An Advancement of Learning

by Reginald Hill

  Five witty answers and several bluntly obscene ones ran through Pascoe’s mind, but he used none of them, merely bowing Dalziel with as much irony as he dared to the desk.

  ‘What’s this lot then? Lot of bloody names. No good till we know who got the chop, are they?’

  ‘This might help,’ said Pascoe, delicately touching the central list.

  ‘Let’s see then. Persons reported missing between… well, you tell me, eh? There might be long words I’d have trouble with.’

  It would be nice to think the sneers derived from an affectionate respect. Or perhaps not. Dalziel, according to oral tradition, had destroyed whatever lay between him and his wife despite, or because of, his almost canine affection for her. That had been before Pascoe met him. He had learned the hard way just how much of Dalziel’s invitations to familiarity to accept.

  Now he picked up the list and gave it an unnecessary glance. It didn’t do to appear too efficient.

  ‘Only two real possibilities so far, sir,’ he said. ‘Mrs Alice Widgett, aged thirty-three, housewife. Last seen leaving her home on August 27, destination unknown. She left a tatie-pot in the oven and two children watching television.

  ‘Secondly, Mary Farish. Widow. Aged forty-five. She’s the nearest. Lived all alone on the outskirts of Coultram. She had a dental appointment at 3 P.M. on November 9th. She left home at 2.15, but never reached the dentist.’

  ‘That’s what I feel like, too,’ said Dalziel, sticking a nicotine-stained forefinger into his mouth and sucking noisily. ‘Best reason for disappearing I know. Well, the dentist’s a help. He’s still around?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll take details of the jaw along as soon as we get them from the lab.’

  ‘Who are taking their bloody time. Why no one else? It looks a fair list.’

  ‘Yes. Some of them are men, of course.’

  ‘Why? We know the sex, don’t we? Even I can tell the difference between a male and a female skeleton.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Pascoe soothingly. ‘I just thought it would be useful to know which men felt it necessary to disappear quietly about that time. And the other six women were either seen boarding trains or long-distance buses, or some subsequent contact has taken place, a postcard, a telephone call. This doesn’t cut them out altogether, of course.’

  ‘Worse bloody luck,’ said Dalziel gloomily. ‘Have you got someone contacting parents, family, friends, again?’

  ‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘It didn’t seem necessary. I’ll get their files of course.’

  ‘On which you’ll find nothing’s been done for five years. Naturally. We can’t spend our precious bloody time chasing around after runaway adults. But you’ll probably find half the sods have turned up again and no one’s thought to tell us. They usually don’t.’

  ‘I’ll get on to it right away,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘By the way. Did they have red hair?’

  ‘Mary Farish did. And the other’s described as auburn.’

  ‘It might help. But then she might have come from a thousand miles away.’

  ‘A Central European, you mean?’ asked Pascoe against his better judgment. ‘That would narrow things down.’

  Dalziel squinted at him calculatingly for a moment.

  ‘Shove off,’ he said. ‘We’ve all got work to do.’

  ‘Hey!’ he called after him. ‘What about that bint of yours? Get anything there?’

  He backed up the double entendre with a toothy leer. Pascoe answered straight.

  ‘Not much. I’m seeing her tonight for a drink. All in the line of duty, of course. She hasn’t been here long enough to know much. I did gather they’re having a bit of excitement at the moment. Some lecturer’s been knocking off a student and there’s a bit of a rumpus.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A fellow called Fallowfield. Biologist.’

  ‘That figures. Was he here five years ago?’

  He answered the question himself by running his gaze quickly down the list before him.

  ‘No. Then he’s of no interest. Dirty sod. Though it must be a temptation. There’s a lot of it around. I think I’ll take a walk and see what’s going on. You can stop here. You’ll need the phone.’

  Jauntily he left the room. Pascoe had to close the door behind him. He jerked two fingers at the solid oak panels.

