Pictures of Perfection

Pascoe pushed the door. It swung open and he found himself in a shadowy vestibule with four doors off. The spoor of blood led into the second on the left.

He went through and found himself in a large farmhouse kitchen. The young man had vanished, presumably through the open door which led into a rear yard and garden. His gunny bag lay on a broad, well-scrubbed table.

Seeing a chance to check without looking foolish, Pascoe moved quickly forward, undid the lace round the bag’s neck, pulled it open, and peered inside.

A pair of big bright eyes peered back at him.

And a voice said, ‘Who the hell are you, then?’

Happily the voice didn’t come from the bag. Unhappily, it came from a broad-built man standing in the doorway and clutching a huge bloodstained knife in his right hand.

Pascoe took two rapid steps back and another two sideways to put the table between himself and the newcomer, who gestured with his weapon and cried, ‘Watch it!’

Too late he recognized the words as a warning not a threat. His shin caught against a galvanized bucket half hidden under the table. Over it went, spilling its contents all over the floor. He staggered, slipped, fell, put his hands into something warm.

And when he held them up to look at them, they were as red and sticky as the broad blade in the hand of the menacing figure looming over him.

CHAPTER THREE

‘They had a very rough passage, he wd. not have ventured if he had known how bad it wd. be.’

The first half of Sergeant Wield’s journey to Enscombe passed in silence.

Wield would have liked to have questioned Terry Filmer about Harold Bendish but as they were ferrying Edwin Digweed back to Enscombe, he contented himself with letting Filmer drive while he studied the print-out he’d collected of the Constable’s personal file.

Academically, he was very bright, bright enough according to his headmaster to have gone to university. Instead he’d opted to join the police in his native city of Newcastle. The head, who couldn’t keep out of his report his feeling that this was a great waste of talent, put it down to misguided adolescent idealism coupled with a belief that universities were élitist, escapist and effete.

Must have been talking to Fat Andy, thought Wield.

During training he had been outstanding on the theoretical and written areas of the course. But there’d been a bit of a problem in the practical areas involving direct contact with the public. Cutting through the jargon, Wield guessed that what they’d got here was a case of that not uncommon youthful arrogance which believes that if tried and tested procedures don’t seem to be working, it’s the procedures that are at fault, not the way they’re being applied.

On attachment, however, the problems identified during training had loomed larger, particularly his readiness to argue the toss at all levels. Reading between the lines, Wield saw that things had come to a head and that while there was a marked reluctance to lose Constable Bendish (which said a great deal for the lad’s potential), it was felt that if a new leaf were to be turned, it would be better to turn it elsewhere. So he’d been transferred to Mid-Yorkshire with the recommendation that before the village bobby system was finally phased out, this could be just the kind of job to help the youngster find his feet.

Things had come a long way even in the years since Wield had trained. They still had a long way to go (who knew it better than he?), but at least brassbound hearts and blinkered brains were no longer essential qualifications for rising to the top of the heap.

He was roused from his meditation by a sharp finger being driven into his shoulder-blade.

‘I’ve remembered something,’ said Digweed from the back seat. ‘Kee Scudamore, she runs the Eendale Gallery opposite my shop, she went up to Old Hall yesterday afternoon shortly after your departure, Sergeant. She took the short cut along Green Alley, that’s the old path which links the church to the Hall, quite overgrown since churchgoing went out of fashion among the gentry. We spoke when she got back and she told me in passing that somewhere along the alley she’d noticed a piece of statuary with a policeman’s hat on it. Could this be significant?’

‘A cap? And she left it there?’ said Wield.

‘Of course. Presumably someone had put it there as a joke. In villages you don’t go around spoiling other people’s fun. Not unless you’re a policeman.’

Wield glanced at Filmer, who said defensively, ‘I didn’t see Miss Scudamore this morning, just her sister. She didn’t say anything.’

‘The Vicar saw it too evidently,’ said Digweed, as though his integrity was being called in doubt.

‘Vicarage was the first place I went when I didn’t find Bendish in Corpse Cottage,’ said Filmer. ‘But Mr Lillingstone wasn’t in.’

‘I thought the police house was called Church Cottage?’ said Wield.

‘It is, really. But Corpse Cottage is the name the locals use. The vicarage is the only house that overlooks it, so that’s why I called there straight off. But like I say, the Vicar was out.’

