Reginald Hill - Under World

His worry replaced by anger, the Chairman returned to the bar and a moment later the bell rang and Pedley’s voice bellowed, ‘Come on now. Get them drinks off. The holiday’s over!’

Wardle said, ‘So you run scared too? It’s good to see you don’t really make up all the laws as you go along.’

‘What? Nay, lad, you don’t understand. It’s nowt to do with what that old geezer said. It’s just that I’m finished with you lot for the time being, but I’ve still not had a chat with Mr Pedley there, and I can’t do that while he’s busy serving drinks, can I?’

As the bar slowly cleared Dalziel wandered across to the table where Ellie was still sitting with her companions.

‘Hello, ladies,’ he said genially. ‘Hope you had time to enjoy your pies.’

Wendy looked up at him and gave him a smile of stunning sweetness.

She said, ‘Piss off, pig.’

Dalziel said, ‘Who’s your porkist friend, Ellie? Never mind. Can I have a word?’

Of course the bold reply was ‘anything you’ve got to say to me you can say in front of my friends’ but the only trouble was that Dalziel undoubtedly would, and Ellie wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t be saying things she’d prefer her new friends, or indeed any friends, not to hear.

So, apology and defiance most becomingly mingling in her face, she rose and moved apart with the fat man.

‘I’m glad to see you, lass,’ said Dalziel in a low voice. ‘Have you heard owt useful?’

Expecting at the least a lecture if not a threat of physical violence, Ellie was taken by surprise by this approach.

‘Useful? What do you mean?’

‘Anything that’d help us get to the bottom of this business. South are determined it’s down to Farr, but me, I don’t like jumping to conclusions. Mind you, I can see why they think like that. No one I’ve spoken to has been able …’

‘Who’ve you been speaking to?’ demanded Ellie.

‘Well, I went round to the Mycrofts’ house …’

‘You don’t want to listen to anything that stupid girl has to say! Why would Colin say anything to her he didn’t say to me?’

Dalziel, who had not laid eyes on Stella Mycroft yet, though he’d heard a lot about her in his rambling chat with Tommy Dickinson, nodded sagely as though understanding Ellie’s odd remark.

‘Just what I thought,’ he said. ‘Listen, how’d it be if I got you in to see young Colin?’

‘Could you?’ asked Ellie, her face lighting up with a hope which stirred something which might have been the dusty relicts of shame in Dalziel’s gut. Or perhaps it was just the beer.

‘Why not? If he’s innocent, the sooner them dozy buggers in South get on the right track the better.’

Behind her he could see Pedro Pedley urging the reluctant women to leave.

‘Best get back to your friends,’ he said, putting his arm round her shoulders and urging her back towards her table. ‘Mr Pedley, I’d like a word. Cheerio, Ellie love. I’ll see you later.’

Transferring his arm and his attention to Pedley, Dalziel moved away. Ellie watched him go. He never lost the capacity to surprise. Ready for bullying interference and a homily on marital loyalty, instead she’d got sympathy and a promise, well, almost a promise, of access to Colin. She found herself smiling at the prospect.

Wendy and Marion were on their feet. She turned to them to include them in her little aura of joy and found herself met by suspicious, hostile faces. For a second the response took her aback as much as Dalziel’s had. Then she put the two together. Divide and rule.

‘Oh, you devious bastard!’ she said.

But when she turned again to purge her collaborative guilt, the devious bastard had already moved out of her reach into the steward’s private quarters.

At first Pedley tried to give Dalziel a bad time.

‘Don’t think I couldn’t see what you were up to. I thought you buggers were up to date now, tape-recorders, computers, proper scientific evidence, not sitting around boozing, listening to drunken gossip. You made a fool out of me, getting the Club open and shut like it were your private bar. Well, you may pull the wool over some silly buggers’ eyes and you may put the fear of God into some others. But you don’t fool me, mister, and you don’t frighten me either. Who the hell do you think you are anyway?’

He ran out of steam and stood glaring down at the seated Dalziel, who returned a gaze of hurt bewilderment.

‘Me? I’m the fellow who’s going to find out what really happened to your little daughter, Mr Pedley.’

Pedley’s response was surprising even to a man who reckoned that only women and lunatics were totally forecastable. He laughed, without much humour, with a great deal of bitter mockery.

‘What am I supposed to do, mister? Drop on t’floor and kiss your boots in gratitude? I’ll tell you what I want from you. I want you to leave it alone!’ He was bellowing now. ‘Can you get that into your thick skull? It can’t all be bone, there’s so much of it you’d fall over every time you stood up!’

Dalziel rose swiftly and brought his bulk menacingly close to the steward.

‘Listen, Pedro,’ he said softly. ‘You may be king of the bar out there, but them buggers expect to be ruled. They may be wild, but in the end they live by the bloody rule book, their own or some other bugger’s.’

‘Meaning you don’t?’ interrupted Pedley disbelievingly.

‘Not by any book you’ve read,’ said Dalziel.

He sat down again as rapidly as he’d risen.

‘So don’t try to treat me like I’m giving you trouble at closing time. If you’ve got summat to say, well, say it, don’t shout it.’

Pedley took a deep breath, then sat down abruptly.

‘It’ll do no good, that’s what I’ve got to say,’ he said. ‘When it happened, I thought I’d never forget. Well, I haven’t. Not a day goes by … but sometimes an hour goes by, mebbe more. And feeling, that changes too. Once if I’d got my hands on whoever took our Tracey, there’s nothing I’d not have done. Nothing. Now … I were glad when they said it were Pickford. Maggie clung on to some daft idea that she’d been kidnapped and would still turn up alive, but I knew from the start she were dead. From the start. So when they said it were probably Pickford and he’d killed himself, I thought: It’s over. A monster, a madman … someone so unnatural he couldn’t live with himself. And the rest of us could at least go on living with each other. Now what are you saying? That it might not have been Pickford after all? Worse, that it may turn out to be someone I knew and liked? Or worse still, that it may turn out to be someone still alive, mebbe someone I’ve been serving beer to all these years and having a joke with, and asking how his family is? Is that what you want me to have to deal with now? Well, I won’t, I tell you. It’d drive me round the twist and I reckon it’d likely kill my Maggie.’

He spoke with a quiet vehemence much more forceful than his earlier shouting.

Dalziel said, ‘There are two ways we can manage this, Pedro. You can refuse to talk to me and then we get a hold of your missus and she can refuse to talk also. Then I pass it on to my bosses to let them sort out any question of impeding the course of justice or owt of that. Or you and me can have a nice cooperative chat and I guarantee no one, not police or Press, will go anywhere near your wife. It’s up to you, lad.’

‘Oh, you cunt,’ said Pedro Pedley.

‘Oh, I could,’ said Dalziel. ‘Now, about your brother-in-law, Harold Satterthwaite …’

Colin Farr sat up in bed and held his mother’s narrow pale hands loosely between his own.