Death's Jest-Book (48 page)

It was Dalziel's turn to shoot a
suspicious glance but she met it boldly. She wasn't about to ask him
direct what it was he didn't want anyone to find, but after a lot of
deep thought she'd come to the conclusion there had to be something
and she'd made a pretty good guess at what it might be. Being on
Dalziel's team meant you often had to put up with being treated like
a personal slave, but the upside of this was that his pride of
possession was second to none, and if anyone tried to mess with one
of his cubs, they found themselves messing with Daddy Bear too.
Finding a wounded officer and dead suspect after a struggle, and
being persuaded the suspect had it coming, Fat Andy wouldn't hesitate
to tidy things up to remove any ambiguity about the killing. She'd
now looked at every photo and read every bit of paper relating to the
affair, and marvelled at how cleverly the selections offered to first
the coroner then the Board of Enquiry had underlined the proper roles
of the trio involved - Maiden in Distress, Noble Rescuer Sorely
Wounded and Foul Fiend Slain With a Single Blow. Had a case ever come
to court, then a good defence counsel would surely have picked up on
this manicure job. But dead men didn't get tried.

'So what do you think got Richter
interested, clever clogs?' he growled.

'Money? Penn must be worth a bob
or two, all this telly stuff.'

'She sound to you like someone
who'll do owt just for the brass?'

'Not really,' admitted Novello.

'Look at her list of
publications.'

Besides her
major investigative articles, there were several books listed on what
seemed to be social or socio-literary topics. The title of one was
translated as
Heine's Apostasy: the German Choice.

She said hesitantly, 'Isn't Penn
doing a book about someone with a name like that?'

Dalziel looked upon her with the
approval he saved for those of his staff whose minds weren't
cluttered up with all kinds of art-farty lit. crit. nonsense.

'Aye. This Heinkel or whatever
his name is. I'll lay odds they've met before and when Charley
started getting these daft ideas in his head about digging up some
dirt, he thought of Fraulein fucking Richter straight off!'

'But it still doesn't explain’

'Does if they'd had a roll in the
hay first time they met,' said Dalziel. 'Nay, don't look surprised. I
know he's no oil painting, but there's no accounting for taste, is
there?'

She looked at the huge bulk
slumped before her, thought of Cap Marvell, and said, 'No, that's
right, sir,' realizing too late she'd not slammed down the visor over
her thoughts quickly enough.

He gave her a promissory glare,
then said, 'I reckon she'd spent the night at Charley's place,
sorting out his irregular verbs, and he were dropping her off so she
could become dear Myra, best mate, again.'

She said, 'Looked as if they
might have been having a bit of a row.'

'Good. Mebbe she's decided
there's nowt in it for her and is giving Charley his cards,' said
Dalziel. 'Off you go, lass. Got no work to do?'

She felt dumped. At the door she
paused. Nothing like a Parthian shot, was there?

She said, 'One thing, sir. How
long has Rogers been living next door to Rye?'

'At least since a week before
Christmas. Why?'

So, three weeks at least. And
she'd stayed around over Christmas too. Either her passion for
Charley Penn was very strong. Or she thought she was definitely on to
something worth spending a lot of time on. She thought of saying this
to see if she could get a flicker of unease into those relentless
eyes. But was it worth the effort?

She didn't know much about the
Parthians but she had an impression that despite all their farewell
shots, they'd never made the World Cup finals.

'Just wondered, sir,' she said,
heading for the door.

'Don't forget your camera. Here,
I didn't realize you knew Sol.'

'Sol?' She turned, puzzled, then
saw that the image now showing on the screen was the man in her flat
with the nerve-tingling smile.

'Aye. Sol Wiseman. Rabbi at the
Progressive Synagogue on Millstone Road.'

'Rabbi. A Jewish Rabbi?' said
Novello, gobsmacked,

'A lot of them are’ said
Dalziel, eyeing her sharply. 'Known him long?'

'No, not really .. . hardly at
all... just trying out the camera.'

She was thinking with horror of
her next confession. 'Father, I've screwed a rabbi

Dalziel grinned suddenly as if
she'd spoken her fears out loud, unplugged the camera and handed it
to her.

