Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  So as Pascoe hastened home on Christmas Eve, bearing with him gifts for Rosie which several of his generous colleagues had placed on his desk, he also bore the fear that the two days off he had won after much hard wheeling and dealing could be interrupted by a phone call saying, Sorry, but there’s so much domestic mayhem going on we can’t cope, and could you come in and give us a hand, please?

  Or, if it were Dalziel calling, scrub the question mark and the please.

  As he put his key into his front door lock, he looked at the brass lion’s-head knocker which Ellie had ‘rescued’ from a derelict farmhouse up on Greendale Moor and waited to see if it would turn into the Fat Man’s face.

  No change, so maybe he was going to be spared a haunting.

  But when he went in and saw on the hall table where Ellie left his personal mail an envelope with a Swiss stamp on and the address written in what was becoming a familiar hand, he felt he’d relaxed too soon.

  He would have thrown it in the fire except that Ellie would have known, and he’d resolved to try and keep to himself just how much these letters bothered him.

  But he did manage to ignore it till he’d embraced his wife, thrown his daughter into the air, persuaded her fiercely protective dog, Tig, that this was not a form of personal assault, got into his comfortable, back-flattened, dog-chewed slippers, which he did not doubt would be replaced tomorrow by a new stiff pair which he and Tig would have to start working on immediately, and taken a long pull at a long gin-and tonic.

  ‘See you got some more Fran-mail,’ said Ellie.

  ‘I noticed. So what’s it say?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t steamed it open?’

  ‘If I were that keen to read it I would rip it open,’ said Ellie. ‘But I don’t deny I’m mildly interested to see how he’s getting on hobnobbing with the idle rich.’

  ‘It’s their nobs that are likely to get hobbed,’ said Pascoe.

  He opened the envelope, scanned through the letter then tossed it across to his wife.

  She read it more slowly, then turned back to the beginning and started again.

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ he said. ‘It’s not Jane Austen.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Hero and heroine meet, exchange yearning glances, part perhaps for ever, then by a strange turn of fate are thrown together in a remote Gothic setting. Not a million miles from Northanger Abbey,’ said Ellie.

  ‘When Roote’s involved, there’s a good chance the Gothic stuff will turn out to be really supernatural,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘No. He’s a realist at heart. An explanation for everything. Except that thing about having a vision of you. Very odd. I mean, the Virgin Mary’s one thing, but you!’

  ‘You won’t laugh when I’m a cult,’ said Pascoe negligently.

  He hadn’t told Ellie about his own vision of Roote by St Margaret’s Church at the same time the man was allegedly seeing him. One thing being a policeman taught you was that the world was awash with coincidences. In fact it often seemed to him when critics moaned about a book relying too much on them that usually the false note was struck by writers refusing to admit just how large a part they did play in our day-to-day existence.

  So he persuaded himself he had a rational argument for saying nothing. But he found himself childishly eager to have her approve his reaction to the letters in some degree.

  ‘You’ve got to see he’s taking the piss,’ he urged.

  ‘Have I? So what precisely do you think he’s mocking you about?’

  ‘You see the way he compares the Duke’s desire to raise his dead wife with his own longing to resurrect Sam Johnson? Instead, the Duke gets this rival he’s murdered. And I ask myself, where do I find a dead rival of Roote’s? All over the place, that’s where! Albacore for a start. Then there’s that student in Sheffield, Jake Frobisher, the one who overdosed himself trying to catch up on his work, the one whose death was responsible for Johnson’s sudden move to Mid-Yorkshire Uni.’

  ‘The one whose death you had Wieldy double-check with no result? Come on! At the very worst Franny might be gently mocking your obsession with dragging him into your investigations, but I defy you to point to anything that even a fully paid-up paranoid like yourself can take as positively threatening.’

  ‘What about the bit about envying my domestic bliss?’ said Pascoe stubbornly.

  She checked it out, looked up at her husband and sadly shook her head.

  ‘He tells you you’re lucky to have such a lovely wife and delightful daughter, and you think that’s a threat? Come on!’

