Death's Jest-Book (55 page)

This sounded like it was
verbatim. Wield's mind was racing. Linford, still hugely disturbed at
his son's death, was taking it out on Belchamber for the want of
anyone else. And it wasn't just a case of a client sacking his
lawyer. Their suspicions that for some reason Belchamber had crossed
the line were obviously right. He was involved here, not as a lawyer
hovering in the background ready to step forward only if things went
awry, not even as a reluctant bagman, but as a principal, an
initiator. But of what? And why the hell should he be taking that
dangerous step across when staying on the legal side must be second
nature to him?

‘And what was all that
'your majesty' business?

‘Just a joke? One queen to
another maybe? Or ...

'That any good then?' said Lee.

'What? Sorry. Yes, it's very
helpful. Any more?'

'No, that's it for now. Don't
worry, I get owt else, I'll be right on to you.'

Wield said, 'Lee, I think maybe
it's time you stopped dealing with Belchamber.'

'Yeah? Why's that then? You
trying to save my soul again, Mac?'

He spoke with a knowing cockiness
that grated. Wield said, 'Not your soul. Your body maybe. If he got
wind that you're passing stuff on to me . . .'

'No chance! All I do is listen.
Not breaking into safes and such. Anyway, I can take care of Belchy.
He's soft as pigshit.'

'Maybe. But there's people he's
mixed up with who aren't, and they're twice as nasty.'

'You reckon? Well, I meet lots of
nasty people, Sergeant Mac. No need to worry about me.'

'But I do worry, Lee.'

'Really?'

'Really.'

'Yeah, well, you'll be the
first.' He spoke with an attempt at throw-away bravado.

'I shouldn't think so,' said
Wield. 'Your mam must have worried.'

'Mebbe. And my dad too. He'd
probably have worried if he'd known.'

He's still hanging on to the idea
that it was ignorance rather than indifference which made his father
dump his pregnant mother, thought Wield. He said gently, 'I'm sure he
would have, Lee.'

'Yeah. I wish I'd got a picture
of him or something. Mam didn't have anything. Not that he were owt
much to look at, she said. In fact most folk reckoned, he were a
right ugly bugger. But she said looks aren't everything, he were
right sexy and she knew he were the one for her first time she saw
him. They were just kids, younger than me, I think, so he'd just be
in his thirties now. Wherever he is.'

Oh Christ, thought Wield aghast,
suddenly recalling the young man's interest in his possible hetero
experience. Edwin had warned him that Lee might be seeing him as a
father substitute, but for once those sharp old eyes hadn't looked
deep enough.

It's not a substitute the poor
little sod's after; he's looking to cast me as his actual sodding
father!

Lee had
brought his wandering gaze to bear full on Wield's ravaged features.
His expression was defiant but not despairing. Hope is
a
persistent virus. Vaccinate yourself against it all you like, it
still clings on. Wield said, 'Look, Lee’

Then the door burst open and
several uniformed policemen rushed into the cafe.

One stayed by the door, two went
behind the counter and grabbed hold of Turk with rather more force
than his unresisting demeanour merited, two more vanished into the
rear of the premises while another addressed the half-dozen
customers.

'Stay in your seats, gents. We'll
need your names and addresses, just as witnesses, you understand,
then you can go.'

Lee was now glaring accusingly at
Wield, who said, 'It's nowt to do with me, lad.' Obviously
unconvinced, the boy began to rise when a hand clapped on his
shoulder and a voice said ponderously, as if the words were being
prised out of mud, 'Keep sat down.'

Oh shit, thought Wield,
recognizing the voice before he took in the face. It belonged to PC
Hector, the albatross round Mid-Yorkshire Constabulary's neck, the
mote in its eye, the pile on its rectum. He was, Dalziel opined, the
most reliable officer in the Force - he always got it wrong. If he
survived long enough he might outdistance the Fat Man himself as a
source of amazing anecdote.

Now his gaze, which had focused
with grave suspicion on Wield's black leathers, moved up to take in
the sergeant's features. There was a moment of mental perturbation,
then recognition came up like thunder out of China 'cross the Bay,
and he said in stentorian tones, 'Hello. It's you, .Sarge! What you
doing here? Undercover, is it?'

