The Wood Beyond

Pascoe awoke. Had he been dreaming? He thought he had but his dream had gone. Or had it? Did dreams ever go? Our present was someone else’s future. We live in other men’s dreams …

He closed his eyes and drifted back to that other place.

… but Ill try to keep them dream children bright in my mind my love – you too – and tell little Ada about them – I still cant credit a bible heaven spite of old padre preaching at me every other day – so unless this lots going to teach us summat about the way we live here on earth wheres the point of it all eh?

Wheres the bloody point?

vi

Wanwood House had had pieces added to it in the modern Portaloo style, but basically it was a square solid Victorian building, its proportions not palatial but just far enough outside the human scale to put a peasant in his place. Thus did the nineteenth-century Yorkshireman underline the natural order of things.

His twentieth-century successors were more self-effacing it seemed.

‘Don’t advertise much,’ observed Dalziel looking at a discreet plaque which read ALBA PHARMACEUTICALS Research Division. ‘And there’s nowt on the gate.’

‘Might as well have put a neon sign on the roof for all the good it’s done them,’ said Longbottom ringing the bell.

The door was opened by a man in a dark green uniform with the name ‘PATTEN’ and a logo consisting of an orange sunburst and the letters ‘TecSec’ at his breast. He was leanly muscular with close-cropped hair and a long scar down the right cheek which, helped by a slightly askew nose, suggested that at some time the whole face had been removed and rather badly stitched back on. Dalziel viewed him with the distaste of a professional soldier for private armies. But at least the man sized them up at a glance and didn’t do anything silly like asking for identification.

He ushered them through the nineteenth into the twentieth century in the form of a modern reception area with a stainless-steel desk, pink fitted carpet and hessian-hung walls from which depended what might have been a selection of Prince Charles’s watercolours left standing in the rain.

One of three doors almost invisible in their hessian camouflage opened and a slim fair-haired man in his thirties and a dinner jacket, who reminded Dalziel of someone but he couldn’t quite say who, came towards them saying, ‘My dear chap, you’re soaked. No need, I’m sure. The fuzz must have plenty of pensioned-off sawbones all too keen to earn a bob doing basics.’

Assuming none of this solicitude was aimed at him, Dalziel said, ‘Aye, and we sometimes make do with a barber and a leech. You’ll be Batty, I daresay.’

‘Indeed,’ said the man regarding Dalziel with the air of one nostalgic for the days of tradesmen’s entrances. ‘And you …?’

‘Superintendent Andrew Dalziel,’ offered Longbottom.

‘Ah, the great white chief. Took your time getting here, superintendent.’

‘Got the call on my way back from a meeting in Nottingham,’ said Dalziel. He saw Longbottom smile his awareness that the meeting in question had taken place under floodlights on a rugby pitch.

‘Well, at least now you’re here, perhaps you can tell the bunch of incompetents who’ve preceded you to get their fingers out and start imposing some sort of order on this mess.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said the Fat Man mildly. ‘Talking of messes, sir, that’s a right one you’ve got out there. Looks like a health hazard to me.’

‘On the contrary, it’s a cordon sanitaire,’ said Batty. ‘After the damage those lunatics did last summer, it was quite clearly beyond the police force’s competency to protect us, so we took steps of our own to thwart these criminals.’

‘Criminals,’ echoed Dalziel as if the word were new to him. ‘You’ll be prosecuting then, sir?’

Batty said, ‘If it’s left up to me, we will! Normally we don’t care to give these lunatics the oxygen of publicity, but I suspect in this case, some exposure is already unavoidable?’

‘Aye,’ said Dalziel. ‘Having a body dug up in your back yard usually gives off a lot worse stink than oxygen.’

‘As I feared, though I suppose the exact nature of the publicity depends on how diplomatically things are handled. Troll, what can you tell us?’

Dalziel gave the pathologist a look which dared him to speculate an inch further than he’d done on the edge of the crater.

‘Early days, David, early days,’ murmured Longbottom.

‘And getting close to early hours,’ said Dalziel looking at his watch. ‘Mebbe I could see the witnesses now …?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Patten will take you along. Troll, let’s try to get your outside dry and your inside suitably wetted.’

