Under World Page 6

  He left like a mighty rushing wind.

  Behind him Pascoe sat down and mused a little space. There were tiny clouds no bigger than a man’s hand on several of his horizons. They might of course come to nothing or even break in blessings on his head. But when Dalziel got nervous, his colleagues did well to twitch.

  And when Ellie started talking about going down mines, it was perhaps time to start looking beneath the surface himself.

  First, though, he owed Alex Wishart a phone call.

  The Scot listened in silence, then said, ‘Well, I don’t see how he can harm us by anything he says. He would hardly want to, would he? It was his triumph and you don’t rain on your own parade. You’re worried in case he takes a little side-swipe at Fat Andy, is that it? Mind you, from what I’ve heard, he’s got it coming to him. Watmough’s no genius, but he always struck me as a decent kind of man and an efficient enough cop.’

  ‘Dalziel took against him. I think Watmough dropped him in the mire way back when they were both sprogs.’

  ‘Doesn’t just look like an elephant, eh? Well, I wasn’t on the Pickford case myself, but perhaps I’ll have a wee glance through the records just in case. Thanks for tipping me the wink, Peter. I’ll be in touch.’

  He kept his word quicker than Pascoe expected. Early the same afternoon the phone rang.

  ‘Peter, I’ve been looking at the Pickford files. You’ve probably worked out yourself that your own involvement is only through the Tweddle child.’

  Annie Tweddle, aged seven, had been found strangled and assaulted in a shallow grave in a wood about ten miles from the Mid-Yorks village in which she lived. There were no leads, and the case had been shelved for eighteen months when Mary Brook, eight, had been abducted from a park in Wakefield in South Yorkshire and later found buried on the Pennine moors. She too had been strangled after being sexually assaulted. A few months later, little Joan Miles of Barnsley had gone missing and the worst was feared. But now there was a common factor. Among the reams of statements taken in both cases there were references to a blue car, probably a Cortina, being seen in the vicinity. All similar cases over the past few years were reactivated. South, under Watmough, began to go through the computer print-outs of all registered owners of blue Cortinas in the area.

  Then Tracey Pedley, the Burrthorpe child, had vanished too. Once more a blue car figured in the witness statements. And a week later a blue Cortina was found in a country lane near Doncaster with a length of washing-machine hose running from the exhaust into the rear window.

  Inside was the body of Donald Pickford and a long incoherent letter in which he confessed by name to several killings and by implication to several more. Clinching evidence that this was not just some compulsive confessor driven by his madness to the ultimate authentication came in a set of detailed directions which led to the grave of Joan Miles in a marshy nature reserve only a mile away. Annie Tweddle was mentioned by name. Tracey Pedley wasn’t. But once it was established that Pickford was likely to have been in the area at the time she vanished, she was put down with a few others as a probable victim.

  ‘We did have to establish Pickford’s alibi, or rather the lack of it, in the Pedley case, I think.’

  ‘Yes, but that was hardly important,’ said Wishart reprovingly. ‘I was just trying to sort out where, if anywhere, you might be vulnerable to a bit of criticism.’

  ‘I suppose Watmough could make a few snide remarks about us having got nowhere with the Tweddle investigation,’ said Pascoe dubiously. ‘But in fairness to the man, he never made any such cracks when he was here, and God knows, he was provoked enough!’

  ‘So, no need to lose any beauty sleep, eh? Or ugly sleep in Andy’s case. Before you ring off, Peter, there was one other thing. Insignificant, I’m sure, but it might interest you. I gave my old mate, Sergeant Swift, a ring. He was at Burrthorpe all through the Pedley case and through the Strike too, so what he doesn’t know about the place isn’t worth knowing. It was Swift who had the doubtful pleasure of arresting that lad, Farr, you were asking about. Now, when I told him about the Challenger printing Mr Watmough’s memoirs, he told me that our friend Monty Boyle hadn’t been put off by his encounter with that window. He’d been back a couple of times, buying drinks and asking questions, though he’s given a wide berth to the Farr boy!’

  ‘Asking questions about the Pedley girl, you mean? Well, that figures. Incidentally, was there any special reason why he should have approached Farr or was it pure accident?’

  ‘He claimed it was just an accident at the time, but now Swift knows what he’s up to, he reckons different.’

