The Wood Beyond (19 page)

He nodded at a photo on the mantelpiece. A young officer, smart and bemedalled, smiled out at him.

'That's right. I was once told he was missing, believed killed.'

'Oh aye? And did you hear beautiful trumpets?'

'Not that I noticed.'

She spoke quietly, undramatically, but he felt there was stuff here he wasn't quite ready to hear yet. Telling him would be her equivalent of his complaining about the Scotch.

They listened to the end of the song in silence. He admitted its melancholy force, but even in that line he still preferred something a bit more catchy, like 'Oh Where, tell me, Where has my Highland Laddie gone?' which his old Scots gran used to sing when she'd taken a wee drappie against the cold.

'Do you see a lot of your lad? You said you had dinner with him.'

'Did I? Oh yes, the alibi.' She smiled. 'Yes, we meet from time to time.'

In fact more often latterly than in the days immediately after her defection. Perhaps she had come to a more generously balanced assessment of the world according to the Pitt-Evenlodes. Also she suspected that Piers the Hero had come to understand, though he would never be able to admit, that his father was a bit of a prat.

'In the Wyfies, isn't he? Or whatever they are now.'

'The Yorkshire Fusiliers. Yes. How did you know?'

'The cap badge,' he said, nodding at the photo. 'Kept the old rose and lily. Ever mention a Captain Sanderson? Or Sergeant Patten?'

'Patten? Wasn't that the name of that awful security man?'

'That's right. Sanderson's his partner. Both ex your lad's mob. It'd be helpful to get a bit of background.'

'What on earth for?'

'My sergeant's got a notion there's something not right with their outfit,' he said.

'Your sergeant? A notion?' she said with the faint scorn of one whose democratization had not reached quite as far as NCOs.

'That's right,' said Dalziel. 'My sergeant. And if he told me he'd got a notion Linford Christie had a wooden leg, I'd take a closer look.'

'And you want me to talk to my son to see if there's any gossip about these two, is that it? I presume you'd want me to do this without revealing that I am a police . . . what-do-you-call-it? ... a snout!'

She had a nice line in indignation. He finished his drink, grimaced, and said plaintively, 'I had a mam too, tha knows.'

'Indeed? I thought you probably leapt out of Robert Peel's head, fully armed.'

'Him with the hounds in the morning? Didn't think you lot 'ud be into that sort of thing. No, what I were going to say is, my mam had this picture on her parlour wall. This lass sitting on a bench in the garden wi' her head bent forward, looking right miserable, and this skinny lad wi' a droopy 'tash sort of skulking in the shrubbery behind her. It were called
Their First Quarrel.'

She stared at him hard then said, 'Apart from the absence of a bench, a garden shrubbery, and a moustache, not to mention misery or skulk, I can see precisely how such a picture might have forced itself into your consciousness. As it happens I'm meeting Piers this very evening. So tell me, Andy, if I were doing you this service on a professional basis, how much would you pay?'

'Depends which service you had in mind, luv,' said Dalziel, grinning.

She flung a punch at his ribs which he absorbed with scarcely a grunt and countered by grabbing her arm and locking it behind her back in the classic arrest mode. Lunch might have been postponed once more but the telephone started ringing and she grabbed it with her free hand.

'Hello,' she said. 'Yes. All right, calm down . .. yes .. . yes .. . I'll come at once.'

She put down the receiver. She had gone pale and he felt her sway slightly. He released her arm and took her shoulders to steady her.

'Trouble?' he said.

'Yes,' she said in a voice barely under control. 'It's awful. That was Jacksie, Annabel Jacklin, you remember her, the nice-looking blonde girl? She works at the infirmary. And she says they've just brought Wendy Walker in. She's been knocked off her bike, and they think she'll probably die.'

vii

Once Kirkton must have been a separate entity, a small Yorkshire village with its own life and a big enough span of open country between it and Leeds to make the pre-motorized journey a matter of some moment.

The nineteenth century had brought the city closer and the twentieth had completed the job, with tentacles of urban sprawl running out like rivulets of Vesuvian lava, threatening, touching, consuming, and finally passing on, leaving a dead and dusty landscape in their wake.

