Reginald Hill - Under World

‘Nearer thirty, actually. That’s quite a long way for your lad to come, isn’t it? He must be very keen to get out of Burrthorpe Main once a week.’

‘He’s certainly found an ingenious way of staying out even longer, hasn’t he?’ said Ellie, a little over-savagely.

‘Yes, dear. You don’t know anywhere round here where a hungry policeman could get a meal, do you?’

Ellie rose and went to the door.

‘It’s salad,’ she said as she passed through. ‘I was a bit pushed.’

Pascoe leaned over and looked down at his daughter who returned his gaze from wide unblinking blue-grey eyes.

‘OK, kid,’ he said sternly. ‘Don’t play innocent with me. You’re not leaving this sofa till you tell me where you’ve hidden the rusks.’

Next morning Pascoe, finding himself with a loose couple of minutes as he drank his mug of instant coffee, dialled the number of South Yorkshire Police Headquarters, identified himself and asked if Detective-Inspector Wishart was handy.

‘Hello, cowboy!’ came the most unconstabulary greeting a few moments later. ‘How’s life out on the range? Got running water yet?’

It was Wishart’s little joke to affect belief that Mid-Yorks was a haven of rural tranquillity in which the only crimes to ruffle the placid surface of CID life were rustling and the odd bit of bestiality. Any note of irritation in Pascoe’s response would only result in an unremitting pursuit of the facetious fancy, so he said amiably, ‘Only downhill. In fact things are so quiet here I thought I’d give myself a vicarious thrill by talking to a real policeman about some real action.’

‘Wise move. Anything in particular, or shall I ramble on generally while I’m beating up these prisoners?’

‘You could fill me in on one Colin Farr, of Burrthorpe. He got done for thumping one of your finest last week.’

‘Oh. Any special reason for asking, Peter?’ said Wishart suspiciously.

‘It’s all right,’ laughed Pascoe. ‘I’m not doing a commando raid. It’s personal and unofficial. My wife knows him, in a tutorial capacity, I hasten to add. She was concerned that he’d missed one of her classes, that’s all.’

‘Blaming it on the police in general and you in particular, eh?’ said Wishart, who had the shrewdness of a Scots lawyer which is what his family would have preferred him to be. ‘Burrthorpe, you say? Indian territory that. It was almost a no-go area during the Strike. You’ll remember the great siege? They just about wrecked the local cop-shop. I believe they’ve rebuilt it like a fortress. There’s a sergeant there I’ve known for years. I’ll give him a buzz if you can hang on.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Pascoe.

In the ensuing silence Pascoe cradled the phone on his shoulder and burrowed in the bottom drawer of his desk in search of a packet of barley sugars he kept there. Man could not live on health food alone. When he surfaced, he found himself looking into the questioning gaze of Andrew Dalziel. Usually the fat man came into a room like an SAS assault team. Occasionally, and usually when it caused maximum embarrassment and inconvenience, he just materialized.

‘Busy?’ said Dalziel.

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe, carefully letting the barley sugar slip back into the drawer.

‘Won’t bother you, then. I just want a look at your old records. Mine are a mess.’

He peered towards Pascoe’s filing cabinets, with the combative expectation of a new arrival at the Dark Tower. Pascoe, who knew why his superior’s records were in a mess (if he couldn’t find anything, he shook the offending file and shouted threats at the resultant shower of paper), rose in alarm. The phone was still silent.

‘Was it something in particular, sir?’ he said.

‘I’m not just browsing if that’s what you mean,’ growled Dalziel. ‘The Kassell drugs case will do for starters. I know you weren’t concerned directly but I know too you’re a nosey bugger, so what have you got?’

What’s he doing digging up old bones? wondered Pascoe as he put the phone on the desk and went to the cupboard in which he stored his personal records.

‘Thanks, lad. I’ll keep an ear open for you, shall I?’

Sticking his head out of the cupboard, Pascoe saw that Dalziel was in his seat with the telephone at his ear, taking the paper off a barley sugar.

‘That’s OK,’ he said with studied negligence. ‘It’s not really important.’

‘It better had be, lad,’ said Dalziel sternly. ‘Official phones these are. Some bugger rang Benidorm last week and no one’s confessing. Wasn’t you, was it? No. Not cultural enough for you, Benidorm. Can you find it?’

Pascoe resumed his search, spurred on by the need to get Dalziel out before the need arose to explain his query to South.

‘Got it,’ he said in dusty triumph a moment later. But it was too late.

‘Hello,’ said Dalziel in a neutral voice which, probably deliberately, might have passed for Pascoe’s. ‘Go ahead.’

He listened for a moment then exploded. ‘Ripper! What do you mean he’s a ripper? No, this isn’t Peter. This is Dalziel. And who the fuck are you? You’re not speaking from Benidorm, are you?’

He listened a while longer then passed the phone to Pascoe.

‘Inspector Wishart from South,’ he said. ‘Says your man’s a ripper down Burrthorpe Main. Gave me a nasty shock, that. This the Kassell stuff? I’ll take good care of it, lad.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pascoe, who foresaw already the dog-eared, beer-stained state in which his lovely records were likely to return to him. ‘Official inquiry, is it, sir?’

From the door Dalziel flashed him a smile as reassuring as a crack in new plaster.

‘As official as yours, I expect, lad.’

He went out. Pascoe said, ‘The coast’s clear.’

‘Jesus,’ said Wishart. ‘You might have warned me Geronimo had broken out again; let’s do this quick, eh? Here’s what the record says.’

That night he said to Ellie, ‘I picked up some info on your protégé, if you’d like to hear.’

‘Official version, you mean? Go on. I like a well-crafted tale.’

‘Simply, he got drunk, took offence at something a stranger in the street said to him, got into a fracas and pushed the man through a shop window. That may have been an accident. Certainly, it turned out the man didn’t want to bring charges. Which was odd. As evidently he turned out to be a journalist, one Monty Boyle, chief crime reporter on the Challenger . Makes you think …

Ellie was not in the least interested in what it made him think.

‘But the good old fuzz persuaded him to change his mind,’ she said angrily.

‘Not really. A couple of local cops witnessed the incident. When they approached, Farr attacked one of them, throwing him through the window too, and had to be restrained by the other. That was the assault he was charged with.’

‘Now I’ve got it,’ cried Ellie in mock delight. ‘A bit of drunken horseplay, the kind of thing that passes for high spirits at Twickers or Annabel’s, is escalated to a criminal assault by heavy-handed police intervention.’

‘It’s a point of view,’ said Pascoe gravely. ‘It’s certainly true that if he hadn’t assaulted the constable, the whole thing might have been smoothed over with a police caution.’

‘But you can’t turn a blind eye to saying boo to a bobby,’ said Ellie.

‘Not when he needs seven stitches in his hand,’ said Pascoe. ‘Incidentally, since you don’t ask, the Challenger reporter was hardly damaged at all. It appears that Burrthorpe’s not the kind of place you encourage cop-bashing. They had a full-scale riot there during the Strike and the police station was just about wrecked.’