Bones & Silence Read Online Free

While he hadn't really expected the Chief Constable to greet him with the Police Medal as journalists jostled and colleagues clapped, he couldn't help feeling that three months' absence to mend a leg shattered in pursuit of duty and a murderous miner deserved a welcome livelier than this.
    'Hello, Hector,’ he said.
    Police Constable Hector was one of Mid-Yorkshire's most reliable men. He always got it wrong. He had been everything by turns - beat bobby, community cop, schools' liaison officer, collator's clerk - and nothing long. Now here he was on the desk.
    'Morning, sir,' said Hector with a facial spasm possibly aimed at bright alertness, but probably a simple reaction to the taste of the felt-tipped pen which he licked as he spoke. 'How can we help you?'
    Pascoe looked despairingly into that slack, purple-stained mouth and wondered once more about his pension rights. In the first few weeks of convalescence he had talked seriously about retirement, partly because at that stage he didn't believe the surgeon's prognosis of almost complete recovery, but also because it seemed to him in those long grey hospital nights that his very marriage depended on getting out of the police. He even reached the stage where he started broaching the matter to Ellie, not as a marriage-saver, of course, but as a natural consequence of his injury. She had listened with a calmness he took for approval till one day she had cut across his babble of green civilian fields with, 'I never slept with him, you know that, don't you?'
    It was not a moment for looking blank and asking, 'Who?'
    'I never thought you did,’ he said.
    'Oh. Why?' She sounded piqued.
    'Because you'd have told me.'
    She considered this, then replied, 'Yes, I would, wouldn't I? It's a grave disadvantage in a relationship, you know, not being trusted to lie.'
    They were talking about a young miner who had been killed in the accident which crippled Pascoe and with whom Ellie had had a close and complex relationship.
    'But that's not the point anyway,' said Pascoe. 'We ended up on different sides. I don't want that.'
    'I don't think we did,' she said. 'On different flanks of the same side, perhaps. But not different sides.'
    'That's almost worse,' he said. 'I can't even see you face to face.'
    'You want me face to face, then stop whingeing about pensions and start working on that leg.'
    Dalziel had come visiting shortly after.
    'Ellie tells me you're thinking of retiring,' he said.
    'Does she?'
    'Don't look so bloody betrayed else they'll give you an enema! She doesn't want you to.'
    'She said that to you?'
    Dalziel filled his mouth with a bunch of grapes. Was this what Bacchus had really looked like? AA ought to get a picture.
    'Of course she bloody didn't,' said Dalziel juicily.
    'But she'd not have mentioned it else, stands to reason. Got any chocolates?'
    'No. About Ellie, I thought. . .' He tailed off, not wanting a heart to heart with Dalziel. About many things, yes, but not about his marriage.
    'You thought she'd be dying to get you out of the Force? Bloody right, she'd love it! But not because of her. She wants you to see the light for yourself, lad. They all do. It's not enough for them to be loved, they've got to be bloody right as well! Your mates too mean to bring you chocolates, is that it?'
    'They're fattening,' said Pascoe, loyal to Ellie's embargo.
    'Pity. I like chocolate. So drop this daft idea, eh? Get the years in first. And you've got that promotion coming up, they're just dragging their feet till they're sure you won't be dragging yours. Now I'd best be off and finger a few collars. Oh, I nearly forgot. Brought you a bottle of Lucozade.'
    He winked as he put it on the bedside locker. The first bottle he'd left, Pascoe had taken at face value and nearly choked when a long swig had revealed pure Scotch.
    This time he drank slowly, reflectively. But the only decision he reached after another grey night was that on your back was no place for making decisions.
    Now