The Wood Beyond (20 page)

There was some muddled thinking here. Or maybe being able to adhere to three contrary opinions at the same time was a
sine qua non
of the captaincy of industry.

Pascoe said, 'Yes, the bones. If I could have a look at the documents relating to your purchase of Wanwood House ...'

'What period are you interested in?'

'We're not precisely sure yet, but as I explained on the phone, there's certainly no question of these remains having been buried there during ALBA's occupation of the premises.'

'Yes, I understand that. I've had photocopies made of the relevant passages from the conveyance. As you'll see, it had in fact been used as a private hospital or clinic, some such thing, which is what attracted us. I mean we weren't starting from scratch in converting it from residential to scientific use. Also the location, not too distant from head office here, yet obscure enough, so we hoped, to be concealed from the attention of these lunatic protest groups. It didn't take them long to track us down. People are big on mouth and short on loyalty these days.'

'Yes. I see from the conveyance you were dealing with a trustee in bankruptcy. How did a private hospital manage to go bankrupt in this day and age?'

'Healthcare is a business like any other, Mr Pascoe. Expansion has its dangers as much as recession. Let yourself get overextended, and give your enemies a glimpse of your jugular, and you'd be amazed how quickly they're in there, slashing and sucking. Of course, a hospital is the kind of place you'd expect to find a few old bones. Couldn't just be that they didn't follow the regulations about the disposal of amputated limbs very closely, could it?'

Pascoe considered this macabre suggestion, or rather considered whether Batty was making it seriously.

He said, 'Unless they did an operation there involving the removal of the complete cranium, I very much doubt it. How long had it been a hospital, do you know?'

'Oh seventy, eighty years,' said Batty vaguely. 'A hell of a long time, that's for sure. Does that help you?'

'Not a lot,' said Pascoe. 'Private family ownership's one thing. You've some chance of checking up on reports of missing persons, rumours of family quarrels. But when you think how many people, patients, relations, staff, must have been connected with even a small hospital over that period. And of course, the remains may have nothing to do with what went on inside the place. Someone just thought it was a handy bit of woodland to dump a body.'

'Doesn't sound hopeful.'

'Not unless we get a precise dating. Or failing that, a cutoff point somewhere the other side of sixty, preferably seventy, years. Then, even if foul play is proved, there'd be so little chance of a result, we'd be able to stick it in the Open-But-Shut drawer.'

Batty said, 'Cut your losses, eh? Same in business. The art of good management is knowing when to say, far enough, let's forget it.'

His tone and manner were pleasantly sympathetic. So why, wondered Pascoe, do I get a sense of. . . calculation?

He said, 'Thank you for your time anyway, Mr Batty.'

'Not at all. Though you do seem to have had a long trip for little reward. We could have faxed you these papers.'

'Oh, it's good to get out and about, actually see the wheels turning.'

As they talked, Batty was moving him through the door and along the landing, but at the head of the staircase he halted. There were two women coming up, one a small sprightly woman in late middle age, the other younger and wearing what was unmistakably, though not inelegantly, a nurse's uniform.

'Janet,' said Batty. 'Say hello to Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe. Mr Pascoe, my wife, Janet.'

The older woman halted, said, 'I'll be with you in a minute,' to the nurse who continued up the next flight of stairs, then extended her hand to Pascoe and said, 'How do you do?'

The handshake was firm enough and the tone level enough, but was he imagining a degree of unease? If so, it was probably no more than the common stormy-petrel reaction to finding a copper on the premises. No one sees a policeman at the door and thinks, oh, my premium bonds must have come up.

But she didn't ask what he was doing here. Meaning she knew? Or that, like a good corporate wife, she knew better than to ask before her husband gave the signal?

'No one is ill, I hope?' said Pascoe letting his gaze drift after the vanishing nurse.

'Oh no,' said Batty. 'We maintain a small first-aid unit in case of emergencies.'

'Well, at least it should be well stocked,' smiled Pascoe.

'What? Oh yes, of course. I'll see you in a moment, dear.'

