Dalziel 15 The Wood Beyond

by Reginald Hill

  He's decided the best way to get me talking is to give it straight, thought Ellie. And as usual the fat bastard's right! Well, I just hope he likes it when he hears it.

  She said quietly, 'I may have some information which can help.'

  Pascoe looked at her in surprise. Dalziel said, 'All contributions gratefully received.'

  'Wendy came to see me the afternoon of the uni party. She had something she wanted to tell me, or at least talk over with me. But it wasn't convenient then.'

  She glanced at her husband who was wearing that little frown of concentration which made him look like Thomas Aquinas. Should she have waited till they were alone before telling him this? In other words, was she doing that most unwifely thing of making your husband look foolish in front of his peers? She didn't think so, but there were still areas of the male psyche which remained terra incognita. Too late to draw back now. And in any case all she'd really have done talking to him privately would have been to off-load the perilous task of putting Andy in a quandary.

  She went on, 'Walker is Wendy's married name. She kept it when she split with her husband partly because she liked the alliteration but mainly because she had no desire to relive the childhood embarrassment of her family name. Shufflebottom.'

  She paused and looked at the three men. Pascoe frowned a little harder. Dalziel said, 'Nowt wrong wi' Shufflebottom. Good honest Yorkshire name.'

  Yes, thought Ellie. If you're a good honest Yorkshire lad, with shoulders like an ox-yoke and fists like hams.

  And Wield, whose mind sorted out connections like Bradshaw, said, 'Same name as that guard that got killed up at Redcar.'

  'Wendy's brother,' said Ellie. 'Worked down Burrthorpe Main from leaving school till after the Strike. But when they started cutting back and cutting back, he was one of the first to accept terms and go. They fell out over it. Wendy said that none of them should let themselves be bought off. Mark said that he had a wife and three small children to think about. He took the money, got a job as a security guard and moved up to Redcar. Wendy didn't see him again till after they closed Burrthorpe completely. Then it struck her that she was letting those bastards at Westminster cut her off from her own flesh and blood too. So she went visiting. Earlier this year. It was fatted-calf time. They made her more than welcome. The kids were delighted to get their auntie back. Her sister-in-law who is completely apolitical was delighted to have an ally in the old Yorkshire struggle to keep the man of the house in his rightful place. And Mark wanted her to move up to the Northeast and start her life again. She went back to Burrthorpe and spent a few weeks thinking about it, but she'd just made her mind up to go when the news came about the animal rights raid. And Mark's death.'

  She paused to take a sip of beer.

  Dalziel was staring at her unblinkingly. He sees where this is going, she thought.

  'She was devastated. Naturally. She'd found her brother again, and lost him forever, all within a matter of weeks. She wasn't all that much concerned with who'd killed him, not at first. For someone with her background she had surprising confidence in the police. They'd get someone, he'd be tried, convicted, sent down for ten years maybe. It wouldn't stop her sister-in-law from being a widow or her nephews from being fatherless. Or herself from being adrift in a world which no longer made much sense. It wasn't till the second raid, the one at Wanwood in the summer, which the papers said bore all the hall-marks of the same group, that it really got to her that whoever killed her brother was alive, and well, and carrying on business as usual. She read Peter's name in the paper as the officer in charge of the investigation. And she came to see me.'

  She was addressing herself purely to Peter now.

  'I hadn't had any contact with her since . .. not for ages. All she wanted now was to know if there was any hope of an arrest. I said I couldn't talk about your work with anyone not in the Force. She told me why she wanted to know. Then I said I'd ask you.'

  'And did you?' he asked.

  'Didn't need to. You came home that night really down. Said you were getting nowhere and that Andy here had told you to wind things down and put it on the shelf till something broke to reactivate it. If I'd had to ask, or if the case was going on, I'd have told you everything then. But there was no need.'

  No need to bring up Wendy Walker and Burrthorpe and all its attendant pain.

