Pictures of Perfection (6 page)

He got out of the car, glanced left and right to make sure he wasn’t going to be knocked down by a speeding tractor or stampeding bullock, and when he looked back, the youngster had vanished. It was incredible. Perhaps the camouflage jacket the youth had been wearing was a new advanced model! Then he saw the red droplets glistening up to the closed door.

Pascoe crossed the street. Above the door was a
large wooden square which he’d registered vaguely as some form of weatherboarding. But closer, he realized here was a partial explanation of the strange non-response to his question. It was an inn sign, weathered almost to illegibility.

In fact, more than weathered. It looked as if at some time in its existence it had been assaulted with an axe and roasted over a bonfire. The once gilded lettering spelled out in the black of its own decay the just readable words THE MORRIS MEN’S REST above the bubbled, flaking portrait of a portly bearded gent, though identification was not possible beyond his hairiness as the best part of his face looked as if it had been blown away with a blunderbuss.

Pascoe pushed the door. It swung open and he found himself in a shadowy vestibule with four doors off. The spoor of blood led into the second on the left.

He went through and found himself in a large farmhouse kitchen. The young man had vanished, presumably through the open door which led into a rear yard and garden. His gunny bag lay on a broad, well-scrubbed table.

Seeing a chance to check without looking foolish, Pascoe moved quickly forward, undid the lace round the bag’s neck, pulled it open, and peered inside.

A pair of big bright eyes peered back at him.

And a voice said, ‘Who the hell are you, then?’

Happily the voice didn’t come from the bag.
Unhappily, it came from a broad-built man standing in the doorway and clutching a huge bloodstained knife in his right hand.

Pascoe took two rapid steps back and another two sideways to put the table between himself and the newcomer, who gestured with his weapon and cried, ‘Watch it!’

Too late he recognized the words as a warning not a threat. His shin caught against a galvanized bucket half hidden under the table. Over it went, spilling its contents all over the floor. He staggered, slipped, fell, put his hands into something warm.

And when he held them up to look at them, they were as red and sticky as the broad blade in the hand of the menacing figure looming over him.

‘They had a very rough passage, he wd. not have ventured if he had known how bad it wd. be.’

The first half of Sergeant Wield’s journey to Enscombe passed in silence.

Wield would have liked to have questioned Terry Filmer about Harold Bendish but as they were ferrying Edwin Digweed back to Enscombe, he contented himself with letting Filmer drive while he studied the print-out he’d collected of the Constable’s personal file.

Academically, he was very bright, bright enough according to his headmaster to have gone to university. Instead he’d opted to join the police in his native city of Newcastle. The head, who couldn’t keep out of his report his feeling that this was a great waste of talent, put it down to misguided adolescent idealism coupled with a belief that universities were élitist, escapist and effete.

Must have been talking to Fat Andy, thought Wield.

During training he had been outstanding on the theoretical and written areas of the course. But there’d been a bit of a problem in the practical areas involving direct contact with the public.
Cutting through the jargon, Wield guessed that what they’d got here was a case of that not uncommon youthful arrogance which believes that if tried and tested procedures don’t seem to be working, it’s the procedures that are at fault, not the way they’re being applied.

On attachment, however, the problems identified during training had loomed larger, particularly his readiness to argue the toss at all levels. Reading between the lines, Wield saw that things had come to a head and that while there was a marked reluctance to lose Constable Bendish (which said a great deal for the lad’s potential), it was felt that if a new leaf were to be turned, it would be better to turn it elsewhere. So he’d been transferred to Mid-Yorkshire with the recommendation that before the village bobby system was finally phased out, this could be just the kind of job to help the youngster find his feet.

Things had come a long way even in the years since Wield had trained. They still had a long way to go (who knew it better than he?), but at least brassbound hearts and blinkered brains were no longer essential qualifications for rising to the top of the heap.

He was roused from his meditation by a sharp finger being driven into his shoulder-blade.

‘I’ve remembered something,’ said Digweed from the back seat. ‘Kee Scudamore, she runs the Eendale Gallery opposite my shop, she went up
to Old Hall yesterday afternoon shortly after your departure, Sergeant. She took the short cut along Green Alley, that’s the old path which links the church to the Hall, quite overgrown since churchgoing went out of fashion among the gentry. We spoke when she got back and she told me in passing that somewhere along the alley she’d noticed a piece of statuary with a policeman’s hat on it. Could this be significant?’

