Death dap-20

by Reginald Hill

  The youth shook his head.

  'Sorry, nowt about that, but I got something else’

  'Oh yes? What's it this time? A sub-post-office job somewhere in the North of England? Or is it not as definite as that?'

  Lee's light was now definitely flickering.

  'Not very definite, no’ he said defensively. 'But I can only tell you what I heard. You don't want me making things up, do you?'

  There was something touchingly ingenuous about this, but Wield did not let his reaction show.

  'Too bloody true’ he said. 'All right, let's have it’

  'It's that Liam Linford case. They're fixing it so the wanker gets off’

  Now it was his intense interest that Wield was concealing.

  'Fixing it? Who is? How?'

  'His dad, Wally, who fucking else?' said Lee with a show of aggression reminding Wield that under the facade of innocent kid lurked a streetwise rent boy. 'And all I know is they're fixing for that Carnwath to change his evidence so it never gets to Crown Court, and it's no use going on at me for more 'cos that's all I fucking know’

  'Yeah yeah, keep your voice down’ said Wield. The music was loud and no one was paying any attention, but too much animation in a place like Turk's was like laughter at a funeral. 'What you do know is where this info comes from’

  A sullen, stubborn expression settled like a pall across the boy's pale features.

  A client, guessed Wield. He's not going to risk giving up a regular source of income. And maybe it's someone he's a bit scared of.

  What he should be trying to do was sign Lee up as an official snout to compensate for any possible loss of earnings, but he didn't think it was worth the effort. Or, maybe he simply didn't want to. Once on the books, his identity would be known at least to Dalziel and Pascoe, neither of whom would hesitate to use him any which way they could, and he would only remain useful as long as he remained a rent boy.

  'OK, forget that. How about an educated guess at what they're going to try to do to Carnwath? Anything at all, Lee. You're right, I don't want you to make things up, but I don't want you not to say anything either just 'cos you think it doesn't sound important’

  His softer tone had an immediate effect. The sullen-ness vanished to be replaced by a childish concentration.

  'Nothing… except he did say something about someone arriving Wednesday… no use asking who or where or when… I don't know.. . just they're due in Wednesday

  Wield didn't press. If there was anything else to come, which he doubted, pressure wasn't going to induce it. He said, That's good, Lee. Thanks a lot.'

  And his heart ached again at the pleasure his praise clearly caused the boy.

  He took some coins out of his pocket and said, 'Here, get yourself a Coke.'

  'Nah, that's all right, my treat. 'Nother coffee?'"

  Without waiting for an answer, Lee went to the counter where the inscrutable Turk offered no response to his chirpy greeting but supplied the requested drinks with the indifference of an Athenian executioner pouring hemlock.

  'So, Lee,' said Wield. 'Tell me a bit more about yourself. You got a trade at all?'

  'Trade? Oh, I get plenty of trade,' he replied with a knowing laugh.

  'Not what I meant,' said Wield. 'I meant a trade to get a proper living at. What you're talking about will likely kill you in the end, you know that.'

  'So what if it does? Anyway, if men've got to pay 'cos that's the only way they can get what they want, where's the harm? Thought you'd have understood that.'

  The bold stare reminded Wield that he'd been sussed.

  He didn't look away.

  'I don't pay for sex, Lee,' he said. 'Anything not available because someone doesn't want to give it to me, I do without.'

  'Yeah, well, you're one of the lucky ones then,' said the boy, dropping his gaze. 'How about lasses, you ever try it with a girl?'

  The question came out of nowhere and Wield let his surprise show.

  'Sorry, I didn't mean… I were just wondering…'

  'It's OK,' said Wield. 'Yes, I tried it with girls. When I were your age… younger… Before you understand the truth about yourself, wanting to be like everyone else makes you think there's something wrong, doesn't it?'

  As he spoke, he realized he was making a stupid assumption. Being a rent boy didn't mean you had to be gay. But Lee's response confirmed what he'd assumed.

  'Yeah, know what you mean’ he said moodily. 'It's like everyone's going to the match and you just want to be heading the other way.'

  He took a pull at his Coke, then said, 'You're not drinking your coffee. It's OK, is it?'

  Wield put the cup to his lips and let a tide of turgid muddy foam break over his teeth.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'It's fine.'

