Dalziel And Pascoe: Under World Part 7

It was his last voyage. The pressures to stay in Burrthorpe were great. His mother was breaking under the strain. He was engaged to Stella Gibson. Neil Wardle had told him he'd got management agreement that Farr's old job would be available. Good will, it was called. Guilt, was what Farr called it. So he stayed. Within weeks his engagement was off. Within months his mother was improving and his pay was stopped for the duration of the Strike. But still he stayed, and still whenever he collected his 'checks', the metal discs with his number stamped on, he saw his father, framed in the hatch of the Centre and in his mind for ever.

'Come on, dreamer,' said Tommy d.i.c.kinson. 'Last as usual. Anyone'd think you didn't enjoy coming to this place!'

Together they went into the 'clean lockers' where they stripped and hung up their clothes. Then naked they walked through into the 'dirty lockers' where the miners kept their working clothes known as 'pit-black'. It was no misnomer, thought Colin Farr as he took out the trousers, waistcoat and football s.h.i.+rt which he wore underground. Their original colour was beyond detection. Dampened by sweat and pit-water, smeared with oil and grease, impregnated with coal dust, to put them on was an act as symbolic in its ways as the priest's a.s.sumption of the chasuble, the novice's of her veil. Only, what these stiff and stinking garments signalled was no embracing of a higher will, no movement to a higher plane, but the exchange of light for darkness, fresh air for foul, sky for earth. Their clammy touch was the embrace of the pit itself.

'You all right, Col? I'm not keen on working with b.u.g.g.e.rs so hung-over they're only half conscious.'

Neil Wardle was sitting next to him, struggling into a pair of boots which had set like concrete since his last s.h.i.+ft.

'I'm grand,' said Farr. 'You know me. Naturally quiet.'

'That's not what Satterthwaite says. He says you've been threatening him,' said Wardle. 'He'd like you out, Col. Permanent.'

They rose together and made for the lamp room.

Farr halted at the turnstile and turned to face the other.

'And what did you say?' he asked.

'I said b.l.o.o.d.y good riddance, what do you think?'

Colin Farr grinned.

'Thanks, Neil.'

'Aye but watch him. Col. He's after your blood.'

'Is that all? He can have that any time he likes.'

Farr went through the turnstile into the lamp room, so called because here the lamps were ranged in racks to be recharged during s.h.i.+fts. Each lamp had a numbered check on a hook above it. The safest way of pa.s.sing a message to a miner was to hang it with his check. A man could ride the pit without many things, but never without his lamp.

There was a piece of paper hanging on his hook. He pulled it off, unfolded it, read it.

Crudely printed in block capitals, it read: SG LOVES HS. TRUE. POOR YOU.

'Love-letter, is it?' asked Tommy d.i.c.kinson, coming up behind him.

Farr crumpled the paper in his fist, then tore it into little pieces and scattered them on the floor.

'Sort of,' he said. And went to ride the pit.

Chapter 10.

It was Sunday morning. The ten churches were almost empty, the cells not much fuller. But when Dalziel addressed his one-man congregation, it was with a pa.s.sionate sincerity which seemed capable of ameliorating both deficiences.

'I swear to G.o.d I'll murder the b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' he said. Pascoe lowered the Challenger and asked politely, 'Don't you want to hear this, sir?'

''Not as much as you do,' said Dalziel malevolently. 'Don't think I'm not noticing how well you control yourself every time I get insulted.'

'It's not easy,' admitted Pascoe.

He was reading from the trailer to ex-DCC Watmough's memoirs in which Ace Crime Reporter, Monty Boyle (The Man Who Knows Too Much) was promising a feast of s.e.x, violence, blood, guts, and Amazing Revelations. Nowhere was Dalziel mentioned by name, but Pascoe couldn't feel his boss was being unduly sensitive.

He had just read: '.....Nev Watmough told me that after his South Yorks triumph, returning to Mid-Yorks was like travelling back from the Twenty-first Century to the Dark Ages. "The South was forward-looking, eager to keep pace with the technological revolution," he said nostalgically. "In Mid-Yorks they still preferred to fly by the seats of their broad and often very s.h.i.+ny pants. I've always believed that trouble starts at the top. And that's certainly where I found it in my efforts to drag my new command screaming and kicking into the Twentieth Century." . . .'

'Get on with it.' commanded Dalziel through gritted teeth.

'There's not much more,' edited Pascoe. 'Like we thought, he's starting with a bang on the Pickford case next Sunday. And in future editions we're promised such treats as The Ka.s.sell Drug Ring - The Royal Connection? Who Killed Dandy d.i.c.k? and The Choker: c.o.c.k-up or Cover-up?'

