Instead the fat man said, "You"re right . . ." and Pascoe"s heart soared ". . I"ll go." And great was the fall thereof.
But before he could find a method of contradiction short of outright refusal, Downey who"d got some way ahead during this discussion returned.
"He"s not there," he said, causing Pascoe"s heart to raise its head hopefully.
"Not where?" said Dalziel, who always seemed to have trouble with Downey"s locative adverbs.
"At the end of the drift," said Downey.
"You mean he didn"t come in here after all?" said Pascoe, torn between relief and indignation.
"He must have turned off," said Downey.
"Turned off?" Pascoe echoed derisively. "Into solid rock?"
Downey didn"t reply but retreated a few paces and did just that.
"Oh G.o.d," said Pascoe.
But Dalziel went forward and said impatiently, "Bring that b.l.o.o.d.y torch!"
There was a side pa.s.sage here. It looked as if a natural fault had been widened by a pick. A draught of air blew through it, not fresh night air, but slightly warmer and with something slightly fetid on its breath.
"Downey!" called Dalziel.
There was no reply and no sign of the miner"s torch.
"Come on," said Dalziel.
"But what about getting help?" demanded Pascoe.
"The b.u.g.g.e.r who"ll need help is that half-wit Downey if he catches up with Farr and we"re not there," retorted Dalziel. "Come on."
There seemed to be no way the fat man was going to get through the gap but somehow he seemed to mould his bulk to fit the contours, and like a squid squeezing into a creva.s.se he vanished from sight.
Pascoe followed. Why not? It had been a day for new and deteriorating experiences. Now the drift seemed to him like a well-lit road. It was his fate, it seemed, to search for the tunnel at the end of the light.
His torch showed he was in a new world now; long stretches were wholly natural as if some ancient movement of the earth had prised these rocks apart. In places he had to duck beneath the atrophied roots of distant trees, sent deep-probing in search of fresh layers of earth and water which they never found. He glimpsed fossils in the walls of rock, leaves and ferns and ammonites, and his imagination turned other ridges and hollows into bones and skulls. And finally he knew that he was quite alone and this was that old nightmare come true in which he went further and further along a tunnel till it grew so narrow that he became wedged in it, unable either to retreat or advance.
Dalziel got through here, he a.s.sured himself. Dalziel got through here. Oh G.o.d! What he would give to hear a few comforting words from that deep certain voice.
"Look at the state of this f.u.c.king suit! Hurry up, lad and shine that torch on it. It"s b.l.o.o.d.y ruined. Look at it. Best tailor in Yorkshire made this, back when they knew how to cut cloth. It"ll be three years before I can get him to do another one."
"Why three years?" asked Pascoe, trying to control the joy in his voice at this summons back to a real world even if it were still subterranean.
"That"s how long he"s still got to do. I put the sod away for receiving stolen cloth, don"t you remember? He blamed it on the government allowing unfair compet.i.tion from the Far East. I reckon the trouble were a bit nearer east than that. Scarborough. That"s where he set his fancy woman up. Expensive tastes, that one. Where"s that daft b.u.g.g.e.r gone now? Downey!"
They were through the fissure and back in a tunnel which the timbered roof showed to be man-made. Up ahead a torch beam appeared and flashed urgently at them. They went forward and found Arthur Downey waiting for them.
"What now?" demanded Dalziel.
"Not so loud," whispered Downey. "The roof"s a bit dicey here."
Pascoe shot a triumphant glance at Dalziel, who said, "Then let"s not hang around under it. Mr Downey, if I can"t communicate with young Farr by shouting, what"re the odds of us getting within whispering distance of him?"
For the first time since this lunatic chase began, Downey seemed to have run out of certainties. He stared around as if surprised to be where he was. Pascoe knew the feeling, hated to know it was shared.
"Mr Downey," he said gently, "is there any point in going on?"
"What?" Downey looked at him as if taking this as a general philosophical inquiry and feeling inclined to answer no. Then he shook his head and said, "A little further. He might be ... a little further."
