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‘What?’ he demanded.
‘Nowt. Just thought there weren’t much point ruining me fingernails digging if you’d snuffed it,’ said Dalziel. ‘How are the legs? Still hurting?’
‘The pain seems to be getting further away,’ whispered Pascoe. ‘Or perhaps it’s just the legs that are getting further away.’
‘Jokes, is it? What are you after, lad? The fucking Police Medal?’
‘No joke, sir. More like despair.’
‘That’s all right, then. One thing I can’t stomach’s a bloody hero.’
Dalziel belched as though in illustration and added reflectively, ‘I could stomach one of Jack’s meat pies from the Black Bull, though.’
‘Food,’ said Pascoe.
‘You peckish too? That’s hopeful.’
‘Another good sign?’ whispered Pascoe. ‘No. I meant there wasn’t any. Back at the White Rock. Did you see any?’
‘Likely he’d not unpacked it. Well, he wouldn’t have time, would he?’
‘Perhaps not … there was someone in there, you know …’
‘In where? The White Rock? In a cave, or what?’
‘Back there … the side gallery … someone, something … I can’t remember …’
‘In there, you mean? Of course there was. Young bloody Farr was in there, which is why we’re in here, up to our necks! Well, back to work.’
It wasn’t the answer or at least only part of it, but his mind seemed to be refusing to register much since they had so foolishly left that marvellous world of air and trees and space and stars. He gave up the attempt at recall and lay still, listening to the fat man’s rat-like scrabblings. Was it really worth it? he wondered. He didn’t realize he’d spoken his thought, but Dalziel was replying.
‘Likely not. They’re probably out there already with their shovels and drills and blankets and hot soup and television lights and gormless interviewers practising their daft bloody questions. Nay, I’m just doing this to keep warm. Sensible thing would be to lie back and wait patiently, as the very old bishop said to the actress.’
‘How will they know where we are?’
‘You don’t think them other buggers got stuck like us? Pair of moles, them two. Born with hands like shovels and teeth like picks, these miners. I can’t wait to get my hands on that young bastard, Farr. This is all down to him, running off down here. Bloody Farr. He’ll wish he were far enough when I next see him.’
Pascoe smiled sadly at the fat man’s attempted cheeriness. He didn’t believe that he and Colin Farr would ever meet again. His mind burrowed into the huge pile of earth and rock which held him trapped and his heart showed him Colin Farr trapped there too. Or worse. And if worse, how to explain it to Ellie in the unlikely event he ever got the chance? Any explanation must sound like justification. He would, of course, deny any imperatives other than duty and the law. Up there you had to keep things simple. There was no other way to survive.
But down here survival was too far beneath hope to make a motive, and the darkness was fetid with doubt and accusation. Time for the bottom line, as the Yanks put it. Place for a bottom line too. And the bottom line read like this.
Colin Farr. Trapped by the pit he hated. Driven into that trap by a man who hated him.
Colin Farr.
Part One (#ulink_93fc55d3-95e8-561b-a090-9ca2cbef0683)
And see! not far from where the mountain-side
First rose, a Leopard, nimble and light and fleet,
Clothed in a fine furred pelt all dapple-dyed,
Came gambolling out, and skipped before my feet.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_56e8ea64-b74a-5035-bf1e-e928aefa4d0a)
‘… the paddy broke down and we had to walk nearly the full length of the return to pit bottom and there was a hell of a crowd there already and tempers were getting frayed. They usually do if you’re kept waiting to ride the pit, especially when other buggers push into the Cage ahead of you because they’ve got priority. It’s not so bad when it’s the wet-ride – that’s men who’ve been working in water – though even then there’s a lot of complaining and the lads yell things like, “Call that wet? I think tha’s just pissed on tha boots!” But worst of all is when a bunch of deputies get to ride ahead of you which is what happened to us, and the sight of all those clean faces, grinning like they were getting into a lift in a knocking shop, really got our goat. As the last one got in, someone yelled, “That’s right, lad, hurry on home to your missus. But you’ll not get to ride there before the day-shift!” The deputy’s face were white before, but now it got even whiter and he set off back out of the Cage like he was going to grab whoever it was that called out and start a rumpus, but some of the other officials got hold of him and the grille clanged shut and the Cage went up. Mebbe it shouldn’t have been said, but first thing you learn down pit is not to bite when someone tries to rile you, and it certainly cheered up most of the poor sods still left waiting.
