The Wood Beyond (33 page)

He put the glass aside. His hand was trembling slightly. This was that other Peter Pascoe's war journal, this little book carefully constructed to fit snugly in some pack or pocket, bound in leather and wrapped in shammy to keep out the damp. Where had it come from? Did he really want to read it?

He tore open the envelope and found what he'd expected, a letter from Ada.

Dear Peter,

What to do with all the enclosed papers has puzzled me greatly in recent years. They are after all a record of a life's obsession which I have been at pains not to inflict on my family.

Perhaps I was wrong in this. Certainly I could not conceal its most obvious effects, and I know that my hatred of uniform, based as it seemed to be merely on suffering what many millions of others suffered, the loss of a father in the Great War, came across as mere eccentricity bordering on dottiness. Perhaps if I had been more open, my relationship with your father might have been different, and his with his children. Who knows?

The truth is, as you will see, that my father did not have the doubtful privilege of dying for his country but suffered the ultiate indignity of being murdered by his country.

My mother, God bless her, though she felt the pain of this more than any of us can ever guess, also felt the shame of it more than any of us can ever understand who were not adult in that most vilely jingoistic age. That he was incapable of doing anything deserving of such a fate she was certain, but then she had also been certain that her Peter could never harm another living creature, and yet he had gone out there to France for the sole purpose of shooting Germans dead. In that time, believing several impossible things at the same time must have been almost a condition of survival, and feeling both pride and shame simulaneously was far from uncommon.

Whether she would ever have spoken of these things voluntarily I do not know, but I had got into my twenties before there came the knock on the door that brought it all out in the open. That was a terrible day with everyone full of anger and accusation. Who would have guessed that out of it would come the greatest joy of my life, though that too was to last only a few years till those madmen who rule our lives snatched it away again? But even at the height of my indignation, I won't conceal from you that I too, like my mother, felt a pang of shame though I hated myself for it. And there was resentment too that I'd been forced to confront the ignominy which attended his death. I'd surely been better off before with nothing but an old photo and a memory of him on his last leave, playing on the piano he bought soon after I was born, so that I too like the children of
the rich could grow up with music at my fingertips. Well, he would have been disappointed there as you know! But once I got over that egotistical reaction, I was determined for his sake and for my own to find out as much as I could of the truth of things. Two of us living together both with our appointed quests - I used to say we should call our house Camelot! It seemed impossible back then with youth and vigour on our side that we shouldn 't be successful. But history has its own agenda and the Powers That Be, in and out of uniform, in the protection of themselves at least are superb strategists.

So the truth about my father remains hidden. Perhaps it will stay so forever. Certainly I no longer feel it matters. Whatever he did or did not do, I do not believe any power on earth had the right to tie its own citizens to a stake after the sketchiest formality of a trial, and shoot them dead. I have read many books written in recent years on the subject, and I believe that most right-thinking people agree with me that a terrible mistake was made, though naturally our political leaders refuse to acknowledge it.

Therefore it seems proper to me now that I should pass on to you, my executor, not the fever of my obsession, but its clinical record, because it is part of our family heritage. Perhaps it has even made us what we are today, which, if true, I am not very proud of.

Forgive me for the silly test I have set you before these papers could come into your possession. But a doubt remained, and this was a way of making a token gesture towards satisfying it. Therefore I shall instruct Barbara that if she has the slightest suspicion that you have merely scattered my ashes in the nearest ditch (and who would blame you?) then she should consign these documents to the fire.

And forgive me also, if you feel it necessary, or possible, for being what I am. Here in part you may find some of the reasons for it.

Your loving grandmother,

Ada

He put the letter down and checked on Rosie. She was lying on her stomach, completely absorbed in some sci-fi cartoon adventure. He said, 'No more after this, OK?' and smiled as she impatiently waved him away.

Now he opened the exercise book.