He set off once more. Dalziel looked at Pascoe and shrugged his shoulders before following. Pascoe once more found himself bringing up the rear. He walked slowly, letting his torch beam run up and down the walls in an effort to memorize their features. Of course, as long as there was no choice of route there was no chance of getting lost but he still felt as if he should be dropping white pebbles, or leaving a clue of thread to guide him back. But as he had neither thread nor pebbles, he"d have to make do with memory.
Of course he could always unravel his pullover, but Ellie wouldn"t like that. Her mother had knitted it for him and though Ellie herself would rather do hard labour on the Gulag than practise such a female submissive craft, she was fearsomely defensive of her mother"s artefacts.
Ellie. He wished he hadn"t thought of Ellie for now this thought turned naturally to Colin Farr and the relationship between them. What it was, he didn"t know. That it was intense he"d had plenty of evidence. It might not be s.e.xual but that didn"t matter all that much. There are other kinds of jealousy just as corrosive.
He"d stopped walking. His mind might go wandering in search of mental escape routes but his stay-at-home eyes, directed perhaps by his roaming thoughts, had spotted something on the wall. He beamed his torch sideways. It was unmistakable. A rough arrowhead scratched on the crumbling wall behind the line of wooden props. And another. Someone else had recently been this way, beset by fears of unreturning.
He let his torch beam move onward and upward. The unknown trailblazer had been wise to carve his traffic signs on wall rather than wood. The roof must have been particularly troublesome along this stretch. Props of warped and rotting timber bowed like the ribs of an ancient wreck under sagging cross beams. If Dali had painted the aisle of some ancient cathedral it might have come out looking like this.
We"re mad to be down here! thought Pascoe. Yet it had a strange fascination. A man could get used even to this. He had to breathe deep now to remind himself of just how rotten the atmosphere stank! G.o.d, it must be like this in a charnel house. Bones and blood and decaying flesh . . .
He flashed his torch ahead, fearful that he"d lost contact with the others, but there they were. They"d stopped still and he hurried to catch up with them.
He saw the reason for their hesitation. There was another side pa.s.sage. Dalziel was peering into it but Downey was shaking his head.
"No, he"ll not have gone down there. It"s a dead end down there. And the roof"s really rotten round here, we don"t want to hang around, just look at the state of it."
Pascoe raised his torch beam. The roof indeed looked bad but little worse than it had for the past many yards. Dalziel grunted and said, "All right, you"re the boss down here," without much conviction, but he did resume his progress down the main tunnel with Downey at his side. Pascoe was about to follow when his peripheral vision caught something he"d rather have missed. It was one of those lightly scratched arrows turning into the side pa.s.sage.
He could ignore it. He could call the others back. The one thing he couldn"t do was go down there by himself. Why then were his feet moving slowly, inexorably, into the pa.s.sage?
The air here was thicker, the stench of decay intensified. He took another couple of steps. The torch beam oozed ahead and touched something bulky, something still beyond mineral stillness. Tiny paws scuttered away. The torch rose slowly in his hand, involuntary as a diviner"s wand, tracing a crumple of dark-trousered legs; a swelling paunch; a broad chest on which lay like a tribute a narrow ca.s.sette recorder; two chins; a gaping mouth, a ragged moustache; eyes - one staring and one which something had begun to eat - a forehead laid open like a pathological model to show the brain beneath.
And Pascoe knew at last why Monty Boyle had proved so elusive over the past couple of days.
He went down on one knee by the body, motivated neither by piety nor professionalism, but merely by a weariness which had little to do with muscular fatigue. Everyone had limits and he suspected that he had come a body too far. Touch nothing, was the rule and he felt little incentive to break it, but that ca.s.sette recorder, Monty Boyle"s trade mark, might tell what the Man Who Knew Too Much had known.
He stretched out his hand to take it. Then froze as the horrors which he had thought to have climaxed, resumed. The darkness beyond, which he had taken for the gallery"s dead end, shifted, took shape, became distinct, advanced. And Dali"s cathedral had its resident angel.
"So we meet at last," said Pascoe inanely for the sake of hearing his voice.