  When he turned round he found two students solemnly staring at him through the large open window. They nodded approvingly, each tapped the side of his nose with the forefinger, and they went on their way. Despite the heat, Pascoe closed the window before he started his telephoning.

  Chapter 5

  Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree, where she espied water, that the water might rise so as she could come to it?

  SIR FRANCIS BACON

  Op. Cit.

  Sam Fallowfield sat in a deckchair in front of his cottage which looked down over the shingle to the level sands and the very distant sea. When the tide went out here, it kept on going till an onlooker could have doubts whether it ever meant to return. The cottage was solidly built of massive blocks of dark grey stone. It had been whitewashed at some stage but the salt and sand-laden winter gales had long ago stripped away this poor embellishment. It was an end cottage of a block of four, each of which had a small garden at the front and a shared cobbled yard behind. The other three were used only as holiday bases, one by the owner of the block only, while the other two were rented out by the week during the summer. Fallowfield alone lived there all the year round and had done so for the past five years ever since arriving at Holm Coultram.

  It was early evening. Soon the holiday-makers, temporarily his neighbours, would be returning from whatever exciting expedition they had so noisily launched that morning. But for the moment he had the place to himself. One or two featureless figures were distantly visible in pursuit of the sea. And away to his right a thin flag fluttered on an elevated plateau to mark the outermost boundary of the golf course. The college was completely out of sight more than half a mile inland.

  It was a situation to make a man as indifferent to society as Fallowfield sigh with contentment.

  He sighed.

  ‘That sounds as if it comes from the heart, Sam,’ said a voice behind him.

  ‘Come and sit down, Henry,’ he said without looking round. ‘You’ll find a beer and another chair behind the door.’

  Gratefully Henry Saltecombe lowered himself in the deckchair which he erected with a deftness unpromised by his podgy hands.

  ‘Hope I’m not obtruding, my dear fellow, but I felt like a constitutional before driving back to the bosom of my family.’

  Henry had a pleasant detached house on a modern estate about eight miles down the coast. It overflowed with four children, a dog, a cat, and his wife. He loved them all dearly but was rarely in a hurry to return home to them. He had married late when the habit of peace and solitude had long since moulded itself comfortably around his shoulders, and it was not easily to be torn away.

  ‘What happened to you then?’ Henry asked after he had opened a can of light ale and jetted it expertly into the O of his mouth. ‘I noticed you disappeared when all the excitement started. The Law has arrived in all its majesty, controlled by a corpulence in excess even of mine. There have been comings and I have no doubt there will be goings. I have even seen one or two students with facial expressions distantly related to alert, intelligent interest. Simeon suspects it’s an act of Walt, and Walt firmly believes it’s an act of God.’

  ‘And the police?’

  ‘The police are less public about their suspicions. But it is exciting. At first I thought it was merely some animal remains. But it appears to be certainly human. I myself think the solution is simple.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I have no doubt it will turn out to be a student jape. They knew all about the garden controversy. It was no secret and even if it had been, they have a supremely efficient intelligence system, if only in the milita
ry sense. So they get some bones, an anatomical specimen perhaps, and they bury them beneath the statue. What fun! Something to enliven a long, dull, very hot term.’

  Fallowfield grinned wryly.

  ‘I should have thought the term had been sufficiently enlivened already.’

  Henry was immediately apologetic.

  ‘My dear fellow, I never thought … that business is far too serious for anyone to be entertained by it.’

  Fallowfield twisted in his chair so that he could see the other’s face. Its rotundities were set in a pattern of sympathetic seriousness.

  ‘Come off it, Henry. It’s the most entertaining thing that’s happened here in years. One of the few consolations I have in it all is the pleasure I know I am giving my colleagues.’

  Henry shook his head in protest, then began laughing. Fallowfield joined in.

  ‘You see,’ he said.

  ‘No, Sam,’ said Henry. ‘It’s you. You just don’t strike one as a career man, so how can I worry about your career being ruined? It’s the effect on you personally that matters and you give a damn good impression of not giving a damn. Which makes it easier to spectate.’

