The Wood Beyond

vi

Pascoe was both right and wrong about Dalziel's state of mind when they parted that morning.

It was true he had an invitation to drop in on Cap Marvell for lunch again, and the prospect filled him with a light-headed anticipation he hadn't experienced since he was a likely lad.

But nowadays such light-headedness was ballasted by a bellyful of solid experience and cynical observation, and he was far from sure he ought to go.

Last night he'd held out, but he couldn't really put it down to virtue. She had left the party not all that long after their conversation with Ellie Pascoe. When she told him she was going he'd looked at his watch and said,

'Woman who lets the telly interfere with her drinking ought to buy a video.'

'Didn't you know? Women aren't allowed to understand such arcane matters. If you get hungry about midday tomorrow, how about another spot of lunch?'

'That sounds good,' he'd said. 'But I can't say definite. My job, you never know what's going to come up.'

'I understand,' she'd said sympathetically. 'But if you can.. Goodnight now.'

And with a kiss on the cheek, delicious because of its ease, but dangerous because of its wifeliness, she had gone.

Some time later he'd heard himself saying to the vice chancellor, 'You got a telly round here, Bog-eye? Case I'm working on might get a mention.'

'Of course. Always happy to help the police with their enquiries,' said Burgoyne, and five minutes later, Dalziel found himself sitting in the AVA department watching Cap sort out some poofy interviewer with practised ease, even managing to weave her critique of ALBA into such a seamless web with her account of the discovery of the bones that they hadn't been able to edit it out. Somehow the sight of her electronic image affected him even more powerfully than her physical presence and when the item finished, instead of returning to the party, he headed for his car and drove round to Cap's apartment block.

If there'd been a light in her window he'd have gone straight up, but the flat was in darkness, not even the white flicker of a TV set showing.

Then as he sat indecisive, cursing himself contradictorily for both a vacillating adolescent and a randy old fool, to his surprise he saw her emerge from the alley which led to the garages behind the flats. Now was the time to intercept her and tell her whatever she'd been doing she'd missed a great show on the telly and why didn't he describe it to her over a nightcap.

Nightcap. He mouthed the word greedily like a gobstopper as he watched her move towards the entrance with a purposeful grace, a self-contained woman who knew what she wanted — and who had a life of her own he knew nothing about.

For some reason the thought was detumescent and he sat in his car till she had entered the building then drove away. But by the time he got home he was cursing himself again for a fool. There was no doubt about it, he really fancied another helping of what they'd had for pudding that lunch time. And yet. . and yet.. Simple lust didn't bother him. Man who didn't get the odd twinge might as well sign up as security guard at a harem. But with Cap there was something else which did worry him. Not just his natural constabular concern that she might yet prove a professional embarrassment, but a feeling as yet too vague to stand up in an identification parade that there might be something after 'afters'..

The phone had started ringing again as they'd uncoupled the previous afternoon, nicely cutting out that danger zone when a man could verbal himself into a lot of trouble.

As forecast, it had been the media, released from his shackles and eager for a story. Leaving her to fix up her telly interview, he'd wandered into the kitchen for another Mexican beer and almost automatically found himself checking out the notes, postcards, invitations, et cetera, she'd got stuck on her pin board.

'Looking for clues, Andy?' she'd said from the doorway.

She was still naked, but entirely unselfconsciously so, not even attempting to suck in the middle-aged sag of her belly.

'Just being impressed by the company you keep,' he'd replied holding up the university invitation.

'I probably shan't go,' she said. 'Unless maybe you fancy coming along? See how our intellectual betters live, and making a hole in their booze?'

It was such a casual, non-threatening suggestion that it seemed quite clever to accept it, and once there, he'd consciously not stuck by her side and equally consciously (and childishly?) made it clear that he was as at home here as he was anywhere else he cared to go.

But he'd really enjoyed the evening, and perhaps it was this sense of more than sexual enjoyment which was making him back off from her invitations.

This kind of self-analysis was foreign to him and he didn't like it. What he did like were situations where he knew instinctively how to react, i.e. ninety-nine per cent of his adult life up till now. Cap Marvell was trouble. Even if she didn't step over the bounds of the law, she was always going to be skirting its edge and he wasn't certain whether he wanted his own anarchy to be constantly tested by someone else's equal but other disregard for convention.

'I could end up like Peter Pascoe!' he told himself aghast. He had a great deal of admiration for Ellie, but there were no two ways about it, having her hand on his tiller got poor Pete sailing through some pretty perilous seas! But at least Ellie had no objection to sinking her teeth into a nice juicy steak.

The memory of the tofu pie did it. Lunch was definitely off. Pleased with having arrived at his decision, he drove out to Wanwood House. He had nothing particular in mind, but Wield's preoccupation with TecSec chimed so closely with his own general distrust of private armies that a closer look wouldn't come amiss.

When he entered the TecSec office, it wasn't Patten who looked up at him from behind the desk but a darkly handsome, athletic-looking man in a pricey pinstripe suit.

'Who the hell are you?' the stranger demanded. 'Don't you know about knocking?'

'It's my life's study,' said Dalziel. 'I'm Dalziel. And who the hell are you?'

'Ah yes,' said the man. 'I should have recognized you from Des's description. Simon Sanderson, founder and senior partner of TecSec. How can I help you, superintendent?'

Putting aside the question of how Patten had described him, Dalziel sank into a chair and said, 'Thought you spent your time going around, charming jobs out of people who can't afford it.'

Best way of getting to know anyone is hit 'em hard and watch how they react. Thoughts of Chairman Dalziel, 244.

Sanderson smiled like he'd taken lessons off Jack Nicholson and opened a desk drawer from which he produced a bottle and two glasses, both of which he filled, one of which he passed to the Fat Man.

