Dalziel And Pascoe: Under World Part 5

'h.e.l.lo?' Impatient now. 'Who's there?'

Still he kept silent.

And now the voice changed, the pitch lower, the tone anxious.

'Colin, is that you?'

But still he did not reply and the woman cried out angrily, 'Get stuffed!' and banged the phone down.

Colin Farr left the receiver dangling and went home.

Chapter 7.

Ex-Deputy Chief Constable Neville Watmough awoke on the Friday morning after the SDP candidate selection meeting with that dull ache of the heart which warns the mind of a disappointment before the mind itself has recollected it.

He had been rejected. Again. The local councillor had won the nomination after a period of debate so short that in a jury it must have meant one show of hands in the corridor outside the court-room. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was a car salesman, for G.o.d's sake, fit enough no doubt to sort out local problems of street-lighting and refuse-collection, but with little grasp of national or international affairs. As for his person - the suede boots, the two-tone shirt, the thin moustache which he kept on touching nervously while the anaemic tongue lubricated the narrow lips in preparation for yet another ingratiating smile - what kind of image was this for a Party with any real belief in its right to govern? Not that the selection committee itself had inspired any confidence. Schoolteachers, small business-men, a solicitor's clerk, a token manual worker, and in the chair, that fat female JP who never missed any opportunity of scolding the police like a stern aunt from the Bench. At least in court you didn't have to look at her huge splayed legs.

Perhaps he had picked the wrong Party. Perhaps he should have listened to the frequent overtures from local Conservatives to become a bulwark of their Law and Order lobby.

But Watmough was not a stupid man any more than he was immoral or opportunist, and over breakfast he settled down to sorting things out into their true relations in the chain of causality.

'It looks as if it could be nice enough to finish tidying up the garden today, dear.' said his wife brightly.

He smiled and grunted and sipped his coffee. It might have been pleasant to discuss things with her, but after three decades of conditioning to regard her husband's professional affairs as unapproachable, it would be as difficult for her to listen as for him to speak. Fleetingly he wondered if he had been altogether wise to treat, say, Mid-Yorkshire's traffic flow problems as confidential within the bounds of the Official Secrets Act. But he had made that decision and now must live with its loneliness.

At least, he told himself with some complacency, he did not blame his wife. She had accompanied him dutifully the previous night and said all the right things on cue. He guessed that he alone had detected her mighty relief when the chance that they might have had to move to London had been trampled on by those suede boots.

No, the cause of his disappointment had been bad timing. He had come too late into the race. Or rather, he had come too early. And the cause of that was his failure to get the Chief's job. Now that had been a real shock. No waking up the next morning then to the dull ache of disappointment, for he had been kept awake all night by its searing pain. It had shattered his hopes and scattered his plans, and worst of all, it had clouded his judgement. It had seemed a cleverly contemptuous act to chuck in his own resignation so quickly afterwards. He would have been wiser far, he now realized, to hang on and look around for a Chief's job in another part of the country. The local man, because he was known and taken for granted, was always at a disadvantage in such matters - except in the case of car salesmen, it seemed. No, he should have withdrawn, regrouped . . .

A clock chimed. Ding dong ding dong. Ding dong ding dong. Dong ding ding dong. Ding dong ding dong.

The sound filled him with sudden fury. He counted himself back to control with the hours . . . seven, eight, nine.

'I find those chimes a little irritating,' he said mildly.

'Do you dear? I'm sure they can be turned off. Most things can.'

Was this irony? he asked himself in amazement. A glance across the table rea.s.sured him and he let his mind count another link back in the chain of causality.

The support of his colleagues, their simple loyalty, that too had been missing. That cunning old b.a.s.t.a.r.d Winter, the outgoing Chief, had never liked him. G.o.d knows what he'd said to the Committee. And as above, so below. That gross grotesque, Dalziel . . .

He shuddered at the memory.

At least he was now free of them, free to make his own decisions. Free to set the record straight.

There was his book, a serious review of the problems and future of modern policing, based on his own experience and observation, and leavened with accounts of some of the more famous cases he'd been involved with. It was a long way from being finished, of course, but he'd shown an outline and some draft sections to Ike Ogilby.

What was it Ike had said as he returned them?

'Very interesting, Nev. Should rouse a lot of interest in the so-called quality papers and heavy chat shows. But a lot of it would be above our readers' heads. It's not as if you're claiming you get your ideas from G.o.d or anything really wild like that, is it?'

