The Wood Beyond (49 page)

He stopped abruptly. Janet Batty's face had drained of colour, leaving it pale and waxy as a lily. It's this woman's father I'm talking about, he thought. My own connection with all this is three generations old and I never knew the men involved, but it's this woman's father, and her pain must go at least as deep as my indignation.

He said, 'Mrs Batty, I'm sorry. I believe your father was as much a victim here as anyone else. I'm sure if he had ever known-'

'Oh he knows,' she burst out. 'He knows!'

It took a few seconds for the tense to sink in.

'Knows?' he echoed.

He saw Thomas Batty's warning glance, David Batty's wry grin, remembered the nurse he'd seen going up the stairs on his first visit to the Maisterhouse.

'He's still alive?' he said incredulously. 'He's here?'

He saw the answer in Janet's face. Illogically this somehow made it all far worse. When all concerned had shared their common end, whether it means repose in a carefully tended family plot, or in a distant soldier's grave, or even in the sodden clay of a ravaged wood, there was a distancing which made the woman's living pain a great dissuader from further public rage and accusation.

But the thought that not only had this man enjoyed a long and comfortable life with all the blessings of family and fortune but was
still
enjoying it.. .

Or perhaps not. Forcing himself to speak evenly he said, 'He must be very old.'

'Oh yes,' said David Batty almost mockingly. 'We're all looking forward to the telegram from Her Majesty.'

'He's very frail,' said Janet Batty defensively. 'But he's still got all his mental faculties.'

'That must be a blessing to all concerned,' said Pascoe savagely.

'We thought so. Till this week, that is.'

'He heard about it on television, didn't he?' said Pascoe. 'He knew at once who it was; he didn't even need to wait for the details to come out. What was his reaction? That he wanted to make a clean breast after all these years? That's why you saw me personally, Mr Batty, to stress that ALBA wouldn't be prosecuting the ANIMA women, to start putting the lid on things as firmly as you could. No wonder you jumped when I told you I was one of the Kirkton Pascoes! Felt like someone walking over your grave, did it?'

He rose to his feet. He was sick of all this. Time to do what he'd come to do and get out. He tried to suppress a deep-down tremor of pleasure at the unexpected revenge he was going to take on this family which had so comprehensively misshaped his own.

Thomas was up too, getting between him and the door.

'You can't see him, Mr Pascoe,' he said. 'He's too frail to take it.'

Pascoe regarded him with some irritation in which there was an element of pity. He didn't really believe that the elder Batty had been party to the raid on Fraser Greenleaf, guessed that the news that his own son was an instigator of theft and an accessory to murder would destroy him.

'Why should you imagine I want to see your father-in- law?' he asked scornfully.

The question started rhetorical, but somewhere along the line it became real.

Why
should
Batty think he wanted to confront Gertie? Or rather, why was it he still got the feeling, especially from the senior Battys, that the bottom line in all this was still unread?

Arthur's statement. That feeling he had of something still requiring explication. The bottom line literally, or rather, the bottom lines.

'Your grandfather mentions contributions to the maintenance of the sergeant's family,' he said to Mrs Batty. 'He never made any, I'm sure of that.'

'He couldn't find them, no one could,' she replied.

Young Colin Pascoe did, thought Pascoe. Only perhaps he looked harder.

He said, 'But why should he feel the need even to try? He'd seen his son's efforts at help tossed back in his face.'

She shrugged as if not trusting herself to speak.

Thomas Batty said, 'It's time, I think, to let sleeping dogs lie. You're a reasonable man, Mr Pascoe, and I'm sure you can see that...’

'What sleeping dog?' said Pascoe. 'I thought we'd woken them all up. What sleeping dog?'

He picked up the handwritten statement again, reread the final paragraph.
Responsibility in law... allegations made concerning my own conduct. .
. why should old Arthur have put in these apparently utterly redundant disclaimers?

What responsibility in law could have been alleged against him ... ?

He looked at Thomas Batty's blank unrevealing face, turned from it to Janet's pale stretched-out features out of which stared a pair of intent and very blue eyes, turned finally to David and met the same blue eyes in that narrow intelligent face whose features had always created in him an uncomfortable sense of near-recognition.