  Meanwhile back in latte land, Hal's cafe-bar, popular at any time of year, by eleven o'clock on a December morning well into the pre-Christmas shopping season was crowded with bag-laden Yorkshire maids and matrons, eager to rest their weary feet and refresh themselves with a sophisticated coffee or a traditional strong tea.

  All the tables were taken and nearly every chair occupied. The only hint of vacancy was at a table for four at which a lone man sat, but the scatter of books and papers which covered the surface of table and chairs suggested that he was not eager for company. Mid-Yorkshire women in search of rest and recuperation are not so easily put off, however, and from time to time a party would boldly advance to essay an assault on this pathetic creature. Alas for their hopes! Alerted to their approach, the man would let them get within a couple of paces, then turn on them a scowl of such ferocity, in which misanthropy vied with lycanthropy for control of his hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed, raggedy-bearded features, that even the Red Cross Knight might have quaked in his armour. Most fled in search of easier prey, but one, a youngish not unfetchingly dumpy woman with a round amiable face advanced as if she simply didn't recognize antagonism and seemed about to take a seat when suddenly a still more fearful shape loomed behind the monster and bellowed in its ear, 'What's up, lad? Pubs not open?'

  The woman retreated, visibly shocked, and Charley Penn, for it was he, jumped about three inches out of his seat before twisting round and responding weakly, 'I could ask you the same, you fat bastard.'

  'Nay’ said Andy Dalziel. ‘I’m a common working man, got to go where the job takes me. You're a scholar and an artist. It's mostly going on in your noddle. You can take your work anywhere, long as you don't lose your head. You've not lost your head recently, have you, Charley?'

  The Fat Man brushed the papers off one of the chairs and sank heavily on to it, splaying its spindly metal legs across the tiled floor with a protesting squeal.

  'Best get another for the other half of your arse, Andy,' said Penn, recovering.

  'Nay, it'll hold, and if it don't, I can sue them. You've not answered my question.'

  'Remind me.'

  'Short-term memory going? They say that's a bad sign.'

  'What of?'

  'I've forgotten.' Penn laughed. It didn't make him look less wolfish.

  'Have I lost my head recently? Figuratively, I assume you mean? Rather than physically? Or perhaps metaphysically? Or even metempsychotically?'

  'I love it when you talk down to me, Charley. Makes me really humble to be the friend of someone so famous.'

  Penn's limited fame and fortune rested on his authorship of a sequence of historical romances which had been turned into a popular romping claret-and-cleavage TV series. His hopes of a lasting reputation rested on the critical biography of Heinrich Heine he'd been researching for many years, researches which had provided him with much of the material he used in his fictions. This was an irony which confirmed his cynical outlook on the way things were arranged. As if, he declared, the Venerable Bede had found the only way he could keep body and soul together was by selling plastic crucifixes that lit up in the dark and played 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot'.

  'Andy, let's both cut the blunt down-to-earth
Yorkshire crap. Just tell me what it is you think I've done that brings you out here looking for me.'

  A waitress approached and enquired timidly if she could help them.

  'Aye,' said Dalziel. 'Coffee. One of them frothy ones with bits of chocolate. And a hot doughnut. Charley? My treat.'

  'By God, it must be serious. Another double espresso, luv. Right, Andy, spit it out.'

  Dalziel settled more comfortably in his chair, spreading its legs a little wider.

  'First off’ he said, 'I've not come here looking for you, I was on my way to the Reference when I clocked you. Though happen I did think I might find you sitting in your usual spot in the library. I've just bought one of your books, thought I'd get you to sign it for me, make it more valuable when I send it up to Sotheby's.'

  He tossed on to the table the paperback he'd picked up at the Centre bookstall when he'd spotted Penn in Hal's. It was entitled Harry Hacker and the Ship of Fools. Its cover showed a ship crowded with agitated men in a turbulent sea being driven on to rocks on which basked several well-endowed women in a state of deshabille.

  Penn frowned at it and said, 'So what made you pick this one?'

  'Liked the cover. Ship driven on the rocks. Seemed to say something about you, Charley.'

  'Like what?'

  'Like out of control, mebbe.'

  This seemed to reassure the writer. He pushed the book aside and said, 'If it's not me you're after in the Reference, then what is it?'