'I didn't show you the drafts with a view to Challenger publication, Ike,' he'd replied, genuinely surprised.

'Of course not. But I was thinking, Nev, in the remote circ.u.mstance things don't go right for you politically, this time. I mean - you could do worse than keep yourself in the public eye with a series of pieces in the Challenger 'But you said that your readers...'

'No, I wasn't meaning the main meat of your book, Nev. You wouldn't want to show your hand too early there, would you? I'm afraid the country's too full of unscrupulous senior cops who aren't above nicking a good idea. No, I was thinking of the more popular market. Memoirs of famous cases. Telling it like it was. We wouldn't need to take up all that much of your creative time either. I took the liberty of showing your draft to Monty Boyle, our chief crime man. He was most impressed. Monty could work with you. He'd do the leg work and st.i.tch it all together. You'd have copy approval, of course, but this way it wouldn't interfere with your serious writing.'

'Interesting idea,' he'd replied. 'But hardly the thing for a parliamentary candidate.'

'Perish the thought,' said Ogilby. 'But have lunch with Monty anyway. Never any harm in having lunch, is there?'

So he'd had lunch, and found the journalist a civilized and entertaining companion. The man had asked if he'd mind if he ran his ca.s.sette recorder as they talked. 'It's best to keep a record, especially when it's informal. Things get missed. Or misunderstood. This keeps us both straight.'

'No, I don't mind,' said Watmough. 'Though it seems a waste of your batteries as I really don't envisage writing anything other than campaign speeches in the near future.'

'No, of course not. But as a crime reporter, I'm always keen to pick the brain of an expert.'

They had spent a fascinating hour talking about famous cases, then, as they parted, the journalist had said, 'By the way, I know it's unlikely to happen, but if Ike ever does sign you up, don't settle for less than . . .' and he had named a quite surprising sum.

Since then, Ogilby hadn't referred to the matter. Would he bring it up again when news of last night's debcle reached him? It wasn't that Watmough needed the money - there were any amount of run-of-the-mill security adviser jobs he could have if his excellent pension and good investments needed topping up - but he did need to make sure he maintained his public profile in preparation for the next selection short list.

If Ogilby didn't contact him it shouldn't be too difficult to contrive an accidental meeting. But he mustn't appear to be pressing . . .

In the hall, the telephone rang. He rose and went to answer it.

'Neville? It's Ike.'

He glanced at his watch and smiled. Ten past nine. These newsmen didn't let the gra.s.s grow under their feet when they really wanted something! Now what was that figure that Monty Boyle had said he should go for?

It was good to feel back in control again.

'h.e.l.lo, Ike,' he said. 'And what can I do for you?'

Chapter 8.

Peter Pascoe was getting used to going to work on Tuesdays in a bad temper. And an opinion pollster catching him en route would also have detected a marked swing to the right, at least as far as mining communities were concerned.

This morning at breakfast; Ellie had announced that she was planning to go down a mine. 'An experience shared is a gap bridged,' she declared. Pascoe, dismayed by the idea for a pudder of reasons, none of which he could identify reasonably, wondered whether this meant he was likely to find himself going to bed with a miner. Ellie informed him coldly that while reason was occasionally democratic, ridicule was always elitist. This, coming from a woman who fell off her chair at the ranting of radical comedians, had to be challenged. One thing led to another and the other led to the usual, which was Pascoe sitting at his desk in a bad temper on Tuesday morning.

After an hour of tedious paperwork, he had declined from a boil to a simmer when his door burst open with a violence worthy of the Holy Ghost fresh from Philippi jail. It was, however, no paraclete who entered.

'He's done it!' exclaimed Dalziel. 'I knew it'd happen. Reason said no, but me piles told me different.'

'Who's done what, sir?' asked Pascoe, rising to place himself defensively between the fat man and his records cupboard which Dalziel had taken to rifling at will during the past few days.

'It's Wonder Woman's memoirs. The Challenger's going to publish them!'

'Good Lord. I heard he didn't get the nomination . . .'

'He'd as much chance of being nominated as an aniseed ball on a snooker table,' snarled Dalziel. 'We all knew that. But Ogilby was going around saying he'd read some of the memoirs in draft and it were like eating cold sago with a rusty spoon, so no one reckoned the Challenger could really be interested. But it was funny, the more folk said it were impossible, the more my piles ached.'

Pascoe was singularly uninterested in Dalziel's haruspical haemorrhoids but he found himself marvelling as often before at the extent of his personal intelligence service. If it happened in Mid-Yorkshire, he knew it in hours; anywhere else in the county and he might have to wait till the next day.