Behind him, Wield saw Turk
register the words, saw his gaze flicker to Lee.

He rose and put his face close to
Hector's and said in a low voice, ‘I'm having a cup of coffee,
which is just as well, 'cos if I were on a job, you'd have just blown
it.'

Hector looked so crestfallen it
was almost possible to feel sorry for him then, and said in the kind
of whisper which echoes round the gods, 'Sorry, Sarge, I never
thought.'

‘There'll be a first time,
maybe.' Then turning to the officer who'd .addressed the cafe
clientele, none of whom showed the slightest interest in what was
happening, he said, 'Johnstone, what's going off?'

Truck broke down on the motorway
coming from Hull. Two of our lot stopped to give assistance and heard
noises. Turned out it was full of illegals. The driver tried to make
a call but got stopped before he got through. This was the number he
was ringing.'

‘I see. Got a search
warrant?'

'One's on its way, but we thought
we'd best make sure of getting Sonny Jim here.'

'Yeah. Well, I'd get yon pair out
of the back till it arrives, so that if you do find anything, it will
be admissible.'

'Yeah, right, Sarge.'

Wield turned back to Lee, who was
on his feet and looking anxious to be elsewhere. It came-back to him
now that on their first encounter the youth had made some crack about
Turk's sandwiches containing the remains of illegals that hadn't made
it.

'You know anything about Turk
being in the people-smuggling business?' he asked.

'I'd heard a buzz, that was all.'

'And you didn't think it was
worth mentioning?'

'No. It's not like real crime, is
it? Just a lot of poor sods wanting in. Christ, think what it must be
like where they come from if they think it's going to be better
here!'

This was matter for an
interesting discussion on comparative sociology which would have to
wait till some other time.

He led Lee to the door and said
to the guardian constable, 'This one can go. I've got his details.'

The man stood aside and Lee
headed through the door like a canary out of a cage.

‘I'll be in touch,' Wield
called after him.

‘Scuse us, Sarge,' said a
voice behind him.

He turned, then stepped aside to
let Turk and his pair of close escorts pass.

His gaze and that of the cafe
proprietor met. All he saw there was the same blank indifference with
which the man dispensed his unspeakable coffee.

No harm done,
Wield reassured himself as he watched the police car pull away. So
now Turk knew that he was a
cop. Presumably he already knew
that Lee was a rent boy. God knows what he might speculate about
their relationship, but so what? Anyway, he was going to have other
more serious matters on his mind.

But still Wield felt uneasiness
working like dyspepsia in his gut.

He stayed a
little longer to make sure that everything was by the book then left.
Part of his mind had never stopped working at the new info Lee had
given him and now he gave it his full attention. There was something
there that meant something to him. That stuff about
crown
and
majesty . . .

Unlike most
minds in search of something only dimly remembered, Wield's didn't
work by turning to something completely different in the hope of
stumbling across the desired item by chance, as it were. His relied
more on the computer principle. You fed the information into a
program, pressed
search,
and waited for results.

The answer came two minutes later
as he sat with idling engine waiting for the traffic lights to
change.

He was in the right-hand lane. As
the lights showed red and amber, he accelerated left across the bows
of a stately old Morris containing three old ladies in fur hats on
their way to lunch with the bishop, who with a synchronicity worthy
of the Beverley Sisters gave him the finger and screamed, 'Asshole!'

It
was forty minutes later that Wield pulled into the police station car
park.

Proximity to
the seat of law being no guarantee of security, he squatted to wrap a
length of chain around the rear wheel and pillion, and as he did so
he noticed
a
big black Lexus in one of the public bays.

Its number plate read JUS 10.
There was a man in the driver's seat talking into a phone, difficult
to identify through the tinted glass. But as Wield snapped his lock
shut, the man got out and headed into the building and there was no
mistaking that Roman head, those sculpted locks. It was Marcus
Belchamber.

Straightening up, Wield once
again felt that acid uneasiness in his gut.