Turning to Digweed, Wield said, ‘If the hat was put there as a bit of fun, sir, can you think of anyone who might enjoy that kind of joke?’

Digweed said, ‘Children perhaps. Or the childlike mind. Tricks with policemen’s helmets were, I recall, a favourite pastime of The Drones’ Club.’

Wield, who had watched Jeeves on the telly, said, ‘Get a lot of Bertie Woosters in Enscombe, do you, sir?’

Digweed nodded a patronizing acknowledgement and said, ‘I suppose Guy Guillemard comes closest.’

‘Guy?’ said Wield, his memory jogged. ‘The one your neighbour wouldn’t serve yesterday? Who is he exactly?’

‘Exactly, he is Squire Selwyn’s great-nephew and, alas, heir, despite the superior claims of his granddaughter.’

‘So why doesn’t she inherit?’

‘Because,’ said Digweed. ‘Salic Law is one of the mediaeval practices still very popular in the upper reaches of Yorkshire society.’

Wield turned back to the front and his file. If the old sod expected him to ask what Salic Law was, he was going to be disappointed.

They were only a couple of miles outside Enscombe now on the narrow winding road Wield remembered from the day before, bounded by an ancient drystone wall on one side and a hedgerow not much younger on the other.

A Post Office van came up behind them, tailgated them for a while, then on the first not very long straight gave a warning peep on the horn and shot past.

‘Bit chancy,’ said Wield.

‘He’s late for the lunch-time pick-up,’ said Filmer. ‘Always late, is Ernie Paget. Except when he’s early ’cos he doesn’t want to be late somewhere else.’

‘At least he does move at speed when he has to,’ observed Digweed irritably. ‘Do we have to dawdle so? I have work to do even if you don’t!’

‘More haste less speed,’ observed Wield, which was not very original but proved almost immediately accurate. The red van had vanished round the next bend. Suddenly they heard a screech of brakes, a chorus of baa-ing, and a loud bang!

‘Holy Mother!’ exclaimed Filmer, hitting the brake hard.

They went round the bend in a fairly controlled skid, coming to a halt aslant the road with a jerk that threw Wield and Filmer against each other and flung Digweed forward with his arms wrapped round the front-seat head restraints.

The van hadn’t been so fortunate. It was halfway through the hedge, straddling a narrow but deep drainage ditch, with steam jetting up from beneath the buckled bonnet.

Ahead, the road was packed with sheep milling around in panic. A man was ploughing through them bellowing what sounded like abuse but turned out to be commands to a pair of Border collies.

‘You both OK?’ said Wield. Filmer grunted laconically but Digweed was no Spartan in either suffering or speech.

‘OK? Not content with depriving me of two hours of peaceful and profitable existence, you finally attempt to rob me of existence itself, and you ask if I am OK?’

He paused rhetorically, his face flushed with a rage which made him look a lot healtheir than his usual scholarly pallor. He was, Wield decided, OK.

‘Let’s take a look at Ernie,’ said Filmer.

At this moment the door of the van opened and the driver staggered out. His face was covered in blood and he let out a terrible cry and slumped sideways as his feet touched the ground.

Fearing the worst, Wield got out and hurried forward.

‘Don’t move,’ he cried, recalling his emergency medical training.

The mask of blood turned towards him.

‘Don’t move? I’ve smashed me fucking van and broken me fucking nose and now I’m up to me hocks in freezing fucking water and you tell me don’t move? Who the hell are you? Jeremy fucking Beadle? Gi’s a hand out of here, it’s sucking me down.’

The farmer had arrived too. He was a man of medium height with a breadth of chest and shoulder which seemed to have bowed his legs. He had a shepherd’s crook in his right hand, its handle carved from a ram’s horn into a beautifully detailed hawk’s head. He proffered this to the postman and hauled him on to the road.

‘You’ve knackered that hedge, Ernie Paget,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to fettle it, that’s what I want to know.’

‘Sod your hedge. I were lucky it weren’t your wall.’

‘Nay,’ said the farmer. ‘You’d likely have bounced off the wall. By gum, you’re quick off the mark for once in your life, Terry Filmer. Last time I called police, they were an age coming. You going to arrest him for speeding?’

‘You by yourself, George?’ said Filmer. ‘You know the law when you’ve got stock on the highway. One man up front, one behind.’