'Jesus! What did he have to do with any of them cases? What's he ever had to do with real police work? When he were a sprog constable, he couldn't write a report without stapling his tie in with it. . .'

'Don't be too hard on him,' said Pascoe provocatively. 'He's probably not writing much of his stuff either, not with Monty Boyle at his side. It'll all be ghosted...'

'Ghosted!' exclaimed Dalziel. 'I'll make a ghost of that moth-eaten string vest if ever I get my hands on him!'

He rehea.r.s.ed the act in the air. His intention was apparently to strangle Watmough while at the same time gouging out his eyes. Pascoe felt that even with hands like Dalziel's, this was going to be a formidable task.

He said, 'Can he really get away with stuff like this? Isn't there a regulation? Something he signed?'

Dalziel considered, then shook his head. 'No, I'm sure Ike Ogilby's wide-boy lawyers will have covered that. But hang on! Mebbe he took some stuff out of the files that he shouldn't have, copies of records, statements, that sort of thing. I wonder if Trimble would cough up a warrant? It's time that little Cornish pixie started paying his debts.'

The Cornish pixie was Dan Trimble, Mid-Yorks' new Chief Constable. The debt was for Dalziel's a.s.sistance in getting him the job, or rather in blocking Watmough's selection. The princ.i.p.al obstacle to repayment was that Trimble didn't have the faintest idea that he owed Dalziel anything, but as Pascoe knew from long experience, ignorance in such cases was no defence.

He said, 'I don't really think Mr Trimble's going to let you kick Watmough's door down, sir. Look, why make a fuss when there's other folk will make it for you? Digging up old cases always upsets a lot of people, relatives of victims, that kind of thing. He's obviously going to be dwelling on his Pickford triumph for a couple of weeks at least. There's nothing there to harm us. And by the time he gets himself back to Mid-Yorks, either someone will have slapped an injunction on him or Ike Ogilby will realize that our Nev's driving the punters back to their beds in droves on Sunday mornings, and spike the remaining episodes.'

Pascoe expressed himself thus cynically because he felt that at the moment the way to Dalziel's heart was through his bile. But besides his natural concern for the reputation of the police, he felt a genuine repugnance at this savaging of people's sensibilities for the sake of mere sensationalism. When he got home just before one, he found that he was not alone in his views.

He entered expecting congratulations that he'd slipped away from Dalziel and actually got back in time for Sunday lunch. But Ellie's expression as she met him in the hall was far from congratulatory.

'Have you seen it?" she demanded.

'What? The light? The spider? What?'

'This rag!'

The object she brandished looked anything but rag-like. He recognized it by instinct rather than eyesight as the Challenger compressed apparently by main force into papier mche. Producing his own copy, he flourished it and said, 'On guard.'

'Be serious!'

'About what? And why have you got that rag? I hope you wore a disguise to buy it.'

'It's Adi's.'

'Adi's?' he said, praying there was another Adi besides Adrienne Pritchard, radical solicitor and Women's Rights Group activist.

'She came round to talk to you, Peter. She reckons that people could get hurt by these articles and she wanted a reasonable police view.'

No, she didn't. She wanted his destruction, for that would inevitably follow if Dalziel ever found out he'd been discussing police business with Ms b.i.t.c.hard, as he called her. Suddenly simultaneous gouging and strangulation seemed well within the span of those vengeful hands.

He said, 'Ellie, you'll have to tell her, I disapprove of what Watmough's doing, but I'm not about to become Ms Pritchard's mole in the CID.'

'You tell her,' said Ellie.

'What?' He looked towards the lounge door with a condemned man's eight o'clock eyes.

'I asked her to stay for lunch. Wasn't it lucky you managed to get away on time for once?'

In the event lunch turned out to be quite enjoyable, particularly when he found himself opening a second bottle of Rioja. Adi Pritchard was no great beauty but she was a good conversationalist, and though he kept a careful eye on her he never got any sense of being pumped for indiscreet confidences. Even when the doorbell rang half way through and Ellie said, 'That'll be Thelma,' his suspicions were unroused. Thelma was Thelma Lacewing, dental hygienist, great beauty, and founder and driving force of the Women's Rights Action Group.

He greeted her with open arms, literally. Good conversation was OK but those limpid brown eyes spoke more fluently to the sensual ear.

He opened another bottle of wine, spoke wisely and well of the kind of man Neville Watmough was, told interesting and amusing anecdotes of his life in the CID, and was rather taken aback when Thelma started yawning uninhibitedly to show the strangely s.e.xy depths of a delicate pink mouth crescented with the kind of pearly teeth a dental hygienist ought to have. She compensated by squeezing his hand apologetically as she said to Ellie, 'Must go. Have you got your great descent fixed yet?'