On the first page, written in the careful almost childish hand of a man not much used to penmanship, and light years away from the fluent minuscule scrawl of the leather-bound journal, he read:

April 16 1913 Mr Cartwright at the Institute reckons it ud help me with writing and reading and also with discussing new ideas if I wrote about something that I knew a lot about - I asked him what - and he said - What about yourself - your life? I said - Whod want to read that? And he said - How about your daughter when she grows up? So here it is Ada for you - if it turns out worth the keeping that is. MY LIFE.

Peter Pascoe turned the page.

viii

'Andy. I thought it might be you. Come on in.'

Cap Marvell led him into her living room. On the coffee table stood the bottle of paint-stripping Scotch, open with a full glass beside it. On the hi-fi a woman was singing agitatedly in German.

'You'll join me?' said Cap.

'No thanks,' said Dalziel. 'Still going on about the war, is she?'

'No. She's saying that she would never have let the children go out in such filthy weather. They've died, you see. He wrote a whole group of songs about children dying.'

'Right bundle of fun, weren't he?' said Dalziel.

'He had his moments,' she smiled. 'You know, though, this song could be about war. All wars. Sending children out where the bullets rattle like hail and the shell blasts carve swathes through forests and folk.'

The song ended. She switched the player off.

'You keep on going on like you lost your lad in the Falklands,' said Dalziel.

'In a way I did,’ she said. 'In his place I got a hero which isn't quite the same thing. I had dinner with him last night by the way.'

'Oh aye? Takes his spurs and sword off before he sits down to eat, does he?'

She frowned and said, 'Andy, from time to time I may be mildly satirical about my son but it is a privilege I don't extend to my friends.'

Dalziel scratched his left jowl like a chef tenderizing a T-bone.

'Well that's me pricked in the pecking order,' he said. 'With such a bad attack of the maternais, I don't suppose you earned your snout pay.'

'Of course I did,' she said. 'In fact it was surprisingly easy. With so much conversational no-man's-land between us, Piers always seizes avidly on any acceptable topic which does present itself and never lets it go till he's torn it to shreds. Buster Sanderson saw us happily through our entrée and well into the petit fours.'

'Buster?'

'As in Keaton. He is evidently quite unflappable and the mess, even when deploring his escapades, was united in admiration of the aplomb with which he met both discovery and disaster.'

'For instance?'

'Night exercise in Germany. The CO returned unexpectedly early to his caravan and found his bunk occupied by Buster on top of a Fräulein. Without interrupting his stroke, the captain looked up and said, "Interrogation, sir. Give me another minute and I'll have it out of her." Or during a mortar attack on their barracks in Northern Ireland, Buster was on the phone trying to persuade his bookie to extend his credit. Everyone else dived for cover. When they emerged Buster was still on the phone saying, "Bangs? What bangs? Look, another five hundred is all I'm asking.'"

'So, he's a randy dickhead,' said Dalziel, unimpressed. 'But is he a crook?'

'He had a reputation for being - how did Piers put it? - unsound in matters of finance or the heart. But when it came to a fight, you couldn't ask for a better chap in your corner. He came dangerously close on several occasions to being cashiered or whatever it is they do to gentlemen that steal the mess silver or cheat at snap. And though the CO claimed that he was never consulted about the regiment's redundancies, nobody was surprised when Buster's name came out of the hat. Or his man's.'

'His man's? You mean Patten?'

'No, of course not. Sergeant Patten left some months before Buster. I'd have thought you'd have known that.'

At this point a real snout would have found himself levitated by his collar, banged very hard against a wall, and advised that unless he had comprehensive medical insurance, it was unwise to get clever.

Dalziel said, 'Aye, I did know that. Who then?'

'His batman. Private Rosthwaite. Rosso. Took care of all of Buster's needs.'

'You sound like that means more than bulling his boots.'

Cap smiled and sipped her Scotch without flinching or foaming at the mouth.

