Bones & Silence (42 page)

'Bloody hell, you've finally flipped,' said Dalziel. 'Think you're Britannia, do you?'

'No, sir. I've just come to wish you happy birthday.'

'It's not my birthday.'

'You'll think it is by the time I'm finished,’ said Pascoe.

He talked. Dalziel listened. There was no doubt about the intensity of his listening, but no other emotion showed on his face.

'And what started you on this tack?' Dalziel asked sombrely when the story was finished.

'Like I said, Swain's either a right bastard or a loyal friend. A right bastard wouldn't have helped Stringer in the first place unless circumstances forced him. And if he was a right bastard when he helped Arnie, that meant it wasn't Arnie he was covering up for when he had the barn cleared out. Simple, really, when you think about it.'

'If it's that simple, I won't be grateful,' growled Dalziel. 'But what I meant was, what decided you to turn your massive intellect to proving me right when for months you've been going around behind my back telling any bugger that would listen that I was wrong?'

Blow, blow, thou winter wind! thought Pascoe.

He said, 'Because I wanted you to be right. Who needs a fallible God?'

Dalziel advanced; a great threatening hand thrust forward. Pascoe half rose in trepidation, then his own hand was enclosed and shaken till it lost all sensible contact with his wrist, and Dalziel intoned,
'This day's work is done ilka deal, And all this work likes me right well, And bainly I give it my blessing.'

'Sorry?' said Pascoe.

'Sorry? Being God means never having to say you're sorry!
All that I ever said should be, Is now fulfilled through prophecy, Therefore now is it time to me To make an ending of man's folly!
Play it through for me again, lad. Play it again!'

part eight

Devil
: For it is written, as well is kenned,

How God shall angels to thee send,

And they shall keep thee in their hend

Whereso thou goes,

That thou shall on no stones descend

To hurt thy toes.

And since thou may without wothe

Fall and do thyself no scathe,

Tumble down to ease us both

Here to my feet;

And but thou do I will be wroth,

That I thee hete.

The York Cycle:

'The Temptation'

May 29th

Dear Andy,

I've thought of you as Andy for a long time, only I was brought up to respect authority and it seemed better to keep this particular correspondence on a formal footing. But this is the last, so I think I can safely drop all that formal respect stuff, don't you?

So tomorrow's your big day, the day you finally get to play God. It's been in all the papers and I'm looking forward to reading all about you in the
Post
's souvenir edition tomorrow morning. Through the town you'll go, riding high, looking down on the ordinary folk and seeing everything. I've never doubted that God does see everything, but that just makes it worse, doesn't it? For seeing's not the same as caring, and priests and terrorists both favour black.

I'm sorry. I mustn't ramble. It's just that I'm rather nervous. You see, I've decided tomorrow's my big day too. Don't worry. I'll hang around long enough to look out as you ride by in triumph. I wouldn't miss that, not for all the world, tower and town, forest and field! Then I'll slip quietly away and leave you in peace.

I'm not sure if you'll be reading this before or after the event. No post today, or tomorrow either, being a holiday, so I'll drop it in by hand. Are you the conscientious kind, I wonder, who'll look in to check things over, even on a Bank Holiday when you're on leave? I doubt it somehow! Not that it makes any difference as I'm not about to sign myself. That's for you to guess, though by this time tomorrow, you should have a clue even you can't miss!

I gather you did manage to clear up that other little puzzle. Did my pathetic suggestions help at all? Probably not. Probably, as usual, you did it all by yourself, you and your sidekicks, the pretty inspector and the ugly sergeant. The Holy Trinity! Three in One, and that One's you! And this is your day, isn't it? Trinity Sunday. Well, praise where it’s due. But what about that other trinity, the ones you dug out of the concrete in your carpark? Shouldn't we remember them today also? In fact, when we set your little triumph alongside the pain, the grief the emptiness, the loss, that their discovery has caused, shouldn't we forget your triumph altogether and think of nothing else? What kind of world is it where things like this. . . but I'm sorry, we both know what kind of world it is, only you feel it's controllable, and I know it's out of control, and that's why I'm going to leave it while you ride by in triumphal majesty.

