*Brass Monkey*
by Reginald Hill
      
       "By the cringe!" said DCI Peter Pascoe, his teeth chattering together like tiny icebergs. "It must be twenty below."
       "Aye. Grand weather for tracking a brass monkey," said Andy Dalziel gleefully, adjusting his binoculars.
       He stood there, bulky as a polar bear and apparently as impervious to cold, peering down the tree-scattered slope to the house below. Is he human? wondered Pascoe, stamping his rapidly numbing feet in the snow.
       More importantly, is he right?
       The windows of Hollybush Grange glowed gold, and before it the tall shapely tree, which presumably provided its name, was festooned with fairy lights and topped with a gossamer-winged angel poised for f light. It looked more like a traditional Christmas card than a villain's lair.
       "Sure this is the right place, sir?" he asked.
       "Sure as if I'd been led by a star," said the Fat Man.
       In fact, the light which led them to this frozen rendezvous had been lit by an exploding lasagna rather than a helpful deity.
       Two weeks earlier a woman in the cafeteria at Mid-Yorkshire's famous Helm Museum in scenic Narrowdale had complained her snack wasn't properly defrosted. The overworked waitress replaced the dish in the microwave. A minute later, the oven exploded in flames.
       The fire spread rapidly, or at least its smoke did, filling the building and setting off the state-of-the-art fire alarm whose fearful screech made it physically impossible for any human being to stay inside.
       Except, that is, for a burly man in a Russian fur hat fitted with what must have been industrial-strength ear muffs, who had been admiring the Helm's most treasured possession, the Cellini Monkey.
       This was a figure, about ten inches high, of an ape of indeterminate species, exquisitely wrought in gold and adorned with precious stones, which the great Florentine artist had wrought for a daughter of the Medici. Its value was said to exceed all of the other exhibits put together.
       Once alone, the man stepped across the velvet rope separating him from the display area, lit a cook's blowtorch, and directed the flame at a sensor in the wall which, at a temperature of 200 degrees Celsius, released the electronic locks on the display cabinets.
       A moment later, with the monkey in a poacher's pocket inside his capacious overcoat, he was pursuing his fellow punters to the exit.
       Naturally all this activity triggered other alarms, but they were no match for the screaming siren, and it wasn't till the fire was brought under control that the theft was discovered.
       Andy Dalziel was just getting his teeth into the case when news came through that the NCS were taking it over.
       "NC bloody S!" snarled Dalziel. "You know what that stands for?"
       "The National Crime Squad?" suggested Pascoe.
       "No. _Never Caught Short._ They gobble up all the glory, but if things go wrong, they walk away and leave the locals to clean up the mess. Flash bastards!"
       The formation of the NCS a few years earlier had been aimed at providing a law-enforcement agency whose remit was to deal with major crime and whose authority wasn't limited by the boundaries of local police forces. The fact that its officers were recruited from the Criminal Investigation Departments of these same local forces was meant to have prevented the kind of rivalries and antagonisms existing between cops and the FBI in the States, but inevitably, to many of the older denizens of CID who'd seen everything and got scars to prove it, NCS officers either got the job because they were born flash bastards or they became flash bastards as a condition of doing the job.
       The flash bastard in this instance was DCI Dai Davison, who looked about eighteen, sported a Welsh Rugby Union tie, and wore trousers so tight they made Dalziel's eyes water just to look at them. "Jesus!" he muttered to Pascoe, "here's me trying to do a man's work and they've sent us the Boyo David!" before putting on his village-idiot face to greet the new arrival.
       The Boyo, speaking very slowly, explained that the NCS's theory was that the Cellini figure had been stolen for use in the international drugs market. "Big money leaves a big trail," he said. "So the major traffickers are into barter. To them, all the Cellini Monkey represents is a million-dollar marker."
       "You mean they'll use it as brass!" exclaimed Dalziel, his look of rustic astonishment terrible to behold. "D'you hear that, Pete? This is really a brass monkey they stole."
       And so the Cellini figure was christened.
       The Boyo's team hung around Mid-Yorkshire for several days, during which time the Fat Man overwhelmed them with cooperation. Requested to provide an officer with detailed local knowledge, he immediately asked Uniformed if they could spare PC Hector for plainclothes duties. They gave him up with tears of gratitude and mirth.
       Pascoe was horrified.
       "Last time they let him out on patrol, an old lady had to show him the way back to the station!" he reminded Dalziel.
       "Aye, he'll really test their commitment," said the Fat Man, looking with delight on Hector who, with his expression of haunted vacancy and a shiny black suit a size too small, could have been a Victorian undertaker's mute. "I give 'em two days."
       It took only one for the Boyo David to decide the monkey was by now probably several continents away. He took his leave, pursued by smiling reassurances that if anything relevant came up in Mid-Yorkshire, he would be the first to know.
       But as the Boyo's gleaming BMW vanished from sight, the smiles faded, too.
       "Right," said Dalziel. "Now we can get started."
       He was convinced the monkey was still on his patch, and quickly spread the word among his snouts that if they brought glad tidings before Christmas, their reward would be a choice of gold or frankincense, but if they withheld even the scrappiest scrap of information, they'd better stock up on myrrh.
       Pascoe watched all this with some uneasiness, having strong suspicions that the Boyo's ears had more chance of being pleasured by Madonna's tongue than by the entry of any information thus garnered.
       On the morning of December twentieth, Dalziel got a phone call and left the office alone. Some time later he returned, whistling a merry tune. For the next couple of days he was hard to find. But on the third day he reappeared again after lunch.
       Pascoe went to see him, but paused at the closed door as he heard a strange voice within. It was saying in a hoarse, very broad Scots accent, "Aye, Hollytree or bush maybe, in Borrowdale, that's what I said. Aye, Borrowdale, Cumbria, is there anither? And it's this selfsame nicht, definite!"
       Pascoe went back to his desk. When he returned to Dalziel's room later, he found the door ajar. The Fat Man was alone, studying a folder. Pascoe glimpsed the name _Palliser Estates_ before it was slid out of sight.
       "Thinking of moving, sir?" he said lightly.
       "Somewhere I can get a bit of privacy, mebbe," growled Dalziel. "What do you want?"
       Before Pascoe could reply, the phone rang. Dalziel picked it up, listened, then banged it down.
       "Snout," he said. "Reckons he might have something on the brass monkey."
       Pascoe stood up and said, "Let's go."
       When interviewing registered informants, two officers were required.
       Dalziel said indifferently, "No. Probably a waste of time. I'll take Novello. Show her how it's done."
       But when he returned, he was much more excited.
       He said, "Ivor 'ull tell you the tale. I need to ring the Boyo."
       The tale WPC "Ivor" Novello told was of a meeting with a snout who'd passed on the information that the gang who'd stolen the monkey were possibly hiding out at Hollybush Hall on the edge of Narrowdale, not twenty miles from the museum.
       She'd been impressed by her boss's surprisingly subtle technique.
       "This guy was really nervous. But Mr. Dalziel put him at his ease with a glance, got the info, and sent him on his way. That's the way to handle snouts, I thought."
       Pascoe didn't like the feel of this. In his experience, the Fat Man's handling of informants involved fistfuls of shirt and hurricanes of hot breath. Also the memory of the Scotsman he'd overheard talking about a house called Holly something in Borrowdale, Cumbria, kept coming back. Surely there had to be a connection...?
       But the Fat Man, on his return, made no mention of this.
       "They say the Boyo's off on some urgent case. Probably broken up for the Christmas hols already, idle buggers. Any road, I've left a message. And I've had a word with the chief. He agreed we should set up a discreet observation. Ten bodies should do it."
       "Ten?" exclaimed Pascoe. "For observation? What is this place? Some kind of palace?"
       "Better safe than sorry. See if Uniformed can lend us a few. I want 'em in plainclothes. Don't want to draw attention. Go on, Pete. Chop-chop!"