With an apologetic mop and mow at Dalziel, the pathologist let himself be led away. Dalziel who kept his slates as carefully as any shopkeeper, chalked up another small debt against Batty’s name and followed the security man through one of the hessian doors and down a long corridor.

‘We’ve got them locked up down here,’ he said.

‘Locked up?’

‘They are trespassers, and once they got into the building, they ran amok. One of my men got hit in the stomach, I was threatened …’

‘Oh aye?’ said Dalziel, interested. Mebbe this could have some connection with Redcar after all. ‘Anyone get really hurt?’

‘More dignity than owt else,’ said Patten enigmatically. ‘That’s where they are.’

They’d turned left at a T-junction in the corridor. Ahead, Dalziel had already observed another TecSec man slouching against a door, his head wreathed in smoke. As soon as he became aware of their approach, he straightened his uniform and snapped to attention. There was no sign of a cigarette. Dalziel admired the legerdemain and bet on the big front pocket of the dark green trousers.

‘At ease, Jimmy,’ said Patten. ‘This is Superintendent Dalziel.’

‘I know,’ said the man. ‘How do you do, sir.’

Dalziel was used to being recognized but liked to know why.

‘Do I know you?’ he said.

‘Not exactly, sir. But I know you. I was at Dartleby nick till I took the pension. Uniformed. PC Howard, sir.’

‘Jumped ship, did you? All right, lad. You can piss off now.’

The man looked unhappily at Patten who said, ‘We do have our orders …’

‘That’s what Eichmann said, and they hanged him. So bugger off. And by the way, Howard …’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Your cock’s on fire.’

Leaving the ex-policeman beating at his pocket, Dalziel stepped into the room and halted dead in his tracks.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

Gently steaming against a big radiator were eight women, each mucky enough to have set Dalziel’s granny spinning in her grave.

That Wield, he swore to himself. He kept quiet on purpose. I’ll punch the bugger handsome!

One woman detached herself from the huddle and came towards him, saying, ‘Thank God, here’s t’organ grinder. Now mebbe we can get shut of the monkeys.’

She glared towards Patten as she spoke. He returned the glare indifferently. Dalziel on the other hand studied the woman with the intense interest of a gourmet served a new dish. Not that there was much to whet the appetite. She had less meat on her than a picked-over chicken wing and her cheeks were pale and hollow as wind-carved limestone.

Memory stirred. That business down the mine when Pascoe got hurt …

He said, ‘You’re one of them Women Against Pit Closures lot from Burrthorpe. Walker, isn’t it? Wendy Walker?’

She stepped by him and slammed the door in Patten’s face. Then she said, ‘That’s right. Got a fag?’

He pulled out a packet. He rarely smoked now, not because of health fears, still less because of social pressures, but because he’d found it was blunting his ability to distinguish single malts with a single sniff. But he still carried fags, finding them professionally useful both as ice-breakers and cage-rattlers.

‘You’re a long way off the coalface, luv,’ he said, flicking his old petrol lighter.

‘Coal?’

She drew the word into herself with a long breath that reduced the cigarette by an inch of ash.

‘What’s that?’ she said on the outgoing puff. ‘They shut Burrthorpe last year like they’ve shut most on t’others. Them bastards made a lot of promises they didn’t keep, but when they said they’d pay us back for the Strike, by God they kept that one!’

‘It’s still a long way from home.’

‘Home is where the hate is, and there’s nowt left to hate in Burrthorpe, just an empty hole in the ground where there used to be a community.’

‘I’m sorry to interrupt this reunion and the Channel 4 documentary, but you, whoever you are, how long are we to be restrained by these thugs in these disgusting conditions?’

The voice, as up-to-Oxford county as Walker’s was down-to-earth Yorkshire, belonged to a small sturdy woman, her short-cropped black hair accentuating the determined cast of her handsome features. This one too brought a memory popping up in Dalziel’s mind, hot as a piece of fresh toast, of a woman he’d known and liked – more than liked – down in Lincolnshire after Pascoe’s wedding … He hadn’t thought about her for years. What could have pressed that button? he wondered as he stared with undisguised pleasure at the way this woman’s wet sweater clung to her melopeponic breasts.

