Death's Jest-Book (46 page)

News of this event was greeted by
such cries of rage and despair from the Atherton household they were,
according to Mrs Eel, audible in Bradwell if not Beyond. The story
now skipped a couple of years to the day when Anthea returned home
for the first time since the wedding, pregnant and alone. Her parents
took her in and after a while gave out the story that her husband was
engaged in some special operation and that Anthea was very keen her
child should be born a Hopeite. Mrs Eel was not deceived. Her
diagnosis, borne out by subsequent events, was a deep malaise in the
marriage.

The child was born prematurely
before Anthea could be loaded into the ambulance summoned to take her
to hospital (so Franny was being strictly accurate when he said he
was born in Hope, thought Ellie). Shortly afterwards, Sergeant Roote
appeared on the scene and bore off child and wife to his den in the
South, thus apparently confirming the official version of events. But
Mrs Eel still was not deceived.

'I knew it 'ud end in tears,' she
declared. 'The lass kept coming back more and more frequent, always
with the lad, but never with the policeman. I think she wanted a
divorce early on, but her mam and dad were dead against it.'

This puzzled Ellie until Mrs Eel
revealed the Athertons belonged to some fairly fundamental
nonconformist sect to whom a foolish marriage might be an offence
against your family, but a fractious divorce was an offence against
God. So now it was the parents who attempted to keep things going.
All the reward they got was that when some professional disaster hit
Sergeant Roote's career, their daughter had to share in it. Exactly
what form it took Mrs Eel had to admit she didn't know, but she knew
it was bad enough to get him chucked out of the Force without a
pension, after which it was all downhill, and when in a short time he
died (drink or suicide, Mrs Eel theorized) Anthea was left destitute.

At this point Mrs Eel's direct
knowledge of what happened became fragmentary, but she was clearly a
great snapper-up of indiscreet trifles and she was able to provide
Ellie with enough bits and pieces to add to her own knowledge of the
subsequent course of Franny Roote's life for the construction of a
convincing mosaic.

She laid this out before Pascoe
that night, jumping straight in once the anticipated explosion of The
bastard's been at it again!' after he read the letter had faded away.

He had listened with close
attention but without any of the ooh's and ah's of wonderment and
admiration she felt her researches deserved.

But in for a penny, in for a
pound.

‘I’ll
leave you to find out what this career-ending disaster might have
been,' she said. 'What I think happened after his death was that
Anthea, faced with the prospect of vegetating gently in Hope, decided
to put the expensive education her parents had given her to practical
use. She re-established contact with old school-friends. I would
guess that to them the sight of a beautiful, wilful, and probably
rather condescending old school chum being forced to admit she'd got
it all wrong and her life was an unmitigated disaster was
irresistible. Soon she was moving once more in their elevated
circles. Mrs Eel certainly recalls young Fran (whom she describes as
a strange, solemn child, a bit fey) being looked after for
increasingly long periods by his grandparents. Ultimately of course
Anthea showed her friends the error of their charitable ways by
plucking from under their noses the
prize
plum of the rich and
attractive American bachelor who became her second husband. But it
seems that Franny did not form part of the deal. He looked like
becoming a permanent fixture at his grandparents' house in Hope, then
Mrs Atherton died of cancer leaving Mr Atherton too frail and
distraught to look after the boy alone. And so, I surmise, began that
long involvement with the British boarding school system which has
produced such a fine crop of crooks, psychotics and prime ministers.'

'Roote did well then. Two out of
three's not bad’ said Pascoe. 'Your conclusions? I can tell by
your flaring nostrils that you have conclusions.'

'Surely here we have the perfect
explanation of Franny's love’hatred relationship with his
father? He's a hero to the boy - that story of the attack in the park
is almost certainly based on truth, if perhaps a little coloured by
memory. But his failure to provide for his family led to Fran's
neglect and stressful upbringing. He tried to write him out of his
life by claiming almost complete ignorance of the man, but Ms Haseen
got through his guard. And his obsessive relationship with you
derives largely from the fact that you are another cop who has had a
tremendous influence on his life, bad in that you got him locked up
in the Syke, but good in that everything now seems to be falling
right for him. Also he's desperately in need of a living
father-figure. And of course your obsession with him must have made
him believe that you too felt a special relationship here.'