  ‘But Farr can’t know anything about the girl’s disappearance or the Pickford case,’ said Pascoe. ‘You said he was away at sea till the Christmas before the Strike and the Pickford business blew up that September, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wishart. ‘He was away, but his father wasn’t. Billy Farr was the last person to see, or admit seeing, Tracey alive. In fact, he was in the frame for a bit. He was an old friend of the Pedleys, it seems, and had taken a real shine to the little girl. He often used to take her off for walks, him, her, and his dog. They’d gone brambling that day up in … let’s see, here it is … Gratterley Wood, that runs along a ridge to the south of the village and there’s a track runs up to it behind the Miners’ Welfare Club where Tracey’s father was – still is – steward. Mrs Pedley expected them back about five for the little girl’s tea. But, according to Farr, Billy Farr that is, they were back within half an hour, about four o’clock. He said he wasn’t feeling too well, and that’s why instead of taking the girlie in as he usually did, he left her in the lane at the back of the club, just a few yards from the kitchen door. Trouble was, no one else saw her and there was no sighting of Billy Farr himself till he got home just before six, by which time the Pedleys were getting a bit agitated. Farr said he’d just been walking around by himself. Evidently he was like a man demented when he heard the girlie was missing, though demented with what wasn’t clear to a lot of people.’

  ‘Guilt, you mean?’

  ‘There’s nowhere like a mining village for gossip,’ said Wishart. ‘Naturally there was a big search for the girl. They found her bramble pail in the woods on a path running down to the road about a quarter-mile outside the village. There were a couple of sightings of a blue car parked off the road, but one of them was by Billy Farr’s best friend, so that didn’t carry all that much weight. Watmough certainly looked long and hard at Farr for a couple of days, then Pickford topped himself, and it was roses, roses, all the way for Mr Watmough and his modern investigative techniques which, we were assured, had pressurized Pickford into his suicide.’

  ‘So it was merely Pickford’s death that took the spotlight off Farr?’

  ‘To be fair, I don’t think so,’ said Wishart. ‘Watmough seems to have lost interest in him before Pickford killed himself. At least that’s how I read the file.’

  ‘And was there any doubt locally?’

  ‘It seems so, though probably not a lot. Billy Farr was well thought of, a quiet fellow and a bit of a loner, especially since his accident which left him too lame to work underground, but much respected. Most people were happy to accept that Pickford was responsible. It had all the marks of one of his killings – except that they never found the body. But two child killers in the same neck of the woods on the same day was unlikely, wouldn’t you say? And Watmough wasn’t averse to clearing up as many cases as he could in one triumphant swoop.’

  ‘And the few who didn’t accept this?’

  ‘Swift tells me that before Pickford died they got the usual rash of anonymous calls and notes, pointing in every possible direction from the vicar to the NUM. Afterwards there was only one, a note, printed in block capitals. It said, YOU GOT THE WRONG MAN FOR TRACEY. DON’T WORRY. WE WON’T.’

  ‘And how did Swift interpret this?’

  ‘Sergeants don’t interpret, they file, have you forgotten? But he recalled it on
Boxing Day three months later when Billy Farr went missing and they found him at the foot of a sealed-off shaft in the old workings along the same ridge that Gratterley Wood stands on. Inquest brought in a verdict of accident. His wife said he’d gone out for a walk with his Jack Russell. There was no sign of the dog. Theory was that it had got into the old workings somehow and when Farr realized it was lost, he’d started looking down the old shaft, the cover was rotten, it broke, he slipped, and bingo! A day or two later there was another note arrived at the station. It said, CASE CLOSED.’

  ‘It’s a sick world,’ said Pascoe. ‘And this is why young Farr came back to Burrthorpe?’

  ‘That’s it. And he’s been a bloody nuisance ever since.’

  ‘To the police?’

  ‘To every bugger as far as I can make out. Perhaps not the kind of company an ambitious young policeman’s wife ought to be keeping.’

  ‘Thanks for the “young”, Alex,’ said Pascoe. ‘As for the rest, get knotted. But let’s keep in touch over this one, shall we?’

  ‘Take care, Peter,’ said Alex Wishart.

  Pascoe replaced the phone. The clouds on his horizons were still just the size of a man’s hand. Only now the man seemed to have hands the size of Andy Dalziel’s.