  ‘Well, how about all that crap about me providing him with a circle of peace and calm. You’ve got to admit that’s just a bit weird,’ said Pascoe, annoyed that he’d let himself be drawn into an argument about the letter in spite of all his resolutions.

  ‘Maybe. But you’ve been elected his guru, his spiritual father, remember? You can’t blame an orphan boy with growing pains for turning to his wise old spiritual daddy!’

  This might have provoked an outburst most unfitting for the eve of this great family festival had not Rosie come into the room at that moment, yawning widely and demanding to know if it wasn’t past her bedtime. This being akin to the Prince of Darkness suddenly expressing a desire to close down Hell and open a care home, her parents burst into sadly unsympathetic laughter and then had to repair the damage done to her tender sensibilities.

  There is a story somewhere of a man in his last night in the condemned cell trying to pretend he is a child waiting for Christmas in order to turn his haring hours into those tortoise-paced minutes of childhood. Fast or slow, good or bad, all things come in the end, and the following morning it took only a paler shade of blackness in the eastern sky to have Rosie bursting into the parental bedroom demanding to know if they intended lying there all day.

  After that things proceeded more or less according to her timetable, with Pascoe made to feel that his insistence on having coffee and toast before starting to open the presents was a manifest offence against the European Declaration on Human Rights.

  The pile of parcels beneath the tree was large, not because the Pascoes were over-indulgent parents, but because their daughter had a strong sense of equity and insisted that everyone else should have as many parcels to unwrap as she did, including the dog.

  Her unselfish delight in watching her mother and father in receipt of their gifts more than compensated for the strain on Pascoe’s dramatic abilities as he declared with rapture that a pair of electric blue cotton socks was all he needed to make his life complete.

  Of course others of his gifts were more luxurious and/or more interesting.

  ‘Let me guess,’ he said to Ellie, hefting a book-shaped parcel. ‘You’ve bought me a Bible? No, it’s too light. The Wit and Wisdom of Prince Charles? No, too heavy. Or is it that intellectual treat I’ve been after for ages: The Pirelli Calendar: the Glory Years?’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ said Ellie.

  He ripped off the wrapping paper and found himself looking at a book with a jet black jacket design broken only by a small high window of white which bore the title Dark Cells by Amaryllis Haseen.

  ‘I saw it in that remainder shop in Market Street,’ said Ellie. ‘And I thought, if you’re going to be hung up on Roote, you might as well read what the experts have got to say.’

  ‘Well, thank you kindly,’ said Pascoe, uncertain how he felt about it. Then he caught Rosie’s gaze upon him and was reminded. ‘That’s absolutely marvellous. I’ve been looking for a copy everywhere, how clever of you to find one, and so heavily discounted at that.’

  Satisfied, Rosie turned her attention to Tig whose pleasure at his prezzies, as long as they were instantly edible, was genuine and unconfined.

  Finally the ceremony was over. Rosie now had the difficult task of deciding which of her many gifts to concentrate on first. Her pecking order, which Ellie was glad to see had nothing to do with expense, placed equal top
a trace-your-ancestors genealogy kit and a silent dog whistle which the instructions assured her would provide instant control of her pet over distances up to half a mile. Finally, because as she said it was Christmas for Tig too, and ignoring the disincentive of a biting east wind, she opted for the whistle and took the dog out into the garden to change its life. Ellie went upstairs to ring her mother who was coming to them tomorrow but insisted on spending Christmas Day itself with her Alzheimer-stricken husband in his nursing home. To her daughter’s proposal that they would all make the two-hour drive to join her there on Christmas afternoon, Mrs Soper had replied briskly, ‘Don’t be silly, dear. I know you feel guilty, but you really mustn’t let your guilt spoil things for others. It’s a bad habit I hoped you’d got out of.’

  When Ellie had protested, her mother had reminded her of a ruined Christmas Day when, aged twelve, Ellie had decided she was going to send all her presents plus her Christmas dinner to Oxfam.

  ‘That was only one of many times,’ she’d concluded. ‘Your father’s right out of it now. It’s my place to be with him on Christmas Day. It’s yours to be at home.’

