'I might, I might,' said Pascoe to the dead phone. But he doubted if he would. Harrogate, Leeds, they were off his patch and Dalziel didn't sound as if he was about to let him go drifting west on a wild goose chase. No, he'd have to get someone local to check that this woman, Linda Abbott, had all her teeth. On the other hand, he'd promised Penelope Latimer that he'd handle it with tact. What he needed was an excuse to find himself in the area.

The phone rang.

'Have you got paralysis?' bellowed Dalziel.

Thirty seconds later he was in the fat man's office.

'There's a meeting this afternoon. Inter-divisional liaison. Waste of fucking time so I've told 'em I can't go, but I'll send a boy to observe.'

'And you want me to suggest a boy?' said Pascoe brightly.

'Funny. It's four-thirty. Watch the bastards. Some of them are right sneaky.'

'One thing,’ said Pascoe. 'Where is it?'

'Do I have to tell you everything?' groaned Dalziel. 'Harrogate.'

Chapter 4

Pascoe had no direct experience of the polygamous East, but he supposed that, with arranged marriages thrown in, it was possible for a man to know a woman only in her wedding dress and total nudity. But would he recognize her if he met her in the street? Pascoe doubted it. He regarded the gaggle of women hanging around outside the school gates and mentally coated each in turn with blood. It didn't help.

He'd come to see Linda Abbott hoping that the law-breaking forecast by Penny Latimer would not be too blatant. Now he wished that he'd found the woman leaning against a lamp post smoking a reefer and making obscene suggestions to passers-by. Instead he'd found himself at the front door of a neat little semi, talking to an angry Mr Abbott who had been roused from the sleep of the just and the night-shift worker by Pascoe's policeman's thumb on the bell push.