  Chapter 9

  Colin Farr awoke with a splitting head. The alarm clock by his narrow bed told him it was past eleven. He was on ‘afters’, the 1.0 P.M to 8.0 P.M shift. Last night he had started drinking as soon as he finished. There’d been some bother at the Club and he’d left. He couldn’t remember much after that but there was the aftertaste of greasy chips in his mouth which suggested he hadn’t come home to eat the supper his mother would have cooked for him.

  Groaning, he rose, washed, dressed, and went downstairs to face the music.

  His apologetic mood evaporated when he went into the kitchen and saw Arthur Downey there, sitting at the table drinking a mug of tea.

  ‘’Morning, Col,’ the deputy said, smiling rather uncertainly.

  ‘It’s you,’ said Farr. ‘Run out of tea, your sister?’

  ‘Colin, don’t be rude. After last night, you should be ashamed to show your face in this kitchen. I had to throw his supper out, Arthur.’

  His mother was standing by the stove from which came a smell of rich meat pastry. May Farr was in her forties, a tall, good-looking woman whose face and body could have done with putting on a bit more weight, and the rather becoming dark shadows around her eyes had not been put there with a brush.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Farr sitting down.

  Downey seemed ready to accept that the apology included him.

  ‘I just brought your mam some vegetables, Col,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to go to sea to get scurvy, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you? Mam, I hope you’re not making that pie for me. I couldn’t face owt more than a cup of tea and mebbe a sandwich.’

  ‘You missed your supper last night and I’ll not have you going to work on an empty stomach.’

  ‘They don’t need their meals regular like us old ones, May,’ said Downey. ‘I bet you often got dragged out of your bunk in the middle of the night when you were at sea, Col, and had to work all day with next to nowt.’

  ‘It weren’t the bloody Cutty Sark I were on!’ exclaimed Farr. ‘All right, Mam, I’ll have some, but not too much, mind.’

  ‘Don’t you miss it, the sea?’ said Downey. ‘I sometimes wish I’d given it a try when I were younger.’

  ‘You’re not old now, Arthur,’ said May Farr, bringing a flush of pleasure to the lanky man’s cheeks.

  ‘No, you ought to sign on as a cabin boy,’ said Farr. ‘Or better still, stow away.’

  Downey laughed and finished his tea.

  ‘I’d best be off,’ he said. ‘See you down the hole, Col. Thanks for the tea, May.’

  After the door closed behind him, May Farr said, ‘Right, my lad, before we go any further, I’ll not have you being rude to Arthur Downey or anyone else I care to invite into my house. Understood?’

  ‘The bugger’s always sniffing round here …’ protested her son.

  ‘You listen, Arthur were a good mate of your dad’s and he’s been good to me since … it happened. He’ll always be welcome in this house as long as I’m here, understand? Besides, he grows best veg in Burrthorpe on that allotment of his.’

  She offered this lightening of tone by way of truce which Colin Farr was happy to accept.

  ‘Aye, it’s not many lasses round here who get bouquets of broccoli,’ he said slyly. ‘You best be careful else you’ll have folk talking.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said indignantly as she took the pie from the oven. ‘Has someone been saying something?’

  Her son smiled sweetly.

  ‘There’s not many round here would dare say owt like that to me,’ he said with an easy confidence she found more dismaying than comforting.

  She heaped the pie on to a plate which she set before him. As he ate, he asked casually, ‘Do you think you will get married again, Mam?’

  ‘How should I know? I’ve no one in mind, if that’s what you mean. But this is wrong way round. It’s me as should be asking you when you’re going to get wed and settle down.’

  ‘Me?’ he laughed. ‘Who would I marry when all the best ones are gone?’

  ‘You’re not still moping after Stella, are you?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘Me run after a married woman? What a thing to say about your own son!’ he mocked. ‘All I meant was, you’re the best, Mam, and they don’t make ’em like you any more.’

  She sat down and regarded him seriously, refusing to respond to his sentimentality.

