Dalziel And Pascoe: Under World Part 13

'Keep the animals off,' he said. 'There's a wilderness out there but they still seem to prefer a bit of cultivation.'

Boyle looked around. 'Wilderness' was extreme, but certainly many of the neighbouring allotments were looking very neglected.

'You should have seen it during the Strike,' said Downey nostalgically. 'Every inch packed with veg that year. We mounted pickets at night to make sure nothing went missing.'

'I thought it was all brotherly love and community spirit during the Strike,' said Boyle cynically.

'Oh yes. We're sent into this world to help each other, I sincerely believe that, Mr Boyle. But there's always some who don't want to be helped, and others who just want to help themselves. I'll just lock up.'

Boyle went to his car and tossed the cauliflower on to the back seat. He also took the opportunity to run back and replace the full tape on his ca.s.sette recorder before Downey joined him. He switched if off temporarily. No point in recording the noise of his motor. In fact, probably little point in recording much more of Downey. But there might be others at the Club. Satterthwaite for instance, who owned a blue car and was always so keen to bad-mouth Billy Farr. It could be worth talking to Satterthwaite again. And Pedro Pedley, a very hard man to get anything quotable out of. How would he react to the idea floated in the Challenger that his daughter's killer might still be on the loose? Unless, of course, it had been Billy Farr. But that would be a pity. A live killer was worth a much bigger spread than a dead one. That could be the way to prise open May and Colin Farr's mouths. Hint at evidence emerging that . . . that what? The trouble was, no evidence was emerging, just rumour, innuendo, theory. None of which he objected to, but he had to have that pinch of truth which would act as leavening to all the rest.

'Ready?'

Downey had come up quietly behind him.

'Right. Hop in.'

As he started the engine, his car phone rang. It was a luxury, Ogilby had conceded only after a string of vandalized public phones had delayed a terrific rape story which Boyle had stumbled upon a few months earlier.

It was the editor himself.

'Monty, where are you?'

'Burrthorpe.'

'I thought so. Look, we've really stirred things up,' said Ogilby gleefully. 'Some victims' rights lawyer threatening us with an injunction. A woman too, Pritchard, I think she was a big mouth during some of the Strike trials, so see if you can get a few quotes down there, the more s.e.xist the better. I'm giving her a headline next Sunday, though I don't expect it'll be the one she wants. Also, the police are inquiring after you at ever decreasing intervals so we've certainly caught their interest too.'

'Oh yes. Will you just keep telling them you can't make contact at the moment?'

'Naturally. Hot on a good dirty trail, are you?'

Boyle glanced at Downey who was busy trying to clean the earth from out of his fingernails.

'Oh, yes, I shouldn't be at all surprised,' he said.

Chapter 5.

It was five minutes to opening and Pedro Pedley was wrestling a beer keg into position in his cellar when he heard someone coming down the stone stair. The steps were light as a dancer's, but naturally, not furtively.

'h.e.l.lo, Col,' he said without looking up. 'Got a thirst on, have you? I'll be with you in a couple of minutes.'

Farr said, 'You saw the Challenger yesterday?'

'Aye,' said Pedley. He finished coupling the pipe to the keg, then sat on it and looked up at Colin Farr, who had stopped half way down the stairs.

'I were in here yesterday dinner-time. Why'd you not say anything? Why'd no one say anything?'

Pedley tugged at his moustache and said, 'What did you want people to say, Col? For all anyone knew, you'd read it yourself and were ready to stuff the first b.u.g.g.e.r daft enough to mention it.'

'That's what they thought? But what about you, Pedro? You were ent.i.tled to mention it. In fact I reckon you were bound to mention it!'

'Mebbe. But in me own time, not over the bar with all them dirty lugs flapping.'

'Time's now, Pedro. So what do you think? Do you reckon there's even the millionth chance there's any truth in what that lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.d's implying?'

Pedley sighed and said, 'What do I get if I say owt but no, Col? Will you try to bust my head open with one of them kegs?'

'He were a good friend to you, Pedro,' exclaimed Farr. 'And he loved that la.s.s of yours like she were his own.'

'Did he? I always thought so. But he didn't see her safe home that day, Col, like he'd always done before. He never explained that to me, not proper. No, don't interrupt. Hear me out. You've got to understand; what me and Maggie have been through changes your view of folk. It's not so much you stop trusting 'em as you stop trusting your own judgement of 'em. I went to the inquest they held on that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Pickford. If he were the one as took our Tracey, I wanted to know all about him, I wanted a true picture so I could at least dream about tearing him apart! Know what I heard? I heard his wife tell what a lovely man he were, how he loved dogs and children, how he went on sponsored charity runs, how she'd never believe in a million years that he'd done what he said in his letter. His mother were the same only worse. It got me thinking, I tell you.'

'What did it get you thinking, Pedro?' asked Farr softly.

