Dalziel 15 The Wood Beyond

by Reginald Hill

  Wield glanced around. No one in sight. He went quickly to his own car and opened the boot.

  The little animal protested when he prised it free from his shoulder and set it down on an old travelling rug.

  'You prefer a cage and hypos on the hour, you just say so,' he said sternly.

  The monkey went quiet and snuggled down into the rug.

  'Right. I'll see you later,' said Wield gently closing the boot.

  As he went back inside he heard a distant ambulance bell.

  In the medical room he found Jane Ambler also wearing a TecSec uniform and looking reasonably well, considering what she'd been through. DC Novello was sitting watchfully at her side while the looming figure of Dalziel blocked the light from the window.

  She looked pleased to see him. With Dalziel doing his Hannibal Lecter at the Health Farm impression, she'd probably have looked pleased to see King Kong.

  'I want to thank you,' she said weakly.

  'My pleasure,' said Wield. 'Listen, luv, all this stuff you did to get your own back on Batty, I want you to know I've been there, I understand what you were feeling.'

  As he spoke he moved to put himself between the woman and the Fat Man.

  'I reckon the court could understand that too,' he went on. 'Spur-of-the-moment revenge, anyone could do it. But taking them negatives, that's a bit different.'

  He held up the envelope.

  'That could look like you were going to try a bit of blackmail,' he said. 'And once the court gets a sniff of premeditation

  'I just wanted to frighten him,' she said.

  Wield dug his finger into his ear as if he hadn't quite caught the remark.

  He said, 'Of course if you'd been uneasy for some time that something not quite right was going off at ALBA, and you decided that as this was probably your last chance to get hold of the evidence, it was your duty as a good citizen to make sure these negatives came into our hands ...'

  He could see her like a chess champion working out all the moves and their implications. He moved slightly to one side to reopen her view of Dalziel, which was a bit like Kasparov drawing an opponent's attention to the presence of a KGB bodyguard with his hand on his gun butt.

  It clearly concentrated the mind wonderfully.

  She said, 'OK. This is the way it was. David Batty and I were very close. It was his idea, he started it, but I admit I was happy to go along. He's a good-looking guy and I was flattered, young research assistant making it with the department chief. But eventually I started getting worried by some of the things he let slip about some aspects of our work.'

  'What aspects?' said Wield.

  'Our main project ever since I joined has been work on a new treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. You should understand that the first company to make a break-through there is guaranteed billions. There are always plenty of rumours flying around and word started to get out that Fraser Greenleaf were way ahead. David was really narked about this, particularly as the researcher I'd replaced had been head-hunted by FG about eighteen months ago. Of course he was legally tied not to communicate anything he'd been working on here, but it's almost impossible to enforce that, and David had convinced himself that FG's breakthrough, if it came, would really be ALBA's.'

  She paused.

  'So?' prompted Wield.

  'So a few months back, in the summer, suddenly the direction of our research took a dramatic change,' she said. 'I couldn't see why. It didn't follow naturally out of what had gone before. And when I asked David why ...'

  She paused again, then looking past Wield to Dalziel she said, 'I want it to be clearly understood that I have no firm knowledge of anything, only some guesses based on hints dropped by David Batty during the course of our . . . work. Unless I'm convinced you understand and accept this, I don't think I have anything more to say.'

  'I think mebbe you've said enough already,' said Dalziel, giving her a hungry grin.

  She grinned back and said, 'Not under caution, I haven't. And I certainly won't sign anything. Or give evidence in court. Not unless I see it in black and white that it's clearly understood that I am entirely an innocent party in all this.'

  'All what?' enquired Dalziel.

  'How should I know, being entirely innocent?' she replied.

  She was, acknowledged Wield, a real gladiator.

  Suddenly Dalziel's hungry grin turned to Santa Claus beam.

  'Nay, lass, tha's so squeaky clean it makes my eyes hurt just to look at you. Never fear, I'll stand up and tell the court you're the Virgin Mary. So what did Dr Batty answer when you asked him about the new research?'

  'He took some photographic negatives out of his desk, waved them in the air and said, "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform, and so do I!" He was a bit drunk at the time.'

