Under World

Chapter 3

The Police Club functions room was crowded, noisy and full of smoke. There was a sound like a spade flattening the last sod on a pauper’s grave. It was Andy Dalziel’s huge hand slapping the bar. Immediately the noise faded and even the miasma seemed to clear for a space of a couple of feet around the massive grizzled head.

The Detective-Superintendent, Head of Mid-Yorks CID, looked round the room till heavy breathers held their heavy breath, then he opened his speech with the time-honoured Yorkshire formula.

‘Right, you buggers,’ he said. ‘You know what we’re here for tonight.’

His audience sighed in happy anticipation. It occurred to Sammy Ruddlesdin of the Evening Post that his report (written in advance so that he wouldn’t have anything to distract him from the boozing) was more than usually dishonest. In it he’d said that the crowded room bore eloquent witness to the high regard in which DCC Watmough was held by his fellows, while in truth, it bore eloquent witness to the low regard in which they knew that Dalziel held him. Most were here in the simple hope of being entertained by a valedictory vilification!

They were sadly disappointed. After a few ancient but warmly received anecdotes, Dalziel launched on a meandering and mainly complimentary account of Watmough’s career. There were a few hopeful signs (‘I knew him in them early days with Mid-Yorks. There were some as said he got a bit over-excited under pressure but I always said, you’ve got to flap a bit if you want to be a high flier!’) but they never came to anything. Perhaps Dalziel was saving himself up for the Pickford case? This was Watmough’s finest hour, occurring during a brief sojourn as Assistant Chief Constable in South Yorkshire when he had masterminded the hunt for a child killer. A salesman, Donald Pickford, had obliged by asphyxiating himself in his car and leaving a note of confession. Somehow Watmough, with media support, had turned this into a triumph of detection with himself modestly wearing the bays. He had returned rapidly on the crest of this wave to Mid-Yorks as Deputy Chief and had looked to have enough momentum left to carry him all the way to the Chief’s office only three years later, till a malevolent fate had intervened.

This same malevolent fate was now approaching his peroration.

‘We’ll not soon forget what you’ve done for us in these past few years,’ declaimed Dalziel. ‘Like the man said, you touched nowt you didn’t adorn. Now the time has come for you to move on to fresh fields and pastures new. And the time has come for me, Neville — and it’s good to be able to call you Neville again after these past few years of having to call you sir …’

Pause for laughter, especially from Peter Pascoe, who recalled Dalziel’s more usual forms of reference, such as Shit-head, Lobby Lud, Her Majesty, Nutty Slack and Rover the Wonder Dog.

‘… the time has come for me to present you with this token of our esteem.’

He picked up a box from the bar.

‘Rumour has it you’re thinking of going into politics, or at least into the SDP, so we thought this’d be a suitable gift.’

From the box he took a clock, turned the hands to twelve and set it on the bar. A moment later a peal of Westminster Chimes began to sound.

‘We reckoned that with this, Nev, if you ever do get into Parliament, it won’t matter whose bed you’re ringing home from, you can always convince your missus you’re at an all-night sitting in the House. Goodbye to you, and good … luck!’

And that was it. Not yet nine o’clock and the action over with not a bloodstain to be seen. The DCC, as relieved as his audience was disappointed, repaid Dalziel’s moderation with a fulsomely sentimental tribute to his colleagues at all levels.

‘Brings tears to your eyes, doesn’t it?’ said Pascoe.

Sergeant Wield, whose shattered visage looked as if it would absorb tears like dew off the Gobi Desert, said, ‘De mortuis.’

‘Well, stuff me,’ said Sammy Ruddlesdin behind him. ‘Once through these hallowed portals and it’s goodbye to all that ’ello, ’ello, ’ello, stuff and it’s out with the Latin tags and literary quotes. Even Fat Andy was at it.’

It was clear Ruddlesdin had been enjoying the hospitality. Beside him was a short, stoutish man smartly dressed in a black worsted three-piece suit, a sartorial effect somewhat at odds with the handrolled cigarette drooping beneath a ragged and nicotine-stained moustache.

‘I dare say you lads know my friend and colleague, Mr Monty Boyle of the Sunday Challenger, the famous Man Who Knows Too Much.’

‘I think we’ve met in court,’ said Pascoe. ‘I didn’t think our little occasion tonight would have had much in it for the Challenger.’

‘The passing of a great public servant?’ said Boyle with a W. C. Fieldsian orotundity. ‘You surprise me. Dignity needs its chroniclers as much as disaster.’

He’s winding me up, thought Pascoe. He opened his mouth to inquire what hitherto hidden connection with dignity the Challenger was planning to reveal when Ruddlesdin said, ‘Careful, Peter. Our Monty Knows Too Much because he’s got an extra ear.’

He drew back the Challenger man’s jacket to reveal, hooked on to the third button of his waistcoat, a slim black cassette recorder, almost invisible against the cloth.

‘Just a tool of the trade,’ said Boyle indifferently. ‘I don’t hide it.’

‘Voice sensitive too, and directional. If he’s facing you in a crowded bar, it’ll pick you up above all the chatter, isn’t that right, Monty?’

There was not a great deal of love lost between these two, decided Pascoe.

