The Wood Beyond

'Like hell,' said Ellie.

'Like hell indeed,' said Pascoe. 'After he's heard Gertie's letter read out and realizes where this leaves him, there's obviously a gap when he doesn't write anything. Then he resumes after the verdict: Maybe I shouldnt have burst out like I did but it made no difference. They are going to kill me whatever I say and they might as well hear the truth of what I think — though not the whole truth — for I will not tell them that Gertie broke and was running for they would not believe it except perhaps for the adjutant who is malicious enough to spread it around — thus catching us both in different ways. And even that is still not the whole truth — for though the true facts of the business have been hidden from them I am none the less guilty as charged — Gerties fear was my fear and when I saved him from running it was also to use him so as I could run myself. I told that staff officer that I was going back up the line as soon as Id finished my fag but would I have done so? And was not perhaps my insubordination a deliberate attempt to sting him to anger and thus get myself arrested? So if they are right to shoot cowards then they are right to think themselves right to shoot me. But I know I am not a coward — nor I think is Gertie — so they are not right — or at least their vicious law isnt right. God help me that it has come to this. And God help Bertie Grindal when he realizes what it has come to.'

'God help Gertie Grindal when he realizes!' echoed Ellie mockingly. 'So what does he do? Sends a consoling letter and a bit of cash to the widow then gets on with the rest of his privileged life. God, if she'd known the truth, I bet she'd have thrown that money back in his face!'

'Perhaps she did know the truth or some of it,' said Pascoe. 'Here near the end he writes: I shall give this to Mr Studholme to do with as he sees fit, and a letter for him to send to Alice in which I shall simply say my goodbyes. And I have written to Stephen by the usual route so that he may know enough to stop Archie Doyles tongue if yon bastard starts blackening me about Kirkton.'

'The usual route?'

'Someone going back on leave to post it in England. That way you jumped the censor,' said Pascoe.

'I hope to God this thing between Steve and Alice didn't start till after he got that letter,' said Ellie. 'Pete, are you OK?'

He was sitting looking into space or rather through it as if he was seeing something beyond.

'I'm an idiot,' he said. 'This has all come piling on me so thick over the past couple of days I've lost sight of where it all started and the mystery of the names. Where's Ada's letter?'

He started sorting through the contents of the package he'd received from Barbara Lomax and then through the papers he'd brought back with him from Ada's cottage.

'Listen, she talks about a knock on the door which brought everything out in the open. I just took it that there was a letter, perhaps something official about a pension or something her mother had been applying for, I don't know. But it was obviously a person. And when later she writes about two of us living together both with our appointed quests, it's not her and her mother, it's her and my grandfather Colin Pascoe.'

'Hold on,' said Ellie. 'You're saying this Colin Pascoe is who? Stephen's son? But he was called Steve, I'm sure he's referred to in the diary.'

'That's right. Stephen after his father which his mother couldn't bear the sound of after he allegedly upped and left her. And George after his paternal grandfather, which I daresay she didn't fancy either. And finally Colin probably after the Quiggins grandfather. That's what he grew up being called. It's here on Ada's marriage lines. Stephen George Colin Pascoe who, when he came of age and felt his independence, was determined to track his errant father down and had nothing to go on but the old family story that he'd run off with cousin Peter's widow. So naturally he went in search of the widow and somehow picked up her trail.'

They sat in silence for a while thinking of the scene when the young Pascoe arrived at the Clark women's house.

'Must have been like having a bomb lobbed through the window,' said Ellie. 'No wonder she married him.'

'Sorry?'

'A guy turns up accusing your mum of having it off with his dad while your dad was being executed in France, the only reason you don't kill him is you fancy him rotten.'

Pascoe laughed and said, 'I always said you and Ada had a lot in common. Too much maybe. God, look at the time. Let's head to bed, love. Mystery solved. One of them.'

'No,' said Ellie. 'Mystery doubled. Before you were just bothered by what happened to one of your great-grandfathers. Now you've got another to worry about. Stephen didn't run off with Alice. Did he really take off to America and never make any attempt then or later to contact his son? Or..'

'Or?'

'Or did he head round to Alice's as soon as he got Peter's letter and find her sitting there with Herbert Antony Grindal's note of condolence in her one hand and his blood money in the other?' And suddenly Pascoe saw seven golden sovereigns shining through the mud.

part four

WANWOOD

Among the beds of Lillyes,

I Have sought it oft, where it should lye;

Yet could not, till it self would rise,

Find it, although before mine Eyes.

i

'You wha'?' said Andy Dalziel, packing enough incredulity into the two syllables to make Doubting Thomas sound like a planted question at Prime Minister's Question Time.

'You heard me,' said Pascoe.

'Nay, lad, but I'm not certain I heard you right. You're saying that yon cranium you fetched me from old Death's sluices belonged to your own great-granddad who got shot by a firing squad in Flanders?'

'No,' said Pascoe patiently. 'That was my other great- grandfather, also called Pascoe. This is the one who got invalided home and when he found out what had happened to his cousin, he went out to Wanwood Hospital to have it out with Lieutenant Grindal.'

'Oh aye. And this Grindal who's a patient there, suffering from war wounds and neurasthenia,' said Dalziel, who'd clearly been paying much closer attention than he pretended, 'he knocks your great-granddad down with his crutches then buries the body after stripping it of all its clothes which he then takes to Liverpool to lay a false scent? He didn't meet a big bad wolf in the woods while he were at it, did he?'

'For fuck's sake, this is no joking matter!' exploded Pascoe.

Dalziel looked at him keenly then said, 'Who's laughing? I'm just saying that as a working thesis I've seen better runners pulling milk floats.'

'Perhaps so,' said Pascoe regretting his outburst. 'At the very least I think the family know more than they're saying. I'd like to go back to Kirkton and have another talk with Batty senior.'

'You'll do it in your own time then,' said Dalziel sternly. 'There's work to be done here and you've not exactly been pulling your weight lately.'

Pascoe didn't argue. The Fat Man looked in no mood to be contradicted, and in any case there was more than a grain of truth in what he said.

Also he knew he was allowing his own concerns to mask the fact that Dalziel had personal problems just as deep and a great deal more immediate.

'Anything new on Wendy Walker?' he asked.

'Nowt.'