The Price of Butcher's Meat

by Reginald Hill

  The cobbled streets were clean & litter free—the buildings freshly painted & well kept. Distantly I could see bathers sporting in the dark blue waves of the sea—& holidaymakers taking thier ease in deck chairs set on the golden sand. Posters everywhere showing an outline map of York-shire—with a big cross on the coast—& the legend—SANDYTOWN IS OUR TOWN—LETS PUT IT ON THE MAP!—while across the main street hung a banner reading FESTIVAL OF HEALTH—AUGUST BANK HOLIDAY.

  Maybe the Headbanger didnt bring us here at all—but found some rundown shantytown to put us off family trips forever!

  Tom Parker—clearly delighted at these signs of activity—gave a running commentary on each individual attraction—& occasionally leant out of the open window to greet pedestrians—as Mary drove us slowly along.

  —right luv—this ull do me—said Mr Deal suddenly.

  I looked out & saw an old freshly whitewashed building displaying a sign which read THE HOPE & ANCHOR—LICENSEE A. HOLLIS. One of the pig family?—I wondered. Mary pulled in. Deal leaned forward & said—Thanks for the lift luv. Sorry if I scared you back there. Lost me footing. Lost me bloody slipper too. Not to worry. I dont doubt Prince bloody Charming ull come looking for me. Tom—tha seems to be a local lad in good standing. I daresay tha gets on well with them up at the Avalon?—

  —yes indeed—said Tom—I know Dr Feldenhammer very well—often visit—

  Wrong answer—I thought. You cant survive as a student for 3 years without getting a nose for a touch!

  —grand. Thing is—Im staying up there for a couple of nights—& I seem to have come out without me wallet. So if you could sub me a fiver—better still 10—Ill leave it with old Fester for you to collect next time you call in—right?—

  It would have taken a lot harder man than Tom Parker to refuse.

  The money was passed over—20 in the end I noticed—& Mr Deal got out.

  He turned & said—thanks for the lift—missus—& for the loan—Tom—

  For the first time Tom Parker got a real look at him—full length—standing by the open door—in his pajamas—with one bare foot. It was clearly a shock—& I think that inside he was bidding a fond farewell to his 20 quid—but he still managed that beaming smile as he said—our pleasure—our very great pleasure—goodbye—

  Now the man turned his gaze on me.

  —bye luv—he said—remember me to your dad—

  —bye Mr Deal—I said.

  He moistened his lips & leaned forward. For a dreadful second I thought he was going to kiss me!

  —Dee Ell—he said very distinctly—get that straight—else thall niver go to heaven. Dee Ell. Cheers—

  He turned & limped into the pub.

  —oh dear—said Tom—I doubt if theyll serve him—looking like that—

  I said—would you refuse to serve him Tom?—

  He glanced round at me—then he smiled.

  —you know—I dont believe I would!—he said—but the further adventures of Mr Dee Ell are no concern of ours! Mary—drive on. Lets get home & see the children!—

  Which is what we did.

  Minnie has just burst in again to tell me lunch is ready—knocking at doors must come late on the Parker curriculum! Better go. Watch this space for more exciting news from sunny Sandytown!

  & dont forget that pic!

  Love

  Charley xx

  5

  There! What do you think of that, Mildred?

  I did it!

  Jumped the gun, surprised myself even, and now I’m in disgrace, quacks tut-tutting and feeding me pills, matron’s bosom heaving like Moby Dick in a hurricane, Cap on the phone, spitting blood, and calling me a stupid infantile prat, and saying the only clothes she’ll be bringing me’s a change of nappies!

  But it were worth it.

  I think.

  Can’t say it’s done me a lot of good, but. To tell truth, I’m feeling a lot worse now than when I arrived here!

  And I can’t even take credit for putting together a cunning plan.

  In fact, there were no plan at all.

  Today the weather were so nice, they suggested I have my lunch outside. The grub’s pretty good, all fresh local stuff nicely cooked, but they don’t exactly pile your plate up. When I asked if I could have a pint of ale to wash it down, the lass serving me said, “Couple of days, maybe, Mr. Dalziel. You’re still on assessment. No alcohol till your diet sheet’s been finalized, that’s the rule.”

