The Price of Butcher's Meat

by Reginald Hill

  Sunny optimisms no substitute for the real stuff—& it was maybe irritation at having my sunlit moment so quickly interrupted that made me object—but surely everything depends on the will? What if Lady Ds heir—or heirs—dont care to continue supporting her investment?

  He said—theyd be mad not to—the future was gilt edged—& there were safeguards built into the consortium agreement—to protect a survivor if one partner died.

  Instantly—you can see how my minds working!—I thought that sharp-eyed Pascoe would see this as a motive—specially once he ferreted out how Tom & Daph used to fight about various details of the scheme.

  Didnt say anything of course—but could see Mary was worried about what was going to happen next. As Ive said before—suspect she feels—for all her reservations about Daph—that at least the old girl acted as a counterbalance to Toms flightier notions! But it soon became clear he wasnt so naively optimistic that he hadnt been thinking about the will also. He said hed been in touch with his solicitor whod made contact with Lady Ds London lawyers—whod told him that their Mr Beard was already on his way up to Yorkshire. No details of the will were forthcoming.

  —but I do not doubt that Edward will inherit the bulk—they have been so close since Sir Harry died—said Tom.

  —& what about poor Clara?—said Mary—doesnt she deserve some compensation for what she has had to put up with?—

  Which prompted me to wonder where poor Clara was.

  I was told she had gone out shortly before I got back.

  —I think she just wanted to get some fresh air & walk around by herself—Mary told us—she said she thought she might pick up some of her things at the hall later—the poor child looked as pale as a snowdrop—tho of course some people do have that natural subtle skin tone—

  There can be few people less capable of malice than Mary Parker—but I still felt my ruddy sun-smacked cheeks were being glanced at!

  Tom went on to say that hed met Sergeant Whitby—whod told him he was searching for Hen Hollis—to help with inquiries—but he wasnt at home & no one seemed to have seen him since he left the Hope & Anchor last night.

  I think we all thought—last time Jug Whitby went looking for a Hollis—he found him dead!

  Tom had also checked out Diana. Shed sent apologies for not calling at Kyoto House this morning to offer moral & medicinal support—but her friend Mrs Griffiths had started packing to go home & Di was trying to dissuade her—presumably not wanting the word to spread that S-town was the new murder capital of the UK—& then the police had turned up to take Sandy in for more questioning! This had naturally thrown Di into a decline—from which she was still recovering—poor thing!

  Mary rolled her eyes heavenward as she listened to this—whether in exasperation at the hypochondria—or gratitude at being spared the visit—I couldnt tell!

  I noticed Minnie had done her stealth bomber thing at this point & materialized within eavesdropping distance—not wanting to miss hearing any fresh news her dad brought. Looking at her I felt a sharp pang of guilt—adults shouldnt off-load their crap on to kids—I can recall mum sermonizing the HB on that very subject!

  Time to build bridges.

  I said—hey there Min—what time are we going then?—

  She glowered at me & said—going where?—

  —thought wed arranged to go for a swim in the pool—I said—I know I said this afternoon but I could manage now if you like—of course if youre too busy…

  I could see her shilly-shallying between the chance to put me down & the prospect of going to the hotel & maybe seeing Uncle Sidney. No competition really. With a weary curl of the lip she could have sold to Ice Queen Esther—she said—oh all right—Ill get my things—

  —let Charley finish her coffee—commanded Mary—& say thank you—

  Minnie glanced at me sullenly & muttered—thanks—almost inaudibly.

  —didnt quite catch that—said Mary sternly.

  Tom & Mary both had their attention fixed on their sulky daughter—so I took the chance to put my fingers in my mouth—pull my lips wide—& roll my eyes—in my famous Mad Mavis act that always used to get you corpsing when I did it behind the HBs back!

  I judged my girl right. Her eyes opened wide—then she dissolved into peals of laughter—ran up to me—gave me a hug—& said—thanks a million!—before taking off into the house.

