Reginald Hill - Under World

‘I’m grand,’ said Farr. ‘You know me. Naturally quiet.’

‘That’s not what Satterthwaite says. He says you’ve been threatening him,’ said Wardle. ‘He’d like you out, Col. Permanent.’

They rose together and made for the lamp room.

Farr halted at the turnstile and turned to face the other.

‘And what did you say?’ he asked.

‘I said bloody good riddance, what do you think?’

Colin Farr grinned.

‘Thanks, Neil.’

‘Aye but watch him, Col. He’s after your blood.’

‘Is that all? He can have that any time he likes.’

Farr went through the turnstile into the lamp room, so called because here the lamps were ranged in racks to be recharged during shifts. Each lamp had a numbered check on a hook above it. The safest way of passing a message to a miner was to hang it with his check. A man could ride the pit without many things, but never without his lamp.

There was a piece of paper hanging on his hook. He pulled it off, unfolded it, read it.

Crudely printed in block capitals, it read:

SG LOVES HS. TRUE. POOR YOU.

‘Love-letter, is it?’ asked Tommy Dickinson, coming up behind him.

Farr crumpled the paper in his fist, then tore it into little pieces and scattered them on the floor.

‘Sort of,’ he said. And went to ride the pit.

It was Sunday morning. The ten churches were almost empty, the cells not much fuller. But when Dalziel addressed his one-man congregation, it was with a passionate sincerity which seemed capable of ameliorating both deficiences.

‘I swear to God I’ll murder the bastard,’ he said.

Pascoe lowered the Challenger and asked politely, ‘Don’t you want to hear this, sir?’

‘Not as much as you do,’ said Dalziel malevolently. ‘Don’t think I’m not noticing how well you control yourself every time I get insulted.’

‘It’s not easy,’ admitted Pascoe.

He was reading from the trailer to ex-DCC Watmough’s memoirs in which Ace Crime Reporter, Monty Boyle (The Man Who Knows Too Much) was promising a feast of sex, violence, blood, guts, and Amazing Revelations. Nowhere was Dalziel mentioned by name, but Pascoe couldn’t feel his boss was being unduly sensitive.

He had just read: ‘… Nev Watmough told me that after his South Yorks triumph, returning to Mid-Yorks was like travelling back from the Twenty-first Century to the Dark Ages. “The South was forward-looking, eager to keep pace with the technological revolution,” he said nostalgically. “In Mid-Yorks they still preferred to fly by the seats of their broad and often very shiny pants. I’ve always believed that trouble starts at the top. And that’s certainly where I found it in my efforts to drag my new command screaming and kicking into the Twentieth Century.” …’

‘Get on with it,’ commanded Dalziel through gritted teeth.

‘There’s not much more,’ edited Pascoe. ‘Like we thought, he’s starting with a bang on the Pickford case next Sunday. And in future editions we’re promised such treats as The Kassell Drug Ring — The Royal Connection? Who Killed Dandy Dick? and The Choker: Cock-up or Cover-up?’

‘Jesus! What did he have to do with any of them cases? What’s he ever had to do with real police work? When he were a sprog constable, he couldn’t write a report without stapling his tie in with it …’

‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ said Pascoe provocatively. ‘He’s probably not writing much of his stuff either, not with Monty Boyle at his side. It’ll all be ghosted …’

‘Ghosted!’ exclaimed Dalziel. ‘I’ll make a ghost of that moth-eaten string vest if ever I get my hands on him!’

He rehearsed the act in the air. His intention was apparently to strangle Watmough while at the same time gouging out his eyes. Pascoe felt that even with hands like Dalziel’s, this was going to be a formidable task.

He said, ‘Can he really get away with stuff like this? Isn’t there a regulation? Something he signed?’

Dalziel considered, then shook his head. ‘No, I’m sure Ike Ogilby’s wide-boy lawyers will have covered that. But hang on! Mebbe he took some stuff out of the files that he shouldn’t have, copies of records, statements, that sort of thing. I wonder if Trimble would cough up a warrant? It’s time that little Cornish pixie started paying his debts.’

The Cornish pixie was Dan Trimble, Mid-Yorks’ new Chief Constable. The debt was for Dalziel’s assistance in getting him the job, or rather in blocking Watmough’s selection. The principal obstacle to repayment was that Trimble didn’t have the faintest idea that he owed Dalziel anything, but as Pascoe knew from long experience, ignorance in such cases was no defence.

He said, ‘I don’t really think Mr Trimble’s going to let you kick Watmough’s door down, sir. Look, why make a fuss when there’s other folk will make it for you? Digging up old cases always upsets a lot of people, relatives of victims, that kind of thing. He’s obviously going to be dwelling on his Pickford triumph for a couple of weeks at least. There’s nothing there to harm us. And by the time he gets himself back to Mid-Yorks, either someone will have slapped an injunction on him or Ike Ogilby will realize that our Nev’s driving the punters back to their beds in droves on Sunday mornings, and spike the remaining episodes.’

Pascoe expressed himself thus cynically because he felt that at the moment the way to Dalziel’s heart was through his bile. But besides his natural concern for the reputation of the police, he felt a genuine repugnance at this savaging of people’s sensibilities for the sake of mere sensationalism. When he got home just before one, he found that he was not alone in his views.

He entered expecting congratulations that he’d slipped away from Dalziel and actually got back in time for Sunday lunch. But Ellie’s expression as she met him in the hall was far from congratulatory.

‘Have you seen it?’ she demanded.

‘What? The light? The spider? What?’

‘This rag!’

The object she brandished looked anything but rag-like. He recognized it by instinct rather than eyesight as the Challenger compressed apparently by main force into papier-mâché. Producing his own copy, he flourished it and said, ‘On guard.’

‘Be serious!’

‘About what? And why have you got that rag? I hope you wore a disguise to buy it.’

‘It’s Adi’s.’

‘Adi’s?’ he said, praying there was another Adi besides Adrienne Pritchard, radical solicitor and Women’s Rights Group activist.

‘She came round to talk to you, Peter. She reckons that people could get hurt by these articles and she wanted a reasonable police view.’

No, she didn’t. She wanted his destruction, for that would inevitably follow if Dalziel ever found out he’d been discussing police business with Ms Bitchard, as he called her. Suddenly simultaneous gouging and strangulation seemed well within the span of those vengeful hands.

He said, ‘Ellie, you’ll have to tell her, I disapprove of what Watmough’s doing, but I’m not about to become Ms Pritchard’s mole in the CID.’

‘You tell her,’ said Ellie.

‘What?’ He looked towards the lounge door with a condemned man’s eight o’clock eyes.

‘I asked her to stay for lunch. Wasn’t it lucky you managed to get away on time for once?’

In the event lunch turned out to be quite enjoyable, particularly when he found himself opening a second bottle of Rioja. Adi Pritchard was no great beauty but she was a good conversationalist, and though he kept a careful eye on her he never got any sense of being pumped for indiscreet confidences. Even when the doorbell rang half way through and Ellie said, ‘That’ll be Thelma,’ his suspicions were unroused. Thelma was Thelma Lacewing, dental hygienist, great beauty, and founder and driving force of the Women’s Rights Action Group.