'Id best see what I can manage today then sir - I said. And I did try. I think his main fear to start with was that hed be too afraid to move - that when the command came to go forward and we all rose up and climbed out of our hole his legs wouldnt raise him and hed simply be left lying there for all to see and mock at. So I fed him rum - his ration my ration and a bit more besides till if hed had much more he wouldnt have been able to move for being stotious let alone being feart. It worked and when the signal came I gave him a bit of a lift - then he was up and off like someone on the cover of the Boys Own - waving his pistol and yelling like he were going to clear Jerry out of Polygon single handed.
'Didnt last of course - couldnt - I were hoping maybe hed get a friendly Blighty - bullet through his shoulder - bit of shrapnel in his leg - anything to knock him over and give him an excuse to lie there - but he seemed charmed - and while rest of us were creeping forward bent double - or going down never to creep again - he were prancing around like a lad on a football field yelling at us to keep up with him.
'In old days it might have been all right - quick charge on foot or horseback - scatter the enemy - all over in half an hour or so. Bet that many a man won his medal half seas over. But this lot goes on forever - and gets nowhere. Hour - two hours - all fucking day - you look around and where youve got to looks no different from where you set off from - same holes - same mud - same pathetic stumps - same bodies - same stench - same endless hopeless senseless sameness.
'Rum wears off - mind starts working again - realize that not all the courage nor all the cleverness in the world can save you now - blind chance - long odds - and if you do make it through this day nothing to look forward to but another and another and another. Gertie slowed then stopped - still with charmed life - rest of platoon badly hit - all around men Id known and some Id loved dead and dying - but Gertie untouched - except inside - I was close - saw his face as he turned - saw the horror and the terror there - all right if hed just collapsed maybe - could always say knocked over by shell blast - but I saw him start to run.
'Run? No running possible in that mud - floundering like weary swimmer close enough to bank to stand up - but definitely going back - no question if he met another officer what he was doing - hed even tell them what he was doing - hed hit them if they tried to stop him - and if he were seen by someone like Evenlode who hates his guts that ud be the end for him - cashiered - disgraced - maybe worse though they dont shoot so many officers.
'He were moving away from me and I might never have caught him - then shell blast threw up a wall of mud in his path and turned him towards me. I hit him. Down he went. Couldnt leave him there - likely hed turn over into mud and drown - or recover and set off back again. I went to others in platoon - not many - said lieutenant were hit and we had orders to withdraw - they wanted to believe me - nobody asked questions - I told them to give me a hand with Gertie - off we went back - passed through next wave of attack - nobody said anything and I thought - good luck! Back at jump off point I told others to wait. Gertie was able to stumble along with a bit of help now and I took him back to Aid Post - sat there for a bit to get my wind - then I gave smart answer to staff officer. That were silly. Sensitive souls staff officers. Put me under arrest for insubordination. Stupid sod doesnt realize what a favour hes doing me keeping me back here out of line. Maybe I should have started being insubordinate a long time back!
'Not funny. Try to smile and feel happy but all I can think of is all my mates - all the fellows I lived with and should have looked after - lying dead and dying broken and bleeding out there in Polygon Wood. Thats where I ought to be not here comfy and safe - out there in Polygon Wood. '
Pascoe stopped reading and Ellie said, 'Did he really think he was safe?'
'Why do you ask?'
'It's just the way he describes things, the black hopelessness of it all; he tries to put it off on Grindal - and don't misunderstand me, I believe every word he says about Grindal - but these are his own feelings he's describing, aren't they?'
'Oh yes,' said Pascoe passionately. 'No doubt of that. No doubt whatsoever.'
Ellie gave him a puzzled look then went on, 'And in taking care of Gertie, which I'm sure he did, he also takes care of himself. All the time I get this feeling that he's using Gertie somehow to externalize his own fears, and he ends up trying to persuade himself that having got Gertie back safe somehow guarantees his own safety. He must have known, surely, that with a battle raging, you didn't get locked up away from the action for a simple act of insubordination.'
