Death's Jest-Book (13 page)

'Oh aye? You got second sight
now, Peter?' said the Fat Man. 'Pity they don't take account of that
in the Criminal Evidence Act. I think that's enough about Roote for
one day. I don't mind my officers having a hobby so long as they do
it in their own time’

Angrily Pascoe retorted, 'And how
do you feel about your officers ignoring prima-facie evidence of
crime? Sir?'

'Prima facie? That 'ud be an
Italian waiter with his throat cut and Roote standing over him with a
knife in his hand? Wieldy, them statistics I'm doing for the Chief,
how'm I getting along with them?'

'You've finished them, sir’

'Have I? Jesus, I must've sat up
half the night. It's no fun being a superintendent. You'd best come
along to my office in five minutes and tell me what I think of them
afore I pass them on to Desperate Dan. How's young Ivor settling back
in, by the way?'

Ivor was Dalziel's sobriquet for
DC Shirley Novello, who had taken a bullet in the shoulder during the
summer and only recently returned to work full time.

'Looking fine, sir’ said
Wield. 'Very sharp and eager to make up for lost time’

'Grand. Now we just need Bowler
back and we'll only be slightly under fucking strength instead of
seriously under fucking strength. When's he due to start?'

‘This week, Wednesday I
think, sir’

'Not till Wednesday?' said
Dalziel incredulously. 'You'd think the bugger had had major surgery.
Here, pass us that phone and I'll give him a wake-up call’

Up till now Dalziel had made
little effort to hurry Bowler from his sickbed, knowing how easy it
was for a convalescent hero to be turned into a gung-ho cop who'd
killed a suspect through use of excessive force.

But now the Board of Enquiry had
finally cleared Bowler of all culpability, the case was altered.

'Shouldn't bother’ said
Pascoe. 'I gather Ms Pomona's taken him away for a weekend of rest
and recuperation. They won't be back till later today.'

'What? Off with his light o'
love, is he? If a man's fit enough to shag, he's fit enough to work,
says so in the Bible. Wait till I see him. Wieldy, them figures, five
minutes right? By the way, Pete. Chief's taking me out to lunch. His
treat for all my hard work. With luck I won't be back till tea-time,
so if anyone wants me, you'll have to do.'

'Yes, sir. Except I'll be in
court myself this afternoon’ said Pascoe.

'Oh aye, the Linford committal.
Nowt to worry about there, we've got the scrote sewn up tighter than
a nun's knickers, right?'

'Right’ said Pascoe.
'Though Belchamber will be looking to do a bit of snipping

'Sod the Belcher’ growled
Dalziel. 'Nowt he can do long as your witness, the Carnwath lad,
stays strong. No second thoughts after that scare on Saturday?'

'Oz is rock solid’ said
Pascoe. 'And they can't get at him directly. Not married, no current
girl, parents dead. Only close family is a sister in the States. She
is coming over for Christmas, but not till Wednesday, by which time
it'll be sorted, God willing.'

'Then what are you moaning about?
Wieldy, five minutes.'

The Fat Man left.

Pascoe watched the great haunches
swing out of sight and said, 'You've made yourself indispensable to
Rustybum, Wieldy. Could be a fatal mistake.'

'No, way I look at it is, if the
station goes up in flames and Andy can only get one person out, it'll
be me over his shoulder and down the drainpipe. Talking of
flames

He looked significantly at the
letters lying on the desk in front of Pascoe.

'You think I'm overreacting too?'

'I think something about Franny
Roote's got to you in a big way. And I think that he knows it and
he's enjoying jerking you around’

'So you agree that he's setting
out to provoke me with these confessions ... all right,
half-confessions?' said Pascoe hopefully.

'Mebbe. But that's all they are,
provocations. One thing I'm certain of about our Franny is, he's not
going to put himself at risk.'

'So your advice is . .. ?'

'Forget it, Pete. He'll soon get
tired and concentrate on manipulating his new friends’

'You're probably right’
said Pascoe gloomily.

Wield observed his friend
closely, then said, There's something else, isn't there?'

'No. Well, yes. It's silly but .
. . look, Wieldy, if I tell you this, not a word to Andy, eh?'

'Guide's honour’ said Wield
girlishly.

Pascoe smiled. Even though he was
now living openly with his partner, Edwin Digweed, at work Wield
rarely let slip the mask with which he'd concealed his gayness for so
many years. This brief flash of campness was a reassurance stronger
than a dozen notarized oaths sworn on Bibles and mothers' graves.

He said, 'In
the letter, you remember the bit where Roote stands up to give Sam
Johnson's paper? He looks at the clock and it's nine o'clock on
Saturday morning, and then he looks down and he sees . .. here it is
...
it was you, Mr Pascoe. There you were, looking straight at
me.' -

He raised his
eyes from the paper and looked at Wield with such appeal that the
sergeant touched his arm and said urgently, 'Pete, it's just a
try-on. It's that German
doppelganger
stuff he's picked up
from Charley Penn. It's for frightening kids with

'Yes, I know that, Wieldy. Thing
is, last Saturday I took Rosie to her music lesson in St Margaret
Street, and I parked outside the church to wait for her. And I saw
him.'

'The teacher?'

'No, dickhead! Roote. In the
churchyard, standing there looking straight at me. St Margaret's
clock began striking nine. I saw him for two chimes of the bell. Then
I started getting out of the car and, by the time I'd got out, he'd
vanished. But I saw him, Wieldy. At nine o'clock like he says. I saw
Franny Roote!'

It came out
more dramatically than intended. Not
thought I saw or
imagined
I saw,
the plain assertion I
saw!
He waited impatient for
Wield's reaction.

The phone rang.