Goodbye, Andy Dalziel. Will you remember me? I doubt it. But try to remember in your triumph that you're not really a god.

Thanks for everything you've done.

Which is to say, thanks for doing nothing.

Except making it easy.

CHAPTER ONE

Andrew Dalziel got out of his car, stretched, yawned, scratched, and critically examined the blue sky, the golden sun, the russet-bricked walls edged with a neatly tended border of green grass broken at regular intervals by quincunxes of orange marigolds. And he saw that it was good.

There was something about an old prison, even when declined into a mere remand centre, that brought comfort to the weariest soul, a sense of tried and tested purpose, a feeling of solidarity in a shifting world. Hither men had come to pay for their crimes, and paid, and hence returned to the society that had judged them, and thence more often than not returned again to this same spot in a cycle of crime and punishment, wrong and retribution, as endless and unremitting as all those other cycles of day and night, birth and death, Left and Right, Romantic and Classical, promotion and relegation, marriage and divorce, ingestion and defecation, permissiveness and puritanism, itching and scratching, whose centrifugal forces hold the timeless, limitless, meaningless universe together.

Some there were, of course, who had come to this place and never left it, but that was in other harsher days, though these too might yet return. Dalziel was no opponent of capital punishment, but he had little faith in those who administered justice. There was nowt wrong with hanging, he'd say, so long as judges too got hanged fur their mistakes. But in case this should be regarded as a sort of crypto-liberalism, he also advocated that those responsible for putting crooks back on the streets should personally indemnify society against all their future depredations.

Tucked away at the back of the prison grounds was an area, entered through a wicket gate, which might have been mistaken for an old walled garden, except that the walls were too high to admit any procreant sunlight and the earth too sour to nourish any but the hardiest weeds. Deep down here, dissolved in lime lest their rotting flesh should spread a moral corruption, the bodies of those executed in the good old days had been hidden away. Dalziel had been known to stroll at length within these walls, like a laird walking his policies, so deeply rapt that those glimpsing him got an impression that he was listening to some sage and serious conversation. And the truth was that he knew the names and histories of nearly every soul who rested here, and knew also that in his judgement a good proportion of them were almost certainly innocent of the crimes laid on them, hence his cynicism about the efficacy of the courts.

But this was not his destination this fine Monday morning. Nor was it his concern with the condemnation of innocence that brought him here

Whatever his reasons, the prison authorities at all levels clearly felt it odd that a man couldn't find something better to do on a fine Bank Holiday Monday.

'Thought you were in this procession, Mr Dalziel,' said the officer who conducted him to the interview room. 'Mysteries or something, isn't it?'

'Aye, lad, you're right,' said Dalziel amiably. 'But we don't kick off till midday, so I thought I'd just pay a few calls first.'

'If you like it so much here, you can do my shift and I'll take your part,' laughed the officer.

'You're better off here, son,' advised Dalziel. 'Kick him up, will you?'

'Only if he wants,' said the officer primly. 'He doesn't have to come.'

'Don't worry. When you mention my name, he'll not be able to stay away.'

A few minutes later the door opened and Philip Swain came into the room. His short time in custody had already faded the healthy glow he had brought back with him from California, but it hadn't yet touched his old easy manner.

'Hello, Superintendent,' he said. 'What's up? Stage fright?'

'Hello, Mr Swain. How are they treating you?'

'All right. But I won't hide that I'll be glad to be out and back at Moscow.'

Dalziel smiled. Mockery, bravado, or genuine confidence, it was all one to him.

'Looking for bail, are you?' he said.

'Once you've completed your inquiries, you'll hardly oppose it again, surely?'

'Why not? Don't want you doing a bunk, do we?'

Swain smiled and said, 'Come on! If I wouldn't go to live abroad on a handsome salary, I'm scarcely going to slum it as a penniless fugitive.'

