The Wood Beyond

He said, ‘I’ll make a note of that,’ not bothering to muffle the sarcasm.

Dalziel snorted in exasperation and said, ‘All right, so what’s going off? Toad-licking season started early in Brigadoon, has it?’

This was Dalziel’s name for Enscombe.

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Jokes last night, and back there you were coming over like the press agent for disadvantaged chimps. So what’s it all mean?’

‘I don’t much like what they’re doing there,’ admitted Wield. ‘Sorry. I know I should keep my neb out.’

‘Bloody right you should. Public needs protecting from a neb like yours. Any road, what was it you came in to tell me? You realize I’ve come out of there as thirsty as I went in, so it had better be important.’

‘Not really, sir. Control came through on the radio. Said that woman in charge of the ANIMA lot, what’s her name? Marbles …? Movables …?’

Wield forgetting a name was as likely as the Godfather forgetting a grudge, but Dalziel found himself saying, ‘Marvell,’ before he could stop himself.

‘That’s right. Seems she called in at the station, wanted to see you to make a statement. Could be you’re right, sir, and she’s come to confess.’

‘Oh aye? Well, she had her chance to confess last night,’ said Dalziel. ‘Let her wait. She can sit around till she gets piles.’

‘Oh she’s not sitting around, sir. When she found you weren’t there, she took off. Said for you to call at her flat, it ’ud be more comfortable there anyway. Says not to worry about turning up at lunch time as she can easily rustle up a snack. You want the address, sir?’

All this was said absolutely deadpan, and pans didn’t come any deader than Wield’s. But Dalziel was not fooled.

‘No, I don’t want the bloody address,’ he snarled. ‘And just because you look like the man in the iron mask, don’t imagine I can’t see you’re smirking!’

He strode away. And Wield, his smirk now externalized, watched him go, thinking, and just because you look like a rhino in retreat, don’t imagine I can’t see you’re horny!

ix (#ulink_f0c3c3c3-57f8-5fa8-a03d-6526ea0e7a38)

In a long narrow office as chaotic as the museum was neat, Pascoe drank strong tea with Major Hilary Studholme.

The major had listened to Pascoe’s story with an attention as undiverted as his pistol. With a mental moue of apology in the direction of Ada, Pascoe had felt it better in the circumstances not to explicate her probable motives, and though stopping well short of any direct assertion of regimental pride, it was as nothing to the distance he stayed from even a hint of paranoiac loathing.

The production of his police ID finally convinced the major he was neither a dangerous lunatic nor a bomb-planting terrorist.

As Pascoe sipped his tea, the major riffled through a couple of leather-bound volumes with a dexterity remarkable in a man with only a left hand.

‘Odd,’ he said. ‘Pascoe rings a definite bell, but there’s no record of an NCO of that name buying it at Ypres in 1917. Could have lost his stripe, of course. There’s a Private Stephen Pascoe got wounded … could that be a connection, do you think?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Pascoe. ‘Point is, it won’t be Pascoe, will it?’

The single eye regarded him blankly, then the upper lip spasmed in a silly-ass grimace which laid the hairs of his moustache horizontal and he said, ‘Sorry. Mind seeping out through my eye socket. Of course Pascoe would be your grandmother’s married name. So, what was her maiden name?’

Pascoe thought then said, ‘Clark, I think.’

Studholme grimaced. ‘Got a hatful of Clarks in here,’ he said, patting the leather-bound books. ‘With an “e” or without? Got an initial?’

‘Sorry,’ said Pascoe. ‘All I know about him is there’s a photo with him showing off a lance corporal’s stripe with the date 1914, then a scrawl, presumably my great-grandmother’s, saying Killed Wipers 1917. That puzzles me a bit. I thought the big battle at Ypres was earlier in the war.’

‘Oh yes? If that’s the limit of an educated man’s knowledge, Mr Pascoe, just imagine the ignorance of most of your fellow cits!’

Pascoe found himself ready to bridle. Studholme with his bristly moustache, clipped accent and sturdy tweeds, looked a prototypical member of the British officer class which liberal tradition characterized as snobbish, philistine, and intellectually challenged, not at all the kind of person a young(ish) Guardian-reading graduate, who could get Radio 3 and sometimes did, ought to let himself be lectured by.

On the other hand as a public servant in a police force threatened with radical restructuring, it would be impolitic as well as impolite to get up the nose of a war hero.

‘I know what most educated people know about the Great War, major,’ he said carefully. ‘That even by strict military standards, it was an exercise in futility unprecedented and unsurpassed.’

Shit, that had come out a bit stronger than intended.

‘Bravo,’ said Studholme surprisingly. ‘That’s a start. Let me fill in a bit of detail. The first battle of Ypres took place in October and November 1914. British losses about fifty thousand, including the greater part of the prewar regular army. First Ypres marked the end of anything that could be called open warfare. During the winter both sides concentrated on fortifying their defences and after that it was trench warfare from the North Sea to the Swiss border till 1918.’

‘So why was Ypres so important?’

‘It was the centre of a salient, a considerable bulge in the line. A breakthrough there would have enabled the Allies to roll up the Boche in both directions. Disadvantage of course was that a salient means the enemy can lob shells at you from three sides. Service in the Salient was not something our lads looked forward to even before Passchendaele. My father managed to be in both Ypres Two and Ypres Three. He used to say there was always a special feel about the Salient even at relatively quiet times. Its landscape was more depressing, the stink of its mud more nauseating, its skies more lowering. You felt as you left Ypres by the Menin Gate that it should have borne a sign reading “All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here”.’

‘Sounds like the entrance to CID on a Monday morning,’ said Pascoe with a forced lightness.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Studholme regarding him gravely. ‘My father said that service there changed human nature. You reverted to a kind of subhumanity, the missing link between the apes and Homo sapiens. He called it Homo Saliens, Salient Man. I don’t think he was joking.’

Pascoe drank his tea. He felt the need for warmth. It was very quiet in here. The supermarket car park seemed a thousand miles away.

He said, ‘So what happened at Ypres Two?’

‘Spring of ’15. Jerry made a determined effort to get things straight. Used chlorine gas for the first time. Gained a bit of ground but the Salient remained. Our casualties about sixty thousand including one general, Horace Smith-Dorrien.’

‘That must have really got them worried back home,’ said Pascoe, drifting despite himself towards a sneer. ‘I mean, what’s a few thousand men here or there, but a dead general …’

‘Not dead,’ said Studholme. ‘Stellenbosched. That is, sacked. Terrible offence. Competence.’

‘Sorry?’ said Pascoe, thinking he’d misheard.

‘He was actually in the thick of things and made judgments based on realities. Also he was foolish enough to suggest to French, the C-in-C, that they were losing too many men in pointless frontal attacks. There aren’t many other recorded expressions of doubt by top brass, I tell you.’

‘No wonder, if you got sacked for it.’

‘Indeed. Now, jump forward two years to 1917. Third Ypres, your great-grandfather’s battle. You probably know it as Passchendaele.’

‘Good God, yes. The mud.’

‘That’s right. Everyone remembers the mud. One of man’s worst nightmares, a slow drowning in glutinous filth. Practically a metaphor for the whole conduct of the war.’

Pascoe was now regarding Studholme with wide-eyed interest.

‘You don’t sound like a member of Douglas Haig’s fan club, major.’

Studholme gave a snort like a rifle shot.