'Only this,' said the steward with equal softness. 'If you want the ninety-nine per cent of me that says, there's no more way good old Billy Farr could've harmed our Tracey than pigs can fly, you've got it. But if you want the other fraction, well now! That doesn't trust my own judgement any more, that reckons that after Pickford there's no b.u.g.g.e.r in the world who's not capable of anything and everything! That's it, Col. That's what you asked for. So what's it to be? The fist or the keg? Only be warned. I'll not just sit here and take it.'

Colin Farr's body, taut before, was now trembling like a cable under breaking strain.

He flung back his head and cried, 'He were my dad!'

And Pedley slowly rose and whispered, 'And she were my daughter.'

'Will you come in for a drink?' asked Arthur Downey through the window of the car which Boyle had brought to a halt just short of the Welfare.

The journalist hesitated. He wanted to see Pedley but not while he had customers to serve. Before he could make up his mind, the door of the Club burst open and Colin Farr came rushing down the steps. His motorbike was lying half on, half off the pavement is if he'd been in too much of a hurry to put it on its rest. He dragged it upright, mounted it in a fluid movement which even the turmoil evident in his face could not render less than graceful and sent it screaming round the side of the building into the potholed lane that ran up to the ridge.

There is a tide in the affairs of journalists, thought Monty Boyle, or something like that.

'Not tonight,' he said. 'Excuse me.'

And he sent his car in pursuit of the speeding bike.

It was a vain effort. Fifty yards and the potholes were beginning to claim him. He stopped the car, switched off the engine, reached into the glove compartment and came out with a torch and a pair of field gla.s.ses. Far ahead through the trees he glimpsed the bike's permanently lit head-lamp flickering still at great speed. But there was a limit to the places that its rider could be going. The hunt was far from dead.

Already dying for a cigarette, Monty Boyle set out along the track. Up here the answer lay. Up here Billy Farr had come with Tracey Pedley. And back up here little Tracey had come alone, after being left alone. If she had been left alone.....

'No,' screamed Colin Farr into the windy air. It was a dank October evening with low clouds, bringing an early dusk. Autumn it had been when Billy Farr and Tracey went brambling, but by all accounts a balmy Indian Summer day with Gratterley Wood still in rich leaf and the air still warm enough for bees to buzz in and lovers to lie in. And hard winter it had been when Billy Farr had come up here for the last time to this same spot his son reached now. It was an area of scrubby common once scarred by spoil and diggings, but now with its wounds mostly healed over with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and undergrowth. Here and there, like druids' circles erected by some prehistoric botcher, stood rings of palings, laced with rusty barbed wire and adorned with ivy and bind-weed and fringed with nettle and burdock. More than the stone which marked his grave, these were monuments to Billy Farr's death. Here the council workmen had come to seal off all known entrances to the old workings like pharaohs' tombs, no doubt presenting some distant generation of archaeologists with an interesting problem.

Meanwhile the tomb-robbers were not to be denied.

Colin Farr let his bike freewheel down a diagonal of the ridge till the undergrowth and saplings at the fringe of the wood brought him to a halt. Laying the bike on its side, he took a torch from the pannier and went forward on foot. Suddenly he stopped and spun round. There was nothing to see except a graceful scatter of silver birch, their trunks scarcely thick enough to hide a man. He pressed on, finally halting by a bank of dusty gorse bushes. Once more he looked round. Once more his eyes failed to back his instinct.

Watched or not, he knew there was no turning back. He was in the grip of a compulsion as strong and undeniable as s.e.x. It might take him into the dark places he feared, but sometimes they seemed light enough beside the darkness he found inside of him.

He pulled at the gorse bushes, ignoring the p.r.i.c.king of his hands. They parted to reveal a narrow deep fissure. Out of this those early rustic miners had hewed their first black harvest home.

Colin Farr switched on his torch and, stooping almost to his knees, wriggled inside.

An hour later as darkness fell on Gratterley Wood, a dog fox sniffing the air to see what kind of night it was likely to be was disturbed by a thin wailing cry. Above, he'd have put it down to an owl. But this hadn't come from above, it had seemed to emerge from the ground itself. The fox listened carefully but there was no repet.i.tion. So, deciding the noise was irrelevant to his purposes that night, he turned and went on his way.

It was late when Colin Farr got home.

'Col, is that you? Where've you been?' called his mother from the kitchen. 'Your supper's ruined. Col!'

She'd come to the kitchen door and seen her son. He was dirt-stained and scratched, but it was the look on his face not his physical condition which disturbed her.

'What's happened?' she demanded. 'Have you been fighting? It's not Harold Satterthwaite, is it?'

'No! It's nowt to do with him,' exclaimed Farr. 'I've been down the old workings, Mam. Down where Dad died.'

'Oh G.o.d,' said May Farr, collapsing against the door- post as the strength ebbed from her legs. 'What have you done that for, Colin? What took you down there? Was it that b.l.o.o.d.y paper? I hid it so you'd not see it, but there's no way to keep anything quiet in this place!'

'No, Mam, it weren't the paper. I've been down the workings a dozen times before.'

'But why?'

'I had to know if Dad ... I had to know, and where else was there to look?'

He stared at her with a defiance which was more heart- rending than a direct appeal for help.