‘A cap? And she left it there?’ said Wield.

‘Of course. Presumably someone had put it there as a joke. In villages you don’t go around spoiling other people’s fun. Not unless you’re a policeman.’

Wield glanced at Filmer, who said defensively, ‘I didn’t see Miss Scudamore this morning, just her sister. She didn’t say anything.’

‘The Vicar saw it too evidently,’ said Digweed, as though his integrity was being called in doubt.

‘Vicarage was the first place I went when I didn’t find Bendish in Corpse Cottage,’ said Filmer. ‘But Mr Lillingstone wasn’t in.’

‘I thought the police house was called Church Cottage?’ said Wield.

‘It is, really. But Corpse Cottage is the name the locals use. The vicarage is the only house that overlooks it, so that’s why I called there straight off. But like I say, the Vicar was out.’

Turning to Digweed, Wield said, ‘If the hat was put there as a bit of fun, sir, can you think of anyone who might enjoy that kind of joke?’

Digweed said, ‘Children perhaps. Or the childlike mind. Tricks with policemen’s helmets were, I recall, a favourite pastime of The Drones’ Club.’

Wield, who had watched
Jeeves
on the telly, said, ‘Get a lot of Bertie Woosters in Enscombe, do you, sir?’

Digweed nodded a patronizing acknowledgement and said, ‘I suppose Guy Guillemard comes closest.’

‘Guy?’ said Wield, his memory jogged. ‘The one your neighbour wouldn’t serve yesterday? Who is he exactly?’

‘Exactly, he is Squire Selwyn’s great-nephew and, alas, heir, despite the superior claims of his granddaughter.’

‘So why doesn’t she inherit?’

‘Because,’ said Digweed. ‘Salic Law is one of the mediaeval practices still very popular in the upper reaches of Yorkshire society.’

Wield turned back to the front and his file. If the old sod expected him to ask what Salic Law was, he was going to be disappointed.

They were only a couple of miles outside Enscombe now on the narrow winding road Wield remembered from the day before, bounded by an ancient drystone wall on one side and a hedgerow not much younger on the other.

A Post Office van came up behind them, tailgated them for a while, then on the first not very long straight gave a warning peep on the horn and shot past.

‘Bit chancy,’ said Wield.

‘He’s late for the lunch-time pick-up,’ said Filmer. ‘Always late, is Ernie Paget. Except when he’s early ’cos he doesn’t want to be late somewhere else.’

‘At least he does move at speed when he has to,’ observed Digweed irritably. ‘Do we have to dawdle so? I have work to do even if you don’t!’

‘More haste less speed,’ observed Wield, which was not very original but proved almost immediately accurate. The red van had vanished round the next bend. Suddenly they heard a screech of brakes, a chorus of baa-ing, and a loud bang!

‘Holy Mother!’ exclaimed Filmer, hitting the brake hard.

They went round the bend in a fairly controlled skid, coming to a halt aslant the road with a jerk that threw Wield and Filmer against each other and flung Digweed forward with his arms wrapped round the front-seat head restraints.

The van hadn’t been so fortunate. It was halfway through the hedge, straddling a narrow but deep drainage ditch, with steam jetting up from beneath the buckled bonnet.

Ahead, the road was packed with sheep milling around in panic. A man was ploughing through them bellowing what sounded like abuse but turned out to be commands to a pair of Border collies.

‘You both OK?’ said Wield. Filmer grunted laconically but Digweed was no Spartan in either suffering or speech.

‘
OK?
Not content with depriving me of two hours of peaceful and profitable existence, you finally attempt to rob me of existence itself, and you ask if I am OK?’

He paused rhetorically, his face flushed with a rage which made him look a lot healtheir than his usual scholarly pallor. He was, Wield decided, OK.

‘Let’s take a look at Ernie,’ said Filmer.

At this moment the door of the van opened and the driver staggered out. His face was covered in blood and he let out a terrible cry and slumped sideways as his feet touched the ground.

Fearing the worst, Wield got out and hurried forward.

‘Don’t move,’ he cried, recalling his emergency medical training.

The mask of blood turned towards him.

‘Don’t move? I’ve smashed me fucking van and broken me fucking nose and now I’m up to me hocks in freezing fucking water and you tell me don’t move? Who the hell are you? Jeremy fucking Beadle? Gi’s a hand out of here, it’s sucking me down.’