But Colin Farr returned no words, though his face spoke for him as his young fair features contorted in rage and hate from guardian angel to avenging demon.
What have I done to inspire this? Pascoe wondered in terror. Then the young man launched himself forward. But the name he was screaming was not Pascoe"s but "Downey!" He was past in a single bound. Pascoe twisted round to see the deputy standing at the entry to the side pa.s.sage. He must have come back to see what was holding Pascoe up.
He only had time to retreat a half-step before Farr was on him driving him backwards by the force of his attack into the main tunnel.
His paralysis broken, Pascoe followed. Somehow Downey had broken loose. Pascoe seized Farr by the shoulder and cried, "For G.o.d"s sake, the roof!" But the young man hurled him away with incredible power for so slight a figure and flung himself on Downey with a brute force that drove him against the wall. Pascoe had fetched up against a prop which he distinctly felt give. On the other side he saw a couple more snap like matchsticks as Farr and Downey crashed against them. And overhead he heard the roof start to groan and creak like an old windmill straining into life. Neil Wardle"s words sounded mockingly in his head. Ever been a thousand feet under and heard the timbers cracking over your head?"
"Peter! Get out of there!"
It was Dalziel"s voice behind a torch beam which seemed a half-mile away. He looked at the struggling figures locked together like a pair of lovers for whom the earth is about to move. There was a noise like an explosion. Then he was running towards the voice and the light through a hail of earth and stone with chaos on his heels. The light seemed as far as yesterday and as dim as lost love, but he still thought that, by running faster and striving harder, he might make it. Pebbles. .h.i.t him like bird-shot, a larger rock clipped the back of his head; he stumbled, half fell, half recovered; then something much bigger and heavier crashed against the back of his legs, forcing him to the ground and pinning him there with pain and pressure till the darkness of the pit rushed in to take away pressure and pain together.
Chapter 8.
"Hold on," said Dalziel. "Give us that torch. There"s a foot here. By Christ, I"ve reached a foot. Question is, whose is it, and is it still attached? Answer is . . ."
He gently rocked the foot from side to side. Pascoe screamed.
"I reckon it"s thine," said Dalziel judiciously. "Right, let"s clear away a bit more of this rubbish and mebbe the dog can see the rabbit."
Pascoe had long since ceased to register the pa.s.sing of time in any normal mensural way but Dalziel had numbered every crawling second of the hour that had elapsed since the roof fall. He had no way of knowing precisely how long it would be before the roof immediately over their heads came down too, but that it would come he did not doubt. He had not trodden the rocky path to his present modest eminence without developing a keen scent for disaster.
At last his bloodied fingers had carefully picked the debris away from both Pascoe"s legs. The left he judged was merely severely bruised and lacerated, but the right was undoubtedly broken. He touched it with infinite care. The tibia had snapped and penetrated the skin. The fibula had probably gone too but he couldn"t be sure. The recommended course would be to leave him alone till a doctor could get there with morphine and a stretcher. Dalziel was not a man who"d ever found recommended courses much help, and with a roof groaning above him like a junior officer half way through a staff college lecture, he saw no reason to be converted now.
Various sections of timber unearthed during his digging he"d set to one side. Selecting a thick splinter from a collapsed prop, he trimmed its edges with the boy scout"s knife he always carried. Another piece got the same treatment. Then he pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips.
"Peter," he said. "Even allowing that this shirt cost me twenty quid, this could hurt you more than it hurts me."
The pain brought Pascoe momentarily out of the timeless mists into the black present before it cut off consciousness altogether. When he came round again, he was over Dalziel"s shoulder and his bound and splinted leg was being gently steadied by the fat man"s huge paw to prevent it from swinging as he was carried along.
"Where are we going?" he croaked after three dry runs at it.
"Is that you, lad, or am I being followed by a frog?" said Dalziel.
"Where are we going?"
"I"m not sure but I know where we"re coming from. Listen."
Behind them in the darkness there was a grinding, cracking sound which crescendoed into a discord of rushing earth and crashing rock as another section of roof came down. Pascoe felt a blast of air against his face, then he was coughing again as the tidal bore of dust projected by the fall swept by them.