‘Nay, lass,’ he said. ‘No one’s restraining you, whoever you are. You can bugger off any time you like, once you’ve made your statement. You have been asked to make a statement, Miss er …?’

‘Marvell. Amanda Marvell. Yes, we’ve been asked but most of us are refusing till such time as we have proper representation.’

She glared accusingly, and in Dalziel’s eyes, most becomingly, at Wendy Walker who snapped, ‘Yeah, I’ve made my statement. In fact, when it comes down to it, I’m the only one who’s really got owt to state. Mebbe more than you’ll care to hear, Cap. All I want is to get out of here.’

‘You surprise me, Wendy,’ said Marvell, all cool control. ‘What happened to all the big talk about going for the jugular and taking no prisoners? First sign of trouble, and you’re all for breaking ranks.’

‘Yeah? Mebbe I should have been more choosy who I formed ranks with in the first place,’ snarled Walker.

‘Really? You mean we don’t match up to the standards of your mining chums? Well, I can see that. Once they encountered real opposition, they pretty soon crumbled too, didn’t they?’

There was a time when a provocation like this to a Burrthorpe lass would have started World War Three, and indeed a small red spot at the heart of those pallid cheeks seemed to indicate some incipient nuclear activity. But before she could explode, a round-faced blonde who looked even wetter and more miserable than the rest said, ‘Wendy’s right, Cap. This is serious stuff. It was bones we found out there, a body. Let’s just make our statements and go home. Please.’

Marvell’s et-tu-Brute look was even more devastating than her j’accuse glare, and Dalziel was experiencing a definite wringing of the withers when the door opened and George Headingley’s broad anxious face appeared.

‘Hello, sir. Heard you were here. Can we have a word?’

‘If we must,’ said Dalziel reluctantly, and with a last mnemonic look at Cap Marvell’s gently steaming bosom, he went out into the corridor.

‘All right, George,’ he said. ‘Fill me in.’

Headingley, a pink-faced middle-aged man with a sad moustache and a cream-tea paunch, said, ‘That lot in there belong to ANIMA, the animal rights group and they were—’

Dalziel said, ‘I don’t give a toss if they belong to the Dagenham Girl Pipers and they’ve come here to rehearse, they’re witnesses is all that matters. So what did they witness?’

‘Well, I’ve got one statement on tape so far. The others aren’t being very cooperative but this lass …’

‘Aye. Wendy Walker. First time in her life she’s been cooperative with the police, I bet. Let’s hear this tape then.’

Headingley led him to a small office where the recorder was set up. Dalziel listened intently then said, ‘This Cap, the one with the chest …’

‘Marvell. Captain Marvell, get it? She’s the boss, except that she and Walker don’t see eye to eye.’

‘I noticed. She sounds a bit of a hard case.’

‘Yes, sir. Patten, that’s the TecSec chief, reckons she had serious thoughts about taking a swing at him.’

‘Could pack quite a punch with that weight behind it,’ said Dalziel, smiling reminiscently.

‘It were a set of wire cutters she was swinging. We’ve got them here, sir. Give you a real headache if these connected.’

Dalziel looked at the heavy implement and said, ‘Bag it and have it checked for blood.’

‘But no one got hurt,’ protested Headingley.

‘Not here they didn’t.’

‘You don’t mean you think maybe Redcar … but they’re women, sir!’

‘World’s changing, George,’ said Dalziel. ‘So what else have you been doing, apart from collecting one statement?’

‘Well, I had a talk with Dr Batty when I got here …’

‘He was here when you arrived?’

‘Yes, sir. Expect that Patten rang him first. Then I got things organized outside, and I thought I’d better see if we could rustle up some sort of refreshment for the ladies. I asked that fellow Howard – he used to be one of ours – but he said he couldn’t leave the door, so I went to look for myself. Found the staff canteen, got a tea urn brewing …’

‘You must be the highest paid tea boy since Geoffrey Howe left the cabinet,’ said Dalziel. Still, at least old George knew his limitations. Why get wet and in the way outside when you had someone like Wieldy, who could organize a piss-up on a Welsh Sunday, fifty miles from the nearest brewery.