'Goodbye, Mr Pascoe. Nice to have met you,' said Janet Batty.

They continued their descent and a few moments later stepped back into the twentieth century.

'I suspect this would come as a bit of a shock to the original owner,' said Pascoe, himself taken aback by the contrast between what he'd left behind and the whole messy complex stretched out before them.

'Possibly. On the other hand I daresay he looked out on his fields and flocks and forests and thought, all this is mine, this is what keeps me and my family in comfort, exactly as I do today. We're pragmatists up here in Yorkshire, Mr Pascoe. You're from the south originally, I gather?'

Now where on earth did you gather that? wondered Pascoe. No, change the question. He'd no doubt that Batty could plug into the same Yorkshire internet that gave Dalziel his local omniscience. More interesting was, why should Batty have bothered to check him out?

A mischievous desire to let the man know that his system wasn't infallible made Pascoe say, 'Originally? No, not the south. In fact my family are local, Mr Batty. As local as yours. My grandmother was born in this very village, when it was still a village. Perhaps you've noticed some Pascoes in the church.'

For some reason the suggestion seemed really to offend Batty. His face changed colour and his studied good humour melted like snow off a dyke.

'No,' he said shortly. 'Can't say I have but I don't pay much attention to the relicts of the dead.'

'Not even when they turn up on your own doorstep?' murmured Pascoe, interested to probe this reaction.

But the old Batty was back in control.

'Then least of all,' he said smiling. 'Goodbye, Mr Pascoe.'

They shook hands and Pascoe got into his car.

'One more thing,' he said through the open window. 'I've been puzzling over your firm's name. ALBA. All I could come up with was some connection with the colour white. You know, as in albino.'

Batty grinned and said, 'It's both more and less prosaic. When the two sides of the family united in business between the wars, or rather when old Arthur decided that the real future lay in pharmaceuticals rather than cloth, like any down-to-earth Yorkshireman, he called the firm what it was, putting himself first, of course, Grindal and Batty. But in the fifties when we went public and the selling became as important as the manufacturing if we were going to compete in the big time, some of us thought that something a bit snappier was needed.'

He paused, as if his words had conjured up other images of those distant days.

'Some of us included you?' prompted Pascoe.

'I was in my early twenties, just back from business school in the States. Oh yes, I was all for change,' admitted Batty. 'Not that anyone took much notice of me back in those days. Nobbut a lad, they said. My father was running the business by then with Uncle Bert, that's my wife's father, Herbert Grindal. They weren't much for change, Dad because he was naturally cautious and Uncle Bert because being under old Arthur's thumb all his life hadn't left him much room for original thinking.'

'Old Arthur?' said Pascoe still uncertain why a man who didn't pay much attention to the relicts of the dead should be so keen to share his family's history. 'He must have been a ripe old age?'

'In his nineties,' said Batty. 'He'd finally retired in '48 on his ninetieth birthday, but he still cracked the whip when he wanted. And surprisingly he was all for a change, mainly because Janet who was the apple of his eye came up with this brilliant idea. That description was hers, but once her grandfather agreed, we all went along. And it was a pretty good idea, after all.'

'The idea being ALBA?' said Pascoe still puzzled.

'GrindAL BAtty,' said Batty stressing the relevant syllables. 'Gerrit? And Arthur still went along even when Janet, who was only seventeen then and a real romantic, announced that an alba was some sort of medieval dawn chorus. Two for the price of one, he said. The firm's old partners, the company's new dawn. Practical or poetic, take your pick.'

Pascoe looked westward to where the November sun was little more than a pallid aureole around the looming dome of a huge storage tank.

Of course on a summer morning with the sun rising behind the Maisterhouse it might all look very different. A new dawn, a new day .. .

... I watched the dawn lighten the sky beyond Sanctuary Wood - sounds nice and romantic put like that - except the sky was black with rain clouds - and Sanctuary were barely more than a bristle of blasted stumps - and this dawn would send us forward for a new big push.

Six weeks too fucking late Pete - said Jammy - this should have happened straight after Messines while Fritz was still on the back foot and the weather was set fair. Funny how up in the Line things look so obvious that them buggers back at Base just cant see.

