Under World

Chapter 16

Dalziel felt he had earned his money already that day and when Ellie Pascoe came into the bar, he reckoned he was into overtime.

It wasn’t that he disliked her. On the contrary, he found her a bloody sight more appealing than the majority of his colleagues’ spouses, most of whom were too thick to even notice when he was taking the piss! At least you could have a laugh with Ellie, trade insults, talk straight and not give offence, and give offence but not provoke hysterics.

Nor could he get too upset at the thought that she might be putting it about. It’d hurt the boy, Pascoe, and that would be a pity, but it wouldn’t be — shouldn’t be — the end of the world. One thing his wide experience of life had taught him was that if a woman was inclined to put it about, you couldn’t stop her, not even with an Act of Parliament. Christ, you’d have to work hard with an act of God! Better then to find out sooner rather than later, while you were still young enough to enjoy your retaliation.

But there were limits. As far as such things are negotiable, a woman had a duty not to put it about in such a way as to embarrass her husband in his workplace. And for a detective-inspector’s wife to be screwing around with a boy miner who was also chief suspect in a murder inquiry over-stepped these limits by a long, long way. He’d hoped he’d given her a big enough hint in the hospital car park to keep her neb out of things but clearly he’d been too subtle. It was always his chief failing.

He sighed and said, ‘Whose shout is it? A man could die of thirst in a place like this.’

He’d been drinking pints with whisky chasers since his arrival. Not to be outdone, Tommy Dickinson had followed suit. Ten or more pints was a normal evening’s consumption for Tommy but the spirit had changed the name of the game. Several times Neil Wardle had tried to urge him to stop or at least to stick to beer. On each occasion Dalziel had added his voice to Wardle’s with the inevitable result that the stout youth had indignantly rejected the advice.

There’d been others at the table too, a steady flow and ebb as curiosity or a desire to bait this constabulary bear overcame the miners’ distrust and dislike. He’d fended off attacks with equanimity, traded insults with good-natured vigour, even proffered advice to those still at loggerheads with the law. And, as Neil Wardle, still on only his second pint after all this time, noted with grudging admiration, there was scarcely a one of them who got away without answering some pertinent questions. He did his best to pre-empt the grosser indiscretions by interruption or change of subject and each time felt Dalziel’s undulled gaze touch upon him with amused acknowledgement before the talk was rediverted into its previous channel by a nudge which should have been blatant but was merely irresistible.

‘You’re a clever sod, I’ll give you that,’ said Wardle in a quiet interlude shortly after Ellie’s arrival.

‘There’s some as thinks so,’ said Dalziel complacently. ‘But I’m glad to have your endorsement.’

‘I didn’t mean it as a compliment.’

‘I didn’t take it as one, so no harm done.’

‘When are you going to let Colin out? You’ve got nothing on him, have you?’

‘No,’ said Dickinson, suddenly reviving from a cat-nap. ‘There’s nowt on Col, not even them foreskin scientists can pin owt on Col.’

‘I hope he means forensic,’ grinned Dalziel.

‘Listen,’ said Wardle, very intense. ‘You can get Tommy drunk, but don’t you patronize him, all right?’

‘I’d not even dream of it,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ve grown very fond of Tommy. He’s a lovely lad.’

‘Now listen,’ began Wardle angrily.

‘Nay, Neil, shut tha gob, it’s not a Union meeting,’ said Tommy Dickinson. ‘And I’m not a little lad needing looked after. Andy here’s all right. If we’d had more like Andy policing the pickets, we’d not have had half the bother we did, isn’t that right, Andy?’

Dalziel looked at Wardle and smiled evilly.

‘Oh aye, Tommy. I think you can safely say that. Not half the bother.’

A worried-looking man of about sixty approached the table and said, ‘Excuse me, Superintendent, but I’m Chairman of the Club Management Committee and it’s long past our closing time. Our steward reckons you said something about it being OK, but I’m not sure the licence magistrates will see it that way if they get wind of it. So unless we can have something in writing …’

Dalziel looked at his watch.

‘By God, is that the time? You should have been shut half an hour back! Hasn’t time been called? That’s bad, that. You’ll really have to tighten up, mister, else you could lose your licence, you know that?’

His worry replaced by anger, the Chairman returned to the bar and a moment later the bell rang and Pedley’s voice bellowed, ‘Come on now. Get them drinks off. The holiday’s over!’

Wardle said, ‘So you run scared too? It’s good to see you don’t really make up all the laws as you go along.’

‘What? Nay, lad, you don’t understand. It’s nowt to do with what that old geezer said. It’s just that I’m finished with you lot for the time being, but I’ve still not had a chat with Mr Pedley there, and I can’t do that while he’s busy serving drinks, can I?’

As the bar slowly cleared Dalziel wandered across to the table where Ellie was still sitting with her companions.

‘Hello, ladies,’ he said genially. ‘Hope you had time to enjoy your pies.’

Wendy looked up at him and gave him a smile of stunning sweetness.

She said, ‘Piss off, pig.’

Dalziel said, ‘Who’s your porkist friend, Ellie? Never mind. Can I have a word?’

Of course the bold reply was ‘anything you’ve got to say to me you can say in front of my friends’ but the only trouble was that Dalziel undoubtedly would, and Ellie wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t be saying things she’d prefer her new friends, or indeed any friends, not to hear.

So, apology and defiance most becomingly mingling in her face, she rose and moved apart with the fat man.

‘I’m glad to see you, lass,’ said Dalziel in a low voice. ‘Have you heard owt useful?’