The bastard's got that right
then’ said Pascoe feelingly.

'Come on, Pete. Give him a break.
I'm not denying there's an element of mockery and teasing in these
letters, but can't you see there's much more?'

'Like threats, you mean? And
hints at crimes committed which I can't touch him for?'

'No. Like . . . need.'

'Ellie, if you're going to say
they're a cry for help, I may puke’

'Shut up and open the prezzies I
bought you in the sales’ she commanded.

He tore open the tissue paper and
looked in horror at the mohair sweaters in the bright colours and
bold designs she believed suited him.

'I may puke anyway’ he
said.

Shirley
Novello was a good Catholic, if Catholic goodness means believing all
the rules and keeping as many as you can without bursting. The one
she had most problems with was the one that says sex outside marriage
is sinful, which was perhaps why, as she once tried to explain to
Father Joseph Kerrigan, she got involved with a married man from time
to time, as in a way that was sex sort of half in marriage, wasn't
it?

Father Joe had shaken his head
and said, 'If the SJ's took women, I'd enter you straight off. Next
time you feel the urge coming on, pray for strength to resist.
Miracles do happen. And while you're at it, make the sign of the
cross, but make it with your legs.'

In fact a miracle had happened at
Christmas, that most miraculous of times. It had started well. Her
Transport sergeant had managed to spend the morning with her using
the pretext of a duty-sharing roster, which, considering that there
were no trains on Christmas Day, meant his wife must be pretty thick.
He'd given Novello a digital camera which must have cost an arm and a
leg, so in return she'd given him both her arms and legs and every
other part of her anatomy she could bring into contact with every
part of his she could reach. How he explained the exhausted state in
which he returned home she did not know, but when she next saw him,
the day after Boxing Day, she found that memory of their festive fuck
plus a vast excess of family festivity had combined to make him start
talking seriously of escaping to the wildwoods with her and building
a willow cabin or some such nonsense.

Now the miracle occurred.

In the twinkling of an eye he was
transformed from a strong handsome interestingly hairy lover in the
prime of life to a middle-aged beer belly with the beginnings of a
bald patch and four noisy, ill-mannered kids. She gave him his
marching orders and even thought of returning the camera, but in the
end thought what the hell! she'd earned it.

So Novello had begun the New Year
as New Years should be begun, with a clean slate and a whole cageful
of lively resolutions. They beat their wings at the bars in vain till
a Twelfth Night party from which she woke with the certain knowledge
that they'd all flown the coop, though in what order she could not
say. But the experience, she seemed to recollect, had been splendidly
epiphanic. In other words her head felt fuzzy but her body felt
great.

She rolled out of bed - her own -
checked that no one was crapping in her bog or cooking in her kitchen
- they weren't - complimented herself on having a great time without
paying the high price of conversation over breakfast, and knocked
back her usual hangover cure of a fried-egg sarnie and a litre of
coffee black as a Unionist's heart.

Then she noticed the digital
camera next to her party clothes on the floor.

She checked the pictures, didn't,
thank God, find anything too naughty, but did come across a snap of a
good-looking guy with a nice crinkly grin sitting on her sofa. She
couldn't put a name to him, but his face sent a distinct mnemonic
tremor through her erogenous zone.

She wanted a close-up, but when
she tried to feed it into her computer she found the bloody thing was
knackered. Never mind. The station was full of bloody things.

Then she set out for work. She
was proud of her fitness and she jogged to the station every other
day. This was an other day. A lesser woman might have chickened, but
not Novello. She'd woken up at her usual time and she was resolved to
follow her usual routine. Sticking a change of clothes plus her
camera into a small rucksack, she got into her tracksuit and set off.

