The Price of Butcher's Meat by Reginald Hill Page A

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.
    â€œYou’ll need another then,” he said with a friendly smile.
    I was really warming to this man.
    â€œAye, 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 first 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 peopleshowing 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 pleasure at the sight of me, as though I owed him money and we’d arranged to meet and settle up.
    â€œMr. 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.
    â€œBloody 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.