The Wood Beyond

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—’