Belchamber had disappeared by the
time he reached the front desk. Des Bowman, the duty sergeant, looked
up and said, 'How do, Wieldy. What fettle?'

'Grand, Des. Weren't that
Belchamber I saw just come in? What's he doing?'

'He's acting for Yasher Asif, you
know him? Runs that caff called Turk's by the station. They brought
him in for questioning about some illegals-smuggling racket.'

'Thanks, Des. Let me through,
eh?'

The sergeant released the
security lock and Wield went through the door and hurried up the
stairs to CID. He glimpsed Pascoe through the open door of his office
and went in.

The DCI was studying a letter
whose handwriting Wield identified at a glance. Franny Roote's. Shit,
he thought, is the silly sod still letting himself be distracted?

Before he could speak Pascoe
looked up and said, 'Wieldy, what do you know about the Elsecar
Hoard?'

It was like having his mind read.

'A lot more now than I did an
hour ago,' said Wield. 'Why do you ask?'

'No reason . . . just an idea ...
oh shit, what am I tiptoeing around for? It's something Roote says in
this letter.'

'Giving you tips now, is he? I
thought it were all hidden confessions.'

'I think I may have got another
of those too,' said Pascoe grimly. 'But that's between me and him.
Anyway, he mentioned the Hoard apropos a conversation he had with
what sounds very like a high-class fence. And I got to thinking. It's
in Sheffield at the moment and it's coming here soon

The twenty-sixth, week tomorrow,'
said Wield.

'You're well informed.'

'Some of us get places by honest
police work that other idle sods reach by imaginative leaps,' said
Wield. 'If you're talking about this job Mate Polchard's planning,
that is.'

Now it was Pascoe's turn to feel
mind-read.

'What else? Tell me about this
honest police work. You interest me strangely.'

Quickly Wield filled him in on
his conversation with Lubanski.

'It was this
bit about the crown that got me thinking. That and wondering why the
hell Belchamber should have got so personally involved in this job.
Then I remembered seeing a poster at the Centre about the Hoard being
on exhibition in January. And I recalled there was some article
fulminating over the sale that Belchamber had written in the
Gazette.
Didn't read it myself, but Edwin gets hot and bothered about such
things and he kept quoting bits at me over the dinner table till I
told him that the moral indignation of a dipstick like the Belch
weren't good for my digestion. Anyway, I went down to the reference
library to look it up in the back numbers. Took a closer look at them
posters too. They've got Belchamber giving a lecture on the Hoard on
the exhibition opening day. Odd that.'

'Why? He's really involved. I saw
him on the telly the other week. He might be a shitbag, but he knows
his Medes from his Persians.'

'It's odd because of the way he's
blown hot and cold. I'll show you what I mean. Yon lass of Bowler's
was very helpful. Hadn't seen her-since that scare at New Year.'

'How'd she look?'

'Bit pale maybe, but full of the
joys of spring otherwise.'

In fact, Rye had greeted him
rather frostily till it was established that his motive in appearing
there had nothing to do with her. Then she had thawed and to his
enquiry after her health, she'd replied, 'Never better. Just some
virus that's going around, but I'm over it now. How about you, Mr
Wield?'

'I'm fine. At least nothing that
a bit of spring sunshine won't cure. Roll on, eh?'

'Yes,' she said. 'I can't wait.'
Which for some reason she seemed to think of as funny and her
laughter was so infectious, he found himself joining in.

‘This article . ..'
prompted Pascoe.

'Articles. There were two of
them. It was Rye put me on to the other which appeared way back when
Belch were on better terms with the Elsecars. I've got copies. This
is the earlier one.'

He handed it over. Pascoe scanned
it quickly then read it again at a more leisurely pace.

This described a visit Belchamber
and other officers of the Mid-Yorkshire Archaeological Society had
been permitted to make to view the Hoard. It was fulsome with
expressions of gratitude to the Elsecars for their kind condescension
in allowing the visit. The style when he described the content of the
Hoard was scholarly and objective, but later it became personal and
familiar as he started theorizing, or perhaps romancing was a better
word, about the provenance of various items and the background of
their owner and the circumstances of their loss.