  ‘Enjoy yourself as much as you can,’ said Fallowfield. ‘Who knows whose turn it’ll be next?’

  He said it lightly, but it stopped the conversation for a minute.

  ‘You did bed the girl, didn’t you, Sam?’ asked Henry finally.

  ‘I’ve never denied it,’ replied the other.

  ‘Here?’ He indicated the cottage.

  Fallowfield shrugged.

  ‘Up against a tree. Out among the dunes. In the principal’s study. What difference does it make where?’

  ‘She always struck me as a nice sort of girl.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘Every detail makes some difference, Sam,’ said Henry earnestly. ‘There’s a difference between casual promiscuity and a real love affair. And between malevolence and malleability. She says you conspired to get rid of her. I know this couldn’t be true. Now, does she really believe it, or is she merely being used?’

  ‘Used? How?’ Fallowfield’s tone was sharp.

  ‘Politically, I mean. Things have been quiet here for a while. They seem to have got all they wanted. But people like that youth Cockshut are never satisfied. And there’s something about Roote I don’t like either. They could be looking for another excuse to start trouble again.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Fallowfield laughed. ‘I suppose it might be something like that.’

  ‘You don’t seem much concerned.’

  ‘Why should I be? It’s all a game, isn’t it? It’s about as real as that.’

  He pointed towards the distant flag which was being held now by one unidentifiable figure while another tried to strike an invisible ball into the hole. From his demeanour it seemed likely he had missed.

  ‘You’re talking of the game I love,’ said Henry, glad to be able to shift from the seriousness of the past couple of minutes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Fallowfield with a smile. ‘I try never to be frivolous about other people’s games, then they won’t be amused or offended by mine. Games are all metaphors after all, and often euphemistic at that. Ah, here comes happiness.’

  A large shooting brake was jolting down the track which curved for a couple of furlongs from the metalled road down to the cottages. Even at a distance the car windows seemed incredibly crowded with faces.

  ‘Four adults, seven children,’ observed Fallowfield, ‘I still don’t know who belongs to whom. Adults or children. They go soon, thank God.’

  ‘I must be off this minute,’ said Henry, rising. ‘Thanks for the beer. Oh, by the way, I brought you some mail from your pigeon-hole. I didn’t know whether you would be in tomorrow. Not much. And one looks like your luncheon bill. You must come and have a bit of supper with us one night next week. Let me know when’ll suit you. ‘Bye.’

  ‘I will. ‘Bye.’

  They both knew he wouldn’t. He never did.

  Henry made his way back through the cottage and out into the courtyard, waving his walking-stick with mock ferocity at the tidal race of small bodies which poured out of the now arrived car.

  Behind him on the other side of the house, Fallowfield’s face had once more lost all trace of the animation it had held during Henry’s visit.

  He was staring down at the single sheet of paper he had taken from the first envelope he had opened.

  It was headed by that day’s date. The message was simple.

  ‘I must see you tonight.’

  It was signed ‘Anita’.

  Dalziel did not receive the report on the bones until after 7 P.M. Pascoe, anticipating fall-out from his superior’s wrath, had rung the lab at 5.30 to discover the report had been sent to the superintendent’s office. He re-routed it before reporting to Dalziel, who was much less condemnatory than might have been expected.

  ‘Limited minds,’ he said. ‘Specialization means you can only think about one thing in one way. I’m not specialized.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Traffic problems to pornographic films at Buckingham Palace. I’ll deal with them all. Now you, Pascoe. You’re in a dangerous position.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Dalziel had had another half hour alone with Landor. Pascoe reckoned the principal had been foolish enough to bring out the bottles. We all learn from our mistakes.

  ‘You’ve got specialized knowledge. Or think you have. Without being in a specialized job. You’ve got this … whatever it is …’

  ‘Degree, sir,’ said Pascoe helpfully.

  ‘I know it’s a bloody degree. But in something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Social sciences.’

