Reginald Hill - Under World

‘And also why you didn’t tell all you knew a couple of years ago,’ said Wield grimly.

‘That’s easy, mate. I was never asked!’

Wield, who’d been sure that either someone had lied in the past or was lying now, listened to Moffat’s story with a growing sense of his own culpability.

Moffat had been on holiday when the Pickford suicide made headlines.

‘I read about it on the beach at Rimini,’ he said. ‘When I read he were a salesman for that tool company, I remember thinking, I wonder if he were that fellow who came to see Mr Wattis?’

‘But he didn’t come to see Mr Wattis,’ said Wield. ‘Mr Wattis was sure he hadn’t kept his appointment. And his name wasn’t in the book.’

‘No,’ said Moffat. ‘The thing was, he was late. Just ten minutes, but that was enough for old Wattis. He was a bit of a joke really. Just treading water till his time was up. And off to the golf course like a flash if he got half a chance. Pickford must have been the last thing he had on his plate that day. He’d give him five minutes, then off. He went out just as Pickford came in. That’s how I recall the time. I glanced at the clock when Pickford said he had a four-thirty appointment. It was just gone four-forty. I told him it were too late. I said I’d ring through and see if they could fix up another day, but I tipped him the wink that it’d likely be a waste of time. You see, with Mr Wattis being so demob happy, no one treated him serious any more. You could be pretty certain any salesman they steered towards him wasn’t someone they intended doing business with! Pickford didn’t seem bothered, just said thanks and went off. So his name didn’t get in the book and the only person he saw at Tanyard-Lees was me, and no one ever asked me!’

‘He came back off holiday three weeks later,’ Wield told Pascoe on his return to the station. ‘His stand-in, that’s the fellow I saw when I looked at the gate book, went off to his usual duties and never mentioned my visit. Why should he? I just looked in the book, and there was never any mention of Pickford’s appointment at the Plant in the papers. Wattis retired a month later, went down to Cornwall and died, and Moffat never thought any more about his possible encounter with Pickford till Monty Boyle came round with a handful of fivers.’

‘You’re sure he’s telling the truth?’ said Pascoe.

‘Certain. More important, perhaps, Boyle’s obviously certain too, certain enough to go public with it. Even ten minutes late wouldn’t give him enough time to divert to Burrthorpe and kill that little girl. Christ, what a cock-up!’

‘Come on, Wieldy, you can’t blame yourself. You were asked to check what looked a ninety per cent certainty according to the way South, that is, Mr Watmough presented it to us. You checked it the best way you could. No one can blame you.’

‘Tell that to the Challenger on Sunday,’ said Wield. ‘Tell it to Mr Dalziel now .’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Pascoe.

‘To hold my hand? No need. He’ll likely just send me to bed with no supper.’

‘I’ll come anyway. And talking of supper, I’ve been meaning to ask you round for a bite one night.’

In fact the notion had just popped into his head, but even as he said it, he recognized he was merely confirming a stage in their friendship.

‘Great,’ said Wield. ‘When?’

‘Make it tomorrow, if that’s OK. Eightish?’

‘Eightish it is. If I survive.’

The condition seemed less of a joke when Dalziel flung open his door as they approached and glowered at them like a jealous Italian catching his wife and brother in flagrante delicto .

‘Well?’ he snarled. ‘Is it true?’

Wield nodded unhappily.

‘I’d not have thought it possible of you,’ cried Dalziel, more than ever like a man betrayed. ‘How’d it happen? Mental breakdown, was it?’

Stoically Wield gave his explanation. It was clear, concise, and void of excuse or special pleading.

‘So,’ said Dalziel. ‘Clever cunt, this Monty Boyle. I think we’d better have a word with him. See to it, Peter. Poor old Nev!’

Pascoe looked at the fat man in surprise. Sympathy for Watmough? And from a man whose usual position on the Christian forgiveness ethic was that no enemy ever fell so low that a kick in the teeth couldn’t drive him lower.

‘I mean,’ said Dalziel, ‘this makes us look Charlies, right? But it takes a bit of the bloom off Lobby Lud’s success, doesn’t it? And with a bit of luck Boyle may have dug something else up that drops old Nev right in it without splattering us in the process! No wonder Ike Ogilby wanted to sign him up.’

‘I don’t see why Boyle couldn’t just have done an article about this himself,’ said Pascoe.

‘Don’t be dim, lad. Which would you rather read — confessions of a randy vicar or accusations from a ranting bishop? J’accuse wins Pulitzers but mea culpa bangs up circulation figures.’

Even Wield’s face registered astonishment and Dalziel’s lips slid back from his great brown teeth like the curtain rising on a Wieland Wagner set at Bayreuth as he grinned in delight.

‘Now let’s sit down and see if we can do some real police work, shall we?’

In depression as in toothache, rational analysis is no palliative. Ellie knew that a gloom had settled upon her since her visit to Burrthorpe but knew no way to disperse it. A recent ritual clearing out of the family medicine chest, aimed principally at Peter who had the mild hypochondriac’s reluctance to dump old pills, had washed away her own little store of uppers and downers, putting that particular temptation out of reach. Drink made things worse, and long walks in the very fresh air didn’t make them any better. She could see that Peter was puzzled by her dullness, and in particular by the absence of the full action replay which her descent into the pit would normally have produced. It wasn’t that images of the visit did not fill her mind. Closing her eyes in sleep brought a darkness which was rapidly filled by the bobbing lights of helmet-lamps. Tunnels curved away with gates branching off in all directions, and as she moved along on the ever accelerating paddy, she had the retrospective fancy that she was in the bloodstream of some monstrous creature, being sucked along a main artery by the audible pumping of its huge heart. And at that heart stood a solitary figure, Colin Farr, his naked body caked with glittering coal dust like a fell of dark pricked with a myriad stars. Then she was in the car with his hand between her legs and in the back seat his mother talked sadly of her pit-maimed husband lying dead in the darkness at the foot of the old shaft.

She was able to toy with these dreams in a variety of ways, but no amount of no matter how eclectic a self-analysis could lighten her depression. She told herself that the terrifying otherness of that underground world which in itself would probably just have provided good copy for a radical dinner-party had somehow, indeed almost literally, been rammed home into her subconscious by the brutal indifference of Col Farr’s assault. Had he simply made a pass at her, that would have been different. In the Ivory Tower’s paternoster she had experienced his physical proximity like an electrical current. But this had been something else. It might just as well have been his ‘ringer’ which he had thrust beneath her skirt. There had been something intensely impersonal as well as whatever was intensely personal in that gesture. It meant separation, dismissal, perhaps even contempt. She made up her mind to ring Adam and call off the rest of her classes.

But on Monday afternoon she was there as they came drifting in, and with them, neither ostentatiously last nor challengingly first, Colin Farr. She caught his eye without meaning to, and he rubbed the back of his hand across his nose and gave a little grin, sheepish almost, like a small boy acknowledging his fault but sure of his forgiveness. Instantly the dullness lifted from her mind like a morning mist and she had to take deliberate control to keep the returning lightness from catching at her voice.