Since Dalziel had given her the
special assignment, her chosen route usually took her along Peg Lane.

Her task of making sure Rye
Pomona wasn't being harassed by investigative reporters was either
very easy or quite impossible, depending on how you looked at it. The
impossible bit was sticking with her twenty-four hours a day. On the
other hand she'd been put on her guard, she was an intelligent woman
(formidably intelligent, in Novello's estimation) and quite capable
of taking care of herself. So the active part of the assignment had
soon diminished to a daily check with her for oddities plus the
occasional morning diversion just to make sure there wasn't some low
life waiting to buttonhole her at this hour most favoured by police,
bailiffs and buttonholers generally.

After the events at the Mayor's
Hogmanay Hop, it had seemed that even this small routine wouldn't be
necessary for some time, but last Thursday Hat had turned up at work,
full of joy, to announce that Rye had rung him the previous night to
say she'd been discharged from hospital with a clean bill of health
and this morning she'd gone back to work.

Novello, guessing that Dalziel
would expect her to know all the ins and outs before he'd even heard
the substantive news, headed straight round to the library for a
chat.

Rye had greeted her like an old
friend. To Novello's enquiries after her health she'd replied that
the hospital staff hadn't been able to assign any specific cause to
her collapse, suspected it might be viral, had given her a couple of
shots of God knows what, and sent her home with instructions to make
an appointment with her GP.

Novello had been unconvinced. She
had a sharp female eye and a proper detective scepticism, both of
which detected tell-tale signs of worry and debility. Had she been a
closer mate of Hat Bowler's, she might have looked for a diplomatic
way of hinting her concern, but even then his boundless relief and
joy at Rye's return home could have made her hesitate. As it was,
with their uneasy relationship, any hint of reservation on her part
was likely to be regarded as peeing on his parade.

Her relationship with Andy
Dalziel had no such ambiguities. If he gave you a job, even if you
thought it was a complete waste of time, you did it, and you didn't
skimp. She'd read every syllable of the Wordman archive twice. Asked
for her conclusions, she'd taken a deep breath and told the Fat Man,
'If Dee hadn't been caught in the act of attacking Pomona, there's
not enough evidence against him to get him community service let
alone a conviction for serial killing. And if he hadn't been killed
resisting arrest, which is how we sold it, I can think of half a
dozen stories he might have told which would have made CPS very
unhappy about charging him.'

Them dozy buggers got hold of
Hitler, he'd have pled down to a misdemeanour’ said Dalziel,
but without any real force.

'So if there is a journalist on
the case, all he has to do is find some way of picking holes in the
Pomona attack and after that it's straight through to the goal mouth.
Tabloids twenty. Police nil.'

'Play a lot of soccer, do you?'

'Six-a-side down the gym’
she said.

'Don't know what the world's
coming to. OK, you've not told me owt I don't know. You could make an
old man very happy by pointing out some loose end in the killings
that we could tie round Dee's neck.'

'Only loose end I could see was
that chap Pyke-Strengler who was found shot and decapitated out at
Stang Tarn. There was some blood on one of his fishhooks, human,
group AB. Not Pyke-Strengler's, but not Dee's either, and not
belonging to either of the other two suspects, Penn and Roote, who,
to be honest, sir, look about as suspicious as the Pope. How they got
in the frame beats me.'

'Wishful thinking’ growled
Dalziel. 'You'll do more of it as you get older. So one loose end you
can't tie up except to say it definitely doesn't point to Dee. That
it? Nothing you can cheer me up with by saying, "Please, sir,
here's something no one can argue with 'cos you definitely got it
right?"'

'Yes, sir, there is something’

'Spit it out.'

'I think you're definitely right
to be worried if it turns out there is an investigative journalist on
the job.'

He stared at her till she began
to regret her boldness, then said, 'Nay, lass, I'm not worried about
that, 'cos I've got this smartass cop on his case who's going to find
him for me before he prints a word.'