The Wood Beyond

His forenames had been compressed to Troll in early childhood, and whether the sobriquet in any way predicated his professional enthusiasm for dead flesh and loose bones was a question for psycholinguistics. Dalziel doubted it. They’d played in the same school rugby team and the Fat Man claimed to have seen Longbottom at the age of thirteen devour an opponent’s ear.

He gingerly edged his way round the rim of the crater and drew the consultant’s attention by tugging at the collar of the mohair topcoat he was wearing over a dinner jacket.

‘How do, Troll? Good of you to come. Needn’t have got dressed up, but. You’ll get mud on your dicky.’

Longbottom squinted up at him. Time, which had basted Dalziel, had wasted him to an appropriate cadaverousness.

‘Would you mind staying on your own piece of board, please, Dalziel? Facilis est descensus, but I’m choosy about the company I make it in.’

Education and high society had long eroded his native accent, but he had lost none of the skill of abusive exchange which form the basis of playground intercourse in Mid-Yorkshire.

‘Sorry you got dragged away from your dinner, but I see you brought your snap,’ said Dalziel peering at the plastic bag which contained a cluster of small bones.

‘Which I shall need to feast on at my leisure.’

‘Looks like slim pickings to me,’ said Dalziel. ‘So what can you give me off the top of your head? Owt’ll do. Sex. Age. Time of death. Mother’s maiden name.’

‘It’s a hand, and it’s human, and that’s all I’m prepared to say till I’ve seen a great deal more which may be some time. This one, I fear, like Nicholas Nickleby, is coming out in instalments.’

‘Can’t recall him,’ said Dalziel. ‘What did he die of?’

Longbottom arose with a groan which comprehended everything from the joke to the stiffness of his muscles and the state of the weather.

‘Just look at my coat,’ he said. ‘Do you know how much these things cost? I shall of course be making a claim.’

‘I’d send it to ALBA then. Your mate, Batty. Do you reckon he keeps anything to drink up there?’

‘I should imagine there’s a single methanol in the labs.’

‘That’ll do nicely,’ said Andy Dalziel.

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Peter Pascoe could have done without the funeral meats but felt he’d gone as far as he dared in disrupting his sister’s arrangements. In fact it worked out rather well as under the influence of cups of tea and salmon sandwiches the wrinkly clones turned into amiable, intelligent individuals, several of them well below retirement age. Some even went out of their way to compliment him on his address, saying how pleased Ada would have been with the service and how much they’d like something like that when their turn came.

Myra clearly took all this in because when they’d waved the stragglers goodbye, she said, ‘OK, so as usual you were right.’

He smiled at her but she wasn’t ready for that yet, and turned back into the old cottage which had been Ada’s home for fifty years.

‘Only room for one in that kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ll do the washing up. You can carry on with your inventory.’

When she came back into the living room, he was manoeuvring an old mahogany secretaire through the doorway.

‘You’re taking that old thing then?’

‘Yes. I thought I’d get it on the roof rack now so I can make a quick getaway in the morning. Don’t worry. It’s on the inventory. I’ll get it valued and make sure it goes into the estate.’

‘I didn’t mean that … oh think what you will, you always did.’

She turned away, angry and hurt.

Oh shit, thought Pascoe. Whatever happened to old silver tongue?

He reached out and caught her arm and said, ‘Sorry. I was talking like an executor. Maybe a bit like a cop too. Listen, you don’t have to say anything but anything you do say will be taken down.’

She stared at him blankly and for a second he thought she’d forgotten the grubby little schoolboy joke he’d tried to embarrass her with all those years ago.

Then she smiled and said, ‘Knickers,’ and through the eggshell make-up he glimpsed the girl who’d been his closest ally in the long war of adolescence. OK, so her motivation had a lot to do with resentment that Sue, the eldest, could get away with shorter skirts, thicker lipstick, and later hours than herself. Whatever the reason, their closest moments within the family had been together.

‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Isn’t there anything you’d like?’

‘Far too old-fashioned for our house,’ she said firmly.

‘Something small, as a memento,’ Pascoe urged.

‘No need for that. I’ll remember,’ she said.

There was something in her tone, not acerbic exactly, but certainly acetic. She’d never been anyone’s favourite, Pascoe realized. Susan had been the apple of their parents’ eye, would perhaps have been their only fruit if their chosen method of contraception had been more efficient. He himself had been Ada’s favourite – or, as he sometimes felt, target. Driven by the loss of two men in her life (three if you counted the disappointment of her own son) she’d focused all her shaping care on her male grandchild, leaving poor Myra to find her own way.

It had led to marriage with Trevor, the kind of financial advisor who bores clients into submission; an ultramodern executive villa in Coventry, a pair of ultra-neanderthal teenage sons in private education; and a resolve to show the world that what she’d got was exactly what she wanted.

So, no appetite-spoiling bitterness this, just a condiment sharpness.

Pascoe said, ‘About the music …’

‘It doesn’t matter, Pete. I’ve said you were right.’

‘No, I’d like to explain. Here, let me show you something.’

He opened the drawer of the secretaire, reached inside, pressed a knob of wood, and a second tiny drawer, concealed by the inlay pattern, came sliding out of the first.

‘Neat, eh?’ he said. ‘I found it when I was ten. No gold sovereigns or anything. Just this.’

From the drawer he took a dog-eared sepia photograph of a soldier, seated rather stiffly with his body turned to display the single stripe on his sleeve. His face, looking directly into the camera, wore the solemn set expression demanded by old technique and convention, but there was the hint of a smile around the eyes as if he was feeling rather pleased with himself.

‘Know who this is?’

‘Well, he looks so like you when you’re feeling cocky, it must be our great-grandfather.’

Pascoe couldn’t see the resemblance but felt he’d probably earned the crack. He turned the picture over so she could see what was written on the back in black ink faded to grey.

First lance corporal from our draft! December 1914.

Then Pascoe tipped the photo so that it caught the light. There was more writing, this time in pencil long since been erased. But the writer had pressed so hard the indented words were still legible. Killed Wipers 1917.

‘All those years and she couldn’t bear to have it on display,’ mused Pascoe.

‘All those years and you never mentioned it,’ accused Myra.