‘It’s not switched on,’ said Boyle. ‘Mr Dalziel’s valediction is, of course, printed on my heart. And I’d never attempt to record a policeman without his knowledge.’

He smiled politely at Pascoe.

Ruddlesdin said, ‘Especially not in their club where visitors can’t buy drinks,’ and stared significantly into his empty glass.

Wield said, ‘Give it here, Sammy. Mr Boyle?’

‘No more for me,’ said the crime reporter, glancing at his watch. ‘I have some driving to do before I get to bed.’

‘What’s that mean? Farmer’s wife or kerb crawling?’ said Ruddlesdin.

Boyle smiled. ‘In our business, Sammy, you’re either pressing forward or you’re sliding backward, have you forgotten that? Once you start just reporting news, you might as well bow out for one of these.’

He tapped the cassette on his chest before buttoning his jacket.

‘Good night, Mr Pascoe. I hope we may meet again and be of mutual benefit soon.’

He made towards the door through which the DCC and his party were being ushered by Dalziel.

‘Jumped-up nowt,’ said Ruddlesdin. ‘I knew him when he couldn’t tell a wedding car from a hearse. Now he acts like the bloody Challenger were the Sunday Times.’

‘Very trying,’ sympathized Pascoe. ‘On the other hand, tonight is very wedding and hearse stuff, isn’t it? A column filler for the Evening Post perhaps, but lacking those elements of astounding revelation which set the steam rising from the Challenger.’

‘When you buy a whippet you keep your eye skinned to see no one slips it a pork pie before a race,’ said Ruddlesdin.

‘Riddles now? You’re not moving to Comic Cuts, are you, Sammy? What is it you’re saying? That Ike Ogilby’s put his minders on Watmough till he gets into Parliament?’

Ogilby was the Challenger’s ambitious editor, linked with Watmough ever since the Pickford case in a symbiotic relationship in which a good press was traded for insider information.

‘No,’ said Ruddlesdin confidentially. ‘What I’ve heard, and will deny ever having said till I’m saying, “told you so”, is that yon clock’s the nearest Watmough’s likely to get to Westminster. This SDP selection he thinks he’s got sewn up — well, there’s a local councillor on the short list, a chap who’s owed a few favours and knows where all the bodies are buried. Smart money’s on him. And Ike Ogilby’s got the smartest money in town.’

‘Another rejection will drive the poor devil mad,’ said Pascoe. ‘But if it’s not a personal leak in the Chamber that Ogilby’s after, why keep up his interest in Watmough once he’s resigned from the Force?’

Ruddlesdin tapped his long pointed nose and said, ‘Memoirs, Pete, I’m talking memoirs.’

‘Memoirs? But what’s he got to remember?’ asked Pascoe. ‘He thinks a stake-out’s a meal at Berni’s.’

Ruddlesdin observed him with alcoholic shrewdness.

‘That sounded more like Andy Dalziel than you,’ he said. ‘All I know is that Ogilby’s not interested in buying pigs in pokes, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. Mebbe my dear old jumped-up mate, Monty, is living up to his byline for once. The Man Who Knows Too Much. Wieldy, I thought you’d fallen among thieves! Bless you, my son.’

Wield had returned with a tray on which rested three pints. The reporter took his and drained two-thirds of it in a single swallow. Pascoe ignored the proffered tray, however. He was looking across the room to the exit through which Dalziel was just ushering the DCC and his party. Before he went out, Watmough paused and slowly looked around. What was he seeing? Something to stir fond memories of companionship, loyalty, a job well done?

Or something to stir relief at his going and resentment at its manner?

And how shall I feel when it’s my turn? wondered Pascoe.

He too looked round the room. Saw the mouthing faces, ghastly in the smoke-fogged strip-lighting. Heard the raucous laughter, the bellowed conversations, the eardrum-striating music. He felt a deep revulsion against it all. But he knew he was not applying a fair test. He was not a very clubbable person. His loyalties were individual rather than institutional. He distrusted the exclusivity of esprit de corps. Not that there was anything sinister here. This scene was the commonplace of ten thousand clubs and pubs the length and breadth of the island. Here was the companionship of the alehouse, nothing more.

But suddenly he felt hemmed in, short of air, deprived of will, threatened. He looked at his watch. It was only five to nine.

‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘I promised not to be late.’

‘But your beer …’ said Wield, taken aback.

‘Sammy’ll drink it. See you.’

In the small foyer he paused and took a deep breath. The door leading to the car park opened and Dalziel came in.

‘Well, that’s the cortège on its way,’ he said rubbing his hands. ‘Now let’s get on with the wake.’

‘Not me,’ said Pascoe firmly, adding, to divert Dalziel’s efforts at dissuasion, ‘and don’t be too sure he won’t be back to haunt you.’

‘Eh?’

He repeated Ruddlesdin’s rumour. Rather to his surprise, instead of being abusively dismissive, Dalziel answered thoughtfully, ‘Yes, I’d heard summat like that too. Makes you think … Ogilby … Boyle …’

Then he roared with laughter and added, ‘But who’d want to buy memoirs from a man who can scarcely remember to zip up after he’s had a run-off? It’d be the sale of the sodding century!’

Still laughing, he pushed his way back into the smoke- and noise-filled room while Pascoe with more relief than he could easily account for went out into the fresh night air.