Death's Jest-Book (64 page)

On
Saturday the twenty-sixth of January, Rye Pomona woke on the floor of
her bathroom. She recalled feeling sick in the night and climbing out
of bed, but she recalled no more. She stood up and realized she had
fouled herself. Stripping off her nightgown, she stepped into the
bath and turned the shower full on.

As the icy blast slowly turned
warm, she felt life return to her limbs and her mind. She found
herself singing a song, not the words but the catchy little tune.
This puzzled her, as recently she'd found no problem in recalling
anything, even things from her very earliest years.

Then it came to her that she
couldn't recall these words because she'd never known them. Even the
tune she'd only heard once. It had been sung by the boy with the
bazouki in the Taverna, the Greek restaurant in Cradle Street. Of all
the songs he had been asked to sing that night, this was the only one
which sounded authentically Greek. The words she didn't understand,
but the rippling notes created an impression eidetic in its intensity
of blue skies, blue waters and a shepherd boy sitting under an olive
tree on a sun-cracked hillside. She got dressed, tidied up, left
everything as she would have liked to find it on her return, locked
the door carefully behind her.

Mrs Gilpin was coming up the
stairs with her morning milk.

'Off to work then’ she
said.

'No, I'm not working today’
said Rye smiling. 'I've been admiring that lovely window box of
yours. It's so clever of you to get such colours in the middle of
winter, and I thought I'd drive out to that big garden centre at
Carker and see if I could pick up anything as nice.'

Mrs Gilpin, unused to her
neighbours being happy to exchange more than the briefest of
greetings with her, flushed at the compliment and said, 'If you want
any help, donlt hesitate to ask.'

'Thank you. I won't’ said
Rye.

She ran down the stairs, happy in
the knowledge that every word of the exchange would be imprinted on
the magnetic tape of Mrs Gilpin's mind, and a little bit sorry that
she had never gone out of her way to show the woman a friendly face
before.

Until she met her neighbour, she
hadn't had the faintest idea where she was going, but now she knew.
And she knew why, though it wasn't till she crossed the town boundary
and set her car climbing sedately up the gentle slope which led to
the brow of Roman Way that she formulated the knowledge. At the top,
she pulled on to the verge and waited.

Below her stretched the old Roman
road, running arrow straight down an avenue of ancient beeches for
nearly all of the five miles to the village of Carker. Down there she
had sat in wait for the boy with the bazouki, watching as the light
of his motorbike raced towards her, then switching on her own
headlights and driving into his path.

Of all her victims, he perhaps
was the one she regretted most. He had been young, and innocent, with
no guile in his heart, and music at his fingertips. She hadn't killed
him, but she had caused his death and in her madness read that as her
licence to kill.

If she could bring someone back
to life .. .

The thought made her feel
disloyal to Sergius, her brother whom she'd also killed with her
driving, though not deliberately, simply by selfishness and neglect.

But he would understand.

She waited till the road ahead
was empty. In her mirror she saw a distant vehicle coming up behind
her. Could it be . . . ? Yes, it was!

A yellow AA van.

What more fitting witness could
she ask!

But a witness to what? Here was a
problem. How could you have an accident on a perfectly straight and
traffic-free stretch of road?

Yet somehow it didn't feel like a
problem.

She set off down Roman Way, her
foot hard on the accelerator.

As her speed increased, she felt
time slowing, so that the beech trees which should have been blurring
by her were moving in sedate procession. This was part of that aura
which had preceded her terrible deeds, the same kind of aura which in
clinical terms often preceded the onset of epilepsy or other kinds of
seizure. In her present case it could be either, the tumour at its
destructive task or the harbinger of her final killing. She would on
the whole prefer her medical condition not to be a factor in her
death. She couldn't imagine it being a comfort to Hat to know he
would have lost her anyway, and she could imagine how he would feel
to learn she had been hiding the truth about her health from him.

But if it had to be, it had to
be.

Then she saw the deer heading
towards the road across the field to her left.

It was, she presumed, moving very
fast, but to her leisurely gaze it advanced at a slow lope.

