The Wood Beyond

i

Edgar Wield looked out of the frost-crazed kitchen window as he waited for the kettle to boil and recalled his certainties of an endless Indian summer just a couple of mornings earlier.

Never bet with a farmer about weather, a woman about weddings, or a miner about whippets. Where did that bit of homely advice spring from? Someone who knew his stuff so it couldn't have been a CID sergeant.

He was passing through an uncharacteristic period of self-doubt, swinging between suspicion that he was wasting his time with his blind-man probings of TecSec and certainty that he was missing something as obvious as a drunk at a church fête. Curiously this doubt didn't make him unhappy. These last few months he had spent living in Corpse Cottage in Enscombe had relaxed and released him somehow, bringing the whole spectrum of emotional coloration within his reach for the first time in more years than he cared to remember. And if at one end dark self- doubt was the price he had to pay for bright self-awareness at the other, then that was OK. More than OK, a real bargain.

The kettle was boiling. He mashed the tea, some odd Chinese blend that Edwin insisted on. It was, he had said rather sniffily, an acquired taste. So, Wield had pointed out, was the strong stewed stuff he preferred — acquired through years of no choice — and he saw no cause to brag about that.

So they danced and fenced and sometimes fought around each other, every encounter a learning process, most outcomes leaving them a little bit closer.

He set the tray with two china mugs, a fresh-sliced lemon, a bowl of sugar, and carried it upstairs.

Edwin Digweed was sitting up in bed reading. It sometimes seemed to Wield that where'er his partner walked, old books immediately crowded into a shade. He looked suspiciously at the pile on the bedside table. It appeared to be at least three volumes higher than the previous morning. Digweed's second-hand and antiquarian bookshop in the village was often quite audibly groaning beneath the weight of words piled high on every surface. When he'd moved out to Corpse Cottage, the books had rushed in to occupy what had previously been his living space above the shop, like water into a foundering ship. This was the one uncrossable line Wield drew. Books on bookshelves he didn't mind. But books on sills and stairs, in kitchen cupboards and bathroom cabinets, under sinks and over wardrobes, books breeding books in every nook, cranny and empty space, was not his idea of interior decoration. A good book might be the precious Iifeblood of a master spirit, but that didn't mean you wanted to drown in the stuff.

'You're up early,' said Digweed. 'Bad conscience?'

'Not so's you'd notice,' said Wield climbing back into bed. 'Just this TecSec thing.'

His first impulse when he and Edwin had joined forces was to continue what had been his iron rule for twenty years — to keep his professional and private lives completely separate. But he had discovered in himself a great weariness for living out of compartments, so he had started talking about his work, not even making a big thing about confidentiality. In his experience a man you needed to swear to secrecy was the last person on earth to share anything with.

He didn't tell everything, but if anything was so adhesive that the drive up the valley of the Een didn't wash it off, then he felt Digweed was entitled to know. Not that his partner gave any sign of feeling this was a right worth demonstrating over, his interest frequently being engaged by elements that were peripheral if not eccentric.

'Wanwood,' he had said when Wield first aired his obsession (for so he acknowledged it to himself) about TecSec. 'After Wanwood Forest, no doubt. Let me see.'

And yet another book had appeared to be pored over before being discarded on one of the rampant piles.

'Yes, here we are. Wanwood House, originally a hunting lodge in the royal forest of Wanwood which in medieval times stretched from Mid-Yorkshire almost as far south as Doncaster. Given with land by Henry Seven to Sir Jeffrey Truman for loyal service at Bosworth. Family prospered during next three centuries but went into decline in eighteenth. House currently ruinous — and this was written, let me see, in 1866. What does it look like?'

'The house? Big and square. Like an old railway station.'

'Victorian, you mean? Probably a nineteenth-century rebuilding. And you say the woodland surrounding it has been ripped up for security reasons? One of the last remnants of the old forest of Wanwood? My God, that's really criminal!'

But occasionally Digweed's long-submerged training as a lawyer surfaced and he expressed a proper forensic interest.

'Ah yes,' he said now, putting a thin slice of lemon into his tea and wincing histrionically as Wield shovelled sugar into his. 'Your intuition. Or to put it another way, your irrational unsubstantiated gut feeling. How do you intend to proceed?'

