Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  This last at least was true. He had one son and heir. It was perhaps all he wanted because, contrary to the common run of things in which the new mother under pressure of all her new responsibilities shows a disinclination for sex, it was Wally who vacated the marriage bed after Liam’s birth. His wife, a quiet, rather introverted young woman, neither complained about nor commented on this state of affairs for some five years until, rather belatedly catching a whiff of the rampant feminism strutting the streets of Mid-Yorkshire in the eighties, she appeared one night in her husband’s room to petition for her rights only to find the situation already filled. By a muscular young man.

  In divorces generally, judges are inclined to favour the mother in matters of custody. In cases like this, it is more than an inclination, it is almost an inevitability.

  But Wally had turned to Chichevache, Bycorne and Belchamber who specialized in avoiding the inevitable. And Liam had grown up under the sole tutelage of his father.

  And yet he had by no means turned out as his father might have wished him.

  Loud, louche, and loutish, he made no effort to win the respect of the common citizenry, or indeed of anyone. He seemed to see it as his bounden duty to dispose of as much of his father’s wealth as he could in the pursuit of personal pleasure with no regard whatsoever for the rights and comforts of others. And his father, apparently blind to his defects, did nothing to disabuse him of this belief. His eighteenth birthday present six months earlier had been a canary yellow Lamborghini Diablo and he’d already run up nine penalty points on his licence for speeding. In fact it was suggested by some that had it not been for Wally’s standing in the community and close friendship with several members of the Bench, Liam would have been disqualified long since.

  Well, that was between them and their conscience, thought Pascoe as he headed straight round to the Linford mansion. What was more interesting to him was the fact that Liam had thought to enhance the beauty of his machine by having a grinning black skull stencilled on the bonnet.

  There was a car in the driveway of Linford’s house, but it was a Porsche, not a Lamborghini. Wally Linford himself answered the door, courteously invited him in. Liam was in the lounge, enjoying a drink with his friend, Duncan Robinson, known as Robbo, another young man whose parents had more money than anything else. Pascoe enquired after the Lamborghini. Oh yes, Liam replied, he had been driving it that night. He’d gone to the Trampus Club, met some friends, had a dance and a few drinks, just a few but he realized when he got up to leave that he might be over the limit, so like a good citizen he had accepted a lift home with his old mate, Robbo. Check it out, the Diablo should still be in Trampus’s car park.

  Pascoe made a call. They sat and waited. The reply came. The car wasn’t there.

  Shock! Horror! It must have been stolen, declared Liam.

  And I’m to be Queen of the May, said Pascoe and arrested him. He tested positive both for booze and coke. Put him in the car and he was going down for a long, long time.

  But this didn’t prove easy. Robbo vigorously confirmed Liam’s story, and several other people at the club recalled hearing the lift being offered and accepted before the two of them left together. The Diablo was found nearly eighty miles away, burned out, despite which Forensic managed to find enough traces of blood to make a match with the dead girl’s. So it was definitely the accident vehicle, but the distance involved gave further support to Liam’s story. No way would he have had time to drive that far, torch the car and get back home before Pascoe arrived to arrest him. CPS were shaking their heads very firmly.

  Then a witness came forward, Oz Carnwath, a student at the local Poly earning some money by working at Trampus’s as an occasional barman. He’d been dumping rubbish in the big wheelie bin at the rear door when he saw Liam and his friend cross the car park, each get in his own car, then drive away separately. He’d kept his mouth shut at first, not wanting to get involved, and believing that Liam would get his come-uppance without any help from himself. But when the youth reappeared in the club, boasting that he was home and free, this stuck in Carnwath’s throat and he went to the police.

  So far Robbo had stuck to his story, though not without uneasiness in face of Pascoe’s assurance that, if Liam was found guilty, the police wouldn’t rest till he joined him in jail for attempting to pervert the course of justice. But clearly he was even more scared of what Wally Linford would do if he came clean. In addition he must have been mightily reassured to see the firm of Chichevache, Bycorne and Belchamber retained for the defence.

  But Pascoe suspected Wally wouldn’t put all his trust in legalities, and ordered a close watch to be kept on Carnwath till they got his evidence into the record at the committal proceedings. So far the business with the lost undertaker had been the only scare. And yet …

  He saw Marcus Belchamber coming through the main entrance of the court complex and felt relieved that soon the action would commence. Then it dawned on him that Belchamber was alone. No Liam. No Wally.

