Death dap-20

by Reginald Hill

  That would indeed take a huge length of silver tongue and a dizzy depth of cunning’ said Pascoe. 'Have you anyone in mind, sir?'

  'Belt up and bugger off,' said Dalziel.

  11

  Pascoe liked Sheffield. Everyone with an eye for beauty, a nose for excitement, a taste for variety likes Sheffield. Built on seven hills like Rome, it is possible to pass from spring in its valleys to winter on its heights without ever crossing the city boundary.

  Perhaps it gets its peculiar buzz from being a frontier town, for this is where Yorkshire in particular and the North in general end. After this, wrap it up how you will, you're into the Midlands. The White Peak bits of Derbyshire may have something of the North in them, but it's hilly landscape stood on its head. You are looking down from edges rather than staring up at heights.

  DI Stan Rose was certainly looking down rather than staring up. His lost snout had been picked up in London trying to use a dodgy credit card. Rose had gone south to see him. He'd found a very scared man, showing signs of a recent severe beating.

  As Pascoe heard this, he thought uneasily of Lee Lubanski. Mate Polchard didn't have a reputation for gratuitous violence, but he was up for anything that the situation demanded. And God knows what kind of mindless muscle he was employing.

  Then Rose, unprompted, mentioned the Elsecar Hoard, and his concern for the missing rent boy evaporated.

  Strong hints that further info on the Sheffield job could persuade Rose to put in a word when the Met came to decide how to proceed in the snout's present difficulty had at first produced only the eloquent comment that he might be better off inside. To which Rose had replied that, in that case, he would make sure he got a conditional discharge, then let it be known around Sheffield that he'd been down for a chat.

  Even then, all he got was a date. January 26th, a week from today, the day the Hoard was being transferred from Sheffield to Mid-Yorkshire.

  'But what made you think of the Hoard as a target in the first place?' asked Pascoe.

  Tolchard's record made me think it might be a security-van hit, so I researched a list of all possibles this month,' said Rose proudly. 'When I saw the date matched the Hoard transfer day, I got all the museum security tapes and went through them. And you know what, Polchard's visited the exhibition twice at least. Coat collar turned up, hat pulled down, but it was definitely him.'

  'Perhaps he's just interested in Roman history,' said Pascoe drily. 'You were going to tell me all this, weren't you, Stan? I mean, we are talking about next Saturday, right?'

  'Of course I was. I've been putting some ideas together, just wanted to run them by my boss, he's been off with this Kung Flu, just got back today, so I was planning to ring you. Anyway, it's still all a bit speculative, isn't it?'

  'I think it's a bit more than that, Stan,' said Pascoe.

  As he explained the reasons for his visit, Rose had the grace to look positively embarrassed at the contrast between Pascoe's speedy sharing of new information and his cards-close-to-the-chest approach.

  'Pete, this is really good. This is all I need to get the go-ahead on my… on our op.'

  'I'm pleased for you. Though of course if, as seems likely, they're planning to make the hit during transfer, it's as likely, in fact more likely to take place on Andy Dalziel's turf.'

  He paused a moment just to let Rose contemplate the life-threatening perils of a power struggle with the Fat Man, then went on, 'But the guy who takes the call calls the shots, isn't that what they say? It's your show, Stan. You'll get full backing from our side of the fence – just as long as we're getting full intelligence from yours.'

  'Pete, that's great. Thanks a bunch. Look, I've got a lot of ideas for this oppo. I'm calling it Operation Serpent, by the way. Thought that fitted.'

  He spoke almost defiantly and Pascoe concealed his amusement.

  'So why don't we get down to some hard planning while you're here,' the DI continued.

  To be honest, I'd rather get down to the museum and see what all the fuss is about,' said Pascoe.

  He had seen photographs of various items in the Hoard, but they hadn't prepared him for its full splendour. It wasn't a huge collection but it had clearly been put together by a man with an eye for beauty who must have approved the care which had been taken in setting his pieces out on display. Rings, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, each was shown to its best advantage on slowly rotating stands covered with black velvet and lit by shifting lights which moved from the full glare of sunshine to the soft glow of candleshine. At the very centre, set on a fibreglass ovoid, which though faceless somehow invited you to see whatever features you found most beautiful there, was the serpent coronet.