Were not in the first wave thank God which is why Ive got time to write. Trouble is it gives more time to think too and more time to snap. Id like to say Im more worried about Gertie than me except Im not. But I am worried about him. The lads have taken to him ever since the night he were inspecting the sentries and came across Chuffy Chandler bashing his bishop - I were there too and I thought - sleeping at your posts a topping offence God knows what they do to you for this - But all Gertie said was - Corporal whatever youre feeding that man see that I get some too!

The lads loved this and Ive got to give it to him - he knows how to speak to them - friendly but firm with it like a real officer. Its that word like that bothers me but sometimes it sounds to me like hes speaking lines from a play - which isnt so easy to do when the curtain really goes up.

No chance to write for nearly a week - and the first four days it rained and rained and rained nonstop - I bet this has been a famous victory in the papers back home - but were still here in Sanctuary only at the far side now so weve made some progress - it started all right - by the time we went forward the first attack had flushed out Fritz from his positions on the eastern edge of the wood. Gertie were so keen to get up there and fight that we were hard set to keep up with him - I knew from Jammy that the battalions orders were to deploy left to keep the line between Sanctuary and Chateau Wood which had been taken pretty quick - only with the ground so churned up - and the smoke and the rain - and Gertie rushing on like a stallion thats got a whiff of the mares - we crossed in front of our support to the right and came out of Sanctuary on the wrong side of the northeastern corner. Gertie waves his left arm and says - Theres Chateau - and starts sending us out to take up our positions - I didnt think owt was wrong but Jammy whose got the kind of sense of direction that can find a pub in a desert says - No sir thats Glencorse - and Gertie shouts - Nonsense sergeant - and sets out after number one section. Jammy tells the rest of the platoon to hold fast - but I keep going after Gertie who reaches the Menin Road when all hell breaks loose out of the wood opposite and thats number one section gone - just like that - now you see them now you dont - and Gertie miraculously untouched just stands there like a hen with gapes - mouth open nothing coming out. I got to him first - hit him like a rugby league fullback - and heard the Hun bullets hissing overhead. Then Jammy was with me and together we managed to drag him back like a sack of coal.

Well that might have got Gertie a real kick in the arse from above - except there were more bollocks that day than youd see at a tinkers wedding including a whole brigade getting the false message that Glencorse had been taken and this time the Huns waiting till they were all across the road before they snapped the trap shut.

So all Gertie had done was get a few of us killed which nobody blamed him too much for - but Id seen his face when it happened - and I said to Jammy - Weve got real trouble here sarge - and he turned that great slab of a face to me and said - It were you saved his life lad - so Id say he were your responsibility now - wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?

'Mr Pascoe. Hello. Are you all right?'

Pascoe looked up into the puzzled face of Thomas Batty.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I was just thinking, it looks like rain. Goodbye now.'

And he drove off towards the setting sun.

viii

They found Wendy Walker in Intensive Care.

The prognosis was not good.

'In fact,' explained the doctor who, to Dalziel's ageing eye, looked like a schoolboy in disguise, 'it's a miracle she's alive at all.'

She'd been found in a drainage ditch alongside Ludd Lane, a narrow country road running parallel to the ring road just west of the university. It looked as if she'd been hit with such force that she'd been sent flying into the ditch, cracking her head against a stone, and ending up face down in six inches of water. What had saved her from drowning was that the water was actually moving, not all that fast, but downstream from her face, and her body had wedged itself in such a way that the cagoule she was wearing formed a partial dam, lowering the level around her face sufficiently for her to breathe. But her skull was cracked and she'd been lying for several hours in near freezing temperatures before a passing farmer in his tractor noticed not her body but her bike which had somersaulted into the hedge some thirty feet further on. She'd had no identification on her and it wasn't till Annabel Jacklin came on duty at midday that her identity was established.

A uniformed team from Traffic had been out to the scene and their report was emphatic, that on that straight and narrow stretch of road on what had been a cold clear night, whoever had hit her must have known he'd hit her.