  She smiled as she said it, a real smile, nowt made up about it. I smiled back. Weren’t her fault, and she was a nice lass with a lovely bum which I admired as she walked away. But it did piss me off a bit, specially as I looked around the terrace where I was sitting and saw half a dozen old farts at another table supping vino and wearing real clothes, like they were on holiday on the Costa Saga.

  But sod it, I thought. No reason not being dressed for dinner should stop me taking a stroll around to explore the place. They’ve started me on physio with Tony down in this little gym. Queer as a clockwork orange, but he knows his stuff, and though I’m still a long way off Olympic qualifying, I’m feeling a lot lisher than when I came.

  I checked there were no one looking, then stood up and went down the steps from the terrace with a lot of care. Didn’t fancy breaking me other leg!

  Once on the lawn, I just meant to have a bit of a wander, but I’m still best in a straight line and as I’d got up a fair head of speed, I just kept going with the house at my back till I found myself plowing through some shrubbery.

  Here I stopped and checked back. The house were out of sight. That would get the buggers worrying, I thought. Bit childish, mebbe. But if they’re going to treat me like a kid, I might as well enjoy myself like one!

  So on I went till finally I came up against the boundary hedge. Thick and thorny. Good for keeping intruders out. And prisoners in!

  I wandered along it for a while. I were beginning to feel knackered now and I was just thinking of setting off back when I spotted this gap.

  Not a gap really. Just the point where two sections of hedge met but without getting all intertwined.

  I heard a car go by on the road. The road that led into Sandytown.

  The road to freedom.

  I felt a sudden urge to take a look at it.

  And why not? I thought. I’m not a prisoner! And my dressing gown’s one of the thick old tweedy kind, none of them flimsy cotton kimonos or whatever they call them.

  So I took a bit of a run, or mebbe a slow trot’s nearer the mark, and got my shoulder into the breach.

  Before my spot of bother I’d have walked through here, no trouble. But it turned out to be narrower than it looked and for a moment I thought mebbe I was going to get stuck and end up shouting for help.

  Didn’t fancy that, so I gave one last heave and burst through onto the roadside verge.

  Except it weren’t the kind of verge I expected, nice and flat and grassy. Instead it were a steep bank that fell away to the tarmac about twenty feet below.

  No way of stopping. All I could do was try to remember all I’d learnt about falling, and curl up tight and try to roll. It were sod’s law that there should be a car coming down the hill exactly at that moment. I had time to think, Whatever hitting the tarmac don’t break, the collision will take care of!

  Then I was under the front wheels and waiting for the pain.

  When it didn’t come, or at least not so much as you get shaving with a lady’s razor, I slowly got up.

  No sudden agony, no broken bones. I’d lost a slipper and my stick, but I were alive and didn’t feel much worse than I’d felt thirty seconds earlier.

  If we look closely we can see God’s purpose in everything, my old mate Father Joe Kerrigan once told me.

  I looked closely.

  Here was a road leading down to Sandytown, which had to have a pub, and I was leaning up against a car.

  Joe were right. Suddenly I saw God’s purpose!

  They were nice folk in th
e car. Real friendly. I sat in the back with this lass. Could have been thirteen, could have been thirty, hard to tell these days. Turned out I knew her dad. Played rugger against him way back when I were turning out for MY Police. He were a farmer and used to play like he were plowing a clarty field. Couldn’t see much point to having players behind the scrum. Reckoned all they were good for was wearing tutus and running up and down the touchline, screaming don’t touch me, you brute! We had a lot in common, me and Stompy.

  They dropped me at this pub. The Hope and Anchor. I didn’t have any money with me. Likely I could have talked the landlord into giving me tick, but this guy Tom in the car volunteered to sub me twenty quid, so no need to turn on the charm. I went into the pub. The main bar were full of trippers eating sarnies and chicken tikka and such. On the other side of the entrance passage were a snug, half a dozen tables, only one of ’em occupied by a couple of old boys supping pints. I went in there, put the twenty on the bar, and said, “Pint of tha best, landlord.”

