Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Might do,’ admitted Pascoe reluctantly. ‘So Sergeant Roote was living dangerously.’

  ‘That’s right. Reading between the lines, he was getting increasingly bolshie at work while at home his marriage was in a tail spin. He was also drinking heavily. Crisis point reached when he was so heavy handed on a big bust that another sergeant reported him. When Tommy heard about it, he went for the guy in the locker room. A DI stuck his nose in and asked what the hell was going on. Roote told him to mind his own fucking business and when he didn’t Roote decked him. That was that. Rolled into his hearing drunk and bolshie and sent any chance of being retired early with his pension intact up in smoke. After that it was downhill all the way. Guy like him had plenty of enemies outside and, without the protection of his badge, he was easy meat. Ended up in an alley behind a pub, his ribs kicked in. Choked on his own vomit. Death by misadventure. It’s all here.’

  He dropped the sheet of paper face-down on the desk.

  ‘Hell’s bells. That’s a terrible tale,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Yeah. Explains a few things about Roote, maybe.’

  ‘Like why he hates the police, you mean?’

  ‘Like why he’s so mixed up about his father, I meant. I think it’s back.’

  Along the corridor echoed the tread of mighty footsteps and a discordant whistling of something which to Wield’s sensitive ears might have been ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. A moment later Dalziel filled the doorway.

  His two subordinates stared at him so unwelcomingly that he took a step backwards and said, ‘Ee, I’ve not been met with looks like that since my dear wife left me. What have I done? Left my dirty socks in the bidet again?’

  ‘More like dirty fingerprints on the polished table, sir,’ said Pascoe, going straight on the attack. ‘What’s all this about Mai Richter? Or Myra Rogers? More to the point, what’s it all got to do with Rye Pomona?’

  Dalziel’s response was to advance towards Wield and hold out one huge paw.

  ‘Before the cock’s crowed thrice, eh?’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘That for me?’

  Silently Wield handed over the folder containing his findings on Richter and Lilley.

  ‘It was me who asked Wieldy what he were up to,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Oh aye? Ask him what he were up to at Tinks last weekend and he sings a song, does he?’

  ‘I just think that anything to do with Rye Pomona and Bowler, I’m entitled to know.’

  ‘And why’s that then?’

  ‘Because I was with you when we interfered with a crime scene and when we edited Pomona’s statement,’ said Pascoe baldly.

  The Fat Man backheeled the door shut with a slam that had constables in the canteen three floors below bolting their scalding coffee and heading back out several minutes early.

  ‘Nay, lad, you weren’t with me,’ he said fiercely. ‘Except maybe in your dreams. And I’d keep quiet about them, even when you’re letting it all hang out on yon Pozzo’s couch.’

  Jesus, thought Pascoe. Has he got me bugged?

  Wield was staring out of the window at the cloudy sky with an intensity that suggested all his senses except for sight were disengaged.

  Dalziel suddenly relaxed and smiled ruefully, shaking his great head.

  ‘My torture!’ he said, using a strange oath allegedly passed down from his Highland forebears. ‘You’re getting me as daft as yourselves. Mebbe I should have put you in the picture, but it didn’t seem that important. All that’s happened is I were told a foreign national might be living on our patch under an assumed name. You know what them sods at Immigration are like, so I thought it best to get ahead of the game and take it seriously.’

  ‘Well, that’s awfully conscientious of you, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘Can’t have anonymous foreigners getting up to their disgusting tricks in Mid-Yorkshire, can we? So tell me, Wieldy, what have you found out about this wolf in sheep’s clothing?’

  ‘Born 1962 in Kaub in the Rhine-Palatinate,’ recited Wield in an old-fashioned schoolroom voice. ‘Studied at Heidelberg, Paris and London. Freelance journalist, concentrating on political corruption stories at a national and local level with a special interest in environmental affairs. Convictions in Germany for breaches of the peace, obstruction, possession. No UK convictions. No warrants outstanding …’

  ‘Yeah yeah,’ said Dalziel, holding up the folder he’d taken from the sergeant. ‘Got all that without wasting your precious time. Hope there’s summat a bit more useful in here.’

