He lay in that flood and tried for unconsciousness but the best he could manage was to drift outside of time. Pictures formed on the shifting surface of the dark, and when he closed his eyes they were on the inside of his eyelids too. He saw Downey, dog-like, wolf-like, drowning in darkness; he saw a young girl with long blonde hair drift by on the stream of the dark with a posy of dog-rose and bramble leaves clutched at her breast; and he saw a young man moving gracefully through the dark like an Arcadian shepherd boy splashing through the shallows of Alpheus and laughing at the silky naiads as they tried to draw him down. It seemed to Pascoe that the youth stooped over him and applied sweet damp cresses to his parching lips and that as he turned and loped gracefully away, his head was framed by a sky of Dorian blue.
Then the darkness surged upwards and the boy disappeared, and towards him, wading chin deep, came a full-faced man with a ragged moustache, talking incessantly into a ca.s.sette recorder which he held to his desperate lips. He seemed to see Pascoe and reached out to him as the dark came bubbling up, then fell forward and vanished from sight. But his outstretched hands grasped desperately at Pascoe"s waist and took a firm grip on his jacket and he screamed as he felt himself also being dragged down beneath the darkness.
Then he awoke and found that the darkness and the terror at least were no dream. He shifted his position uneasily. The pain was still hot in his leg. But his mouth no longer felt so cracked and dry. The power of auto- suggestion, he told himself. There was something digging into his side.
A body in pain often finds the smaller discomfort a greater distraction and he set about removing this lump of stone he had settled upon. Except that it wasn"t a lump of stone, it was something actually in his jacket pocket. He reached in, pulled it out. He couldn"t see it but his fingers told him what it was.
Monty Boyle"s ca.s.sette recorder.
Then he was back in the side gallery finding Boyle"s body. Now he remembered everything so clearly that he knew why he had wanted to forget.
Except that he couldn"t remember pocketing the recorder.
In fact he would have sworn that in that moment of terror at Farr"s appearance, he had let it fall back on the dead man"s chest. But here it was.
"And I don"t believe in ghosts," he said out loud.
And shrieked as a little red eye winked at him and the ca.s.sette vibrated gently in his hand.
It was of course voice-operated, tuned and directed so that even in a crowded pub it would pick up the conversation between Boyle and the man directly in front of him without admitting enough peripheral noise to mask the words.
The j.a.panese were truly marvellous, thought Pascoe, not least for creating something st.u.r.dy enough to survive what he"d been through. And what Boyle had been through too, of course, poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Ike Ogilby got value for money out of his reporters. Recently Pascoe had helped get one of them jailed. Now here was another getting himself murdered. In-house scoops, impregnable exclusives. Lucky old Ike.
As his mind wandered idly, his fingers were moving to more purpose. They had found the b.u.t.ton to run the tape back. When it stopped, he pressed the next b.u.t.ton. And suddenly he was no longer alone. There were voices with him in the darkness and as he lay there and listened, his mind"s eye gave them form and substance also.
"Christ, you scared me!"
Monty Boyle. But he didn"t sound scared. He"d probably heard someone coming and gone towards him, preferring for some reason to meet him out of that horrible side gallery.
"Did I?"
Downey. Always sneaking up on people, Downey. A bad habit.
"You surely did. What are you doing down here, Mr Downey?"
"Same as you, likely."
"I was watching the Farr boy. I saw him go down this hole, so when he came back out again, I thought I"d take a look."
"Me too"
"To tell the truth, I"m pleased to see you. I"ve marked my way back, but I"m not used to crawling around like a mole, so it"s good to have an expert along. "
"What have you found, Mr Boyle?"
"Sweet f.a. I reckon I"ve ruined a good suit for nothing. Come on, let"s get back topside and I"ll buy us both a stiff drink. I don"t know about you but I"m gasping for one. "
"How far did you go, Mr Boyle?"
"Just a bit further. Not much. I thought: This is pointless. And dangerous. So I just turned round and..."
"You didn"t go down that gallery?"
"What? That side pa.s.sage, you mean? No, I didn"t like the look of that. Come on. . ."
"Your marks turn in there. "
"Do they? Surely not. I mean, I may have taken a glance but. . .."
"You"re a liar! You"ve been in there! Why are you lying to me?"
There was a pause. Cla.s.sic interrogation technique, thought Pascoe with professional detachment. Test a good story with total disbelief. Make the suspect budge an inch and you had him. The best never budged. But perhaps Boyle was more used to asking questions than answering them ... He waited. It was quite suspenseful, even though he knew the outcome.
