'Aye, you're right there,' admitted Dalziel. 'The army took him, and once they'd got him, well, as long as he kept on breaking their rules, they were going to keep locking him up in their prisons.'

'But he gave them cause, didn't he?' said Pascoe, surprised by the sympathetic tone of Dalziel's voice.

'Oh aye. He weren't a tearaway, but he had a talent for violence. Not surprising, if you think about it. Kids learn from the way they're brought up, even if it's the wrong way. He hated his dad for being violent, but that was the only way he ever saw for getting the things you wanted from life.'

Pascoe knew sociologists who'd needed a whole lecture to make much the same point. Get Dalziel on campus and maybe they could have got through the degree course in a fortnight! Mind you, he doubted if they made mortarboards to fit heads like that.

'You keep on grinning, your face'll stay like that,' said Dalziel warningly. 'People may stop asking you to funerals.'

All the time he talked, his forefinger kept up its tiny circles on the toe of the boot. Occasionally he examined his progress and administered further salivary unction.

'Did Tankie try to stand up to his father, then?' asked Pascoe.

'Oh aye. But it were no contest. Might be different now he's broadened out and learnt a few dirty tricks. But back then, it took me all my strength to sort the bugger out.'

'You had a fight with him?' cried Pascoe.

'Aye, well, after the first couple of times Tankie bunked off from the barracks and headed home, I started getting some idea of the lie of the land. So I thought mebbe I could set the lad's mind at rest by having a quiet word with Thomas. By God. I'd not want many quiet words like that!'

'What happened?'

'I didn't want to talk in public – this were unofficial, fewer folk who saw us the better. So I waited for him in the ginnel that runs from back of their house to the main road. I spoke him fair. I said, "Thomas, tha's got to stop beating thy wife.