Death's Jest-Book (33 page)

Par for the course, Dalziel had
growled. And now he groaned at what the Sunday Smear or the Daily
Dirt might make of all those hesitations and qualifications.

Frankly, but, it didn't matter
what they made of it. It was, from their point of view, such a very
good case, weird, bloody, baffling, terrifying and at times grimly
comic, that even though the dust had hardly settled, already it must
feel ripe for a re-run, and if some smart hack could make a story out
of Penn's half-baked allegations, let's go for it!

So, how to proceed? Cover
everything was the textbook policy. He'd worked out the road he
thought this still-hypothetical hack would take, so warn those who
needed warned, and send one of your own down the same road.
Preferably a new face, fresh eyes.

He picked up his phone, pressed a
number, said, 'Ivor there? Send her in, will you?'

Detective
Constable Shirley Novello had been
hors de combat
during most
of the Wordman investigation. When she returned, Bowler had been on
convalescent leave. Now he was back too, it was evident to the Fat
Man's sharp eye that a healthy rivalry for top DC status existed
between them. Meaning, given the right direction, both would go the
extra mile in the hope of impressing their lord and master.

Yes, Ivor would do very nicely as
a key figure in defence.

But this didn't affect Dalziel's
gut feeling that this wasn't one to counter with subtle defensive
tactics, this was one to hit in mid-flight with a hospital tackle!

Such was the conclusion he
reached after long dark brooding, and now the light of action came
back to his eyes, and he rose like that famous bull from the sea
summoned by Theseus to destroy his own son as he fled from the scene
of his monstrous crime.

Of course, Hippolytus was
completely innocent, but Theseus didn't know that, and it made not a
jot of difference to the bull.

Peter
Pascoe had pondered long and hard Ellie's well-reasoned assertion
that the best way to deal with his Franny Roote 'obsession' was to
test it to destruction.

His own conclusion, reached with
impeccable male logic, was that when the woman whose body you worship
and whose wisdom you respect above all others takes time off to
analyse your problems, the only thing to do is prove she is
completely wrong.

Roote, he told himself, was not a
problem either to resist or resolve. He was a minor irritation which
if ignored would eventually go away.

On the
twenty-sixth he returned to work, refreshed and ready to make huge
inroads into the paper mountain that towers on the desk of most
modern CID officers. He did well and didn't think about Roote more
than three times. Or four if you counted the time the phone rang and
for nearly a minute he didn't pick it up, convinced it was Franny
ringing from Switzerland, but it turned out to be DI Rose from South
Yorkshire just wondering if maybe he'd got a whisper about the Big
Job which he was sure was on, not because he'd heard anything more
but because his snout had mysteriously gone missing ... Of course
while Rose wasn't Roote, the connection was there (making
a
fifth
time) and had to be broken again after he'd assured the DI that Edgar
Wield was burrowing away on his behalf even as they spoke.

But he went home pretty pleased
with himself on the whole and he woke up the following morning
convinced he'd heard the last from Roote and certain that today would
see him well on the way to that most desirable of states - a clear
desk for a New Year.

Then in the hall he saw the
envelope with the familiar handwriting and a Swiss stamp.

From the car on the way to work
he rang Dr Pottle to make an appointment and was told he could come
instantly as the doctor's first two patients that morning had
cancelled as a result of a Yuletide suicide pact.

Pottle, Head of the Central
Hospital Psychiatric Unit, part-time lecturer in Mid-Yorkshire
University and adviser to the police on matters where his discipline
and theirs overlapped, was Pascoe's occasional analyst and sort of
friend, meaning Pascoe liked him on the possibly irrational ground
that he resembled the kind of psychiatrist you might meet in a Woody
Allen film, with sad spaniel eyes and explosive hair whose luminous
greyness was in fetching contrast to an Einstein moustache stained a
gingery brown as a result of the endless chain of cigarettes
depending from his nether lip.

Patients who objected were told,
'I'm here to help with your problems. If my smoking figures among
them, leave now and I'll bill you for solving one of them.'