       The duty uniformed inspector was unenthusiastic, but offered three men, as long as one of them was Hector, who'd been boring them all with tales of his exciting NCS attachment. Dalziel groaned and said, "Needs must when the devil drives!" But he still didn't mention the Scotsman.
       It was already dark when the little convoy finally set off, led by Pascoe driving Dalziel, who sat nursing his mobile phone.
       "Expecting a call, sir?" he said.
       "You wha'?" said Dalziel, looking at the phone as if it had emerged from his fly. "No. Why should I be?"
       The phone rang.
       He put it to his ear, listened, said, "You're sure? Thanks."
       To Pascoe he said, "New info. My snout reckons there could be some kind of exchange fixed for tonight."
       "Exchange? What kind of exchange?"
       "Drugs, he's heard. Some Krauts. All right, don't look like you've sucked a lemon, Germans, I mean."
       But it wasn't political correctness that was causing Pascoe to look unhappy. It was his growing sense of performance, which deepened as the Fat Man now rang NCS, expressed histrionic exasperation on learning Davison was still unavailable, and left another message for him to get in touch urgently.
       "Shouldn't you have mentioned where we're going?" he said.
       "He can always ask a policeman," said the Fat Man, pulling out the Palliser Estates folder, which Pascoe was not surprised to see contained details of Hollybush, including a map of the grounds, copies of which Dalziel passed on to Sergeant Wield to aid him in the disposition of his troops when they rendezvoused in the woods flanking the approach to the house.
       Pascoe didn't bother asking how these useful bits of literature happened to be in the Fat Man's possession. The whole thing stank, and the less he knew, the better.
       But as he stood there freezing in the snow, he decided that the risk of losing his toes as well as the risk of Dalziel losing his job required one more effort to get the Fat Man to abandon this dubious operation.
       "Sir," he began.
       "Hush!" said the Fat Man.
       "What?"
       "Did you not hear summat?"
       Pascoe strained his ears. There was something ... a long way away ... rising ... fading...
       "Carol singers," he said. "Must be from the village. Sound really travels in the cold."
       "Aye. Too bloody far sometimes."
       Pascoe looked at him curiously
       "How do you mean?" he said.
       "I were just recalling my Great-Uncle Hamish," said Dalziel. "He often stayed with us at Christmas, and one frosty night much like this him and me were coming back from a walk in the park when he stopped and stared up at this line of trees, like he were listening. I said, 'What is it, Uncle Hamish?' and he said, 'D'ye no hear it, laddie?' And he began to croon this carol, 'Silent Night' it was, only the words he were singing were in German. _Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,_ that's what he sang. He'd served in the Great War, didn't talk about it much, but one thing he did talk about was Christmas nineteen fourteen -- how the Germans sang carols, and the Tommies sang back, and then they all came out of the trenches, carrying bottles of booze, and they played football together, and got drunk together. And I'll tell you a strange thing, Pete. When he said, 'D'ye no hear it, laddie?' and I strained my ears, blow me if after a bit I didn't hear it, and in German, too! Like the man said to Horace, there's more things in heaven and earth, eh?"
       "Oh, yes," said Pascoe, deeply affected, not so much by the story as the Scots accent Dalziel had put on when quoting his uncle.
       Either the ghost of Great-Uncle Hamish had been in the Fat Man's office that afternoon or -- his mind rapidly supplied the more likely explanation -- or Dalziel had been on the phone to Davison, making sure he was well out of the way on a wild-goose chase up in Cumbria when the carefully staged delivery of this "new" information he'd probably got from his snout at least three days ago came through!
       If any of this ever came out, Dalziel would be lucky to save his pension, let alone his job. Only complete success -- drugs confiscated, bodies in the cells, and the brass monkey recovered -- could keep him secure.
       He opened his mouth to remonstrate, but the Fat Man said excitedly, "Hey, look there. This could be it."
       Pascoe looked. Distantly he could see the line of the road picked out by the headlights of a car.
       Dalziel was on his radio, talking urgently.
       Pascoe said, "They're turning into the lane."
       "Yes ... yes ... Wieldy's onto it. It's a Merc, four passengers."
       "And how many in the house?" wondered Pascoe. "We could be outgunned."
       "Only two inside," said Dalziel confidently. "And no guns with this lot, guaranteed."
       "What about this other lot?" said Pascoe.
       A second set of headlights had appeared, slowed, then turned out of sight into the wooded lane.
       "Who the hell's that?" exclaimed Dalziel angrily. "Hello, hello! Wieldy, have you died down there?"
       Sergeant Wield's voice came crackling back.
       "It's a minibus, sir. Crowded ... there's kids in it ... and women ... they've got lanterns..."
       "It's them sodding carol singers!" exclaimed Dalziel. "Stop them! Do you hear me? Stop them! Don't let them past!"
       And that was when things started going seriously wrong.
         * * *
Down below, Detective Sergeant Edgar Wield had disposed his officers according to Dalziel's instructions. When it came to PC Hector, the instruction had been simple. "Put the bugger out of harm's way!" Hector, once more in his old black suit, looked so completely frozen that Wield had taken pity on him and put him in a tumbledown outhouse with the strict command, "Stay in here unless Mr. Dalziel himself orders you out!"
       Hector had spent the next hour studying the instruction sheet on how to use his portable radio. Finally, triumphantly, he managed to switch it on.
       And the first thing his frost-numbed brain heard was his master's unmistakable voice screaming, "Stop them! Don't let them past!"
       He rushed to the outhouse door and saw a golden glow of headlights pouring down the lane which led to the house.
       And he obeyed.
       From his vantage point up the slope Pascoe watched in horror.
       The Merc came speeding down the snow-covered track to the house. Into its path floundered the cadaverous figure of Hector, waving and shouting. The terrified driver hauled the wheel over, the car skidded in the snow and rammed the festive holly tree. The fairy lights went into spasm and the angel's angle of flight changed from takeoff to nosedive. Steam jetted out of the Merc's bonnet. The doors opened. Four men fell out. Two were clutching suitcases, and one of the others was clutching something Pascoe didn't want to believe in. They all started running towards the house.
       Hector tried to grapple with the unencumbered one, a tall athletic-looking figure who with practiced ease caught him in a wristlock and twisted his arm up behind his back.
       Edgar Wield appeared from the lane, yelling.
       And the man with the something Pascoe now had to acknowledge was a shotgun swung it in his direction and fired.
       There was a high-pitched agonized shriek and Wield went face-down in the snow.
       The house door had opened. The men with the cases vanished inside, closely followed by the tall man dragging Hector with him, and finally, after one last defiant flourish, the man with the shotgun.
       Then all was still below and the only noise Pascoe could hear was his own heavy breathing as he floundered down the snow-covered hillside in his master's steps while his thoughts too floundered through drifts of dreadful speculation.
       An unauthorized operation, NCS deceived, a policeman taken hostage, a shot fired, Wieldy lying wounded in the snow ... or worse...
       Mother of God! After a career signposted by burnt bridges and downtrodden enemies, was this at last the end of Andy Dalziel?
         * * *
The good news was that it wasn't the end of Edgar Wield.
       As they reached the bottom of the slope, a figure like the Abominable Snowman rose before them. They each seized an arm and kept on going till they reached the shelter of Hector's outbuilding.
       "Right, Wieldy," gasped Pascoe. "Lie down. Where are you hit?"
       "I'm not bloody hit," said the sergeant with some irritation. "I just took a dive when I heard that gun."
       "So why did you squeal like a stuffed pig?" demanded Dalziel.
       "That weren't me, that was some poor sodding owl," said Wield. "I hope it were just scared."
       "With my luck, I'll likely get done by the RSPB," said Dalziel gloomily. "Right, sit-rep. What's happened with them sodding singers?"
