Reginald Hill - Under World

‘I’ll just see how my wife’s statement’s coming along,’ he said.

He went towards the stairs. Behind his back, the sergeant smiled faintly, then became serious as the door opened and Chief Inspector Wishart came in, looking surprisingly happy for a man who’d just been down a mine to investigate a murder he didn’t want.

‘Inspector Pascoe!’ he called to Pascoe’s disappearing back.

Pascoe turned and viewed the Scot’s approach with surprise.

‘When you say you’re not going to be long, you mean it, don’t you?’

‘I told you, just a quick look. But I really wanted to get back before you left, Peter,’ said Wishart putting his arm round Pascoe’s shoulders and ushering him up the stairs. ‘A funny thing’s happened. We were on this wee train, the paddy they call it, and I must have been looking a bit uneasy because the pit-manager who was with me said, “Don’t let it worry you. Just think that up there only a few hundred yards at most is Little Hayton.” Well, that rang a bell. There’s a nice pub there, does lovely meals. I went there once last time I was in this neck of the woods. But then it struck me. Little Hayton’s over the line. It’s not South at all, it’s in Mid-Yorks. So when we got to the spot they found Satterthwaite, I said, “What’s up there now?” And he worked it out on this map he’s got of the workings.’

‘Where’s all this getting us?’ asked Pascoe uneasily.

‘A long way from here,’ said Wishart gleefully. ‘Peter, a crime belongs to the Force whose patch it’s found on, right? Well, this chap Satterthwaite: even allowing for a large margin of error and the fact that he was found under a couple of thousand feet of earth, it is incontrovertibly Mid-Yorkshire earth he was found under. Peter, I honestly believe this may turn out to be your body after all!’

Dan Trimble, Chief Constable of Mid-Yorkshire, was a small man with a sharp face and prominent ears. He was still very new in the job. His predecessor, Tommy Winter, had tended to let things slide in his final phase, preferring to deal with trouble by devolution and absence. Trimble, by contrast, preferred to meet problems face to face, and one of them was facing him now.

‘I reckon it’s like mineral rights,’ declared Dalziel.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The bloody coal doesn’t belong to the farmer whose field’s up above, does it? It belongs to them as mines it, which in this case is the Coal Board as represented by Burrthorpe Main, which is South’s baby.’

‘A body is not coal,’ said Trimble.

‘Tin.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You’d be more used to tin, sir, coming from Cornwall,’ said Dalziel with the benevolent beam of a man willing to make allowances.

In fact Dalziel quite approved of Trimble whom he’d backed very profitably in the selection stakes. But neither professional approval nor personal profit could be allowed to obscure basic issues such as who ran what in Mid-Yorks. He knew he couldn’t win this present argument but he also believed there was nowt like a few teeth marks in the ankle to make a postman tread carefully next time he came bearing bad news.

‘We’ve got to learn to bow gracefully to the inevitable, Andy,’ Trimble said.

Aye, but you’ve not so far to bow as me, thought Dalziel with the amiable scorn of the large for the small. That he didn’t say it out loud was a measure of his relative respect for the man.

‘And this is what’s been decided,’ continued Trimble. ‘The investigation of Harold Satterthwaite’s death will be a joint operation. It makes sense even if there hadn’t been this absurd complication of whose body it really is. It makes sense because South’s Head of CID is currently on special assignment in Ulster and Chief Inspector Wishart is a little junior for what looks like a potentially troublesome case; it makes sense because we’ve already become involved to some extent; and in the opinion of some of the policy makers, it makes sense to provide a buffer between a highly sensitive community and a local force they haven’t yet re-learned to trust.’

‘So we’re a buffer now?’

‘Well, you certainly have the build for it, Andy,’ smiled the Chief Constable, running his gaze up the CID man’s mountainous frame. Supposedly, one of the privileges of rank was not having to worry about what you said, but when Trimble peeked at Dalziel’s face, he saw his remark registered there like a price in a till.

‘I’m not altogether convinced of all these arguments myself, Andy,’ he went on hastily. ‘But I am convinced of the overall usefulness of a joint approach. I hardly need tell you that this involves two basic principles. One is to solve the crime. The other is to make sure we get our share of the credit. OK?’

‘Aye,’ grunted Dalziel without enthusiasm. ‘One more thing, sir: I understand there’s a promotion meeting later today. My lad, Pascoe: what’s holding up his promotion to CI? There’s buggers I’d not trust to come in out of the rain leapfrogging ahead of him.’

‘Rain is the favoured environment of frogs,’ said Trimble mildly.

‘You what?’

‘Nothing. Andy, you must know that promotion is not in my gift. Mine is merely one voice among many, and as a comparatively new off-comer, it’s not even a particularly strong voice. But if there’s any special case you wish me to advance at the meeting …’

‘Aye, there is. Mebbe you can pass this on to the many,’ said Dalziel.

A quarter of an hour later, on his way to his office, he met Wield.

‘’Morning,’ he grunted. ‘You look bloody rough.’

‘I had a disturbed night, sir.’

‘Oh aye. Anything I ought not to know about?’

From a lesser man there might have been a hint of sexual innuendo. From Dalziel the signal flashed like the lamp on a police car.

‘I was looking after Mr Pascoe’s kiddie.’

‘You’ll know all about this Burrthorpe business, then. Well, it’s our business too, as from now. Come on. Let’s get the ground cleared, then mebbe we can make a start.’

Dalziel’s approach to ground-clearing made more use of the bulldozer than the hoe. He rang Burrthorpe, asked for Wishart, requested a progress report, listened yawningly for thirty seconds, then said, ‘In other words, nowt? What’s the matter with this lad, Farr? It’d save me a drive down there if you could charge him in the next couple of hours.’

‘There’s nothing concrete to tie him in,’ said Wishart. ‘We haven’t found the weapon. And no one in Burrthorpe’s saying anything, at least not to us.’

‘What about his clothes?’

‘He changed and showered before he left the pit, so we went to collect his pit-black, that’s the gear he wears to work in. Only it wasn’t there.’

‘Sod me. There you are! What do you buggers in South want? Doves and a voice from a cloud? Find it and you’ve likely got the sod!’

‘We’re looking. The gateman remembers him going out on his bike, but reckons he wasn’t carrying anything like a bundle of clothes and a pair of boots, so we’re concentrating on the yard itself. I think our best bet could be an admission when Farr’s fit enough to talk. The hospital’ll be checking him over shortly.’

‘Oh aye! In that case, I’d best come down myself. When? Oh, any time, lad. Any time at all.’

He put down the phone, grinned at Wield and said, ‘That’ll be something for ’em to look forward to. Now, Wieldy, what went off last night?’

‘I think you ought to ask Mr Pascoe that, sir,’ said Wield.

‘All right! If the bugger’s got in yet.’ He picked up the internal phone, pressed a couple of buttons, and said, ‘Peter! You’ve never got out of bed? See if you can manage to stagger up here. Wieldy thinks there’s one or two things I should ask you about last night.’