  ‘That’s it. Exactly. Which equips you to work well in …’

  ‘Society, sir?’

  ‘Instead of which you have to work in …’

  ‘Society, sir?’

  There was a long pause during which Dalziel looked at the sergeant more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ he said finally. ‘You’re too bloody clever by half.’

  Neither ‘yes’, nor ‘no’ seemed suitable here, so Pascoe preserved a diplomatic silence.

  ‘I’m stopping here,’ said Dalziel suddenly. ‘Landor’s fixed me up with a room. It’s a long drive home.’

  To nothing, thought Pascoe. Dalziel seemed to read the thought.

  ‘You might as well stay too. There’s no reason for you to go back, is there?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Pascoe had had a date that night, but he had put it off hours earlier as he saw the way things were going. It had been a pity. He had felt certain he wouldn’t have had to spend that particular night alone in his flat.

  ‘Right. Then you’ll be at hand. They’re going to give us dinner in here. I think we’re a bit low for High Table. Conversation-killers, that’s what we are. Even you, Pascoe, who might have been One Of Them.’

  Pascoe again skirted round the comment.

  ‘What about the principal, sir? Isn’t he going to want this room back pretty soon?’

  Dalziel frowned.

  ‘I hope we’ll be able to give it to him pretty soon. But evidently part of these flash new buildings you see going up around the place is a new administrative centre. He’s quite happy to have an excuse to start in there ahead of schedule.’

  ‘Odd,’ said Pascoe. ‘This is … nice.’

  He looked around the comfortably proportioned, panelled room.

  ‘Doesn’t fit the new image, I expect,’ said Dalziel. ‘We’re still in Miss Disney-Land.’

  He laughed loudly at his own joke, his flesh shaking till he started an itch in the small of his back. This he erased against the corner of the desk, grunting with satisfaction.

  Dinner arrived early, about 6.45, and they were sawing through some rather stringy beef when the lab-report was delivered.

  ‘You read it,’ said Dalziel carrying on with his meal.
/>
  ‘Well?’ he said through a mouthful of apple crumble a few minutes later.

  ‘Female, middle-aged, been in the ground a few years, five or six would fit nicely. Skull is fractured in two or three places, probably the result of blows with a heavy instrument and almost certainly contributory factors in the death, there’s a lot of technical stuff about the bones which isn’t going to be of much help, she wasn’t a hunchback, or lame or anything like that. Height about 5’ 6”. A big-boned woman, normal weight expectation 9 to 9½ stone, but they can’t make a guess at whether she was relatively fat or thin, size 5½-6 in shoes, size 7½ in gloves. That’s interesting, left leg has been broken twice, but old breaks.’

  ‘Accident prone,’ volunteered Dalziel, scraping the remnants of custard from his plate noisily. ‘What else?’

  ‘The mouth should be a help. No less than three gold fillings, one a fairly complex job.’

  ‘We’ll need that dentist. Your Mrs Farish is the only one of your probables that the age fits. Anything more?’

  ‘Yes. That red hair. It was a wig. Or what was left of a wig. Real hair, mind you, but treated, and remnants of the binding fabric still remained. That could help.’

  Dalziel was unimpressed.

  ‘Too many bloody wigs about these days. You never know whether what you’ve got hold of is going to come away in your hand or not. What about clothes etcetera?’

  ‘Well, there were traces of fabric in the earth samples we sent along and they’ll let us know if they can make any definite pronouncements on the buttons, bits of metal and so on we picked up. They reckon the body was fully clothed and wrapped up in something, a blanket or a piece of curtaining. But they’re still working on it.’

  Dalziel poured himself a cup of coffee and stirred in two large spoonfuls of sugar.

  ‘The first thing then is for you to go and see that dentist. It’s a long chance, but at the least it will eliminate Mrs Farish. And then..’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then we’ll have to visit every dentist and doctor in the area. And eventually between here and Central Europe if necessary. Unless we get something else. Well, you might as well be off. You won’t want to finish that, will you? It’s cold.’