Residential development had been mainly at the lower end of the market, long dark terraces rising steeply from narrow pavements still running like scars between later, more enlightened attempts at council housing in redbrick blocks of four, with some pebble dashing and three almost distinguishably different designs. In the middle of this, traces of the original village remained - a church and a crowded graveyard, an old village cross and several whitewashed cottages flanking a cobbled street. This probably owed its preservation to its descent from the importance signalled by the name plate at its opening, High Street, to the status of a mere cul-de-sac, formed by dropping a huge factory wall across the far end.

This Pascoe observed in passing. He was following a series of signs reading
ALBA all vehicles,
and when he glimpsed the wall dwarfing the little cottages, he guessed he was getting near.

The ALBA complex was huge, spanning a small river which may once have dimpled brightly between fields of hay, providing fresh water and fresh trout for those happy enough to live on its banks. But now, though Pascoe did not doubt that the water authorities would not let considerations of profit to their shareholders or pelf to their executives inhibit them in their priestlike task of enforcing all the innumerable regulations regarding pollution of waterways, the turgid stream looked black and lifeless.

He'd taken the precaution of telephoning in advance and his passage through the security gate was swift and painless.

'Follow the
Maisterhouse
sign,' said the gateman.

It was a fair drive, taking him, he guessed, back towards the old centre of the village, but the walls were too high for him to get confirmation from a glimpse of the church spire.

What the Maisterhouse might look like puzzled him, but when it finally hove into view behind a long, low, modern laboratory, he had no problem recognizing it.

It was a fine three-storey Georgian house, austere but elegantly proportioned, standing amidst its industrial surrounds like a bishop in a barnyard.

As he got out of his car, a young man in a grey business suit opened the front door and said, 'Mr Pascoe? Come this way. Mr Batty is expecting you.'

'Mr Batty?' said Pascoe. 'You don't mean Dr David from your Research Division?'

'Oh no,' said the man. 'This is Mr Thomas Batty, our chairman.'

This surprised Pascoe. When he'd rung up he'd asked if he could have access to the Wanwood House conveyance documents which presumably would include a list of previous owners. Also he would like to have a chat with anyone who might have worked on the transfer. Why the company chairman should feel it necessary or useful to involve himself, Pascoe could not guess.

They went up a broad flight of stairs, then the man in the grey suit tapped lightly on a door and pushed it open without waiting to hear a reply.

In obedience to his gesture, Pascoe stepped through.

He found himself in a spacious drawing room, which his amateur antiquarian eye told him was furnished more to the taste of the nineteenth than the eighteenth century. A man was standing in front of the tall marble fireplace in which a teepee of pine logs gave off a comfortable heat and a pleasant aroma of resiny smoke. Through the tall sash windows a view of the top of the church spire told him his sense of direction had been good.

The man, who was of medium build, in his late sixties, with corn-coloured hair now laced with grey, came forward with a welcoming smile and outstretched hand.

'Mr Pascoe, how do you do? Come and sit down. I've got some tea here but if you'd prefer something stronger . . . ?'

His voice was strong, his accent educated but unmistakably northern.

'Tea's fine,' said Pascoe. 'Mr Batty, I hope you haven't mistaken the purpose of my visit. It's really something which someone in your records office could have dealt with. Forgive me for being so forthright, but I should hate you to feel your probably very valuable time is being wasted.'

That forced the issue nicely, he thought. He didn't believe for a moment that Batty was here by accident and the sooner they got on a level, the better.

'Nothing to do with ALBA can be a waste of my time, Mr Pascoe,' said Batty firmly. 'We went public many years ago, but we've still stayed basically a family firm. The minute I heard from my son about that grisly discovery out at Wanwood I gave orders that all further developments should be referred directly to me.'

'I see. Your son . . . that would be Dr David Batty?'

'That's right. My son the doctor,' said Batty with a smile. 'He got the scientific brain which comes from the Batty side of the family, plus, I'm glad to say, enough of the entrepreneurial spirit from the distaff side to bode well for when he takes over. Meanwhile he's where he can be most useful. Research is a young man's game. They're like professional footballers, these chaps, pretty well played out some time in their thirties and ready to slip into management. So nature has programmed David perfectly.'