'Piers had to be pressed. There are some things a hero does not talk about with his mother. I thought he was being a bit coy about admitting what it didn't take a mastermind to guess, that a good officer's servant would do a bit of pandering on the side. But I finally got it out of him that Rosso, when time and place and circumstances made the procurement of female company difficult or dangerous, was reputed to supply the deficiency himself.'

'You mean he took it up the jacksie?' said Dalziel thinking he could see where the hero got his coyness from. 'Buster's AC/DC?'

'It would seem so.'

'Thought they kicked you out of the army for that?'

'Perhaps, among other things, they did.'

She didn't seem to know Rosso was dead, thought Dalziel. Why should she? He himself hadn't known anything about it till Wield had mentioned the accident. Did the fact that Sanderson might have used him for soldier's comforts make his death any more significant? No reason why. But mebbe he shouldn't have been quite so dismissive of the sergeant when he'd been trying to flesh out his wispy suspicions of TecSec.

'So what did the he .. . your son have to say about Patten?'

'Not a great deal. It seems he had a reputation for being a bit of a hard man, the kind of NCO who might have made it to the very top except that from time to time he'd cross the very wavy line which even the army draws between honesty and dishonesty, discipline and brutality, and get busted. Of course, the army, being the army, knows the value of such men and very rapidly he'd always be promoted once more to his former rank. Rather like the police, I daresay.'

'No,' said Dalziel. 'You get reduced in the Force, you'd need more luck than Lazarus to make it back up. That it then?'

'That's it,' said Cap. 'Have I earned my thirty pieces of silver?'

'Nay lass, that 'ud make you both Judas and the Virgin Mary. Can't have it both ways. Not unless you're Captain Sanderson.'

They sat in silence now. She knows it wasn't this that I've come about, thought Dalziel. Since Wield's visit she's been expecting me. Why? He could think of reasons. And he knew enough of human complexities to know there could be reasons he couldn't think of.

He said, 'You've not asked about Wendy.'

'I rang the hospital just before you turned up. Still no change.'

She sounded genuinely concerned. But then she would be, either way.

He said, 'Get on OK with Sergeant Wield, did you?'

'He was ... interesting. I liked him. He made me feel at ease.'

'Any reason why you shouldn't feel at ease?'

'Only my guilty knowledge that I was screwing his boss,' said Cap. 'I use the imperfect tense advisedly. I get a distinct impression that you haven't come here to have your wicked way with me, Andy.'

'Why do you think I have come?' he asked.

'Something about Wendy's accident. The questions your sergeant asked ... oh don't misunderstand me, he gave nothing away. But I've been asked questions by quite a lot of policemen over the last ten years, and I know the difference between routine enquiries and purposeful probing.'

'Why should we be asking you questions about Walker's accident?' he said.

It was a crap question, not even justifiable as cat and mouse. There, each advance and apparent retreat was purposeful, leaving you a little further forward. But this did nowt, except fill in time while he tried to make his mind up which way to go. Such uncertainty was not a state of mind he normally brought to the interrogation room.

She didn't bother to reply, her silence confirming the status of the question.

She knows this is hard for me, he thought. So the clever thing is to make her think it's harder than it is.

'Look,' he said. 'This is hard for me. I should mebbe have sent someone else.'

'You did,' she said. 'Mr Wield.'

'I meant someone senior. My DCI, Pete Pascoe.'

'Why didn't you?'

'Because I owe it to you - to both of us - to come myself. You understand?'

Tempting her to agree, to acknowledge she knew what this was all about.

She sipped her drink.

'Yes, I think so,' she said slowly.

Jesus. Why didn't his heart leap as it usually did at the first sign of a hairline crack? Why did this part he was acting of the reluctant inquisitor feel so sodding real?

She went on, 'I understand that there's something about Wendy's accident bothering you. Well, there would be of course. It was hit and run. And from the way you're going on, Andy, incredible though it seems, I can only assume you've got me - how do you put it? - in the frame. Is that right?'

She was looking at him with a wide-eyed, innocent sincerity which could have got her a job as a token woman in a Tory cabinet.