Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  ‘There’s the missing watch. And the missing drugs.’

  ‘Oh aye? Which Roote stole? Why?’

  ‘Drugs, obvious. For use or profit. The watch because Johnson had given it to Jake Frobisher as a love token. Roote took it as a trophy, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe. You got this inscription there?’

  Pascoe had photocopied it and sent the original rubbing back to Sophie Frobisher as promised. He now produced the copy with his own transliteration underneath.

  ‘More sodding poetry,’ said Dalziel gloomily.

  He reached into his desk, found a jeweller’s eyeglass and peered at the rubbing.

  ‘Reckon you got it wrong,’ he said, not without satisfaction.

  ‘Wrong? How so?’

  ‘I’d say it isn’t YOURS TILL TIME INTO ETERNITY FALLS OVER RUINED WORLDS but TILL TIME INTO ETERNITY FALLS OVER RUINED WORLDS YOUR S.’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ said Pascoe.

  He peered through the glass and said, ‘I think you’re right. That just makes it even more definite it was a gift from Sam!’

  ‘Or Simon, or Syd or Santa fucking Claus.’

  ‘No, it has to be Sam Johnson. I checked out the quote, or rather I got Ellie to check it. It’s from Death’s Jest-Book, that’s a play by Beddoes whose Life Sam was researching. That’s the Life that Roote has been given the job of finishing by Linda Lupin. She’s …’

  ‘Please, God, no more! My brain feels like someone’s stirring it with a porridge ladle. I give in. The watch was a prezzie from Johnson to Frobisher. Right, but what’s it prove? I reckon we’ll have a long day in the outfield if we rely on you getting enough evidence to put him back in the Syke. We’re pissing in the dark here. Best thing if we don’t want to end up with wet boots is for me to have a heart-to-heart with little Miss Pomona, find out exactly what’s going off. And even if she’s not talking, I might get a hint how soon it’ll be afore she takes whatever she thinks she knows to the grave!’

  Pascoe shook his head in disgust.

  ‘There you go again,’ he said. ‘Same as with Lubanski. To you death’s just another policy tool, isn’t it? These are real people we’re talking about!’

  ‘No,’ said Dalziel. ‘Not Lubanski. He’s a dead person, Pete. Not real any more. Where he was is a space. That’s what Wieldy’s so cut up about. We go, and despite all the memorial services and monuments and pious crap about living on in memories, we have ceased to exist. Where we were is a space an elephant could fart through and we’d never notice the smell. It’s like losing a tooth. It hurts for a bit, then we notice the space for a bit, then we start chewing on our gums or the other side of our mouth, and soon both tooth and space are all forgotten. End of sodding sermon. I’ll talk to the lass, do the old paternal act. They all love their daddies, ain’t that what Freud says? Now to more important things. This DI Rose, you rate him, do you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I think he’s OK.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got my doubts about anyone who can come up with a name like Operation Serpent. Watches a lot of movies, does he? All right, all right, I accept your judgment. It’s his show. But it’s us as will take the crap if it goes wrong on our patch. I’ll be seeing Desperate Dan shortly and if I’m to get his go-ahead, it’ll be because I’m telling him I’ve got you overseeing the job. Thinks the sun shines out of your backside, does Dan.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Pascoe.

  He stood up and swayed slightly but not so slightly Dalziel didn’t notice.

  ‘You sure you’re OK?’ he said.

  ‘I think so.’

  But he was lying. He’d spent much of Saturday sharing air with Kung Flu germs and he knew for certain now they were advancing on him with wild Asiatic screams, chopping and stabbing and kicking.

  But he wasn’t going to give in! No way … no way … no way …

  Life is nothing without death, for it is death that defines life, giving it meaning even when it seems completely meaningless. Ask yourself, what could be more meaningless than a life without death?

  Peter Pascoe, lying on a bed of pain, was absolute for death. Every bone in his body seemed to have its peculiar ache. He’d never before been so conscious of himself as an osseous being, an articulated construct. It seemed very odd to him that in art Death should be so often figured as a skeleton. It was in his bones that life persisted, painful miserable unbearable life. His flesh and his mind and his soul were all desperate to wave the flag of surrender, but these insurgent bones persisted in defying Death’s violent engines. He lay like Leningrad under that siege, kept alive by the sheer pain of the assault that was aimed at destroying him.

  Not that his bones were good for anything other than aching. He had crawled out of bed on Tuesday morning, dismissing as female fuss all Ellie’s attempts to persuade him he was unfit even for Dalziel’s company. He had got into his car and sat there for a little while feeling that something was not quite right but unable to put his finger on it. The main problem seemed to be finding somewhere to insert his ignition key. Gradually it came to him that he was sitting in the rear seat. It was during his attempt to rectify this error that the unreliability of his limbs made itself absolutely clear, and Ellie, who had been watching his contortions from the house with growing concern, emerged to half lead, half drag him back inside.

