Reginald Hill - Under World

Except that he couldn’t remember pocketing the recorder.

In fact he would have sworn that in that moment of terror at Farr’s appearance, he had let it fall back on the dead man’s chest. But here it was.

‘And I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he said out loud.

And shrieked as a little red eye winked at him and the cassette vibrated gently in his hand.

It was of course voice-operated, tuned and directed so that even in a crowded pub it would pick up the conversation between Boyle and the man directly in front of him without admitting enough peripheral noise to mask the words.

The Japanese were truly marvellous, thought Pascoe, not least for creating something sturdy enough to survive what he’d been through. And what Boyle had been through too, of course, poor bastard. Ike Ogilby got value for money out of his reporters. Recently Pascoe had helped get one of them jailed. Now here was another getting himself murdered. In-house scoops, impregnable exclusives. Lucky old Ike.

As his mind wandered idly, his fingers were moving to more purpose. They had found the button to run the tape back. When it stopped, he pressed the next button. And suddenly he was no longer alone. There were voices with him in the darkness and as he lay there and listened, his mind’s eye gave them form and substance also.

‘Christ, you scared me!’

Monty Boyle. But he didn’t sound scared. He’d probably heard someone coming and gone towards him, preferring for some reason to meet him out of that horrible side gallery.

‘Did I!’

Downey. Always sneaking up on people, Downey. A bad habit.

‘You surely did. What are you doing down here, Mr Downey?’

‘Same as you, likely.’

‘I was watching the Farr boy. I saw him go down this hole, so when he came back out again, I thought I’d take a look.’

‘Me too.’

‘To tell the truth, I’m pleased to see you. I’ve marked my way back, but I’m not used to crawling around like a mole, so it’s good to have an expert along.’

‘What have you found, Mr Boyle?’

‘Sweet f.a. I reckon I’ve ruined a good suit for nothing. Come on, let’s get back topside and I’ll buy us both a stiff drink. I don’t know about you but I’m gasping for one.’

‘How far did you go, Mr Boyle?’

‘Just a bit further. Not much. I thought: This is pointless. And dangerous. So I just turned round and …’

‘You didn’t go down that gallery?’

‘What? That side passage, you mean? No, I didn’t like the look of that. Come on …’

‘Your marks turn in there.’

‘Do they? Surely not. I mean, I may have taken a glance but …’

‘You’re a liar! You’ve been in there! Why are you lying to me?’

There was a pause. Classic interrogation technique, thought Pascoe with professional detachment. Test a good story with total disbelief. Make the suspect budge an inch and you had him. The best never budged. But perhaps Boyle was more used to asking questions than answering them … He waited. It was quite suspenseful, even though he knew the outcome.

‘I’m sorry. You’re right. Look, I can tell you. I did find something. A child’s bones. You see what this means, Mr Downey? I didn’t want to distress you, but it means your friend, Billy Farr, must have hidden the girl there after he … after it happened. Look, I’ve been thinking, maybe there’s no need for this to go any further. What can the police do now? What can anyone do? Maybe it’s best just left forgotten. Let’s get out of here and talk about it over that drink, shall we?’

Boyle knew, thought Pascoe. Perhaps he was sharper than the rest of us and had his suspicions already. And I should have had mine too! He recalled Downey’s face when they’d confronted Mrs Farr with the dog’s bones. Pale and trembling. Memory of a lost friend, they’d thought. But it had been the shock of realization just how close to the truth Colin Farr must be getting. And when he got Ellie’s message and guessed that Farr was proposing to hide down here, he knew that discovery was getting ever closer.

I was slow! Pascoe told himself in anguish. When I saw that Downey hadn’t brought any food … when I saw that knife … if I’d stopped to think, I could have stopped all this. They could still have been alive, Downey … and Colin Farr …

‘Billy’d not do that! You didn’t know Billy. He was my friend, he’d not harm a fly let alone that lass … Never!’

‘Well, if it wasn’t Billy, it must have been Pickford after all. Killed her and brought her down here. That’s what I’ll write in my paper. You’ll be able to read all about it next Sunday.’

Poor Monty. The Man Who Knows Too Much. The man with an answer for everything. Monty Boyle, confidant of cops and robbers alike, equally at home in the corridors of law and the alleys of the underworld. Except that now he’d found himself in an underworld whose geography was beyond his plotting, facing a mind whose workings were dark and twisting beyond his understanding. And now The Man Who Knows Too Much knew everything … or nothing.

‘That’s what you’ll write, is it? Not the truth? You wouldn’t rather write the truth?’

Downey’s voice no longer strident, but teasing, wheedling. The suspect ready to cough, eager to cough, just requiring his audience to be grateful, attentive, sympathetic … Leave it, Boyle! Walk away from it! Show no interest. You can still survive … could still …

‘Yes, indeed, Mr Downey. I’d very much like to write the truth. Why don’t you tell it to me?’

So there it was. In the end poor old Monty Boyle had died of journalism. He gave up any chance he had of talking his way above ground because he could not resist a good story, an exclusive, a scoop …

‘I saw them that day, Billy and Tracey. I were lying up above the White Rock, watching … you get a grand view up there, all sorts of things. The tricks some of these young uns’ll get up to! Not just the young uns either, I were watching Harold Satterthwaite that day. Christ, he were really giving it to her! She were young enough to be his daughter too, and he’s older than me … was … it makes you think … it made me think: Why’m I up here watching and he’s down there … never mind. I saw Billy go back down the path with the girl, and a bit later Harold and Stella got dressed and went straight down through the woods towards the road. I started scrambling down the side of the White Rock and I got up a bit of speed, you know the way you do when your legs are nigh on running away with you! And I came down the last bit to the path right fast. Well, Tracey were there again. She must have come back up by herself. She were dead scared when she saw me. It’s understandable, someone bursting out of the bushes like that. She just turned and started to run. And I set off running after her. All I wanted was to tell her it were all right, it was only me and I meant her no harm. But when you start chasing someone … have you ever chased someone, Mr Boyle?’

‘Not like that, Mr Downey. Not like that.’

‘No? Well, it’s … exciting. But all I meant was to stop her and tell her … all I meant … Then I caught up with her and I grabbed her. I had to get hold of her, you understand, I had to touch her, to make her stop so’s I could tell her … that’s all I wanted … but she kept on struggling and she started yelling and I had to stop her in case folk heard and got the wrong idea … and I kept on thinking of Harold … And then she were dead, Mr Boyle. All slack and loose. Dead!’