'Sharp little thing aren't you?' said Pascoe. 'You're dead right. He knows that. But he doesn't want to let himself know it. He's so much like me, Ellie. I see myself in him all the time, all his fears and failings, all his little tricks to try and get by. He's so much like me.'
'One big difference,' said Ellie coming to stand behind his chair and draping her arms around his shoulders. 'You're alive. But the cat gets out of the bag later, does it?'
'Oh yes, During the trial. At first, like Studholme said, he put his trust in Gertie's testimony. He writes: Hes no fool Gertie - and hes basically a decent kind of man. A bit of peace and quiet will soon have him back to normal and hell work out what happened. Hell know theres no danger of him being charged because whos to give evidence against him except me? And hell know what Im saying happened because the captain has written to him - and hell send word that Ive got it dead right - so Im not worrying.'
'Like hell,' said Ellie.
'Like hell indeed,' said Pascoe. 'After he's heard Gertie's letter read out and realizes where this leaves him, there's obviously a gap when he doesn't write anything. Then he resumes after the verdict: Maybe I shouldnt have burst out like I did but it made no difference. They are going to kill me whatever I say and they might as well hear the truth of what I think - though not the whole truth - for I will not tell them that Gertie broke and was running for they would not believe it except perhaps for the adjutant who is malicious enough to spread it around - thus catching us both in different ways. And even that is still not the whole truth - for though the true facts of the business have been hidden from them I am none the less guilty as charged - Gerties fear was my fear and when I saved him from running it was also to use him so as I could run myself. I told that staff officer that I was going back up the line as soon as Id finished my fag but would I have done so? And was not perhaps my insubordination a deliberate attempt to sting him to anger and thus get myself arrested? So if they are right to shoot cowards then they are right to think themselves right to shoot me. But I know I am not a coward - nor I think is Gertie - so they are not right - or at least their vicious law isnt right. God help me that it has come to this. And God help Bertie Grindal when he realizes what it has come to.'
'God help Gertie Grindal when he realizes!' echoed Ellie mockingly. 'So what does he do? Sends a consoling letter and a bit of cash to the widow then gets on with the rest of his privileged life. God, if she'd known the truth, I bet she'd have thrown that money back in his face!'
'Perhaps she did know the truth or some of it,' said Pascoe. 'Here near the end he writes: I shall give this to Mr Studholme to do with as he sees fit, and a letter for him to send to Alice in which I shall simply say my goodbyes. And I have written to Stephen by the usual route so that he may know enough to stop Archie Doyles tongue if yon bastard starts blackening me about Kirkton.'
'The usual route?'
'Someone going back on leave to post it in England. That way you jumped the censor,' said Pascoe.
'I hope to God this thing between Steve and Alice didn't start till after he got that letter,' said Ellie. 'Pete, are you OK?'
He was sitting looking into space or rather through it as if he was seeing something beyond.
'I'm an idiot,' he said. 'This has all come piling on me so thick over the past couple of days I've lost sight of where it all started and the mystery of the names. Where's Ada's letter?'
He started sorting through the conte
nts of the package he'd received from Barbara Lomax and then through the papers he'd brought back with him from Ada's cottage.
'Listen, she talks about a knock on the door which brought everything out in the open. I just took it that there was a letter, perhaps something official about a pension or something her mother had been applying for, I don't know. But it was obviously a person. And when later she writes about two of us living together both with our appointed quests, it's not her and her mother, it's her and my grandfather Colin Pascoe.'
'Hold on,' said Ellie. 'You're saying this Colin Pascoe is who? Stephen's son? But he was called Steve, I'm sure he's referred to in the diary.'