  'So I saw Wendy again and told her, no, there wasn't likely to be an arrest. She went away. A few days later she was back. She asked me if I had any contact with anyone in the animal rights movement. I said, yes, I knew a couple of people, but not the sort who'd be involved in violence, if that's what she meant. She said, it didn't matter. All she wanted was an introduction. She wanted to get in, establish her credentials, get a reputation as an extremist, and hopefully pick up some lead to the group which had killed her brother. She was convinced it was Yorkshire based, with the two known raids being where they were.'

  'And you encouraged her in this?' said Pascoe.

  'I told her it was crazy. And pointless. I told her that almost certainly the police would have their own undercover operators in the movement already, and if they hadn't come up with a lead, what chance was there that she would? But she was adamant. This is what she wanted, all that she wanted. I could see that she needed something. Like I say, she was totally adrift. Everything had gone .. .

  'She still had her brother's family,' said Pascoe.

  'She'd been back to see them,' said Ellie. 'There was a fellow there, helping with the garden, that kind of thing. Not living in, in fact nothing else happening yet, her sister-in-law assured her. But she didn't deny she had hopes. They spoke honestly, woman to woman. Wendy couldn't blame her, as a woman. But as a sister . . . well, at the very least she felt this was yet another development which left her on the outside. She needed something to keep her life moving forward. So I said I'd have a word with someone I knew. And I spoke to Cap Marvell.'

  Dalziel said, 'Are you saying you told her all this? Any of this?'

  'No. I told her everything else about Wendy's background but nothing of this. I told her that Wendy was disillusioned with politics and left-wing radicalism and wanted a new cause without all the human ambiguities of the old one. Cap said to send her along. That's all I did. Except that I promised Wendy to keep this to myself. And in return she promised if ever anything broke or looked like breaking, she'd contact me before pursuing it further.'

  She leaned forward and said directly to Peter, 'In the remote contingency she did find out something, I wanted to make sure that nothing could happen which might embarrass or compromise you.'

  He smiled and drooped the eyelid furthest from Dalziel in a wink which said, 'It's OK, I know that.'

  'And what did she find out?' asked Dalziel.

  She gave him her full attention now.

  'I've no idea. Like I said, she called the day after they found those bones at Wanwood. I got the impression something had come up the previous night, or maybe it had been confirmed the previous night - '

  'Something?' he interrupted.

  'Nothing as firm as definite proof, else she'd have come straight out with it,' Ellie assured him. 'But something she wanted to talk over with me, a piece of behaviour perhaps, or something she'd overheard one of the others say ... I really don't know . . .'

  'But something definitely connected to the previous night?' he insisted.

  Ellie put her fingers over her eyes in the effort of remembering.

  'I thought she looked pale . .. well, paler than usual, and I suggested that finding those bones must have shaken her up . . . and she said, no it wasn't that . .. and she mentioned when they got inside the building, something about Cap Marvell running riot.. . then Peter came in. But she did say before she left it was probably all in her imagination.'

  She spoke reassuringly, then asked herself why the hell am I offering the Fat Man reassurance? Like telling a pit bull you weren't going to hurt him!

  He said, 'And you were expecting to see her
at the party? To talk about this?'

  'Right. Well, not at the party maybe but I'm sure while I was giving her a lift home, she'd have brought it up ...'

  'Did you say owt about this to anyone else?'

  'No! Well, except. ..'

  'Yes?'

  'I may have said something to Cap about Wendy wanting to talk to me. I mean, look, to be honest, I never felt altogether right about landing Wendy on her as a kind of spy. OK, Cap's not a close friend, and this kind of stuff she's got herself into strikes me as a diversion from much more serious issues - get the big things right, and we get everything right - but for all that, it worried me because it was a bit . . . sneaky. Sorry, that sounds childish, but it's the right, the appropriate, word.'

  A picture of Miss Martindale's wry smile flashed into her mind.

  'So you were paving the way for a full admission in case anything Wendy might have come up with brought the whole business into the open,' said Peter.

  Oh, how well you know me, my husband. But no need to spell out my moral ambiguity quite so plainly!

  'Right,' she said.