‘Oh aye? Happen I’m a bit short-handed today. Like you lot, I hear!’

Wield noted the sarcasm, but was too busy checking Paget to try to follow it up. He couldn’t find any damage apart from the nose and some bruised ribs, but it would take a proper hospital examination to check if there was anything broken.

‘Let’s get him into the car,’ he said to Filmer, ‘and you can call up some help.’

‘Hang about. I’ll just sort these sheep, then you can come up to the house for a mug of tea,’ said the farmer.

He turned and began to bellow instructions again, rather unnecessarily it seemed to Wield, as the dogs had been quite happily turning the flock through an open gate into the field beyond the wall. There was a cold wind blowing down the valley and Wield shivered. The farmer seemed unaffected even though he was wearing only a short-sleeved tartan shirt and his close-cropped head was hatless. Wind and weather had cured his skin to the consistency of leather. His trousers, which were tied round his waist with baling twine and looked as if they could walk by themselves, were tucked into a pair of odd wellies, the left black, the right green.

‘I’m not going to hang around here any longer,’ declared Digweed, who had preserved an unnatural silence for the past couple of minutes. ‘I can be comfortable in my own house long before you get this lot sorted out.’

‘Do us a favour, Mr Digweed,’ said the postman as Filmer helped him to the police car. ‘Tell Mr Wylmot at the Post Office that I’ve been held up.’

‘Certainly,’ said Digweed. ‘I hope you’ll be all right, Mr Paget.’

Wield felt, though he did not show, surprise at this faint glimmer of human feeling. He said, ‘Hold on, Mr Digweed, and I’ll walk into the village with you.’

He followed Filmer to the car and said, ‘I’ll leave you to sort this lot out. I’ll be making for the Hall to meet Mr Pascoe. Why don’t we meet up at Church Cottage in about an hour?’

‘Fine,’ said Filmer. ‘Try not to bleed on the seat, Ernie.’

‘This farmer, what’s his name?’

‘Creed. George Creed. He farms Crag End up there.’

He pointed to a whitewashed farmhouse set like a solitary molar in the rocky jaw of land rising to the west. The track running up to it was steep and unmetalled. Wield hoped the postman’s ribs, not to mention the car’s springs, would survive the trip.

He said, ‘Owns it, does he?’

‘Rents it from the Guillemard estate.’

‘They own most of the land round here, do they?’

‘Did once. Lot of it had to go for death duties when the Squire inherited in the ’fifties. Since then the bottom’s fell out of sheep, and there’s only three working farms left on the estate and t’other two are in a bad way.’

‘But Creed makes a go of it?’

‘Good farmer, George. Didn’t just stick with sheep. Nice herd of cows too. And pigs. Best ham in the county comes from George’s porkers.’

‘I noticed that he seemed to know all about Bendish going missing.’

It wasn’t intended as reproof but Filmer seemed ready to take it as such.

‘Most folk’ll know by now,’ he said with some irritation. ‘It’s not like the town round here with no one bothering with their neighbours. And you’ve got to know how to talk to these folk. I don’t know what your fat boss is playing at, sending a soft townie like that Pascoe out here. We’d have done better with a couple of dogs sniffing around the moor in case the lad’s lying up there somewhere with a broken leg. Yon fancypants likely wouldn’t know blood if he trod in it!’

‘I’ll pass your observations on, shall I, Terry?’ said Wield. ‘And talking of blood and fancypants, Postman Pat’s just dripped down your trousers.’

And smiling to himself, he turned and hurried after the bookseller who, forecastably, had been too impatient to wait.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?’

At this moment Pascoe’s pants were far from fancy, being of a bookmaker’s check with enough spare room around the waist and buttocks to accommodate the bookie’s runner.

The upside of things was that he was sitting in a bar lounge drinking the best beer he’d tasted in a long while.

The speed of his journey from horror to happiness was enough to give a philosopher pause. The menacing knifeman had dropped his weapon on to the table and helped him to his feet with expressions of concern and apology that had rapidly transformed him from Jack the Ripper to jolly Thomas Wapshare, landlord of the Morris Men’s Rest. The bucket of blood, he explained, belonged to a pig and was the essential ingredient of the homemade black puddings for which he claimed a modest fame. And the eyes in the bag belonged to a large buck rabbit which, along with a couple of pigeons and a duck, were destined for t’other pillar of the pub’s culinary reputation, Mrs Wapshare’s game pie.

