Free A Clubbable Woman by Reginald Hill Page B

he’ll be playing. If he’s not playing already.
    ‘My sergeant can be taking a statement from Miss Connon while we’re talking,’ added Dalziel.
    That’ll be nice, thought Pascoe, trying to keep any trace of the thought off his face.
    Jenny Connon did not seem to think it would be particularly nice at all and made little effort to keep her thoughts off her face. But she turned readily enough and went to the door.
    ‘We’ll go into the lounge, then,’ she said. Connon nodded. Dalziel wondered if he detected a hint of relief.
    The chair had been moved, Pascoe noticed. He didn’t suppose anyone else had sat in it since Mary Connon had relaxed to watch television on Saturday night. Then he laughed inwardly and changed his mind. The chair probably hadn’t come back from County Forensic where Dalziel, despite the scorn he poured on Science and all its works, had sent it. The boys down there, their work once finished, would have no compunction at all about sitting in it.
    ‘Well,’ said Jenny, ‘are you just going to stand there, all hawk-eyed, or are we going to get on with this statement? What would you like me to state?’
    ‘Yes, the statement.’ Pascoe fumbled in his pocket for his notebook. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
    ‘In my own home, I prefer to issue the invitations. Please sit down, Sergeant.’
    Only the remembrance that her mother had died in this room not a week earlier stopped Pascoe from grinning.
    He sat down.
    ‘The words in that letter were printed, of course, but even printing is sometimes recognizable. Did the writing remind you of anyone’s you had seen before?’
    Jenny shook her head.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
    ‘Can you think of anyone who would send such a letter to you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Startled, he ceased his pretence of making notes.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The man who killed my mother.’
    He shook his head slowly.
    ‘Now why should he do that?’
    ‘To divert suspicion from himself.’
    ‘How can he hope to do that when we don’t know who wrote the letter?’
    ‘But you do know who you’re suspicious of.’
    Of whom you are suspicious, Antony might have said. But it sounded a little clumsy for Antony. He never let his passion for correctness trap him into clumsiness. In any field.
    She noticed that this time Pascoe had let his grin show through. She felt like grinning back, whether at Pascoe or at the thought of Antony she wasn’t sure. But she didn’t, for at the same time she felt guilty, as she did whenever she found herself acting normally, as if her mother hadn’t been done to death, here, in this very room, last week, on an ordinary Saturday evening with the television set babbling uncaringly on in the background.
    The thought had stopped the grin even if her willpower had failed. But even now she recognized how diluted the emotional shock of remembering had already become.
    I could go out tonight, she thought. Have a drink and a laugh, no bother. I know I could. I feel I shouldn’t be able to, but I could. They’ve got to catch him soon, they’ve got to, I’ll make sure they do, he deserves it, he must be caught. Must.
    That’ll be an end of it then, some more distant part of her mind whispered.
    Dear God! the most conscious level replied, aghast. Is that it, then? Is that what the pursuit of vengeance is - not the instinctive reaction of deep and lasting grief, but an attempt to compensate for shallowly felt grief, to give it body, to make testimony to it?
    Confused, she became angry. Angry at herself for thinking like this. Angry at the police for making no progress. Angry at Pascoe for talking to her here while the real interview was taking place in the next room.
    ‘Let’s stop this farce, shall we?’ she said.
    ‘Farce?’
    ‘Yes. You don’t want a statement from me. What the hell can I state that’s any help or even needs recording? All you want is me here so that disgusting Dalziel can chat Daddy up by himself.’
    Pascoe’s face