       "Well, they've not showed up down here, so I presume they're safe up the lane."
       "Thank God. What idiot let their coach turn in?"
       "That 'ud be you, sir," said Wield. "You said, no interference with any vehicle approaching the house."
       Dalziel glowered into the sergeant's famously ugly face and said, "You want to watch it, Wieldy, else I might buy you a mirror for Christmas."
       But the insult lacked its usual force.
       Reassured about his friend's condition, Pascoe now took stock of their situation. It wasn't good. Moonlight spilled through the fractured roof of the tumbledown outhouse to put its otherworldly touch on rusty garden tools, broken deck chairs, a slightly deflated red and yellow football. And there was something def lated about Andy Dalziel, too. After his crack at Wield, he relapsed into a sullen silence, staring down at the rubbish-strewn floor as if he saw there some image of his own future.
       Pascoe said urgently, "Sir, we can't just stand here doing nothing. We need to let NCS know what's happened, and we need to get an armed response team deployed as soon as possible. As for the carol singers, we should get them moved back to the village, then set up a one-mile exclusion zone, traffic diversions, the lot."
       Each point seemed to punch another hole in the Fat Man's casing. He continued standing there, head down, for another long minute.
       Finally he took a deep breath, as if trying to restore his old bulk, and said, "You're right. No use freezing here like three brass monkeys. Wieldy, tell the lads to hold their positions but do nowt without my say-so. We don't want dead heroes."
       "You think they might make a break for it?" said Pascoe, who'd already been examining the possibility.
       "Doubt it. They'd need to go cross-country on foot. Their car's knackered, and all the Penders have got is a sporty two-seater."
       "Who the hell are the Penders?" asked Pascoe.
       "Couple who rent Hollybush. You'll have seen 'em on the Helm security video. Homework, that's the secret of success, lad," said Dalziel. "Have I learned you nowt?"
       The thought of asking the Fat Man what particular success he believed this bit of homework was the secret of f lashed across Pascoe's mind, but kicking Andy Dalziel when he was down was likely to break your toe.
       "Very good, sir," he said. "But they're armed and have a hostage. What if they threaten to cut up Hector unless we supply transport?"
       "Tell them to start with his brain," said Dalziel. "That should take time to find. Ivor, that you skulking out there?"
       WDC Shirley Novello, who'd been lurking in the doorway observing the discomfiture of the Holy Trinity not without a little schadenfreude, stepped into the moonlight.
       "Get yourself up the lane to them carol singers," commanded the Fat Man. "Tell them there's nowt to worry about, bit of trouble with poachers in case they heard the shotgun. Oh, and while you're at it, give them this," -- he took a couple of notes out of his wallet and handed them over -- "and ask them if they'd sing us a carol afore they go. 'Silent Night' 'ud be nice. My favorite."
       He's gone mad, thought Pascoe. Uncle Hamish has come to haunt him.
       Novello looked at Pascoe, who nodded. She left. Then he turned his attention to Dalziel, who gave him what looked like an approving wink.
       "Andy," he said pleadingly. "Shouldn't you be ringing the Squad? We're running out of time."
       For answer, the Fat Man picked up the brightly colored football and started bouncing it off the wall. It can't have been punctured, and as the air inside got warmer, it began to recover its old shape and resilience.
       Like Dalziel in the past, thought Pascoe. Hit him hard and he reinf lates! But there was no way he could bounce back from this situation.
       "Sir," he said in a harsh formal tone, "I've got to warn you, if you won't ring the Squad, I will."
       He hadn't wanted to utter the threat, but it had to be spoken. The _Titanic _was going down. Unless something was done, they could all be sucked under by the turbulence.
       "Well, thank you kindly, Mr. Christian," said Dalziel. "You follow your conscience, Pete. Me, I've got other things to do."
       "What, for God's sake!" demanded Pascoe.
       There was a second of confrontational silence. Then distantly, eerily, a sound came floating through the air.
       _Silent night ... holy night..._
       "How about a little game of footie for starters?" said Dalziel.
       And before they could stop him, he stepped out of the outhouse, booted the ball towards Hollybush, and trotted after it.
       "What the hell's he doing?" demanded Wield.
       "Oh God," groaned Pascoe. "He thinks he can declare a truce like they did in the Great War!"
       "You going to ring the squad, Pete?"
       Pascoe knew he should. But he knew he couldn't. Not yet, not with that pathetic figure out there, trying to keep the ball in the air.
       "Anything else happens, you ring them, Wieldy."
       "What'll you be doing?"
       "Showing the terror of Twickers how to play a real ball game."
       And with the deep sigh of a man who knows he's doing something unbelievably stupid, Pascoe trotted slowly forward.
       "This ball's the wrong sodding shape," complained the Fat Man, who was a rugger man through and through.
       "Give it here," ordered Pascoe.
       Dalziel threw it to him. He caught it on his thigh, bounced it on his right knee a couple of times, and then, as the skills of his youth gradually creaked back into life, he lofted it high and got in three headers before it dropped into the snow.
       "By God, I'd love to have seen you in _Swan Lake,"_ mocked Dalziel, taking out a hip flask and putting it to his lips.
       "Belt up," said Pascoe. "We've got company."
       The house door had opened and a man stepped out. It was the tall athletic man who'd seized Hector. He was in his thirties and dressed in black trousers and a rather sharp black jacket over a black turtleneck. He held his arms wide, probably to show he was unarmed, but Pascoe took it as an invitation for a pass and lobbed the ball to him. He took it on his head, nodded it down, and volleyed it with great force straight at Dalziel. The Fat Man didn't flinch but caught it one-handed in front of his face.
       Now the three of them stood still while high above them through the cold bright air floated the lyrics of "Silent Night."
       "Gentlemen, please introduce yourselves," said the man in a faintly Germanic accent.
       "I'm Detective Superintendent Dalziel of Mid-Yorkshire CID," said the Fat Man. "This is Chief Inspector Pascoe, and the man you've kidnapped is Police Constable Hector, and I'd like him back."
       "Good Lord," said the tall man. "Is the man who attacked us really a policeman? He keeps on claiming so, but I found it hard to believe."
       Dalziel laughed. "Me too, sometimes. Is he okay?"
       "A little incoherent. He keeps telling us we are surrounded by cruise missiles and the SAS. But I think he has the wrong war. With the snow and the football and the carols, this is more like Christmas in no man's land in nineteen fourteen, eh?"
       "A historian, are you?" said Dalziel.
       "I try to learn from history," said the man. "So tell me what you want, Superintendent. It's very cold."
       "Aye, what we call brass-monkey weather," said Dalziel, taking a swig from his flask. "In fact, it's so cold, my brain's half frozen, which is why I've got to think aloud. And what I'm thinking is this. What are we all doing here? I can tell you why I'm here. A tipoff. We get 'em all the time. Most of 'em are a waste of time, but we've got to follow them up. So I'm here 'cos I got told I might see summat to my advantage. All I've seen so far is four men turning up with suitcases. Question is, why are they here? Could be they've come to spend Christmas with friends. Could be they're hoping to do a bit of rough shooting, which 'ud explain why they brought a shotgun."
       He paused to take another drink.
       "Thirsty work, thinking aloud," he said, proffering the flask.
       "And listening, too," said the man, taking it. "Go on."
       "So what have we got?" resumed Dalziel. "Gents turn up for a Christmas break and suddenly there's a lot of shouting and people jumping out of the bushes. If that happened to me, I wouldn't ask questions, I'd reckon I were being mugged and head for cover. Gun goes off in self-defense, someone makes a citizen's arrest on one of the attackers, that would be perfectly understandable, too."
       Pascoe couldn't believe this. He stepped forward to speak but the Fat Man's elbow in his ribs silenced him.
