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?'
'That's what I seem to be doing,' said Pascoe.
; 'Face to face, I mean. It's amazing, I feel I know you really well, like a… really well. But if you think about it, just about all the times we've talked face to face have been when you came looking for me officially. There's not a lot of scope for conversation in those circumstances, is there? All I ask is one meeting, it would mean a lot to me. I could call round to see you… no, maybe that's not such a good idea. Invasion of personal space and all that. Maybe you could come round to see me. You know where my flat is, don't you – 17a Westburn Lane. Any time to suit yourself. Or just drop in. I'll be spending most of my time there when I get back. I've really got to get down to some hard work on Sam's book. There's a deal of editing to do, a couple of chapters to write more or less from scratch, and I've even been trying my hand at a few of his Imagined Scenes', you know, imaginative reconstructions of events and conversations. It's a device to use with great care, of course, but, as you know yourself, Mr Pascoe, when not a great deal of physical evidence exists, you've got to use all your professional skill to put together a plausible picture of events. Oh God, I'm rabbiting, aren't I? If you could come to see me, I'd be more pleased than I can say. And if I happen to be out, don't disappear. I'm never far away. There's a spare key with my neighbour, Mrs Thomas, she never goes out, arthritis, tell her Francis says it's OK, she always calls me Francis, so if you say that, she'll know you've spoken to me. I'm ringing off now before you can say no. Please come.'
The phone went dead.
Pascoe sat in thought for a long moment. He had, despite himself, been touched by what sounded like a note of real pleading in the young man's voice.
But that was his deceptive art, wasn't it? That was what pleasured the cunning bastard. He'll be sitting there now, that pale face blank as ever, but inside he'll be grinning like a death's head at the thought of the little seeds of fear and uncertainty he's planted in my mind.
He stood up with sudden resolution that seemed to send new strength surging along his arteries to revive his weakened limbs.
Thanks for the invitation, bastard’ he said. 'Don't worry. I'll come!'
He went upstairs and got dressed. If he'd gone back into the kitchen he'd have heard Edgar Wield, code sign Serpent 5, sitting astride his Thunderbird on the South and Mid-Yorkshire boundary line, reporting to Serpent 4 (Andy Dalziel) that he'd just had word from Serpent 1 (DI Rose) that transfer was complete and the Hoard was on its way north out of Sheffield.
And if he'd turned back to the first channel he'd have heard that the registered owner of the crashed car on Roman Way was a Raina Pomona and that the corpse of a young female, presumed to be Miss Pomona, had just been removed from the vehicle.
But Pascoe had ears only for the voices in his own head.
The party in the Junior Jumbo Burger Bar was going a treat.
Ellie, on the excuse of going to the loo, had double-checked the kitchen to reassure herself there hadn't been a switch from fresh local produce to reclaimed gunge since her previous visit.
Satisfied, she returned to the party just in time to nip in the bud an assault spearheaded by Rosie on a neighbouring bouncy castle occupied by a tribe of little boys who had been foolish enough to opine that girls were stupid and should be permanently banned from Estotiland.
The boys screamed their delight at the enforced retreat. Then suddenly delight turned to shock as their bouncy castle started to deflate and Ellie found herself with no justification whatsoever staring accusingly at her daughter.
'I just wished it’ said Rosie defensively. Oh God, thought Ellie. Don't tell me I've got one of them!
Ten miles away the Praesidium security van bearing the Elsecar Hoard was moving steadily north, followed, though not too closely, by an unmarked car containing DI Stanley Rose and four of his South Yorkshire colleagues. Also moving north on by-roads and side roads were various other police vehicles, staying roughly parallel to the main highway so that major reinforcement was never more than a few minutes away, and in the event things went pear-shaped, all escape routes could be rapidly blocked.
A few days ago Edgar Wield would have strongly opposed these tactics. In his book, prevention was always better than cure. OK, it made a better statistic and certainly put a bigger feather in the police cap, and in Stan Rose's cap in particular, if they got a positive result by taking Mate Polchard's gang in the act. But no matter how fast they moved in on trouble, there was always a chance the security guards could get hurt. Better by far in his opinion to have flashing lights and screaming sirens before and after the van, sending all the low-life scurrying back to their murky crevices.
But that was before the discovery of Lee's corpse.
Now as he tracked the South Yorkshire car on his Thunderbird, he was longing for the expected ambush to occur, to put bodies in reach of his stick and his hands.
