Pictures of Perfection (31 page)

The wanton Troopers riding by
Have shot my Faun and it will dye.

Dear Mrs Pascoe

I do not know if Peter ever mentioned to you that I was his superior officer for some time. Indeed one of my last acts before I was invalided out was to confirm his promotion to sergeant. You may therefore understand with what dismay I received the tragic news of his death, and I wanted to write to you at once to say that in my opinion he was one of the finest men I had the privilege to command, and in no way does the manner of his death divert me from that judgment
.

I realize that at a time like this you will scarcely feel able to look ahead, but with a young daughter to bring up, the future and its problems will all too soon demand attention. Recognizing that you may have needs which are pressing and immediate, I beg you to accept the accompanying small initial contribution and my assurance that as soon as the opportunity arises I shall take steps to ensure you and your child are cared for as Peter would have wished
.

Meanwhile I remain yours in deepest sympathy
,

Herbert Antony Grindal

Is this thing working? Right. Here we go. Here we go, here we go … sorry. Just testing. OK, from the start. Getting into the wood were easy. Out of the ditch, over
the top, and there we were. Mind you, it were like jumping into a raging sea. Wind howling, everything shaking and creaking and groaning like the whole bloody issue was alive, and so much stuff flying around you were in danger of getting your head took off. But we pressed on regardless, taking our direction from the glow up ahead. Even when you can’t see your hand before your face, there’s always that glow.

Then at the edge of the trees we hit wire, and we paused here to get our breath and count heads.

We were all present and correct, the whole eight of us, and Cap started in on the wire. You’ll have met the Captain? Useless with the cutters but won’t let anyone else have them. Sort of badge of office. Eventually there was a hole of sorts and we started through. Jacksie – that’s Jacklin, the well-made one – got snagged and swore. Cap said, ‘Keep it down,’ like someone might hear in all that din, and Jacksie said, ‘If I could keep it down, I wouldn’t have got it stuck,’ and a couple of us got the giggles. It’s easy done when you’re shit scared. Not that it mattered or Jacksie swearing either. Like I said, it were pissing with rain and blowing a gale, and you would have needed a lot more than a giggle to get noticed.

Then we were all through and the laughing stopped.

There’s nowt to laugh at out there. It’s a wasteland. Used to be trees but after the big raid last summer, they blew them all to hell, roots and all, and when it rains for a week, like it’s been doing, the holes all fill with water and the ground gets so clarty, you can feel it sucking you down. Smells too. Don’t know why it should. It were once good mixed woodland like what’s still there. But now it stinks like a ploughed-up boneyard.

Someone – don’t know who – said, ‘This is bloody stupid. We should head back.’ Seconded, I thought. But I kept my trap shut ’cos if there’s one thing guaranteed
to make Cap head east, it’s hearing me speak up for west. I should’ve known better than to try diplomacy. It never works. Might as well start scrapping right off and get it over with. Cap just glowered at me as if it had been me mouthing off, and said, ‘Follow me. Keep close.’ And we were off, no pretence of a discussion. Whatever happened to universal suffrage?

God, it were hard going. Two steps forward, one back, and as for keeping close, with that rain coming down and the mist coming up, it was all you could do to see where your next step were going to land, let alone keep an eye on anybody else. So it came as no surprise when somewhere over to the left I heard a splash and yell and a voice crying ‘Oh shit!’ all spluttery. Someone had gone into a crater. My money was on Jacksie, but I didn’t waste time speculating. Even someone a lot better coordinated could drown in one of them holes as easy as the middle of the Atlantic. So I headed for the noise like everybody else. Only I must’ve been a bit more headstrong than the rest ’cos when I got there, I didn’t stop but slid right over the edge, and next thing, I were down the bleeding hole too!

For a while I thought I were going to drown, but once I got the right way up and persuaded Jacksie – I’d been right about that – to stop grabbing my hair, I realized there were only two or three feet of water down there, which was fine so long as you didn’t lose your footing. The real problem was how to get out, ’cos the walls started sloshing and crumbling every time you tried to get a hold on them.

Cap and the others had arrived by now and were reaching down to grab us. They got Jacksie first and I pushed like mad and got nowt but a faceful of boot for my pains. But eventually the useless bugger got hauled out and it were my turn. I reached up and felt someone get a hold
of my right hand, I couldn’t see who, my eyes were so full of mud and water, and I thrashed around with my left till finally I found another hand to get hold of. Then, kicking my toes into the side, I started to haul myself out.

I soon caught on I were getting a lot of help with my right hand – turned out to be Cap who were doing the pulling – but nowt at all with my left. But before I could start wondering why, my feet slipped out of the hole I’d kicked in the side of the crater and my hand slipped out of Cap’s, and I started to slide back in, putting all my weight on whoever had got a hold of my left hand.

And it just came away, the hand I was holding on to I mean. And I slid right back down into that filthy water with my fingers still grasped tight around that thing, or like it seemed then, with that thing’s fingers still grasped tight round mine, and I started to scream, and some on the others started to scream too, and eventually even them buggers in the green uniforms started taking notice, and next thing there was a whole platoon of them all around us shouting and shoving and that’s how we ended up getting captured. Me ciggies are all sodden. You’ve not got a dry one, have you?

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Reginald Hill, who died in 2012, was a native of Cumbria and former resident of Yorkshire, the setting for his novels featuring detectives Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. Their appearances won him numerous awards including a CWA Gold Dagger, the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement and the Theakstons Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award. The Dalziel and Pascoe novels have also been adapted into a hugely popular BBC TV series.

Dalziel and Pascoe novels

A CLUBBABLE WOMAN

AN ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

RULING PASSION

AN APRIL SHROUD

A PINCH OF SNUFF

A KILLING KINDNESS

DEADHEADS

EXIT LINES

CHILD’S PLAY

UNDER WORLD

BONES AND SILENCE

RECALLED TO LIFE

PICTURES OF PERFECTION

THE WOOD BEYOND

ASKING FOR THE MOON: A DALZIEL AND PASCOE COLLECTION

ON BEULAH HEIGHT

ARMS AND THE WOMEN

DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD

DEATH’S JEST BOOK

GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT

THE DEATH OF DALZIEL

A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES

MIDNIGHT FUGUE

Joe Sixsmith novels

BLOOD SYMPATHY

BORN GUILTY

KILLING THE LAWYERS

SINGING THE SADNESS

THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES

Other

FELL OF DARK

THE LONG KILL

THE COLLABORATORS

DEATH OF A DORMOUSE

DREAM OF DARKNESS

THE ONLY GAME

THE STRANGER HOUSE

THE WOODCUTTER

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