The farmer had arrived too. He was a man of medium height with a breadth of chest and shoulder which seemed to have bowed his legs. He had a shepherd’s crook in his right hand, its handle carved from a ram’s horn into a beautifully detailed hawk’s head. He proffered this to the postman and hauled him on to the road.

‘You’ve knackered that hedge, Ernie Paget,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to fettle it, that’s what I want to know.’

‘Sod your hedge. I were lucky it weren’t your wall.’

‘Nay,’ said the farmer. ‘You’d likely have bounced off the wall. By gum, you’re quick off the mark for once in your life, Terry Filmer. Last time I called police, they were an age coming. You going to arrest him for speeding?’

‘You by yourself, George?’ said Filmer. ‘You know the law when you’ve got stock on the highway. One man up front, one behind.’

‘Oh aye? Happen I’m a bit short-handed today. Like you lot, I hear!’

Wield noted the sarcasm, but was too busy checking Paget to try to follow it up. He couldn’t find any damage apart from the nose and some bruised ribs, but it would take a proper hospital examination to check if there was anything broken.

‘Let’s get him into the car,’ he said to Filmer, ‘and you can call up some help.’

‘Hang about. I’ll just sort these sheep, then you can come up to the house for a mug of tea,’ said the farmer.

He turned and began to bellow instructions again, rather unnecessarily it seemed to Wield, as the dogs had been quite happily turning the flock through an open gate into the field beyond the wall. There was a cold wind blowing down
the valley and Wield shivered. The farmer seemed unaffected even though he was wearing only a short-sleeved tartan shirt and his close-cropped head was hatless. Wind and weather had cured his skin to the consistency of leather. His trousers, which were tied round his waist with baling twine and looked as if they could walk by themselves, were tucked into a pair of odd wellies, the left black, the right green.

‘I’m not going to hang around here any longer,’ declared Digweed, who had preserved an unnatural silence for the past couple of minutes. ‘I can be comfortable in my own house long before you get this lot sorted out.’

‘Do us a favour, Mr Digweed,’ said the postman as Filmer helped him to the police car. ‘Tell Mr Wylmot at the Post Office that I’ve been held up.’

‘Certainly,’ said Digweed. ‘I hope you’ll be all right, Mr Paget.’

Wield felt, though he did not show, surprise at this faint glimmer of human feeling. He said, ‘Hold on, Mr Digweed, and I’ll walk into the village with you.’

He followed Filmer to the car and said, ‘I’ll leave you to sort this lot out. I’ll be making for the Hall to meet Mr Pascoe. Why don’t we meet up at Church Cottage in about an hour?’

‘Fine,’ said Filmer. ‘Try not to bleed on the seat, Ernie.’

‘This farmer, what’s his name?’

‘Creed. George Creed. He farms Crag End up there.’

He pointed to a whitewashed farmhouse set like a solitary molar in the rocky jaw of land rising to the west. The track running up to it was steep and unmetalled. Wield hoped the postman’s ribs, not to mention the car’s springs, would survive the trip.

He said, ‘Owns it, does he?’

‘Rents it from the Guillemard estate.’

‘They own most of the land round here, do they?’

‘Did once. Lot of it had to go for death duties when the Squire inherited in the ’fifties. Since then the bottom’s fell out of sheep, and there’s only three working farms left on the estate and t’other two are in a bad way.’

‘But Creed makes a go of it?’

‘Good farmer, George. Didn’t just stick with sheep. Nice herd of cows too. And pigs. Best ham in the county comes from George’s porkers.’

‘I noticed that he seemed to know all about Bendish going missing.’

It wasn’t intended as reproof but Filmer seemed ready to take it as such.

‘Most folk’ll know by now,’ he said with some irritation. ‘It’s not like the town round here with no one bothering with their neighbours. And you’ve got to know how to talk to these folk. I don’t know what your fat boss is playing at, sending a soft townie like that Pascoe out here. We’d have done better with a couple of dogs sniffing
around the moor in case the lad’s lying up there somewhere with a broken leg. Yon fancypants likely wouldn’t know blood if he trod in it!’

‘I’ll pass your observations on, shall I, Terry?’ said Wield. ‘And talking of blood and fancypants, Postman Pat’s just dripped down your trousers.’

And smiling to himself, he turned and hurried after the bookseller who, forecastably, had been too impatient to wait.