Ahead a huge sign with a direction arrow said Estotiland – Visitors and a quarter of a mile further on the slip road slid away to the left. Good planning that, he approved. The complex itself was five miles further, but feeding the visitors off so early considerably reduced the chance of a tailback extruding dangerously on to the main highway. Even as he let these thoughts of traffic control flow across the surface of his mind, he knew he was trying to damp down what the Estotiland sign really said to him. And I need you now tonight… and I need you more than ever… and the foul canal water forcing itself down Lee's throat and into his belly, his lungs…
He shook his head violently as though shaking it free of water and forced his attention back to Operation Serpent, scanning the way ahead for the first sign of danger.
Peter Pascoe stood on the threshold of Franny Roote's flat.
Getting the key had been easy. Getting away from Mrs Thomas, the key's keeper, had been more difficult. But after suffering a lengthy and seamless encomium of her lovely young neighbour, Francis, who was such a parcel of virtues you could have sent him as gift-aid, he had finally been released by the announcement of the next horse-race on her television set.
Now as he stood there looking into what he thought of as his enemy's lair, he wondered once more, not with self-doubt but with amazement at the gullibility of his fellows, why it was that he always seemed to be swimming against a tide of Rootophilia.
He also wondered what the hell he imagined he might gain by coming here.
Indeed it occurred to him that the mention of the spare key might simply be a lure to make him waste his time, the kind of stratagem the youth loved.
Well, if he was going to waste time he might as well waste it quickly!
He stepped inside and began a methodical search.
Marcus Belchamber stood before one of the most treasured items in his study – a life-size model wearing the uniform and equipment of a military tribune of the late empire.
On his desk stood a high-powered radio illegally tuned in to police frequencies through which he had surfed until he hit the one that interested him.
Operation Serpent! What dull plod had thought that one up? It was like saying, if you want to keep track of our anti-heist plans, here's the channel you should be listening to.
It did mean, however, that either the Sheffield grass or poor little Lee had said enough to alert even a dull plod.
But according to Polchard it didn't matter that they knew. In fact the plan was always going to assume they knew anyway. But not of course everything.
He was, for such a terrifying man, comfortingly reassuring.
For all that, Belchamber had a packed bag in the boot of his Lexus and a plane ticket to Spain in the glove compartment. When trouble comes, the professional criminal rings his clever lawyer. But who does the clever lawyer ring? No, at the first sign of things going wrong, he was going to vanish and oversee developments from a safe distance.
The uniform was necessarily eclectic; a bit here, an item there, put together over many years and at the expense of many thousands of pounds. Only the cloth and the fine purple plume in the helmet weren't original. He was particularly fond of the helmet
. He liked to put it on at moments of crisis. When he was alone, of course. The only person who ever saw him wearing the uniform in part or whole was the dead boy.
Don't think about him.
With the helmet on, he sometimes had the fancy he was that hypothesized ancestor, Marcus Bellisarius. Certainly he seemed to see things more dearly when he wore it, perhaps with the ruthless eye of the military tactician, balancing so many men lost against so much ground gained.
He took the helmet down now. Was something happening? The voices on the radio no longer sounded quite so bored and routine.
He raised the helmet high and placed it on his head.
Stanley Rose was beginning to sweat. He hoped his colleagues wouldn't notice, but when you've got five big men packed together into a medium saloon, sweat is hard to hide. If they did notice, they'd know the reason. And behind their grimly blank faces, they'd be grinning. When Operation Serpent got the go-ahead, he'd revelled in being The Man and he hadn't been able not to let it show. Try as he might, he knew that at briefings he'd come on strong, always having the last word, making sure everyone knew whose show they were in. Christ, when he'd gone to the bog, if there'd been any of the team there, he'd even pissed with more authority I
Logically, if the Hoard got safely delivered to Mid-Yorkshire, that was a job well done. But it wouldn't read like that back in Sheffield. If he'd been a little more tentative in his approach, he might have got away with some heavy ribbing. But when you'd strutted your stuff as The Man, a no-show with its expense of time and effort and manpower was going to be chalked against you almost as heavily as a successful heist.
They were approaching the Estotiland underpass. Another twenty minutes beyond that would see them home. Polchard! he screamed mentally. Where the fuck are you?
A hundred and fifty yards ahead. Mate Polchard back at Rose's car through the mirror of the security van.
Death dap-20 Page 47