       The man in black nodded emphatically. "Precisely what happened to me and my friends," he said. "But the police I think would still want to ask questions, make searches?"
       "Oh aye. Cops ask, lawyers answer, everyone goes home," said Dalziel. "It's the way of the world. As for searches, you can't find what's not there. God, but it's chill! Goes right to your bladder, this air. I expect after a long drive you and your friends will be all queuing up for the bog."
       "The bog?" echoed the man.
       "Bathroom. Lavatory. Loo. I daresay you'd need to use it quite a bit to make yourselves feel comfortable afore we go off to meet your lawyer. No need to rush."
       The man in black was regarding him speculatively. "You are local police, you say?"
       "What else would we be?"
       "I am a foreign national, Mr. Dalziel, a totally innocent foreign national, of course, but I have read somewhere that here in England serious crimes, especially those with an international dimension, have been taken out of the hands of local forces and are now dealt with by what I think is called your National Crime Squad."
       "You're certainly well informed, sir," said Dalziel admiringly. "But I don't see any reason for the National Crime Squad to be involved in a little local mix-up, do you? Getting them down here flexing their muscles wouldn't do either of us much good, would it?"
       Suddenly the man smiled as if everything had become clear.
       "Prosit," he said, taking another swig from the flask before handing it back. "Yes, fifteen minutes should be fine."
       Then he turned on his heel and went back inside.
       "Sir!" exploded Pascoe.
       "Not in front of the servants, lad," said Dalziel, striding back to the outhouse.
       Once inside he said, "All right, spit it out afore you choke on it."
       "You can't do this, sir. It's just plain wrong."
       "Wrong? They've got Hector in there, remember?"
       "Come off it! This isn't about Hector. This is about saving your skin! There's a gang of drug dealers in there flushing the evidence down the pan on your instructions so you can keep your job!"
       "Nobody's perfect," said Dalziel.
       "It won't even work!" said Pascoe desperately. "Not for you, anyway. Yes, some sharp brief will probably get them clear, but everyone in the job will know the truth. You don't imagine Davison and his masters are going to let you get away scot-free? Screwing up is bad, but there's some dignity in putting up your hand for it. Trying to cover up by letting these scumbags walk free is unforgivable."
       "You'll not be contributing to my going-away prezzie then?" said Dalziel.
       For a moment the two old colleagues stood toe-to-toe like a pair of bare-knuckle pugilists.
       Then Wield, who'd stepped outside when the row began, called, "The door's opening. He's chucked the shotgun out. He's waving us over."
         * * *
Inside the warm house, Pascoe's feet began to thaw, but that was the least of his pains.
       They were met by the tenants of Hollybush, the Penders, a handsome young couple with cut-glass accents whose reaction to events was a carefully judged mixture of righteous indignation and noblesse oblige. They confirmed that the Germans were old friends and honored guests, come to enjoy an English Christmas and do a bit of rough shooting over the holiday. Pascoe tried to spot some usable resemblance between them and the couple on the Helm security video, but found none. Not even the remarkable sight of Fat Andy grovelling in apology could divert his mind from its growing sense of angry frustration.
       As expected, the suitcases contained nothing but clothing. Hector was no help whatsoever. He couldn't recall anything incriminating being said in his presence, but he did report that there'd been a great deal of toilet flushing during the last fifteen minutes of his ordeal. "Thought they must be getting worried because of what I told them about the penalties for kidnapping a police officer," he concluded proudly.
       The Germans, meanwhile, sat at their ease in front of a roaring fire, drinking brandy and chatting away about football.
       "So how much of your money's gone down the drain then?" interrupted Pascoe, desperate to score some kind of hit. "Half a mil? More?"
       The man in black laughed and said, "Don't know what you mean, but in any case, what's money? What is it you English say? Money doesn't grow on trees? I have news for you. In some parts of the world, it really does!"
       He had to translate his bon mot to one of his compatriots whose English wasn't so good, and the four of them fell about laughing.
       Their self-possession remained undented even when Dalziel apologetically invited them to let themselves be taken down to police headquarters to tie up some loose ends. The man in black smilingly replied that in anticipation of this he'd already arranged for his lawyer to rendezvous with them there.
       Assuring their hosts they'd be back soon, they departed.
       Pascoe, without consulting the Fat Man, had requested the Penders' permission to search the house. They gave it without a moment's hesitation, which didn't fill him with much hope of a successful outcome.
       He left Wield to supervise the search. He wanted to stick close to Dalziel, who'd sunk into a big chair by the roaring fire. At the moment, he didn't trust him not to offer the Penders some sort of deal. Not that they seemed in the mood for negotiation. In fact, everything about their manner suggested they were completely unworried.
       "What on earth are you looking for, anyway?" enquired the woman. "Or is that an official secret?"
       "You'll laugh," said Dalziel. "It's a monkey. The brass monkey, we call it."
       "A monkey? Good lord, you don't mean the Cellini Monkey that was stolen from the Helm? And you think it might be hidden here? How bizarre!"
       "Aye, well, I get these daft ideas. Time of life, I reckon," said Dalziel. "I could murder a cup of tea."
       "Certainly. Earl Grey all right?"
       "Why not? Drop of this brandy in it 'ull give it a bit of body."
       Some time later Wield appeared at the door shaking his head.
       Dalziel finished his tea noisily and stood up.
       "Sorry to have disturbed your evening, folks," he said. "We'd best be off to make sure your friends get back to you as soon as possible."
       The Penders saw them to the door, showing graciousness in victory.
       Outside in the snow Dalziel said, "Make sure we've got everything. Don't want to disturb these good folks again. Who's got that shotgun?"
       Novello held up the bag into which it had been placed.
       "Let's have a look," said Dalziel.
       And to Pascoe's horror he reached in and took the weapon out of the bag. The old sod was determined to contaminate even what little evidence they had.
       "Nice balance," said the Fat Man, hefting the weapon. "Even with the short barrel. Used to be a dab hand at the old clay pigeons myself."
       So saying, he raised it to his shoulder. Above him towered the holly tree. Its lights had settled down, but the angel still hung precariously. It reminded Pascoe of a photo he'd seen of the shell-blasted Basilica at Albert with its Golden Virgin leaning parallel to the ground from the ruined tower. The night seemed full of images of the First World War.
       And he recalled that on the Front, popular mythology had said the war would end when the statue fell.
       Perhaps Dalziel felt the same.
       "Put it out of its misery, shall we?" he said, squeezing the trigger.
       They heard the shot ripping up through the foliage. Snow melted. Fairy lights exploded. And the angel, separated from its supporting branch, nose-dived to the ground, which it hit with a most unangelic thud.
       Everyone stood stock-still till the thunderous echoes of the gunshot had rolled to silence across the frosty sky.
       Then Wield moved forward and stooped to pick the fairy up.
       He let out a grunt of surprise at its weight, then turned to Dalziel, cradling the ornament in his arms like a child.
       "Sir," he said. "It's the monkey."
       But Pascoe did not need his words. He'd been watching the faces of the Penders in the doorway, and the truth was written clearly there. No wonder they hadn't been worried by a house search!
       "Bit of damage, I'm afraid," said Wield, stripping off the angelic gauze. "Reckon you might have some explaining to do to the insurers."
       The shotgun pellets and the impact with the ground certainly hadn't done Cellini's masterpiece any favors, but Dalziel only laughed.
       "Not to worry, lad," he said, turning to the couple in the doorway. "Don't think it will help your defense, but you've been done. You see, Mr. and Mrs. Pender, it really is a brass monkey and all them lovely gems are nowt but paste. The insurers insist the real one's kept safe in a bank vault. I should have thought a couple of clever crooks like you would have known that. Now wrap up warm. Don't want you catching cold on your drive to the station, do we?"
         * * *
As they stood in front of Hollybush Hall watching the cars vanish up the lane, Pascoe said, "You knew all along the real monkey was safe?"