'If he killed himself, you mean? Is that it? Why'd you need to look, Col? You could've just asked me. You should've been able just to ask yourself! Instead you go risking life and limb . . . It were an accident, Colin. Likely Jacko got lost and he were looking for him and some idiot had taken the cover off... it were an accident, nothing to do with . . . anything.'

'Nothing to do with Tracey, you mean? Just coincidence? Up there where he'd last been with her, Jacko goes missing and Dad goes looking for him? It's a nice story, Mam, but if it's true, then how do you explain this?'

He held out a circle of imprinted metal.

She took it and looked at it, bewildered but fearful.

Then slowly he unzipped his leather jacket, and she screamed inaudibly and slid all the way to the floor as out of it spilled a confusion of delicate ivory bones.

Chapter 6.

Pascoe was amazed to find himself under violent attack the moment he got home on Monday evening. It took him some little time to work out the angle of a.s.sault and the nature of the armament, and when he did he had to double-check.

'Hang on,' he said. 'You're blaming me for what Neville Watmough's writing in the Challenger? Is that it?'

'No. Yes. In a manner of speaking, you are responsible, aren't you?'

'Speak to me in that manner, that I may hear and be instructed,' said Pascoe gravely.

Ellie was not to be mocked into truce, 'It's you, it's Dalziel, it's the whole b.l.o.o.d.y way the police function, isn't it? You don't think of people as people, they're statistics, so many crooks and potential crooks. So many victims and potential victims. You don't care about feelings, not till someone starts knocking you in the media and then you come all over hurt. Look, you cry, we're giving you protection, aren't we? And it's our lives, not yours, that are at risk out there on the front line, so you should just sit quiet at home and thank your lucky stars that you've got the best police force in the world to go along with the best TV, the best Royal Family, and the best Health Service, look at all the frogs and wogs who come here for freebies . . .'

'Hang on!' said Pascoe. 'Aren't we getting just a little incoherent? What about some of that fine old academic discipline we used to get before the war? If you want to b.i.t.c.h about the Challenger, b.i.t.c.h away and I'll b.i.t.c.h with you . . .'

'b.i.t.c.h? b.i.t.c.h? What's with this s.e.xist language? You give yourself away every time you open your mouth. Peter, you're in quicksand and you can't see it. You're sinking. Every day you're becoming a bit more of a Dalziel clone. No, all right, I take that back, he is absolutely unique! But you could be a Watmough clone, respectable, polite, self-important, thinking that a life spent shovelling manure qualifies you to pontificate on agricultural policy and technique.'

'I thought you said it was quicksand I was sinking in,' said Pascoe. 'Whoops, before you tell me that I always flee to frivolity in the face of defeat, let me quickly slip in that I've asked Wield for supper tomorrow night. Perhaps you can serve him the food we're quite clearly not going to get tonight.'

'Wield? Why? I knew you were friends - well, friendly - but you've never asked him for a meal before.'

'I've asked him now. OK? I thought you liked him.'

'Yes, I suppose I do. How's he been? I haven't seen much of him since he came out.'

'He seems OK. As for coming out, I can't say I've noticed very much change.'

'As you never noticed anything in the first place, that doesn't surprise me,' said Ellie acidly.

This reference to the fact that he had been amazed at the revelation of Wield's h.o.m.os.e.xuality while both Ellie and Dalziel found it completely unsurprising was a low blow. She knew how much he blamed himself for his insensitivity. Well, in this age of equality, both sides can fight dirty.

He said, 'To get back to Watmough and the Challenger, would I be right in saying what all this is really about isn't human rights but the Marvellous Boy of Burrthorpe? Has he been weeping dusty tears on your shoulder all afternoon?'

It was a savage blow. Ellie momentarily reeled but, like the fighter she was, rallied magnificently. All night long the noise of battle rolled, with pause only for hasty mouthfuls of a scratch supper and a couple of hours' necessary sleep. Breakfast was a cross-table bombardment and hostilities would certainly have been resumed in the evening by the fireside's glow if it hadn't been that Wield was coming to supper.

He arrived dead on time, clutching a bunch of red roses and a bottle of white wine. He was casually dressed in a pair of elegant light blue slacks, a pale lemon open-necked sports shirt and a diamond patterned lambswool sweater.

He said, 'I've left my leathers in the garage. I hope that's OK.'

Pascoe and Ellie avoided exchanging glances.

'Leathers?' said Pascoe faintly.

'Yes. I came on the bike,' said Wield.

'Of course,' said Pascoe. 'The famous motorbike. Darling, you must have heard me mention the famous motorbike.'

He did glance at Ellie this time and saw he was overdoing it.

'Come in,' said Ellie firmly. 'It's great to see you again. Can I. . .'

She looked at his burdens.

'Oh yes,' said Wield. 'I brought you these, I hope they're what you like.'

Carefully he handed Ellie the bottle of wine and Pascoe the bunch of roses. They both looked at him for some signal that the distribution had been an error, but that gnarled and knotted face gave no more away than the bark of an old elm tree.

Then he smiled and said, 'You can swap if you think I'm being s.e.xist.'