  ‘Can’t say, as I don’t know what you want to use it for,’ said Wield.

  Dalziel gave him a glower and Pascoe hastily interposed his own body; saying, ‘Kaub. That’s on the Rhine, I recall. Few miles south of the Lorelei.’

  ‘Is it now?’ said the Fat Man. ‘You been there?’

  ‘Yes. Did a Rhine tour a few years back. Lovely spot. Very romantic, in every sense.’

  ‘One sense at a time is as much as I can manage,’ said Dalziel. ‘And seeing as we’re in such a sharing mood, anything else I should know about?’

  His gaze was focused on the sheet bearing the new info on Roote Senior, which, despite the fact that it was face-down on the desk at a distance of several feet, he looked to be reading like a billboard poster.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Pascoe firmly.

  ‘And you, Wieldy. Owt more from Boy George?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Equally firmly.

  ‘Grand. Then we can all get down to some work, can’t we?’

  He left.

  ‘Why is it that I feel like I’ve been told, “You scratch my back or I’ll have the skin off yours”?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Me too,’ said Wield. ‘It’s like having a pet bear. A lot of the time it’s all warm cuddles, then suddenly you realize the bugger’s crushing you to death!’

  Mai Richter dreamt she was back in her home town of Kaub, standing in Metzgergasse, its lovely main street, looking towards the town tower, silhouetted against a ghastly sky. Higher still, a looming presence on even the sunniest days, was the bulk of Gutenfels with its restored ruins reminding those beneath where the real power in this land once lay.

  But Mai Richter’s gaze was fixed much lower. Before the tower a bonfire raged, its teeth of flame ripping through the ribs of pinewood which formed its frame to reveal the orange heart pulsing within. Figures danced around, cloaked and hooded, with just enough firelight stealing beneath the cowls to reveal pallid faces and staring eyes and mouths twisted in terrible pleasure. They were hurling books into the fire’s maw, which received them greedily, devouring whole volumes in a second. She knew that these were her books, books she had written with sweat and tears and love and devotion, all the copies of all her books, every word she had ever written, reducing to ashes before her eyes, vanishing forever from libraries and bookshops and, worst of all, from her mind.

  What use to think of books when she knew beyond doubt that when they’d burnt all her words, it would be her body they turned to next. Already she could feel the heat of the ravening flames, yet she had no power to flee or to resist. Somewhere close she could hear the pulse and the roar of the mighty Rhine but its cooling waters offered no relief.

  And now its sound was changing, still as powerful and as pulsing as ever, but now something more, something else … and suddenly she recognized the dark and terrible music of Siegfried’s funeral with a shock of fear that woke her.

  The dancing shadows of the bonfire were replaced by the still white walls of her bedroom and its searing heat by the sharp chill of an English January night.

  But the music remained. Those shuddering glooms of sound which roll down the margins of mortality into the underworld still reverberated in her mind. And in her ears.

  She sat up.

  Still it was there.

  Slowly she got out of bed, fumbled in her bedside drawer, found what she was looking for, and moved towards her bedroom door. Beneath it she could see a line of light, red and faintly flickering as if the bonfi
re she had dreamt about lay just beyond this portal.

  Dauntless, she took the handle, turned it and pushed the door open.

  From her tape deck the music boomed, while from her gas-fire the flickering orange flames cast just enough light to trace the outline of a monstrous figure whose bulk spilled over the edge of the old armchair in which it sat.

  Her nerveless fingers sought but could not find the light switch.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she demanded shrilly. ‘Who is that? I warn you, I have arms.’

  ‘Good job I’m ‘armless then,’ said the figure. ‘It’s all right lass, it’s only me, the Ghost of Christmas Past. Come in and shut that door. There’s a hell of a draught.’

  And the figure leaned forward till she was able to recognize the unwelcome welcome face of Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.