'Don't know. Another go at Patten maybe.'

'What about his partner?'

'Captain Sanderson? No, Mr Dalziel's getting the dirt on him.'

'I see. Class divide. Sergeants investigate sergeants, captains are left to the brass.'

Wield laughed.

'Don't think either Sanderson or Fat Andy 'ud thank you for lumping them in the same class,' he said.

'No. Now I bring your great leader to mind, or at least as much of him as I can cram into my fairly elastic imagination, I see what you mean. By "have another go" do you mean electrodes on genitals or just the wet knotted towel?'

'Psychological pressure we call it when it doesn't leave marks,' said Wield.

'Really? Fascinating. We really must consider bringing out a small booklet of police definitions. Now don't look offended.'

'I wasn't. And how would you know?' said Wield. 'Any road, this must be a big bore when you've got a book on early American presses in your hand.'

'No, honestly, far from being bored, I'm fascinated. Let me prove it. It seems to me that two things occurred which, if connected, may give body to your somewhat ethereal suspicions. Firstly, the man Patten joined the firm. Secondly, the firm got its first substantial contract, working for ALBA.'

'And if there's no connection?'

'Then I should concentrate on helping old ladies across the road.'

'Well thanks a lot,' said Wield. 'That's a big help. No, I mean it.'

'You mean you mean to be kind rather than satirical, perhaps. But I'm not finished. Once engage the attention of Sherlock Holmes and he applies the full might of his intellect to even the most trivial of details. A detail which may or may not be trivial seems to me to be the matter of what Patten was doing in the months between pouring his severance pay into the pockets of the bookmakers and becoming Captain Sanderson's partner.'

'Yeah, I know. In fact I think I said that to you myself,' said Wield.

'Hoity toity,' said Digweed. 'Yes indeed you did. But what you said was that you'd like to know what possibly nefarious activity Patten had got up to which earned him enough money to buy in. I think perhaps you ought to be asking why he should want to buy in? Or perhaps why Sanderson would want to let him buy in? Or even whether indeed he bought in at all in the strictly financial sense?'

'Eh? You're losing me.'

'I do hope not. All right, let me put it simply. Suppose Patten bought in with blackmail? He knew something about Sanderson's past which the good captain preferred kept out of the papers? Or suppose he bought in with information? He knew something about ALBA which would help TecSec get taken on there?'

Wield sought for a reply that wouldn't be a put down. These were the kind of airy-fairy speculations he was happy to take from Peter Pascoe because he knew that behind them all was a real cop's mind, centred on the need for proof.

'Not a great deal I can do to check them ideas out, but,' he said. 'Thanks all the same.'

'You could check out whether in fact Patten during his dead time took a perfectly ordinary job to keep the wolf from the door,' suggested Digweed. 'It sometimes seems to me that you chaps are so busy digging the dirt that you forget to look around you at clear eye level.'

Having delivered himself of this Holmesian utterance, Digweed returned his attention to his book.

Wield supped his tea and grimaced. Still had a lot of acquiring to do. But Edwin had a point about the job. Not that it would help much if it turned out Patten spent six months on a checkout at Sainsbury's. But if, as Wield suspected, there was a complete blank, then that would prove.. nothing. But it would be a big encouragement!

Bravely he swallowed the rest of his tea and got out of bed again.

'Off so soon?' said Digweed.

'Aye, I've got some checking to do. And before you start looking so smug, think on. I've counted the books in that pile. There's nine counting the one you're reading. Gets to double figures and it's bonfire time. Right?'

'You're a hard man, sergeant. And don't forget that this is a meatless day.'

This was a weekly lowlight of the Corpse Cottage dietary regime.

'I didn't know what unnatural practices meant till I met you,' said Wield.

Once he got to the station his checking didn't take long, which was just as well as the outcome didn't seem worth waiting for. He'd short-cut official channels by ringing a contact in Social Security Investigations and asking her to punch up Patten's National Insurance Number and checking on employment from November the previous year till June this. The answer was so obvious that Wield felt a pang of resentment towards Digweed as if his partner had deliberately wasted his time.

Patten, feeling the pinch when his gambling had emptied his account, had looked for a job to suit his talents and training, and been taken on by Task Force Five, the Manchester-based security firm who, from small beginnings in 1979, had burgeoned with the eighties crime figures into one of the top three national firms.

