'David looks after research, mine is the final say-so in matters of general policy,' said Batty sharply. 'The state of the courts nowadays, prosecution's a waste of time and money. All it does is buy us bad publicity, and these bones could give us enough of that without pursuing more.'
There was some muddled thinking here. Or maybe being able to adhere to three contrary opinions at the same time was a sine qua non of the captaincy of industry.
Pascoe said, 'Yes, the bones. If I could have a look at the documents relating to your purchase of Wanwood House…'
'What period are you interested in?'
'We're not precisely sure yet, but as I explained on the phone, there's certainly no question of these remains having been buried there during ALBA's occupation of the premises.'
'Yes, I understand that. I've had photocopies made of the relevant passages from the conveyance. As you'll see, it had in fact been used as a private hospital or clinic, some such thing, which is what attracted us. I mean we weren't starting from scratch in converting it from residential to scientific use. Also the location, not too distant from head office here, yet obscure enough, so we hoped, to be concealed from the attention of these lunatic protest groups. It didn't take them long to track us down. People are big on mouth and short on loyalty these days.'
'Yes. I see from the conveyance you were dealing with a trustee in bankruptcy. How did a private hospital manage to go bankrupt in this day and age?'
'Healthcare is a business like any other, Mr Pascoe. Expansion has its dangers as much as recession. Let yourself get overextended, and give your enemies a glimpse of your jugular, and you'd be amazed how quickly they're in there, slashing and sucking. Of course, a hospital is the kind of place you'd expect to find a few old bones. Couldn't just be that they didn't follow the regulations about the disposal of amputated limbs very closely, could it?'
Pascoe considered this macabre suggestion, or rather considered whether Batty was making it seriously.
He said, 'Unless they did an operation there involving the removal of the complete cranium, I very much doubt it. How long had it been a hospital, do you know?'
'Oh seventy, eighty years,' said Batty vaguely. 'A hell of a long time, that's for sure. Does that help you?'
'Not a lot,' said Pascoe. 'Private family ownership's one thing. You've some chance of checking up on reports of missing persons, rumours of family quarrels. But when you think how many people, patients, relations, staff, must have been connected with even a small hospital over that period. And of course, the remains may have nothing to do with what went on inside the place. Someone just thought it was a handy bit of woodland to dump a body.'
'Doesn't sound hopeful.'
'Not unless we get a precise dating. Or failing that, a cutoff point somewhere the other side of sixty, preferably seventy, years. Then, even if foul play is proved, there'd be so little chance of a result, we'd be able to stick it in the Open-But-Shut drawer.'
Batty said, 'Cut your losses, eh? Same in business. The art of good management is knowing when to say, far enough, let's forget it.'
His tone and manner were pleasantly sympathetic. So why, wondered Pascoe, do I get a sense of… calculation?
He said, 'Thank you for your time anyway, Mr Batty.'
'Not at all. Though you do seem to have had a long trip for little reward. We could have faxed you these papers.'
'Oh, it's good to get out and about, actually see the wheels turning.'
As they talked, Batty was moving him through the door and along the landing, but at the head of the staircase he halted. There were two women coming up, one a small sprightly woman in late middle age, the other younger and wearing what was unmistakably, though not inelegantly, a nurse's uniform.
'Janet,' said Batty. 'Say hello to Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe. Mr Pascoe, my wife, Janet.'
The older woman halted, said, 'I'll be with you in a minute,' to the nurse who continued up the next flight of stairs, then extended her hand to Pascoe and said, 'How do you do?'
The handshake was firm enough and the tone level enough, but was he imagining a degree of unease? If so, it was probably no more than the common stormy-petrel reaction to finding a copper on the premises. No one sees a policeman at the door and thinks, oh, my premium bonds must have come up.
But she didn't ask what he was doing here. Meaning she knew? Or that, like a good corporate wife, she knew better than to ask before her husband gave the signal?
'No one is ill, I hope?' said Pascoe letting his gaze drift after the vanishing nurse.
'Oh no,' said Batty. 'We maintain a small first-aid unit in case of emergencies.'
'Well, at least it should be well stocked,' smiled Pascoe.
'What? Oh yes, of course. I'll see you in a moment, dear.'
'Goodbye, Mr Pascoe. Nice to have met you,' said Janet Batty.
They continued their descent and a few moments later stepped back into the twentieth century.
'I suspect this would come as a bit of a shock to the original owner,' said Pascoe, himself taken aback by the contrast between what he'd left behind and the whole messy complex stretched out before them.
'Possibly. On the other hand I daresay he looked out on his fields and flocks and forests and thought, all this is mine, this is what keeps me and my family in comfort, exactly as I do today. We're pragmatists up here in Yorkshire, Mr Pascoe. You're from the south originally, I gather?'
Now where on earth did you gather that? wondered Pascoe. No, change the question. He'd no doubt that Batty could plug into the same Yorkshire internet that gave Dalziel his local omniscience. More interesting was, why should Batty have bothered to check him out?
A mischievous desire to let the man know that his system wasn't infallible made Pascoe say, 'Originally? No, not the south. In fact my family are local, Mr Batty. As local as yours. My grandmother was born in this very village, when it was still a village. Perhaps you've noticed some Pascoes in the church.'
For some reason the suggestion seemed really to offend Batty. His face changed colour and his studied good humour melted like snow off a dyke.
'No,' he said shortly. 'Can't say I have but I don't pay much attention to the relicts of the dead.'
'Not even when they turn up on your own doorstep?' murmured Pascoe, interested to probe this reaction.
But the old Batty was back in control.
'Then least of all,' he said smiling. 'Goodbye, Mr Pascoe.'
They shook hands and Pascoe got into his car.
'One more thing,' he said through the open window. 'I've been puzzling over your firm's name. ALBA. All I could come up with was some connection with the colour white. You know, as in albino.'
Batty grinned and said, 'It's both more and less prosaic. When the two sides of the family united in business between the wars, or rather when old Arthur decided that the real future lay in pharmaceuticals rather than cloth, like any down-to-earth Yorkshireman, he called the firm what it was, putting himself first, of course, Grindal and Batty. But in the fifties when we went public and the selling became as important as the manufacturing if we were going to compete in the big time, some of us thought that something a bit snappier was needed.'
He paused, as if his words had conjured up other images of those distant days.
'Some of us included you?' prompted Pascoe.
'I was in my early twenties, just back from business school in the States. Oh yes, I was all for change,' admitted Batty. 'Not that anyone took much notice of me back in those days. Nobbut a lad, they said. My father was running the business by then with Uncle Bert, that's my wife's father, Herbert Grindal. They weren't much for change, Dad because he was naturally cautious and Uncle Bert because being under old Arthur's thumb all his life hadn't left him much room for original thinking.'
'Old Arthur?' said Pascoe still uncertain why a man who didn't pay much attention to the relicts of the dead should be so keen to share his family's history. 'He must have been a ripe old age?'
'In his nineties,' said Batty. 'He'd finally retired in '48 on his ninetieth birthday, but he still cracked the whip when he wanted. And surprisingly he was all for a change, mainly because Janet who was the apple of his eye