  No sodding trial!

  ‘Mr Pascoe, I’m so sorry, but it seems we are wasting our time today. Young Mr Linford is too ill to attend. Possibly the advance guard of this new flu virus which is rife in London. Kung Flu, they call it, a play I assume on Kung Fu, because it knocks you down and leaves you helpless. I have the necessary medical certificate, of course. Forgive me. I must go and apprise the Bench.’

  The man smiled apologetically. One civilized cultured guardian of the law exchanging courtesies with another, both of them engaged in the great pursuit of justice.

  And yet as Pascoe left the court he felt more stitched up than the Bayeux Tapestry.

  With Fat Andy being lunched by the Chief Constable and Pascoe locked in mortal combat with Marcus Belchamber, Wield anticipated having the Black Bull pretty much to himself. And if there were any junior colleagues taking advantage of their superiors’ absence to linger late, one glower from the most frightening features in the Force would send them scurrying back to their desks.

  But the two DC’s he saw as he entered the bar showed no signs of scurrying.

  They were Hat Bowler and Shirley Novello, deep in conversation. Slightly surprising, as he got the impression that Bowler regarded Novello as his most potent rival. Perhaps, both having been wounded in the line of duty, they were swapping scars.

  They stopped talking as he approached.

  ‘Nice to see you, lad,’ he said. ‘When are you due back? Wednesday, isn’t it? Breaking yourself in gradual, is that the idea?’

  ‘Actually, I was hoping to see you, Sarge,’ said Hat.

  ‘Is that right?’ said Wield. ‘I’ll just get myself a pie and a pint first.’

  ‘My shout,’ said Novello.

  As she waited at the bar, she saw Bowler talking earnestly to Wield. She guessed he was telling him the story of returning to his girlfriend’s flat and finding it burgled. He’d come in, looking for Wield, but when she told him that the sergeant had gone out at the end of the morning and not reappeared yet, he had started talking to her, not because he regarded her as a confidante, she guessed, but merely as a rehearsal for what he was going to say to Wield. She suspected there was more to his tale than he’d told her, but now that his true audience was here, she’d probably get to hear the lot.

  When she returned to the table Bowler was just reaching a rhetorical climax.

  ‘So, you see, it’s got to be Charley Penn!’ he pronounced with all the fervour of Galileo reaching the end of his detailed proof that the earth went round the sun.

  Wield was regarding him with all the enthusiasm of an overworked Inquisition officer who didn’t fancy having to attend yet another bonfire at the height of an Italian summer.

  ‘Why so?’ he said.

  ‘Because Lorelei’s that German stuff he messes with, and because he hates me and Rye, and because I’ve got a description … oh hell!’

  ‘Well well well! What’s this? A wounded heroes’ conference? It’s purple hearts all ro
und! And mine’s a pint!’

  Andy Dalziel had burst through the bar-room door, radiating more geniality than a Harrods Santa Claus, but Hat Bowler flinched away from the glow like a scientist in the presence of a reactor gone critical.

  How could this be? he asked himself aghast. Hadn’t he in his cleverness rung the station and established that Pascoe was in court and the Fat Man wasn’t expected back from lunch with the Chief before dusk, leaving the way clear for him to buttonhole Wield in the Bull?

  What Bowler hadn’t made allowances for was that chief constables earned their extra thousands by being even cleverer than detective constables. Dan Trimble, knowing from experience that lunch with Dalziel could blend imperceptibly into high tea then supper, had arranged to be bleeped by his secretary. The bleep had come with their puddings, the meal already having begun to stretch, but the loss of a crème brûlée seemed a small price to pay for an early escape. He made a brief phone call, put on a concerned look, then explained with much apology that urgent business required his instant return to his office. ‘No need for you to rush, Andy,’ he said as he rose. ‘Enjoy your pudding. Have a drink with your coffee. I’ll leave the bill open.’

  Trimble was a decent man and it was guilt that made him utter these words, but the guilt even of a decent man is a delicate flower and his had faded before he reached his car, leaving him asking himself, aghast, ‘Did I really say that?’

  Behind him Dalziel finished his bread and butter pudding, sampled the Chief’s crème brûlée, ordered two more with the comment, ‘Tell the chef this is nice nosh, only he don’t give a man enough to put in his eye!’ then, washing down his Stilton with a large port, he applied himself to the serious business of choosing what malt to drink while his coffee went cold.