  For a moment as he studied it, Pascoe almost understood Belchamber's desire for possession. And he could certainly share his indignation that this treasure was being allowed out of the country.

  They saw the Exhibition Director and questioned him about the transfer arrangements at the end of the exhibition. They kept the tone as low-key as possible, stressing that these were just the routine security enquiries any movement of so valuable a cargo would require. Prevention might be better than cure, but neither of them had any desire to alert the gang to their suspicions and warn them off. As Dalziel once put it, with hardbitten pros, the only true crime prevention was prison. Anything else was mere postponement.

  One piece of information caught Pascoe's interest. The transfer was going to be done by Praesidium Security.

  Rose, with a sensitivity to reaction which boded well for him in his career, noted the flicker of interest and brought it up as they left the Director's office.

  Pascoe told him about the earlier attack on the Praesidium van and of the link with Belchamber.

  'So you think this could have been some kind of rehearsal?'

  'Could be. It would certainly explain why they weren't that much interested in the money that had been on board. Though I must say if they think the crew ferrying the Hoard are going to stop at a caff for tea, they must be seriously thick.'

  Pascoe paused as they passed through the main foyer. On a noticeboard a poster had caught his eye. It advertised the one-day conference being held at the university by the Yorkshire Psychandric Society – and of course today was the day. He wondered how Pottle's opening address had gone down.

  He went closer to check the details.

  Amaryllis Haseen had been on that morning, so he'd missed her. But Frere Jacques, Roote's guru, was on after lunch, talking about Third Thought and his new book.

  Back at Sheffield HQ he met Rose's boss. He didn't look well and, despite his assurances that he was no longer infectious, whenever his chain smoking brought on a bout of ferocious coughing, Pascoe tried to keep to the windward.

  He was less convinced than his DI that Pascoe's news meant there was definitely a heist attempt in the offing, but he questioned him closely about Andy Dalziel's attitude. Obviously the Fat Man's opinions carried weight everywhere. Finally he gave Rose that conditional blessing which Pascoe well recognized. Interpreted, it meant: your triumph is ours, your cock-ups are your own.

  But Stan Rose was delighted. Outside the smoky room, he said, 'Pete, let me buy you some lunch. Least I can do. I owe you.'

  Pascoe said, 'Thanks, Stan, but there's something I need to do up at the university. Talking of which, there is something… Remember that boy Frobisher, the one Sergeant Wield asked you about way back in connection with that lecturer's death on our patch…?'

  'Yeah, I remember him. Accidental overdose trying to stay awake to finish his work.'

  "That's the one. Look, while I'm here I'd like to poke around the house he lived in, have a word with any of his mates who are still there, nothing heavy – but if anyone got stroppy, it would be good to say I'd checked, it out with you.'

  Rose was regarding him like a poor relation who'd fsuddenly mentioned money.

  This anything to do with that fellow Roote?' he asked.

  'Distantly.'

 
'Pete, this is a non-suspicious death, all done and dusted.'

  'From what you said, his sister didn't think so.'

  'What are sisters for? Pete, it's a waste of time.'

  'You're probably right. And I realize I should be devoting all my energies to assisting you in this Hoard oppo…'

  He slightly stressed assisting. Rose sighed. 'Be my guest, Pete. I can always say you pulled rank on me.'

  'That was my next move,' grinned Pascoe.

  At the university, Pascoe entered the lecture theatre just as Dr Pottle was concluding his introduction of Frere Jacques. The front rows were full but there were plenty of empty seats near the back. Perhaps the flu bug was to blame. Pascoe seated himself in the rearmost row alongside a trio of world-weary female students who looked like they'd only come in to get out of the cold. Pottle finished and stepped down to take a seat at the front. A woman next to him turned her head to speak and, though he'd only seen a book jacket photo, Pascoe thought he recognized Amaryllis Haseen. Frere Jacques was a surprise. With his cropped blond hair and his tight-fitting black turtleneck, which showed a muscular torso with no sign of fat, he looked more like a ski instructor than a monk.

