Pascoe was certainly treating it as a crime scene. He’d upgraded the search of Gina Wolfe’s room to full SOCO examination.

‘You sort that, Wieldy,’ he’d commanded as if his commanding officer were not present. ‘But first off, get on to Seymour and tell him to make sure Mrs Wolfe’s room is left untouched. Don’t want a chambermaid getting in there and stripping the bed, do we?’

Stripping the bed? Was that a crack? wondered Dalziel.

‘You’re still giving the room the once-over, are you, Pete?’ he said. ‘Mebbe I should take a look first afore SOCO gets to work.’

‘Why’s that, Andy?’

‘Because I’ve been there, remember? Could be I’d spot summat.’

It had sounded weak and Pascoe hadn’t bothered to try and smooth over the fact.

‘Oh, I see. Maybe you’d notice a subtle change out of the corner of your eye, some slight discrepancy that would eventually turn out to be the clue that cracks the case, like in one of Agatha’s novels? No, I think on the whole it might be best for all our sakes if you weren’t around when the CSIs start poking about.’

Best for all our sakes? That was definitely a crack!

‘Why? What do you think they’re going to find? Semen stains on the sheets?’

Pascoe shrugged and said, ‘I just need to be sure there’s nothing to find, OK?’

‘Listen,’ said Dalziel, ‘I told you, I were knackered. Not fit to drive. I dossed down by myself. For Christ’s sake, if Gina had been there, whatever else I gave her, I’d have given her an alibi, wouldn’t I? And you’d not be wasting time with this daft notion that she might have blown Watkins’s face off and put Novello in hospital.’

Pascoe had looked at him with half a smile and said, ‘No need to get your knickers in a twist. All right, if you’re so desperate to go back, let’s go. Wieldy, you keep an eye on things here, OK? Anything comes up, ring me.’

‘As opposed to keeping it all to myself, you mean?’ said the sergeant ironically.

‘Why not? Seems to be in fashion nowadays,’ said Pascoe.

They weren’t going to leave it alone, thought Dalziel. And he couldn’t complain, he had it coming.

Pascoe, who’d parked alongside him, was out of his car already and opening his boss’s door for him.

‘Come on, Andy,’ he said impatiently. ‘Work to do.’

This was too much. Pascoe had followed him to the hotel. Followed, not led the way, thought Dalziel. Like he was scared I was going to do a runner. Time he had a little reminder of the divine order of things.

God seemed to agree. Even as the Fat Man looked for a way to slow things to his own pace, the good Lord sent him one.

‘Here,’ he said, looking across the car park to where a man was putting a suitcase into a BMW X5, ‘I know yon face.’

He set off with Pascoe in close attendance. As they approached, the man straightened up and looked round. He was an imposing figure, broad-shouldered, grey-haired, with a Roman emperor’s head and a nose to match.

‘How do, Hooky!’ boomed Dalziel. ‘Long time no see!’

Pascoe was a good reader of reaction and it struck him that this Roman emperor was reacting to Dalziel’s approach as if he’d just noticed Alaric the Visigoth trotting up the Appian Way.

Conclusion: he was a crook whose acquaintance with the Fat Man was purely professional. Question: what kind of crook was he, and could his presence here have anything to do with Gina Wolfe?

But even as the question formed in his mind he was revising his conclusion as Dalziel took the man by the hand and shook it vigorously.

‘So what are you doing here, Hooky? Bit off your patch. Can’t be official, else we’d have baked a cake or summat.’

The man managed a wan smile and said, ‘No, just a visit. Old chum’s daughter got married.’

‘Oh aye? Job, is he?’

‘No, no. Some of us do have friends outside the Force,’ said the man, his eyes straying to Pascoe, who coughed in the Fat Man’s ear.

‘Oh aye, I’m forgetting me manners. Hooky, this is Peter Pascoe, my DCI. Pete, drop a curtsey, this is Nye Glendower, king of the Cambrian cops!’

‘Good to meet you, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ve heard of you, of course.’

Aneurin Glendower, Chief Constable of the Cambrian Force. Not a household name outside of Wales, but one well known in police circles as a man of strong views who might rise even higher if he could find a PM on the same wavelength.

They shook hands and Glendower said, ‘You boys got something going on here? I noticed a bit of activity in the hotel.’

Seymour and a WPC. They couldn’t have caused much of a stir, but you didn’t get to be CC without having well-tuned sensors, thought Dalziel. He opened his mouth to reply, but Pascoe cut in.

‘Just a little local difficulty,’ he said breezily. ‘But we’d better get it sorted. Good to meet you, sir. Andy, when you’re ready…’

The bugger’s worried in case I shoot my mouth off! thought the Fat Man indignantly.

He said, ‘With you in a minute, lad. Us old buggers need the young ’uns to keep us on our toes, eh, Hooky? Sorry I didn’t know you were here. We could have cracked a bottle and had a chat about the good old days when we mattered.’

‘Yes. Would have been nice, Andy-not that I had much spare time. Got to shoot off now and burn a bit of midnight oil when I get home so that I’m up to speed when I hit the desk in the morning. Good to see you. Nice to meet you, too, Pascoe.’

He slammed his boot, got into the X5 and accelerated out of the car park.

‘He’s in a hurry to get home,’ said Pascoe.

‘Well, it’s Wales,’ said Dalziel. ‘Probably shuts at half past seven. Here, watch out!’

He pulled Pascoe out of the way of a white Mondeo backing out of its parking spot at speed. The middle-aged woman driver scowled at them, then sped off towards the exit.

‘Bloody women drivers,’ said the Fat Man, shaking his fist after it. ‘Most on ’em couldn’t push a pram straight.’

Racist and sexist in the same ten seconds, thought Pascoe. Nothing new there then, except it came across rather mechanically, as if the old sod were becoming a parody of himself. And all that stuff about the good old days when he mattered! He really should have taken a few more weeks convalescent leave. Or maybe months.

Or am I just behaving like Henry the Fifth looking for arguments to invade France?

But Glendower’s reaction had certainly contained something of the embarrassment of the successful man on meeting the one-time equal he’d left behind. In the past their leader’s national reputation had always been a source of pride to his colleagues in Mid-Yorkshire CID. Could the truth really be that he was regarded as a bit of a joke by the upwardly mobile, a cop who’d found his relatively low level, a grampus puffing his way around a small provincial pond?

Pascoe shook away the disloyal thoughts.

‘Let’s find Seymour,’ he said.

16.35-17.05

It had been a funny kind of day, thought Edgar Wield.

The unexpected appearance of Dalziel early that morning should have rung a warning bell. Looking back now, it seemed that there had been something a touch manic about the fat sod’s speech and demeanour, and there was that business about the old lady, Mrs Esmé Sheridan, ringing in with a complaint about a kerb-crawler, and giving a car number and description that pointed the finger at the Fat Man. But on the whole Wield had been happy to accept his arrival as evidence that normal service was about to be resumed.

That the superintendent had come back too early from convalescent leave the sergeant did not doubt. But when others, including Pascoe, had expressed concern as to whether the great man could ever truly get back to where he had been before, Wield had kept his counsel. In his eyes it was just a matter of time. The others saw it in terms of a champion boxer trying to make a come-back. He saw it in terms of Odysseus come to reclaim his kingdom.