  'And what did you understand by this?'

  'That somehow he'd got information from somewhere about someone else's research.'

  'But you'd no idea how or whose?'

  'None whatsoever. All I knew was that after he fired me, if I didn't take this last chance to get hold of those negatives, I might never find out the truth. I was of course going to hand them over to the authorities at the first opportunity.'

  'Which is right now, lass. And don't think we're not grateful,' said Dalziel.

  The door opened and Pascoe came in.

  'Ambulance is here, sir.'

  'Grand. You fit enough to travel up front, miss?'

  'I think so. Why?'

  'Then we can get them to put Jimmy Howard in the back, saves a double journey,' said Dalziel genially. 'Got to watch NHS finances these days, haven't we? Novello, you go with the lady. See she's taken care of.'

  The door closed behind them.

  'There goes a real piece of work,' said Dalziel not unadmiringly.

  'Why? What's happened?' said Pascoe.

  They told him. He said, 'So you reckon these negatives are photos of Fraser Greenleaf research papers, taken during the Redcar raid?'

  'I'd put money on it. One way to find out. We'll get 'em printed then ask someone from FG to take a look. Have we got hold of Captain Sanderson?'

  Pascoe shook his head.

  'They just called in to say that there's no sign of him at his flat or at TecSec HQ.'

  'Bugger,' said Dalziel. 'I'd have liked to finger his collar before he got wind that owt's gone wrong. What about Batty?'

  'Blank there too, sir. Thought the simplest thing to do was ring his home and tell him a few of the animals had got loose and invite him out here, but all I got was his wife who said she didn't know where he was. Didn't sound as if she cared much either, though I got the impression there was someone there.'

  Wield coughed and said, 'Could be that Mrs Batty's chucked her husband out. Could even be that Captain Sanderson's round there, comforting her.'

  Dalziel looked thoughtfully at the sergeant and said, 'Total immersion turned you psychic or what, Wieldy?'

  'No, sir. Just something Patten said.'

  'Oh aye. Give you any ideas where the doctor might have ended up?'

  'Gone home to Mummy, he thought.'

  'Where else?' laughed the Fat Man. 'Right, I'll go and see if I can catch the captain on the job; you, Wieldy, see to them photos then get yourself down to the hospital and take Ambler's statement. She seems to fancy you. Oh and while you're down there, get yourself checked out. I know since the Water Board got privatized, we've not had to be too choosy about what we drink, but I think even the chairman would think his millions hard-earned if he had to share his bath with Jimmy Howard.'

  'What shall I do, sir?' asked Pascoe.

  'You, Pete? Why, I'd have thought you'd have signed off by now, having spared us a good couple of hours of your time today. Tell you what. You were going on about wanting an excuse to ask Tom Batty some more questions. Why don't you pop out to Kirkton and if you see your way to fitting it in, pick up Dr David and bring him back for questioning? But only if it's not going to interfere with your ow
n plans of course.'

  Dalziel's ironic touch made Ian Paisley sound like Jane Austen.

  'I'll do that, sir,' said Pascoe.

  'I'd be grateful. And do us a favour, lad. Try to keep at least one foot in the nineties!'

  'I'll try,' said Peter Pascoe.

  iv

  Slow and perilous was the journey westward, with flooded roads and fallen trees. Three times the drapes of darkness swirling in his headlamps' beam were drawn back by the emergency services, and for a moment, like the Venerable Bede's sparrow, he passed through a salient of light across which stretcher-bearers bore the wounded and the dead from the wreckage of their lives.

  Kirkton lay in darkness. The power lines must have come down. Only the red glow of coal and the buttermilk light of candles limned the curtained windows. So must the village have looked when it still was a village eighty years ago. But an inflammation of the sky beyond the massive fortress wall told him that ALBA lived up to its name in this at least, summoning up the dawn of its own generators when the national grid failed.

  They were expecting him at the Maisterhouse. Of course the gateman would have rung through. But as he entered the long sitting room and saw them grouped around the fireplace - Thomas Batty serious and watchful - Janet Batty, Bertie Grindal's daughter, uncertain and anxious; Dr David, the main object of his visit, smiling and welcoming - he got a sense of expectancy deeper rooted than mere foreknowledge.