He thought,
not this!
He recalled that other Peter Pascoe's piece of self-improving autobiography which recounted how his mother had been in service with the Grindals up to the time she left to get married and give birth to her son, recalled the dreadful Quiggins woman's screamed accusations that she'd been no better than she ought to have been . ..

Not this!

He said, 'I'm going to see him.'

'What? No!' protested Thomas.

'Mrs Batty,' said Pascoe. 'Feel free to go and prepare him as best you can, but I'm going up whatever any of you say. Don't you think I'm entitled?'

She didn't argue but rose at once and left the room.

David Batty laughed out loud and said, 'Thought you'd get there in the end, Peter. Kind of mind that doesn't miss a trick. Takes a one to know a one!'

Pascoe left the room, stepping round Thomas who didn't move.

He ran lightly up the stairs, saw an open door and made for it.

In a large airy bedroom giving a view out across the high boundary wall towards the church and old village of Kirkton, he saw Janet Batty sitting on the edge of a bed with her arm around the shoulders of an old man, propped up by pillows. His face was pared down almost to the skull, but a shock of soft white hair still fell over his brow and the eyes which fixed on Pascoe were bright blue and alert.

Then they began to fill with tears just as his daughter's had filled a little while earlier.

'Peter,' he said brokenly. 'It's you . .. after all this time ... I didn't know . .. not then ... I swear . ..'

He's not seeing me, thought Pascoe. He's seeing that other Peter who died for him.

'Didn't know what?' he asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear it from this ghost incarnate who could be himself a half-century on.

That we are brothers,' said Bertie Grindal.

Brothers. Had the sergeant known? Had his mother said something to him on that visit to her deathbed in Cromer? Was this the reason that Arthur had so long delayed passing on the information about her illness? He would need to read the journals again and again to find answers to these questions. And perhaps they weren't there. And perhaps he didn't want to know them.

Janet Batty was speaking.

'He had to make a choice. Grandfather had to make a choice.'

Between the legitimate heir and the left-wing bastard?

'No choice,' said Pascoe, his eyes riveted on the old man in the bed.

'I've just been working it out,' said David's voice from behind him. 'Funny really, but because you've got an extra generation in, I must be something like your half-uncle, once removed. Welcome to the family!'

Pascoe now let his gaze leave the old man and his pale-faced daughter, and turned slowly to take in David Batty with his father behind him on the landing.

He recalled his admission to Ellie
... I used to fantasize about discovering I was a changeling and I really had this
completely
different family I could make a fresh start with
. . . And here it was, his new family to set alongside the old one which had proved so singularly unsuccessful. No point in hanging around. Time to make that fresh start. . .

A kind of wild laughter was welling up inside him at the black comedy of it all, and its repression made his shoulders shake.

'No need to take on,' said David. 'I won't insist on my right to be called uncle.'

'Kind of you,' said Peter Pascoe. 'But a man should cling to his rights. Why don't I tell you a few of yours?'

And without a backward glance at the old man in the bed, he took the puzzled David Batty by the arm and urged him down the stairs.

v

Andy Dalziel parked his car in the same spot opposite Cap Marvell's flat that he'd used four nights earlier.

It was almost the same time too and as he sat, undecided on his next move, he saw her again, only this time she was coming out of the apartment block and heading round to the garages.

Like a man who has screwed up his courage for a visit to the dentist's then finds the surgery closed, Dalziel didn't know whether he felt glad or disappointed.