  'But clearly,' he went on, 'at no point did it ever enter your mind that Cap Marvell herself might be an object of Wendy's suspicions? Otherwise she's the last person you'd have said anything to. Right?'

  So he too was in the reassure-Dalziel business. Oh, that tender blossom, that rathe primrose, needing protection from the cold blasts of suspicion playing on his new-found lady love. Could Cap Marvell really be mixed up in the Redcar business? Could antic chance have made her introduce Wendy to the woman who'd killed her brother? Dafter things happened on television. And what did she really know about Cap anyway? Wasn't her gut reaction that she was non-violent based more on the social assumption that ladies of Marvell's class didn't go around breaking skulls than on any real psychological insight? And how would Andy Dalziel react to the growing suspicion that he might have been banging away where he should have been banging up?

  Like vulcanologists sailing off Krakatoa, they watched, poised between flight and fascination.

  Slowly the great head turned, the slab features and blank eyes concealing whatever lavatic emotions surged and bubbled within, his gaze passing like a dark shadow over Wield and Ellie and Peter, till it came to rest on the bar.

  'Jack!' he bellowed. 'Are you exhuming that pie, or what?'

  vi

  Sergeant Wield groaned as he pulled open the first filing-cabinet drawer and released a gust of that scent of old damp paper which permeated Digweed's shop and which he was determined was not going to tinge the air of Corpse Cottage.

  At least, unlike Pascoe, he had come dressed for the job in white police-issue overalls with surgical gloves.

  Patten had laughed when he saw him and said, 'What's this? Frankenstein meets the Abominable Snowman?'

  His good spirits and the fact that he was the one who'd drawn Pascoe's attention to the cabinets convinced Wield that whatever else he found down here, it wasn't going to have any bearing on any scam TecSec were involved in. Of course, it could be he was completely wrong and TecSec was as clean as a whistle. Unlike Dalziel, Wield had no religious faith in his gut. If licking toads or chewing exotic mushrooms could conjure up visions, no reason why a bit of ripe cheese or dodgy kebab shouldn't provoke a dyspeptic hunch.

  But the way that Jimmy Howard had jumped when he bumped into them just now, as Patten was showing Wield the way to the cellar, kept his rumblings loud and clear.

  For the moment, however, despite the smell, he was not altogether displeased to be down here out of harm's way. Unfortunately he hadn't had time to give an account of his morning's work to Dalziel before Ellie Pascoe's revelations, which meant that when he did get round to it, every reference to the antagonism between Walker and Marvell came out like another straw on the camel's back.

  'And Cap herself, what did you make of her?' Pascoe had asked, before Dalziel could, or couldn't, as the case might be. This was after Ellie had taken her leave.

  Nothing to do but give the same answer he'd have given if Dalziel had been able to resist handling the fruit.

  'Tough,' he said. 'Able to look after herself, and anything else she cares to look after. Not the kind that you could put anything across, or at least, not for long.'

  'You mean, she might have had some suspicions about Wendy Walker?'

  'About her real commitment? Yes, it wouldn't surprise me. Though of course the issue was clouded by Walker sounding off about the need for more direct, i.e. violent, action.'

  'And Marvell's attitude to more direct action?'

  'My impression was, she probably wouldn't set out to hurt anyone, but if it happened more or less by accident, I think she could deal with it.'

  'And the others?'

  'Jacklin and Walker apart, I reckon she's dominant enough for them to go along with her.'

  'Why not Jacklin? She doesn't sound like one of society's strong wills?'

  'That's mebbe the trouble.'

  He gave details of Jacksie's relationship with the group.

  'And being a nurse, of course, night duty means she's not as freely available as the others for evening activities. Cuts both ways. Means that sometimes she misses out, but also that if Cap wanted, it would be easy to miss her out.'

  'Arrange something for a night you know she couldn't make it?' said Pascoe. 'Might be interesting to check if she was on duty the nights of the Redcar raid, and the first one at Wanwood.'

  'To prove what?' said Dalziel.