  'Well, it's related to you in a way’ said Dalziel. 'Just tell me straight, Charley. You know where Ms Pomona, the librarian, lives?'

  For a moment Penn went still, like a wolf freezing when the wind brings it some trace of its prey.

  'Got a flat in Peg Lane, hasn't she?' he said.

  'That's right. Church View House. You been round there recently?'

  'Why should I? We're not exactly on social visiting terms.'

  'Question answered with a question is a question answered, that's what they taught us at police college,' said the Fat Man. 'Thanks, luv.'

  He raised the cappuccino the waitress had set in front of him to his mouth and licked the chocolate-flecked foam with an apparently prehensile tongue.

  'And a suspect beaten with a table is a criminally damaged table,' said Penn. 'Bet they taught you that as well.'

  'Hope it won't come to that,' said the Fat Man, studying his doughnut with the keen eye of a man expert at finding where the sac of jam is hidden. 'So?'

  Penn let out a long sigh and said, 'OK, you've got me bang to rights. I' did call round there for a chat, last weekend it was. No harm in that, is there?'

  'When at the weekend?'

  'Oh, Saturday I think,' said Penn vaguely. 'No one home, so I came away.'

  Dalziel chose his point of incision, raised the doughnut to his mouth and bit.

  Through red-stained teeth he said, 'Precision is important, Charley, else you miss the full pleasure. Saturday. When on Saturday?'

  'Morning, was it? Yes, morning. Does it matter?'

  'Morning starts at twelve midnight. Between twelve and one, was it?'

  'Don't be daft!'

  'One and two then? No? Two and three? No? Give us a clue at least, Charley!'

  'And spoil your game? Play's important to kids, isn't that what the psychs say?'

  'How about between eight and half past?' said Dalziel, pushing the rest of the doughnut into his maw.

  ‘That would be about right, I dare say,' said Penn.

  ‘Thought it might, as a man matching your description were seen lurking in Church View around eight twenty-five.'

  'Can't have been me,' said Penn indifferently. 'I gave up lurking years back. Case of mistaken identity then.'

  'We got a description,' said Dalziel, taking out a notebook and looking at a blank sheet. 'Bearded, furtive, mad-looking. Like a nineteenth-century Russian anarchist who'd just planted a bomb.'

  'Yeah, that does sound like me’ said Penn. 'So I called at about eight fifteen and she wasn't in so I left. So what?'

  'Bit early for a social call, weren't it?'

  'You know what they say about early birds, Andy.'

  'Catch colds, don't they? Still sounds a bit odd to me. Can't remember the last time I called on a lass so early. Not unless I had a warrant and wanted to catch 'em afore they got their clothes on.'

  'No such ambition. I just wanted to catch her before she went to work.'

  'Works Saturdays, does she?'

  'Aye. In the mornings. Mostly.'

  'Yes, you'd know that 'cos you'd be in the library yourself most days, right, Charley? So why not have your little chat with her there?'

  'Because it's hard to be private there.'

  'Private? So there was something private you wanted to discuss with her, Charley?'

  'Not particularly.'

  'Not particularly? But particularly enough to call on her at sparrow-fart! Come on, Charley! There's only one thing you're interested in discussing with Ms Pomona and it's not something that Ms Pomona would want to discuss with you any time, seeing as it was a nasty traumatic experience which she'll have been doing her very best to forget! So what do you think she was going to say if she opened her door at eight a.m. and saw Cheerful Charley Penn standing there? Sod off! That's what she was going to say.'

  Penn drank his coffee, then asked quietly, 'Andy, what's going off here? She made some kind of complaint about me?'

  'Not yet.'

  'Meaning, but she will? Doesn't surprise me. She has to be dancing to your tune in this, no other way I can see it working.'

  ‘I won't ask you what that means 'cos I don't like hitting a man I've just invested a coffee in. So what you're saying, Charley, is, you've never been in Ms Pomona's flat?'

  'You're slow, Andy, but you get there in the end.'

  'That's what all the girls tell me. So if we happened to find one of your fingerprints in Ms P's flat, you'd be hard put to explain how it got there?'

  Penh raised his coffee cup, looked at it speculatively and said, 'If you took this cup and left it in the Vatican, you'd find my print there, but that doesn't mean I'm the Pope. Andy, don't you think it's time you told me what you're really after here?' 'Just having a coffee with an old friend.' Penn made a play of looking round then said, 'Must have missed him.'

