Reginald Hill: Under World

‘Just a tool of the trade,’ said Boyle indifferently. ‘I don’t hide it.’

‘Voice sensitive too, and directional. If he’s facing you in a crowded bar, it’ll pick you up above all the chatter, isn’t that right, Monty?’

There was not a great deal of love lost between these two, decided Pascoe.

‘It’s not switched on,’ said Boyle. ‘Mr Dalziel’s valediction is, of course, printed on my heart. And I’d never attempt to record a policeman without his knowledge.’

He smiled politely at Pascoe.

Ruddlesdin said, ‘Especially not in their club where visitors can’t buy drinks,’ and stared significantly into his empty glass.

Wield said, ‘Give it here, Sammy. Mr Boyle?’

‘No more for me,’ said the crime reporter, glancing at his watch. ‘I have some driving to do before I get to bed.’

‘What’s that mean? Farmer’s wife or kerb crawling?’ said Ruddlesdin.

Boyle smiled. ‘In our business, Sammy, you’re either pressing forward or you’re sliding backward, have you forgotten that? Once you start just reporting news, you might as well bow out for one of these.’

He tapped the cassette on his chest before buttoning his jacket.

‘Good night, Mr Pascoe. I hope we may meet again and be of mutual benefit soon.’

He made towards the door through which the DCC and his party were being ushered by Dalziel.

‘Jumped-up nowt,’ said Ruddlesdin. ‘I knew him when he couldn’t tell a wedding car from a hearse. Now he acts like the bloody Challenger were the Sunday Times.’

‘Very trying,’ sympathized Pascoe. ‘On the other hand, tonight is very wedding and hearse stuff, isn’t it? A column filler for the Evening Post perhaps, but lacking those elements of astounding revelation which set the steam rising from the Challenger.’

‘When you buy a whippet you keep your eye skinned to see no one slips it a pork pie before a race,’ said Ruddlesdin.

‘Riddles now? You’re not moving to Comic Cuts , are you, Sammy? What is it you’re saying? That Ike Ogilby’s put his minders on Watmough till he gets into Parliament?’

Ogilby was the Challenger ’s ambitious editor, linked with Watmough ever since the Pickford case in a symbiotic relationship in which a good press was traded for insider information.

‘No,’ said Ruddlesdin confidentially. ‘What I’ve heard, and will deny ever having said till I’m saying, “told you so”, is that yon clock’s the nearest Watmough’s likely to get to Westminster. This SDP selection he thinks he’s got sewn up — well, there’s a local councillor on the short list, a chap who’s owed a few favours and knows where all the bodies are buried. Smart money’s on him. And Ike Ogilby’s got the smartest money in town.’

‘Another rejection will drive the poor devil mad,’ said Pascoe. ‘But if it’s not a personal leak in the Chamber that Ogilby’s after, why keep up his interest in Watmough once he’s resigned from the Force?’

Ruddlesdin tapped his long pointed nose and said, ‘Memoirs, Pete, I’m talking memoirs.’

‘Memoirs? But what’s he got to remember?’ asked Pascoe. ‘He thinks a stake-out’s a meal at Berni’s.’

Ruddlesdin observed him with alcoholic shrewdness.

‘That sounded more like Andy Dalziel than you,’ he said. ‘All I know is that Ogilby’s not interested in buying pigs in pokes, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. Mebbe my dear old jumped-up mate, Monty, is living up to his byline for once. The Man Who Knows Too Much. Wieldy, I thought you’d fallen among thieves! Bless you, my son.’

Wield had returned with a tray on which rested three pints. The reporter took his and drained two-thirds of it in a single swallow. Pascoe ignored the proffered tray, however. He was looking across the room to the exit through which Dalziel was just ushering the DCC and his party. Before he went out, Watmough paused and slowly looked around. What was he seeing? Something to stir fond memories of companionship, loyalty, a job well done?

Or something to stir relief at his going and resentment at its manner?

And how shall I feel when it’s my turn? wondered Pascoe.

He too looked round the room. Saw the mouthing faces, ghastly in the smoke-fogged strip-lighting. Heard the raucous laughter, the bellowed conversations, the eardrum-striating music. He felt a deep revulsion against it all. But he knew he was not applying a fair test. He was not a very clubbable person. His loyalties were individual rather than institutional. He distrusted the exclusivity of esprit de corps . Not that there was anything sinister here. This scene was the commonplace of ten thousand clubs and pubs the length and breadth of the island. Here was the companionship of the alehouse, nothing more.

But suddenly he felt hemmed in, short of air, deprived of will, threatened. He looked at his watch. It was only five to nine.

‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘I promised not to be late.’

‘But your beer …’ said Wield, taken aback.

‘Sammy’ll drink it. See you.’

In the small foyer he paused and took a deep breath. The door leading to the car park opened and Dalziel came in.

‘Well, that’s the cortège on its way,’ he said rubbing his hands. ‘Now let’s get on with the wake.’

‘Not me,’ said Pascoe firmly, adding, to divert Dalziel’s efforts at dissuasion, ‘and don’t be too sure he won’t be back to haunt you.’

‘Eh?’

He repeated Ruddlesdin’s rumour. Rather to his surprise, instead of being abusively dismissive, Dalziel answered thoughtfully, ‘Yes, I’d heard summat like that too. Makes you think … Ogilby … Boyle …’

Then he roared with laughter and added, ‘But who’d want to buy memoirs from a man who can scarcely remember to zip up after he’s had a run-off? It’d be the sale of the sodding century!’

Still laughing, he pushed his way back into the smoke- and noise-filled room while Pascoe with more relief than he could easily account for went out into the fresh night air.

By half past nine, Colin Farr was moving between his seat and the bar with a steady deliberation more worrying to Pedro Pedley than any amount of stagger and sway.

‘Young Col all right, is he?’ he asked Neil Wardle as the taciturn miner got another round in.

‘Aye,’ said Wardle, apparently uninterested.

But when he got back to the table, he repeated the question as he set pints down before Farr and Dickinson.

‘All right, Col?’

‘Any reason I shouldn’t be?’

‘None as I can think of.’

‘Right, then,’ said Farr.

‘What’s that, Neil? A half? You sickening for something?’ said Tommy Dickinson, his face flushed with the room’s heat and his vain efforts to catch up with his friend’s intake.

‘No, but I’m off just now to a meeting,’ said Wardle.

Wardle was on the branch committee of the Union. During the Great Strike there had been times when his lack of strident militancy and his quiet rationalism had brought accusations of ‘softness’. But as the Strike began to crumble and the men began to recognize that no amount of rhetoric or confrontation could bring the promised victory, Wardle’s qualities won more and more respect. There’d only been one ‘scab’ at Burrthorpe Main, but many who had weakened and come close to snapping knew that they too would now be paying the price of isolation if it hadn’t been for Wardle’s calm advice and rock-like support. Since the Strike he’d been a prime mover in the re-energizing of the shattered community. And it was Wardle who’d pushed Colin Farr into seeking a place on the Union-sponsored day-release course at the University.