LITMIR.BIZ

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      Pascoe picked up his daughter and held her high in the air to her great delight.

      ‘No, not a drop-out,’ said Ellie. ‘He couldn’t be there because he’s in jail.’

      ‘Jail? Good Lord.’

      Pascoe replaced Rose on the sofa and sat down beside her.

      ‘Tell me all,’ he said.

      ‘He was in some kind of fracas with a policeman. I assume it was the kind of horseplay which, if indulged in with another miner, would have got his wrist slapped. With a cop, of course, it amounts to sacrilege.’

      ‘You assume that, do you?’ mused Pascoe. ‘Is it an assumption based on evidence? Or, like that of the Virgin Mary, on faith and a dearth of eyewitnesses?’

      Ellie’s indignation was not to be diverted to the conspiracy of clerics, attractive target though it was.

      ‘An educated guess,’ she retorted. ‘As for evidence, I rather thought you might have mentioned the case to me before this, or does it come under Official Secrets?’

      ‘On the contrary. Assaults on police officers are, alas, so commonplace that they can go pretty well unnoticed, even in the Force. Like accidents to miners. As long as they don’t put a man in hospital for more than a few hours, who cares? But you must have had his mates’ version?’

      ‘Not really,’ admitted Ellie. ‘He’s the only one from his pit, so the others have only known him since he came on the course. One of them saw a paragraph about the case in his local paper.’

      ‘So where is he from, this whatsisname?’

      ‘Farr. Colin Farr. He works at Burrthorpe Main.’

      ‘Burrthorpe. Now that rings a bell. Of course. Both mysteries solved.’

      ‘I didn’t know there was even one.’

      ‘Mystery One. Why did it ring a bell? That was where one of the kids went missing that Watmough put in the Pickford frame. And our beloved ex-DCC never missed a chance of dragging the Pickford case into his many farewell speeches.’

      ‘You mean this man Pickford murdered a Burrthorpe child?’

      ‘Possibly. They never found her body. But Pickford’s suicide gave Watmough the chance to load several unsolved child-molestation cases on to him, plus the Pedley girl’s disappearance. Must have helped the serious-crime statistics a lot.’

      ‘Jesus!’ said Ellie. ‘How comforting! And what was the other mystery? You said there were two.’

      ‘Oh yes. Mystery Two. Why don’t I know about the assaulted copper? Because Burrthorpe’s in the South Yorks area, that’s why! Only just, mind you. Another quarter-mile and it would be on our patch, but as it is, the battered bobby is not one of Mid-Yorkshire’s finest, therefore I know nothing.’

      ‘How typically parochial!’ mocked Ellie. ‘How far is it? Twenty miles?’

      ‘Nearer thirty, actually. That’s quite a long way for your lad to come, isn’t it? He must be very keen to get out of Burrthorpe Main once a week.’

      ‘He’s certainly found an ingenious way of staying out even longer, hasn’t he?’ said Ellie, a little over-savagely.

      ‘Yes, dear. You don’t know anywhere round here where a hungry policeman could get a meal, do you?’

      Ellie rose and went to the door.

      ‘It’s salad,’ she said as she passed through. ‘I was a bit pushed.’

      Pascoe leaned over and looked down at his daughter who returned his gaze from wide unblinking blue-grey eyes.

      ‘OK, kid,’ he said sternly. ‘Don’t play innocent with me. You’re not leaving this sofa till you tell me where you’ve hidden the rusks.’

      Next morning Pascoe, finding himself with a loose couple of minutes as he drank his mug of instant coffee, dialled the number of South Yorkshire Police Headquarters, identified himself and asked if Detective-Inspector Wishart was handy.

      ‘Hello, cowboy!’ came the most unconstabulary greeting a few moments later. ‘How’s life out on the range? Got running water yet?’

      It was Wishart’s little joke to affect belief that Mid-Yorks was a haven of rural tranquillity in which the only crimes to ruffle the placid surface of CID life were rustling and the odd bit of bestiality. Any note of irritation in Pascoe’s response would only result in an unremitting pursuit of the facetious fancy, so he said amiably, ‘Only downhill. In fact things are so quiet here I thought I’d give myself a vicarious thrill by talking to a real policeman about some real action.’

      ‘Wise move. Anything in particular, or shall I ramble on generally while I’m beating up these prisoners?’

      ‘You could fill me in on one Colin Farr, of Burrthorpe. He got done for thumping one of your finest last week.’

      ‘Oh. Any special reason for asking, Peter?’ said Wishart suspiciously.

      ‘It’s all right,’ laughed Pascoe. ‘I’m not doing a commando raid. It’s personal and unofficial. My wife knows him, in a tutorial capacity, I hasten to add. She was concerned that he’d missed one of her classes, that’s all.’

      ‘Blaming it on the police in general and you in particular, eh?’ said Wishart, who had the shrewdness of a Scots lawyer which is what his family would have preferred him to be. ‘Burrthorpe, you say? Indian territory that. It was almost a no-go area during the Strike. You’ll remember the great siege? They just about wrecked the local cop-shop. I believe they’ve rebuilt it like a fortress. There’s a sergeant there I’ve known for years. I’ll give him a buzz if you can hang on.’

      ‘My pleasure,’ said Pascoe.

      In the ensuing silence Pascoe cradled the phone on his shoulder and burrowed in the bottom drawer of his desk in search of a packet of barley sugars he kept there. Man could not live on health food alone. When he surfaced, he found himself looking into the questioning gaze of Andrew Dalziel. Usually the fat man came into a room like an SAS assault team. Occasionally, and usually when it caused maximum embarrassment and inconvenience, he just materialized.

      ‘Busy?’ said Dalziel.

      ‘Yes,’ said Pascoe, carefully letting the barley sugar slip back into the drawer.

      ‘Won’t bother you, then. I just want a look at your old records. Mine are a mess.’

      He peered towards Pascoe’s filing cabinets, with the combative expectation of a new arrival at the Dark Tower. Pascoe, who knew why his superior’s records were in a mess (if he couldn’t find anything, he shook the offending file and shouted threats at the resultant shower of paper), rose in alarm. The phone was still silent.

      ‘Was it something in particular, sir?’ he said.

      ‘I’m not just browsing if that’s what you mean,’ growled Dalziel. ‘The Kassell drugs case will do for starters. I know you weren’t concerned directly but I know too you’re a nosey bugger, so what have you got?’

      What’s he doing digging up old bones? wondered Pascoe as he put the phone on the desk and went to the cupboard in which he stored his personal records.

      ‘Thanks, lad. I’ll keep an ear open for you, shall I?’

      Sticking his head out of the cupboard, Pascoe saw that Dalziel was in his seat with the telephone at his ear, taking the paper off a barley sugar.

      ‘That’s OK,’ he said with studied negligence. ‘It’s not really important.’

      ‘It better had be, lad,’ said Dalziel sternly. ‘Official phones these are. Some bugger rang Benidorm last week and no one’s confessing. Wasn’t you, was it? No. Not cultural enough for you, Benidorm. Can you find it?’

      Pascoe

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