Pascoe showed him the letters. He
didn't have to explain about Roote. They'd talked about him before.

Pottle read the letters as he
read everything at an amazing speed which Ellie suspected was spoof
and done simply to impress. But Pascoe knew she was wrong. Pottle in
his consulting room was the Sibyl in her cave, a mortal conduit for
the voice of a god, and it was the god's eyes that scanned the words
at a rate beyond a human's.

'Should I be worried?' asked
Pascoe.

'Should you be asking me that
question?' said Pottle.

Pascoe considered, rephrased.

'Is there anything in the letters
which you would interpret as concealing, or containing, or implying a
threat to me or to mine?'

'If you are threatened by
mockery, certainly. If you are threatened by dependency, perhaps. If
you are threatened by sheer incomprehension, I can't help you, as I
do not have sufficient data fully to understand the letters myself.'

'Yes, but should I be worried?'
repeated Pascoe impatiently.

'There you go again. Do you want
me to try to understand you, Peter, or do you want me to try to
understand Mr Roote?'

Another pause for reflection then
Pascoe said, 'Roote. Me I can cope with. Him I've no idea about,
except that I don't think he's up to any good.'

'So what do you think he's up
to?'

'I think he's enjoying trying to
screw up my mind. I think he's probing all the time for weak points.
And I think he's getting off on telling me about illegalities he's
involved with in such a way I can't do anything about them.'

'Examples?'

The assault in the shower at
Chapel Syke, he admits to that. And then at St Godric's, I think he
set fire to the Dean's Lodging, and I've got a strong suspicion he
assaulted Dean Albacore and left him to die.'

'Good lord. When I read about it,
I saw no reference to the possibility of foul play.'

'No, you wouldn't. That's my
point.'

'Sorry, I missed that. Evidence?'

'Nothing outside the letters,
except a bit of circumstantial with regard to Albacore’

He spelt out his theory.

'And is this suspicion shared by
your colleagues in Cambridge?'

'They're thinking about it’
said Pascoe evasively.

'I see. This probing for weak
points - what would they be exactly?'

'He's telling me that maybe I
took the wrong path becoming a cop instead of heading into academe.
He's showing me that time in jail can move you on a lot further than
time in the police force. He keeps drumming on about me being a
sedate old married man whose willpower he admires and whose advice he
desires while all the time he's trying to make me envious of him
being fancy-free, with girls falling into his bed more or less ad
lib.'

'Wow,' said Pottle. 'And does he
make you envious?'

'Of course not. Most of the stuff
he writes is fantasy anyway.'

'Except the bits you want to
believe where he seems to be admitting to some crime?'

'No, I mean yes . . . Look, I
thought you were going to concentrate on Roote not me?'

'It's proving hard to separate
the two. Anything else you want to tell me, Peter?'

'Such as?'

'Anything about this vision of
you he claims to have had, for instance?'

Pascoe blinked then said quietly,
'Why do you ask that?'

'Because the letters are full of
interesting things, but not many truly odd ones. The vision, however,
was very odd indeed. And the omission of it from your catalogue of
complaints strikes me as odd too. I mean, you clearly want to think
that Roote is mentally unhinged, yet you make no reference to the
only piece of prima-facie evidence that he may be two groats short of
a guinea. So?'

Another blink, then Pascoe said
helplessly, 'I saw him too.'

He told the tale. Pottle said,
'Interesting. Let's turn to his sessions with Ms Haseen.'

'Hey, what happened to my
visionary moment?'

'Whereof one cannot speak,
thereon one must keep silent. You've read her book?'

'Yes; well, the relevant bits.'

The relevant bits,' echoed
Pottle. 'Indeed. Interesting how our friend gave you the precise
reference to save you the bother of ploughing through all that clayey
prose and making educated guesses. Let me see . . .'

He reached to the bookcase behind
him and plucked a black-jacketed volume which Pascoe recognized off a
shelf. Then, without reference to the letters, he flicked to what
Pascoe could see upside down was the right page and did his
speed-read trick again.

