Bones and Silence

Wharf and it wasn't there. Didn't you listen?'

'Aye. Thing is, you didn't ask hard enough or look far enough. Get that map out of the glove compartment. Now follow the cut out of town about half a mile north. It goes under an unclassified road near a place called Badger Farm, right?

That's where we'll find the Bluebell, Chief Inspector. And once aboard the lugger, Mr Gregory fucking Waterson is mine!'

Dalziel was half right. After no more than two misdirections they found the bridge, humped high to give maximum clearance to the canal traffic beneath. Evening was drawing on fast, the last rays of a cold-eyed sun turning the water into a mockery of a yellow-brick road and the black furrows of the huge field bordering the canal into a desolate seascape. The tow-path was puddled and muddy here, the bank crumbling and overgrown. The only sign of habitation was Badger Farm a couple of furlongs away, black against the skyline with a narrow skein of smoke rising from a lanky chimney stack as though its owner were burning one stick at a time.

It was not a place of obvious attraction to the pleasure craft which were the canal's main users these days, but moored almost under the bridge was a dilapidated boat on whose bow it was just possible to discern the word Bluebell.

But there Dalziel's Tightness ended. Even to the landsman's eye the boat had the look of a deserted and vandalized house, and when Pascoe scrambled awkwardly on board, he realized quickly he had been right in both particulars.

'Jesus Christ,' said Dalziel, who had followed him with shame-making nimbleness.

Everything in the tiny cabin that could be broken had been broken. Smashed crockery lay among torn clothes and splintered wood from the destroyed bunk. A pair of waist-length waders, gashed with a knife, had been laid like a corpse across the debris and the contents of a chemical lavatory emptied over the lot.

'Harry Park's lesson?' wondered Pascoe.

'Aye. But where are Waterson and this Beverley King, that's the question?'

Pascoe looked over the side into the black water. The canal ran straight and dark and deep here.

'I don't think so,' said Dalziel at his side.

'No,' said Pascoe. 'On the other hand . . .'

'We'll have to look.' Dalziel sighed and leaned his head back to scratch beneath his chin. High above, a trio of unidentifiable birds beat silently across the darkening sky. He shuddered gelatinously.

'Cold, sir?' asked Pascoe.

'No, lad. It's just that I prefer my ceilings no more than four feet over my head and preferably nicely browned with nicotine. Come on. Let's get back to civilization before the vampire bats come out to play!'

CHAPTER NINE

Seal-like, the police frogmen disported themselves in the canal's murky waters by the corpse light of a grey dawn. A broken wheelbarrow they brought up, a tractor tyre and half a scythe, plus sundry tins, jars, bottles, boxes, all suggestive of a systematic dumping of household detritus from the bridge. But the nearest they came to bodies was a fertilizer bag containing six drowned kittens.

The tenant of Badger Farm turned out to be as stingy with words as he was with fuel till Dalziel's threat of RSPCA and Environmental Health inspectors touched a lingual nerve. Then he recalled noting Bluebell's arrival some four weeks earlier. He kept a close eye on it for a while, suspicious that it should remain so long in such an unattractive mooring. But once assured that its sole occupants were a man and a woman with no kids, no dogs, and no desire to trespass on his land and bother him for milk, eggs or fresh water, he'd lost interest. He was a man of no curiosity and less sympathy. He remarked that he'd spotted the man wading around in the canal a couple of times with what he assumed was a fishing rod . . . 'though what the stupid sod was looking to catch, God alone knows. There's been no fish in that cut since the First War.'

'You likely pointed this out?' said Dalziel.

'Nay! Let folk find out their own errors, that's my way.'

It seemed a not unattractive philosophy, so Dalziel did not tell the farmer that he'd set the RSPCA and Environmental Health people onto him anyway.

Harry Park, given another sniff at the carrot of possible bail, came up with the address of an associate who might possibly have called on Waterson the morning after the meeting in the Sally. This man denied everything till Dalziel made him an offer he couldn't refuse, which Pascoe, who had come to recognize the signs, only just managed not to hear. Then he admitted he and his mate, Park's companions in the Sally, had called on Waterson with a view to persuading him that his sole hope of a happy future was total amnesia and he'd better not forget it. Finding the boat deserted, they had left a message to this effect.

'It's pretty clear what happened,' said Pascoe. 'Waterson must have spotted Wieldy that night, headed back to the boat, rousted out Beverley King and made off into the wild blue yonder.'

'You reckon?' said Dalziel. 'Likely you're right. Check out her parents' house in Monksley. Waterson doesn't sound the type to saddle himself with a woman once she'd stopped being useful and mebbe the lass has headed for home by herself.'

She hadn’t. Her parents who applied the epithet god-fearing to themselves five times in as many minutes, said they hadn't seen their daughter since the second Sunday in February when they'd had what sounded like the usual quarrel about money and lifestyle. The Kings showed some natural concern, though not a lot, and expressed the opinion that her sojourn in London had left her irremediably tainted. Recalling what Peter Coombes had said to him about her return north, Pascoe caused inquiry to be made at Chester Belcourt. The reply came very promptly, mainly because within thirty minutes of the Met ringing the firm to ask if someone could give them any information about Miss King, a middle-aged director with a wife and three children in Sevenoaks was round at the local station offering to cooperate fully in return for the utmost discretion. That he had been screwing Beverley King on a regular basis he did not seem to find at all reprehensible. Moral revulsion only appeared in his tone when he described his shock at finding her shooting up in a hotel bathroom prior to one of their sessions. Ultimately he had come to believe that it was in the best interests of both the girl and the company if she returned to the bosom of her family in the North. The sincerity of this belief was underlined by the large personal severance payment he made her and by his carefully worded letter of recommendation for future employment in Mid- Yorkshire.