She recalled driving with Hat to
Stang Tarn when a deer had appeared on the road ahead of them,
sending his little MG skidding on to the grass verge and triggering
memories which had come bubbling out, bringing her and Hat
dangerously close, making her contemplate for the first time ever -
and already too late - the possibility of happiness.

Happiness she had had, however
brief, however t tainted. A deer had started it and now a deer would
end it.

This was good. Hat would
remember, and such patterns of fate are a comfort to the stricken. We
grasp at anything to give us evidence that what seems meaningless has
meaning, what seems final is only a pause before a new beginning.

The deer reached the hedgerow and
flew over it in a movement of such beauty her heart stopped at the
achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Then it was on the road. She
swung the wheel over, touched the brake lightly to give a touch of
evidential authenticity to the AA man who was now within sight, and
careered towards the far side of the road with scarcely any loss of
speed. Yet in her time-out world, the approach to the tree that was
to kill her felt so slow that she could make out clearly its bruised
and scarred trunk and knew with a burst of joy that here was the very
same beech beneath which the bazouki boy had died.

Even the dying which the coroner
would describe as instantaneous took long enough for her to see the
line it was necessary to cross. On one side knelt Hat looking pale
and stricken and on the other stood Sergius and the bazouki boy,
overlapping and melding, smiling in welcome.

Then it was dark, and in the
control room of Praesidium Security where Hat had been posted to
follow the progress of the van dispatched to collect the Hoard,
everything went dark too.

'What's up with you?' demanded
Berry, the manager, looking with concern at the young DC who had
risen from his chair and was clasping both hands to his pallid face.

'I don't know. Nothing. Didn't
the power fail?'

'Eh? I think I'd have noticed.'

'No, look there was something ..
. see there! The signal's gone.'

Berry glanced at the computerized
map, smiled and started counting.

'. . . fourteen, fifteen,
sixteen, seventeen . . . there it is!'

A flashing light had appeared on
the screen heading south.

'It's the Estotiland underpass’
he said. 'Shields the signal. Usually takes between twelve and twenty
seconds, depending on traffic. Any road, no need to get your knickers
in a twist. It's on the way back with the Hoard on board that these
master criminals of thine are going to strike, not on the way down
with an empty van. Didn't they teach you owt at police college?'

Hat didn't answer. It felt like
something had been snuffed out in his mind. Was it possible to have a
stroke at his age? But there was no paralysis of one side of his
body, no twisting of his mouth, no sense that the link between
thought and speech had been lost. Yet something had been lost.

'You don't look so grand,' said
Berry, observing him more closely. 'Sit down, lad, and I'll bring you
a cup of tea. You've not been near anyone with this Kung Flu, have
you?'

'What? Yes. The DCI's got it.'

That'll likely be it then. How
old's your DCI? I've heard it can be a killer.'

But Peter Pascoe in fact was
feeling much much better. For the first time in five days he'd woken
up without feeling he had been unwillingly summoned from the grave,
and the only trace his mind held of the troubled visions of the past
few days had something to do with a Scotch pie.

He had been sleeping alone, for
his comfort and Ellie's protection. He pushed back the duvet and
swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Excellent. No dizziness, no
sudden overheating of the body. The door opened and Ellie came in
with a tray. 'Well, hello, Lazarus,' she said. 'What's this? Urgent
call of nature?'

'Something like that. What did
you feed me last night? I've got dim recollections of a Scotch pie. I
think there's been a miracle cure.'

'Scotch pie? No, you're still
delirious. Stand up.' He stood up and fell over.

'Just a little miracle then. Do
you want a lift into bed or are you going to levitate?' Sulkily he
crawled back beneath the duvet. 'But I really do feel much better,'
he protested. 'Of course you do. Why is it your bouts of illness
always follow such a hyperbolical parabola? A simple cold takes you
from death's door to the Olympic stadium in one mighty leap.'

'A simple cold? Bollocks. And
hyperbolical parabola sounds tautologous to me.'