  Death is our constant companion from the moment we are born, never more than a heartbeat away, and yet we make a stranger of him, a dangerous stranger too, a bitter enemy.

  Not me, said Pascoe fervently. Not me. Come on, mate. I’m all yours, let’s be off, over the hills and far away!

  He heard Rosie on the landing being refused admittance by Ellie.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Is Daddy dying?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Ellie. ‘He’s just got the flu.’

  Why did she lie? You shouldn’t lie to your kids. Tell them the truth. Of course he’s dying! Could a man feel like this and not be dying? Most of his body knew it. If only these bloody bones, the incorruptible, the immortal part, would accept the majority vote and let him die in peace! At least his daughter understood how serious his illness was.

  ‘If Daddy does die before Saturday, would that mean I’d miss Suzie’s party at Estotiland?’ said Rosie anxiously.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m sure we could find a corner of the bouncy castle to lay him out in.’

  When the sun shines and the sky is blue and our hopes are high, then we give thanks to God for life. It is only when the storm clouds blot out all light and hope lies crushed that we turn to death with pre-emptive thanksgiving. But it is in that glorious morning that we should be giving thanks for death also.

  Later of course when he recovered, the memory of his wimpish self-pity filled him with shame. At what point he had picked up Frère Jacques’ autographed book from his bedside table he didn’t know, but from time to time he dipped into it at random, hoping to light upon a strategy for dealing with these Kung Flu assailants.

  While we are living, every third thought should be our grave, but when we are dying every third thought should be our life.

  He tried that and he found that the plural possessive was very apt, for the feverish nightmarish world which he inhabited for much of the time was lit by brief flashes of total awareness in which he knew everything that was going on. Perhaps he picked up hints from things Ellie said, as well as from the brief distance-keeping visits of Dalziel and Wield, back at work and, apparently, back in control.

  He knew for instance that Dalziel had talked to Rye Pomona because Dalziel was telling him this during his visit, but somehow he found himself experiencing their conversation rather than just listening to a précis of it …

  ‘Time for a quick word, luv?’ said Andy Dalziel.

  ‘For you, Superintendent, always,’ said Rye.

  Dalziel looked at her and thought, she knows why I’m here.

  Here was her flat. He’d visited it once before, illegally, after his illegal entry into Mai
Richter’s apartment next door. Light and her welcoming presence made it look different now. She looked different too from the last time he’d seen her. She was definitely thinner. And paler, but her pallor disguised by a light that seemed to shine through her translucent skin. This light, her lively movement, her gay manner, all disguised or at least distracted the eye from the fact that she was beginning to look seriously ill.

  He sat down opposite her and they locked, or rather engaged gazes, for there was nothing of strife or opposition in the way they looked at each other.

  He heard himself saying, ‘Myra Rogers, her next door, she were really Mai Richter, an investigative journalist. I expect you knew that?’

  ‘I guessed it. Or something like it. But only after she left. She said she’d got a job offer down south, but I knew there was more to it. More to her.’

  ‘She liked you. She couldn’t bear to hang around after you told her you were going to die and not let anyone do anything about it.’

  He hadn’t meant to say any of this, or at least he hadn’t planned to say it in this way, but to keep as long as he could the advantage of knowing more than she did.

  ‘I liked her.’

  ‘Me too,’ admitted Dalziel. ‘I know how she felt. I’m not mad about sitting around doing nowt while you snuff it.’

  ‘Unless you plan to hold me down while you operate, I don’t see there’s much you can do about it,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘What about young Bowler? How’s he going to feel?’

  ‘As bad as anyone can feel and still go on living,’ she said sombrely. ‘But he will go on living. I’m glad you know the truth, Mr Dalziel, because you’ll be ready to help Hat. You and Mr Pascoe. He thinks you’re both marvellous. This is your chance to prove he’s right.’

  He thought of all the arguments he could put forward to make her change her mind, and dismissed them. In the interrogation room, he generally knew after a couple of minutes when there was no point going on. He knew that now.

  He said, ‘You’ll do what you want, lass. In my experience that’s what lasses usually do. One thing, but – are you planning to leave any little billy-doos behind you?’

  ‘In my experience, you can be a bit more direct than that,’ she said.

  ‘All right. There’s buggers like Charley Penn and maybe others who don’t think the Wordman’s dead. I’m not interested in what you and Dee were getting up to that day out at the Stang. But I’d like to know what you think. Is the Wordman dead?’

  She thought about this long enough to make him feel uneasy. Then she said in a low voice, ‘Yes, I believe he is. And I’m sure that when he looks back at what he did, whatever pleas there might be in mitigation, he is filled with a horror that makes death welcome. But Charley Penn is right. Dick Dee was a lovely man. Charley’s right to remember him like that. When we die I don’t think anything matters much, but if anything matters a little, it’s how our friends remember us. Goodbye now, Mr Dalziel.’

