The Price of Butcher's Meat (7 page)

So I took a bit of a run, or mebbe a slow trot’s nearer the mark, and
got my shoulder into the breach.

Before my spot of bother I’ d have walked through here, no trouble.

But it turned out to be narrower than it looked and for a moment I
thought mebbe I was going to get stuck and end up shouting for
help.

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Didn’t fancy that, so I gave one last heave and burst through onto the
roadside verge.

Except it weren’t the kind of verge I expected, nice and flat and
grassy. Instead it were a steep bank that fell away to the tarmac about
twenty feet below.

No way of stopping. All I could do was try to remember all I’d learnt
about falling, and curl up tight and try to roll. It were sod’s law that
there should be a car coming down the hill exactly at that moment. I
had time to think, Whatever hitting the tarmac don’t break, the collision will take care of!

Then I was under the front wheels and waiting for the pain.

When it didn’t come, or at least not so much as you get shaving with
a lady’s razor, I slowly got up.

No sudden agony, no broken bones. I’d lost a slipper and my stick,
but I were alive and didn’t feel much worse than I’d felt thirty seconds
earlier.

If we look closely we can see God’s purpose in everything, my old
mate Father Joe Kerrigan once told me.

I looked closely.

Here was a road leading down to Sandytown, which had to have a
pub, and I was leaning up against a car.

Joe were right. Suddenly I saw God’s purpose!

They were nice folk in the car. Real friendly. I sat in the back with
this lass. Could have been thirteen, could have been thirty, hard to tell
these days. Turned out I knew her dad. Played rugger against him way
back when I were turning out for MY Police. He were a farmer and used
to play like he were plowing a clarty field. Couldn’t see much point to
having players behind the scrum. Reckoned all they were good for was
wearing tutus and running up and down the touchline, screaming don’t
touch me, you brute! We had a lot in common, me and Stompy.

They dropped me at this pub. The Hope and Anchor. I didn’t have
any money with me. Likely I could have talked the landlord into giving
me tick, but this guy Tom in the car volunteered to sub me twenty quid,
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so no need to turn on the charm. I went into the pub. The main bar
were full of trippers eating sarnies and chicken tikka and such. On the
other side of the entrance passage were a snug, half a dozen tables, only
one of ’em occupied by a couple of old boys supping pints. I went in
there, put the twenty on the bar, and said, “Pint of tha best, landlord.”

Don’t expect he gets many customers in their sleeping kit, but to give
him his due, he never hesitated. Not for a second. Drew me a pint, set it
down.

I took the glass, put it to my lips, and drank. Didn’t mean to be a hog
but somehow when I set it down, it were empty.

“You’ll need another then,” he said with a friendly smile.

I was really warming to this man.

“Aye, and I’ll have a scotch to keep it company,” I said. “And a packet
of pork scratchings.”

I nodded at the old boys, who nodded back as I took my drinks over
to a table in a shady corner. When a landlord treats me right, I try not
to offend his customers.

I nibbled my scratchings, sipped my scotch, gulped my beer, and took
in my surroundings. Nice room, lots of oak paneling, no telly or Muzak,
bright poster above the bar advertising some Festival of Health over the
Bank Holiday. With medicine like this, I thought, it couldn’t fail! And
for perhaps the fi rst time since that bloody house in Mill Street blew up,
I felt perfectly happy.

It didn’t last long. Rarely does. According to Father Joe, that’s ’cos
God likes to keep us on the jump.

Certainly kept me on the jump here.

Hardly had time to savor the moment when the barroom door opened
and a man in a wheelchair came rolling through.

He halted just inside the door in the one shaft of sunlight coming
through the window. His head were shaven so smooth the light bounced
off it, giving him a kind of halo. His gaze ran round the room till it
landed on me.

Perhaps there was summat in the Sandytown air that stopped people
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showing surprise. The landlord had kept a perfectly straight face when a
slightly bleeding man wearing jimjams and one slipper came into his pub.

Now the wheelchair man went one better. His face actually lit up
with plea sure at the sight of me, as though I owed him money and we’d
arranged to meet and settle up.

“Mr. Dalziel!” he exclaimed, driving the wheelchair toward me. “Of
all the gin joints in all the world, you had to walk into mine! How very
nice to see you again.”

I did a double take. Couldn’t believe my eyes. Or mebbe I didn’t
want to believe them.

“Bloody hell,” I said. “It’s Franny Roote. I thought you must be
dead!”

6

Had a little sleep there. Bloody pills!

Where was I?

Oh aye. Franny Roote.

First time we met were at this college Ellie Pascoe used to work at
not far up the coast from here. They’d found the old principal’s body
buried under a memorial statue. Roote were president of the Students
Union. Bags of personality. Made a big impression on everybody. Made
a specially big one on me by cracking a bottle of scotch over my head.

Insult to injury, it were my own bottle.

He got banged up—not for attacking me but for being involved in
the principal’s death. When he came out a few years back, he showed
up again in Mid-Yorkshire, doing postgrad research at the university.

Then his supervisor got murdered. So did a few other people.

Folk were always dropping dead round Roote.

Pete Pascoe were convinced he was involved, in fact, he got a bit
obsessed about it. But he never got close to pinning owt on him. Then
Roote started writing him letters from all over the place. Funny bloody
things they were, dead friendly on the surface, saying how he really admired Pete. But they really began to freak the poor lad out.