'Here's to our better acquaintance,' he said.

'Up yours,' said Dalziel.

They drank. It was Tomintoul.

Thoughts of Chairman Dalziel 244(a). If hitting 'em hard gets you Tomintoul, what would kicking 'em in the goolies produce?

He said, 'So what did you get chucked out of the army for, captain?'

'Embezzling the mess funds and screwing the colonel's lady,' said Sanderson promptly. 'That's what I always tell people. The truth, you see, is less credible and makes them think I've got something to hide.'

He refilled the glasses. I could get to like this prancer, thought Dalziel.

'Every bugger's got something to hide,' he asserted confidently. 'Usually it is the truth. So try me.'

'I was enjoying a little vacation in Bosnia when my driver steered my armoured personnel carrier over a mine. A few days later as I opened the flood of get-well cards from my many admirers, I found among them a note from the Ministry of Defence which proved to be a get-out card instead, what is known among Other Ranks, I believe, as a redundancy notice. Here, have another snort. I can see it's been a shock to you.'

'I can thole it,' said Dalziel. 'So you were out on your neck, money in your pocket, and nowt on your CV but ten years or so of giving orders and shooting people dead. That's when you started a security company.'

'What else? The only kind of job I was really qualified for, one requiring nerves of steel, balls of brass, and a general indifference to the sensitivities of those who got in my way, would have been yours, superintendent, but I couldn't face all those years of wearing a pointed hat. Now we've got me safely catalogued, how may I be of service to you today?'

This was a real smooth piece of work, thought Dalziel. Calculating, confident, cocky. But not condescending, you had to give him that. There'd been no implication of superiority in his armed response to Dalziel's assault, and this was, in a way, disarming. In fact the bugger's got me feeling flattered he thinks I'm as good as he is! concluded the Fat Man. And anyone who can manage that really needs watching.

He said, 'How come a potty little outfit like thine with next to no track record landed a contract with a company like ALBA?'

'Ah, it's guilty secret time,' said Sanderson. 'It's all down to a homosexual relationship, I'm afraid.'

'You wha'?'

'Me and David Batty. Went to the same public school, pulled each other's plonkers behind the fives court. Everyone did. I mean, lock up a couple of hundred growing boys out of reach of all female company for months at a time, what do they expect? Mere marking time in most cases, of course, but such close encounters do cement adult relationships. This is what the old boy network is really all about. It's not masonic handshakes that get you favours, it's knowing where those hands have been.'

'You're saying Dr Batty set you on here 'cos you're old school mates?'

'More or less, though I had to give him a prompt. I read in the local rag about the raid they had last summer and I thought, security problem, there could be an opening here for a young, thrusting state-of-the-art company. So I picked up the phone and invited myself round for a drink. He liked the sound of my ideas, and here we are.'

'Your ideas being to dig up half the wood and fence the place off like Colditz?'

'Not a pretty solution but it worked,' said Sanderson. 'No one gets in who shouldn't.'

'They did the other night.'

'Yes, they did, didn't they?' admitted Sanderson ruefully. 'Trojan horse. Well, Trojan skeleton anyway. It won't happen again. By the way, I suppose you have considered the possibility that they brought the bones along themselves? Sorry. That was crass. Teaching my grandmother.'

'Aye,' agreed Dalziel. 'Another possibility we're still considering is that when the remains were disturbed during the clearance last summer, either the contractors, or mebbe you yourself, noticed them and decided it were simpler just to pile a bit of muck on top of 'em rather than have the whole operation held up by an investigation.'

'I suppose that would be what you might call a grave offence?' said Sanderson.

Dalziel didn't return his smile.

'Worse than that,' he said.

'Then I'm glad that for once I can plead complete innocence.'

To his surprise, Dalziel found he was inclined to believe him.

Sanderson was looking at his watch.

He said, 'Time marches on. I sometimes pop along to the Green Tree in the village. Reasonable pint. Care to join me?'

Dalziel hesitated. At least he thought he was hesitating. But if he was someone in a pretty good imitation of his voice was saying, 'No thanks. I've got a lunch appointment.'

Interestingly, having once said it aloud, he had no more thoughts of not turning up. Indeed he couldn't even imagine why he should have had them in the first place.

'Hello,' she said in the doorway. 'Glad you could make

it.'

He didn't reply but took her in his arms and kissed her.

'Before lunch?' she said breathlessly when she finally got unstuck.

'If it's yon toffee again, I'll need to work up an appetite,' he said.

Afterwards he paid her the ultimate Yorkshire compliment.

'Ee, that were grand,' he said.

'Yes, it was rather. Pour us a drink. There's some whisky on the sideboard.'

He wouldn't have quite put it like that. It was a bottle of the same enamel-unfriendly brew he'd sampled yesterday. She'd probably got an offer at the supermarket. He might have to speak to her about that, but not yet. It was possible to have a good fuck and a vegetarian lunch on a casual just-happened-to-be-passing basis, but asking a woman to change her whisky implied a long-term commitment.

She'd pressed a button on her CD player and a man and a woman started singing. They didn't sound happy which to Dalziel's ears was not surprising as the words were foreign, probably kraut, which must be like singing and chewing celery at the same time.

'Is this going to be Our Tune?' he asked. 'Me, I think I'd rather go for the Grimethorpe Band playing "Blaze Away"!'

She smiled and said, 'I might have known you wouldn't go in for postcoitaltristesse, I'll find something livelier.'

'Nay, leave it. What's it all about any road?'

'It's a boy off to the wars saying goodbye to his girl and telling her if she wants to find him, he'll be in a house of green turf where the beautiful trumpets are playing.'

'Jesus,' said Dalziel. 'Your lad's in the army, you said? That him there?'

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.'