       "Aye, but I made sure I were the only one. They've got big gobs at NCS. If word got out it were a worthless copy that had been stolen, there'd have been no incentive for the Germans to come, would there? But I'd no idea where it were hid till yon car hit the tree and I noticed how it leaned over. Good old Hector did us a favor. I may not kill him after all!"
       He sounded so pleased with himself that Pascoe found it hard to point out what should have been obvious. But it had to be said.
       "Look, sir, it's great that we've got the Penders, but they're not going to make things worse for themselves by admitting to a drugs deal, are they? And with all the evidence gone down the bog, we've no chance of making anything stick against the Germans."
       "In other words, you still think it's going-away prezzie time?"
       "Without the drugs, it's still going to look like a real cockup," said Pascoe sadly. "There'll be an enquiry, and NCS will be out for your blood."
       "You reckon? Here, let me show you something."
       He took the Palliser Estates folder out of his inside pocket, opened it at the sketch map of the house and its grounds, and led the way along the side of the building and down the garden at the back. Once more Pascoe found himself treading in his master's steps.
       Finally the Fat Man came to a halt.
       "Here we are," he said, kicking at the snow. "Get ahold of that and pull."
       _That _was a manhole cover.
       With some difficulty Pascoe raised one end.
       "Hell's bells," he said, averting his face.
       "Aye, pungent, ain't it?" said the Fat Man, breathing in deeply like an oenophile sampling the bouquet of a fine old wine. "No mains drainage, see? This is Hollybush's septic tank. Everything comes here, and with the overflow frozen solid, everything stays here, too. Them Krauts wouldn't have thought for one moment a place like this might not have modern plumbing with everything being swished away out to sea. We'll need to get all this lot down to the lab, of course, to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Might leave that to the Boyo David, let the _Never Caught Short_ mob clean up the mess for a change."
       Pascoe let the cover fall back into place with a clang.
       "You knew about this when you conned that German with all that Christmas truce stuff, didn't you?"
       "He conned himself. You heard him say he'd learned the lesson of history. Mebbe he didn't learn enough."
       "Meaning?" said Pascoe.
       Dalziel chuckled richly, like bubbles passing through a poteen still.
       He said, "Another thing Great-Uncle Hamish told me on our way home from the park that night was that while they were boozing and singing carols and playing football with the Germans at Christmas, him and his mates took a careful note of their strength and disposition. Day after Boxing Day, they launched a surprise attack and knocked hell out of them."
       He laughed at the thought. Pascoe didn't join in, and the Fat Man's laughter faded and he looked at his colleague speculatively.
       "Tell me, Pete, you said you were going to ring the squad yourself and break the bad news. You had the chance. Why'd you not do it?"
       "Don't know," said Pascoe. "Maybe I really have learned the lesson of history. Listen!"
       "What?"
       Pascoe cupped his ear and strained his eyes up to the line of trees running along the crest of the snowy slope where they'd kept watch at the start of the evening.
       "Thought I heard someone singing a carol, sir. Yes, there it is... '_Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht'..._ do you not hear it?"
       For a moment Dalziel listened, then he swung his fist and punched Pascoe on the arm.
       "Bog off, buggerlugs!" he exclaimed. "You had me going for a moment there."
       "Thought I had you going forever half an hour back," said Pascoe, grinning through his pain. "Shall we head somewhere a bit warmer? I think I can make it back to the house with a bit of help."
       "Glad to hear it. There's a brandy bottle there I don't think we searched thoroughly. Merry Christmas, lad."
       And arm in arm the two men made their way back to Hollybush through the bitter weather.
       Copyright (C) 2002 by Reginald Hill.
--------
       CH003
         *Farber and the Errant Nun* by Gordon Cotler
       A screenwriter for crime films such as 1979's _Sanctuary of Fear_, Gordon Cotler is also the author of several mystery novels published by St. Martin's Press. His most recent book, _Artist's Proof_ (1997), is still in print. In recent years Mr. Cotler has spent much of his time writing short stories. Other cases in his delightful Farber NYPD series will appear in EQMM later this year.
--------
       "Seventeen years on the job, this is a new one," Jimmy Buffalo announced to anyone in the room who might be interested. As it happened, all three of his fellow detectives were busy on the phone.
       But also, as it happened, Bernie Farber, on a periodic tour of his West Side precincts, entered the squad room just in time to keep the remark from dying in the stale air. "What's a new one?" he asked.
       "Hey, Lieutenant," Buffalo said by way of greeting, and then, "A woman who looks better dead than alive." He held out a couple of eight-by-ten head shots. "Am I wrong?"
       The first picture was of a corpse, a police photo that showed an attractive young woman with full red lips, thick lashes, and eye shadow, and blush on her otherwise sallow dead skin. The other was of a mousy young thing in a bridal crown, cheek by jowl with her smiling groom. This woman was alive. She had thin lips, raisin eyes, and a generally unremarkable face. "And remember," Buffalo pointed out, "this is her wedding picture. She _primped _for it."
       Farber looked at the pictures. "Are you sure it's the same woman?" And then, after a closer inspection, "Yeah."
       "The husband says it is," said Buffalo. "But even he wasn't a hundred percent until he went over to the morgue with Tom Gluck and eyeballed the body. He'd brought the bridal shot in when he tried to file a missing-person report."
       "When did she turn up?" Farber asked. This looked like a possible homicide and he was usually informed of homicides in any of his five precincts within hours of their being reported.
       "Around ten this morning," Buffalo admitted. "I was about to call you. They'd have found her yesterday but it wasn't a pickup day."
       "She was discovered by a sanitation crew?" Farber guessed.
       "Off Riverside in the Nineties. You know the drill. On the day between collections the black trash bags pile up at the curb. The bride was in two near the bottom of a pile, one pulled down from her head, the other up from her feet."
       "Was she dressed?"
       "Fully clothed. With an emerald what they call 'pendant' around her neck, which she'd been strangled with. A nice piece."
       "So we can rule out a grab-and-run mugging. Where's the husband now?"
       "On his way back from the morgue with Gluck. So we can take a statement." Grudgingly, "Did you want to sit in?"
       "Why? You don't need me," Farber said. His wife had cautioned him recently that he was too hands-on with his subordinates and he had a sense that this subordinate felt the same way.
       An instant later he heard himself say, "But, hey, if it won't bother you and Gluck I'll hang by the door for a few minutes." Sternly he added, "Jimmy, only if it won't cramp your style."
       Ten minutes later, Gluck and Buffalo were facing the somewhat glazed young widower across the table in the interrogation room. His name was Aaron Marston and he was in his late twenties with a hairline already in retreat and neat, regular features. Except for the nonstop drumming of his left heel against the floor, he didn't move a muscle.
       The two detectives had been partners for so long their movements and voice patterns echoed each other, much like those of a long-married couple. They both opened their mouths but it was Buffalo who got the words out first. "When did you find your wife missing?" he asked.
       "Night before last, when I got home from work." Marston's voice wasn't that of a New Yorker; Farber (at the door, as he promised) would bet on a prairie state. "It must have been about eleven-thirty. I came in to the precinct but the desk sergeant said I couldn't file a missing-person report until she'd been gone three days. He said people sometimes just cut out for a while. I said, not my wife, not Claire. He said to check the hospitals." Marston set his mouth in a grim line. "I did."
       "What type of work keeps you out till eleven-thirty P.M.?" Buffalo asked. This well-barbered widower was no night watchman.
       "I'm a lawyer." He was managing to keep a tight lid on his emotions. The drumming heel continued to be the only sign that he was under tension.
       "Till nearly midnight?" Gluck asked.
       "I'm a first-year associate at a Wall Street firm, Biggers Groot. They make me earn the privilege of working for them. I'm nailed to the floor till ten, eleven, twelve at night, two, three, four times a week. Running up the billable hours. That's all they care about, the damn billable hours." He flashed a dark look at Buffalo. "Does this have anything to do with finding whoever killed my wife?"
