Under World. Reginald Hill

      They’d said goodbye the previous night as Billy would have to be up at five to go on shift, but after breakfast Colin had been overcome by an urge to see his father again and had made his way up to the Deployment Centre. Spotting his father through one of the hatches, he called, ‘Hey, mister, can you set a young lad on?’

      His father had looked up anxiously and said, ‘Is something wrong at home?’

      ‘No. I just thought I’d see if this place had improved with age.’

      ‘You needn’t have bothered. It’ll improve wi’ nowt short of bombing.’

      ‘Well, I’ll say cheerio, then.’

      ‘Right. Take care of yourself, son.’

      ‘You too, Dad.’

      They’d regarded each other for a moment, then turned away in unison. As he strode back down the hill he was full of anger with himself. He was far from clear what he’d hoped to do by going up to the pit, but he knew he hadn’t done it.

      Four months later as his ship wallowed in the Bay of Biscay against a Force Five which had stopped them from getting home for Christmas, the news had come over the ship’s radio. His father was dead.

      It was his last voyage. The pressures to stay in Burrthorpe were great. His mother was breaking under the strain. He was engaged to Stella Gibson. Neil Wardle had told him he’d got management agreement that Farr’s old job would be available. Good will, it was called. Guilt, was what Farr called it. So he stayed. Within weeks his engagement was off. Within months his mother was improving and his pay was stopped for the duration of the Strike. But still he stayed, and still whenever he collected his ‘checks’, the metal discs with his number stamped on, he saw his father, framed in the hatch of the Centre and in his mind for ever.

      ‘Come on, dreamer,’ said Tommy Dickinson. ‘Last as usual. Anyone’d think you didn’t enjoy coming to this place!’

      Together they went into the ‘clean lockers’ where they stripped and hung up their clothes. Then naked they walked through into the ‘dirty lockers’ where the miners kept their working clothes known as ‘pit-black’. It was no misnomer, thought Colin Farr as he took out the trousers, waistcoat and football shirt which he were underground. Their original colour was beyond detection. Dampened by sweat and pit-water, smeared with oil and grease, impregnated with coal dust, to put them on was an act as symbolic in its way as the priest’s assumption of the chasuble, the novice’s of her veil. Only, what these stiff and stinking garments signalled was no embracing of a higher will, no movement to a higher plane, but the exchange of light for darkness, fresh air for foul, sky for earth. Their clammy touch was the embrace of the pit itself.

      ‘You all right, Col? I’m not keen on working with buggers so hung-over they’re only half conscious.’

      Neil Wardle was sitting next to him, struggling into a pair of boots which had set like concrete since his last shift.

      ‘I’m grand,’ said Farr. ‘You know me. Naturally quiet.’

      ‘That’s not what Satterthwaite says. He says you’ve been threatening him,’ said Wardle. ‘He’d like you out, Col. Permanent.’

      They rose together and made for the lamp room.

      Farr halted at the turnstile and turned to face the other.

      ‘And what did you say?’ he asked.

      ‘I said bloody good riddance, what do you think?’

      Colin Farr grinned.

      ‘Thanks, Neil.’

      ‘Aye but watch him, Col. He’s after your blood.’

      ‘Is that all? He can have that any time he likes.’

      Farr went through the turnstile into the lamp room, so called because here the lamps were ranged in racks to be recharged during shifts. Each lamp had a numbered check on a hook above it. The safest way of passing a message to a miner was to hang it with his check. A man could ride the pit without many things, but never without his lamp.

      There was a piece of paper hanging on his hook. He pulled it off, unfolded it, read it.

      Crudely printed in block capitals, it read:

      SG LOVES HS. TRUE. POOR YOU.

      ‘Love-letter, is it?’ asked Tommy Dickinson, coming up behind him.

      Farr crumpled the paper in his fist, then tore it into little pieces and scattered them on the floor.

      ‘Sort of,’ he said. And went to ride the pit.

       Chapter 10

      It was Sunday morning. The ten churches were almost empty, the cells not much fuller. But when Dalziel addressed his one-man congregation, it was with a passionate sincerity which seemed capable of ameliorating both deficiences.

      ‘I swear to God I’ll murder the bastard,’ he said.

      Pascoe lowered the Challenger and asked politely, ‘Don’t you want to hear this, sir?’

      ‘Not as much as you do,’ said Dalziel malevolently. ‘Don’t think I’m not noticing how well you control yourself every time I get insulted.’

      ‘It’s not easy,’ admitted Pascoe.

      He was reading from the trailer to ex-DCC Watmough’s memoirs in which Ace Crime Reporter, Monty Boyle (The Man Who Knows Too Much) was promising a feast of sex, violence, blood, guts, and Amazing Revelations. Nowhere was Dalziel mentioned by name, but Pascoe couldn’t feel his boss was being unduly sensitive.

      He had just read: ‘… Nev Watmough told me that after his South Yorks triumph, returning to Mid-Yorks was like travelling back from the Twenty-first Century to the Dark Ages. “The South was forward-looking, eager to keep pace with the technological revolution,” he said nostalgically. “In Mid-Yorks they still preferred to fly by the seats of their broad and often very shiny pants. I’ve always believed that trouble starts at the top. And that’s certainly where I found it in my efforts to drag my new command screaming and kicking into the Twentieth Century.” …’

      ‘Get on with it,’ commanded Dalziel through gritted teeth.

      ‘There’s not much more,’ edited Pascoe. ‘Like we thought, he’s starting with a bang on the Pickford case next Sunday. And in future editions we’re promised such treats as The Kassell Drug Ring – The Royal Connection? Who Killed Dandy Dick? and The Choker: Cock-up or Cover-up?’

      ‘Jesus! What did he have to do with any of them cases? What’s he ever had to do with real police work? When he were a sprog constable, he couldn’t write a report without stapling his tie in with it …’

      ‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ said Pascoe provocatively. ‘He’s probably not writing much of his stuff either, not with Monty Boyle at his side. It’ll all be ghosted …’

      ‘Ghosted!’ exclaimed Dalziel. ‘I’ll make a ghost of that moth-eaten string vest if ever I get my hands on him!’