  Despite this he was on his way back to the station at half past two, which was a lot earlier than he’d anticipated. He was in a taxi, having gone to the restaurant in the Chief’s official car, and thinking it a shameful thing for a man to have no better place to go to on an afternoon he’d regarded as taken care of than his place of work, he commanded the driver to divert to the Black Bull.

  He paid off the cab with a generous tip which went down on the receipt he collected to send to Trimble’s office for reimbursement. The thought of the Chief’s face when he saw it (hopefully at the same time as he registered the extra crème brûlées and the malts) had filled him with a delight which had bubbled over into his somewhat over-effusive reaction at the sight of Hat Bowler.

  ‘What did I say, Wieldy?’ he went on. ‘Out of his hospital bed and into his lass’s, he’ll be so full of vim, he’ll not be able to wait to get back to work! Isn’t that what I said?’

  ‘Not as such,’ said Wield, observing that young Bowler, once Dalziel’s bête noir, did not seem delighted at his apparent upgrading to palace favourite, even though it was in the presence of Novello, his main rival for the spot. She had returned from the bar with Dalziel’s drink. To get Wield’s, she’d had to wait her turn, but at the sight of Dalziel, Jolly Jack, the lugubrious landlord, had pulled a pint in a reaction worth a Pavlovian paper.

  ‘There’s that not as such again, Wieldy,’ reproved the Fat Man, sinking into a chair and taking his glass from Novello.

  He drank half of it like a traveller in an antique land who hadn’t seen liquid for many a hot day, and said, ‘Thanks, Ivor. Now what’s the crack?’

  Wield hesitated. He’d already begun to suss there was something not quite right about this burglary report. The youngster had escorted his girlfriend home after what had been (if Wield read the signs right) a sexually and emotionally successful holiday and had found her flat had been burgled. Naturally, being a DC, the boy would have promised to kick-start a thorough CID investigation. Which a phone call would have done. Instead of which Bowler had turned up at the Bull and, what was even odder, a couple of hours must have lapsed since the burglary.

  There were other things too, and Wield would have been happy to let the full story emerge at the DC’s own pace. But now the case was altered.

  He said, ‘DC Bowler was just reporting a burglary to me, sir.’

  ‘Ee, that’s champion. On the job, off the job, back on the job, all in the twinkle of an eye. That’s the stuff a good detective’s made of. So, fill me in, lad.’

  With all the enthusiasm of a politician admitting a bribe, Hat began his story again.

  Dalziel soon interrupted, picking up points Wield had not yet commented upon.

  ‘So nowt taken. She says. You believe her?’

  ‘Of course.’ Indignantly. ‘Why should she lie?’

  ‘Summat she was embarrassed by. Sex aids. Pictures of her six illegitimate kids. Summat she didn’t care to tell a cop about. Bag of shit. Bundles of used notes she’d got on the black and wasn’t going to let on to the Revenue about. Summat she didn’t want her employers to hear about. Expensive books she’d liberated from the reference library. Why should a woman lie about anything, lad? Mebbe just because they’ve got a talent for it! Am I right or am I right, Ivor?’

  Shirley Novello said, ‘You know I think you’re always right about everything, sir.’

  Dalziel looked at her suspiciously, then his face lit up and he exploded into laughter.

  ‘There, young Bowler, see what I mean! Fortunately us fellows have got a talent for sussing out lies, or ought to have. So, I’ll ask you again. You believe your lass?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hat sullenly.

  ‘That your head or your hormones speaking?’

  ‘My head.’

  ‘Grand. No sign of forced entry, you say?’

  ‘Couple of little scratches round the lock, but nothing positive.’

  ‘Never mind, we’ll know for sure when we take the lock to pieces.’

  Hat looked even more unhappy, but the Fat Man was in full spate.

  ‘So, just this message on her computer then. OK, what’s it say?’

  ‘Bye bye Lorelei.’

  ‘Lorelei? What’s that? Hang about. Weren’t Lorelei the name of someone in a film …’

  ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Marilyn Monroe,’ said Wield.

  ‘You been checking on the opposition, Wieldy? Lovely girl. Shame about yon fellow.’