'Next week,' said Ellie. 'I'm going down Burrthorpe Main.'

'Burrthorpe? I know it. Good active women's group determined not to be sat upon after the Strike ended.'

'Always the problem with miners,' chimed in Adi. 'I defended a few of them and it was surprising how they followed a pattern. Shock troops of radicalism till it comes to their women, then they're stuck in the Dark Ages.'

'Perhaps,' said Pascoe brightly, 'if they sent all the women down the pit and made the men stay at home, they'd all soon arrive at a better understanding of s.e.xual equality.'

This clanged like the last-orders bell and shortly afterwards the visitors left.

'Well, that seemed to go OK,' said Pascoe, flopping into an armchair.

'You thought so?'

She sounded irritated but Pascoe, who was feeling vinously randy, pressed on in the nave belief that the way to melt a woman's heart was to be nice about her friends.

'I was surprised how reasonably Adi was approaching this business. She seemed genuinely concerned about the reputation of the Force as well as the feelings of the public. I was quite touched.'

'Yes, I noticed you were quite touched. And every time Thelma made a point, I noticed she was quite touched in return.'

'For heaven's sake! She's a mere child.'

'She's thirty if she's a day.'

'Yes, of course I realize that. But you've got to admit there is a childlike quality about her. Those eyes, that complexion, so fresh, so smooth. And not a trace of make-up . . .'

Something in Ellie's eyes warned Pascoe he was missing his way. He tried to get on the right path again by squeezing her hand and saying, 'What I mean, I suppose, is my att.i.tude to Thelma is sort of avuncular.'

'Well, don't imagine you're going to work out your fantasies on me, Uncle,' said Ellie, coldly pulling away.

Irritated himself now, Pascoe retorted, 'At least I keep my fantasies above ground.'

'What's that mean?'

'What it says. You never told me you'd definitely fixed up this mine trip. And Burrthorpe. Why Burrthorpe? That's a long way to go to get your face dirty.'

'Because that's where the next visit is happening,' Ellie replied coldly.

'Is that so? Oh, I thought they'd have stopped work throughout the entire Yorks.h.i.+re region and laid on a special gala to celebrate this great conversion.'

'Conversion?'

'Yes, isn't that what they do? Take the heathen bourgeoisie and bring them up blacker than black after total immersion in dust? Just think. One quick dip and you'll have expiated all your sins of birth and background and education and marriage - you'll have joined the working cla.s.s at last! Welcome aboard.'

Ellie, who was rather sensitive that her origins were considerably less humble than Peter's, went to the door where she paused.

'Oh no,' she said. 'You can't welcome me aboard. Not when you went over the side and swam away long ago, like all the other rats.'

She went out. Pascoe groaned and reached for a Rioja bottle. When he tipped it up, nothing came out. He peered inside with one eye and groaned again. It was deep and dark and empty as despair.

Chapter 11.

It was true what the Spaniards said about trouble. Once she fancied you, there was no shaking her off, so you might as well go looking for her as risk being surprised when she turned up at your wedding.

Colin Farr recalled this bit of wisdom, picked up in a Bilbao bar, during his s.h.i.+ft on Tuesday afternoon. Monday had been great, the cla.s.s had been really interesting with Ellie talking about the way the media distorted truth and often corrupted opinion rather than informing it. Afterwards she had been full of her visit to Burrthorpe Main on Wednesday. 'Pity I'll be on s.h.i.+ft myself,' he said, 'else you could have come and had tea with my mam.' He could see she didn't know if he were joking and to tell the truth he didn't know himself.

That night as he went into the Welfare, he glimpsed Boyle, the stout Challenger reporter, standing at the bar with a couple of men Farr had no cause to like. He'd amazed himself by turning on his heel, getting back on his bike and heading off to do his fairly moderate drinking in a pub at the far side of the village.

He'd rounded this trouble-free day off by getting home early, drinking a cup of cocoa with his mother and laughing with her at some early pictures in the family alb.u.m.

Tuesday morning he'd tinkered with his bike which was running a bit rough, then, leaving it half stripped down, he'd strolled to work, vaguely surprised at how little of the usual pre-s.h.i.+ft tension racked his nerves.

But half way through the s.h.i.+ft trouble found him out again. It wasn't surprising. A man can duck and weave through his free time, but work makes him a still target.

At first the trouble seemed merely operational.

They were advancing one of the gates or tunnels leading up to the coal-face. The roof here was notoriously weak and when they blasted the rip, instead of the looked-for twelve or fifteen feet, nearly thirty feet came down, leaving a great hole far beyond the reach of the metal support arches.

Colin Farr and Neil Wardle peered cautiously up.

'It's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' said Wardle.

'Aye,' said Farr.