Under World

Chapter 3

May Farr sat with the skull in her hands and tears blinding her eyes.

‘You’re quite sure,’ insisted Pascoe.

‘Oh yes. There was the disc as well. The leather would have rotted but there was the disc with his name on. It’s Jacko, poor little tyke. Billy loved that dog.’

‘And Colin brought these bones home on Monday evening and you gathered he’d found them in the old workings?’

‘Yes. I knew he’d been wandering around up there. I asked him not to. But I didn’t know he’d got inside. It’s all supposed to have been filled in and made safe since … since …’

‘How did you know he’d been up there before? Did he tell you?’ asked Pascoe sharply.

‘Arthur saw him. He didn’t deny it.’

Pascoe looked at Downey. He’d wanted to clear the room completely before talking to Mrs Farr. Wendy Walker had got belligerent and Ellie had looked defiant but they’d allowed Swift to shepherd them towards the door. Downey, however, had shaken his head and said, ‘I’ll stay,’ in a voice tremulous with the determination of a weak man making an unshiftable stand. May Farr had resolved matters by saying, ‘Yes, I’d like Arthur to stay.’ The other two women had then left the kitchen. Swift stood guard on the door, but behind it Pascoe did not doubt that Wendy and Ellie were straining their ears.

Downey was finding it hard to speak. The sight of Jacko’s bones seemed to have brought his old friend back to him with an intensity of emotion matching May Farr’s. He sat pale-faced now, his eyes fixed on the woman opposite, or the skull in her hands.

Finally he said, ‘Aye, I saw him a few times. Well, I thought nowt of it at first. The workings are mainly on the old common, right up against the edge of Gratterley Wood. That’s a popular spot in summer for walking, and for courting round the White Rock — that’s a sort of limestone cliff in the middle of the wood — and there’s brambling in the autumn …’

He was getting a grip on himself again and as he realized what he’d said he shot May an apologetic look, and went on hurriedly, ‘But Col was going there in all weathers and not just in the woods either, and I thought May ought to be told.’

‘Did you know he was going underground, Mr Downey?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Aye, I did wonder. He’d disappear so unexpected, like.’

Pascoe returned his attention to the weeping woman.

‘Mrs Farr, what effect did it have on Colin, finding these bones?’

Pulling herself together visibly, May Farr said, ‘It upset him.’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But in what way?’ persisted Pascoe. ‘Was it just because it brought his dad back that finding the bones upset him? Or was it because they seemed to confirm a theory …?’

‘You’re not daft, are you, mister?’ said May, drying her eyes. ‘That’s right. He couldn’t bring himself to say it hardly, but he didn’t have to. We all thought Billy most likely had an accident because Jacko had got stuck somewhere and he could hear him barking. Well, any fool can see this poor devil was doing no barking.’

Her fingers ran round the edge of the great hole smashed in the top of the skull.

‘And Col reckoned that if Billy could do this to Jacko, then he must have been really desperate?’ prompted Pascoe.

‘Yes,’ said the woman wearily. ‘Yes. Living in a place like this and hating it like Col does, it gets you willing to believe the worst of people, Mr Pascoe. I didn’t realize how much it had affected Colin till all this blew up yesterday, him walking off shift and getting drunk, I mean. He told me he had nowt to do with Harold Satterthwaite’s death, and I believe him.’

‘Mrs Farr,’ said Pascoe gently. ‘You thought Colin believed that finding the dog proved that his father killed himself. Did you feel the same?’

‘Monday night I did,’ she admitted in a low, shamed voice. ‘That’s why I didn’t catch on how far Col’s thoughts had taken him. I knew Billy never harmed that little girl, but I thought mebbe it had got to him, the things people said, and him feeling guilty anyway for leaving her on her lone, and it was Christmas, and the kiddies were running around the street with their new presents, and …’

She looked down at the skull and said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Billy, but you always did keep things bottled up, and I thought … any road, mister, I didn’t pay as much heed to what our Colin was thinking as I should have done. But when I realized that he could actually believe his dad was a … was like that, I soon put him right.’

‘And how did you do that, Mrs Farr?’ asked Pascoe.

‘I went up to the hospital and I told him what had happened when Billy took little Tracey brambling in Gratterley Wood that day.’

It had been a warm ripe Indian Summer day, a jewel in September’s golden crown, a day when a man could feel it a real blessing not to have to ride the pit any more, even if the price were a stiff leg and a nagging pain in the knee joint as he tried to keep up with the impatient little girl by his side.

‘The brambles’ll wait,’ he assured her. ‘They’re not going anywhere. Look, there’s some over there. Why don’t we start there?’

‘No, no, no,’ she insisted, tugging at his hand. ‘The best ones are up by the White Rock. They always are. You told me that, Uncle Billy.’

‘Did I? I must’ve been daft,’ he said with a laugh that few adults ever heard. ‘Well, Jacko seems to agree, so we’d best go, I suppose.’