  It was David Batty who spoke.

  'Chief Inspector Pascoe . . . Peter . .. good to see you again. Take a pew. And take some tea too. No use offering anything stronger, I suppose?'

  He seemed too genuinely at ease for it to be wholly an act, confirming Pascoe's feeling that their expectancy had nothing to do with what had happened at Wanwood - today, at least. So don't break the mood, he thought as he sat down. Time enough to reveal his official purpose.

  He said, 'Nothing for me, thanks. Aren't you going to sit down too?'

  They were still looming over him. David Batty grinned and slumped into a deep armchair while his parents perched awkwardly on the edge of a chaise longue which looked sculpted rather than upholstered.

  Whatever they have to tell me, thought Pascoe, is going to be told through necessity not choice. They must be shown that I know too much now to be diverted from pursuing the whole truth.

  He said, 'Mr Batty, last time we met I think I mentioned to you that I had a family connection with Kirkton. I had a slight suspicion then that you knew something more about the Pascoe connection than you were letting on, and that the knowledge that I was one of the Kirkton Pascoes came as a bit of a shock to you.'

  'No. Why should it?' denied the man unconvincingly.

  'Good question. I wondered about it myself. Then as I later discovered a fairly close connection between your family and mine a generation or so back, I thought perhaps you too were somehow aware of it. But it still didn't explain the intensity of your reaction. Then yesterday - or rather early this morning - '

  He stifled an associative yawn as his words reminded him how little sleep he'd had.

  'Sorry,' he said. 'I discovered or at least developed a strong suspicion of something quite extraordinary, to wit, that the bones discovered out at Wanwood belonged to my great-grandfather.'

  He saw on the older pair's face the admission of knowledge, quickly suppressed on the man's, but its traces less easily erased from the woman's.

  Leaning forward and concentrating on her, Pascoe said,

  'I mean of course the great-grandfather your father, Herbert Grindal, actually killed, not my other great-grandfather, the one he merely allowed to be executed in Flanders.'

  Tears filled her eyes. Her husband looked ready to work himself up into a fine fit of indignation but as the tears started to stream down his wife's face, he seemed to acknowledge to himself that there was no point in trying to bluster a way out of this.

  He said, 'How . . . ?'

  Pascoe said, 'I have in my possession Sergeant Peter Pascoe's journal right up to the eve of his execution. Also I have seen the journal of the officer who acted as his Prisoner's Friend at the court martial, and I know the details of the evidence given by your father, Mrs Batty, and the letter accompanying it, written by your grand- father.'

  The implication that he'd got onto these last two via Studholme's journal seemed strong enough to keep faith with Poll Pollinger.

  'What I want to do now,' he went on, 'is discover what more you can tell me about this business. I should warn you that the inquiry into the cause of death of Stephen Pascoe is still ongoing, and as things stand at the moment, I shall feel impelled to reveal at the inquest all that I have been able to discover.'

  Let 'em know that like any paranoid he'd go all the way!

  'These are scarcely matters for the media, Mr Pascoe,' protested Batty. 'Tabloid publicity wouldn't benefit anyone.'

  'You think not? I don't see how it could hurt my family,' retorted Pascoe. 'There's no way either of my ancestors could be stigmatized worse than they have been for the past eighty years.'

  ‘I really can't see what all the fuss is about, for God's sake,' said David Batty impatiently. 'It's history we're talking here! That's all your fat boss seemed worried about, Peter. Proving it all happened so long ago that it wouldn't either occupy his time or worsen his crime figures.'

  Pascoe regarded him coldly. This was a man with very little moral sense. Knowing that moved his pleasant easygoing manner into a new dimension.

  But no reason not to use him. He forced a young conspirator's smile.

  'That's right, David,' he said. 'But if I'm going to keep quiet, I need to know what exactly it is I'm keeping quiet about, so I don't let it out by accident.'

  This fallacious pragmatism fell on sympathetic ears.