Morning would be better, he decided. He'd had a long hard day though not so long as Des Patten, Captain Sanderson and Dr Batty. He'd found the captain at the doctor's house, wearing nothing but a kimono and a satisfied smile both of which had been removed prior to his departure for the station. Later Pascoe had turned up with Batty and that had been the turning point. The two military men knew the value of keeping their mouths shut till they found a way to communicate and produce a consistent story. But Batty, once the string of deaths had been laid before him, had been almost overenthusiastic in his efforts to put clear blue water between himself and an accessory-to-murder charge. Yes, he'd paid Sanderson to steal the Fraser Greenleaf research papers; yes, the second part of the deal had been for TecSec to get the Wanwood House contract after Patten had staged a raid there too, serving the double purpose of demonstrating the need to upgrade security and at the same time refocusing attention on the non-existent animal rights extremists who'd killed the guard at Redcar. But no, he hadn't at any time had any knowledge, either prior or subsequent, of any of the other deaths now laid at TecSec's door, and he'd honestly believed the guard's death had been completely accidental.

Load of bollocks, proclaimed Dalziel. But the doctor's small volume of evidence was going to be invaluable in putting the other two away. So, cause for celebration. But Wield had long since headed off home, and as for Pascoe, the lad had been in a funny mood, quite unable to join in the general euphoria that usually attended the fingering of collars. In fact, if he were honest, Dalziel himself had to admit he'd needed to work on it. Always at the back of his mind was the sense of unfinished business with Cap Marvell.

But it would have to stay unfinished tonight. God knows where she was heading now at this hour, and he didn't want to risk finding out! Pointless trying to apologize for one misunderstanding with another already on the boil.

He switched on his engine then realizing he would be driving past the entrance to the garage courtyard with the good chance that she'd drive out simultaneously and clock him, he switched off again. Best to let her go. And follow? No! Jesus Christ, if he was going to get anywhere with this woman which he doubted, he'd have to stop acting like a cop.

But where the hell was she? Didn't take this long to start up a vehicle and drive out.

Suddenly he was worried. Could fate be so malevolent as to let Cap get mugged while he was sitting out here feeling like a nervous adolescent?

Too bloody right it could! he thought grimly.

He picked up the gift-wrapped cylinder lying on the passenger seat, gripped it like a club and got out of the car. Moving with that lightness and stealth which often amazed those who'd never seen him in action, he crossed the road and went along the front of the block.

At the corner of the alley leading into the rear yard where the garages were, he paused. No sound . . . no . .. wait... a distant voice . .. female . . . low . . . pleading .. .

He launched himself forward again, still light-footed but now covering the ground with the surprising speed of a grizzly bear on the rampage. Teeth bared in fury and exertion, he rounded the corner. And stopped.

In the light cast out of an open garage door, Cap Marvell crouched, surrounded by cats feeding at half a dozen saucers piled high with scraps of meat. Several of the animals, alarmed by Dalziel's approach, retreated and the woman looked up angrily.

'Quiet!' she urged. 'It's OK, my dears, nothing to worry about, back you come.'

Slowly the cats returned and began to feed again. They were mainly lean ragged beasts with the scars of street warfare upon them.

'Bet the neighbours love you,' said Dalziel.

'Bet the neighbours aren't starving,' replied Cap.

'You do this regular, do you?'

'Most nights when I'm home. Watch the news, then it's supper time. Nice to have a bit of order in a disordered universe. Why do you ask?'

Dalziel considered whether explanation would help his case, decided on the whole it wouldn't.

'No reason,' he said. 'Thought we should talk.'

'We talked, remember?'

'Still things left to say.'

'I don't think so, Andy.'

'Brought you a present.'

He offered her the cylinder. She didn't take it so he tore off the wrapping to reveal a bottle of whisky.

'The Macallan,' he said reverently. 'Twelve years old. Single malt.'

'Maybe it'll get married when it grows up,' she said.

The cats had finished eating. She gathered up the saucers.

'Thought you might like to know what happened about Walker,' he said.

‘I’ll read about it in the papers,' she said. 'Unless you've sat on them again?'

'No, it'll be there, eventually.'

'Good,' she said.

She put out the garage light, closed the door and began to walk away.

'Hey, you're forgetting your malt.'

'Never touch the stuff,' she called over her shoulder.

He set it carefully on the ground.

'Well, it's there if you change your mind,' he said.

'I won't,' her voice came out of the darkness. 'But it's a nice gesture, superintendent. You can plead it in mitigation. Nothing God likes better than a nice gesture.'