Nowt wrong with that, was there? A man needed friends. What was he making all the fuss about any road? Two mature people – she were near on old as he was – both knowing the score – no need to be mooning around like some kid whose balls had just dropped.
He found he was feeling guilty now about his uncharitable thoughts towards Wendy Walker. Where the hell was all this guilt coming from? If I go on like this I'll be kissing the Pope's ring, he told himself.
It seemed easier to salve the sore by picking up the phone and ringing the hospital to see how Wendy was.
Still hadn't recovered consciousness, they told him. Prognosis unchanged, except that the longer the worse. Next he got hold of Dennis Seymour who also had little to report except the possibly significant negative that there were no signs of hard braking on Ludd Lane, suggesting whoever hit her hadn't responded at all to the contact.
'Could be he was so well pissed he didn't even notice,' said Seymour.
'That makes it better, does it?' growled Dalziel. 'Keep me posted.'
An hour later the CID fax machine pumped out Troll Longbottom's preliminary report on the Wanwood bones.
Aided by Dr Death's sluices, he had got together an almost complete skeleton with the exception of the left fibula, the right ulna and various phalanges, the absence of which was probably down to the depredation of the local fauna.
The skeleton was of a man, five feet eight or nine inches tall, slight build, in his twenties, with some evidence of calcium deficiency suggesting dietary limitations in childhood but stopping well short of the level of deprivation which would have caused rickets.
The skull fracture already noted was confirmed as a possible cause of death, though by no means certain. There was evidence of other recently healed damage to the left leg, ribcage and shoulder such as may have been occasioned by a severe beating, but which was certainly not cotemporal with death. The damage to the shoulder was such as would have severely limited movement of the left arm.
The jawbone was less helpful than might have been hoped. There had been three extractions and there was some sign of decay in one or two of the surviving teeth, but no filling work which would have helped with the dating. This suggested that the man had lived in an era, and possibly a class, in which extraction was the first rather than the last option when toothache struck.
On the basis of the general condition of the bones and such other evidence as they presented, Longbottom put the date of death at somewhere between forty-five and ninety years.
'Shit and derision!' exclaimed Dalziel. 'The bugger's doing it on purpose!'
He rang the lab again and this time refused to be fobbed off.
'What the devil do you want now, Andy?' demanded the pathologist. 'You've got my report.'
'Preliminary, it says.'
'There are other tests, but I don't anticipate any major changes.'
'Not even the lower limit. Up it from forty-five to fifty say? Or better still, sixty? Or cause of death. Couldn't you be even vaguer? Mention the possibility of natural causes?'
'Andy, I can understand your anxiety to shift this one out of the realm of the investigable, but at the moment that's really the best I can do. Hasn't Gentry come up with anything which could point to a more precise date?'
Glumly Dalziel described Dr Death's findings.
'Interesting,' said Longbottom. 'You know it used to be claimed that in I think it was King Alfred's time a naked virgin carrying a bag of gold could walk the length of England unmolested. Perhaps this chappie was trying to repeat the experiment and made it as far as Mid-Yorkshire before he failed. Wouldn't be the first refugee from the South it happened to.'
'Very funny,' said Dalziel. 'Except that, if the sovereigns are his, he didn't fail, did he? I mean, he wasn't robbed. And it doesn't look as if he had them concealed about his person.'
'True. Well, there's your line. If the sovs were his, that could help date him. If I'm right, they had gone out of general circulation by the twenties, so we'd be getting to the far end of my limits. And if he wasn't robbed, then one motive for fatal assault goes. Perhaps he was a naturist bathing in some woodland pool when he had an accident. Perhaps he'd been up at the big house rogering the mistress when the master came home. Wouldn't be the first Jack the Lad to exit in the buff, clutching the family jewels in one hand and whatever he valued second highest in the other.'
'You've been reading too many dirty books,' said Dalziel. 'Dental records, they'd help, right?'
'To confirm identification, of course they would. Except that you don't have any identification to confirm, and in any case, if as seems probable this chap is prewar, I doubt if his records are still lying about, even supposing he didn't just have his extractions done by the local vet in the first place.'
'Thanks a lot,' said Dalziel. 'I can see why you specialize in dead 'uns, Troll. Don't have to worry about cheering them up.'
He put down the phone. It rang almost immediately.
'Seymour, sir. We've just had word on Walker's bike from Forensic. No sign of any paint or other traces from the contact vehicle, but the front wheel had damage consistent with being run over by a car wheel.'
'Great, that helps a lot,' said Dalziel.
'Yes, sir. I mean, no. I mean, maybe… look, the thing is, sir, if the car actually ran over the bike, how come we found it in the dyke thirty feet away from the woman?'
'Bugger who hit her hoyed it there so's anyone else passing wouldn't notice the accident,' suggested Dalziel.
'Yes, sir. Except that, as I explained earlier, there aren't any traces on the road of a car braking violently. And if the vehicle did actually run over the bike, it would have been dragged along the surface, leaving very distinct marks in the tarmac.'
'So what is it you're suggesting, lad?'
'Well, maybe Wendy Walker was knocked down somewhere else and the driver decided he'd rather she were found a lot further away from his home, say. Or…'
'Let's have it, lad.'
'Or she wasn't knocked down at all, but someone would like it to look like that.' xi
For a while on the journey back from Kirkton, Peter Pascoe got ahead of the rain. But always its dirty grey clouds came bubbling up in his rear-view mirror and suddenly they were above and beyond him, spilling huge greasy drops to burst like insects on his screen. The dual carriageway he was on was crowded and soon driving began to feel like crawling along the bed of a filthy canal littered with the rubbish of an over-consumering society.
At the first opportunity he turned onto a country road, often his preferred route in good weather because of the pleasant rolling countryside it wound its way through. But today there was little hope of enjoying the view. Indeed, as if provoked by his attempt at escape, the clouds now darkened to black and exploded in such fury over his head that he could hardly see the road let alone the landscape. He dropped his speed to twenty but even then almost overshot a sharp bend and, deciding enough was enough, he pulled off the road onto a cart track and came to a halt in the shelter of a small clump of trees.
He turned on his radio but the rain was making it crackle and fizz so unpleasantly that he soon turned it off. He was, he realized, curiously disturbed by his encounter with the ghastly Quiggins women. Not just by the abuse the old one had showered on his family but also by the sense they'd given him of how claustrophobic life in a village like Kirkton must have been only a couple of generations ago. Perhaps still was! And this was his heritage, this was where he came from.
He almost wished that when he'd discovered that the Wyfies' barracks had been knocked down he had simply scattered the ashes on the site and carried on home. What did it matter where your remains came to rest? If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a short-stay park that is forever Ada!
He managed a smile at the parody but it didn't change things. He'd gone into the museum, met the major, and now he was stuck with knowledge he couldn't ignore.
The rain showed no sign of letting up. Pity he hadn't bought a newspaper. But there was reading matter in his glove compartment, and not inappropriate. It was the volume on the First World War which Major Studholme had loaned him. He opened it and turned to the chapter on Passchendaele.
It was a brisk, scholarly account, concentrating on giving detail rather than drawing conclusions. Not that this was a felt deficiency as the simple facts spoke eloquently for themselves.
