He took a small evidence bag out of his pocket and handed it over, his face a mask of studied neutrality.

Pascoe examined it for a moment then said, ‘Thanks, Dennis. You wait in the car park for SOCO. Take them up in the service lift; let’s keep the management happy, eh? I may want to buy you a drink here some day.’

Which, interpreted, meant, You’ve done well, but this is between us, OK?

He found Dalziel standing in Gina Wolfe’s room looking pensively at the bed.

Pascoe said, ‘No, she didn’t find it, Andy. Seymour did.’

He held up the plastic bag.

It contained a note scrawled in a hand as familiar to members of Mid-Yorkshire CID as their own.

It read Sorry to pass out on you, put it down to old age. Next time I’ll try to stay awake! I’ll be in touch. A.

‘I did wonder,’ said Dalziel, apparently unfazed. ‘Was a time when Dennis would have handed it over to me.’

‘Tempora mutantur,’ said Pascoe, who often armoured himself with pedantry in anticipation of a verbal skirmish with the Fat Man. ‘So you thought you’d get up here first just in case it was still lying around. And your exquisite reason, knight?’

‘Nowt that you’d call exquisite, but reason enough,’ said Dalziel. ‘It’s nothing to do with the case, but it could be misinterpreted.’

The two men stood and looked at each other. Dalziel was not used to feeling vulnerable but he felt vulnerable now. That his unofficial activities might have put a junior officer at risk was bad enough. The fact that he admitted to sleeping off an excessively vinous lunch in a suspect’s hotel room made matters worse. But the inference drawable from the note that he had passed out as he attempted to have sex with Gina, still giving her the time to head out to Loudwater Villas and confront her errant husband, added an element of black farce that he might find hard to survive both personally and professionally.

To a ruthless rival to his throne, this was a perfect opportunity to achieve his goal with the gentlest of pushes. Even someone as upright and decent as Peter Pascoe had to do nothing but play things by the book to make his boss’s position very difficult.

Pascoe put the bag back in his pocket and said wearily, ‘From now on, just talk to me, Andy, OK? One more time I’m left not knowing what’s going on will be one time too many. Now bugger off out of here. I’ll see you downstairs.’

Dalziel left. He felt good, not because of what he’d done-nothing to feel good about there-but because of his part in making Pascoe what he’d become. It was going to be hard, but it was time to let go. Not step aside, that would be too easy. And in any case, he was far from ready to step aside. This too would pass and the tempora would bloody well mutantur back again! But his first task once he was safely back on the throne must be to make sure his loyal lieutenant got lift-off.

Meanwhile he was a cop and he was still on the case.

He went downstairs to reception and asked the woman on duty to get hold of the car-park security video for that afternoon. While she was sorting that, he checked the record of incoming phone calls and made a couple of notes. The receptionist then took him into her inner office where she’d linked the car-park video to her computer. It was a good system. When they’d had their bit of bother a year back, he’d read the riot act to Lionel Lee. ‘You’d not give your guests nylon sheets and scratchy bog-paper, would you? So why sell ’em short with cheap security?’ It was a message Lee had taken to heart. There’d been an attempt to break into the hotel office only last weekend, but it had been thwarted by the new levels of security installed since Dalziel’s lecture.

First he checked the period immediately after Gina had thrown him out of her bedroom. It didn’t take long to spot her departure less than thirty minutes after he’d left. Then he went right back to lunchtime and studied what he found there with great interest.

‘Anything else I can help you with, just ask, won’t you?’ murmured the receptionist in his ear. She was keen to know what was going on.

‘Can I print some stills from this video?’ he asked.

‘Of course. Like me to do it for you?’

She leaned over him, her soft bosom resting on his broad shoulder.

‘There,’ she said huskily. ‘Anything else you want?’

She were either very nosy or she liked the cut of his rig. Odds on the former, but he didn’t have time to find out.

‘Aye,’ said Dalziel. ‘That lad, Pietro, who were in charge of the terrace this lunchtime, he still around?’

While the woman was checking that, he helped himself to the guest registration book. One thing he found there made him laugh out loud, causing the receptionist to glance at him curiously. Get a grip! he admonished himself. This is serious business.

Pietro arrived and Dalziel sat down with him in the reception lounge. As he sank into the chair, his elephantine buttocks obliterated the imprint left by Vince Delay a little time before.

‘Right,’ said the Fat Man. ‘I’ve got a lot of questions and not much time, so let’s not bugger about. Answer me straight and you and me will stay friends, and I’m a good friend to a likely lad. But fuck me around and tha’ll be on an early boat back home to sunny Italy, OK?’

‘Bus, sir.’

‘Eh?’

‘It ’ud be a bus back home to ’uddersfield.’

His accent had changed from Mediterranean mandolin to Yorkshire tuba.

Dalziel laughed out loud.

‘I think thee and me are going to get along famously,’ he said. ‘First, who does the table selection on the terrace at lunchtime?’

‘That would be me, sir. Guests state their preference and I try to oblige them.’

‘So how come I got the best table overlooking the garden even though it weren’t booked till this morning?’

‘That were Mr Lee, the manager. He told me to change it.’

‘That must have meant you bumping some poor sod.’

‘Yes, sir. A Mr and Mrs Williams. They’re staying at the hotel.’

Dalziel nodded, unsurprised, and said, ‘Take a look at these pictures. Recognize any of ’em?’

He showed him the photos he’d printed from the security video.

Pietro picked out three faces he recognized as belonging to hotel guests.

‘Any of them on the terrace at lunchtime?’

‘The only one I can be sure of is Mr Delay,’ said Pietro. ‘Him and his sister.’

‘Have they been staying here long?’

‘A week, I think.’

‘Oh aye?’ said the Fat Man, rather disappointed. ‘But they were definitely around at lunchtime?’

‘Yes, sir. On the upper terrace. They left without having their puddings.’

‘More fools them, Notice a young lass by herself? Brown hair, nice knockers.’

Pietro grinned.

‘Yes, I did. She were another one who shot off before her order came.’

They spoke a little longer, after which Dalziel took out his mobile and began making calls.

When Pascoe joined him a few minutes later, Dalziel said, ‘Gina Wolfe had a call fifteen minutes after I left. I’ve checked the number. Unregistered pay-as-you-go. A few minutes later she rang down to say she were leaving. She used their express check-out which meant she didn’t have to come down to the desk. Security video shows her in the car park at twenty past four. She seems to be checking around like she’s worried someone might be watching her. Then she drives away.’

‘But where to? No word that she’s been spotted yet?’

‘If she stays on the main roads, we’ll soon have her,’ said Dalziel confidently.

‘Fine. Anything else?’

‘Mebbe.’

Pascoe gave him his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger look and the Fat Man said, ‘Nay, lad, I’m not holding out on you. Just I don’t want to waste time chatting about stuff that may be owt or nowt till I’m sure of it.’

Pascoe was saved from having to decide whether to make a stand or not by his phone ringing.

He looked at the display and saw it was Wield.