Reginald Hill - A pinch of snuff

The nearest Pascoe had been to the yard before was some years earlier when Blengdale had celebrated something (his first ulcer, perhaps) by holding a party there. The bar had been on a barge strung from bow to stern with Chinese lanterns, and a dance band had played among the stacks of timber while the guests gyrated on the wharf. Pascoe had travelled slowly by in a police boat and felt the disdainful superiority of the guardian to the guarded.

This time he approached by road and the first thing he noticed was Dalziel's car parked outside on a double yellow line. Pascoe squeezed in behind him and entered the building, stepping into an atmosphere heavy with noise and sawdust. He presumed there was order here but his first impression was of utter chaos. He approached a man who seemed to be in some perturbation of spirit about the relative lengths of two pieces of wood he was carrying.

'Mr Blengdale? Right over there. Up the stairs. Them's his offices.'

'Them' were a line of windows at first-floor level in the high-ceilinged building. There were figures within, but he couldn't identify anyone at this distance. As he moved away he heard the man with the planks mutter, 'Centi-fucking-metres! I told him, centi-fucking-metres!'

He was almost at the foot of the stairs which ran up the wall to the first-floor level when he spotted Charlie Heppelwhite. He was running lengths of wood over a circular saw with a speed and precision which obviously derived from long practice. To Pascoe's untutored eye it seemed that the proximity of spinning blades and soft flesh should demand rather more than one hundred per cent concentration, but in Charlie's case automatic expertise was obviously enough, for the man's mind was so far from his surroundings that Pascoe had to shout his name twice before he became aware of his presence.

'Oh, it's you,' he said stupidly like a man waking from a bad dream to a worse reality.

'Everything all right?' said Pascoe.

'Why shouldn't it be?' asked Charlie, beginning to recover his poise a little. 'What do you want now, Mr Pascoe?'

'Nothing. Nothing. Just passing through,' said

Pascoe, realizing how unconvincing it must sound.'Clint here? I don't see him.'

'He's out in the yard. Do you want to talk to him again?' asked Heppelwhite.

'No. Not just now. It's your boss I'm after. See you later,' said Pascoe.

As he climbed the steep and worn stairs to the office, he thought with regret how impossible it was not to sound threatening when you talked to people who were involved, no matter how innocently, with police business. The staircase was enclosed by a single handrail. At the top he glanced down. Charlie Heppelwhite was looking up at him but when their gazes met, he quickly turned away and resumed his work.

These offices had been built in the good old-fashioned tradition by the overseer who quite literally oversaw the work. From here you got a task-master's-eye view of what was going on. In the first office he came to, a dark-eyed typist, who looked about ten years younger than the machine she was beating, regarded him with little interest.

'I've come to see Mr Blengdale,' said Pascoe.

'He's in there,' said the weary child.

'He's not engaged, I hope,' said Pascoe.

'Through there,' said the girl as if to an idiot.

'I mean, is there anyone with him?' persisted Pascoe.

'Yeah,' said the girl. And returned to her work.

Pascoe smiled to himself. It made a change to meet a secretary who didn't read the kind of women’s magazine which preached that the only acceptable alternative to mothering your family was mothering your boss.

He opened the door.

'Oh God!' said Blengdale. 'Here's another of 'em!'

He was sitting at a desk piled so high with paper that Pascoe felt a pang of sympathy for a fellow sufferer.

Standing in front of him as though being interviewed by a headmaster was his wife. She wore a light blue suit with a skirt long enough to be fashionable but not long enough to be trendy. A small square of blue silk sat elegantly on her sculpted locks (like a gay judge passing the death sentence, thought Pascoe gruesomely) and she wore a pair of chamois leather gloves, also in blue, which needed no label to declare they were made (probably) in Italy and had cost (certainly) fifty pounds.

Behind her in a suit so shiny that his nails scarred the glaze as they scratched his left buttock was Dalziel.

'Good. You've got here, Inspector,' he said as if Pascoe were the first person in the world he expected to see.

He advanced on Pascoe and forced him into a corner.

'I'm getting nowhere with this bugger,' he muttered. 'Say something about Haggard.'

'What?' whispered Pascoe.

'Anything. Come on, lad!'

'Alice Andover caught her sister beating Haggard,' he murmured.

'Louder, for Christ's sake!' said Dalziel. 'His name, louder.'

'Haggard,' said Pascoe. 'She saw Haggard being whipped.'

Dalziel nodded vigorously, turned his head and shot a baleful glance at Blengdale who was observing them angrily.

'I mayn't be able to trip the bugger, but by God! I'll scare him,' muttered Dalziel.

'Superintendent!' said Blengdale. 'I'm a busy man. I'm always a busy man. This morning I'm so busy, I don't think I'll catch up with myself for a month!'

'Business troubles?' said Dalziel with that spurious sympathy which Pascoe so admired. 'Cash flow problems? Hard times, hard times.'

'No. For Christ's sake, don't go saying things like that. That's how rumours start,' said Blengdale in alarm. 'Truth is, business is too good. It's meeting the demand that's my problem. I'm up to my eyes, and what happens? You turn up, Gwen turns up, your sidekick turns up. The only one who doesn't turn up's my bloody foreman and he's the only one who can be any good to me!'

'Brian Burkill, you mean?' said Dalziel.

'Aye. Of course, you'll know him. No word. Just doesn't appear. Trouble at home, that'll be his excuse. Show me someone who doesn't have trouble at home! I've got trouble at home, but I've got to come in!'

'Not to worry,' said Dalziel, looking out of the big window down into the work floor. 'One of your worries is over. There's Burkill now.'

'Where?' demanded Blengdale as if he didn't trust Dalziel. He came out from behind his desk and they all stood in line and stared through the window.

It was indeed Burkill, threading his way across the floor towards the office stairs. But there was something not quite right about him, thought Pascoe. Of course – it was his clothes. Everyone else wore overalls of some description, but Burkill was dressed in the brown checked suit he'd been wearing at the Westgate Club the night before last. He was walking slowly as if uncertain where he was. Finally he reached the bench at which Charlie Heppelwhite was working and here he stopped; Heppelwhite turned round leaving a length of wood to be chewed at will by the spinning blade; the two men talked; Burkill emphasized what he was saying with hammer-like taps of his forefinger into the other man's chest; Heppelwhite seemed to be expostulating with him; he made nervous waving movements with his hands; Burkill's face was thrust only a few inches from the other man's; workers at neighbouring benches looked round at them curiously.

Then Blengdale opened the window, leaned out and shouted, 'Burkill! Get yourself up here this bloody instant!'

Brian Burkill looked up. He hadn't shaved that morning. Whether he saw them all or only Blengdale it was hard to say. In fact, thought Pascoe, so stretched and tight was his face with some emotion, it was difficult to tell if he even saw his employer. A fork-lift truck with a load of doors came rolling down the aisle between the machines and benches. There was plenty of clearance, but to those above it seemed as if Burkill jerked away from its approach, instinctively stepping backwards and turning as he did so. Or perhaps he wasn't seeing the truck either.