       "I don't know that it does, but I don't know that it doesn't," Gluck said. "Let's find out. How did your wife keep busy in the evening while you cranked out billable hours? Did she frequent the movies? Visit friends?" He took a beat. "Maybe go out dancing?"
       "Nothing like that. She was a homebody. She mostly read, worked around the apartment. We've been in New York less than six months. Back home we were living with her folks. No time ever to be alone. She loved having a place that was just hers and mine." He paused and his lip trembled. "You know something? I'm not sure I like your last question. Do you think she was ... she was seeing another man?"
       "Mr. Marston, we ask the questions," Buffalo said. "And yes, we do have a possible problem here. A problem with your wife's behavior." Farber tried to hand-signal the detectives to ease off; lawyers can get litigious when their feathers are ruffled. Buffalo studiously ignored the gesture and barreled ahead. "Let's face it, you hardly recognized your wife in the police photo. You want to tell me what that was all about?"
       Marston's heel stopped drumming. He hooked that foot behind the other and pulled it tight against the ankle. For a moment he looked as though he might explode. Then he went the other way. His face softened. "You have to understand something," he said in the flat voice that held down his inner turmoil. "Claire was brought up in a fundamentalist religious sect back in Iowa. She didn't know how to dance till I taught her. There was no smoking in her world, no alcohol, church two or three times a week." He swallowed hard. "She was a virgin when we married. Yes, she left a lot behind when we moved here, but she still kept to how she was raised in the way she presented herself. In what she believed. She wore no more makeup than a touch of pale lipstick. At her office -- she was a secretary, a very good secretary -- they called her the nun. The nun, Detective."
       "When she was found," Buffalo said, "she was wearing a bright red lipstick, more than a touch of it." Here he consulted his notes. "Plus -- and I don't even know what some of these things are -- I was given this list: eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara, blush, and lip liner." He let the obvious question hang in the air unasked.
       Marston unhooked his feet and planted them firmly on the worn linoleum floor. "Why was she made up that way? Don't you think I've asked myself that question? Tormented myself with it? I've turned it over and over in my mind. And I can offer a possibility, an answer that's nothing remotely like what you must be thinking."
       "Please."
       "Claire and I came from different worlds. I'm pretty much an agnostic. We would never have met in a social setting; we were thrown together. I was working to save for law school, she was a secretary in the same office. We were acquaintances, then we were friends. Work, the great equalizer, right? Eventually I went off to law school and then I would see her when I came home on school breaks. She was someone I could talk to about the pressures. It wasn't until I finished my first year that I realized I loved her. Needed her." Again he swallowed hard. "She had a shining soul."
       The painful memories were making it hard for him to speak. It seemed to take an act of will for him to go on. "There was something about her honesty -- her 'what you see is what you get' attitude -- that set her apart from other women I knew. Set her above them. I knew as surely as I had ever known anything in my life that she would be a rock I could lean on. But, as I said, we were from different worlds."
       For the first time his rigid body moved. He placed open palms on the table and bent forward for emphasis. "Claire wanted, in whatever ways she could that were consistent with her core beliefs, to enter my world. To please me. The makeup -- don't you see? -- must have been an experiment. She must have thought wearing it would make me more comfortable when we went out -- with other couples, whatever. As if I gave a damn. She was my Claire, she was beautiful. She probably painted herself up for an hour or two a couple of times when she knew I would be home late. So she would feel at home with the stuff before she tried it with me. She couldn't have made herself up often because even I could see, when I looked at her body at the medical examiner's, how badly she did it."
       "So she just happened to run afoul of some stranger when she left the apartment wearing her new makeup." Buffalo's tone conveyed his doubts.
       "Whether it was a stranger or somebody she knew I have no idea. But one thing I can tell you for certain because I know my Claire so well. Every fiber of her being. She didn't paint her face to attract another man."
       A uniformed officer had opened the door a crack and handed a note to Farber. "From the medical examiner," the cop whispered.
       Farber glanced at the note, opened his mouth to say something, resisted the temptation to micromanage, and handed it to Buffalo.
       Buffalo read the note and lifted his eyes slowly to Marston. "Mr. Marston, did you know your wife was two months pregnant?"
       Marston's eyes opened wide, then he blinked rapidly. The single word was breathed rather than spoken. "No..."
         * * *
Sylvie said, "It's an old story -- the minister's daughter leaves home and goes wild. A revolt against her upbringing. Aren't you glad we raised our girls on a long leash?"
       "You mean because they seem conventionally mainstream?" Farber replied. The Farbers were seated at their much abused kitchen table drinking after-dinner coffee and making serious inroads on a pecan coffee ring. "Claire Marston's parents probably thought their daughter was conventional, too," he continued. He often briefed his wife on his cases; she sometimes brought a fresh perspective to them. "Aren't parents often the last to know when a woman strays from the straight and narrow?"
       "Thanks for putting my mind at ease about our girls," Sylvie said. "Actually, if there's a husband in the equation _he's _usually the last to know about a woman's hanky-panky."
       Farber paused with a piece of coffeecake halfway to his mouth. "Oh?" he said.
       "I don't mean you," Sylvie said hastily. "I'm thinking of your widower. Talk about denial, what can he possibly be thinking? The dead woman might as well have had a scarlet 'A' sewn on her simple black dress. By the way, the necklace she was strangled with? Was that a gift from the husband?"
       "What makes you ask?"
       "Because a woman going out to meet her lover tends to wear the jewels he gave her." She waited. "So?"
       "You seem spookily knowledgeable on this subject," Farber murmured to his coffee cup. And then, to Sylvie, "Marston wasn't sure where the pendant came from. He thought it might be a piece that was in his wife's family."
       "Uh-huh. Bernie, her kind of family doesn't wear that kind of jewelry. Hats off to the poor guy for trying to save his wife's honor."
       "You're beating a dead horse. The boys and I are agreed that there must be a lover somewhere out there. That's not the question. The question is how do we find him."
       "Yes, how do you?" Sylvie was suddenly respectful. "Do you have anything at all to go on?"
       "Just that thanks to the demands of her husband's billing-hungry law firm, Mrs. Marston had three or four evenings a week when she was free to get in trouble. I don't doubt she left tracks. They always do. Twelve detectives are doing the legwork to find them." Avoiding Sylvie's eye he added, "If the boys need me, I'll lend a hand." And, reasonably confident, he claimed the last of the coffee ring.
         * * *
"A secret lover? I don't see it." Mr. Pirosh, of Pirosh & Baker, shook his head emphatically. His boxy corner office had been furnished, probably by his father, at least forty years ago. He was about fifty, a big man, f leshy, with incipient jowls, and he was overf lowing his trousers and smoking a cigar that exactly suited him. "Claire was a straight arrow. And how. Best secretary I ever had. It's a damn shame." Farber couldn't tell whether the man meant he regretted Claire Marston's death or only the loss of her secretarial services.
       "How did she dress?"
       "Like a mouse," was the instant response. "Some of these girls, the way they dress, do themselves, you'd think they were daring you to come on." The cigar came out to allow for a full-press leer. "And I might just take them up on the invite if these damn anti-harassment laws didn't scare the bejesus out of me." The cigar went back in. "With Claire it was just the opposite. It was like working with a nun. That's what the girls called her, the nun. I sometimes wished she'd slash on a fire-engine lipstick, hike up her skirt, maybe chase some of the gloom out of this place. But, hey, she was a hell of a secretary, and if I needed cheering up I could always stroll through the typing pool."
       "So you'd describe Claire as plain?"
