Reginald Hill - A pinch of snuff

Her breath stank of vodka. The half-empty bottle had fallen from her dangling hand and rolled beneath the bed, leaving the sinister stain on the carpet.

'I'll get an ambulance,' said Pascoe.

'No you bloody well won't,' said Deirdre. 'I'm not going anywhere looking like this. Oh God, I feel right sick. You couldn't make us a cup of tea?'

Pascoe went downstairs to the kitchen. While the kettle was boiling, he went quietly out to his car and reported in, asking Control to get word of what he'd found to Dalziel.

When he went back upstairs with the tea-tray, he found the woman had washed her face and was sitting in front of her dressing-table mirror trying to conceal the damage with make-up.

'For God's sake!' he expostulated. 'It's antiseptic you want, not powder.'

'Got to look right,' she said. 'That's all you sods'll let us have, our faces.'

Pascoe poured the tea.

'I've got a doctor coming,' he said. 'If you want your own doctor, I'll arrange for that too. But I thought the sooner we had you looked at, the better.'

She shrugged indifferently and winced.

'Brian did this?' said Pascoe casually.

'It weren't self-inflicted,' she answered.

'Where's Sandra, Mrs Burkill?' pursued Pascoe.

'Out. At a friend's, I expect. She'll be all right, that one.'

'When did she go out?'

'Last night. This morning. If I'd any sense I'd have made a run for it too. But I've never seen reason for running from what you don't respect.'

She laughed bitterly.

'Would you like to tell me exactly what happened?' asked Pascoe gently.

She lit a cigarette from a packet in the dressing-table drawer and coughed raucously.

'Why not?' she said. 'I don't mind much who knows. You were here last night. You know the state you left us in. Well, I calmed down after a bit. I don't know why I got so upset. Kids, you should expect it of them nowadays. Me, I was sixteen before I even kissed a lad. I've made up for it since, but what you do when you're grown up's your own business. They've no childhood now. Babies one minute, talking mucky the next. I don't know.'

She sipped her tea reflectively, wincing as the hot cup touched her swollen lip.

'There she was, pregnant. All right, so she'd been seduced or led astray or whatever you like to call it. But unless they hold you down, you've still got to lie there and let it happen. Well, I kept my temper then, I had to, Brian would have killed her if he'd got going. When I saw her last night, though, with that Clint, it were too much. But for all that I'd made up my mind to say nowt to Brian. But when he came in about one o'clock, he knew summat was up.'

'How?' asked Pascoe.

'You do nowt round here without every bugger knowing,' said Deirdre Burkill. 'Someone in the street'd go down to the Club later on and mention, dead casual like, that they'd seen the rozzers at our door. Well, I just said you'd wanted a word with Sandra, check her statement. Up he goes to her room, all indignant.'

'Surely she'd be asleep.'

'Not her. She was lying on her bed, playing records. When her dad came in looking annoyed, she must have thought I'd told him about her and Clint. Well, she jumps up and starts shouting the odds, silly little fool, and Bri soon catches on. He really goes wild now. He's always spoiled her rotten and he'd even convinced himself that she’d got put in the club all innocent-like. But he couldn't see his way round this. So he clouted her. Just the once. But it were enough.'

'Enough for what?' prompted Pascoe.

'Enough to make her start blabbing,' said Deirdre. 'I didn't know she knew. I'd always been that careful.'

'About what?'

'She blamed me, you see. Thought I'd set her dad on her. So she told him. I can't blame her.'

'For what?' demanded Pascoe in exasperation.

'For telling Bri about me and Charlie,' snapped the woman.

'Telling him what about you and Charlie?' asked Pascoe stupidly.

She looked at him in surprise, turning first to amusement and then to pain as her smile stretched her battered flesh.

'You and Charlie? Charlie Heppelwhite?' said Pascoe, incredulous.

'I don't mean Chaplin,' said the woman wearily. 'Yes, me and Charlie Heppelwhite. Long thin Charlie. Poor old Charlie. Poor old Deirdre.'

She began to cry.

Dalziel arrived with the doctor who was the same one summoned to attend Shorter.

'What happens to people when you're around?' he asked.

'Oh, an attack of this, an attack of that,' said Pascoe.

He and Dalziel went into the cold unwelcoming front parlour.

'Takes me back,' said Dalziel, looking around.

You too, thought Pascoe. Is nothing sacred?

'What's up then?' asked the fat man, sprawling on the sofa and scratching his groin with an expression of sensuous reminiscence on his face. It disappeared as Pascoe spoke.

'So, he found out at last,' said Dalziel. 'That explains why he's gone missing.'

'At last?' said Pascoe, raising his eyebrows.

'Aye. Didn't you know? I thought everyone knew! Everyone save Bri and Betsy, of course, and I'm not sure about her. Well, it figures, doesn't it? You don't leave an active, handsome woman like that to her own devices night after night, not unless you've fitted a time-lock. What did she tell you?'

Deirdre had offered no explanations or analysis – why should she? – but the picture had emerged quite clearly. Night after night, her husband would be off down the Club. Charlie Heppelwhite would come round to say, would she like a lift? And when they got back, Charlie would see her safely into the house. Probably Charlie used to moan about it at first, always having her along, and Betsy probably gave him the rough side of her tongue whenever he moaned. Until one day.. . How do these things happen? Who decided? Who cares! Whenever Charlie went round, there would be contact from then on. A kiss or a caress, if it was just a matter of saying the car was ready. But doubtless there were other things to do, the coals to bring in, a shelf to fix, a fridge to repair, little neighbourly things, little unremembered acts. Ah, how ingenious is the human mind in pursuit of pleasure!

'So what exactly happened after Sandra had blown the whistle?' asked Dalziel.

'Deirdre heard it all from the bottom of the stairs. She should have got out if she'd got any sense, but she didn't. She's a brave woman in a funny kind of way. Burkill came downstairs and she backed off into the living-room. He was right on the edge, but oddly enough I think what got to her in the end was that he didn't want to believe it, not because of her, but because of Charlie. So it ended up with her almost having to persuade him that she'd been unfaithful. Well, she succeeded. He went berserk, you saw the room. She made it upstairs to the bedroom, Sandra was screaming and shouting, she remembers, then Burkill really laid one on her and knocked her out. When she woke up the house was empty. She crawled downstairs and poured some vodka into her. Then she staggered back upstairs and drank some more to wash down some tranquillizers to deaden the pain.'

'Had Sandra gone with her dad?' asked Dalziel.

'She doesn't know. After what happened, she didn't much care. The pills and the booze combined soon put her to sleep. ‘Till the brave prince came and woke her with a caution,’ said Dalziel.

'That's it,’ said Pascoe. 'There was something else, though. I got a pretty full version of the speech she made to Bri before the thumping got properly under way.'

'And?'

'Among other things he'd been screaming at her that she was no fit mother for Sandra and that it was no wonder the girl had got into trouble. So she retaliated by telling him about the lass and Clint in the garden shed.'

'That was natural,' observed Dalziel.

'Yes, but she went on to suggest that as Charlie had been coming round to bang her regularly, what was to stop him having a go at Sandra too?'