  Don’t expect he gets many customers in their sleeping kit, but to give him his due, he never hesitated. Not for a second. Drew me a pint, set it down.

  I took the glass, put it to my lips, and drank. Didn’t mean to be a hog but somehow when I set it down, it were empty.

  “You’ll need another then,” he said with a friendly smile.

  I was really warming to this man.

  “Aye, and I’ll have a scotch to keep it company,” I said. “And a packet of pork scratchings.”

  I nodded at the old boys, who nodded back as I took my drinks over to a table in a shady corner. When a landlord treats me right, I try not to offend his customers.

  I nibbled my scratchings, sipped my scotch, gulped my beer, and took in my surroundings. Nice room, lots of oak paneling, no telly or Muzak, bright poster above the bar advertising some Festival of Health over the Bank Holiday. With medicine like this, I thought, it couldn’t fail! And for perhaps the first time since that bloody house in Mill Street blew up, I felt perfectly happy.

  It didn’t last long. Rarely does. According to Father Joe, that’s ’cos God likes to keep us on the jump.

  Certainly kept me on the jump here.

  Hardly had time to savor the moment when the barroom door opened and a man in a wheelchair came rolling through.

  He halted just inside the door in the one shaft of sunlight coming through the window. His head were shaven so smooth the light bounced off it, giving him a kind of halo. His gaze ran round the room till it landed on me.

  Perhaps there was summat in the Sandytown air that stopped people showing surprise. The landlord had kept a perfectly straight face when a slightly bleeding man wearing jimjams and one slipper came into his pub.

  Now the wheelchair man went one better. His face actually lit up with pleasure at the sight of me, as though I owed him money and we’d arranged to meet and settle up.

  “Mr. Dalziel!” he exclaimed, driving the wheelchair toward me. “Of all the gin joints in all the world, you had to walk into mine! How very nice to see you again.”

  I did a double take. Couldn’t believe my eyes. Or mebbe I didn’t want to believe them.

  “Bloody hell,” I said. “It’s Franny Roote. I thought you must be dead!”

  6

  Had a little sleep there. Bloody pills!

  Where was I?

  Oh aye. Franny Roote.

  First time we met were at this college Ellie Pascoe used to work at not far up the coast from here. They’d found the old principal’s body buried under a memorial statue. Roote were president of the Students Union. Bags of personality. Made a big impression on everybody. Made a specially big one on me by cracking a bottle of scotch over my head. Insult to injury, it were my own bottle.

  He got banged up—not for attacking me but for being involved in the principal’s death. When he came out a few years back, he showed up again in Mid-Yorkshire, doing postgrad research at the university. Then his supervisor got murdered. So did a few other people.

  Folk were always dropping dead round Roote.

  Pete Pascoe were convinced he was involved, in fact, he got a bit obsessed about it. But he never got close to pinning owt on him. Then Roote started writing him letters from all over the place. Funny bloody things they were, dead friendly on the surface, saying how he really admired Pete. But they really began to freak the poor lad out.

  But finally, big twist, what happens is Pascoe’s lass Rosie gets taken as a hostage by a bunch of scrotes Roote had known in the nick. Roote manages to get her out, but only at the expense of getting a load of buckshot in his back. Looked a goner. But he hung on. Got transferred to some specialist spinal-injury unit down south. Pascoe kept in close touch. Practically took control of his insurance and compensation claims. Felt he owed him, specially after all the nasty thoughts he’d had about him.

  Me, I were real grateful too. Rosie’s a grand kid, got the best of both her mum and dad in her. But just ’cos I were grateful didn’t make me elect him St. Franny!

  Pete gave us bulletins. Quadriplegia seemed likely to start with, so when it finally came down to paraplegia, Pascoe acted like he’d won the lottery. Bothered me a bit. I told him, be grateful, okay, but that don’t mean feeling responsible for the sod for the rest of your life. Pascoe slammed off out after I said that and I heard no more about Roote for six months or more. That’s a long sulk in my book so finally I mentioned him myself.