       "She _did _herself plain. Flash her up a bit and she'd come off not half bad. Matter of fact, I once suggested to Elaine -- the office manager -- that she take Claire aside and give her a lesson or two on clothes and makeup. Elaine told me she might as well talk to the wall."
       "Any idea what Claire did after work?"
       "After work? I think she went home and waited for her husband, the lawyer."
       "She didn't socialize with any of the men in the office?"
       "The men liked her, if that's what you mean." The cigar came out again and he examined the lengthening ash. "They'll tell you that I took her to lunch on Secretary's Day and we were gone nearly three hours. I got ragged about that."
       "Three hours? What did you talk about?"
       "Me. My miserable life. My divorce situation. I'd rather be in a train wreck. That woman knew how to listen."
       "Did she have visitors? Personal phone calls?"
       "Her husband would call. Her parents out West, once. I think she told them to call her at home."
       "That's it?"
       "I didn't monitor the woman. It was just if I passed her desk and overheard. And hey, who cared? She could get twenty personal calls a day, she'd still knock off more work than any girl ever worked for me."
       "Has her desk been cleared?"
       "Not yet. Help yourself." Suddenly mournful-looking, he sank into his desk chair.
       Claire Marston's gunmetal desk sat in an alcove just outside her boss's door. It was as clean as a billiard table. She had left no unfinished business on its surface when she left work, nor any evidence of her personal life.
       Farber opened and closed the side drawers. They yielded nothing of interest. In the center drawer he found an old-fashioned one-day-at-a-time desk calendar. This was where she jotted down her personal business -- buy eggs and butter, pick up the dry cleaning. On the date three days before she was murdered was a circled notation, Axel Horvel Stockley, followed by an exclamation point. He flipped open her Manhattan directory. No such listing. And yet he knew that name from somewhere.
       And then he remembered the small East Side hotel. He looked it up and dialed. "Hotel Stockley? Do you have an Axel Horvel registered?"
         * * *
Horvel was a darkly handsome man in his thirties wearing a well-cut business suit. He had already phoned the front desk to prepare his bill when Farber called the Stockley, and he was settling it, his wheeled black suitcase at his side, when Farber entered the jewel-box lobby ten minutes later. Farber introduced himself and asked if he might have a few minutes in connection with a police investigation.
       The man registered mild concern; his heavy eyebrows moved to join each other. "I have a flight out of La Guardia in two hours," he said. He was another Midwesterner.
       "Plenty of time," Farber assured him.
       He led them to a leather couch near the front door that sighed a protest when they settled on it. Farber wasted no time on amenities. "How do you know Claire Marston?"
       "Claire was my secretary for nearly three years. In Des Moines." He became alarmed. "Has something happened to her?"
       "It'll be on the evening news. She was found this morning, murdered."
       Horvel reared back against the couch. "No! Good God, how awful. She was ... She was a wonderful person. The genuine article." He put a hand to his face to steady himself. "What happened?"
       "She was strangled by person or persons unknown. You saw her recently?"
       "A few nights ago. I'm in town on business and we met for a drink after work."
       "A drink?" Farber's eyes narrowed.
       "Sorry. I drank, Claire had tea."
       "Did she seem troubled?"
       "Now that you ask, a bit nervous maybe."
       "You saw her often?"
       "Three times in New York. Once each time I've come in. I don't know that many people here socially, and Claire was often available in the evening. Her husband worked late. I can't believe she's dead."
       "Do you remember if she was wearing jewelry when you saw her?"
       "I wouldn't notice that sort of thing, but I doubt it. When she worked for me I stupidly gave her a bracelet on her birthday. She never wore it."
       "You did notice that."
       Horvel's face colored and he said, "I guess I did."
       Farber let it pass. He said, "The other night, did she tell you she was pregnant?"
       "No! God, how awful. I know she wanted a family. She spoke about kids a lot when she worked for me."
       "So you'd have expected her to tell you the good news."
       "First thing. That's the first thing I'd have expected out of her mouth. Are you sure?"
       "Yes." His cell phone rang and he fished it out. "Excuse me.... Yes, Jimmy." He took his notebook from a breast pocket and began writing.
         * * *
The dermatologist's harried receptionist was handling the phones and managing the paperwork, but her number-one priority was to make sure no one left the crowded premises without settling the bill. "I'm sorry, Officer," she finally said. "You should have made an appointment. What exactly is your problem?"
       Farber had no wish to unsettle the waiting patients behind him who were flipping through dog-eared magazines. Quietly, he said, "I prefer to tell that to the doctor."
       The young woman's face registered an immediate diagnosis of genital herpes. "Sir, I can make an appointment for you on Thursday," she snapped. "Today we are fully booked."
       No kidding. This place looked like an airline terminal the day of the big storm. Either dermatology was a hot specialty or Dr. Frayn was a hot dermatologist. Maybe both. There were three examining rooms behind the reception desk and two nurses were kept busy ushering patients in and out of them. The doctor, a pale youngish man with delicate features and wavy blond hair, was not much more than a white-coated blur as he slipped from one room to the next.
       Still speaking softly, Farber said, "Miss, unless one of these waiting patients is _in extremis,_ tell Dr. Frayn that Lieutenant Bernard Farber, _Homicide, _needs him _now."_
       That did the trick. "Yes, sir," she said.
       He was put in examining room two, where he failed to fend off a nurse who thrust a paper gown at him and ordered him to change into it unless his problem was situated on his head or arms. She vanished before Farber could set her straight.
       Just as he was beginning to regret that he had taken this part of the investigation from Buffalo and Gluck, Dr. Frayn slipped into the room, soft-voiced and reassuring. "How may I help you?" he murmured. A hundred patients might be waiting out front, his sole interest at the moment was this paunchy man with a paper gown under his arm. He settled into a chair as though he had all day. His pale eyes leaked concern, his bedside manner was king-sized. If Farber had acne he would make for this man like a shot.
       He said, "I'm not a patient, Doctor. I'm a police officer, Lieutenant Farber, investigating a homicide. You might be able to help."
       Nobody had briefed the doctor. He sat up straight and his mouth dropped open. "Help? Help how?" he asked. No longer the comforting father figure, he seemed at a loss for a proper posture.
       Command of the situation had shifted to Farber. He put the paper gown on a shelf. "You have a patient named Claire Marston," he said and watched for a reaction.
       "I do?" Dr. Frayn replied. And then, more composed, "I'm not a primary-care physician, Lieutenant. I have a great many patients. I know only a fraction of them by name."
       "You might remember this one."
       Dr. Frayn searched Farber's face for some further explanation, then opened the door a crack. "Helen," he called, "please bring me the record of -- " he turned to Farber -- "Claire...?"
       "Marston."
       "Claire Marston." He closed the door and danced his fingers on the arms of his chair. "Are you looking for an opinion on a forensic question? I did once testify in a trial...." He trailed off in a half-question.
       "Why don't we wait for the patient's record?" Farber said.
       It was handed in by the nurse a moment later, a single sheet in a file folder. Dr. Frayn glanced at it and then looked at Farber. Farber said, "Does that refresh your recollection?"
       Dr. Frayn said, "I see that this woman made one visit, a couple of months ago. With a rash on her left forearm. I prescribed an antibiotic lotion. As a matter of fact, I gave her a sample that I believed would be sufficient to clear up the minor problem. Apparently it did, as she never returned."
       "And you've never seen her since?"
       "Not that I can recall. Her problem was not interesting enough to make a lasting impression."
       "How about the woman herself? Maybe she made an impression." Farber opened the Manila envelope he was carrying and removed the eight-by-ten bridal picture of Claire Marston. "Does this refresh your recollection?"
       Dr. Frayn studied the picture. "I can't say that it does." His soft gray eyes looked pleadingly at Farber. "Would you please tell me what this is about?"
       "I was just about to do that. Is your home phone number -- " Farber was consulting his notebook -- "914-555-4387?"