‘So what now, sir?’ said Headingley. ‘Statements?’

Dalziel thought then said, ‘Walker’s the only one with owt to state and we’ve got hers. Give them all their cup of tea, take details, name, address, the usual, keep it all low key and chatty, but see if you can get any of them to let on they’ve been here before.’

Headingley was looking puzzled and the Fat Man said with didactic clarity, ‘Tie ’em in with last summer’s raid here and we’re well on the way to tying ’em in with Redcar.’

‘Oh yes. I see. You really think then—’

‘Not paid to think, George. I employ someone to think for me, and the bugger’s at a funeral so we’ll have to get by on our lonesome. Patten!’

Closed doors and thick walls were no sound barrier and a moment later the TecSec man appeared.

Dalziel said, ‘The ladies are going along to the staff canteen for refreshments then they’ll be going home. I presume you’ve got all your animals locked away?’

‘Don’t worry. They won’t get anywhere near the labs,’ said Patten confidently.

‘Nay, lad, it’s your men I’m talking about. No more strong-arm stuff, you with me?’

‘Because they’re female, you mean? Listen, that chunky cow, the one they call Cap, she nearly took my head off with a bloody great pair of wire cutters.’

‘Is that right? Your head looks OK to me,’ said Dalziel examining it critically.

‘No thanks to her,’ said Patten. ‘All I’m saying is, if my men get assaulted …’

‘They should count their blessings,’ said Dalziel. ‘There’s a place in Harrogate where it costs good money to get beaten up by a handsome young woman. Like the address? All right, George? Everything under control?’

‘Yes, sir. What about you, sir?’ said George Headingley. ‘Where are you going to be?’

‘Me?’ said Dalziel smacking his lips in anticipation. ‘I’m going to be wherever Dr Batty keeps his single methanol.’

vii

As Pascoe drove north the following morning, the weather got worse but his mood got better. By the time he got within tuning distance of Radio Mid-Yorkshire, his car was being machine-gunned by horizontal hail, but the familiar mix of dated pops and parish pump gossip sounded in his ears like the first cuckoo of spring.

I must be turning into a Yorkshireman, he thought as he sang along with Boney M.

A newscast followed, a mixture of local and national. One item caught his attention.

‘Police have confirmed the discovery last night of human remains in the grounds of Wanwood House, research headquarters of ALBA Pharmaceuticals. Tests to ascertain the cause of death are not yet complete and the police spokesman was unwilling to comment on reports that the discovery was made by a group of animal rights protesters.’

It sounded to Pascoe’s experienced ear that Andy Dalziel was sitting tight on this one, and with one of those mighty buttocks in your face, even the voice of nation speaking unto nation got a bit muffled.

It also confirmed him in his half-formed resolution that it was worth diverting to dispose of Ada’s ashes. Dalziel believed that time off on any pretext meant you owed him a week of twenty-five-hour days. With a possible murder on his hands, he’d probably raise that to thirty, particularly as Pascoe had been in sole charge of the investigation into the ALBA raid last summer. It had only merited a DCI’s involvement because of the possible connection with the killing at FG’s labs up at Redcar. There’s always a certain pleasure in solving another mob’s case, but Dalziel who was a good delegator had neither interfered nor complained when Pascoe had reported that the investigation was going nowhere. On the other hand Pascoe did not doubt he would be held personally responsible for not having noticed the presence of human remains out at Wanwood even if they turned out to have been buried six feet under!

So, dispose of Ada, else the urn could end up sitting on his mantelpiece for some time, and his guess was that even someone as conscientiously house-humble as Ellie would draw the line at such an hydriotaphic ornament.

Leeds was only a little out of his way. With luck he could be in and out in half an hour.

This pious hope died in a one-way system as unforgiving as a posting to the Western Front. Even when he arrived where he wanted to be, where he wanted to be didn’t seem to be there any more. At least the hail had stopped and the blustery wind was tearing holes in the cloud big enough for the occasional ray of sun to penetrate.