The Jack Russell, which was way ahead of them up the track, looked round to make sure they were following, then scampered on.

Fifteen minutes later the creamy limestone of the outcrop was visible. The little girl was soon absorbed in searching for blackberries. She was a very choosy picker and it was going to take her some time to fill the plastic seaside bucket she’d brought as her container.

Billy Farr strolled on. Life seemed good. It would have been marvellous to have had a little lass of their own but it wasn’t to be. And as Pedro had once said, with Tracey he was getting all the pleasures of fatherhood without losing the sleep. Well, not all. There was nothing to match that sheer joy of creation, that was the only word for it, that he felt when he looked at Colin. But it would come again. When Col settled down and married Stella and they had kiddies of their own, a little girl perhaps. Probably would be little too if she took after her mother! Little Stella, but beautiful as a porcelain doll and strong with it, physically and mentally. They’d become really good friends since Col joined the Navy. She too was like a daughter to him. He looked back to Tracey absorbed in passing judgement on a bramble and felt a frisson of sheer pleasure. Two daughters by act of God, and the promise of grandchildren to come. It was good to be alive.

He hadn’t seen Jacko for some time, he realized. Nor had he heard him. This probably meant he was on to something. Never a noisy dog, he fell absolutely quiet whenever he got a scent or spotted a movement.

Now Billy Farr saw him, up a steep slope on the far side of the White Rock, where the ground rose in lynchets, each level screened by a profusion of furze and dogberry and wild eglantine. He could just see the terrier’s hind quarters, rigid with attention. Something was up there. Possibly a bird or a rabbit. Farr began to ascend, aware that his approach would probably startle the prey, but not worried. A dog was a dog and hunting was his instinct, but he didn’t want anything to end its life on such a glorious day.

He needn’t have worried. Nothing was here which the dog might threaten. Nor was there much chance that his own approach would disturb this prey. Putting one hand firmly on Jacko’s nape, he carefully parted the foliage in front of him.

Here in a scoop of ground, luxuriant with brome and hair-grass, and fragrant with willowherb, a man and a woman wrestled naked, now the golden tan of her narrow back showing on top, now the pallid breadth of his. He bore the marks of a collier, slab-muscled in the shoulder and upper torso, with his skin etched by carbon where the coal dust had soaked into small cuts and abrasions. It looked as if his weight and strength must surely tear the woman apart, but she clung to him with such tenacity, her slim legs locked round his heavy buttocks, her nails digging into his back, that there flashed into Billy Farr’s mind an image from a TV wildlife programme of a tiny golden scorpion destroying a huge black beetle.

The image was his mind’s attempt to escape from the physical truth he saw before him. But the mind is its own traitor and already as he slid back down the slope and hurried back down the path, seizing an amazed and distressed little Tracey as he passed, a new image, eidetic in its intensity, had printed itself permanently on his brain. He could never forget, or forgive, the sight and the sound of the girl he loved like a daughter as she gave herself willingly and with a joyous lust to Harold Satterthwaite.

There was a silence in the tiny room after May Farr had finished. Pascoe broke it. ‘So Billy left Tracey at the back of the Club and went off by himself.’

‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Farr. ‘He’d never have done that normally, but he didn’t want to see Pedro or Maggie or anyone. He just wanted to be alone for a bit. To think what to do, what to say. He were a very trusting man, my Billy. He didn’t let a lot of folk get close, but when he did it was absolute trust. Stella Gibson had shattered that. And Col would need to be told. It was all too much for him. He just went off and sat in a field and smoked his pipe for a couple of hours. Then he came home and the news that Tracey had gone missing near on finished him off.’

A thousand questions arose in Pascoe’s mind.

He said, ‘And did he tell Colin?’

‘He never saw Col again.’

‘He could have written.’

‘No,’ she said certainly. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you write to someone so far away.’

‘Then Colin never knew?’

May Farr said, ‘When he came back for the funeral, I were ill; half dead, now I look back. It were like living in a fog. When I started coming out of it, Col and Stella had already broken up, so there seemed no point in saying anything, especially not when she got herself engaged to Gav Mycroft and married him. And there was bad blood enough between Colin and Satterthwaite without stirring up more. Mebbe I was wrong. But I never guessed that Col might get round to thinking his dad could actually be the killer!’

Her voice trembled with love and loss, and indignation too. The only words of comfort that rose in Pascoe’s mind would be no comfort at all. Colin was a proven violent man, he wanted to say. It wouldn’t be surprising if he began to wonder whether beneath his father’s calm exterior a like darkness lay.

He forced his mind back to the job in hand. May Farr was telling the truth, yet there was still a hesitation.

He pressed on — ‘And what was Col’s reaction when you told him today?’ — and knew he had reached his goal.

‘What do you mean? Naturally he were relieved to know at least what happened that day.’

‘But was he surprised to learn about Stella and Satterthwaite?’