"I"m sorry. You"re right. Look, I can tell you. I did find something. A child"s bones. You see what this means, Mr Downey? I didn"t want to distress you, but it means your friend, Billy Farr, must have hidden the girl there after he . . . after it happened. Look, I"ve been thinking, maybe there"s no need for this to go any further. What can the police do now? What can anyone do? Maybe it"s best just left forgotten. Let"s get out of here and talk about it over that drink, shall we?"
Boyle knew, thought Pascoe. Perhaps he was sharper than the rest of us and had his suspicions already. And I should have had mine too! He recalled Downey"s face when they"d confronted Mrs Farr with the dog"s bones. Pale and trembling. Memory of a lost friend, they"d thought. But it had been the shock of realization just how close to the truth Colin Farr must be getting. And when he got Ellie"s message and guessed that Farr was proposing to hide down here, he knew that discovery was getting ever closer.
I was slow! Pascoe told himself in anguish. When I saw that Downey hadn"t brought any food . . . when I saw that knife ... if I"d stopped to think, I could have stopped all this. They could still have been alive, Downey . . . and Colin Farr . . .
"Billy"d not do that! You didn"t know Billy. He was my friend, he"d not harm a fly let alone that la.s.s . . . Never!"
Well, if it wasn"t Billy, it must have been Pickford after all. Killed her and brought her down here. That"s what I"ll write in my paper. You"ll be able to read all about it next Sunday."
Poor Monty. The Man Who Knows Too Much. The man with an answer for everything. Monty Boyle, confidant of cops and robbers alike, equally at home in the corridors of law and the alleys of the underworld. Except that now he"d found himself in an underworld whose geography was beyond his plotting, facing a mind whose workings were dark and twisting beyond his understanding. And now The Man Who Knows Too Much knew everything ... or nothing.
"That"s what you""ll write, is it? Not the truth? You wouldn"t rather write the truth?"
Downey"s voice no longer strident, but teasing, wheedling. The suspect ready to cough, eager to cough, just requiring his audience to be grateful, attentive, sympathetic . . . Leave it, Boyle! Walk away from it! Show no interest. You can still survive . . . could still. . .
"Yes, indeed, Mr Downey. I"d very much like to write the truth. Why don"t you tell it to me?"
So there it was. In the end poor old Monty Boyle had died of journalism. He gave up any chance he had of talking his way above ground because he could not resist a good story, an exclusive, a scoop . . .
"I saw them that day, Billy and Tracey. I were lying up above the White Rock, watching. . . you get a grand view up there, all sorts of things. The tricks some of these young uns"ll get up to! Not just the young uns either, I were watching Harold Satterthwaite that day. Christ, he were really giving it to her! She were young enough to be his daughter too, and he"s older than me . . . was ... it makes you think ... it made me think: Why"m I up here watching and he"s down there . . . never mind. I saw Billy go back down the path with the girl, and a bit later Harold and Stella got dressed and went straight down through the woods towards the road. I started scrambling down the side of the White Rock and I got up a bit of speed, you know the way you do when your legs are nigh on running away with you! And I came down the last bit to the path right fast. Well, Tracey were there again. She must have come back up by herself. She were dead scared when she saw me. It"s understandable, someone bursting out of the bushes like that. She just turned and started to run. And I set off running after her. All I wanted was to tell her it were all right, it was only me and I meant her no harm. But when you start chasing someone. . . have you ever chased someone, Mr Boyle?"
"Not like that, Mr Downey. Not like that."
"No? Well, it"s . . . exciting. But all I meant was to stop her and tell her... all I meant. . . Then I caught up with her and I grabbed her. I had to get hold of her, you understand, I had to touch her, to make her stop so"s I could tell her . . . that"s all I wanted . . . but she kept on struggling and she started yelling and I had to stop her in case folk heard and got the wrong idea . . . and I kept on thinking of Harold . . . And then she were dead, Mr Boyle. All slack and loose. Dead!"
Pascoe lay in pain and darkness and felt the other"s darkness and pain. But the sharing stopped a long way short of forgiving. He thought of Rosie (What time did that creche close, for G.o.d"s sake? Surely they wouldn"t just dump her out on the street. . . ?) And he thought of where these first desperate steps had led this pathetic murdering b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Even Pickford in the end could not live with himself. But Downey was determined to live his stunted life for ever, no matter who else had to die.
He"d drifted a bit, missed a little of the tape. It didn"t matter. He could fill it all in now. Super-tec, that"s what he was. Super Chief Inspector tec . . .