'I know you're
getting better when you start sneering at my style. And I'm glad of
it,' said Ellie, setting down the tray. 'It means I can leave you
with a clear conscience.'

'Leave me? I know you writers are
sensitive, but that's a bit extreme, isn't it?'

'Leave you to your own devices
while I try to stop your power-mad child from hijacking Suzie's
birthday party at Estotiland.'

'Typical. Gadding off enjoying
yourself while I'm lying on a bed of pain,' said Pascoe.

'What happened to the miracle?
And if you really want to change places

Pascoe closed his eyes, imagined
the party - the noise, the violence, the vomit - and said, 'I think
I'm having a relapse.'

But later, after he'd heard the
front door close behind Ellie and his wildly excited daughter, he
climbed out of bed again and this time, not needing to impress with
his returned athleticism, he was able to stand upright and take a few
tentative steps with little more counter-effect than a drunken
stagger.

He put on his dressing gown and
went downstairs. As he made himself a cup of coffee he switched on
his official radio. He no longer took sugar, but what better
sweetener does a man at home need than to eavesdrop on his colleagues
hard at work?

Not a lot on the general
frequency. Shoplifting in the town centre. Bit of strife outside the
railway station as visitors arriving for that afternoon's football
match were fraternally greeted by home supporters. And an accident on
Roman Way. Only one car involved and they were still cutting the
victim out of the wreckage.

He tried the frequencies that CID
normally occupied and on the second of them heard Dalziel's voice
asking for a report from Serpent 3. Operation Serpent. He'd forgotten
all about that. Funny how a virus could reduce matters of seemingly
vast importance to vanishing point. Bowler, who must be in the
Praesidium control room, reported that the pick-up van was inside the
Sheffield city boundary. Pascoe felt a pang of guilt. It should have
been his job to make sure that Mid-Yorkshire's share in the operation
was trouble free. At the very least he ought to have rung Stan Rose
and wished him luck. He could remember his own first big job after
he'd been promoted to DI, how eager he'd been to get things right, to
reassure everyone - and in particular Fat Andy - that he could hack
it. Too late to get involved now, but he'd make a determined effort
to be first with his congratulations. The telephone rang.

He went through to the lounge and
picked it up. 'Pascoe,' he said.

'Mr Pascoe! How lovely to hear
your voice!' He sat down. It wasn't a voluntary movement and
fortunately there was a chair conveniently placed for his buttocks,
but he'd have sat down anyway. 'Hello? Hello? Mr Pascoe, you still
there?' 'Yes, I'm still here.'

'Oh good, thought I'd lost you
for a moment there. It's Franny, Mr Pascoe. Franny Roote.'

'I know who it is,' said Pascoe.
'What do you want?'

'Just to talk.
I'm sorry. Is this a
bad time?'

To talk to you? Every time is a
bad time! He said, 'Where are you, Mr Roote? America?
Switzerland? Germany? Cambridge?'

'Just outside Manchester. I got
back from the States this morning. Plane was late. I felt a bit
knackered, so I hung around and had a shower and a hearty breakfast,
and now I'm on my way home. Look, Mr Pascoe, I wanted first of all to
say sorry about all these letters I've been bombarding you with. I
hope you haven't found them too much of a nuisance, I’ve never
given you the chance to say so Mabye I was scared to. I mean, if you
didn't tell me direct that you were pissed off with getting letters
from me; then I could imagine maybe it was OK, maybe you even quite
enjoyed reading them and looked forward to them ... OK, that's
probably going too far, but writing them has been important to me and
I'm sure you can't do your job without understanding how ingenious
human beings are at justifying doing the things that seem important
to themselves.'

'I understand that very well, Mr
Roote,' said Pascoe coldly. 'I think the most persuasive line in
self-justification I ever heard came from a man who had just
dismembered his wife and two children with a meat cleaver.'

There was a pause. Then Roote
said, 'Oh shit. You really are pissed off, aren't you? I'm sorry.
Listen, no more letters then, I promise. But won't you at least talk
to me?'