Reginald Hill - Under World

‘You? Aye, it’s time you got sorted, lad,’ said Dalziel enigmatically. ‘You go off and see if Farr’s headed for home. Take that Sergeant Swift. He looks the freshest of this bunch of zombies and he knows his way around. Check Farr’s mates’ houses too, Wardle and Dickinson. And check the Welfare. I want you to find this sod a bloody sight quicker than you’ve found Monty Boyle!’

At May Farr’s house, Pascoe knocked at the front door while Swift and a constable went through the alleyway to the back. After a little delay, the door was opened on a chain by a man who regarded Pascoe with the watchful distrust of a guard dog and growled, ‘What do you want?’

‘Police,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’d like to see Mrs Farr.’

‘Hold on.’

He vanished; there was a distant mutter of conference, then he returned and the chain was released.

‘Weren’t you at the station last night?’ asked Pascoe.

‘That’s right. Name’s Arthur Downey. Friend of the family. In here.’

Pascoe was pointed into the kitchen.

Round a blue formica table three women were sitting.

One, middle-aged, handsome, but with her face pallid with strain, rose as he entered. He recognized her from the previous night as May Farr. On one side of her was a smallish woman with a thin pinched face, whose body gave off emanations of volcanic vitality and whose expression was one of mocking contempt.

But it was the woman on the other side that Pascoe focused on.

It was Ellie.

So this was what Dalziel had meant.

She said, ‘Hello, Peter. You know May, do you? And this is Wendy.’

‘So you’re the good cop Ellie’s been telling us about,’ said Wendy sceptically. ‘At least you look human, which is more than can be said for yon gorilla who was let loose in the Club today.’

Pascoe said, ‘Mrs Farr, you won’t have heard but Colin’s escaped …’

‘Escaped?’ interrupted Wendy. ‘What from? He weren’t locked up, were he?’

‘Shut up, Wendy,’ said May Farr. ‘What’s happened, mister?’

‘Colin left the hospital,’ Pascoe rephrased. ‘Neither we, the police, nor the medical staff, were finished with him. We’d like …’

‘May! There’s some bobbies in your back yard.’ It was Downey this time, pointing out of the window.

‘Christ, it’s just like the Strike all over. Buggers thinking they can go where they please,’ cried Wendy, rising and heading for the door. ‘I’ll soon sort ’em!’

‘Wendy, sit down,’ ordered May Farr. ‘This is my house. I’ll do my own sorting. What’s going off, Mr Pascoe?’

‘We’re looking for your son. There’s a warrant out now. I’m sorry those men have jumped the gun a little, but we’ve got to look. Inside too.’

‘Look away,’ said the woman indifferently. ‘A man in a hospital nightgown shouldn’t be hard to find.’

‘He’s got clothes,’ said Pascoe. ‘He took them from a visitor. At knife-point, it’s alleged.’

‘A visitor? Gav Mycroft were there as I left. Was it Gav?’

‘I believe so,’ said Pascoe.

‘That explains the knife,’ said Wendy. ‘No other way Col was going to get anything out of that stuck-up bugger.’

‘It doesn’t altogether explain the knife,’ said Pascoe.

He regarded May Farr steadily trying to assess her reaction to all this.

She seemed to be taking it calmly, but it was only the relative calm of one who has been pushed so close to the edge that she knows that even the slightest movement might send her over. Could it be she knew something? If her son had got this far, they’d find him in the next few minutes. A miner’s terrace afforded little space for secret panels, priests’ holes, escape tunnels. Even in persecution, the poor were disadvantaged.

Or perhaps Farr had been in touch by telephone. If so, given the smallness of the house and the situation of the phone which was in the hall almost outside the kitchen door, there was no way the others present could not be privy to the knowledge. He wanted to look at Ellie but he forced his gaze to remain on May Farr.

‘Are you saying I gave him the knife?’ she demanded.

‘Not saying. Asking. It’s important for us to know how he’s armed, Mrs Farr. It could be important to Colin too.’

‘So you’ll know whether to use tanks or atom bombs? Why not ring Greenham and tell ’em to get Cruise on the move?’

It was Wendy again. May Farr ignored the outburst this time and said quietly, ‘I gave him no knife.’

‘All right, Mrs Farr. May we search the house now?’

‘You’ll find nowt.’

Taking this as acquiescence, Pascoe began to search. As anticipated, hiding places were few. As he came down the stairs, Swift appeared and said, ‘No luck, sir? Me neither. There’s something out in the wash-house you mebbe ought to take a look at, though.’

He followed the sergeant through the tiny kitchen into the yard. Here in an old brickbuilt wash-house Swift pointed to a plastic bag.

‘It were pushed down behind the old boiler,’ he said.

Pascoe picked up the bag and opened it carefully.

‘Christ,’ he said.

‘I’m no path man, sir,’ said Swift. ‘But I’d say that that skull had been bashed in, wouldn’t you?’

Gingerly Pascoe reached into the bag and brought out the tiny skull.

‘Yes, I would,’ said Pascoe. ‘And even though you’re no path man, Sergeant, would you have any ideas about whose bones these might be?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sergeant Swift grimly. ‘A bloody good idea.’

‘Let’s get inside and talk to Mrs Farr,’ said Peter Pascoe.

Dalziel’s fingers inside his shirt scratched ineffectually at his ribcage. It was like trying to play a polystyrene-wrapped zither.

‘Tell me again,’ he said patiently.

‘He rang. It were about six. He said he’d come off shift early again …’

‘Again? He’d done it before?’

Stella Mycroft lit another cigarette and said, ‘Aye. That’s what again means down here.’

She was a pretty lass, thought Dalziel. Pretty and possibly passionate and certainly bright. He inserted the ‘possibly’ because during his alcoholic interrogations at the Welfare, he had elicited many wishful fantasies about Stella’s love-life but nothing more positive than the firm assertion from Tommy Dickinson that Colin Farr had been ‘shagging her rotten’.

But she was certainly bright, clubbing his googly questions all over the field with a violence that was often superfluous. Let’s try her with a Yorker, he thought.

‘When? Why? How do you know?’ he rapped.

It was no problem to her.

‘Not long back. He had a row wi’ Harold Satterthwaite. He came round to see me,’ she rapped back.

All this Dalziel knew.

‘What did he want?’

‘What do you think?’

‘To bed you?’

‘Aye,’ she said, blowing a jet of smoke at him. ‘Not that he were much bothered about a bed.’

‘And?’

‘I told him to get lost. We’d gone steady once, been engaged, but that were a long time back and now I was a respectable married woman.’

‘And he went?’

‘I thought he did. But he must have hung around in the hall. I went upstairs and when Gav came off shift he found someone had lit the fire and made a right sooty mess down the wall.’

‘You told him who it was?’

‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I? I’d done nowt wrong.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He wanted to go after Col, what else? That’s all you lot ever think of, isn’t it? Screwing, drinking and fighting.’

‘Oh aye? And which of these did he want to do to Mr Farr — screw him, buy him a drink, or fight him?’

‘You’re a real joker, aren’t you?’ said Stella.