'But if it's as bad as that, why should Ogilby be interested?'

'Christ knows! But he must reckon there's enough dirt in there to be worth digging for! They can make silk knickers out of a pig's knackers, them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! That Leeds vicar last week. Caught two youngsters nicking candlesticks and by the time Monty Boyle were finished, he had Headingley sounding like a mix of Salem and Sodom !'

'Monty Boyle!' exclaimed Pascoe. 'Of course!'

'You know something I don't?' said Dalziel incredulously.

Pascoe explained.

'It fits, doesn't it? The Pickford case was Watmough's finest hour. And it was during South's investigation of that Burrthorpe girl's disappearance that it all came to a head and Pickford topped himself, leaving a note confessing all. So if Boyle was sniffing around so that he could collaborate with Watmough on a tell-all series, he'd not want to draw rival attention to it by getting involved in a court case. Only, this was before the selection meeting, so Ogilby must have been pretty sure what the result would be.'

'I told you, everyone was. And if he hadn't been, he would likely have fixed it.'

'I'd better give Alex Wishart a buzz and warn him what's happening,' said Pascoe.

'Let Wishart take care of himself,' said Dalziel. 'You concentrate on looking after those nearest and dearest. Like me.'

'But Watmough was mainly admin after he came back to us,' pointed out Pascoe. 'Not even the Challenger can make his time here interesting.'

'I wish I could be as sure, lad,' said Dalziel. 'But forewarned is forearmed . . .'

'That's why you've been ruining my records!' exclaimed Pascoe.

'They were a bit mixed up,' said Dalziel reprovingly. 'You want to watch that. Well, mebbe you'll turn out to be right and it'll all be a storm in a p.i.s.s-pot after all. But one thing I know for sure. If Lobby Lud says anything out of place about me, I'll hit him so hard with his clock, his head'll chime for a fortnight!'

He left like a mighty rushing wind.

Behind him Pascoe sat down and mused a little s.p.a.ce. There were tiny clouds no bigger than a man's hand on several of his horizons. They might of course come to nothing or even break in blessings on his head. But when Dalziel got nervous, his colleagues did well to twitch.

And when Ellie started talking about going down mines, it was perhaps time to start looking beneath the surface himself.

First, though, he owed Alex Wishart a phone call.

The Scot listened in silence, then said, 'Well, I don't see how he can harm us by anything he says. He would hardly want to, would he? It was his triumph and you don't rain on your own parade. You're worried in case he takes a little side-swipe at Fat Andy, is that it? Mind you, from what I've heard, he's got it coming to him. Watmough's no genius, but he always struck me as a decent kind of man and an efficient enough cop.'

'Dalziel took against him. I think Watmough dropped him in the mire way back when they were both sprogs.'

'Doesn't just look like an elephant, eh? Well, I wasn't on the Pickford case myself, but perhaps I'll have a wee glance through the records just in case. Thanks for tipping me the wink, Peter. I'll be in touch.'

He kept his word quicker than Pascoe expected. Early the same afternoon the phone rang.

'Peter, I've been looking at the Pickford files. You've probably worked out yourself that your own involvement is only through the Tweddle child.'

Annie Tweddle, aged seven, had been found strangled and a.s.saulted in a shallow grave in a wood about ten miles from the Mid-Yorks village in which she lived. There were no leads, and the case had been shelved for eighteen months when Mary Brook, eight, had been abducted from a park in Wakefield in South Yorkshire and later found buried on the Pennine moors. She too had been strangled after being s.e.xually a.s.saulted. A few months later, little Joan Miles of Barnsley had gone missing and the worst was feared. But now there was a common factor. Among the reams of statements taken in both cases there were references to a blue car, probably a Cortina, being seen in the vicinity. All similar cases over the past few years were reactivated. South, under Watmough, began to go through the computer print-outs of all registered owners of blue Cortinas in the area.

Then Tracey Pedley, the Burrthorpe child, had vanished too. Once more a blue car figured in the witness statements. And a week later a blue Cortina was found in a country lane near Doncaster with a length of washing machine hose running from the exhaust into the rear window.

Inside was the body of Donald Pickford and a long incoherent letter in which he confessed by name to several killings and by implication to several more. Clinching evidence that this was not just some compulsive confessor driven by his madness to the ultimate authentication came in a set of detailed directions which led to the grave of Joan Miles in a marshy nature reserve only a mile away. Annie Tweddle was mentioned by name. Tracey Padley wasn't. But once it was established that Pickford was likely to have been in the area at the time she vanished, she was put down with a few others as a probable victim.

