Reginald Hill - Under World

He fell silent. Ellie was driving very slowly, not wanting to take the youth too far, not wanting to stop him talking.

‘I went and joined the Merchant Navy, don’t ask me why,’ he resumed. ‘I’d never given it any thought before and the nearest I’d ever been to the sea had been a week at Brid one summer. Mebbe it was because I thought it’d be as far away from mining as I could get.’

‘And was it?’

‘Sometimes. Sometimes it seemed worse. At least at the end of a shift down pit you’re your own man. But yeah, it mainly was a bloody sight better, and it was good having your money saved for you as there was bugger-all to spend it on. Come the end of a trip, you could have a right good time.’

Ellie tried to imagine what a right good time looked like to Colin Farr. Booze and birds? It seemed more likely than books and Beethoven. Was she being culturalist?

She said, ‘But you came back?’

‘Aye.’

‘Because your father died?’

‘Aye.’

‘And you stayed because of your mother.’

‘Aye,’ he repeated, but this time he didn’t sound so sure.

‘Did she ask you to stay?’

‘No! She wanted me to go off again,’ he exclaimed. ‘She said she’d be fine and the last thing she wanted was to see me back down the pit. But I said no, I’d stay.’

‘That was very thoughtful,’ said Ellie.

‘No, it wasn’t! It had nowt to do with Mam, or at least not directly,’ burst out Farr. ‘There were stories. About the way Dad died. I overheard a lad saying it were suicide. I half killed the bugger before they got me off. After that most of ’em were a bloody sight more careful. But I knew they’d still be on with their stupid bloody gossip behind my back. And I reckoned the further off I was, the braver they’d get. So I stayed.’

‘To protect your mother?’ said Ellie.

‘I suppose so. Incidentally. But mainly to show them buggers that I didn’t care. But they better had, if they didn’t want to end up in the gob with a broken jaw.’

‘In the gob?’

‘The hole left where they’ve taken the coal out of the seam. Don’t you read those bloody essays you make us write?’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry. Colin, what’s been going on today?’

‘Nowt,’ he said harshly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on!’ said Ellie. ‘Why’d you take me to meet your mother and then leave us together?’

‘Mebbe I wanted to give her a chance to discuss your prospects and ask if your intentions were honourable!’ he sneered.

Containing her anger with difficulty, she brought the car to a halt by the roadside but didn’t switch off the engine.

‘It’s been an interesting day, Colin,’ she said very formally. ‘Thank your mam again, will you? And I’ll see you next week.’

He sat looking gloomily out of the window without speaking. She stole a glance at her watch. Daphne would be in that state of icy politeness which in the privately educated daughters of C of E archdeacons passes for rage.

‘Colin …’ she began.

His reaction was astounding. He turned towards her, placed his right hand on her left shoulder and thrust his left hand with considerable force up her skirt between her legs.

For a moment simple astonishment excluded outrage. She looked at him, eyes and mouth rounded in a dramatic mask of surprise. His face was very close but he made no effort to kiss her. His hand was pressed hard against the narrow gusset of her panties, but the fingers were still.

Then outrage came and she hit him, an openhanded slap across the face with as much force as the swing-limiting confines of the Mini permitted.

Immediately he withdrew his hand, released her shoulder, and turned his head to stare out through the windscreen once more.

It took another moment for Ellie to regain her powers of speech.

‘And what the hell was all that about?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing. I thought you might fancy a quick jump,’ he said indifferently.

‘Oh no, you didn’t!’ she retorted. ‘Don’t give me that! Even when you were pissed out of your mind in some dockland knocking shop, your approach’d be subtle compared to that!’

‘You think so?’ he said. ‘All right, you’re the clever one. You tell me what I was after!’

‘I don’t know! You were watching me, weren’t you? You just wanted to see what I’d do. You wanted, I don’t know, to shock me, defile me even, is that it?’

‘Defile?’ he savoured the word. ‘Sort of sacrilege, you mean? Like gobbing on a crucifix, something like that?’

He was mocking her and she did not feel in any state to trade verbal blows.

‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Just bloody well get out!’

He climbed out of the car and closed the door gently behind him.

She set off instantly, accelerating rapidly. She never once glanced in her rear-view mirror for fear of seeing him. But after she had driven half a mile she had to pull into the side of the road once more.

With awkward tyro movements, she lit a cigarette. She was shaking, she was amazed to discover. She tried to tell herself it was rage, but she knew it was not. It was the aftermath of that moment of sheer nerve-fracturing terror when she had been absolutely certain he was going to rape her.

‘Oh, you bastard,’ she said. ‘You cocky little bastard!’

It was five minutes before the shaking stopped enough for her to drive back to town.

The following Sunday Pascoe drove to a newsagent where he wasn’t known and bought a Challenger . Sitting in his car, he turned with scarcely a pause past the page with the topless blonde and settled down to the first episode proper of Watmough’s memoirs.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said after he finished, and immediately began the unpleasant task of reading the article again.

It outstripped his expectation in several ways. The language was even more lurid than he’d guessed, details were given of Pickford’s assaults on his victims which had never appeared before, and there were quotes from recent interviews with relatives, plus the revelation (with address) that Pickford’s widow had remarried and gone to live in Essex. These were obviously the work of Monty Boyle, but it all came out under the imprimatur of Neville Watmough.

As far as Mid-Yorks went, there was the expected side-swipe at their inefficiency in dealing with what turned out to be the first Pickford killing, that of Annie Tweddle. But this was nothing compared with what was hinted at in the trailer for the following week.

What of the body that got away? Little Tracey Pedley was never found. Did Pickford abduct her and subject her to the same terrible fate as the others? At the time the evidence seemed to point that way. But upon examination how flimsy that evidence seems. Before Pickford’s suicide it amounted to little more than the alleged sighting of the by now notorious ‘blue car’ off the road near the place where her pail was found. And after Pickford’s death the best the police could do was establish that he had no alibi for the time of Tracey’s disappearance.

But what if the police got it wrong for once? What if Pickford did have an alibi?

There were always those in Burrthorpe who were never satisfied with the official explanation and their doubts may have been rekindled three months later when the last witness to admit seeing Tracey alive himself died in strange circumstances. Coincidence? Like the coincidence that it was his best friend who gave the most positive sighting of the blue car?

‘A tragic accident,’ said the coroner. But there were those who whispered of remorse, or even retribution.

But suppose they too are wrong as the police may prove to have been wrong? Suppose the killer of Tracey Pedley is still alive and perhaps even having his evening pint drawn by the father he so cruelly bereaved …