The Price of Butcher's Meat (67 page)

R E G I N A L D H I L L

embarrassing, not to mention the revelation of all those little corners
we’ve cut, those little pleasures we’ve enjoyed. I must say I’m surprised at
you, Andy, choosing to hide Mildred in the cistern! The indignity to her
person apart, nowadays we have all been so educated in criminality by
televi sion that it’s the first place anyone would look!

But no need to worry about her. She is quite safe. No worries about
me either. Restored to rude health by a miracle (and it was a miracle,
Andy, with only the timing a little displaced) I shall not readily forget
that I owe God a life. I have my literary work, I have my Third Thought
mission, I have the woman I love by my side—what possible threat can
I pose to the world in general or yourself in partic u lar? Like Scrooge I
am a converted sinner. My name will probably descend to future genera-tions as a synonym for benevolence and magnanimity!

So there we are, Andy. Tell Peter I shall drop in on him soon, to let
dear Rosie see for herself that I am still the same
upright
young man I
always was!

Will our paths cross again?

Of course they will, in this life or the next.

So let me end not with a definitive good- bye, but with a hopeful
auf Wiedersehen
!

By the way, to delete, you just press the small D symbol on the bottom left of the control pad. Then if you want to delete everything, press
it again.

Be clever, dear Andy, and let who will be good!

Slainte!

3

Andy Dalziel walked clockwise three times round the room then three times widdershins.

This had no superstitious significance, it was simply a refl ection of the maelstrom of warring emotions raging around his mind.

Rage indeed was there, rage that the sly serpent Roote had managed to wriggle into his head and leave his slimy trail across the in-nermost recesses. Fear was there too, fear of what might be the outcome of this invasion. Mildred had been a mistake. From the beginning of time, man had been taught the lesson that confi ding your most intimate thoughts to a woman was a recipe for disaster, but still he never learnt!

Yet also there was a sense of self-congratulatory pleasure at having his vague suspicions confirmed. About Roote, about Alan Hollis, about the whole damned business!

Allied with this, however, was guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t spoken out. But how could he have done? he defended himself. With Peter Pascoe in charge, everything Dalziel said had rung in his own ears like the smart-ass commentary of a know- it-all spectator on the touchline. But there was more to it than that, he had to admit. He had repressed his suspicions because he liked Alan Hollis, liked him for his excellent beer and his welcoming manner. What had he called him? The prince of landlords!

Put not your trust in princes!

And there was resentment. Resentment at having this moment of decision thrust upon him just when it felt like he was going to be able to walk away from Sandytown, close that book, put it on the shelf and 5 1 4

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never open it again. He’d even managed to get his head round the alleged miracle of Roote’s cure. It had entertained him to think that now the manipulative bastard was going to be able to shack up openly with Esther Denham. She was very bright and very mixed up, a combination which, with luck, might prove enough to give the doting Roote a taste of his own medicine! Also—a much bigger plus—the

“miracle cure” had acted as the spark to ignite the sexual atmosphere he’d felt surrounding Charley and the healer from the start. Every story should end with at least one couple walking off into the sunset, and it had warmed his cockles to see that ill-matched pair fi nally getting together.

How the revelation of the truth about everything would affect them, he wasn’t sure. Probably not at all. They were young, they were resilient. But there were others who would suffer. He guessed that Cap would forgive his one-off with Pet, but it would mark the end of the unspoken absolute trust he felt existed between them. What would old Fester make of the news that Pet loved him so much she was willing to open her legs to another man on his behalf? Maybe he would remember his own sessions with the Indian maid. Or maybe he would exercise the ancient right of men to require better behavior of their women than they could manage themselves.

He was assuming of course that, if he did ignore Roote’s advice and stir things up, the scrote would somehow put Mildred on public display.

Of course he would! Why wouldn’t he?

What was certain was that a reopening of the case so soon after its apparently satisfactory conclusion was going to make Peter Pascoe look a bit silly, to say the least. Roote, with his own Pascoe brother/

father fixation, clearly thought this was the clinching argument for doing nothing.

But why the hell had the toe-rag left his stupid message at all?

What was all that crap about some kinds of justice should be left to God? Was he really beginning to believe that Third Thought rub-T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 5 1 5

bish he spouted? The old Roote would surely have known that an Andy Dalziel with vague suspicions might just decide to hold his peace, but giving him certainties could have only one outcome.

He stopped walking. His mind was clear. Only one thing mattered. Daph Denham, that splendid monster of a woman, with more life in her as she approached seventy than most people had at seventeen, was lying dead. And the bastard who killed her was home and free.

No matter what the consequences, Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel, head of Mid-Yorkshire CID, couldn’t leave that one to God.

He looked at his watch. Just coming up to six. Hollis would be preparing to open the Hope and Anchor.

The wise thing would be to ring Pete Pascoe and lay it all before him. But Dalziel was finally acknowledging that he didn’t have the build or the technique for tiptoeing around his deputy’s supposed sensitivities. Any road, to do so was bloody patronizing! Pete was a big boy now, he could look after himself.

And more weighty than any other argument was the burning desire he felt in himself to see Hollis’s face when he realized the game was up.

Alan Hollis was his to bring down, no matter what else he brought to ruin with him.

He left his room and went down to Pet Sheldon’s offi ce.

She was sitting behind her desk.

“Like to borrow your car again, luv,” he said. “Last time, eh?”

She sighed and tossed him the keys. She was a grand lass, too good for old Fester, he reckoned. He would miss her.

“Thanks,” he said.

As he turned away she said, “Oh, Andy, someone left this for you.

Going-away present, maybe.”