  Turned out the reason Pascoe said nowt was ’cos he’d nowt to say. He’d lost touch. Seems that when the medics decided they’d done all that could be done for Roote, he just vanished. Pascoe had traced him as far as Heathrow where he’d got on a plane to Switzerland. We knew he’d been there before. That’s where some of the funny letters had come from. This time no letters, not even a postcard. Best guess was, being Roote, he weren’t settling for a life viewed from belly level, he were going to spend some of that compensation dosh looking for a cure.

  Would have been easy enough for us to get a fix on him. Even in our borderless Europe, a foreigner in a wheelchair tends to leave a trail. But I reckon Ellie said to Pete that if Roote didn’t want to keep in touch, that was his choice.

  Now here he was, large as life, back on my patch—all right, on the very fringe of it—and I didn’t know a thing about it.

  I didn’t like that. Okay, I’d spent a bit of time in a coma recently, but that’s no reason not to know what’s going off.

  He maneuvered his chair alongside me and said, “I read about your bit of trouble and I’m so pleased to see reports of your recovery haven’t been exaggerated. Though tell me, is the bare foot part of a new therapy? Or have you finally joined the Masons?”

  That was Roote. Misses nowt and likes to think he’s a comic.

  I said, “You’re looking well yourself, lad.”

  In fact he was. If anything he looked a lot younger than the last time I’d seen him—not counting straight after getting shot, of course. The landlord came over to our table and set a glass of something purple with bubbles in front of him. Mebbe it were the elixir of life. If any bugger found it, it would be Roote.

  He said, “Thanks, Alan. And thank you too, Mr. Dalziel. Yes, I feel extremely well. So what brings you to sunny Sandytown? No, don’t tell me. Let me guess. I’d say you’re down here to convalesce at the Avalon. You must have arrived fairly recently, they are still completing their preliminary assessment, which you, growing impatient, have opted to preempt by making your own way to this excellent establishment.”

  Told you he were a clever bastard.

  I said, “If we’d caught you younger, we might have made a detective out of you, Roote. But I’m not complaining we caught you later and made a convict out of you instead.”

  “Still as direct as ever, I see,” he said, smiling. “Any minute now you’ll be asking what I myself am doing here.”

  “No need to waste my breath,” I said.

  “Meaning of course you’re just as capable as me at w
orking things out,” he said.

  Like a lot of folk who love playing games, Roote always reckoned other folk were playing them too. Don’t mind a game myself, long as I’m making the rules.

  I said, “No. Meaning I’d not believe a bloody word you said! But I can work out you’ve been here long enough for our landlord to know you drink parrot piss.”

  “Cranberry juice actually,” he said. “Full of vitamins, you really ought to try it.”

  “Mebbe after morris dancing and incest,” I said. “As for your reasons for being here, I’m not interested. Unless they’re criminal, which wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Oh dear. Still the old mistrust.”

  “Nay, just the old realism,” I said.

  Then I went on ’cos I’d never said it direct and it needed saying, “Listen, lad, I’ll be forever grateful for what you did for little Rosie Pascoe. Thought you should know that. Won’t make me turn a blind eye to serious crime, mind, but anytime you feel like parking your chair on a double yellow line in Mid-Yorks, be my guest.”

  His eyes filled. Don’t know how he does that trick, but the bugger’s got it off pat.

  “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Mr. Dalziel. And how is the girl? Must be growing up now. And dear Mr. Pascoe and his lovely wife, how are they?”

  “All well. He were a bit upset losing contact with you. What happened there?”

  He sipped his drink. I had to look away. If the buggers can ban smoking, I reckon at least they should put up screens for folk wanting to drink stuff that color.

  Then he said, “I was deeply touched by Mr. Pascoe’s concern for me. He’s a man I admire greatly. I would love to be able to think of him as my friend. Perhaps it was because of this that, as I gradually improved, I began to worry in case the gratitude he felt should become a burden. It’s all too easy for gratitude to turn into resentment, isn’t it? Mr. Pascoe is a man of intense feeling. Sometimes perhaps overintense. It was a hard decision, but I felt it might be best if I cooled things between us, so when I concluded that medical wisdom as it stood in the UK had done everything possible for me and decided to head abroad in search of other treatments, it seemed a good opportunity. I’m sorry if that sounds too altruistic for your view of me, Mr. Dalziel, but it’s the truth.”