'That must be very satisfying to you, sir,' said Pascoe. 'Having such a perfect heir. Were you a scientist too?'

'Not really. Got the basics, of course, but my grandfather's genes seem to have skipped me. I was always more interested in running the business side of things, so you can imagine how it suited everyone, especially old Arthur, when Janet and I fell for each other.'

Pascoe had often noted in certain Yorkshiremen who'd achieved a measure of local prominence what he categorized as a sort of inverted braggadocio. While not feeling it necessary to blow their own trumpets, their social intercourse was based on two tenets: not to know me argues yourself unknown; and, not to be fascinated by me argues yourself dull as ditchwater. This was probably the explanation of Batty's friendly volubility, except that as head of a national, indeed international, and highly successful business, he might have been expected to subscribe to that other more fundamental Yorkshire precept,
see all and say nowt.
Maybe he just wanted to be loved. Pascoe decided to go with the flow.

He said apologetically, as if the name of the Queen had inexplicably slipped his memory, 'Now
Arthur,
that would be ..  ?'

'Arthur Grindal, my wife's grandfather, my granddad's cousin, him who started Grindal's Mill here in Kirkton, remember?'

'Of course. The business brains. And the Battys provided the scientific know-how.'

'That's it. Without old Arthur, my grandfather would have spilled the beans about all his ideas in some learned journals and let someone else develop them commercially. And without him, old Arthur would have ended his days spinning cloth for a declining market. As it is, well, look around you, Mr Pascoe. One of the biggest independent pharmaceutical companies in the EU and, so long as lads like my David keep coming up with the goods, likely to continue so.'

Pascoe, taking the instruction to look around literally, said, 'This Maisterhouse, just exactly what is it?'

'Used to belong to the village squire. Arthur bought it way back when his mill got going and the money started rolling in. It had a name of its own but the millworkers soon started calling it the Maisterhouse. There was a nice piece of parkland with it, and when the business went into rapid expansion after the last war this was the obvious, i.e. cheapest, way to come. Arthur Grindal was no sentimentalist and he wanted to knock the old place down but they wouldn't let him. Listed building, they said, you can't touch it. Right, said Arthur, I won't. But I'll do what I want with my own bloody land! And as you can see, he did. There were very few restrictions on industrial development in those days. So now we use the Maisterhouse for receptions and entertainment, and there's

accommodation for the family and the odd distinguished guest who needs to be right on top of things. Heritage folk want to come sniffing around from time to time. It takes them a lot longer to get through the main gate than it did you, I can warrant you!'

Pascoe joined in his laugh. Keep on the right side of the customer till you'd got his money. And in any case, was he not also of this same hard Yorkshire stock, traceable back to this very village? It was an idea that was taking some getting used to.

He said, 'Now about Wanwood House, sir. As you know, some bones were discovered by some women . ..'

'Yes, yes. Blasted animal protesters,' said Batty. 'I can't imagine why you lot don't just round them all up and put 'em away.'

He sounded as if he meant 'down'.

Pascoe said, 'Where a crime has been committed - '

Batty interrupted, 'Crime? They killed a security guard up at Redcar, didn't they? Isn't murder a crime any more?'

'That was tragic, though whether a murder charge would be sustainable, I'm not sure . ..'

'He died, didn't he? As a result of action by those lunatics. What would you call it? These people are a menace and need to be pursued to the extremity of the law.'

'This means you will definitely be prosecuting for trespass?' said Pascoe wondering how Dalziel would react to seeing his inamorata hauled up before a court, if that indeed was what she was.

'What? No, probably not,' said Batty.

'Oh? I understood that your son, Dr Batty, was determined . ..'

'David looks after research, mine is the final say-so in matters of general policy,' said Batty sharply. 'The state of the courts nowadays, prosecution's a waste of time and money. All it does is buy us bad publicity, and these bones could give us enough of that without pursuing more.'