  —there—said Mary—its marvelous what a few well judged words will do—isnt it dear?—

  —how true—said Tom—You know—I think Ill stroll along with the girls to the hotel—I want to have a word with Sidney & get his take on what effect this business might have on the investment program—

  I could tell Min wasnt too delighted to have her dad tagging along—she was probably hoping to squeeze every last detail of my interview with the police out of me—but she did pretty well by making sure whenever the path got too narrow for 3 abreast—Tom was always the odd one out.

  To start with I went for an edited version—but eventually—maybe cos shes so sharp at spotting omissions—& also cos I dont think anyones too young to learn what cunning bastards the police can be!—I found myself telling her just about everything.

  Her shriek of indignation when I told her about Novello passing my emails to all & sundry had to be explained to Tom. He was less openly indignant—saying—if youd told me why you wanted to use the printer Charley I think I would have advised against it—

  When we came in sight of the hotel—& Minnie ran ahead as if she hoped Sidney might be waiting for her in reception—Tom went back to the subject saying—re those emails Charley—it might be well to think carefully in future about what you say to your sister—

  Behind all his sometimes daft optimism—Tom Parker is pretty sharp!

  —you mean theyd hack into my computer?—I said—horrified!

  He didnt answer direct but said—tell me about your security setup—

  So I did. When I told him that Id kept on getting blue screen which the accompanying message blamed on my firewall—so Id disabled it—he groaned.

  —Im going to get it sorted—I assured him.

  I didnt tell him that I was so nontech that in fact it had been loathsome Liam who disabled it when I mentioned my problem. Hed been going to download another firewall for me—but that went out of the window when I caught him poking my ex-pal up against that tree!

  —meanwhile youre an easy target—he said—for anyone!—

  Would the bastards really do that?—I wondered.

  Of course they would! I almost hope they do read this. BASTARDS! BASTARDS! BASTARDS! There—now I feel better!

  In reception we found Minnie chatting to the girl at the desk—who was telling her that she knew Sid wasnt in his room cos hed told her if anyone wanted him hed be in the Recreation Center.

  As we approached the pool area we could see a towel spread out on one of the luxurious sunbeds the hotel supplies for its well heeled clients but no sign of Sid.

  Then Min screamed—there he is! Not in delight—but horror!

  Lying on the water—facedown—quite still—arms & legs spread wide—was a pale naked body.

  Before we could stop her—Min had run forward & jumped straight in. I think Tom might have followed—but as the shock waves from the splash reached the body—it turned slowly over—& Sid Parker—shaking the water from his head—said—well hello young Minnie!—havent you forgotten something?—like taking your clothes off?—

  Cradling Min in his arms—he waded to the side. The girl was choking with relief—or maybe shed just swallowed a lot of water. I realized now Sid wasnt in fact nude—but wearing a pair of trunks—creamy colored like his skin—& tight enough to leave little to the imagination.

  Not that the sight engaged mine anyway. Suddenly Sid was no longer an object of my lustful fantasy. Indeed—memory of its enough to make me cringe with embarrassment! What an idiot I am Cass!—seeing everything—understanding nothing—but always 100 percent certain Im righ
t.

  What Im 150 percent certain Im right about now is that those long white limbs Id glimpsed in the cliff cave—spread-eagled beneath the barts bouncing buttocks—hadnt belonged to Clara Brereton—but to Sidney Parker!

  Now I recalled him walking away from me at Denham Park—his arm draped round Ted Denhams shoulders. Oh God! Me thinking the only reason for them to be closeted together was to hatch some cunning financial plot—then trying to decide which one of them I found the more gorgeous! Twit twit twit!

  & Esther, welcoming me into the house & flinging open doors. Bet she hoped she might let me catch them at it! Maybe it was her way of being kind. Cow!

  Well, I did catch them at it, didnt I? Only as usual my mind wouldnt let me compute what it didnt want my eyes to see.