"... I didn"t mean to harm Billy. He were my mate. I"d have done anything for Billy. I"d not have let him get in bother for me, you can be sure of that. I"d have come forward . . . But once the coppers decided Pickford had done it, I thought it"d be all right. . . they seemed so sure ... so sure . . . sometimes I began to wonder if mebbe Pickford hadn"t really done it after all. Mebbe she were just unconscious when I left her. . . mebbe he came along and found her ... I mean, he did it to all them other la.s.ses, didn"t he? b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Any road, I went out for a walk that day, Boxing Day, it was. I could see that brother-in- law of mine wanted me out of the house and I knew what for. He"d be at it every hour that G.o.d sends if he could. I don"t know how my sister puts up with him. I lie awake nights and I can hear them in the next room ... So I went for a walk and I went up along the ridge where the old workings are, no special reason, just for a walk. Then I spotted Billy"s dog, Jacko. He were worrying away at this old overgrown pile of spoil near the old shaft. I just stood and watched for a bit, never thinking anything except that Billy"d likely be along shortly and we could have a crack. I swear I never thought. . . can you believe it? This was where I"d put the girlie"s body, and I"d forgotten!"
Forgotten. Who has remembered? who has . . . but the world will end when I . . . forgive . . . forgo . . . forsake . . . forlorn . . . back to the waking nightmare, the living darkness! Concentrate, concentrate. Listen to the mad b.a.s.t.a.r.d!
"... . I"d come this way looking, most of the others searched in the woods and down near the road where I dumped the pail, but a few of them wanted to check the covers on the old entries, so I came up here too. I"d covered the spoil up so it didn"t look touched and now I brought some stuff I had for the allotment, keeps dogs off your veg, and I sprayed it round there so that if the coppers did bring dogs in, they"d not go near. I thought that were pretty clever. . ."
"Oh yes. Very clever, Mr Downey. But now..."
"Oh aye. The stuff had washed off long since, I expect, though being so cold you"d have thought. . . anyroad, here was Jacko scratching away and suddenly it dawned on me what he were scratching after! I tried to shoo him off, but he paid no heed. Once that little b.u.g.g.e.r got a scent, he"d not leave it alone till Billy told him. I gave him a kick, a right belt, and he took a snap at my ankle. But he still went back to his scratching. 1 had to do something, didn"t I? I picked up this rock and I brought it down hard. I just meant to stun him, that were all. But mebbe the rock were sharp or mebbe he had a thin skull. Anyway, it just seemed to go through the bone like tissue paper. I could see he were dead right away. And when I looked round, there was Billy standing watching me. He looked like ... I don"t know... I went to him to explain it were an accident ... I hadn"t meant... I held out the rock to show him how sharp it was. He knocked my hand aside. He went to Jacko and knelt down by him. He was right next to where the beast had been scratching. I had to get him away from there before he noticed anything. I put my hand on his shoulder and he turned and looked up at me and I.. . it were an accident! He was my best friend. It were an accident. . . !"
So many accidents. The child, the dog, his friend . . . Arthur Downey, the man who lived by accident. . . And here am I! Just another piece of debris on the fringe of a Downey accident, laughed Pascoe unconvincingly.
"...I broke open the covering, it were half rotten anyway, a real danger, someone like Billy walking up there by himself could easily have fallen through it, it"s a scandal the way the council. . . Any road, I tipped Billy down so it"d look like he fell. His head weren"t so bad to look at, but I knew that any fool could spot that Jacko hadn"t just got hurt in a fall, so I had to get rid of him . . . and the la.s.s too, I couldn"t leave her so close to the shaft, not when all them b.u.g.g.e.rs would be tramping round there once they found Billy. So I had to ... dig . . . and I wrapped her in my donkey jacket and I climbed down the shaft, I just dropped the dog down, but her 1 carried. I"d been down here when I were a kid, we were wild young b.u.g.g.e.rs in them days me and Billy, we went everywhere together. . . and I knew I could get through to the roadway. I just left them a short way in-bye. I only had a lighter to show the way and bare flame"s b.l.o.o.d.y dangerous. Then I got off home, needn"t have worried about sneaking in, that dirty b.u.g.g.e.r was still at it. But I were worried about them just lying there, so soon as I could I came back up with a torch and a little shovel. They"d found Billy by then and they"d started to seal off the shaft, but I know other ways of getting down here, like you found, Mr Boyle. And I brought the la.s.s down here and I buried her in my jacket and left the dog at the entrance, like a guard sort of. . . "
"There"s no dog bones in there, Mr Downey. Just. . . No dog bones. "
Poor Monty. Still thinking he was getting a story he could write. Still wanting loose ends tied up. Of course there were no dog bones. Farr had removed them. The same night. This must be . . . when? Monday, that was it. Tuesday, Farr had come out of the pit, turning Mycroft into a ticking time-bomb en route, before getting drunk and ringing Ellie . . . Ellie . . . better to think of Monday, only two days ago, unless it was past midnight. . . could it be so late? It could be any time! Back to Downey, justifying himself like a word processor and feeling all the time that a malevolent fate was pushing him to an unmerited downfall. . .
