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perfectly with no suggestion of
tightness. Next time you see him, you really must ask who his tailor
is.'
    This was a provocation too far.
    'Right, lass, if you just came
round here to be rude, you can bugger off back to that fancy flat of
thine. What did you come round for anyway?'
    She grinned at him and ran her
tongue round the rim of her glass.
    'Actually I just thought I'd pop
round to see what you wanted for Christmas’ she said
languorously.
    â€˜I’ll need at least
thirty seconds to have a think’ said Dalziel. 'But it's not a
tangerine in a sock, I can tell you that for starters.'

    Delective
Sergeant Edgar Wield was in a good mood as he mounted his ancient but
beautifully maintained Triumph Thunderbird and said farewell to
Mid-Yorkshire's Central Police Station with a quite unnecessary
crescendo of revs. A couple of uniformed constables coming into the
yard stood aside respectfully as he rode past them. He was still a
man of mystery to most of his junior colleagues, but whether you
thought of him as an ageing rocker who ate live chickens as he did
the ton along the central reservation of the Ml or believed the
rumours that he was matron -in-chief of a transvestite community
living in darkest Eendale, you didn't let any trace of speculation
and or amusement show. Dalziel was more obviously terrifying, Pascoe
had a finger of iron inside his velvet glove, but Wield's was the
face to haunt your dreams.
    It had been a long day but in the
end quite productive. With time running out, a suspect had finally
cracked under the pressure of Wield's relentless questioning and
unreadable features. Then, just as he was leaving, Dalziel had tossed
into his lap the job of reassuring Oz Carnwath, the Linford case
witness, that the burly man on his doorstep talking about death
really had been an undertaker who'd mixed up addresses. He'd left the
young man happy and arranged for a patrol car to stop by from time to
time during the night. Then he'd returned to the station to put on
his leathers and pick up his bike, and finally he was on his way home
with all the pleasures of a crime-free Sunday in the company of Edwin
Digweed, his beloved partner, stretching ahead. Nothing special, he
doubted if they'd get further than the Morris, their local, or
perhaps take a stroll along the Een whose valley had the bone
structure to remain lovely even in midwinter, or go up to Enscombe
Old Hall to check haw Monte, the tiny marmoset he'd 'rescued' from a
pharmaceutical research laboratory, was coping with the cold weather.
    Things must be
beautiful which, daily seen, please daily, or something like that.
One of Pascoe's little gags which usually drifted across his hearing
with small trace of their passage, but that one had stuck. As he
recalled it now, he tried superstitiously not to let the thought ‘ am a very lucky man join it in his head.
    He came to a halt at traffic
lights. Straight ahead the road which tracked the western boundary of
Charter Park stretched out temptingly. Parks are the lungs of the
city, and the fact that Mid-Yorkshire possessed an abundance of
beautiful countryside, easy of access and to suit all tastes, did not
mean the founding fathers had stinted when it came to pulmonary
provision in the towns. Over the years many unsentimental eyes had
looked greedily at these priceless green sites, but that lust for
'brass' which is proper to a Yorkshireman comes a poor second in his
defining characteristics to the determination that 'what's mine's me
own, and no bugger's going to take it from me'. Try as they might,
not an acre of ground, not a spadeful of earth, not a blade of grass,
had the developers ever managed to wrest from the grip of Charter
Park's owners in perpetuity - the taxable citizenry. So the road
alongside the park stretched straight and wide for a mile or more and
a man on a powerful machine might hit the ton, though it's doubtful
if he'd have much time to digest a live chicken.
    Wield let