The Witch Maker by Sally Spencer Page A

comes out of my pumps.’
    â€˜Tell me about it,’ Woodend suggested.
    The landlord needed no further urging. ‘Well, when I was younger – an’ didn’t know any better – I tried to get off with a girl from Hallerton myself,’ he said. ‘A lovely lass, she was, by the name of Bessie Potts.’ He sighed, and a faraway look came into his eyes. ‘But it never came to anythin’.’
    â€˜Why was that?’ Woodend asked. ‘Didn’t she fancy you back?’
    â€˜Oh, she fancied me, all right.’ The landlord paused and patted his stomach. ‘I wasn’t born with this, you know. When I was young, I had a belly as flat as a washboard, an’ an arse so tight you could have cracked walnuts in it. So as you can imagine, I never had any difficulty pullin’ women.’
    â€˜Except for this Bessie Potts,’ Woodend prompted.
    â€˜Like I said, she wasn’t the problem. She’d have gone for a ramble on the moors with me at the drop of a hat. But she never had the chance, did she? I went to pick her up for what I suppose these days you might call “our first date” – an’ she wasn’t there.’
    â€˜But someone else was?’ Woodend guessed.
    â€˜You’re so smart you should be a detective,’ the landlord said, laughing heartily at his own joke. ‘Yes, you’re right, somebody else was there – half a dozen somebody elses, as a matter of fact.’
    â€˜Local lads?’
    â€˜That’s what you’d have thought, isn’t it? But it wasn’t
lads
at all. These fellers were all old enough to have been my dad.’ He chuckled again. ‘Nasty enough to have been that dad of mine, an’ all.’
    â€˜Did they hurt you?’
    â€˜No, though I suppose it would have made a better story if they had’ve given me a beltin’.’
    â€˜So what
did
they do?’
    â€˜They made it as plain as the nose on your face that if I didn’t take their first “friendly” warnin’, there wouldn’t be another one. An’ we’re not talkin’ about a few bruises, you know. They as good as said that if I showed my face in the village again, they’d make sure I’d lose the use of my legs. An’ I believed them at the time – so I’ve never been there from that day to this.’
    â€˜Probably wise,’ Woodend said.
    The landlord shrugged. ‘Aye. Probably.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘Supper should be ready in about half an hour. I know for a fact that the missus is makin’ a Lancashire hotpot – but she can soon do you somethin’ else if you think that won’t suit you.’
    â€˜Do
you
think it’ll suit me?’ Woodend asked.
    â€˜Well, though I say so as shouldn’t, it’s the best hotpot I’ve ever tasted. An’ it always wins first prize at the village fête.’
    â€˜Then I’d be a fool to turn down the opportunity to try it for myself,’ Woodend said.
    He had picked up his bag and was heading for the stairs when the landlord’s cough made him turn round again.
    â€˜Was there somethin’ else?’ he said.
    â€˜Not really,’ the landlord said wistfully. ‘I was just thinkin’.’
    â€˜About what?’
    â€˜There were lots of other pretty girls around at the time I was after Bessie. Some were
almost
as pretty as she was, an’ I married one of them.’
    Woodend smiled. ‘But?’
    â€˜But I still can’t help wonderin’ if my life would have been any different if I’d ignored that “friendly” warnin’.’

Sixteen
    I t was nice to be back in the normal world, Woodend thought. Nice to be sitting in a bar with Monika Paniatowski by his side, a pint glass in his hand and his stomach well-lined with the landlady’s justly famous Lancashire hotpot.
    It was only a temporary release, of course.