  Dalziel relaxed in his chair and watched the woman as she busied herself round the room, turning the music off and the lights on. The round anonymity of her face, which must be so useful in her line of work, had somehow vanished. Perhaps it was the shock of sudden awaking to this strange invasion or the absence of make-up or the fact that her hair was no longer neat and carefully coiffed. Her round features now seemed sharp and well defined. She slept in nothing but a thin white T-shirt and it could be that the new awareness this gave him of her sexuality aided the defining process. He noted that, despite her delaying tactics, she made no attempt to get a dressing gown. Bright lass, he thought. Gets herself together, but reckons there might be some advantage in distracting me with her tits.

  Finally she sat down opposite him, very demurely, pulling the T-shirt over her knees.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘Superintendent Dalziel, you have broken into my flat at one o’clock in the morning. You are drinking my whisky, which is theft, and as you’ve gone through my tapes, I presume you’ve performed an illegal search. Or is there something I have missed?’

  ‘Nay, lass, that just about wraps it up. Nice whisky too. Was a bit worried you might have nowt but schnapps or some other Kraut firewater. Going to join me?’

  She smiled and leaned forward to fill a glass and said, ‘I’m really interested to know why a senior policeman should put his career at risk in such a way.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the tie-break question, isn’t it? To tell you the truth, all I really came for was to find out why you are leaving.’

  ‘Leaving?’

  ‘Come on, luv. You don’t imagine someone with your record can book plane seats without half the police forces in Europe knowing.’

  This was a lie. In the three days since getting Wield’s report, the Fat Man had certainly spent a lot of time planning his strategy with regard to Richter, but he’d had no idea of her plans to return to Germany until he’d found the plane ticket in her desk drawer. It was for tomorrow, it was one-way, and it was first class.

  His conclusion had been that she felt her job here was either over or getting nowhere and he’d been tempted to steal away as silently as he’d come, but only for a second. It was, he’d discovered in the course of a life packed, both professionally and personally, with problems, a delusion that they ever went away.

  And Charley Penn certainly wasn’t going away.

  She said, ‘So you have also been illegally accessing computer databases?’

  ‘Not sure what that means, but I dare say you’re right. So let’s get down to it, Fräulein Richter. Here’s what I know about you and what I want from you. You’re an old mate of Charley Penn’s, on good shagging terms, from the look of things. You came here at his instigation to see what you could sniff out via Miss Pomona about the circumstances of Dick Dee’s death. Now, what I’d like for you to do is tell me what you imagine you’ve found out, then we can all get into our beds. All right?’

  She shook her head in not altogether affected amazement.

  ‘Charley told me about you, Mr Dalziel, but I did not altogether believe him. Now I realize he got it wrong. He told me you were arrogant and ruthless, but he did not tell me you were also stupid. Do you really think you can break your English law and violate my rights in this way and get away with it? You say you’ve studied my background. You must know I’ve helped put more powerful and important men than you behind bars.’

  ‘I’m sorry, luv,’ said Dalziel, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘My dad told me never to contradict a lady, but I’ve got to say that, when it comes to putting buggers behind bars, I reckon I can give thee half the Sudetenland start and still be in Prague afore ye. But why make such a pother? It’s tit for tat, you help me, I’ll help you, can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘What could you help me with?’ she asked mockingly. ‘Are you going to fix a parking ticket, perhaps?’

  ‘I can manage that too, but I were thinking more of keeping you out of jail,’ said Dalziel, leaning forward to help himself to more whisky.

  ‘Jail? For what?’ she demanded.

  ‘You got no laws in Germany then? Well, we’ve got enough to go round. First off, personation, forgery and deception. You took this flat telling the estate agent you were English and called Myra Rogers, and handing over a set of references to show what an upright British citizen you were. Want more? You’ve got a bagful of interesting-looking white powder in your fridge. And while you may have a licence back home for that natty little gun you were waving just now, I can’t find any trace of anything which makes it legal here. Want more? You’ve employed Mr Tristram Lilley to introduce illicit surveillance equipment into a private dwelling which involved illegal entry. Yes, I’ve had a word with him and, being a self-centred little scrote, he’s talking so fast, his own equipment can’t keep up. Want more? I haven’t even started with the stuff I can heap on top of you yet.’