  'Well, hello sailor,' said one of the girls sitting near Pascoe. 'Wonder if he's got a dick to match?'

  It came out perfectly natural, on a par with a young man's not many of them in a pound on sight of a big-breasted woman. Was this an advance to equality or a backward step? wondered Pascoe.

  Jacques began talking. His English was structurally perfect with just enough of an accent to be sexy. He talked easily of death, his own experiences as a soldier, his belief that Western man's growing obsession with longevity and wonder cures had foolishly made a foe out of the one fact of nature we couldn't hope to defeat. 'Pick your friends carefully is a wise motto’ he said. 'But pick your enemies even more carefully is a wiser one. Losing a friend is much easier than losing an enemy.'

  His ideas were carefully couched in the language of psychology and philosophy rather than of religion. Only once did he stray in the direction of Christian dogma, and that was when he referred with an ironic twinkle of those luminous blue eyes to the unique comforts of the English Prayer Book 'which assures mourners at a funeral that "man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower." No wonder the tradition has grown up after a funeral of heading back to a house or pub and downing as many drinks as are necessary to blot out this cheerful message!'

  A thread of humour ran through all his exposition of the stratagems and disciplines by which Third Thought aimed to make its practitioners more comfortable with that awareness of death which he argued was essential to a full life. But there was never anything frivolous or factitious or tinged with mere bravado in his talk. He ended by saying 'It is commonplace, as many great truths are commonplace, to talk of the miracle of life. But being born is only the first of the two great miracles which humanity is involved in. The second is of course death and in many ways it is the greater. The fine Scottish poet Edwin Muir understood this, as expounded in the opening verse of his poem "The Child Dying".

  Unfriendly friendly universe

  I pack your stars into my purse and bid you, bid you so farewell.

  That I can leave you, quite go out,

  Go out, go out beyond all doubt,

  My father says, is the miracle.'

  He sat down. The applause, led by the three no longer bored girls, was enthusiastic. Pottle stood up to say that Frere Jacques would now take questions and afterwards would be happy to sign copies of his new book.

  The questions were as usual led by the tyro academics eager to count coup. One quoted with heavy irony from a later stanza of Muir's poem which referred to 'the far side of despair' and 'nothing-filled eternity' and wondered what the good Brother's religious superiors thought of this alternative to the Christian heaven he seemed to be promising his proselytes. One of Pascoe's neighbours said very audibly, 'Dickhead!' but Jacques needed no external shield, parrying the blow easily with the assurance that the questioner, whether atheist or Christian or anything else, need not fear his beliefs were being challenged as Third Thought was non-secular, non-proselytory, and concerned only with the living.

  The girl who'd said, 'Dickhead', then asked very seriously what part sex with its 'little death' played in Third Thought philosophy, to which Jacques replied equally seriously that if she cared to read chapter seven of his book, he was sure she'd find her question answered. As he finished speaking, he smiled, not at the questioner but at someone seated at the other end of Pascoe's row. He leaned forward to look and saw a stunningly beautiful blonde-haired young woman smiling back at the monk.

  Afterwards Pascoe bought a copy of the book and was wondering whether to join the signing queue (which included all three of his young neighbours) when Pottle tapped his shoulder and said, 'Peter, how nice to see that the policeman's pursuit of enlightenment doesn't stop in the forensic laboratory. Let me introduce you to Amaryllis Haseen.'

  As he shook hands with the woman, Pascoe thought that Roote's description had been a bit over the top but not much. She was definitely sexy in a slightly overblown and garish kind of way. He could see how she might provoke many stirrings and rustlings and scratch-ings in the wainscot of St Godric's SCR.

  He said, 'I was very sorry to hear of the death of your husband, Ms Haseen. Sir Justinian will be a great loss to scholarship.'