  Good for her! Pascoe had applauded internally. But he had tried not to let it show.

  Now seated alone with another mug of coffee, he glanced at his watch, groaned to see that though his body-clock told him it must be dinner-time, its hands told him it was still only nine forty-five, then reached out and picked up Dark Cells.

  He skipped through the introduction in which the author assured him that this was a serious in-depth analysis of the relationship between penological theory and the practicalities of incarceration, a claim somewhat at odds with that made on the jacket sleeve where he was invited to be titillated by a riveting account of evil unmasked and a disturbing analysis of the failure of our prison system to contain it. Do not read this book unless you feel strong enough to meet some of the worst men in our society. Be prepared to be shocked, to be scandalized, to be terrified!

  A perfect antidote to Christmas, he thought. He went out to the hall and from a shelf in the cupboard under the stairs he took his private Roote file. Dalziel’s gaze had noted it on his office desk, and doubtless noted too the drawer into which he’d slipped it. The drawer had a sturdy lock as did the office door, but Pascoe would not have bet sixpence against the Fat Man breaking through. So that same day he had brought the file home.

  He sat down again and from the file he took Roote’s first letter and glanced through it. Here it was … I am Prisoner XR pp 193–207…

  He picked up Dark Cells and turned to page 193, where sure enough the author began her case history of Prisoner XR.

  After giving details of crime and sentence, Ms Haseen got straight down to her sessions with Roote.

  His recorded responses during the investigation, the psychological assessment prepared in concurrence with his trial, and the whole raft of subsequent and consequent reports I had read of his reactions and behaviour since sentence all contained significant indices that here was a highly intelligent man sufficiently in control of himself to use that intelligence to make his stay in prison as comfortable and as short as possible, and, though I am very aware of the need to proceed with great caution in matters of analysis, in his case I felt within a few minutes of our first meeting fairly sanguine that the proposed course of analysis would affirm the accuracy of those advance impressions.

  God, this was turgid stuff! No wonder the book had been remaindered!

  From the start he was keen to demonstrate, and to underline in case I missed the point, that he was accepting these sessions absolutely on my terms. Unlike many of the others (see Prisoner JJ pp104 ff and Prisoner PR pp184 ff) he never showed any overt sexual awareness of me, nor when my investigation touched on matters pertaining to his sexuality did he see this as an opportunity to indulge in self-titillating sex talk (see Prisoners AH and BC pp209 ff). Yet despite this strict propriety, I often felt the atmosphere between us was highly charged, sexually speaking.

  You can bet your sweet ass it was! thought Pascoe.

  This fitted in very well with my developing judgment that Prisoner XR was going to be a difficult case to put under the magnifying glass of detailed analysis. He was clearly determined to provide me with no insight into his psyche that might be at odds with what he saw as the only truly important objects of our sessions viz. his rapid transfer from Chapel Syke to an open prison, and subsequently his early parole.

  She may be a lousy writer, old Amaryllis, thought Pascoe, but at least she got that right. Let’s see if she managed to get under his guard at all. Though, remembering that it was Roote himself who’d drawn his attention to her book, it didn’t seem likely.

  Our first few sessions therefore were in the nature of preliminary skirmishes whose main function in his eyes was to establish that he was in charge while I endeavoured to persuade him that I was unaware of his efforts so to do. Once past that point, though he always remained on a high level of vigilance, I was able to utilize his greater relaxation to make contact with him at a deeper level than hithertofore.

  Hithertofore! He smiled, then, recalling what a sad Christmas this must be for the woman, he stopped smiling and read on.

  Lot of background stuff. No names or identifying details, of course, but he fitted these in from his own researches.

  Family background: mother and stepfather; the latter a well-heeled businessman called Keith Prime who married Mrs Roote when Franny was six and clearly didn’t take long to decide it was worth spending a little of his wealth on keeping his stepson out of his hair.

  Boarding schools from age seven – first a prep school, then Coltsfoot College, a progressive public school near Chester. At some point, apparently for business reasons, the Primes had set up home in the Virgin Isles and most of young Franny’s vacations were spent staying with friends in England, a practice continued when he went to Holm Coultram College of Liberal Arts where his and Pascoe’s paths had first crossed.