'That's right. Stephen after his father which his mother couldn't bear the sound of after he allegedly upped and left her. And George after his paternal grandfather, which I daresay she didn't fancy either. And finally Colin probably after the Quiggins grandfather. That's what he grew up being called. It's here on Ada's marriage lines. Stephen George Colin Pascoe who, when he came of age and felt his independence, was determined to track his errant father down and had nothing to go on but the old family story that he'd run off with cousin Peter's widow. So naturally he went in search of the widow and somehow picked up her trail.'
They sat in silence for a while thinking of the scene when the young Pascoe arrived at the Clark women's house.
'Must have been like having a bomb lobbed through the window,' said Ellie. 'No wonder she married him.'
'Sorry?'
'A guy turns up accusing your mum of having it off with his dad while your dad was being executed in France, the only reason you don't kill him is you fancy him rotten.'
Pascoe laughed and said, 'I always said you and Ada had a lot in common. Too much maybe. God, look at the time. Let's head to bed, love. Mystery solved. One of them.'
'No,' said Ellie. 'Mystery doubled. Before you were just bothered by what happened to one of your great-grandfathers. Now you've got another to worry about. Stephen didn't run off with Alice. Did he really take off to America and never make any attempt then or later to contact his son? Or . ..'
'Or?'
'Or did he head round to Alice's as soon as he got Peter's letter and find her sitting there with Herbert Antony Grindal's note of condolence in her one hand and his blood money in the other?' And suddenly Pascoe saw seven golden sovereigns shining through the mud.
part four
WANWOOD
Among the beds of Lillyes,
I Have sought it oft, where it should lye;
Yet could not, till it self would rise,
Find it, although before mine Eyes.
i
'You wha'?' said Andy Dalziel, packing enough incredulity into the two syllables to make Doubting Thomas sound like a planted question at Prime Minister's Question Time.
'You heard me,' said Pascoe.
'Nay, lad, but I'm not certain I heard you right. You're saying that yon cranium you fetched me from old Death's sluices belonged to your own great-granddad who got shot by a firing squad in Flanders?'
'No,' said Pascoe patiently. 'That was my other great- grandfather, also called Pascoe. This is the one who got invalided home and when he found out what had happened to his cousin, he went out to Wanwood Hospital to have it out with Lieutenant Grindal.'
'Oh aye. And this Grindal who's a patient there, suffering from war wounds and neurasthenia,' said Dalziel, who'd clearly been paying much closer attention than he pretended, 'he knocks your great-granddad down with his crutches then buries the body after stripping it of all its clothes which he then takes to Liverpool to lay a false scent? He didn't meet a big bad wolf in the woods while he were at it, did he?'
'For fuck's sake, this is no joking matter!' exploded Pascoe.
Dalziel looked at him keenly then said, 'Who's laughing? I'm just saying that as a working thesis I've seen better runners pulling milk floats.'
'Perhaps so,' said Pascoe regretting his outburst. 'At the very least I think the family know more than they're saying. I'd like to go back to Kirkton and have another talk with Batty senior.'
'You'll do it in your own time then,' said Dalziel sternly. 'There's work to be done here and you've not exactly been pulling your weight lately.'
Pascoe didn't argue. The Fat Man looked in no mood to be contradicted, and in any case there was more than a grain of truth in what he said.
Also he knew he was allowing his own concerns to mask the fact that Dalziel had personal problems just as deep and a great deal more immediate.
'Anything new on Wendy Walker?' he asked.
'Nowt.'
'And is, er, Ms Marvell still in the frame?'
Those hard bright eyes ran over his face like a security sensor, cataloguing each feature for future reference.
'No change,' he said laconically, meaning, Pascoe interpreted, that nothing further had emerged either to incriminate or exculpate the woman.
He said, 'You like her a lot?' turning it from assertion to question in mid-utterance.
The eyes seemed to be measuring his inside-head dimensions this time.
'You planning to give me advice, Pete? I should warn you, I've already heard from the Sage of Enscombe.'
'Well I've started so I might as well finish,' said Pascoe. 'Make your peace now before you're certain, otherwise either way, it'll make no difference. If you like her that much, that is.'
