile and therefore ignored it.

      ‘You should have seen him, Pascoe. He went round their cover like a downhill skier round a line of snowmen. And he was a big lad, mark you. Still is, of course. But even then. Not one of your bloody Welsh dwarfs, but a good solid-built English fly-half. How we roared! He’d have captained the Lions if we’d been selectors.’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Pascoe with the resigned condescension of one certain of the intellectual superiority of Association Football.

      ‘Graceful, too. Ran upright. Always looking for the quickest way to the line. God, he found it that day. He was picked for the final trial, of course. Nearest thing to a certainty since Lily Jones left Crown Street. Then bang! his ankle went. The week before. No one’s fault. He was overtaken by a loose scrum. Never afraid to mix it, was Connie. Solid defender, sharp attacker. But he never came again after that. Played for another eight years. No difficulty in holding his place in the club. Stood up for the County a dozen times. But never sniffed at a cap again. But he was a great runner with the ball, a great player.’

      He nodded two or three times and smiled faintly as though at some pleasant memory.

      ‘A great player.’

      ‘Then he could hardly commit a murder, could he?’ said Pascoe, hoping by this irony to recall his superior to the realities of their work.

      ‘No. Probably not. Or not one like this. He’d use his head, that one. Which,’ added Dalziel, standing up and walking to the window, ‘is what you should do, Pascoe, before wrapping up another of your little ironies for me.’

      Pascoe refused to be squashed.

      ‘Perhaps he is using his head, sir. Perhaps he is, in the sporting idiom, selling us a dummy.’

      Dalziel flung up the window with a ripping sound from the parts where the paint had fused, and let in a solid cube of icy air which immediately expanded to fit the room.

      ‘No one ever sold me a dummy. Point yourself at the man and bugger the ball, you can’t go wrong.’

      ‘But which man?’ said Pascoe.

      ‘No,’ said Dalziel, slapping his thigh with a crack which made Pascoe wince, ‘at this stage the question is, which bloody ball? Is that enigmatic enough for your scholarship, eh?’

      Pascoe had grown used to jokes about his degree when a constable, but Dalziel was the only one who hung his wit on it now.

      The trouble is, he thought, looking at the broad slope of the back whose bulk stopped the light but not the draught, the trouble is, deep down he believes that everyone loves him. He thinks he’s bloody irresistible.

      ‘What did you make of him last night anyway?’

      ‘Not much. That doctor of his had pumped him full of dope and was hovering around like a guardian angel when I got there.’

      Dalziel snorted.

      ‘At least you saw him. He was tucked up in bed by the time I arrived. I’d have liked a go at him while the iron was hot.’

      ‘Yes, sir. The early bird …’

      ‘Only if it knows what it’s all about, Pascoe.’

      Pascoe did not let even the ghost of a smile appear on his lips. He went on speaking.

      ‘In any case, the iron wasn’t all that hot at eleven. She’d been dead at least three hours, possibly five. The room temperature seems to be a rather uncertain factor. Signs of a big fire, but the place was like an ice-box by the time we got there. That was a sharp frost that set in last night.’

      ‘Bloody science. All it does is give us reasons for being imprecise. I can manage that without logarithms.’

      ‘The cause of death’s a bit more exact, isn’t it, sir?’

      ‘Oh, yes.’

      Dalziel rippled through the papers scattered on the desk before him. Pascoe tried to show none of the offence this lack of organization caused him.

      ‘Here we are. Skull fracture … bone splinters into frontal lobes … blow from a metal implement, probably cylindrical … administered with great force to the centre of forehead … perhaps long enough to permit a two-handed grip. That’s a great help. Found anything yet, have they?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘I should bloody well think not, eh? Not if you knew and I didn’t. Where is this man, anyway?’

      Pascoe pushed back his stiffly laundered white cuffs to glance at his watch.

      ‘The car went for him half an hour ago.’

      ‘Waiting for him to finish breakfast, I expect. Hearty, I hope. He’ll need his strength.’

      Pascoe raised his eyebrows.

      ‘I thought you said …’

      ‘I