‘I rode up with the next lot and that was the end of my shift and this is the end of my homework.’
‘Thank you, Colin,’ said Ellie Pascoe. ‘That was really very good.’
‘Ee, miss, tha don’t say? Dost really think there’s hope tha can learn an ignorant bugger like me to read and write proper?’
Colin Farr’s accent had broadened beyond parody while his mouth gaped and his eyes bulged into a mask of grotesque gratitude. The others in the group roared with laughter and Ellie found herself flushing with shame at the justified rebuke; but because she was by nature a counter-puncher, she replied, once again without thinking, ‘Perhaps I’ll settle for learning you to stop feeling insecure in unfamiliar situations.’
Farr’s features tightened to their usual expression of amused watchfulness.
‘That’ll be grand,’ he said. ‘As soon as you’ve found the secret, be sure to let me know.’
He’s right, thought Ellie miserably. I’m as insecure as any of them!
She hadn’t anticipated this three weeks earlier when Adam Burnshaw, director of Mid-Yorks University’s extra-mural department, had rung to ask if she could help him out. One of his lecturers had contracted hepatitis in the Urals (Ellie had observed her husband teeter on the edge of a Dalzielesque joke), leaving a gap in a union-sponsored day-release course for miners. Ellie, politically sound, with years of experience as a social science lecturer till de-jobbed by childbirth and redundancy (both fairly voluntary), was the obvious stop-gap. No need to worry about her daughter, Rose. The University crèche was at her disposal.
Ellie had needed little time to think. Though far from housebound, she had started to feel that most of her reasons for going out were short on moral imperative. As for her reason for not going out, the great feminist novel she was supposed to be writing, that had wandered into more dead ends than a walker relying on farmers to maintain rights-of-way.
Preparation had been a bit of a rush, but Ellie had not stinted her time.
‘This is something worthwhile,’ she assured her husband. ‘A real job of real education with real people. I feel privileged.’
Peter Pascoe had wondered over his fourth consecutive meal of tinned tuna and lettuce whether in view of her messianic attitude to her prospective students, she might not be able to contrive something more interesting with leaves and fishes, but it was only a token complaint. Lately he too had started noticing signs of restlessness and he was glad to see Ellie back in harness, particularly in this area. During the recent year-long miners’ strike, when relations between police and pickets came close to open warfare, she had kept as low a profile as she could conscientiously manage. This had cost her much political credibility in her left-wing circles, and this job-offer from academic activist, Burnshaw, was like a ticket of readmittance to the main arena.
But there’s no such thing as a free ticket. The dozen miners who turned up at her first class on Industrial Sociology seemed bent on confirming the judgement of Indignant (name and address supplied) in the letter columns of the Evening Post, that such courses were little more than subsidized absenteeism.
At the end of an afternoon of monosyllabic responses to her hard prepared but softly presented material, she had retired in disarray after issuing a schoolmarmly invitation to write an account of a day at work before the next encounter.
That night she served frozen pizza as a change from tuna.
‘How’d it go, then?’ asked Pascoe with a casualness she mistook for indifference.
‘Fine,’ she grunted with a laconicism he mistook for exclusion.
‘Good. Many there?’
‘Just twelve.’
‘Good number for a messiah, but watch out for Judas.’
And here he was, Colin Farr, in his early twenties, his fair clear complexion as yet hardly touched by the tell-tale blue scars marking the other faces, his golden hair springy with Grecian curls, his every movement informed with natural grace. Put him in a tasselled cap and a striped blazer and he’d not win a second glance as he strolled through the Enclosure at Henley, except of admiration and envy.
Oh shit! she thought desperately. How classist can you get? It was wrong to call him Judas. He had merely invited her to betray herself.
At first indeed he had seemed a saviour when, just as she felt herself drowning in the silence which followed her request for a volunteer, he had risen like Adonis from a grassy bank and begun to read. It had been gratitude which had trapped her into that patronizing praise, and guilt which had stung her into that equally patronizing rebuke.
She took a deep breath, decided between inhalation and exhalation that the time was not yet ripe for an open analysis of the group dynamic, and said, ‘Did you think it should have been said?’
‘Eh?’
The change of direction was right. It had taken him by surprise.