'Poor Amaryllis,' he said. 'She
is pretty well the opposite of dear Goldsmith who, you recall,
according to Garrick, wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.'

'You know her,' said Pascoe,
interested.

'We have met professionally.
Indeed, should be doing so again next month when the Winter Symposium
of the Yorkshire Psychandric Society, of which I am the current
Chair, takes place in Sheffield. Amaryllis Haseen is scheduled to
give a paper.'

'But surely in view of what
happened, she'll be cancelling?'

'I suggested so in my letter of
condolence. She has replied that on the advice of her analyst she is
minded to keep the date. She is a woman of great resilience.'

'Evidently’ said Pascoe.
'So how do you rate her? I mean, if you've invited her to address
your society, I presume you don't think she's a dud?'

'Far from it,' said Pottle. 'What
you're really asking is how much notice you should take of what she
says about Roote in her book. I would advise you not to disregard it.
She is, as you would see if you'd read the whole book rather than
just the bits Roote directed your attention to, a meticulous worker,
capable of great insight and not easily fooled.'

'And yet,' said Pascoe, 'in the
question of Roote's relationship with his father, she has had the
wool pulled completely over her eyes. The man died while he was still
a babe in arms. All these so-called memories are pure invention.'

'Is that so? You surprise me.'

If you'd met Roote you wouldn't
be surprised,' said Pascoe fervently. 'He's the great deceiver.'

'Except in your case? Perhaps,
Peter, you should retrain as a psychiatrist.'

'Maybe I will. And maybe I'll
come along to your Symposium if I'm free.'

'Be my guest’ said Pottle.
'Indeed it might be doubly worth your while for, by one of those
coincidences which people only object to in detective novels, another
of our speakers is this chap Frere Jacques that your friend Roote
refers to.'

'I didn't think your members
would have much interest in all that hippy-happy stuff.'

'Peter, I hope you won't be
offended if I point out that from time to time you sound disturbingly
like your lord and master, Mr Dalziel. Man's relationship with death
is a very proper area of study for people in my profession. Indeed
you might argue that in some ways it is the only thing that we study.
Frere Jacques, though far from free of religion's tendency to poetic
waffle at the expense of systematic rigour, has many interesting
things to say. We are fortunate to get the chance to listen to him.
Also, as he's touring the country promoting the book, we are
fortunate to get him for free and his publishers even cough up for a
small amount of relaxing booze’

'Cheap and cheerful then’
said Pascoe. 'So when exactly is this knees-up?'

'Saturday January nineteenth’
said Pottle. 'Your motive in attending would be . .. ?'

To see for myself a couple more
experts whose strings Franny Roote is pulling.'

'Ah. I see. The open-mind
approach then. Peter, don't rush to judgment. Read Frere Jacques'
book. He has a fine perceptive mind, not easily fooled, I'd say. And,
like I said before, read Haseen's book all the way through.'

'And if I do, will I find any
mention of the way he more or less blackmailed this objective
professional into recommending his transfer to Butlins?' asked Pascoe
cynically.

'Peter, once again you're
cherry-picking. If you distrust parts of Roote's letters then you
must distrust the whole, until you have evidence to the contrary. A
common feature of the obsessive personality is a belief that
everybody else has got everything wrong’

Pascoe's face assumed what Ellie
called his sulky look, which he himself, if pressed, might have
described as the politely stoical expression of one who has heard all
the arguments to the contrary but prefers to trust his own judgment.

He glanced at his watch. He
should have been at work fifty minutes ago.

'So, bottom line, how do you read
Roote's motives in writing these letters?' he asked.

Pottle did the little piece of
legerdemain which turned the glowing cinder at his lip into a whole
new cigarette and said, 'Difficult. I think he has motives which he
knows, and motives which he believes he knows, and motives which he
is only dimly aware of. Perhaps your best approach is to simplify
matters. To this end, I would advise that you ask yourself why he
wrote to you in the first place. Then ask yourself why he wrote to
you in the second place. And then in the third place. And so on, till
the picture is complete.'