The Wood Beyond

He crossed his legs the other way and waited for the answer.

‘Oddly enough,’ she said, ‘it was through a colleague of yours in a manner of speaking, man and wife being one flesh. A mutual acquaintance introduced us. I expect you know her well. Mrs Ellie Pascoe.’

‘You’re not saying she’s one of your lot?’ he groaned.

‘Not really. Sympathetic but too concerned with suffering humanity to have much energy left for the animal kingdom, so no need to be embarrassed.’

Another weakness, imagining embarrassment was one of his.

‘Still, a bit of a handful, isn’t she? Wendy, I mean.’

‘She’s certainly got her own ideas, and I’m not sure she’ll stay with us forever. Too much energy and resentment, not perhaps enough self-knowledge. Like me, her marriage broke up, but she thinks it was because her husband was a scab, while the truth I suspect is that she so enjoyed the role she found in the Strike that there was no way she was ever going to go back to the life servitude of being a pitman’s wife. Pitman. I had my own Pitt man too, so I can sympathize. But the difference is, I changed sides, while she lost; not only a battle but a whole bloody war. So perhaps it was no wonder she was looking for a new role where the issues were clear cut, even if it meant she has to work for a while at least alongside an old class enemy like me.’

She laughed and Dalziel grinned too. Weakness three. Believing she’d got Wendy Walker and her kind sussed. Couple of weeks on the dole could root out the centuries-deep deference of the British worker, but it took major surgery to eradicate the built-in smugness of the middle class.

He sucked the last drops out of the last can. Every plate was empty. Time for business.

He said, ‘All right, missus …’

‘Cap,’ she urged.

‘All right, Cap. So why did you want to see me?’

‘To make a statement, of course. You were very keen for us to make statements last night.’

‘Was I? Funny how you take these fancies, then go off them. Like being pregnant they tell me.’

‘So you don’t want a statement?’ she said, disconcerted.

‘Depends what you’ve got to state.’

‘I thought we could negotiate,’ she said, recovering. ‘I mean, you’ve got a body in the grounds of Wanwood House. I bet you’ve got some ideas about that already. So if it would help for me to say I saw that plonker Batty start like a guilty thing surprised when he got the news, just say the word. Or that TecSec Nazi, Patten, if it’s him you fancy and you need an excuse to search his pad, maybe I could help there.’

Dalziel scratched his bubaline neck and said, ‘What makes you think I’d take kindly to the idea of fitting someone up?’

‘Oh, I know you wouldn’t do it maliciously,’ she reassured him, her candid brown eyes gazing deep into his. ‘Only if you were sure it was in the best interests of justice. I mean, when I contacted the local media this morning to ask why ANIMA was hardly getting a mention, and got told that in matters sub judice it was editorial policy to afford the police full cooperation, I didn’t immediately think, that bastard Andy Dalziel’s put the frighteners on. No, I thought, that nice superintendent’s imposed a temporary media blackout in the best interests of all concerned. No need for me to go running hysterically to my cousin who does features for Channel 4 or my old school chum who’s a junior minister in the Home Office, is there? Why have confrontation when you can have consultation instead?’

Not bad, approved Dalziel. Just because he’d identified three weaknesses didn’t mean she couldn’t still kick him in the balls. But he was still intrigued as to why she should think he was susceptible to consultation. She didn’t give the impression of being thick.

He said, ‘Let’s get things straight. I take the frighteners off the local media and you’ll sign any statement I care to dictate to you?’

‘More or less,’ she said.

‘Talking about fitting folk up always makes me thirsty,’ he said, crushing the last empty can in his huge fist.

‘Have to be Mexican,’ she said, going to the fridge. ‘It’s good. So good some of the American companies started spreading rumours the Mexican workers piss in it.’

‘So what? Yon reservoir up Dendale, the one supplies most of our tap water, we fished five bodies out of there last year. Cheers. Don’t have another bit of pork pie in there too, do you?’

‘Another bit?’ she said.

It took him a second to work this out.

‘You mean it weren’t pork?’

‘I don’t eat dead animals, Andy, nor encourage my friends to do so. It was basically tofu.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Dalziel, taking a long cleansing suck at his beer. ‘Two things I don’t do, missus. One is feed folk stuff they don’t know what it is. T’other is fit people up. Understand that and we might get on a bit better.’

‘Oh dear,’ she said, concerned. ‘I’ve offended you. I’m not very good on moral codes. I suppose that means goodbye to Plan Two as well.’

‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Well, after our first encounter last night I had the feeling that my boobs hadn’t been so closely scanned since my last radiography checkup. I thought if all else failed … let me rephrase that … I rather hoped all else might fail and I’d have to fall back on the flesh, so to speak. But naturally I’d never come between a man and his moral code.’

Dalziel considered. Another man might have played for time by pretending to suck on the empty bottle or making reference to the weather, but Dalziel did his considering in plain view. Offers of trade-offs of sexual for constabulary favours weren’t uncommon. He rarely bothered himself. A bang was only a bang but a good result was a collar.

On the other hand, if he was honest with himself (and with himself what was the point of being other?), he really fancied this lass. Not just the boobs. These days even Mid-Yorkshire was bulging with highly visible boobs. See two, you’ve seen ’em all. And not the way she spoke which still carried too many overtones of the Pitt-Overload era, or whatever the prat’s name was. And certainly not all this dotty animal rights stuff. And she wasn’t young. And she wasn’t beautiful. Any other strikes against her? Yes, of course, the big one. OK so ALBA would almost certainly decide not to proceed against her. And the possible charges he’d just listed weren’t worth wasting his time on. But if he thought there was any chance at all that she’d been mixed up in this Redcar thing …

Very long odds against. One in a million. Less. She’d offered alibis and from what he’d seen he reckoned that she’d sussed out he wasn’t the kind of cop who’d let a bit of nookie stop him from checking. So why was he looking for an excuse to reject what his whole being was urging him to grab with both hands?

Mebbe he was a bit scared of his own desire. Mebbe it was because there was something about her that hit the spot, like the bouquet of an untried single malt when you opened the bottle, telling you that this was one to be savoured.

She was regarding him oddly. Calculatingly?

‘What’re you thinking of?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Old friend of mine, same name as the novelist. Balzac,’ she said smiling.

Bloody incomprehensible. But which on ’em wasn’t? Condition of service! And at least he now understood her motive for getting him alone. Just as he’d been identifying her weaknesses over the past hour, so she’d identified his last night, and taken a bloody sight less time about it.

Question his sodding vanity wanted answering was this. Was Plan Two a Last Resort, or really a Principle Object disguised as a Last Resort?

She read a question in his eyes, but misread it also.

She said, ‘I had nothing to do with the Redcar raid, Andy. And I deplore what they did, both personally and as an activist.’

Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she? Clever thing for a cop to reply was, I believe you.

‘I believe you,’ he replied. ‘Them bones you lot found last night, looks like they could be pretty old.’

‘So?’

‘I mean too old to have owt to do with ALBA. With a bit of luck they might even turn out too old to have owt to do with the CID!’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Aye. Means there might be nothing at all to investigate. Certainly means you and the folk up there aren’t mixed up in any investigation. I rang my media contacts on the way here, told ’em they could go to town.’