  'Let's show him,' said Batty. 'Then he'll know we're all in it together.'

  His parents exchanged questioning glances, but their son, not waiting for an answer, rose and left the room. A moment later he returned with an old buff legal envelope.

  'Here we go,' he said dropping it on Pascoe's lap. 'This should fill in the gaps.'

  Pascoe opened it and took out a single sheet of foolscap covered by a tiny copperplate hand.

  There was a heading printed in capitals.

  STATEMENT OF

  ARTHUR HERBERT GRINDAL

  NOVEMBER 30th 1917

  Another voice from the past. When would it ever fall silent?

  He began to read.

  I, Arthur Herbert Grindal of Kirkton in the county of Yorkshire, being of sound mind, affirm and assert that the following is a true and accurate description of the circumstances surrounding the death of Stephen Pascoe, also of Kirkton.

  On the evening of November 27th last I was visiting my son Bertie then being treated for wounds received in Flanders during military service at the Officers' Hospital situated at Wanwood House, Mid-Yorkshire. He was in a state of some distress having just learned that his former platoon sergeant, Peter Pascoe, cousin to the above mentioned Stephen Pascoe, had been executed by firing squad having been found guilty of cowardice in face of the enemy. Bertie, in a nervous condition diagnosed as neurasthenia brought on by long and continuous exposure to the danger of front-line life, took upon himself some responsibility for the death of his sergeant, and had been deeply shocked by allegations made against him during the court martial even though I understand that none of his other men or fellow officers had offered any but highest praise for his own conduct under fire. I calmed him down and when the time came to leave we went out to my car and, finding ourselves with much still to say to each other, took a turn down the drive to keep the blood circulating against the night frost. Here we were aware of a figure approaching which, when it became identifiable in the moonlight, I recognized as Stephen Pascoe, who used to be in my employ. He was wearing a greatcoat over his private's uniform. I got the impression he had been drinking. As soon as he saw my son he cried, 'Grindal, there you are, it's you I've come lookin
g for. I know from my cousin what really happened out there and I'll find other lads to back up the true story when this lot's over, believe me. Meanwhile don't you dare go writing letters to Peter's wife - widow, I mean, that's what you've made her, and as for your filthy money ...' and here he hurled a leather purse full into Bertie's face and rushed at him with both hands outstretched as though he wanted to strangle him. I tried to intervene and got knocked aside for my pains. As I lay on the ground I saw Pascoe seize hold of Bertie, they spun around, moving off the drive into the trees, and there one of them caught his foot on a root and they both went down locked together. But only Bertie got up.

  He helped me to my feet and I examined Pascoe. His head had hit a sharp edge of rock protruding from the earth and he was no longer breathing.

  Bertie was in no condition to make decisions so I took control. What happened next was my sole decision and my sole responsibility. Together we lifted the body and carried it into the wood. There is an old ice house there, built for the original old mansion and long disused, almost completely hidden beneath earth and undergrowth. Here we laid the body. Then I escorted Bertie back to the hospital where I told the matron his nerves had taken a turn for the worse and she administered a sleeping draught. After that I set off to drive home and in the lights of my car noticed the purse lying in the driveway. I stopped to pick it up and then got an idea of how I might throw the authorities off the scent when they began to look for the missing soldier. I went to the ice house and stripped the body of all its military uniform and identifying discs. The purse with the gold sovereigns in it I tossed in beside the corpse. The clothes I put in my car and two days later when I was in Liverpool on business, I hid them where they would be found in the railway station there.

  I am making this statement because, in the event of my death and the subsequent discovery of Stephen Pascoe's remains, it is possible that my son might, because of his nervous condition, give a false or partial account of events, laying himself open to criminal charges, perhaps even murder. I wish to make it quite clear that apart from aiding me in the concealment of the body (and that only because he was at that time incapable of not following my commands), Bertie has broken no law. My fear was, and is, that if his part in Pascoe's accidental death came to light, any rumours which might already be in circulation or subsequently arise about my son's conduct as an officer during the late campaign in Flanders could flare up and result in false accusation, and perhaps permanent nervous debility.