  Thereafter the vacation problem was solved by residence at HMP Chapel Syke.

  His mother, according to Pascoe’s own records, had visited her son once during pre-trial custody, thereafter pleading poor health as reason for not attending the trial. Prime had never appeared. There was no record of the mother ever visiting her son in the Syke, but her claim to physical debility was supported the hard way when she died during his second year of detention. She was buried in the Virgin Isles. No application was made by Roote to attend the funeral. No contact with Keith Prime was recorded.

  It was evident that Amaryllis Haseen had been fascinated by the relationship between Roote and his mother and father and stepfather, which must have made it easy for him to jerk her around with fictitious memories of the father he couldn’t recall at all.

  XR was clearly father-fixated to a degree which must have been psychologically disabling till he developed techniques of control, though not without detriment to other more conventional emotional procedures. His obviously enhanced memories of incidents involving his father all tended to stress qualities which made the dead man a worthy object of admiration and affection, yet underpinning them always was that syndrome in which the subject’s sense of being abandoned by the object, even though the cause of abandonment is death, manifests itself in angry and abusive resentment.

  An example of the exaggerated memory was the following, being an account of an incident when the subject was four or five years old.

  XR: we were walking through the park one day, me and my dad, when this big guy jumped out of a bush brandishing a knife. He grabbed me by the hair and put the knife to my throat and said to my dad, ‘Here’s the deal, give me your wallet and the kid lives.’

  And my dad reached into his jacket and pulled out this huge pistol and he said, ‘No, here’s the deal, let go the kid and you live.’

  And the big guy said, ‘Hey man, no need to get heavy,’ and let me go. And my dad jumped forward and smashed him across the side of his head with the gun, and when he f
ell down my dad stamped on the hand carrying the knife till he dropped it.

  And the big guy lay on the ground screaming, ‘I thought we had a deal, man!’

  And my dad said, ‘The deal was, you get to live, but I didn’t say anything about you living healthy.’

  That an incident occurred in which the subject as a small boy was frightened in a park and was defended by his father is possible. In this and other recollections the father is always referred to as ‘my dad’, the possessive and the familiar abbreviation being together indicative of a deep sense of loss and an almost painful desire for repossession. The gun-toting Dirty Harry accretions have probably been developed over many years of creative recollection and it is likely that the subject is by now completely persuaded of the truth of this version. It is interesting to note that the qualities this embellished narrative stresses have less to do with the kind of story-book heroism which might have appealed to a young boy and more to a cold and calculating self-sufficiency. It would have been interesting to hear the version of this story that the subject was telling at the ages of, say, ten, and then again at fifteen.

  Alongside this let us set the subject’s response when it was suggested to him that he must have missed his dead father greatly.

  ‘Miss him? Why the fuck should I miss him? He never earned any more than kept us out of the gutter. Useless bastard, getting himself killed like that. We were better off without him even though he didn’t even leave us a pension. Fortunately Mother found herself this drooling dickhead who was so loaded we could afford to buy ourselves all the stuff we wanted.’

  Subject’s attempts to reduce his bereavement to economic terms are a typical grief-controlling stratagem in which the discomforts of poverty are substituted for the pain of loss. Accusations of selfishness aimed at the dead for dying appear in this light to have a real and computable base, and the return of prosperity can then be projected on to the subject’s ego-view as a healing of any wounds the bereavement may have caused.

  At the same time the source of the new prosperity is likely to be viewed with suspicion, or indeed as in this case contempt verging on hatred. I could discern little trace here of any Oedipal jealousy – subject always refers to his mother simply as ‘mother’, never using ‘mum’ or any other diminutivization, or employing the possessive pronoun, and never offering any anecdotes in which she features other than as a functional presence – so the unfailing choice of pejorative descriptions for his stepfather must be ascribed to subject’s appreciation of his stepfather’s wealth as a criticism of his real father’s failure to provide for his family and his determination that the newcomer is never going to get close to taking the dead man’s place.