  ‘What does keep you here then, Col, if you’ve no plans for settling? I know you hate it, always did. And don’t say it’s for my sake. I’m all right now. I’ve got friends, real friends …’

  ‘You mean Red Wendy and her mates in the Women’s Support Group?’ he laughed. ‘With friends like yon, you need a man around the place to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘You see, there you go again, Col, trying to put it down to me. Don’t do that. Don’t keep things hid deep inside you like he did. Yes, Wendy and the others are my friends. It may have ruined the Union, but there’s me and a lot like me who can say thank God for the Strike. It showed me a road I’d not have found on my own. And you, Col; I thought when you started getting involved that mebbe you’d found a road too …’

  ‘Me? Oh, I liked the action and the fighting well enough, but the only road I hope to find in Burrthorpe is the road out of it.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go?’ she asked passionately. ‘And don’t pretend to be hurt, I know all your little acts, remember? You know what I’m saying. I wept the first time you went, after your dad hurt his leg. And I’ll weep if you go again. But I were glad then too, glad that now neither of my men was going to be killed down that hole … Well, I were wrong about one of them, though God knows how …’

  ‘There’s more than God knows,’ interrupted her son fiercely.

  ‘Is that it, Col? Listen, son, he’s dead, he’s gone, does it matter how or why? There’s nothing any of us can do will bring him back, so why waste your life boozing and fighting and causing trouble in the Club, and wandering round them old workings looking for God knows what …’

  ‘Who’s been gabbing? That old woman Downey, is it?’ Farr interrupted once more. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s like living in a fish tank, this place! What do you have to do to get a bit of privacy?’

  ‘Try living quiet, not raising hell wherever you go,’ suggested his mother.

  Colin Farr pushed his plate away and stood up.

  ‘No one ever lived quieter than my dad and they didn’t let him alone, did they?’

  ‘Col, don’t talk like that. What do you mean? What are you trying to do? Col, please, you’ve no idea how it upsets me to see you this way.’

  There were tears on her cheeks. He put his arms round her shoulders and kissed them away. It was a gestur
e neither awkward nor theatrical. He had a natural grace in his movements which had made him stand out even as a child. He drew back and smiled at her, the smile which had so often won forgiveness instead of punishment, and complicity instead of accusation. Billy had sometimes said she was spoiling him but she knew how deep her husband’s love went too.

  ‘I’ll go soon, Mam,’ he promised. ‘Once I’m sure you’re OK and … once I’m sure. Now I’d best be off to work.’

  She watched him walk away down Clay Street, marvelling as always that from Billy Farr’s seed and her womb a creature of such grace and beauty could have sprung. At the corner he turned and smiled and waved his snap tin. She waved back, then went inside and began to clear the dishes.

  Colin Farr walked on, no longer smiling. The long brick terraces opening directly on to the pavement frowned back at him. They had been built a hundred years ago when Burrthorpe had suffered its first expansion from rustic hamlet to mining village. Perhaps they had looked more cheerful then. He doubted it. There had been other expansions since, most affluently in the late ’sixties and early ’seventies. The low hills to the east, the end furthest from the pit, were chequered with owner-occupied boxes. There were modern shops in the High Street (one with a new plate-glass window) plus a bank and two building societies. The Strike had hit hard, but the natives of Burrthorpe were used to taking and giving hard blows, and they would bring the good days back, if the pit survived.

  Here was the irony which Farr felt every day of his life. It was like being fed by a tyrant you hated, yet if you slew him, you would starve.

  He was in the High Street now, heading west towards the Welfare. The village was built in a blank valley running east to west. It was along the densely wooded southern ridge that the sweet infection of coal had first been detected. Here due to some geological fault the veins were broken and often near the surface, and possibly the uprooting of some ancient tree in a storm revealed the symptoms. There were records at the end of the eighteenth century of frequent disputes between the Burr estate which owned most of the land hereabouts and the locals who, delighted at having such a ready supply of fuel on their doorstep, ran drifts into the scrubby common land which abutted Lord Burr’s woods, and didn’t much care if they trespassed underground. At first His Lordship’s care was all for his trees, the game they harboured and the income they promised. But a new lord, the first one born in the nineteenth century, caught on that industrial progress simply meant a new system of serfdom to replace the old which had run its course. He initiated a series of fairly haphazard explorations of the south ridge, ravaging much fine woodland principally on the village side, out of sight of his country house. At last an engineer was employed who knew what he was doing. He looked at the mish-mash of workings on the south ridge, shuddered, turned to the north and after several months of exploration recommended that here was where the next generation of Burrs would earn the necessities of life such as London Seasons, Grand Tours, four shirts a day, and the most up-to-date treatment of their social diseases.