'So he's done their training course, and had seven months to see how they get things done, when he runs into Sanderson who's got a business he'd like to turn into the next TFF,' growled Dalziel. 'Makes him a good man to hire.'

'Didn't get hired, became a partner,' said Wield obstinately.

'So he'd had a bit of luck with the bookies somewhere out of Mid-Yorkshire. Or maybe making him a partner was compensation for not being able to afford to pay him wages. How much does it cost to buy into nowt anyway? This all you've got, Wieldy?'

'There's Rosso, that's Les Rosthwaite.'

'Who the hell's he when he's at home?'

Wield told him.

Dalziel said, 'Am I missing something here? Sanderson's batman came out with him and worked for TecSec till he got himself killed in a car accident?'

'That's right, sir,' said Wield, uneasily aware that Dalziel more than anyone recognized the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped.

'Anything suspicious?'

'Well, no, actually. I checked with Traffic. He was more than twice over the limit and he'd got previous for drunk and disorderly..'

'Thank God for that. I thought you were going to say they found curare in his bloodstream and somehow I'd missed hearing about it. Are you done now?'

'Yes, sir, I'm done. Are you saying I should drop it now?'

'You've got to have got hold of summat afore you can drop it, lad,’ said Dalziel. 'As far as TecSec goes, we've got nowt. OK, it's odds on that there was some kind of fiddle went on for Sanderson to get the ALBA contract. Old boys' network with mebbe a bit of old boys' blackmail thrown in, but without a complaint there's nowt criminal in that. So let's fry the fish that are in the pan, eh? The women in ANIMA who went on the raid, I want them all interviewed again.'

Wield examined this then said reasonably, 'I thought we'd decided there was no way they could have anything to do with the remains, except finding them

'Don't start telling me what I know, Wieldy,’ said Dalziel irritably. 'This is something else. You've not heard? No, of course, you were off enjoying yourself yesterday afternoon. It's a bloody good job there's someone round here puts in an honest day's work. It's Wendy Walker.'

He told Wield the story.

'How's she doing?' asked the sergeant.

'Still unconscious,' said Dalziel. 'If she wakes up, mebbe she'll be able to tell us exactly what happened. Until then all we can be sure of is she weren't knocked down the way someone tried to make it look like she was knocked down.'

'Could be the driver just wanted to shift the scene of the accident a bit further from home.'

'Yeah, even Seymour managed to work that one out,' snapped the Fat Man. 'Well that's a serious crime in itself. It would mean the driver knew she was alive still. And the way she was dumped face down in a ditch full of water suggests he didn't much care if she stayed that way. So it could be attempted murder we're dealing with.'

'So we're interviewing all known associates to see if we can pick up any pointers,' said Wield.

'By gum, you're sharp today, sergeant. I've got Seymour checking out her fellow lodgers in the house she lives in. Some kind of lefty commune by the sounds of it, so I doubt we'll get much cooperation there. And the other major bunch of contacts we know about are the ANIMA women, so if you can spare a bit of your precious time, sergeant

The probable cause of Dalziel's bad temper was beginning to be clear, but Wield liked to have things completely clear.

'Does that include Ms Marvell, sir?'

'She's one of them, isn't she?'

'Yes, but I thought, mebbe knowing her personally..'

He faltered under a gaze as obstructive as a road block.

'That's why I'm telling you off to do it,' said Dalziel softly. 'Unless you've got any objection?'

'Not the least in the world, sir,' said Wield. Then he thought, hey, that sounds more like Edwin speaking than me. But the Fat Man didn't seem to have noticed. He was looking at his watch.

'You seen Peter this morning?' he asked.

'No, but I may have missed him. I didn't look in his room..'

'Don't go all defensive cover-up on me, Wieldy,' said Dalziel. 'I doubt if I've seen him for more than two minutes since he got back from his gran's funeral. He claims he didn't cop for owt, but the way he's acting, you'd think he'd turned into a gent of independent means! I don't know what's happening to this department, but it's coming apart at the seams, and I'm the bugger to stitch it up again, even if it means drawing a bit of blood in the process. So put that into your grapevine and spread it, lad.'

'Yes, sir,' said Wield. 'I'll spread it like margarine.'