Once more she headed for the
door.

As she opened it, his voice said,
'Another thing, Ivor. You keep this quiet. And I mean quiet. No
exceptions, not even Father Joe. Right?'

'Yes, sir.'

She went out into the corridor
and was shutting the door when, without looking up, he added, 'Nice
work, lass. You did right well.'

Suddenly things didn't seem so
bad after all.

Biting her lip to stop herself
grinning like an idiot, Novello went on her way.

Rye
Pomona watched out of her window as Novello drove away.

Her appointment was at nine
thirty. At nine forty a grim-faced man came out of the consulting
room.

'Do we need another appointment,
Mr Maciver?' asked the receptionist.

'What for?' he snarled. And left.
A great start.

Chakravarty appeared in the
doorway, casually dressed in a shirt so white it dazzled the eye and
knife-edged cream-coloured slacks. All he needed was a bat to be
opening in a test match. He ushered her in, full of apology and
charm.

Rye listened to him stony faced,
then glanced at her watch and said, 'So let's not waste any more
time.'

He blinked as if a bouncer had
just whistled past his nose and said, 'Of course. I have your records
here. The tests are scheduled. But first let's see things from your
point of view.'

He was a good listener, and a
good questioner, though after half an hour Rye felt slightly
irritated that he seemed to be focusing less on what in her eyes was
the most significant event of her medical history, the accident which
had killed her brother and left her with her silver blaze, and more
on the events out at Stang Tarn the previous autumn which had left
Dick Dee dead.

Suspecting his interest was
merely prurient, she said dismissively, 'I don't see how this can be
relevant. I only suffered a few minor injuries.'

'So I observe, it must
nevertheless have been a tremendous shock to your system. And it
would seem your symptoms have appreciably worsened since that event.'

'Aren't you jumping the gun?'
said Rye. 'You're talking as if everything you've asked about or I've
mentioned is part of a single syndrome. Surely until you've examined
the results of all the necessary tests, this is mere hypothesis?'

'I prefer to think of it as
diagnosis,' he said with a quick flash of the charming smile. 'So far
you've given me a history of severe headaches over many years
increasing in frequency, occasional bouts of dizziness or
disorientation also becoming more frequent, and mood swings if not
violent enough to be called manic-depressive, certainly remarkable
enough for you to feel they were worth a mention. These begin to form
a pattern which may give a pointer to what I should be looking for in
the test results.'

'So why don't we get down to the
tests?'

He blinked again. Probably every
blink means another hundred on his bill, thought Rye. Well, that's
what the private patient paid for, the right to be ruder than the
doctor.

She'd come as clean as she could
in answering his questions, stopping short of telling him about her
conversations with Serge, of course, and not getting within screaming
distance of her involvement in the Wordman killings. She had told him
about her sense of responsibility for the accident that had caused
Serge's death, though without admitting that she was indeed
responsible. And she'd gone on to describe how, after her recovery,
lines she knew by heart had vanished the moment she set foot on a
stage, thus bringing to an end her hope of an acting career. She'd
been worried in advance that baring so much of herself to an
impersonal expert might tempt her to go the whole confessional hog
and let everything spill out. But in fact she was finding that the
process was causing a distancing between herself and the self who'd
done those dreadful things, turning that other into the killer you
read about in the paper or see being taken into court on the telly,
then you close the paper or switch off the set, and though you may
retain a residual impression of the monster for a while, it isn't
strong enough to spoil your dinner or trouble your sleep.

Only the sepulchral confinement
of the brain scanner brought it all back to her, brought Sergius too,
his flesh disintegrating as it strove to rid itself of all that fluff
and dust, his eye accusing, as if all her efforts to contact him had
only heaped purgatorial coals upon his spirit. As she rolled back
into the by comparison cathedral vastness of the hospital room, she
wondered how her turbulent mental activity had registered on the
scan. Would it be possible for the expert eye to read a full
confession in the message scrawled by all those electronic impulses
on the wall of the brain?