Expecting at the least a lecture if not a threat of physical violence, Ellie was taken by surprise by this approach.

‘Useful? What do you mean?’

‘Anything that’d help us get to the bottom of this business. South are determined it’s down to Farr, but me, I don’t like jumping to conclusions. Mind you, I can see why they think like that. No one I’ve spoken to has been able …’

‘Who’ve you been speaking to?’ demanded Ellie.

‘Well, I went round to the Mycrofts’ house …’

‘You don’t want to listen to anything that stupid girl has to say! Why would Colin say anything to her he didn’t say to me?’

Dalziel, who had not laid eyes on Stella Mycroft yet, though he’d heard a lot about her in his rambling chat with Tommy Dickinson, nodded sagely as though understanding Ellie’s odd remark.

‘Just what I thought,’ he said. ‘Listen, how’d it be if I got you in to see young Colin?’

‘Could you?’ asked Ellie, her face lighting up with a hope which stirred something which might have been the dusty relicts of shame in Dalziel’s gut. Or perhaps it was just the beer.

‘Why not? If he’s innocent, the sooner them dozy buggers in South get on the right track the better.’

Behind her he could see Pedro Pedley urging the reluctant women to leave.

‘Best get back to your friends,’ he said, putting his arm round her shoulders and urging her back towards her table. ‘Mr Pedley, I’d like a word. Cheerio, Ellie love. I’ll see you later.’

Transferring his arm and his attention to Pedley, Dalziel moved away. Ellie watched him go. He never lost the capacity to surprise. Ready for bullying interference and a homily on marital loyalty, instead she’d got sympathy and a promise, well, almost a promise, of access to Colin. She found herself smiling at the prospect.

Wendy and Marion were on their feet. She turned to them to include them in her little aura of joy and found herself met by suspicious, hostile faces. For a second the response took her aback as much as Dalziel’s had. Then she put the two together. Divide and rule.

‘Oh, you devious bastard!’ she said.

But when she turned again to purge her collaborative guilt, the devious bastard had already moved out of her reach into the steward’s private quarters.

At first Pedley tried to give Dalziel a bad time.

‘Don’t think I couldn’t see what you were up to. I thought you buggers were up to date now, tape-recorders, computers, proper scientific evidence, not sitting around boozing, listening to drunken gossip. You made a fool out of me, getting the Club open and shut like it were your private bar. Well, you may pull the wool over some silly buggers’ eyes and you may put the fear of God into some others. But you don’t fool me, mister, and you don’t frighten me either. Who the hell do you think you are anyway?’

He ran out of steam and stood glaring down at the seated Dalziel, who returned a gaze of hurt bewilderment.

‘Me? I’m the fellow who’s going to find out what really happened to your little daughter, Mr Pedley.’

Pedley’s response was surprising even to a man who reckoned that only women and lunatics were totally forecastable. He laughed, without much humour, with a great deal of bitter mockery.

‘What am I supposed to do, mister? Drop on t’floor and kiss your boots in gratitude? I’ll tell you what I want from you. I want you to leave it alone!’ He was bellowing now. ‘Can you get that into your thick skull? It can’t all be bone, there’s so much of it you’d fall over every time you stood up!’

Dalziel rose swiftly and brought his bulk menacingly close to the steward.

‘Listen, Pedro,’ he said softly. ‘You may be king of the bar out there, but them buggers expect to be ruled. They may be wild, but in the end they live by the bloody rule book, their own or some other bugger’s.’

‘Meaning you don’t?’ interrupted Pedley disbelievingly.

‘Not by any book you’ve read,’ said Dalziel.

He sat down again as rapidly as he’d risen.

‘So don’t try to treat me like I’m giving you trouble at closing time. If you’ve got summat to say, well, say it, don’t shout it.’

Pedley took a deep breath, then sat down abruptly.

‘It’ll do no good, that’s what I’ve got to say,’ he said. ‘When it happened, I thought I’d never forget. Well, I haven’t. Not a day goes by … but sometimes an hour goes by, mebbe more. And feeling, that changes too. Once if I’d got my hands on whoever took our Tracey, there’s nothing I’d not have done. Nothing. Now … I were glad when they said it were Pickford. Maggie clung on to some daft idea that she’d been kidnapped and would still turn up alive, but I knew from the start she were dead. From the start. So when they said it were probably Pickford and he’d killed himself, I thought: It’s over. A monster, a madman … someone so unnatural he couldn’t live with himself. And the rest of us could at least go on living with each other. Now what are you saying? That it might not have been Pickford after all? Worse, that it may turn out to be someone I knew and liked? Or worse still, that it may turn out to be someone still alive, mebbe someone I’ve been serving beer to all these years and having a joke with, and asking how his family is? Is that what you want me to have to deal with now? Well, I won’t, I tell you. It’d drive me round the twist and I reckon it’d likely kill my Maggie.’

He spoke with a quiet vehemence much more forceful than his earlier shouting.

Dalziel said, ‘There are two ways we can manage this, Pedro. You can refuse to talk to me and then we get a hold of your missus and she can refuse to talk also. Then I pass it on to my bosses to let them sort out any question of impeding the course of justice or owt of that. Or you and me can have a nice cooperative chat and I guarantee no one, not police or Press, will go anywhere near your wife. It’s up to you, lad.’

‘Oh, you cunt,’ said Pedro Pedley.

‘Oh, I could,’ said Dalziel. ‘Now, about your brother-in-law, Harold Satterthwaite …’