'We did have to establish Pickford's alibi, or rather the lack of it, in the Pedley case, I think.'

'Yes, but that was hardly important,' said Wishart reprovingly. 'I was just trying to sort out where, if anywhere, you might be vulnerable to a bit of criticism.'

'I suppose Watmough could make a few snide remarks about us having got nowhere with the Tweddle investigation,' said Pascoe dubiously. 'But in fairness to the man, he never made any such cracks when he was here, and G.o.d knows, he was provoked enough!'

'So, no need to lose any beauty sleep, eh? Or ugly sleep in Andy's case. Before you ring off, Peter, there was one other thing. Insignificant, I'm sure, but it might interest you. I gave my old mate, Sergeant Swift, a ring. He was at Burrthorpe all through the Pedley case and through the Strike too, so what he doesn't know about the place isn't worth knowing. It was Swift who had the doubtful pleasure of arresting that lad, Farr, you were asking about. Now, when I told him about the Challenger printing Mr Watmough's memoirs, he told me that our friend Monty Boyle hadn't been put off by his encounter with that window. He'd been back a couple of times, buying drinks and asking questions, though he's given a wide berth to the Farr boy!'

'Asking questions about the Pedley girl, you mean? Well, that figures. Incidentally, was there any special reason why he should have approached Farr or was it pure accident?'

'He claimed it was just an accident at the time, but now Swift knows what he's up to, he reckons different.'

'But Farr can't know anything about the girl's disappearance or the Pickford case,' said Pascoe. 'You said he was away at sea till the Christmas before the Strike and the Pickford business blew up that September, didn't it?'

'Yes,' said Wishart. 'He was away, but his father wasn't. Billy Farr was the last person to see, or admit seeing, Tracey alive. In fact, he was in the frame for a bit. He was an old friend of the Pedleys, it seems, and had taken a real shine to the little girl. He often used to take her off for walks, him, her, and his dog. They'd gone brambling that day up in . . . let's see, here it is . . . Gratterley Wood, that runs along a ridge to the south of the village and there's a track runs up to it behind the Miners' Welfare Club where Tracey's father was - still is - steward. Mrs Pedley expected them back about five for the little girl's tea. But, according to Farr, Billy Farr that is, they were back within half an hour, about four o'clock. He said he wasn't feeling too well, and that's why instead of taking the girlie in as he usually did, he left her in the lane at the back of the club, just a few yards from the kitchen door. Trouble was, no one else saw her and there was no sighting of Billy Farr himself till he got home just before six, by which time the Pedleys were getting a bit agitated. Farr said he'd just been walking around by himself. Evidently he was like a man demented when he heard the girlie was missing, though demented with what wasn't clear to a lot of people.'

'Guilt, you mean?'

'There's nowhere like a mining village for gossip,' said Wishart. 'Naturally there was a big search for the girl. They found her bramble pail in the woods on a path running down to the road about a quarter-mile outside the village. There were a couple of sightings of a blue car parked off the road, but one of them was by Billy Farr's best friend, so that didn't carry all that much weight. Watmough certainly looked long and hard at Farr for a couple of days, then Pickford topped himself, and it was roses, roses, all the way for Mr Watmough and his modern investigative techniques which, we were a.s.sured, had pressurized Pickford into his suicide.'

'So it was merely Pickford's death that took the spotlight off Farr?'

'To be fair, I don't think so,' said Wishart. 'Watmough seems to have lost interest in him before Pickford killed himself. At least that's how I read the file.'

'And was there any doubt locally?'

'It seems so, though probably not a lot. Billy Farr was well thought of, a quiet fellow and a bit of a loner, especially since his accident which left him too lame to work underground, but much respected. Most people were happy to accept that Pickford was responsible. It had all the marks of one of his killings - except that they never found the body. But two child killers in the same neck of the woods on the same day was unlikely, wouldn't you say? And Watmough wasn't averse to clearing up as many cases as he could in one triumphant swoop.'

'And the few who didn't accept this?'

'Swift tells me that before Pickford died they got the usual rash of anonymous calls and notes, pointing in every possible direction from the vicar to the NUM. Afterwards there was only one, a note, printed in block capitals, It said, 'YOU GOT THE WRONG MAN FOR TRACEY. DONT WORRY. WE WON'T.'

'And how did Swift interpret this?'