  Didnt stay long at the pool. Tom was insistent on talking to Sid—& the pair of them went off to his room. Minnie not pleased—started a sulk—but Sid knows how to smooth her feathers—promised her he wouldnt be leaving Sandytown for at least another two or three days—& hed take her for a drive in the Maz. Gave me a sort of rueful glance—like hes caught on Ive caught on! At a guess Id say Sids dedicated High Church gay while Teds a lot more ecumenical. Not that that makes any difference to the way I feel about him now. Dont mind a boyfriend who thinks my lovely sisters a knockout—but I couldnt put up with one who started making eyes at George!

  Somehow neither me nor Min were in a mood for swimming—so after a few lengths we were both ready to head back home. More chance of getting updates here than at the hotel anyway—& if something interesting happens you dont want to be caught lying around in a wet swimming cozzie!

  Gap there. Minnie came bursting in at speed of sound—meaning I didnt hear her knock! She gasped the police were here—asking for me again. I said—who?—Novello?—& she said—no—a big fat man—could be Shreks brother if you painted him vomit green.

  Has to be Mr Deal—however you spell it. Whats he want? Minnie didnt know—so I chucked her out—said Id be down in a moment. But with him sniffing around—not to mention the rest of his gang—Im not risking leaving this around for anyone to see. Send & delete! You do the same, OK? Thatll show the bastards!

  Love

  Charley xxx

  VOLUME THE FOURTH

  My feelings tell me too plainly that in my present state, the Sea air would probably be the death of me.

  1

  “Peter! Salvere iubeo! Willkommen! Bienvenu! In any language, I am glad to see you!”

  Franny Roote was sitting in his wheelchair on the threshold of his cottage, so for a moment as Pascoe swiveled his legs to get out of the car, they were face-to-face and eye to eye.

  From many a mouth, such a greeting would have seemed ove-reffusive, even synthetic. But the glow of pleasure on the young man’s face was beyond fabrication.

  Wasn’t it?

  Pascoe said, “Good to see you, Fran.”

  He meant it, but with reservations.

  He’d been genuinely concerned to lose touch with Roote, and his relief at discovering he was alive and relatively well was equally genuine. But to see that slight figure sitting there in a wheelchair sent a pang through his heart at the memory of how he had got there. And then there were the circumstances of their meeting.

  He’d listened to Wield’s account of his interview with the man and read his witness statement, and with some relief had found nothing to suggest that Roote was anything more than a peripheral witness in the case.

  But now that he laid eyes on him again, for some reason there popped into his mind the famous response of the great Bill Shankly when asked if in his opinion a player who was not interfering with play could be judged offside.

  If a player’s not interfering with play, he ought to be!

  Around a crime—and Pascoe’s encounters with Franny always seemed to take place around a crime—somehow it was hard to believe he wasn’t interfering with play.

  He got out of the car and they shook hands, each bringing the free hand to intensify the greeting, both apparently reluctant to break the contact.

  Finally Roote said, “I thought we’d sit outside and enjoy the air, if that’s all right?”

  There was a rustic table with a bench set against the cottage wall. On the table stood a coffeepot, two mugs, and a cake on a plate.

  He was expecting me, thought Pascoe. Interesting.

  “Maisie’s Madeira, I presume,” he said.

  “I’m impressed. Sergeant Wield, of course? If I read him right, no detail of my simple life here will have gone unrecorded or unreported.”

  “That’s Wieldy,” agreed Pascoe. “Anything he misses won’t be missed.”

  “I see you still love a paradox,” said Roote.

  “In the abstract. But in reality, they can be a problem. For example, the paradox of why you, having made so much more progress than seemed likely, and knowing how concerned I was to keep track of this progress, should apparently have vanished off the face of the earth. And on top of that, why you finally should have settled down within a short car ride of where I live and never made contact.”

  Roote poured the coffee and cut the cake.

  Then he said, “Maybe I wanted to walk into your office one day under my own steam and say, ‘Hi! Here I am! Good as new!’ And lift the guilt from your shoulders.”

  “Guilt? You think I feel guilty?”