He pulled into the car park of a pile-’em-high-sell-’em-cheap supermarket and addressed an apparently shell-shocked old man in charge of a convoy of errant trolleys.

‘Is this Kirkton Road?’

‘Aye,’ said the man.

‘I’m looking for the West Yorkshire Fusiliers’ barracks.’

‘You’ve missed it,’ said the man.

‘Oh God. You mean it’s back along there,’ said Pascoe unhappily regarding the one-way street he had just with such pain negotiated.

‘Nay, you’ve missed it by more ’n ten years. Wyfies amalgamated wi’ South Yorks Rifles way back. Shifted to their barracks in Sheffield. Call themselves the Yorkshire Fusiliers now. War Office sold this site for development.’

‘Bugger,’ said Pascoe.

Ada’s wishes were precise if curious. My ashes should be taken by the executor of my will and scattered around the Headquarters of the West Yorkshire Fusiliers in Kirkton Road, Leeds.

Knowing her feelings about the army, Pascoe did not doubt that her motive was derisory. She would probably have liked to leave instructions that the urn was to be hurled through a window but knew she would need to moderate her gesture if she hoped to have it carried out. But moderation must surely stop a long way short of being scattered in a car park!

‘Museum’s still here but,’ said the man, happy to extend this interruption of his tedious task.

‘Where?’ said Pascoe hopefully.

‘Yon place.’

The man pointed to a tall narrow granite building standing at the far end of the car park, glaring with military scorn at the Scandinavian ski-lodge frivolity of the supermarket.

‘Thanks,’ said Pascoe.

He drove towards the museum and parked before it. Close up the building looked even more as if it had been bulled, boxed and blanco’d ready for inspection. Pascoe collected the urn from the boot, scuffed his feet on the tarmac to make sure he wasn’t tracking any dirt, and went up the steps.

The lintel bore a mahogany board on which was painted a badge consisting of a white rose under a fleur-de-lis, with beneath it WEST YORKSHIRE FUSILIERS – Regimental Museum. The paint was fresh and bright, the brass door knob gleamed like a sergeant major’s eye, and even the letter box had a military sharpness which probably terrified any pacifist postmen.

Pascoe turned the knob, checked to be sure he hadn’t left fingerprints, and entered.

He found himself in a large high-ceilinged room, lined with display cabinets and hung with tattered flags. It was brightly lit and impeccably clean, but that didn’t stop the air from being musty with the smell of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago.

Pascoe moved swiftly through a series of smaller rooms without finding any survivors. He even tried calling aloud but there was no response.

Sod it! he thought. The absence of witnesses should be making things a lot easier. All he had to do was scatter and scarper! But somehow, even without a witness, the thought of sullying these immaculate surfaces with powdered Ada was hard for an obsessively tidy man. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust … but there had to be some old dust for the new dust to go to!

He tried a pinch in the darkest corner he could find but it stood out like a smear of coke on a nun’s moustache. Finally he settled on a fireplace. Even this looked to have been untroubled by coal for a hundred years, and the Victorian fire irons which flanked it stood as neat and shiny as weapons in an armoury. But it must have known ash in its time. And what after all was this philopolemic building but a mausoleum in need of a body?

His conscience thus quietened, Pascoe unscrewed the top of the urn, took out a handful of dust, examined it for fear, found it, and with an atavistic prayer, threw it into the grate.

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ demanded an outraged voice.

He turned his head and looked up at a tall grey-haired man wearing an indignant expression, a piratical eye patch and a hairy tweed jacket with the right sleeve pinned emptily across the breast.

Time, thought Pascoe, for the disarming smile, particularly as the man’s present hand was pointing what looked like a flintlock pistol very steadily at his head.

‘You may find this a trifle hard to believe,’ said Pascoe. ‘But I do hope you are going to try.’

viii

It was clear that Troll Longbottom’s forecast was right. These bones were going to be a long time coming.

The drenching dark which had finally made them abandon the hunt the previous night had been replaced by fitful sunlight, but visibility did little to make the job more attractive.