'If I knew that, I'd not be listening to you and Old Mother Riley here,' growled Dalziel, glancing towards Wield who had just come through the door. 'What's up wi' you? Get your ticket punched for being late last night, did you?'
He was far advanced in the art of interpreting Wield's expression which to Pascoe looked little different from that which registered amusement or delight.
'Got a woman downstairs playing merry hell, sir,' said the sergeant.
Cap Marvell, thought Pascoe, and he saw that Dalziel thought the same.
'Mrs Howard,' continued the sergeant. 'Wanting to know how long we're going to keep her man banged up.'
'But I thought. ..' began Pascoe.
'That's right. We did, last night,' said Wield. 'No grounds for holding him longer.'
'Then why didn't he go home?' said Pascoe.
'Fancy woman?' said Wield.
'Would you say he's the type?'
'There's no telling,' said Wield making sure his gaze didn't even touch Dalziel's penumbra. 'But after talking to his missus . . . Could just have done a bunk, of course.'
'Why?' said Dalziel. 'That TecSec brief had got him right off the hook, and you don't run from a banned driving charge. Peter, you talk to Mrs Howard, ooze some of that boyish charm over her and see if she knows owt useful. Wieldy, you check out that lass you saw give him the envelope, and if there's no joy there, then get out to Wanwood and chat up your mate in TecSec. And on your way out, one of you send Novello in, will you?'
Wield passed on the message.
'Does he want a cup of tea?' asked Novello, only half satirically.
Wield said, 'That chat you wanted last night, mebbe later, eh?'
'It's OK, I've slept on it, sarge. Woke up and it seemed a lot of nothing.'
She tapped on Dalziel's door and waited till she heard a bellow which might have been Come in, or the mating call of the African gorilla.
There was, however, nothing amatory about his expression.
'Sit,' he said.
She perched right on the edge of a chair and he said, 'Afraid of catching summat?'
'No, sir. Just didn't think I'd be staying long enough to get comfortable.'
Did I really say that? she asked herself incredulously.
'Oh aye? Why's that?'
'Well, we haven't had a lot of. ..' The word that came into her mind was intercourse, but it didn't seem a good choice. '.. . talked a lot since I joined the department.'
'Got something worth saying, have you?'
'Well, not really . ..'
'Good. Soon as you have, just knock and come in. Now, las
t evening you escorted yon scrote Jimmy Howard out of the building, right?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Talk with him, did you?'
'Well yes, a bit, but I don't think... I know I didn't tell him anything .. .'
'Christ, lass, you must have a bigger guilt complex than Judas sodding Iscariot! It's Howard I'm interested in, not you. So what was the crack?'
She eased her buttocks more fully onto the seat of the chair and said, 'We talked about that video he'd been looking at. He asked me if it was true that the thin woman, Walker, was really dead, and I said yes, she was. And he asked how, and I didn't see any harm in telling him, I mean, it was in the local paper...'
'Do I look like the Pope or summat, lass?' demanded Dalziel.
It occurred to Novello, who was a good Catholic, that given an ermined cloak and a flat red cap, Dalziel could very easily pass for one of the medieval fleshly school of cardinals she'd seen in paintings.
'You want to confess,' he went on, 'you go to see Father Kerrigan. Just tell me what went off!'
Given her assumption up to now that he was hardly aware of her existence, his knowledge that Father Kerrigan was her parish priest came as a jolt. If he knew that, what else... ? But his fingers were reshaping a paperknife which she took to be a sign of impatience.
'So I told him what I knew, I mean what was public knowledge about Walker's death. And he went on about her. How did she die? Why were we interested? And I told him that we were always interested in hit-and-run accidents, and he laughed and said .. . said things had changed since he was in the Force.'
Dalziel had noticed the hesitation and said, 'What you mean is he said something like, it took more than a mere hit-and-run to get yon fat bugger off his arse when I was in the Force. Right?'
Dalziel 15 The Wood Beyond Page 34