  ‘These are empty threats, Superintendent,’ she said calmly. ‘I have been hounded by experts and threatened with physical violence, death even, and I am still here. I know lawyers who will get me out of your clutches without even leaving their offices.’

  ‘I can believe it. They ought to geld one a day to encourage the others. Aye, the law’s an ass, all right, but the good thing is it’s a broken-winded and spavin’d ass. Now I’d guess that maybe one thing that’s helped you decide to leave first class is someone back in Krautland has offered you a real job setting the world to rights.’

  She was good at hiding, but he was better at seeking and saw he’d scored a hit.

  He went on, ‘I think I can guarantee you’ll stay banged up long enough for your friends back home to find themselves another Mata Hari. And I’ll make sure that you get such publicity all over Europe, you’ll need to wear a beard next time you go undercover.’

  She thought for a moment then she smiled at him.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll see if I can help you.’

  Then she shivered and went on, ‘It’s so cold in these English flats, don’t you think so? In Germany we know how to keep warm.’

  As she spoke, she half turned to the gas fire and arched her body towards it as if in search of heat, hitching the T-shirt up as she did so.

  Dalziel relaxed in his chair, nodded approvingly and raised his glass.

  After a moment, Richter pulled her T-shirt back over her knees.

  ‘Nice try, lass, but I’ve got one of my own at home that I’d like to get back to,’ said Dalziel. ‘Save it for Charley. Though I can’t understand what you see in him myself. Thought you lot liked a bit more meat on your men.’

  ‘Charley is a good man,’ she said seriously. ‘And not a stupid one. When he told me his story and asked for my help, I admit it did not seem like my kind of thing.’

  ‘Which is political corruption on a big scale, right?’

  ‘That sort of thing,’ she smiled. ‘This sounded, personal, petty. At best, if Charley had got it right, it was about some insignificant provincial bobbies covering their tracks. It might make a little stir in the English papers, but anything makes a stir here. But Charley is an o
ld friend, and it suited me to rest quiet a few weeks away from home. So I came.’

  ‘Saw, and conquered. You certainly seem to have conquered little Miss Rye,’ said Dalziel. ‘So what have you found out?’

  She hesitated and he growled from deep in his chest, ‘The truth, remember.’

  She said, ‘I am not thinking of a lie. No, it is the truth that I have to work out, for to tell the truth I don’t know what I have found. Except that Rye is very disturbed, and distressed. Her boyfriend, the young policeman, he makes her very happy, but he is also the cause of much of her unhappiness too. All this I have found hard to understand. When I first spoke to her she was scattering the contents of a vacuum cleaner into the churchyard. I later found when we became friends that it was the ashes of her dead brother which had been spilt during that strange burglary she had.’

  ‘Strange? How was it strange? It was Charley Penn, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No. Not so. Charley was here that morning because he spent the night with me. No danger, we knew Rye was away, just like you know she is away tonight, I presume, else you would not have played the music so loud.’

  ‘Aye, she’s round at young Bowler’s,’ said Dalziel. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. We heard a crash, like something breaking. It seemed to come from next door, but we knew the flat was empty. Charley went out to listen at the door. That’s when Mrs Gilpin saw him, so he didn’t come back in to me but went home.’

  ‘You sure it weren’t you?’ said Dalziel doubtingly. ‘Some bugger left a message about Lorelei on her computer. Right up Charley’s street, that, and not far from the bottom of your street back home, if my information is right.’

  ‘You’ve been digging deep, Mr Dalziel,’ she said. ‘Yes, she told me about the message when we became friends. Very odd, especially because of the link with Charley. Another odd thing was the quiet.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘She said her flat was a mess, things knocked over, drawers emptied. Yet apart from the one crash, I heard nothing. Also odd is the other bug.’