       "That's right, I live in Westchester. Tarrytown, to be precise." The doctor was looking more and more troubled.
       "According to the phone company, calls were made from Mrs. Marston's home phone to yours."
       Instantly, "To my home? That's some kind of mistake. A misdial. A wrong number."
       "Six calls over three weeks? All in evening hours."
       "It's some kind of mistake. She must have a friend with a similar number."
       "No similar number was dialed. It's true that the calls were all brief. The longest was two minutes." He took his time. "Maybe to stay on longer would have been awkward."
       The doctor's pale face was suffused with color. "See here, I know what you're implying. Look, I'm a married man. I have a child. I don't make dates with patients."
       "Or anybody?"
       "That's none of your business. Who is this woman?"
       "It's 'Who _was _this woman?' She was murdered day before yesterday. If I were you, I'd talk to your lawyer."
         * * *
"That's got to be our man," Jimmy Buffalo said. He was pleased with himself for having thought to check the Marstons' phone records.
       "If he is, you've still got a long way to go to make a case," Farber said. He, Buffalo, and Gluck had gathered in the detectives' squad room late in the day. "Ten minutes' worth of phone calls do not add up to a relationship. Who knows, maybe Claire's rash was itching. If she and the doctor rendezvoused, where was it? You'll have to _shlep _their pictures all over town looking for someone who can put them together. Until you make that match, you've got nothing to show an ADA."
       "How about the pendant?" Gluck said. "That should help."
       "It might," Farber said. Gluck had traced the emerald pendant to a 47th Street jeweler who dealt in antique pieces. The man, an ancient Hassidic Jew with fading eyes and memory, was unable to describe the buyer except to say that he was a man, he had paid eleven hundred dollars cash for the piece a few weeks ago and, oh yes, he had asked if he could return it if the lady didn't like it. The jeweler had said yes, within thirty days.
       "So they had a conversation," Farber had observed. "Might he recognize the buyer's voice?"
       "What do you think? I had to speak directly into his 'good' ear to get through. The doctor knew where to shop."
       So that's how things stood after a day's loss of shoe leather by Buffalo, Gluck, and a platoon of detectives. They had checked out the other tenants in the Marstons' brownstone and the neighbors had confirmed Marston's assessment of his wife's pristine character. Tomorrow the team would start nosing discreetly into Dr. Frayn's life. They were bound to turn up something. But right now it was getting late and wives were holding dinner. It was time to adjourn.
       Then Buffalo remembered one more item he thought Farber might want to see. Marston had given him a computer printout from his office of his billable hours. He hoped it might be of some use to the investigation, since it showed how often he had worked late and how late he had worked.
       Farber took the stack of paper. "Why so many pages?" he said.
       "Marston may be a first-year associate but his firm bills clients two hundred and fifty dollars an hour for his services. Broken down into fifteen-minute increments."
       Farber shook his head in wonder. He said, "My mother warned me I was going into the wrong line of work."
         * * *
Sylvie was in bed asleep when he arrived home at nearly midnight. An open book, facedown across her midsection, suggested that she had tried to wait up for him. She hadn't even taken off her reading glasses. He removed those gently and placed them on her night table and turned off her reading light. He was grateful that she wasn't awake; she would have asked a lot of questions it was too soon to answer.
       Ten minutes later he was drifting off to sleep himself. His last thought was to thank himself for doing everything by the book. Axel Horvel's phone number in Des Moines was inscribed in his notes.
       In the morning, while he pretended to be asleep with his head buried in the pillow, he could hear Sylvie as she bustled about getting ready for work. She had to make a 7:35 train to Westchester and occasionally she was out the door before Farber was out of bed. Now he could sense her frustration as she rattled coat hangers. When he knew she absolutely had to leave or she would miss her train he faked a wake-up stretch and roused himself from the bed to pad after her out of the room. He gave her a sleepy goodbye kiss at the front door.
       She said, "Bemie, did you manage to get some dinner?" And then, more to the point, "For heaven's sake, what's happening in your garbage-bag murder?"
       He said, "The boys are on it. I'll be checking with them later today." His face was the picture of innocence. "Didn't you tell me not to be so hands-on?"
       Her look said, _I know exactly what you're doing._ But she said only, "Goodbye, Bernie," turned crisply, and was out the door.
       "When I got home I had a piece of cheese," he called after her.
         * * *
Farber arrived home before his wife that evening. Partly in celebration of the day's developments and partly out of guilt for having teased Sylvie this morning, he had stopped at Zabar's and picked up a few ounces of smoked sturgeon and a couple of bagels. By the time she opened the front door he had the goodies laid out on the kitchen table and he had filled a pitcher with ice in preparation for making a couple of his famous dry martinis.
       Sylvie took one look at the festive board and said, "You've made an arrest."
       "Not yet. But imminently. Imminently."
       "Tell me," she said. She slipped off her coat and draped it over a chair back rather than take the time to hang it in the closet. "No, let me guess. Claire Marston's lover killed her when she told him he was the father of her child. The beast didn't want to hear that. Did you track him down through the emerald pendant?"
       "Very good, Sylvie. In part. It was the pendant that set me thinking." He was mixing the martinis and he stopped talking. His practiced hand was measuring out enough vermouth to mellow the gin but not so much as to give the mix a winy taste. He stirred briskly and poured the drinks. Not until he had handed Sylvie hers and taken an approving sip of his did he feel free to continue. Not a moment too soon. She was ready to throttle him.
       "The man who bought the pendant," Farber said, "asked the jeweler if it could be returned. Does a woman say 'I don't like it' to a gift from a lover? More likely the husband was thinking ahead to recouping his eleven-hundred-dollar investment once Claire was dead. I checked a printout of the husband's hours of work against a series of phone calls from his home to a doctor Claire had seen. Was she arranging assignations with him?"
       "Was she?" Sylvie wanted to know. She hadn't touched her drink.
       "Highly unlikely. The calls were made not on nights when the husband was working late but on nights when he was home."
       Sylvie took a moment. "You mean _he _made them? The wife would have been home, too. Could he take that chance?"
       "Why not? The calls were brief. He could have made them when she was out of the room, posing as a telemarketer or a charity pitchman. Or even when she was in the room, if he said, 'Sorry, wrong number' and then dialed another."
       Sylvie's mind had already leaped ahead. "But the heavy makeup -- "
       "Part of Marston's overall plan. A nice try at misdirection. Persuade us of Another Man out there and we might not focus on the usual prime suspect in a domestic murder, the spouse. He must have coaxed Claire to try the makeup and then strangled her with the pendant he'd bought. Or -- a grisly thought -- he could have applied the makeup himself after he'd killed her."
       Sylvie paled and took a deep gulp of her martini. "My God," she whispered, and then, "I'm resisting that scenario. I'm a romantic, Bernie. I'm resisting the husband as the murderer. All you have for sure is the timing of the phone calls. Pretty thin stuff. Everything else is sheer speculation."
       "So far. But we've subpoenaed Marston's bank records. He'll have some explaining to do if he drew out enough money recently to pay for the pendant."
       Sylvie's mouth was set in a grim line. "He'd need a powerful motive to hatch a plot that ugly."
       "True. Like not wanting to be married to Claire, not wanting a baby."
       "Then why did he marry her in the first place?"
       "My very question. I called her old boss in Des Moines this afternoon. He told me Marston went to law school on Claire's inheritance from her grandmother. That explains the marriage. He never intended it to last. Claire's pregnancy spoiled his chance for a graceful exit into a brilliant career. She would never have agreed to an abortion."
       "Can he really be that cold-blooded?"
       "He's a corporate lawyer."
       "I'm not big on capital punishment. In this case I would make an exception."
       "No. If he's guilty the right punishment for Marston is life without parole. Fifty years -- eighteen thousand days -- without a single billable hour. A lawyer's ultimate nightmare."