Reginald Hill - An Advancement of Learning

“Why? We know the sex, don’t we? Even I can tell the difference between a male and a female skeleton.”

“Of course,’ said Pascoe soothingly. ‘ just thought it would be useful to know which men felt it necessary to disappear quietly about that time. And the other six women were either seen boarding trains or long-distance buses, or some subsequent contact has taken place, a postcard, a telephone call. This doesn’t cut them out altogether, of course.” “Worse bloody luck,’ said Dalziel gloomily. ‘ you got someone contacting parents, family, friends, again?” “No,’ said Pascoe. ‘ didn’t seem necessary. I’ll get their files of course.”

“On which you’ll find nothing’s been done for five years. Naturally. We can’t spend our precious bloody time chasing around after runaway adults. But you’ll probably find half the sods have turned up again and no one’s thought to tell us. They usually don’t.”

I’ll get on to it right away,’ said Pascoe.

“By the way. Did they have red hair?”

“Mary Parish did. And the other’s described as auburn.”

“It might help. But then she might have come from a thousand miles away.” “A central European, you mean?’ asked Pascoe against his better judgement. “That would narrow things down.”

Dalziel squinted at him calculatingly for a moment.

“Shove off,’ he said. ”ve all got work to do.”

“Hey!’ he called after him. ‘ about that hint of yours? Get anything there?”

He backed up the double entendre with a toothy leer. Pascoe answered straight.

“Not much. I’m seeing her tonight for a drink. All in the line of duty, of course. She hasn’t been here long enough to know much. I did gather they’re having a bit of excitement at the moment. Some lecturer’s been knocking off a student and there’s a bit of a rumpus.”

“Who?”

“A fellow called Fallowfield. Biologist.”

That figures. Was he here five years ago?”

He answered the question himself by running his gaze quickly down the list before him.

“No. Then he’s of no interest. Dirty sod. Though it must be a temptation. There’s a lot of it around. I think I’ll take a walk and see what’s going on. You can stop here. You’ll need the phone.”

Jauntily he left the room. Pascoe had to close the door behind him. He jerked two fingers at the solid oak panels.

When he turned round he found two students solemnly staring at him through the large open window. They nodded approvingly, each tapped the side of his nose with the forefinger, and they went on their way.

Despite the heat, Pascoe closed the window before he started his telephoning.

Sam Fallowfield sat in a deckchair in front of his cottage which looked down over the shingle to the level sands and the very distant sea. When the tide went out here, it kept on going till an onlooker could have doubts whether it ever meant to return. The cottage was solidly built of massive blocks of dark grey stone. It had been whitewashed at some stage but the salt and sand-laden winter gales had long ago stripped away this poor embellishment. It was an end cottage of a block of four, each of which had a small garden at the front and a shared cobbled yard behind.

The other three were used only as holiday bases, one by the owner of the block only, while the other two were rented out by the week during the summer. Fallowfield alone lived there all the year round and had done so for the past five years ever since arriving at Holm Coultram.

It was early evening. Soon the holiday-makers, temporarily his neighbours, would be returning from whatever exciting expedition they had so noisily launched that morning. But for the moment he had the place to himself. One or two featureless figures were distantly visible in pursuit of the sea. And away to his right a thin flag fluttered on an elevated plateau to mark the outermost boundary of the golf course. The college was completely out of sight more than half a mile inland.

It was a situation to make a man as indifferent to society as Fallowfield sigh with contentment.

He sighed.

“That sounds as if it comes from the heart, Sam,’ said a voice behind him.

“Come and sit down, Henry,’ he said without looking round. ”ll find a beer and another chair behind the door.”

Gratefully Henry Saltecombe lowered himself in the deckchair which he erected with a deftness unpromised by his podgy hands.

“Hope I’m not obtruding, my dear fellow, but I felt like a constitutional before driving back to the bosom of my family.”

Henry had a pleasant detached house on a modern estate about eight miles down the coast. It overflowed with four children, a dog, a cat, and his wife. He loved them all dearly but was rarely in a hurry to return home to them. He had married late when the habit of peace and solitude had long since moulded itself comfortably around his shoulders, and it was not easily to be torn away.

“What happened to you then?’ Henry asked after he had opened a can of light ale and jetted it expertly into the O of his mouth. ‘ noticed you disappeared when all the excitement started. The Law has arrived in all its majesty, controlled by a corpulence in excess even of mine. There have been comings and I have no doubt there will be goings. I have even seen one or two students with facial expressions distantly related to alert, intelligent interest. Simeon suspects it’s an act of Walt, and Walt firmly believes it’s an act of God.”

“And the police?”

The police are less public about their suspicions. But it is exciting.

At first I thought it was merely some animal remains. But it appears to be certainly human. I myself think the solution is simple.”

“How?”

“I have no doubt it will turn out to be a student jape. They knew all about the garden controversy. It was no secret and even if it had been, they have a supremely efficient intelligence system, if only in the military sense. So they get some bones, an anatomical specimen perhaps, and they bury them beneath the statue. What fun! Something to enliven a long, dull, very hot term.”

Fallowfield grinned wryly.

“I should have thought the term had been sufficiently enlivened already.”

Henry was immediately apologetic.

“My dear fellow, I never thought… that business is far too serious for anyone to be entertained by it.”

Fallowfield twisted in his chair so that he could see the other’s face.

Its rotundities were set in pattern of sympathetic seriousness.

“Come off it, Henry. It’s the most entertaining thing that’s happened here in years. One of the few consolations I have in it all is the pleasure I know I am giving my colleagues.”

Henry shook his head in protest, then began laughing. Fallowfield joined in.

“You see,’ he said.

“No, Sam,’ said Henry. ”s you. You just don’t strike one as a career man, so how can I worry about your career being ruined? It’s the effect on you personally that matters and you give a damn good impression of not giving a damn. Which makes it easier to spectate.”

“Enjoy yourself as much as you can,’ said Fallowfield. ‘ knows whose turn it’ll be next?” He said it lightly, but it stopped the conversation for a minute.

“You did bed the girl, didn’t you, Sam?’ asked Henry finally.

“I’ve never denied it,’ replied the other.

“Here?’ He indicated the cottage.

Fallowfield shrugged.

“Up against a tree. Out among the dunes. In the principal’s study. What difference does it make where?”