Reginald Hill - The Wood Beyond

'What shall I do, sir?' asked Pascoe.

'You, Pete? Why, I'd have thought you'd have signed off by now, having spared us a good couple of hours of your time today. Tell you what. You were going on about wanting an excuse to ask Tom Batty some more questions. Why don't you pop out to Kirkton and if you see your way to fitting it in, pick up Dr David and bring him back for questioning? But only if it's not going to interfere with your own plans of course.'

Dalziel's ironic touch made Ian Paisley sound like Jane Austen.

'I'll do that, sir,' said Pascoe.

'I'd be grateful. And do us a favour, lad. Try to keep at least one foot in the nineties!'

'I'll try,' said Peter Pascoe.

Slow and perilous was the journey westward, with flooded roads and fallen trees. Three times the drapes of darkness swirling in his headlamps' beam were drawn back by the emergency services, and for a moment, like the Venerable Bede's sparrow, he passed through a salient of light across which stretcher-bearers bore the wounded and the dead from the wreckage of their lives.

Kirkton lay in darkness. The power lines must have come down. Only the red glow of coal and the buttermilk light of candles limned the curtained windows. So must the village have looked when it still was a village eighty years ago. But an inflammation of the sky beyond the massive fortress wall told him that ALBA lived up to its name in this at least, summoning up the dawn of its own generators when the national grid failed.

They were expecting him at the Maisterhouse. Of course the gateman would have rung through. But as he entered the long sitting room and saw them grouped around the fireplace — Thomas Batty serious and watchful — Janet Batty, Bertie Grindal's daughter, uncertain and anxious; Dr David, the main object of his visit, smiling and welcoming — he got a sense of expectancy deeper rooted than mere foreknowledge.

It was David Batty who spoke.

'Chief Inspector Pascoe. . Peter.. good to see you again. Take a pew. And take some tea too. No use offering anything stronger, I suppose?'

He seemed too genuinely at ease for it to be wholly an act, confirming Pascoe's feeling that their expectancy had nothing to do with what had happened at Wanwood — today, at least. So don't break the mood, he thought as he sat down. Time enough to reveal his official purpose.

He said, 'Nothing for me, thanks. Aren't you going to sit down too?'

They were still looming over him. David Batty grinned and slumped into a deep armchair while his parents perched awkwardly on the edge of a chaise longue which looked sculpted rather than upholstered.

Whatever they have to tell me, thought Pascoe, is going to be told through necessity not choice. They must be shown that I know too much now to be diverted from pursuing the whole truth.

He said, 'Mr Batty, last time we met I think I mentioned to you that I had a family connection with Kirkton. I had a slight suspicion then that you knew something more about the Pascoe connection than you were letting on, and that the knowledge that I was one of the Kirkton Pascoes came as a bit of a shock to you.'

'No. Why should it?' denied the man unconvincingly.

'Good question. I wondered about it myself. Then as I later discovered a fairly close connection between your family and mine a generation or so back, I thought perhaps you too were somehow aware of it. But it still didn't explain the intensity of your reaction. Then yesterday — or rather early this morning — '

He stifled an associative yawn as his words reminded him how little sleep he'd had.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I discovered or at least developed a strong suspicion of something quite extraordinary, to wit, that the bones discovered out at Wanwood belonged to my great-grandfather.'

He saw on the older pair's face the admission of knowledge, quickly suppressed on the man's, but its traces less easily erased from the woman's.

Leaning forward and concentrating on her, Pascoe said,

'I mean of course the great-grandfather your father, Herbert Grindal, actually killed, not my other great-grandfather, the one he merely allowed to be executed in Flanders.'

Tears filled her eyes. Her husband looked ready to work himself up into a fine fit of indignation but as the tears started to stream down his wife's face, he seemed to acknowledge to himself that there was no point in trying to bluster a way out of this.

He said, 'How. .?'

Pascoe said, 'I have in my possession Sergeant Peter Pascoe's journal right up to the eve of his execution. Also I have seen the journal of the officer who acted as his Prisoner's Friend at the court martial, and I know the details of the evidence given by your father, Mrs Batty, and the letter accompanying it, written by your grand- father.'