After the initial consultation
and examination, Mr Chakravarty had vanished, presumably to see
another lucrative private client, or maybe glance at a dozen or so
National Health patients, while she spent the rest of the morning
undergoing tests, some of which she understood, others of which were
impenetrably arcane.

Finished, she was told that she
should present herself at the peacock throne again at four thirty, by
which time Chakravarty, his busy schedule permitting, should have had
time to make some preliminary assessments of the test results.

She had no desire to go back to
her flat. Hat was working today, but that didn't mean he wouldn't
bunk off at some point to visit her at the library. There he would be
met by the story she'd fed her colleagues, that she was taking the
day off to do the January sales in Leeds. Being a cop, and knowing
her attitude to sex and shopping was that they were fine except for
the shopping, he might be a little more sceptical than her colleagues
and head straight round to Church View. To head him off from doing
something stupid like kicking her door down, she'd confided in Myra
Rogers who'd promised to listen out for any visitors and confirm that
she'd seen her friend set off, hopes high, in search of bargains
first thing that morning. Worried that she'd be keeping Myra stuck in
Church View, she'd been reassured that her bookkeeping work could for
the most part be as easily done at home as in her clients' often
cramped offices.

It seemed a good idea too to
avoid the chance of an accidental encounter in the town centre so
when she got into her car, she drove out into the country. Whether
directed by accident or by subconscious choice, she did not know, but
she suddenly realized she was driving along the Little Bruton road,
and there ahead was the tiny humpback bridge where she'd broken down
and sat in despair till she saw the yellow AA van driving towards her
like the answer to a prayer. Here it had all started, here the first
of her victims had died - no, not a victim, not this one ... his
death had been an accident ... an accident which she had interpreted
as a sign .. .

She stopped on the bridge. Time
had stopped for her on that occasion and all those subsequent
occasions when deaths had occurred which by no stretch of the
imagination could be called accidental. She'd told Chakravarty
something about these timeless episodes, not with any detail, of
course, but just in an effort to convey her feeling of separation
from the chronology of everyday life, her sense of otherness. Now she
longed for the experience again . . . time slowing .. . stopping . ..
only this time when the flow started again, perhaps instead of the AA
man lying dead in the water, he'd be climbing into his van and
driving merrily on his way . . .

But nothing happened. She stood
on the bridge and looked down over the shallow parapet. The stream
flowed, and so did time. She got back into the car. The past was past
and never changed. The dead were dead and the only way to see them
again was to join them. Her eyes filled with blinding tears. She kept
on driving, faster and faster, but when her eyes cleared, she was
still alive, still bowling along this narrow bendy country road as if
hands other than hers were turning the wheel.

At four twenty-nine she was back
in Chakravarty's office. At four thirty prompt he appeared. So she'd
taught him one lesson. But when he didn't make any charmingly
humorous reference to his good timekeeping, she guessed he was not
the bearer of glad tidings.

She said, 'Mr Chakravarty, before
you begin, please understand there is no need to wrap things up. I
require clear explanation. No jargon, no concealing technicalities
and certainly no euphemism.'

A blink.

'Fine’ he said. 'Then I am
sorry to tell you that you have a brain tumour. This is the cause of
your recent headaches and of the convulsive episode you suffered at
New Year.'

He went on talking, smoothly,
eloquently. She registered the drift - that he was advising immediate
hospitalization and the commencement of a vigorous combination of
radiotherapy and chemotherapy - and she got the message - that the
tumour was inoperable and treatment likely to be merely palliative.
But she wasn't really listening. Out on the Little Bruton road she
had longed for a return of that sense of timelessness, and now she
had it. She felt as if she could stand up and take her clothes off
and dance on the consultant's desk then get dressed and resume her
seat, and all the time he would go on talking, unaware that she had
escaped from the dimension that he was trapped in. Or perhaps, being
a wise and experienced doctor who had spent too much of his life
looking into the human brain and the human psyche to be easily
deceived, he knew very well that she had left him and was elsewhere
and elsewhen, and was merely talking on and on to fill the time until
she, as she must do, rejoined him in the cage.