  Whether Dalziel’s objection was to baseball players, playwrights or Kennedys wasn’t clear, nor about to be made so as he pressed on. ‘So what’s its significance here? Come on, lad. Don’t tell me you’ve not got a theory. When I were your age I had as many theories as I had erections, and I couldn’t go upstairs on a bus without getting an erection.’

  Hat took a deep breath and said, ‘Well, sir, Lorelei’s a sort of water nymph in this German fairy tale. There’s this big rock or cliff on the Rhine, that’s called the Lorelei too, and she sits there singing, and it’s so beautiful that fishermen sailing by get distracted listening to her and run their boats on the rock and drown.’

  ‘Used to feel like that about Doris Day,’ said Dalziel. ‘Sounds like one of them sirens.’

  ‘They’re Greek I think, sir,’ said Wield.

  ‘All in the bloody European Union, aren’t they?’ said the Fat Man, his geniality beginning to fade like morning dew. Airy-fairyness he could put up with from his DCI when more down to earth approaches were looking unproductive, but it wasn’t something he encouraged in DCs making preliminary reports about burglaries. ‘So we’re into a German fairy tale now. Hope it’s got a happy ending, lad.’

  Bowler, who was beginning to learn that life with Dalziel meant having to put up with four injustices before breakfast, pressed on manfully.

  ‘I looked it up. Seems this German poet, Heine, wrote a poem about this Lorelei …’

  ‘Hold on. This yon Heinz that Charley Penn’s always going on about?’ said Dalziel suspiciously.

  ‘Heine, yes,’ said Hat.

  ‘I thought I heard you mention Charley when I came into the room,’ said Dalziel. ‘I hope this isn’t leading where I think it’s leading?’

  It wa
s time to get this out in the open, thought Wield.

  He said, ‘Yes, sir, DC Bowler was just telling me of three links he made putting Penn in the frame. The message was one, the second was … remind me, Hat.’

  ‘Because he hates Rye, and me,’ said Bowler.

  ‘Charley Penn hates every bugger,’ said Dalziel. ‘What makes you two so special?’

  ‘Because we were both involved in the death of his best friend, Dick Dee,’ said Hat defiantly. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t believe Dee was the Wordman. And he reckons that I killed Dee because I was jealous that he was getting it off with Rye, and that the pair of us covered it up by fitting Dee up with responsibility for the Wordman killings. And you all went along with it because it meant you could tell the media you’d got the bastard.’

  Now Dalziel was right out of Santa Claus mode.

  ‘You reckon that’s what Charley thinks?’ he said. ‘He’s not said it to me, but you’ll know that, seeing he’s not walking round with his head shoved up his arse. Wieldy?’

  ‘He said some pretty way-out things to start with,’ admitted the sergeant. ‘But since then I’ve not heard him sounding off.’

  ‘That could be because he thinks it’s pointless making a fuss and he’s planning to do something,’ said Hat.

  ‘Like breaking into your girlfriend’s flat?’ said Dalziel. ‘Why?’

  ‘Looking for something to support his story, I suppose. Or maybe he thought he’d find her there and …’ Hat tailed off, not wanting to encourage them to follow him down the alleys of his more lurid imaginings.

  Then, seeing the scepticism on their faces, he burst out, ‘And he was round there a couple of days ago, I’m ninety-nine per cent sure of it. I went and knocked at some doors in Church View. And I got two witnesses, Mrs Gilpin who lives on one side of Rye and Mrs Rogers on the other. They both saw a strange man outside Rye’s flat last Saturday morning, and the description they gave fits Charley Penn to a T.’

  This was stretching things a bit. True, Mrs Gilpin, a voluble lady who had lived in the block long enough to regard it as her personal fiefdom, had described a skulking villainous creature who with only a little prompting had been shaped into Penn. But Mrs Rogers, a younger but much more retiring woman, had at first said that, having only just moved in, she didn’t really know which people she saw were residents, which visitors. At this point Mrs Gilpin, who unbeknown to Hat had followed him to Mrs Rogers’ door, came in with a graphic description which the other woman, perhaps in self-defence, admitted put her in mind of someone she thought she might have seen perhaps on Saturday morning. Upon which Hat, fearful that the sound of Mrs Gilpin’s voice, which a town-crier would not have been ashamed to own, might bring Rye to her door, had swiftly brought the interviews to a conclusion.