Under World. Reginald Hill

      If Ogilby didn’t contact him it shouldn’t be too difficult to contrive an accidental meeting. But he mustn’t appear to be pressing …

      In the hall, the telephone rang. He rose and went to answer it.

      ‘Neville? It’s Ike.’

      He glanced at his watch and smiled. Ten past nine. These newsmen didn’t let the grass grow under their feet when they really wanted something! Now what was that figure that Monty Boyle had said he should go for?

      It was good to feel back in control again.

      ‘Hello, Ike,’ he said. ‘And what can I do for you?’

       Chapter 8

      Peter Pascoe was getting used to going to work on Tuesdays in a bad temper. And an opinion pollster catching him en route would also have detected a marked swing to the right, at least as far as mining communities were concerned.

      This morning at breakfast, Ellie had announced that she was planning to go down a mine. ‘An experience shared is a gap bridged,’ she declared. Pascoe, dismayed by the idea for a pudder of reasons, none of which he could identify reasonably, wondered whether this meant he was likely to find himself going to bed with a miner. Ellie informed him coldly that while reason was occasionally democratic, ridicule was always élitist. This, coming from a woman who fell off her chair at the ranting of radical comedians, had to be challenged. One thing led to another and the other led to the usual, which was Pascoe sitting at his desk in a bad temper on Tuesday morning.

      After an hour of tedious paperwork, he had declined from a boil to a simmer when his door burst open with a violence worthy of the Holy Ghost fresh from Philippi jail. It was, however, no paraclete who entered.

      ‘He’s done it!’ exclaimed Dalziel. ‘I knew it’d happen. Reason said no, but me piles told me different.’

      ‘Who’s done what, sir?’ asked Pascoe, rising to place himself defensively between the fat man and his records cupboard which Dalziel had taken to rifling at will during the past few days.

      ‘It’s Wonder Woman’s memoirs. The Challenger’s going to publish them!’

      ‘Good Lord. I heard he didn’t get the nomination …’

      ‘He’d as much chance of being nominated as an aniseed ball on a snooker table,’ snarled Dalziel. ‘We all knew that. But Ogilby was going around saying he’d read some of the memoirs in draft and it were like eating cold sago with a rusty spoon, so no one reckoned the Challenger could really be interested. But it was funny, the more folk said it were impossible, the more my piles ached.’

      Pascoe was singularly uninterested in Dalziel’s haruspical haemorrhoids but he found himself marvelling as often before at the extent of his personal intelligence service. If it happened in Mid-Yorkshire, he knew it in hours; anywhere else in the county and he might have to wait till the next day.

      ‘But if it’s as bad as that, why should Ogilby be interested?’

      ‘Christ knows! But he must reckon there’s enough dirt in there to be worth digging for! They can make silk knickers out of a pig’s knackers, them bastards! That Leeds vicar last week. Caught two youngsters nicking candlesticks and by the time Monty Boyle were finished, he had Headingley sounding like a mix of Salem and Sodom!’

      ‘Monty Boyle!’ exclaimed Pascoe. ‘Of course!’

      ‘You know something I don’t?’ said Dalziel incredulously.

      Pascoe explained.

      ‘It fits, doesn’t it? The Pickford case was Watmough’s finest hour. And it was during South’s investigation of that Burrthorpe girl’s disappearance that it all came to a head and Pickford topped himself, leaving a note confessing all. So if Boyle was sniffing around so that he could collaborate with Watmough on a tell-all series, he’d not want to draw rival attention to it by getting involved in a court case. Only, this was before the selection meeting, so Ogilby must have been pretty sure what the result would be.’

      ‘I told you, everyone was. And if he hadn’t been, he would likely have fixed it.’

      ‘I’d better give Alex Wishart a buzz and warn him what’s happening,’ said Pascoe.

      ‘Let Wishart take care of himself,’ said Dalziel. ‘You concentrate on looking after those nearest and dearest. Like me.’

      ‘But Watmough was mainly admin after he came back to us,’ pointed out Pascoe. ‘Not even the Challenger can make his time here interesting.’

      ‘I wish I could be as sure, lad,’ said Dalziel. ‘But forewarned is forearmed …’

      ‘That’s why you’ve been ruining my records!’ exclaimed Pascoe.

      ‘They were a bit mixed up,’ said Dalziel reprovingly. ‘You want to watch that. Well, mebbe you’ll turn out to be right and it’ll all be a storm in a piss-pot after all. But one thing I know for sure. If Lobby Lud says anything out of place about me, I’ll hit him so hard with his clock, his head’ll chime for a fortnight!’

      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