But finally, big twist, what happens is Pascoe’s lass Rosie gets taken as a
hostage by a bunch of scrotes Roote had known in the nick. Roote manages
to get her out, but only at the expense of getting a load of buckshot in his
back. Looked a goner. But he hung on. Got transferred to some specialist
spinal-injury unit down south. Pascoe kept in close touch. Practically took
control of his insurance and compensation claims. Felt he owed him, specially after all the nasty thoughts he’d had about him.

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Me, I were real grateful too. Rosie’s a grand kid, got the best of both
her mum and dad in her. But just ’cos I were grateful didn’t make me
elect him St. Franny!

Pete gave us bulletins. Quadriplegia seemed likely to start with, so
when it finally came down to paraplegia, Pascoe acted like he’d won the
lottery. Bothered me a bit. I told him, be grateful, okay, but that don’t
mean feeling responsible for the sod for the rest of your life. Pascoe
slammed off out after I said that and I heard no more about Roote for six
months or more. That’s a long sulk in my book so finally I mentioned
him myself.

Turned out the reason Pascoe said nowt was ’cos he’d nowt to say.

He’d lost touch. Seems that when the medics decided they’d done all
that could be done for Roote, he just vanished. Pascoe had traced him as
far as Heathrow where he’d got on a plane to Switzerland. We knew
he’d been there before. That’s where some of the funny letters had come
from. This time no letters, not even a postcard. Best guess was, being
Roote, he weren’t settling for a life viewed from belly level, he were going
to spend some of that compensation dosh looking for a cure.

Would have been easy enough for us to get a fix on him. Even in our
borderless Europe, a foreigner in a wheelchair tends to leave a trail. But
I reckon Ellie said to Pete that if Roote didn’t want to keep in touch,
that was his choice.

Now here he was, large as life, back on my patch—all right, on the
very fringe of it—and I didn’t know a thing about it.

I didn’t like that. Okay, I’d spent a bit of time in a coma recently, but
that’s no reason not to know what’s going off.

He maneuvered his chair alongside me and said, “I read about your
bit of trouble and I’m so pleased to see reports of your recovery haven’t
been exaggerated. Though tell me, is the bare foot part of a new therapy?

Or have you finally joined the Masons?”

That was Roote. Misses nowt and likes to think he’s a comic.

I said, “You’re looking well yourself, lad.”

In fact he was. If anything he looked a lot younger than the last time
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I’d seen him—not counting straight after getting shot, of course. The
landlord came over to our table and set a glass of something purple with
bubbles in front of him. Mebbe it were the elixir of life. If any bugger
found it, it would be Roote.

He said, “Thanks, Alan. And thank you too, Mr. Dalziel. Yes, I feel
extremely well. So what brings you to sunny Sandytown? No, don’t tell
me. Let me guess. I’d say you’re down here to convalesce at the Avalon.

You must have arrived fairly recently, they are still completing their
preliminary assessment, which you, growing impatient, have opted to
preempt by making your own way to this excellent establishment.”

Told you he were a clever bastard.

I said, “If we’d caught you younger, we might have made a detective
out of you, Roote. But I’m not complaining we caught you later and
made a convict out of you instead.”

“Still as direct as ever, I see,” he said, smiling. “Any minute now you’ll
be asking what I myself am doing here.”

“No need to waste my breath,” I said.

“Meaning of course you’re just as capable as me at working things
out,” he said.

Like a lot of folk who love playing games, Roote always reckoned
other folk were playing them too. Don’t mind a game myself, long as I’m
making the rules.

I said, “No. Meaning I’d not believe a bloody word you said! But I
can work out you’ve been here long enough for our landlord to know you
drink parrot piss.”

“Cranberry juice actually,” he said. “Full of vitamins, you really
ought to try it.”

“Mebbe after morris dancing and incest,” I said. “As for your reasons
for being here, I’m not interested. Unless they’re criminal, which wouldn’t
surprise me.”

“Oh dear. Still the old mistrust.”

“Nay, just the old realism,” I said.

Then I went on ’cos I’d never said it direct and it needed saying,
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“Listen, lad, I’ll be forever grateful for what you did for little Rosie Pascoe. Thought you should know that. Won’t make me turn a blind eye to
serious crime, mind, but anytime you feel like parking your chair on a
double yellow line in Mid-Yorks, be my guest.”

His eyes filled. Don’t know how he does that trick, but the bugger’s
got it off pat.

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Mr. Dalziel.

And how is the girl? Must be growing up now. And dear Mr. Pascoe and
his lovely wife, how are they?”

“All well. He were a bit upset losing contact with you. What happened there?”

He sipped his drink. I had to look away. If the buggers can ban
smoking, I reckon at least they should put up screens for folk wanting to
drink stuff that color.

Then he said, “I was deeply touched by Mr. Pascoe’s concern for me.

He’s a man I admire greatly. I would love to be able to think of him as
my friend. Perhaps it was because of this that, as I gradually improved, I
began to worry in case the gratitude he felt should become a burden. It’s
all too easy for gratitude to turn into resentment, isn’t it? Mr. Pascoe is a
man of intense feeling. Sometimes perhaps overintense. It was a hard
decision, but I felt it might be best if I cooled things between us, so when
I concluded that medical wisdom as it stood in the UK had done everything possible for me and decided to head abroad in search of other
treatments, it seemed a good opportunity. I’m sorry if that sounds too
altruistic for your view of me, Mr. Dalziel, but it’s the truth.”

I found I believed him.

I said, “I reckon you got things right for once.”

The bar door opened and a young woman came in, laden with carrier bags. She were tall and skinny as a bowstring. Slim, they likely call
it in the women’s mags, or slender or willowy, some such bollocks, but
it’s all skinny to me. I like a lass with a bit of something to get a hold of.