Reginald Hill - The Price of Butcher

He was making his way toward it when he heard a woman scream.

He broke into a run. He was out of breath after the first couple of strides, reminding him that the famous curative powers of Sandytown still had a lot of work to do, but he had enough momentum to take him through the doorway and across the kitchen, till he came to a harsh-breathing halt at the head of the cellar steps.

He looked down and saw that God had got there before him.

The single bare bulb cast sharp-edged black shadows over a scene Caravaggio could have painted.

Jenny the barmaid was kneeling among a chaos of beer kegs and splintered wood. Buried beneath it, staring up at her with unseeing eyes, lay Alan Hollis.

Hearing Dalziel’s feet on the stairs, Jenny looked round. Her face showed natural shock but she was a strong-nerved Yorkshire lass. One scream, then she’d descended to check out the state of her employer when lots of women would have run outside for help.

“He’s gone,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “That old cow did for him in the end. He’d been going on at her for months about getting the cellar sorted, but she were too mean to cough up. And now it’s done for him.”

That was no doubt how many in Sandytown would see it, thought Dalziel as he studied the collapsed keg rack. What had gone first wasn’t immediately clear, one of the old shelves or one of the supporting props. But once movement started, it would have been as unstoppable as an avalanche.

Others, perhaps, would not blame Daphne, or at least only name her as an instrument of fate. The Hollises were a doomed race, everyone knew that. Even when destiny seemed to give them a break, it never lasted long.

“Nay, lass,” he said as he helped Jenny back up the stairs. “Let’s not rush to blame anyone. It were an act of God.”

Or of his agent Roote, he thought.

As he summoned Sergeant Whitby and the emergency services, his mind ran and reran the implications of what had happened. The case was certainly altered. In every sense.

Could Roote really be responsible for what had happened in the cellar?

Of course he bloody could!

And that would put his recorded message in quite a different light. Now it made sense as a warning not to act precipitately, to sit back and give God a chance. More than a warning. An instruction backed by a threat.

Dalziel didn’t like threats. If he’d been the kind of man to concern himself over such things, he might have felt complacent that he’d decided to ignore it in the name of justice. Instead he was asking himself whether that same justice required that he off-loaded on to Pascoe everything he knew or suspected. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect, in fact, it would be unkind, disruptive, and almost certainly ultimately nonproductive.

In fact, would he be contemplating it at all if he didn’t resent so much the threat that Roote was holding over his head in the shape of Mildred? To ignore a threat for the sake of justice was one thing, to ignore it simply because it really pissed you off was just plain daft!

The debate was still raging in his mind an hour later when he finally left the Hope and Anchor to the emergency services and climbed into Pet’s car to return to the Avalon. The weather was on the turn. The bright warm day that had blessed the opening of the Festival of Health was now a fading memory, a rising wind was hurrying shreds of cloud along the darkening sky and spattering the windscreen with the first drops of rain.

It was, after all, a Bank Holiday weekend.

As he put the key in the ignition, he noticed the jiffy bag on the passenger seat.

He thought, If it really is a letter bomb, mebbe I can go back to being a poor old convalescent cop again, only this time, I’ll definitely check in at the Cedars!

He picked it up and tore it open.

Out of it slid Mildred.

There was an unsigned note.

Andy, as I told you, I removed Mildred for safekeeping. Do try to take better care of her in future, and all your womenfolk. Safe journey home!

Dalziel sank back in his seat. A strange feeling was welling up inside him. He resisted it for a moment, then gave in. It was admiration for Franny Roote! You had to give it to the bastard, using the threat of a threat to give pause, but knowing that the reality of the threat might ultimately be counterproductive. Young Charley Heywood could do a lot worse than go to Roote for tutorials!

He started the car, drove out of the car park, and turned up the hill to North Cliff.

Suddenly the problem of whether Roote had anything to do with the death of Alan Hollis had ceased to be a problem.

If I’d got to the pub and found him working down in that cellar, I might have pulled the whole bloody issue down on top of him myself! thought Dalziel.

So let it go! The buck stops with the man at the top, and that’s me!

As for Franny Roote, let the clever bugger win this battle. There was a whole lifetime ahead to sort out the war!

He wound down the window. Suddenly the cold wild weather seemed the proper element to be reveled in, not shut out.

“Watch out, you scrotes!” he bellowed out of the open window. “Dalziel’s back!”

A blast of wind with half the North Sea on its back blew his words back into the car.

He wound up the window hastily.

He didn’t give a toss what Tom Parker said, any fool knew there was nowt like a cold sea breeze for giving a man a nasty cold!

Ahead of him as he crossed the town boundary at the foot of South Cliff, the wind caught at a colorful banner stretched across the road, tossed it high, snapped a cord, and twisted it into an unreadable plait. It didn’t matter. He’d read it on the way down.

Welcome to Sandytown, Home of the Healthy Holiday!

“Sod that,” said Andy Dalziel. “If that’s what healthy holidays do for you, I think I’ll take up smoking again!”