She tossed him a jiffy bag with his name on it.

“More likely a letter bomb,” he said.

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He put it on the passenger seat unopened as he drove down the hill into Sandytown.

It was still a minute or two off six as he approached the pub. He saw the front door was still unopened as he turned into the car park.

But the rear entrance he’d used on his last visit was ajar.

He was making his way toward it when he heard a woman scream.

He broke into a run. He was out of breath after the first couple of strides, reminding him that the famous curative powers of Sandytown still had a lot of work to do, but he had enough momentum to take him through the doorway and across the kitchen, till he came to a harsh-breathing halt at the head of the cellar steps.

He looked down and saw that God had got there before him.

The single bare bulb cast sharp-edged black shadows over a scene Caravaggio could have painted.

Jenny the barmaid was kneeling among a chaos of beer kegs and splintered wood. Buried beneath it, staring up at her with unseeing eyes, lay Alan Hollis.

Hearing Dalziel’s feet on the stairs, Jenny looked round. Her face showed natural shock but she was a strong- nerved Yorkshire lass.

One scream, then she’d descended to check out the state of her employer when lots of women would have run outside for help.

“He’s gone,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “That old cow did for him in the end. He’d been going on at her for months about getting the cellar sorted, but she were too mean to cough up. And now it’s done for him.”

That was no doubt how many in Sandytown would see it, thought Dalziel as he studied the collapsed keg rack. What had gone fi rst wasn’t immediately clear, one of the old shelves or one of the supporting props. But once movement started, it would have been as unstop-pable as an avalanche.

Others, perhaps, would not blame Daphne, or at least only name her as an instrument of fate. The Hollises were a doomed race, everyT H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 5 1 7

one knew that. Even when destiny seemed to give them a break, it never lasted long.

“Nay, lass,” he said as he helped Jenny back up the stairs. “Let’s not rush to blame anyone. It were an act of God.”

Or of his agent Roote, he thought.

As he summoned Sergeant Whitby and the emergency services, his mind ran and reran the implications of what had happened. The case was certainly altered. In every sense.

Could Roote really be responsible for what had happened in the cellar?

Of course he bloody could!

And that would put his recorded message in quite a different light. Now it made sense as a warning not to act precipitately, to sit back and give God a chance. More than a warning. An instruction backed by a threat.

Dalziel didn’t like threats. If he’d been the kind of man to concern himself over such things, he might have felt complacent that he’d decided to ignore it in the name of justice. Instead he was asking himself whether that same justice required that he off-loaded on to Pascoe everything he knew or suspected. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect, in fact, it would be unkind, disruptive, and almost certainly ultimately nonproductive.

In fact, would he be contemplating it at all if he didn’t resent so much the threat that Roote was holding over his head in the shape of Mildred? To ignore a threat for the sake of justice was one thing, to ignore it simply because it really pissed you off was just plain daft!

The debate was still raging in his mind an hour later when he finally left the Hope and Anchor to the emergency services and climbed into Pet’s car to return to the Avalon. The weather was on the turn. The bright warm day that had blessed the opening of the Festival of Health was now a fading memory, a rising wind was hurrying shreds of cloud along the darkening sky and spattering the windscreen with the first drops of rain.

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R E G I N A L D H I L L

It was, after all, a Bank Holiday weekend.

As he put the key in the ignition, he noticed the jiffy bag on the passenger seat.

He thought, If it really is a letter bomb, mebbe I can go back to being a poor old convalescent cop again, only this time, I’ll defi nitely check in at the Cedars!

He picked it up and tore it open.

Out of it slid Mildred.

There was an unsigned note.

Andy, as I told you, I removed Mildred for safekeeping. Do try to take better care of her in future, and all your womenfolk.

Safe journey home!

Dalziel sank back in his seat. A strange feeling was welling up inside him. He resisted it for a moment, then gave in. It was admiration for Franny Roote! You had to give it to the bastard, using the threat of a threat to give pause, but knowing that the reality of the threat might ultimately be counterproductive. Young Charley Heywood could do a lot worse than go to Roote for tutorials!

He started the car, drove out of the car park, and turned up the hill to North Cliff.

Suddenly the problem of whether Roote had anything to do with the death of Alan Hollis had ceased to be a problem.

If I’d got to the pub and found him working down in that cellar, I might have pulled the whole bloody issue down on top of him myself!

thought Dalziel.

So let it go! The buck stops with the man at the top, and that’s me!

As for Franny Roote, let the clever bugger win this battle. There was a whole lifetime ahead to sort out the war!

He wound down the window. Suddenly the cold wild weather seemed the proper element to be reveled in, not shut out.

“Watch out, you scrotes!” he bellowed out of the open window.

“Dalziel’s back!”

T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 5 1 9

A blast of wind with half the North Sea on its back blew his words back into the car.

He wound up the window hastily.

He didn’t give a toss what Tom Parker said, any fool knew there was nowt like a cold sea breeze for giving a man a nasty cold!

Ahead of him as he crossed the town boundary at the foot of South Cliff, the wind caught at a colorful banner stretched across the road, tossed it high, snapped a cord, and twisted it into an unreadable plait. It didn’t matter. He’d read it on the way down.

Welcome to Sandytown,

Home of the Healthy Holiday!

“Sod that,” said Andy Dalziel. “If that’s what healthy holidays do for you, I think I’ll take up smoking again!”

About the Author

R E G I N A L D H I L L has been widely published in both England and the United States. He received Britain’s most coveted mystery writers’ award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger, as well as the Golden Dagger for his Dalziel-Pascoe series. He lives with his wife in Cumbria, England.

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