‘Surprised that it was happening then,’ she said, sounding herself surprised, as if she hadn’t really considered this before. ‘But no, he didn’t sound surprised at the idea itself. As if …’

‘As if perhaps it was still going on and he knew all about it?’

Pascoe glanced at his watch. The afternoon was drawing on. It was time he got this information back to Dalziel.

‘Thank you, Mrs Farr,’ he said. ‘I wish you could have told us this a lot sooner …’

‘Sooner? Sooner than what? You’ve known about Billy seeing them two at it up in the wood for long enough …’

‘No, I assure you,’ said Pascoe, taken aback.

‘Not you. You’re an off-comer, aren’t you? But this lot who were here when it happened …’

Pascoe looked at Sergeant Swift whose long face grew even longer in surprise.

‘First I’ve heard of it,’ he said. ‘First I’ve heard anything about Satterthwaite and Mrs Mycroft. They must’ve been clever to get away with it round here!’

‘But you told someone, Mrs Farr?’

‘That’s right. I couldn’t put up with Billy being under suspicion any more. He wasn’t going to open his mouth to a soul, he was so upset by everything. But in the end I went along and saw the man in charge and told him straight he were wasting time and money keeping my Billy under suspicion.’

‘Who was this you told?’ asked Pascoe. ‘Do you recall his name?’

‘Aye, it’s him who’s writing them things in the Challenger, isn’t it? Watmough. That’s his name. Mr Watmough.’

Now more than ever it seemed imperative to contact Dalziel. He would do it from the car, though, not from this house where there were so many ears.

He said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Farr. I’ll have to leave a constable here in case Colin does come home or tries to ring you. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re doing your job, mister,’ she replied wearily. ‘Now, Arthur, I reckon it’s time you went off home and stopped supping my tea like it grew on bushes. And take them two out there with you. Go on now. I’ll be all right. I need some time to myself.’

It was probably true. But Pascoe suspected too that in the midst of her own woes, this remarkable woman was finding time for a bit of compassionate diplomacy. He’d been wondering how to get Ellie out of the house without it seeming like a plea or a command. And he guessed Ellie had been wondering how to respond without losing face in front of the fearsome Wendy. Now May, by lumping them all together, had provided an out.

‘Thank you, Mrs Farr,’ he repeated. ‘Try not to worry eh? Probably Colin will come in of his own accord when he sits down and considers how daft he’s been.’

A wintry smile touched her frost-pale lips.

‘You think so? Talk to someone who knows him, Mr Pascoe.’

He left now and stood at the front door waiting for Wendy and Ellie to make their farewells. They weren’t long. Wendy seemed to have Downey in a kind of loose armlock.

On the step she said, ‘See you, Ellie. Come and visit some time when you can get a pass. Come on, Arthur. What are you going to do? Curl up here and howl?’

Ignoring Pascoe, which he took for her highest courtesy to a policeman, she led the still reluctant Downey away.

‘Well,’ said Pascoe. ‘I suppose you heard most of that?’

‘Most,’ admitted Ellie. ‘It explained a lot.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Col going on last night about bones and blood in the pit. He wasn’t talking about Satterthwaite at all, he was talking about the dog!’

‘Was he? Does this mean you’d like to put it in your statement now?’

She looked at him angrily, decided the grounds of her anger were unsafe, made herself relax.

He said, ‘Walk you to your car?’

‘All right. I’d best get home and pick up Rose.’

Pascoe glanced at his watch. Four-thirty. It felt later.

‘It’s been a long day,’ he said. ‘For both of us. Your blood test was negative, by the way.’

‘What? Oh, that. It seems years ago.’

‘Does it? Perhaps. Ellie, if you rush to meet trouble, you usually find it, so I’m not rushing. But shouldn’t we talk?’

‘Here? Now?’

He looked around. The terraced houses of Clay Street stretched away on both sides, the façades grey with indifference, their windows like blind eyes. But he guessed their indifference was delusive and their blindness like a professional beggar’s.

Ellie’s car, parked round the corner, was now in sight. They could sit in it and talk, but it wasn’t the place, this wasn’t the time. A wise man picked his own ground for a battle.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at home.’

‘Don’t tell me. You’ll probably be late.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said.

‘I’ll try to be awake,’ she said.

‘Just try to be at home,’ he replied before he could stop himself.

She shook her head in disbelief.

‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman,’ she said. ‘It’s always the Middle Ages. I’ll see you when I do.’

She marched away towards the car and got in. He noticed she’d left it unlocked. Demonstrating her implicit trust in these knights of the dusty face, he thought savagely.

As she accelerated past him, he looked for some sign of softening, for at the very least that expression of humorous irony with which she had once laced her indignation.

But her face was set and cold and unrelenting and she drove by him without even looking in his direction.

He turned away sadly and went to update Dalziel.

And in the car Ellie said, ‘You can sit up now,’ and watched in the mirror to see the smiling face of Colin Farr rise into view behind her.