  'Oh just dotting the i's and crossing the t's,’ said Pascoe vaguely.

  'As in shit!' snarled Dalziel. He drained his pint and banged his glass on the table with a crash which would have had many landlords grabbing for their baseball bats, but only got Jolly Jack reaching for the pump.

  'All right. Do it,' said Dalziel. 'Owt else from your little tit-a-tit wi' Miss Jacklin?'

  It ill behoved a man with his unconcealed mammary obsession with Cap Marvell to make breast jokes with regard to any other woman, thought Wield primly. Perhaps it was time for the little people to stop tippytoeing around the man mountain.

  He said, 'Yes, there was, as a matter of fact. That night at Wanwood when they ran amok inside, Jacksie got the impression that Cap knew exactly where she was running to. And she was struck by the way she and Walker seemed to have swopped attitudes when they were locked up together later.'

  Taking out his notebook, he quoted Jacksie's precise words.

  Dalziel flapped his hand in a dismissive gesture which in central Asia would have destroyed whole fleets of flies.

  'She explained that, swinging them wire cutters. Yon bugger Patten suddenly appeared in front of her. Reflex defence. I'd have done the same myself.'

  And if a man lay dead at your feet after you'd done it, what then? wondered Wield.

  'What about knowing her way around, sir?' he asked. 'I checked the TecSec statements. She almost made it to the labs.'

  Pascoe rode to the rescue.

  'She sounds to me exactly the kind of person who'd research anything she planned to do very carefully, not just act on girlish impulse.'

  His intention was simply to offer another reasonable explanation of the woman's apparent knowledge of the geography of Wanwood, but he realized even as the words were still coming out that their application went far beyond that.

  Both Wield and the Fat Man had turned on him gazes which were at once inscrutable and eloquent.

  And that was when he said hastily, 'Oh by the by, talking of Wanwood .. .' and told them of his adventures among the filing cabinets.

  Now Wield started using that gift which God has dished out to some humans with great generosity because, like a blind man with a jigsaw puzzle, He has only limited use for it Himself - the gift of creating order out of chaos.

  First he established which cabinets had not been penetrated by ravening rodents. Using an indelible black marker he put the sign of the cross on those which were beyond his human skills.

  N
ext he divided the others into their two main categories, Patients' Records and Admin correspondence, marking this on the cabinets. And finally he established the date parameters of each set of files and marked this on the side also. With many gaps, they ranged from 1915 to 1946. Pascoe, with that serendipity with which God sometimes compensates those who are Marys rather than Marthas, had stumbled on the earliest almost immediately. His news about the original ownership of Wanwood had been interesting, but Wield couldn't see how it related to their enquiries, nor did he really have any idea what it might be that Pascoe had set him looking for down here. But as a team the three of them, himself, and Fat Andy, and Peter, had long since come to rely on each other's peculiar talents to the extent that each could lead the others a long way down his particular road before they cried, Hold! Enough!

  Physically, the cabinets relating to the years 1915-19 were the most accessible. Wield guessed that this was because they were the first to be dumped down here, after the war when the hospital administrators started looking forward to a period of peace and profit. Whoever had lugged them down the stairs had seen no reason to go deeper into the cellar than he needed, so had left them close by the entrance.

  After 1946, perhaps something to do with the establishment of the National Health Service, other means of disposing of outdated records had been found.

  Wield read through the early Admin stuff and glanced at some of the medical records. If the bones had anything to do with the hospital, and if these cabinets contained any clue to this connection, there were two ways of doing this. One was the Wield way which meant reading through everything and taking notes and hoping that out of such a careful cold collation some piece of nutritious information might emerge. The other was the lucky Pascoe way of putting in your thumb at random and hoping you pulled out a nice juicy plum.

  He closed his eyes, jerked open a drawer, reached in, and grabbed a file.

  'Well, bugger me,' he said. 'But not too much.'

  A good policeman knows that coincidences though always suspicious are not invariably significant.

  The file he had in his hand belonged to Second Lieutenant Herbert Grindal of the West Yorkshire Fusiliers.