  Dalziel emptied his cup and said, 'No rest for the wicked, eh? Oh, just one thing more. Lorelei. What's one of them when it's at home?'

  'Why do you ask, Andy? Owt to do with little Miss P's intruder?'

  Dalziel didn't answer but just stared at the writer till he raised his hands in mock surrender and said, 'She's a German nymph who lives on the Rhine. Her beautiful song lures fishermen to steer their boats on the rocks and drown. Heine wrote a poem about her. "Ich weifi nicht was soil es bedeuten Daft ich so traurig bin. Bin Marchen aus alien Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.'"

  'You're hard enough to follow in English, Charley.' '"I don't know of any good reason For me to feel so sad. A legend from some old season Keeps running around in my head."'

  'Sounds like you, Charley.'

  'How so?'

  'Well, you've got everything most men want, a bit of fame, a bit of fortune, but you still droop around like you got the world on your back. And this Lorelei, beautiful young woman luring ships to destruction. Seems to run around in your head all right. Like in this book of yours, if the cover's owt to go on.'

  'It's an imaginative interpretation.'

  'That's all right then. What happened to Lorelei in the end? Some questing knight stick his lance into her?'

  'Not that I know of,' said Penn. 'Not many fishermen on the Rhine nowadays, but I don't suppose she's averse to going for bigger prey, the odd pleasure boat full of trippers. No, I'd say that Lorelei's still out there, biding her time.'

  'Best left alone then. That's what my old Scots gran used to say about beasties and bogles and things that go bump in the night. You don't bother them and they won't bother you. See you upstairs,
mebbe.'

  He stood up. Penn said, 'You've forgotten your book.'

  He opened the paperback, scribbled in it and handed it to Dalziel.

  The Fat Man moved away, squeezing between the crowded tables. He expected Penn would follow his progress out of the cafe, but when he looked at the reflection in the glass wall which marked Hal's boundary, he saw the bearded face buried deep in a book once more.

  Wonder what language he thinks in? thought Dalziel.

  Outside, he opened the book. The printed dedication was in German.

  An Mai – wunderschon in alien Monaten!

  Dalziel's German was up to that. 'To May – beautiful in every month!'

  But he didn't need linguistic skills to interpret the message which Penn had scrawled beneath the title Harry Hacker and the Ship of Fools.

  Bon voyage, sailor!

  He laughed out loud.

  'Charley’ he said. 'I didn't know you cared.'

  A man cannot live and work in the same town for many years without finding his head and his heart assailed by fond associations wherever he looks, and when Dalziel's route to the reference library took him past the toilet in which the Wordman had murdered Town Councillor 'Stuffer' Steel with an engraver's burin, he went inside for a pee, but stopped short when he found himself looking at a man up a step-ladder screwing a video camera into the ceiling.

  'How do,' said Dalziel. 'What's this? Filming Uro-trash?'

  'Updating the system, mate. State of the art, that's what they're getting now. Beam a close-up of your bollocks to the moon with this kit,' said the man proudly.

  'Oh aye? Mebbe someone should warn 'em at NASA.'

  Unfazed by the prospect of universal distribution, he had his pee then went on his way, from time to time observing other evidence of the new installation taking place.

  In the reference library he was greeted with the kind of smile that twangs a man's braces and the words, 'Mr Dalziel, how nice to see you!' uttered with evident sincerity by the fine-looking young woman behind the desk.

  The Italian strain in the Pomona family might be a couple of generations old, but the genes had come out fighting in Raina of that ilk, pronounced Rye-eena and contracted familiarly to Rye. Her skin had a golden glow and her dark expressive eyes might have sent a more poetic man than Fat Andy in search of images from Mediterranean skies. Her hair was a rich brown, except for a single lock of silvery grey which marked the main impact point of a head injury she had received at the age of fifteen in the car crash that killed her twin brother. Antipathetic at first towards the superintendent, and not encouraged to greater charity by the reports of persecution she received from her incipient boyfriend, DC Hat Bowler, she had relented her attitude in the aftermath of the Wordman case when she had come to see that, no matter what his outward semblance seemed to indicate, Dalziel was deeply defensive of his young officer and determined that no official crap should come his way.