Pascoe had started to explain who he was but, as at Scarletts, found himself treated as if expected. At this point Mrs Wapshare appeared, looking just like her husband in drag, and expressing great concern at the state of Pascoe’s trousers. Despite his modest protests, she had them off him with a speed he hoped was honestly learned and took them away to be sponged while he climbed into a pair of Wapshare’s colourful bags.

During this time the pale youth with the shotgun rematerialized in the kitchen and watched the debagging with that unnervingly unfocused stare. Pascoe felt he ought to ask him some questions but was inhibited by his deshabille and also by some legal uncertainties. Game laws didn’t play a large part in his detective life. Once he had known them, but only as examination knowledge, which sparkles like the dew in the morning and has as brief a stay. He was pretty certain the pigeons and the rabbit were OK, but he couldn’t swear to the duck. Wieldy would know. Wieldy knew everything, despite never showing the slightest interest in promotion exams.

But at least he could check the gun licence.

It was too late, he realized as he looked up from tucking his shirt into the trousers. The young man had vanished.

‘Who was that?’ he asked. ‘And where’s he gone?’

‘God knows, and He’s not telling,’ said Wapshare. ‘Name of Toke. Jason Toke. Bit strange but he’s harmless, and you’d have to walk a long mile to find a better shot. We buy a lot of stuff off him. He doesn’t work – who does these days? – and the money helps him and his mam. But what are we hanging around here for, Chief Inspector? Come through into the bar and make yourself comfortable till your trousers are ready.’

The bar was a delight, nicely proportioned and very user-friendly, with lots of old oak furniture well polished by much use, a huge fireplace with a log fire, walls completely free of horse-brass, and best of all, not a juke box or fruit machine in sight. Waspshare drew a couple of pints before he got a potion which satisfied his critical gaze.

‘There we are,’ he said, handing over a glass. ‘Clear as a nun’s conscience.’

Pascoe produced some money and when Wapshare looked ready to be offended, he placed the coins carefully on a ziggurat of copper and silver which towered up beside a notice saying Save Our School.

‘Money trouble?’ he said with the sympathy of a parent who spent so much time answering appeals that he sometimes suspected he’d been edged into private education without noticing it.

‘Aye, but not just books and chalk. Worse than that. We need enough to pay a teacher, else they’ll close the place down and bus our kids nine miles to Byreford.’

‘That’s terrible,’ said Pascoe. ‘How’s the appeal doing?’

‘OK, but not OK enough to provide an income. That takes real money. Only way we can get that is to sell something and we’ve nowt to sell except our Green. So no school or no Green. It’s what they call a double whammy, isn’t it? But you’ve not come here to talk about schools, have you, sir? Not unless it’s a school for scandal!’

‘So what do you think I have come here to talk about? asked Pascoe.

‘At a guess I’d say … Constable Bendish!’ He peered into Pascoe’s face and let out his infectious laugh. ‘Nay sir, don’t look so glummered! There’s no trick. Soon as it got round that Terry Filmer were getting his knickers in a twist about Dirty Harry going missing, I said to my good lady, five quid to a farthing some smart detective from the city’ll stroll in here afore the day’s out and start making discreet inquiries. So fire away, Mr Pascoe.’

Pascoe sipped his beer, decided that a man who kept ale as good as this was entitled to a bit of smart-assery, and said, ‘It’s a fair cop. But no big deal. It’s just that we need to get hold of Bendish, but it’s his day off and no one seems to know where he’s got to. Probably some simple explanation …’

‘Like he’s trapped under a fallen woman,’ grinned Wapshare. ‘Lucky devil!’

Wondering if this echo of Dalziel’s theory sprang from local knowledge, Pascoe said, ‘Is that why you called him Dirty Harry just now?’

‘No. That just slipped out. A kind of nickname some folk use,’ said Wapshare, hesitating before going on, ‘I might as well tell you as you’ll not be long finding out, your Constable Bendish didn’t set out to make himself popular. For years we had old Chaz Barnwall, lovely man, and when he retired last back end, we gave him a party here that went on till milking time. Next night, dead on the stroke of eleven, the door opens and young Harold walks in. “Welcome to Enscombe,” says I. “You’ll have a drink against the cold?” And he never cracks his face but says, “No, I won’t. For two reasons. One is my warrant which doesn’t allow me to drink on duty. The other is your licence which doesn’t allow you to serve drink after eleven. Get supped up and shut up, landlord.” And he went outside and sat in his car in the car park, and the first lad who came out, he breathalysed.’