‘You said that perhaps it was wrong for someone to make that crack about the deputy’s wife. Is that what you think?’
Slowly Colin Farr smiled. It was a slightly lopsided, devastatingly attractive smile and it seemed to say he now saw exactly what she was doing.
‘What do I think?’ he said. ‘I think either a man can look after his wife or he can’t and it doesn’t matter what any other bugger says. Also I think that deputies deserve all the shit you can throw at them. Just ask these lads here what they reckon and you’ll soon see if I’m right.’
She saw, and that night at dinner (steak and mushroom pie with braised red cabbage, incontrovertibly home-cooked) she attempted to convey both her delight and her surprise, delight that the ice had been broken and surprise at the depth of feeling revealed in the ensuing discussion.
‘It’s positively atavistic,’ she said. ‘These are young men talking as if they were back in the nineteen-twenties.’
‘You always said the Strike had knocked industrial relations back a generation,’ said Pascoe, shovelling another huge forkful of pie into his mouth.
‘This is nothing to do with industrial relations,’ retorted Ellie. ‘It’s tribal. Peter, if you’re going to gobble your food and look at your watch at the same time, you’ll end up putting your eye out. What’s the rush anyway? Not another James Cagney film on telly?’
‘No,’ said Pascoe uneasily. ‘It’s just that I’ve got to go out.’
‘You didn’t say anything,’ said Ellie indignantly.
‘No? Well, I was going to tell you when I got home but somehow …’
‘You mean,’ said Ellie with detective sharpness, ‘that when you got home and instead of the fast food you’ve been moaning about, you saw I’d rushed back from my class and slaved away cooking your favourite dinner, you lost your nerve!’
Pascoe smiled placatingly and said, ‘Well, sort of. I was going to say something, but you were so keen to tell me about your interesting afternoon with the horny-handed sons of toil …’
‘My God, I know who you really are! You’re Indignant (name and address supplied), I recognize the style! So, tell me, what’s so important that you prefer it to your favourite nosh, not to mention my intellectual company?’
‘It’s Mr Watmough,’ said Pascoe.
‘Watmough? You mean that creepy sod who’s Deputy Chief Constable? I thought he was leaving?’
‘He is. That’s why I’ve got to go out. The brass will be laying on a farewell dinner, but tonight he’s popping into the Club for a presentation from the plebs. I feel I ought to be there out of courtesy.’
‘Courtesy? To a Social Democrat?’ said Ellie scornfully.
The announcement of Watmough’s resignation had been followed almost immediately by the leaked news that he was shortlisted as a possible SDP candidate for a winnable local seat. It was no secret that he had been bitterly disappointed when he failed to get the recently vacant Chief Constable’s job. He’d been everyone’s favourite, except for Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel, who rated him, to quote, ‘lower than a duck’s arsehole and twice as wet’. How Dalziel could have influenced the result was not clear, but Pascoe had suspicions close to certainties that it had been the fat man’s spade-like hand that had dashed the foaming cup from Watmough’s foaming lips.
A period of dark brooding had followed. Watmough was already a small-time media personality with the assistance of Ike Ogilby, editor of the Sunday Challenger, flagship paper of the main Mid-Yorkshire news group. He had been hoping to become a big-time personality via the Chief Constableship, and thence launch himself into the political empyrean. Now, faced with the choice of looking for other Chief’s jobs outside the area where his power base lay, or attempting a low-level take-off, he’d opted for the latter.
‘Who’s making the presentation?’ asked Ellie.
‘Dalziel.’
Ellie began to laugh.
‘You’re quite right, Peter,’ she said. ‘You can’t miss that. It should be a night to remember. But first you’ll eat up your apple pie and custard. And you’ll sit there and look interested while I finish telling you about Colin Farr and his mates. Are you sitting comfortably?’
‘Yes, miss,’ said Pascoe.
‘Then I’ll begin.’
Chapter 2 (#ulink_1ba8b065-add4-58f5-9516-b951d59df9bc)
Colin Farr went to the bar and asked for another pint. It was his fourth since he’d come into the Welfare not much more than half an hour ago.