  Englishmen are notoriously bad at offering condolences and Pascoe thought he'd done it rather well, but the woman regarded him with unconcealed scepticism and said, 'You knew my husband, Mr Pascoe?'

  'Well, no…'

  'But you know his books? Which one impressed you most?'

  Pascoe glanced appealingly at Pottle who, smiling faintly, said, 'In fact, Amaryllis, you and the Chief Inspector do have a common acquaintance, I believe. A Mr Franny Roote.'

  Grateful for both the change of subject and the opening, Pascoe said, 'I read with great interest what you said about him in Dark Cells, which -I was really impressed with, by the way. Fine work. If you've got a moment to talk about him, I'd really appreciate it.'

  His attempt at diversion by flattery failed miserably.

  She said coldly, 'I cannot talk about my clients, Mr Pascoe, none of whom was identified in the book anyway.'

  He said, 'No, but Franny identified himself to me in a letter. Prisoner XR, if I remember right. So perhaps the rules of confidentiality no longer apply. He was certainly very open about his sessions with you and the debt he feels he owes you for supporting his transfer from the Syke to Butler's Low.'

  'If you've got a whip’ said the Gospel according to St Dalziel, 'just a little crack will usually do the trick -so long as they're convinced you're willing to draw blood.'

  Pascoe fixed her with what he hoped was a stare full of Dalzielesque conviction.

  Get 'em in a corner then show 'em a get-out, was another of the Master's tips.

  'But you met him again recently at St Godric's, I believe, long after he'd ceased to be a client, so no ethical problems talking about that, are there? I know it must be a very painful memory to you, that conference. But at the same time it must have been a source of great pleasure seeing someone you'd helped as a prisoner receiving the applause of a distinguished academic audience for his paper. Weren't you impressed?'

  'By the paper, no. Like most literary analyses, so called, it was big on waffle, low on psychological rigour. Hardly worth rushing lunch for. But of course it wasn't Roote's work, was it? I was rather more interested in his relationship with the late Dr Johnson.'

  'You must have known Sam when Sir Justinian worked at Sheffield?'

  'Oh yes. We met.'

  He said, 'I knew him too. Very bright, very attractive guy, I thought.'

  'You found him attractive?' She gave him an assessing glance.

  'Yes, I did. I gather there was some kind of falling out with your husband.'

  S
he shrugged and said, 'On Johnson's part, perhaps. A certain type of character always comes to resent those who have helped them as much as Jay helped Johnson with his Beddoes book. For some people it is easier to quarrel with the helper than to acknowledge the help. I did not know him well, but he always struck me as a very volatile, perhaps even unstable character. I was not surprised when I heard of the circumstances of his departure from Sheffield.'

  'The death of that student, Jake Frobisher, you mean?'

  'You know of that? Of course, you would. Again the closeness followed by the rejection, the same pattern as with Jay, except of course the closeness in this case was sexual rather than academic collaboration. I think Johnson's death may have been a lucky break for Roote, in more ways than one.'

  ‘I’m not sure he sees it like that. And certainly he doesn't see the rift between your husband and Johnson in quite the same light,' said Pascoe, finding in himself the beginnings of a serious antipathy to this woman.

  He guessed she wasn't exactly crazy about him either, and now she proved it.

  She said, 'Your name is Pascoe, you say? That name rings familiar. Wasn't one of the policemen who helped put Roote away called Pascoe?'

  'That was me,' said Pascoe.

  'And he's writing to you, you. say?' She smiled with evident satisfaction. That must be a source of concern to you, Mr Pascoe.'

  'Why?'

  'Because whenever he spoke of his trial, though he claimed to have sublimated any thought of revenge into other areas, particularly his academic research, I still detected an undercurrent of resentment and a feeling of having been ill done by. Of course, this was years ago, and time does, in some few cases, bring about changes 'Indeed,' interposed Pottle. 'And Mr Roote, some of whose letters I have seen, wrote specifically to the Chief Inspector to assure him he had no thought of revenge.'