" . . It"s Farr, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d! He"s not half the man his dad were ... I knew he"d been snooping ... all I wanted was that he"d go off again ... he did before, just up and left Billy . . . not that I minded ... he was always getting in the way, Billy couldn"t see what a useless b.u.g.g.e.r . . . I"ve tried to get shut of him . . . I"ve let him see his mam would be well taken care of... I tried to stir up trouble between him and Harold so he"d go too far and get the sack ... I told Harold he"d been saying things . . . and I left him a note hinting that Harold were still stuffing Stella . . . but he"ll not go . . . and now he"s found Jacko . . . and you"ve found . . . why"s he not go? He doesn"t like it round here, he keeps telling everyone. So why does everyone love him?"
The voice became a scream. The climax was near. To be unloved, this was the worm which gnawed at Downey"s heart. One man he had been able to claim as friend and perhaps that friendship had really only flourished in his imagination. He had built a life and personality around being pleasant and helpful and amenable; unable to inspire love, he had given vegetables; and when he murdered his "friend", he had tried to create a living memorial to the friendship by a dog-like devotion to May Farr. But no dog, this; a wolf rather, slinking and treacherous.
And now from the tape came the sounds of poor Monty Boyle"s death. Convinced at last by that final despairing cry that he was in deadly peril, he must have panicked and tried to push past Downey and follow his marks to the surface. But he was already in his grave from the moment he allowed Downey to tell his tale. There was a noise like a dog panting, a crunch like a cleaver splitting a cabbage, a bubbling groan. Then Downey"s voice, faint, uncertain, speaking the inevitable epitaph.
"It were an accident...."
Then silence. It lasted two days in real time but only a few seconds on the tape before the next voice alerted its sensors.
"Oh Downey, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
Colin Farr. Running from the police simply because he scorned to run with them. Had he suspected Downey before the man attacked him at the White Rock? Or had he perhaps disliked the man too much to suspect him? But now as he flitted easily through these dark galleries, his mind must have been working, working, till his feet brought him here where he had found Jacko"s bones, and there was Boyle stretched out like a confession on a charge-room table . . .
"So we meet at last."
Who was that? The voice had startled him almost more than anything else he had heard. Not Farr. Not Downey. He"d know their voices anywhere. This was a stranger. Who else had been down here? Who else had spoken in that narrow corpse-chamber to alert this hidden witness? A phantom . . .? A spirit. . .?
"And I don"t believe in ghosts!"
And now Pascoe smiled.
It was himself of course. Speaking before he plucked the recorder from Boyle"s waistcoat and thrust it into his pocket where it remained m.u.f.fled till he took it out a few minutes ago.
He had come full circle and met himself. In folklore, the shock of that strange meeting always brought death.
He lay back now and closed his eyes. There seemed to be less pain now. Soon it would be gone altogether. And with it, hate and jealousy and striving; touch, taste and sight, and scent, and sound.
Already the pa.s.sions had died and now the senses were fading too. Another hour would have probably set him completely free.
As it was, he didn"t hear the noise of the men digging down to rescue him and he couldn"t feel the gentle touch of their rough hands as they bound him to a stretcher.
But he never lost the taste of wet cresses from his mouth. And eventually the scent of a soft night breeze caught at his heart and stirred the slow blood in his veins. And when he opened his eyes, he saw the stars again.
Envoi.
. . . Then he turned round, And seemed like one of those who over the flat And open course in the fields beside Verona Run for the green cloth; and he seemed, at that, Not like a loser, but the winning runner.
After the ambulance had borne Pascoe away, with Ellie grey from worry at his side, and Dalziel a-glow from whisky at his head, the men of the Mine Rescue Service descended once more into the old workings.
Monty Boyle they brought up first, to be laid with reverence beneath the headlines of his own exclusive. Then Arthur Downey they dragged from his lair back to a world which had patted his head and scratched his ears but never let him into its living-room.
Finally they bore Colin Farr"s body and Tracey Pedley"s bones into the clear night air, softly scented by the westerly breeze sighing through the golden-leaved, owl haunted trees of Gratterley Wood, where the little girl had played with her forgotten and forgetting friends, and where the young man had first tasted and given love, and the world had seemed to promise both that all manner of things would be well.
Beyond the wood on the next rise, blocking out the bright slant of the northern stars, loomed the pit-head. The Wheel turned, the Cage descended, the conveyor clacked endlessly, the trucks were filled, the spoil heap grew.
An alien spirit or a simple child watching from Gratterley Wood might have thought that the process consisted of pouring men into a dark pit where by some strange sorcery they were changed into dust and coal, and so returned to the surface.
The spirit or the child might have been right.
end.