The Wood Beyond

vii

After Wield had left the Black Bull, Pascoe and Dalziel had sat in silence for a while.

'Another pint, sir,' Pascoe finally ventured.

'Don't think so,' said the Fat Man. 'Enough's enough.'

This was like God resting on the fourth day.

'Can I have that on tape?' said Pascoe.

Dalziel frowned and said, 'You got no work to do?'

Pascoe said, 'I thought I'd go to the hospital. See how Walker is. And I guess that's where Ellie will be.'

'Aye. Hope she's not doing owt daft like blaming herself. There's no future in it, blaming yourself.'

'No one knows yet there's anything for anyone to blame themselves for,' said Pascoe.

'Oh there's always summat, lad. There's always summat, ' said Dalziel. 'Off you go, see how she is. Both on 'em.'

'What'll you do, sir?'

'Start back where I should've started in the first place,' said Dalziel. 'At the crime.'

'The bones, you mean?'

'Nay, lad. Still don't know if there's a crime in them or not. No, it's unlawful entry, criminal damage, threatening behaviour, I mean. Them's the crimes we do know about. I let 'em go too easy because — '

'Because you had, potentially at least, a much more serious investigation on your hands,' interjected Pascoe. 'And because ALBA didn't want to prosecute.'

' — because I had other fish to fry,' said Dalziel ambiguously. 'Should have made sure I filleted 'em first. Still, only one thing to do when you get a bone stuck …'

'And what's that?'

'Take a big bite of summat, chew it hard and swallow it down!' Pascoe contained his smile till he got outside, then immediately felt guilty.

Even a man engaged in a less prurient profession might have entertained himself deconstructing such an image, he assured himself defensively as he drove away. Has my life in the police locker room rendered me perceptibly coarser? One for Ellie.

But not just now, he thought when he saw her in the hospital waiting room.

'No change?' he said.

'She's moved up a level of consciousness they reckon,' said Ellie. 'But no one's making any forecasts.'

'You know what doctors are,' said Pascoe lightly. 'Won't tell you the time in case they get sued. Listen, love, this isn't down to you, any of it.'

'I should never have introduced her to Cap. Or kept it from you. I should have made her talk when she came round to see me, but..'

'But I came in.'

'No! I wasn't going to blame you, not this time. Most other times, yes, but not this one.' She managed a smile. 'All I was thinking was, we'd just been about to go to bed and it wasn't going to happen now. And I was looking forward to our evening in, and that wasn't going to happen either. All because of sodding Wendy Walker!'

'And now you feel guilty. Without knowing anything about what happened. Listen, Wendy lying unconscious up there may have, in fact very probably does have, nothing to do with you or any of this business about her brother. So just wait and see, eh? And no need to wait here. Who's up there with her?'

'Dennis Seymour.'

'Fine. So any news, we'll be the first to get it. Now let's go home.'

She said hesitantly, 'Yes, you're right, I know it… but would you mind if I stay just a bit longer? What I mean is, could you pick Rosie up from school? Sorry. I'm being selfish. I know you've got work to do …'

'Nothing that any other three or four ordinary detectives couldn't manage in a month,’ he said. 'Of course I'll pick Rosie up. By the way, how'd you get on with little Miss Martinet?'

'It was fine. Well, sort of. Basically she seems to think that Rose only swears in front of us because she feels it's a kind of password admitting her to the family's innermost sanctum. In other words, it's us she's learned from, but as for the most part it's only when we're by ourselves that we use these words, she thinks they belong to our special language.'

'Shit,' said Pascoe.

'My response in a nutshell. Which makes you think, doesn't it?'

'So what do we do?'

'Watch our language. Stuff her ears with bread pellets. I don't know. I certainly don't want to introduce her to the concept of censorship at this stage in her development.'

'Oh good. I'll go and dig out that old Bible you hid in the attic, shall I? Only joking. Only just joking, I mean. Don't be too long, eh?'

He kissed her. She responded hard, giving him some tongue. He enjoyed it then drew away.

'One thing old Virgin Bottom guaranteed before she got dumped was no spare beds in the NHS!' he said. 'We really should go private.'

Rosie greeted his appearance at the school gate with some suspicion.

'Why's Mummy not here?' she demanded.

'Well you know how she feels about stereotypical behaviour,' he said swinging her high.

Home, he provided her with a cheese and jam sandwich and a glass of apple juice with a squeeze of tomato puree and left her watching a cartoon on television while he sat down and opened the package from Ada's lawyer.

In it he found another carefully bound packet with his name on it and a covering note from the lawyer.

Dear Mr Pascoe,

Your grandmother left instructions that once I had heard from you that her wishes regarding the disposal of her ashes had been carried out, I was to dispatch to you the enclosed packet. I have no knowledge of its contents other than assurances that they are Mrs Pascoe's family papers of no testimonial interest to us as executors of her will. Should that prove not to be the case, however, or if there is any doubt, I am sure you will contact me for professional advice.

Yours sincerely, Barbara Lomax

He took a paperknife and carefully cut through the layers of Sellotape swathing the packet, noting with amusement that Ada had scrawled her name across the main junctions of tape, thus making it almost impossible to remove and replace them undetected.

Like a sensible Yorkshire woman, she obviously felt that only fools and gods put those they trusted most in the way of temptation.

The packet contained another envelope addressed to him in Ada's hand, a plastic folder stuffed with documents and letters, an old exercise book and yet another package wrapped in a piece of chamois leather so dry that it cracked as he tried to unfold it. What emerged, as though from the fragments of a very old eggshell, was another book, about the size of a World's Classics volume. It had a leather cover and was clearly home-made, with exercise-book paper cut down and sewn together with oiled thread and a soldier's careful stitch. Each page was crammed with minute writing in faded pencil. Pascoe rose and got the Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass which had been a joke birthday present many years ago. He examined a page at random …New Years Day — its snowing — we all moan but not much — a man can thole cold — in fact theres talk of a fellow in 3 platoon deliberately let his left foot get frostbitten so as hed lose a couple of toes and get Blightied — could be true seeing as words gone up on Orders that not taking proper precautions against frostbite is an offence — next thing not ducking a bullet will be an offence! One things for sure but — it can get as cold as it likes but nobody wants the winter over — like little Harry Holmes whos got a way with words and a not half bad voice either sings — The flowers that bloom in the Spring trala are bottomed in bone meal and blood And the brass hats are starting to sing trala Lets attack dear old Fritzes left wing trala And straighten our line through that wood So thats what we mean when we say or we sing Fuck off to the flowers that bloom in the Spring! — Happy New Year to everybody — everybody who wants this war to finish I mean — British or German. Happy New Year.

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.