Carefully Dalziel lowered him to the ground.
"We"ll rest here a while," he spluttered. "Till this lot clears a bit."
"You should have left me," said Pascoe.
"That"s the kind of thing they say in movies," reproved Dalziel. "Your missus always said you watched too many movies."
"Did she? At least you know where you are with a movie."
"Paying to sit in the dark and be frightened, you mean? We"re getting all that free, gratis and for b.u.g.g.e.r-all, here," said Dalziel.
"What"s my leg like?" asked Pascoe, after a timeless excursion into the misty hinterland of his mind.
"Well, you"ll be hard pushed to play full back for England unless you"ve got an uncle on the selectors," said Dalziel. "But I dare say you"ll be able to turn out for the Chief Inspectors" darts team, if selected."
"Chief Inspector . . . ?"
"You"re not that far gone, then? Aye. Congratulations. Not official yet, but it"ll be posted next week."
"But I thought. . ."
". . . thought that being in my company so much had likely scuppered your chances? Nay, lad, I"ve got influence where it matters. I used the threat of resignation to make "em take notice."
Even through his pain, Pascoe was dumbfounded.
"You threatened to resign if I didn"t get my promotion? But. . ."
He couldn"t say it, not even in these confessional circ.u.mstances; he couldn"t say: But why didn"t they jump at the chance of getting rid of you?
Dalziel coughed a laugh.
"I think mebbe you"ve got things wrong," he said kindly. "I didn"t tell "em I were going to resign if you didn"t get promoted. I told "em I"d not even think of retirement until you had been promoted! That must have made the b.u.g.g.e.rs take notice. So you can see, I"ve got a big investment in you, Peter. If you snuff it, they"ll never learn what verbal understandings are really worth, will they? So come on, let"s find our way out of here."
"Is there a way out?" asked Pascoe faintly.
"There"s still plenty of air, isn"t there? I"m sure I can feel a draught on my face," said Dalziel as once again he lifted Pascoe and draped him over his shoulder. "Any road, I don"t think yon wild b.u.g.g.e.r, Farr, was daft enough to go running into a dead end, do you?"
The renewal of pain made it impossible for Pascoe to give this a considered answer. He closed his eyes and tried to will the darkness to blank him out once more, but just as success seemed close, Dalziel halted and lowered him to the ground again.
"I think you"ve come to the end of the road, lad," he said. "What?"
"No, I don"t mean euthanasia, I just mean I reckon this might be the exit, only I don"t think I"m going to be able to get you through there without help."
He shone the now very faint beam of his torch ahead. The tunnel began to slope sharply up and the ground was covered with debris. A few yards on the debris was piled high to the roof and at first glance it seemed as if the way must be blocked. But high up the pile, almost at roof level, there was the dark circle of a smaller tunnel as if someone had burrowed their way through. More significantly, there was now an unmistakable draught of air blowing towards them.
"I"ll not be long," said Dalziel. "You"ll be all right?" Pascoe nodded. He looked longingly at the torch but knew that it would be ridiculous to ask if he could keep it when Dalziel"s need was so manifestly the greater. But to lie here alone in the dark . . .
"I"ll be off, then," said the fat man.
Pascoe"s mind was searching feverishly for some excuse to delay Dalziel"s departure.
"There was no food at the White Rock," he gasped. "Did you notice? And the knife ... if Mycroft helped Farr to get out of the hospital, he"d not have needed a knife . . ."
"That"s right, lad," said Dalziel. "That"s good. Funny how it takes a leg dropping off to get some people thinking like a Chief Inspector. Pity you hadn"t thought about it earlier, though. Mind you, neither did I. But I"m excused on account of being uneducated and nearly senile. Take care, lad. And don"t move from here, promise?"
He watched the pale cone of torchlight zigzag slowly up the slope.
Then the maw of the secondary tunnel swallowed it up as Dalziel wriggled his surprisingly flexible bulk into the gap and sent the darkness pouring down on Pascoe in a mighty torrent.