  “Sorry. Wrong word. Responsibility? Something like that. Whatever it is you feel whenever you see me. I wanted to take that away. And having got that scenario in my mind, I couldn’t settle for less. Sorry. It was silly. Egotistical, even.”

  “Seems pretty unegotistical to me,” said Pascoe. “Even Mr. Dalziel was impressed.”

  “Dear Andy! What a joy it was to see him again. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I rolled into the pub that day. Do you know, I was so pleased to see his face, at first I didn’t notice he was wearing a dressing gown and slippers—sorry—one slipper!”

  Pascoe murmured, “He’ll be flattered to know he had that effect on you.”

  “He’s one of the great originals, isn’t he? But part of my pleasure, a large part, was knowing that chance had done what I myself should have done months earlier. To see him was at one remove to see you, and whatever I said, I knew it could not be long before that remove was removed.”

  Pascoe took a large bite out of his slice of the cake because he had no idea how to respond to this intensity. Was there a homosexual element in it? There were so many ambiguous areas in Roote’s personality that it wouldn’t be surprising…

  “Peter, just for the record, I don’t fancy you,” said Roote. “Not touchy-feely fancy, so no need to worry lest I might leap from firm handshakes to slobbery kisses.”

  Pascoe swallowed a large bolus of Madeira and washed it down with coffee. He should have remembered that talking with Roote could be like having your mind scanned.

  “I never imagined…well, maybe I did wonder…look, I’m sorry, but to be honest, when you first started writing those letters to me, I thought you were taking the piss!”

  Roote grinned.

  “Maybe I was, a little. But that’s what friends do to each other, isn’t it? Listen, I think it’s your job that gets in the way. Imagine we’d just met, on a campus, say, at a gallery, in a theater, anywhere. You might have found me a touch eccentric, but amusingly so. And I might have found you a touch buttoned up, but intriguingly so. And if we met again a couple of times, I reckon we’d have drifted into being friends, which is how friendship happens, isn’t it?”

  “But…?”

  “But we met in circumstances which demanded you saw me as a suspect. And when the vagaries of English law saw me sent down, that initial relationship was frozen, apparently beyond all hope of dissolution. Myself, I soon realized that I needed to move on from any feelings of resentment and blame. But when I met you again, I saw that it was going to be much harder for you to move on from suspicion and distrust.”

  “So you thought, Hey,
I can change this guy!” said Pascoe, trying to lighten things up. “Was that because of some evangelical imperative, or simply as an entertaining intellectual exercise?”

  “Bit of both,” said Roote. “Then I began to realize this was really important to me. Without getting anywhere near slobbery-kiss territory, I found I really did like you, and it’s a shit feeling when you know someone you really like regards you as the pits.”

  “You’re saying what you did for Rosie you did to make me like you?” said Pascoe.

  “No,” said Roote. “I did it because that’s what friends do. And hey! Let’s not make too big a thing of this. I didn’t know that part of the deal was a madman with a shotgun who hated my guts!”

  “But when you found out, you still put Rosie first,” said Pascoe. “She talks about you, you know.”

  “Does she? I’d rather she forgot me. That’s another reason I didn’t want to roll in on you. Bad enough having you look at me with those big guilty eyes. No reason to load that stuff on a kid.”

  They sat and drank their cooling coffee in silence for a few minutes.

  Pascoe thought, Please God, don’t let me find that Franny Roote has anything to do with this case. Don’t face me with that choice!

  Which he knew wouldn’t be a choice.

  He set down his mug and said, “Tell me about your wanderings and how you came to settle in Sandytown. I got an outline from Wieldy, but I always prefer original sources.”

  “You and I both,” said Roote.

  He started talking. The style was anecdotal, the tone light and amusing. It was, thought Pascoe, like listening to a young gent of an earlier age just back from doing the Grand Tour. Where the reason for his journey was touched upon, it came over as hardly weightier than a visit to various spas to take the waters.

  Pascoe finally interrupted.

  “So in the end, there was nothing that gave any hope?”

  He hadn’t meant to be quite so blunt, but that was how it came out.