Reginald Hill: A pinch of snuff

'Who?'

'Bri Burkill, of course. There was a hell of a barney late on last night when he got back from the Club.'

'What time would that be?' enquired Pascoe.

'Don't know, but I was woke up about two o'clock. There was shouting and screaming and God knows what. It must have been bad for us to hear it. These walls are right thick, not like them sheets of hardboard on the new estate. Well, a bit later, we heard Bri's car start up in the road outside and off he went. He wasn't back this morning. Charlie had to go to work on the back of our Colin's bike.'

'But you didn't go round till you were going out shopping?' said Pascoe.

Something of bewilderment in his intonation must have got through.

'Listen, Inspector,' she said grimly. 'You don't stick your nose in, not unless you're asked. But when she doesn't open the door to the police, I begin to wonder. That's all. But you still haven't said why you' re here.'

'Oh God. I'm sorry,' said Pascoe, acutely embarrassed. 'All this distracted me. Look, Mrs Heppelwhite, it's bad news, I'm afraid. There's been an accident at Blengdale's.'

'Our Colin?' she said, arms unfolding, hands rising to her cheeks.

‘No. Charlie. He's cut himself on one of their saws. Look, it's all right, I mean he's not in danger. They've taken him to the Infirmary. Clint – Colin's with him.'

'What's he cut, for God's sake?' she demanded.

'It's his hand.'

'His hand? You've come round here to tell me Charlie's cut his hand!' she said disbelievingly.

'It's a serious cut,' said Pascoe. 'What I mean is, his fingers..’

Now it got to her and that strong square face went rhomboid in shock.

'Cut off? Oh my God! Why didn't you say? Oh God!'

Pascoe put out a comforting arm but she shook herself back to something like normality, pushed it aside, and, saying, 'I'll get my coat on,' she disappeared into the house.

Pascoe turned to the constable.

'You take Mrs Heppelwhite to the Infirmary, will you? I'll stop here and have a look around next door.'

With a small sigh which said all that needed to be said about the relativities of detective-inspectors and Panda drivers, he took out his personal radio and explained the situation to his control.

Pascoe watched them into the car and waited till they'd disappeared round the corner before opening the Burkill gate. As he walked up the narrow concrete path he had a premonition of something nasty waiting for him within. Childe Roland to the dark tower came.

Perhaps he was just being over-imaginative, he thought as he banged on the door. But he hadn't imagined what he had just heard about Burkill's departure in the night nor about the discovery of his abandoned car. And he hadn't imagined the haggard, unshaven face he had seen that morning. The more striking image of the mutilated hand had temporarily blotted out that pale set face, but it came back to him now and he hammered on the door with greater vigour.

Still no answer.

He looked closely at the lock. If necessary, and if the door were not bolted, he could fiddle his way past that easily enough. On the other hand, if last night had been packed full of excitement, household routine had likely gone by the board…

He poked his fingers through the letter-box. He was right. There was a key on a string behind the door and last night it hadn't been wound around the door knob in its 'secure' position. He pulled it out, fitted it, turned it.

There were no bolts fastened either. The door swung easily open. He went in and closed it behind him.

For a moment he stood very still in the gloomy hall and listened. Nothing.

'Hello!' he called. 'Anybody at home?'

The silence shrugged his words off effortlessly without even giving them the acknowledgement of an echo.

Pascoe began to search.

The front room was cold and dead. Old-fashioned furniture, but so little used throughout the years that it might have been genuine reproduction, if anyone were yet genuinely reproducing uncut-moquette discount suites of the fifties. There were chairs for sitting upright in and making formal conversation. Pascoe felt a sudden twinge of memory. He had had his first touch of female pubic hair in such a room as this, sitting in such a chair. He had been pretty upright too.

The living-room was different. It was a mess; not the deliberately destructive mess which Alice Andover had made of Haggard's study, but an incidental mess. The fire had been allowed to die in the grate and not cleared out. There were unwashed tea-cups on the table.

But it went further than simple neglect.

A chair was overturned. The onyx-framed clock lay on the carpet by the door, its green stone cracked and its innards spilling out. Above it on the wall was a dent where it had struck with some force. The fire-iron stand had been overturned and the poker lay some distance away. Pascoe stooped and examined it carefully but he did not touch it.

The kitchen was just untidy. There was a cupboard under the stairs. Pascoe peered in there too, with difficulty suppressing a whistle to keep his spirits up. It contained mops, brushes and left-over pieces of carpet preserved against an irremovable stain or irreparable burns.

That just left upstairs.

As he slowly mounted the narrow staircase Pascoe found himself thinking of the private eye in Psycho searching the household. A quick rushing attack from a maniac wouldn't give him much chance of defence. Best would be to turn his inferior situation to advantage and, instead of retreating, bend his shoulder into his assailant's belly and hurl his body down the stairs. They did it all the time in cowboy films.

But he reached the landing without trouble. It was only a few feet square with four doors leading off it. Three of them were ajar.

Those first, thought Pascoe.

A bedroom, single bed, all the insignia of modern girlhood: viz. cuddly toys; a pink panther nightgown-holder; posters of three pop-groups Pascoe had never heard of; a red plastic record-player; ditto transistor radio; comic-strip magazines; a wardrobe; cheap clothes but plenty of them; three pairs of suicidal wedges. All the evidence of parental indulgence, thought Pascoe mentally totting up costs.

The bed had been lain on but not slept in.

Next a bathroom. He looked at the wash-basin and the towels. They were just like any other wash-basin and towels.

A bedroom-cum-boxroom. There was a bed in it, but it had almost disappeared beneath a mound of household lumber. Pascoe probed the heap of suitcases and cardboard boxes. Nothing.

Which left the closed door.

Taking a deep breath, he slowly turned the handle and pushed it open.

It was almost a relief to see the body on the bed.

The first rule was to look without touching.

The woman was lying diagonally across the bed, face down, her left arm dangling over the edge. Her fingers pointed to a wide stain on the pink carpet. Her legs were bent away beneath her. A shoe remained on her right foot while the other was bare. There were spatters of blood on the pillow.

Pascoe let out his breath in a deep sigh and slowly approached.

At the bedside he knelt on one knee to make identification positive. It was Deirdre Burkill all right even though he could only see the back of her head, half a cheek and one eye.

A waste, he thought. It ends like this. All that hope. The world lay all before them. The future is terror.

He put his hand over his eyes and rubbed his brow as if to eradicate the thought.

When he took it away, the single eye opened and was watching him. Pascoe fell backwards in his fright.

'You a priest as well as a policeman?' said Deirdre Burkill, rolling over on her back. 'It's a doctor I need, thank you very much.'

She wasn't joking. Her face was badly bruised and grazed. The other eye couldn't have opened, so swollen was the surrounding flesh, her nose had been bleeding and flakes of congealed blood still clung to her upper lip, while the lower lip had a nasty split and from the way she clasped her arms around her ribs, Pascoe surmised she was in pain there too, either from bruising or a fracture.