'So you
had
made your mind up not to take the Delgado job?' said Dalziel. 'Thought you were going to claim you and your missus were still debating? You'll need to remember your lines, lad. Not easy when you're up there with all eyes on you. I know.'

'What the hell do you want, Dalziel? I only agreed to see you to break the boredom, but I begin to suspect it would be less tedious in my cell.'

'Liar,' said Dalziel amicably. 'You came to hear what I had to say 'cos despite what you think you think, and despite what you think your brief thinks, you won't really believe you're not going to be charged with murder till you hear it from me.'

Swain tried not quite successfully to look unconcerned.

'Look,' he said. 'I've confessed freely to what I've done wrong, and I'll take my punishment. But I'm not a murderer, and you know there's no evidence I'm a murderer, and I can't believe that British justice can make that sort of mistake.'

'Oh aye? There's a patch of ground not much more than a hundred yards from where we're sitting might make you change your tune,' said Dalziel. 'But let me put your mind at rest. That's why I'm here, you see. Bank Holiday Monday, sun shining, everyone out enjoying themselves, and I got to thinking about you, banged up in here, miserable, worried, not even able to ring your brief - he flew off yesterday to Barbados, I suppose you know that? Not short of a bob or two, them vultures. So here I am, errand of mercy, come to remove all doubt. Though that's a bit of a laugh really, isn't it? I mean doubt's what you want, isn't it? Doubt's your best friend.'

'What do you mean?' asked Swain long-sufferingly.

'Doubt, benefit of the, that's what I mean. To be given to accused prisoners by jaded juries. And you've got a lot to benefit from, Phil. Take your missus. You say it were an accident, and there's no evidence it wasn't. So, a doubt. Or Bev King. You say it were Waterson's idea and he carried it through after you changed your mind and tried to stop him.
Doubt.
Or Waterson himself. You say it must have been Arnie who killed him, out of gratitude to you and revulsion at the kind of man Waterson was.
Doubt.
And lastly, poor old Arnie. Got in the way of the JCB. Mebbe he didn't try hard enough to get out of the way because of all his guilt feelings. Anyroad,
doubt.
See what I mean, Phil? Doubt's flavour of the month for you. And it's odd the way it works. Some might say that there's just too many deaths, that it goes way beyond coincidence, that benefit of doubt has got to stop somewhere. But juries don't think like that. It's addictive, doubt. Accept the Crown's got it wrong once, and next time it's that much easier; twice, and after that they're ready to think a trout in the milk got there by jumping out of the galley of a passing Concorde. So I reckon you've made it, Phil. I reckon the prosecution'll write off your wife and Arnie as accidents, accept you had nowt to do with Waterson's death, and slap your wrist for getting mixed up in the plot to kill King. Congratulations! I mean, they'll probably still send you down for a spell, but from what I've seen of you, I'm sure you can eat your porridge and come out smiling, specially when it's only Baby Bear's plate you've got to get through.'

He finished speaking and Swain studied his beaming face like a sailor still fearful of reefs between him and the sheltered harbour.

'Is this official, Superintendent?' he asked.

'It's better than official,' laughed Dalziel. 'It's what I think.'

Swain nodded and began to smile.

'Then that's good enough for me,' he said. 'I thank you for coming. It was an unexpected kindness.'

He stood up and extended his hand. Dalziel examined it for a moment, then grasped it firmly. For a few seconds the two men stood smile to smile, then Dalziel said, 'Only. . .'

'Only. . .?'

'Only it's a pity,' began Dalziel then broke off, shaking his head as though in regret. The smile left Swain's face. He tried to withdraw his hand but Dalziel's grip was not to be broken and slowly, without any obvious force exerted by the fat man, Swain found himself pressed back down into his chair.

'What are you talking about?' he gasped.

'It's a pity about the other body,' said Dalziel. 'I mean, you must have thought, like the Yanks say, if it's not broke, don't fix it. If there's no risk, why take precautions? If you've got certainty, who needs doubt? You can let go of my hand now, if you like, Phil. Don't want the screws talking, do we?'