‘New broom,’ said Pascoe. ‘Making his mark.’

‘He did that right enough. As well as the breathalysing, he marked folk for road tax, tyres, lights, MOT, leaving mud on the road, letting animals stray – you name it, if it’s an offence there’s someone round here he’s done for it! Can you wonder some folk took to calling him Dirty Harry!’

‘So, a lot of people with grudges,’ said Pascoe. ‘You included?’

‘Nay, takes more than that to cause a grudge round here. As for me, I were grateful to have an excuse to get to bed at a decent time. This pubbing takes up far too much fishing time as it is.’

‘I notice you don’t exactly advertise,’ said Pascoe.

‘Them as I want in here knows where it is,’ said Wapshare. ‘Plus a few discerning travellers like yourself, of course. But if it’s the sign you mean, there’s a story behind that.’

A policeman in full possession of his trousers might have avoided the temptation and pressed on with official inquiries. But Pascoe felt himself in the grip of stronger forces than mere duty. He finished his beer and said, ‘A story, you say?’

‘Aye. You’d like to hear it? Let me get you the other half. And what about summat to eat? Only take a tick to fry up some chips and a slice or two of my black pudding. Nay? You’ll have a piece of cold pie, but? My good lady would never forgive me if I let you go without trying her game pie. That big enough for you? If not there’s plenty more. Now let me see. The sign. We’ve got to go back a few hundred years …’

Pascoe began to feel this might have been a very serious mistake. But as he sank his teeth into the wedge of pie and found it matched in quality the superb ale, he comforted himself with the argument that this came under the heading of gathering local colour.

‘Thing is,’ began Wapshare, ‘there never used to be a pub here in Enscombe at all. There was no way we were going to get one without the approval of the Guillemards, and the Guillemards reckoned that the last thing working men needed was a pub to get bolshie in.’

‘The Guillemards? They’re the family at Old Hall, right?’ said Pascoe, recalling the brief briefing he’d received from Terry Filmer about the last sighting of Harry Bendish.

‘That’s right. Used to be a big bunch of them and right powerful.’

‘And now?’

‘There’s the old Squire; his granddaughter, Girlie; his great-nephew, Guy Guillemard, who’s the heir; and little Franny Harding, the poor relation.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Every posh family needs a poor relation to remind ’em how well they’re doing. Only in recent years they’ve not been doing so well. But way back, when I’m talking about, they were rotten rich, and they made sure Enscombe stayed dry till well into the last century.’

‘What happened then?’

‘What happened? They were rude to Jake Halavant, that’s what happened!’

‘Halavant? Any relation to Justin Halavant at Scarletts?’

‘You know Justin? Then mebbe you’ll be surprised to learn that at the start of the last century the Halavants were nowt but a bunch of raggedyarsed peasants who could hardly pronounce their own name let alone spell it. The only one on ’em with enough brains to make a pudding was Jake. Good with his hands too – carving, painting, owt of that. And a real artist with his tongue, by all accounts. So it didn’t surprise anyone when he decided he’d had enough of living like a pig, and he upped and vanished. But everyone was knocked right back twenty years later when who should turn up in the village, looking, talking and spending money like a gent, but young Jake!’

‘How did people react?’ wondered Pascoe.

‘They were pleased, most on ’em. Enscombe folk like to see their own get on, so long as they don’t forget who they are. Jake was a real Fancy Dan, but he was generous with all his old friends, and with what remained of his family too after the smallpox and the gallows had taken their share. Then one day he took it into his head to stroll up to Old Hall and send in his card. A bit provocative, maybe, but all they had to do was send word out they weren’t at home.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Pascoe. ‘I take it they didn’t.’

‘No. They kept him waiting on the doorstep twenty minutes. Then the butler brought his card back with a message that if he cared to go round to the kitchen entry, the cook would be happy to extend the usual courtesy of the house to members of his family and dig out some scraps of food and old clothing for him. That was the biggest mistake they ever made.’