‘Thirsty work back at school, is it?’ said the steward. His name was Peter Pedley, but ever since he’d grown a bandido moustache to age his childishly young features when he first went down the pit, he’d been known as Pedro. His body had long ago thickened to a solid barrel which was eighty per cent muscle, and the childishness too had spread into a mature joviality, though the moustache remained. He was a man much respected both for his strength of body and his resilience of spirit. In his mid-twenties he’d been advised by the doctor that the bronchitis which had troubled him since childhood was rapidly worsening underground. With a wife and young family, he was unwilling to take the wage cut and poor prospects of surface work, so he’d taken a job as barman in a Barnsley pub, got to know the business inside out, and eventually returned to the place of his birth as the residential steward of the Burrthorpe Miners’ Social and Welfare Club. Two years later his resilience was tested to breaking-point when his youngest daughter, Tracey, aged seven, disappeared. The child had never been found. The consoling presence of and continued responsibility for three other children had kept Pedley and his wife from falling apart, but Mrs Pedley had aged a decade in the years since the disappearance and Pedro visited the whisky optic on his own behalf as frequently as on his customers’.
He rarely let it show, however, and he had a sharp eye for alcohol-based trouble in others.
Now Colin Farr supped two inches off the top of his pint and said, ‘University, not school, Pedro. But you’re right. It’s thirsty work, all that talking.’
‘Better than fighting,’ said Pedley, amiably but with a hint of warning. He knew most of his customers better than they knew themselves. Four pints in half an hour was par for the course in some; with young Farr it spelt trouble.
The young man heard the warning and drank again, regarding Pedley over the rim without resentment. The steward still wheezed through the winter, but when Pedro Pedley sallied forth to sort out trouble, those close to it scattered and those safely distant settled down to enjoy the show. When Colin Farr lowered the glass, it was more than half empty.
‘Where’s Maggie?’ he asked.
‘She’ll not be working tonight. She’s badly. This is the day it happened.’
Their eyes met: Pedley’s blank, Farr’s searching.
‘Is that right?’ said Farr. ‘Then naturally she’ll be upset.’
And he went back to his seat moving with easy grace.
He was alone at one of the round formica tables. The Club’s main public room was a cheerless place when almost empty. Full, you couldn’t see the brown and beige tiled floor, or the cafeteria furniture, or the vinyl-upholstered waiting-room bench which ran round the flock-papered walls. Full, the plaster-board ceiling, steel cross-girder and glaring strip-lights were to some extent obscured by the strato-cirrus layer of tobacco smoke. And best of all, full, the whisper of a man’s own disturbing thoughts was almost inaudible beneath the din of loud laughter, seamless chatter, and amplified music.
At the moment Colin Farr’s thoughts were coming through too loud, too clear. He’d gone into the students’ union bar at the University today. Its décor and furnishings had not been all that different from the Club’s. The atmosphere had been just as thick; the voices just as loud, the music just as raucous. Yet he had left very quickly, feeling alien. The reaction had troubled him. It was uncharacteristic. He was not a shy person; he’d been around and hadn’t been much bothered at entering some places where he’d been quite literally a foreigner. But the students’ bar had made him feel so uneasy that he’d fled, and the memory of this uneasiness wouldn’t leave him alone.
It had been self-irritation with his reaction that had made him so sharp with that Mrs Pascoe in the afternoon. Well, partly at least. And partly it had been her. Condescending cow!
He had finished his fourth pint without hardly noticing. He was thinking about getting out of his seat again, though whether to return to the bar or head out into the night he wasn’t sure, when the door burst open and two men came in. One was Farr’s age but looked older. They’d been in the same class at school, but, unlike Farr, Tommy Dickinson’s career down the pit had been continuous since he was fifteen. Chunkily built, he had the beginnings of a substantial beer-gut, and when his broad amiable face split into a grin at the sight of Farr, his teeth were stained brown with tobacco juice.
‘Look what’s here!’ he cried. ‘Hey, Pedro! I thought only working men could get served in this club.’
‘You’d best buy me a pint, then,’ said Farr.
While Dickinson was getting the drinks, the other man sat down at Farr’s table. He was Neil Wardle, in his thirties, a lean taciturn man. His face was as brown and weather-beaten as any countryman’s. In fact, like many of his workmates, as if in reaction against the underworld in which they earned their bread, he spent as much of his spare time as possible roaming the hills around Burrthorpe with his dog and a shotgun. He was charge-man of the team of rippers in which the other two worked.