Wield picked it up, said, 'Yes?'
listened, said, 'OK. Turk's. But not for an hour,' and replaced the
receiver. He stood in thought for a long moment till Pascoe said,
'Well?'

'What? Oh, just someone, owt or
nowt.'

Normally such imprecision would
have aroused Pascoe's curiosity but now it merely aggravated his
impatience.

'I mean about Roote,' he said.

'Roote? Oh yes. You thought you
saw him but he's in Cambridge. Had your eyes tested lately, Pete?
Look, I'd best get along to make sure Andy understands what he's
going to be telling Dan. Good luck with Belchamber. See you later.'

'Thanks a bunch,' said Pascoe to
the empty air. 'It's bad enough seeing things but it gets worse if
you turn invisible at.the same time.'

And was relieved to find he could
still laugh.

It
had been the best weekend of Hat Bowler's life, no competition, not
even from the winter weekend a couple of years ago when he'd trudged
back from a long unproductive stint in a hide looking for a reported
Rock Thrush and there it had been, perched on the bonnet of his MG
where it stayed long enough to get three good shots with his camera.

It hadn't just been the sex but
the sense of utter togetherness they shared in everything they did.
Saturday had been a perfect day till dinner when she'd pushed away
her plate and said, 'Shit, I'm getting one of my headaches.' At first
he'd laughed, taking it as a joke, then had felt a huge pang of
selfish disappointment as he realized it wasn't. But this had quickly
been blanked by anxiety as her face drained of colour. She'd assured
him it was nothing, taken a tablet, and when, instead of retiring to
her own room, she lay willingly and trustingly in his arms the whole
night through, this had seemed an affirmation of love more powerful
than sex. Gradually the next morning the colour had returned to her
cheeks and by lunchtime she was as active and joyous as ever, and
that night ... if ever joy was unconfined, it was in the boundless
universe which was their bed that night. They didn't leave the room
till halfway through Monday morning, and only then because they were
due to check out. Slowly they drove back into Mid-Yorkshire. They
were in Rye's Fiesta - Hat's MG was taking even longer than its owner
to recover from the injuries sustained during the rescue mission -
but it was lack of volition rather than lack of power which dictated
their speed. Both knew from experience that joy is a delicate fabric
and life's shoddy sleeve has a thousand tricks up it which can be
played to bankrupt poor deluded humans even as they rake their
winnings in. This journey was a time-out. In the car with them they
carried all the joyous certainties of that hotel room, but what lay
ahead could never be certain. Out of some part of Hat's subconscious,
the existence of which he had hitherto not even suspected, the Gothic
fancy leapt that if they had been driving along a narrow mountain
road with a rock face on one side and a precipice on the other, it
might have been well to seize the wheel and send them plunging to
their deaths. Happily a hawthorn hedge and a turnip field didn't
offer quite the same incentive, so it was a fancy easy to resist and
one he decided to keep to himself. What after all was he feeling so
pessimistic about? Had not Rye promised he would be safe with her,
and he certainly intended exerting all his strength to ensure she
stayed safe with him.

Impulsively he leaned over and
kissed her, nearly bringing the turnip field into play.

'Hey’ she said, 'don't they
do road safety in the police any more?'

'Yeah, but some of us get special
exemption.' She reached over and touched him intimately. 'And that's
a special exemption, is it? Hang on.' The turnip field came to an end
to be followed by a meadow full of sheep with a rutted overgrown lane
in between. Rye swung the wheel over and they bumped up the lane for
twenty yards or so before jolting to a halt.

'Right,' she said, undoing her
seat belt. 'Let's have a road safety lesson.'

For the rest of the journey his
heart was like a nest of singing birds which permitted no discordant
future possibilities to be heard. The world was perfect and all that
lay ahead was an eternity exploring its perfections.

But, for all his certainties, he
was sorry when the journey came to an end and they turned into Peg
Lane where Rye lived. Somehow, cocooned in the car, they had seemed
as solitary as Adam and Eve at the world's dawn. Still, God was
obviously smiling upon them as there was a parking space right in
front of Church View, the big converted townhouse which contained
Rye's flat.

He followed her up the stairs,
wondered as she inserted the key in the lock whether it would be naff
to offer to carry her over the threshold, decided it wouldn't and who
the hell cared anyway? put the cases down and stepped forward as the
door swung open.

And saw over her suddenly rigid
shoulder that the flat had been burgled.

The
flat was a mess. It looked as if stuff had been removed from
cupboards and drawers and hurled about recklessly in a desperate
search, but as far as he could see the only thing that had been
broken was a Chinese vase in the bedroom. It lay beneath the shelf it
had fallen from. It struck Hat as he stood there looking down at it
that this was the first time he'd been in Rye's bedroom. But not the
last, he told himself complacently. Then he saw her face and all such
smug self-congratulation vanished.

She was staring at the shards of
the broken vase, her face as pale as the fine white dust which
surrounded them.

'Oh shit’ said Hat.

He could guess what the vase had
held. Aged fifteen, her twin brother Sergius had been killed in the
car accident which left his sister with the head injury whose healing
was marked by a distinctive silver blaze in her rich brown hair. The
twins had been close in life, he knew that, but just how close
Sergius had stayed in death he hadn't known till now.

How he would have felt about
bedding down with Rye in the presence of her brother's ashes, he
didn't know. Not that there looked any likelihood of being put to the
test in the near future. He tried to put a comforting arm round her
shoulders but she turned out of his grasp without a word and went
back into the living room.

Personal contact not getting
through, he tried professional, urging her not to touch any more than
was necessary, but she didn't seem to hear him as she moved around
the living room and the kitchen, checking drawers, boxes, private
hiding places.

'What's been taken?' he asked.

'Nothing,' she said. 'So far as I
can see. Nothing.'