The implication that he'd got onto these last two via Studholme's journal seemed strong enough to keep faith with Poll Pollinger.

'What I want to do now,' he went on, 'is discover what more you can tell me about this business. I should warn you that the inquiry into the cause of death of Stephen Pascoe is still ongoing, and as things stand at the moment, I shall feel impelled to reveal at the inquest all that I have been able to discover.'

Let 'em know that like any paranoid he'd go all the way!

'These are scarcely matters for the media, Mr Pascoe,' protested Batty. 'Tabloid publicity wouldn't benefit anyone.'

'You think not? I don't see how it could hurt my family,' retorted Pascoe. 'There's no way either of my ancestors could be stigmatized worse than they have been for the past eighty years.'

‘I really can't see what all the fuss is about, for God's sake,' said David Batty impatiently. 'It's history we're talking here! That's all your fat boss seemed worried about, Peter. Proving it all happened so long ago that it wouldn't either occupy his time or worsen his crime figures.'

Pascoe regarded him coldly. This was a man with very little moral sense. Knowing that moved his pleasant easygoing manner into a new dimension.

But no reason not to use him. He forced a young conspirator's smile.

'That's right, David,' he said. 'But if I'm going to keep quiet, I need to know what exactly it is I'm keeping quiet about, so I don't let it out by accident.'

This fallacious pragmatism fell on sympathetic ears.

'Let's show him,' said Batty. 'Then he'll know we're all in it together.'

His parents exchanged questioning glances, but their son, not waiting for an answer, rose and left the room. A moment later he returned with an old buff legal envelope.

'Here we go,' he said dropping it on Pascoe's lap. 'This should fill in the gaps.'

Pascoe opened it and took out a single sheet of foolscap covered by a tiny copperplate hand.

There was a heading printed in capitals.

STATEMENT OF

ARTHUR HERBERT GRINDAL

NOVEMBER 30th 1917

Another voice from the past. When would it ever fall silent?

He began to read.

I, Arthur Herbert Grindal of Kirkton in the county of Yorkshire, being of sound mind, affirm and assert that the following is a true and accurate description of the circumstances surrounding the death of Stephen Pascoe, also of Kirkton.

On the evening of November 27th last I was visiting my son Bertie then being treated for wounds received in Flanders during military service at the Officers' Hospital situated at Wanwood House, Mid-Yorkshire. He was in a state of some distress having just learned that his former platoon sergeant, Peter Pascoe, cousin to the above mentioned Stephen Pascoe, had been executed by firing squad having been found guilty of cowardice in face of the enemy. Bertie, in a nervous condition diagnosed as neurasthenia brought on by long and continuous exposure to the danger of front-line life, took upon himself some responsibility for the death of his sergeant, and had been deeply shocked by allegations made against him during the court martial even though I understand that none of his other men or fellow officers had offered any but highest praise for his own conduct under fire. I calmed him down and when the time came to leave we went out to my car and, finding ourselves with much still to say to each other, took a turn down the drive to keep the blood circulating against the night frost. Here we were aware of a figure approaching which, when it became identifiable in the moonlight, I recognized as Stephen Pascoe, who used to be in my employ. He was wearing a greatcoat over his private's uniform. I got the impression he had been drinking. As soon as he saw my son he cried, 'Grindal, there you are, it's you I've come looking for. I know from my cousin what really happened out there and I'll find other lads to back up the true story when this lot's over, believe me. Meanwhile don't you dare go writing letters to Peter's wife — widow, I mean, that's what you've made her, and as for your filthy money …' and here he hurled a leather purse full into Bertie's face and rushed at him with both hands outstretched as though he wanted to strangle him. I tried to intervene and got knocked aside for my pains. As I lay on the ground I saw Pascoe seize hold of Bertie, they spun around, moving off the drive into the trees, and there one of them caught his foot on a root and they both went down locked together. But only Bertie got up.