  She watched him go. And Pascoe through his feverish gaze watched him go too at the end of his sick-room visit and found he was watching through Rye Pomona’s cool brown eyes and thinking what she was thinking, which was so unthinkable that he twisted in his turbulent thoughts like a drowning man and struck out wildly for some impossible shore and found himself in the middle of Edgar Wield’s pain …

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Wield said. ‘This is stupid. I shouldn’t be like this. It’s worse than stupid, it’s unfair. I shouldn’t be doing this to you.’

  ‘And who else should you be doing it to?’ said Digweed. ‘So shut up and eat your frikadeller. They are, though I say it myself as shouldn’t, being the one who has slaved away in the kitchen to produce them, quite perfect.’

  Wield, who found them indistinguishable from frozen meatballs cooked in the microwave, dutifully put one in his mouth.

  ‘I don’t know why I should feel like this,’ he said, chewing. ‘There really was nothing between us, Edwin, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes there was,’ said Digweed. ‘He must have been a remarkable child. I told you at Christmas he was looking for a dad, and, against all the odds, I think he succeeded. You’re not acting like a bereft lover, Edgar, but a bereaved father. Which is fine. Odd but fine. But for once I agree with that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox, Superintendent Dalziel. What you mustn’t act like is an avenging fury. No man can profit from assaulting a lawyer. Besides, from what I know of Marcus Belchamber, he seems unlikely to have countenanced this brutal assault.’

  ‘He’s countenancing what could turn out to be a brutal assault on some security guards,’ retorted Wield.

  Usually he was as discreet as a confessor about the details of his job, but grief and anger had unlocked his lips.

  ‘At a distance, in pursuit of an obsession, and on people he doesn’t know,’ said Digweed. ‘I dare say this has given him pause. Shock at Lee’s death plus fear of what he may have revealed to you could well result in the whole thing being cancelled.’

  i hope not,’ said Wield. ‘Because if we can’t get him for this, I’ll need to go round to his office and punch his lights out.’

  He spoke tough but he didn’t feel tough. Vengeance was for heroes. He did not feel heroic. Nothing he could do to anyone was going to remove either of those memories which would forever have the power to leave him feeling weak as a tired child trying to weep away this life of care. The first was of that other tired child’s battered, drowned face looking up at him on the canal bank. The second was of that same face, smiling encouragingly, lovingly, as it belted out the words of the song on the karaoke screen.

  I really need you tonight … forever’s going to start tonight …

  Perhaps Pascoe had picked this up from Wield’s monosyllabic references … perhaps the sergeant had opened up to Ellie with whom he’d always been very close … but there were other projections which were much harder to explain …

  In the comfortable study where Lee Lubanski had visited him so often, Marcus Belchamber sat and tried to recapture the sublime thrill he had felt when he held the serpent crown. And failed. All he could see was Lee’s slim body being hauled out of the cold murky waters of the Burrthorpe Canal. He had never felt anything for the boy. He was a whore. You rented his body like a hotel room, looked to find everything there that you’d paid for, made yourself perfectly at home in it, but you never thought of it as home. At the end of each rental period you left without a backward glance. And yet …

  If the boy had died in a road accident, he wouldn’t have thought of it other than as an inconvenience. Like your hotel burning down. You have to find another place to stay.

  This was different. Though he refused to accept responsibility, he could not deny that between himself and that sordid death ran an unbroken chain of causality. It was not his fault that the boy was dead. But he was attainted by the death in too many ways.

  His first reaction had been to talk of cancelling the whole job.

  Polchard had smiled his cold smile and made it clear that he and his team would still require payment in full. Already because Linford in his grief had reneged on the further payments which had fallen due, Belchamber had had to promise Polchard a large portion of the monies projected from the sale of the disposable part of the Hoard. That was bad enough, but worse was the fear that now that the initial agreement had been broken by Linford’s default, Polchard might simply take the lot, ruthlessly melting down individual items to make them more easily disposable.

  Or perhaps the crown would suffer the fate of so many stolen works of art and end up as permanent collateral in a series of squalid drug deals.

  He couldn’t bear the thought of that.

  In the end he had to accept Polchard’s assurance – no; not assurance; the man didn’t feel the need to reassure, simply to assert – that all he wanted was his agreed cut. Which made it easier to accept his further assertion that Lee’s death had been caused by an overenthusiastic minion and that
to the end the youth had insisted that his relationship with the ugly cop was purely professional. In other words, the dirty little scrote had been giving freebies in return for protection. So fuck him. No problem.

  So he gave the go-ahead, trying to retain the illusion that he was still in charge. And he sat in his study trying to recall the thrill he had felt when he held the serpent crown.

  And failed …

  Death is a very great adventure, but to many people, especially to those who find the experience of going on a package holiday traumatic enough, the idea of embarking on an adventure is completely horrifying. Yet with holiday trips, most of us enjoy ourselves when we get there. And at a distance, are we not all full of delighted anticipation?

  An unexpected visitor to Pascoe’s sickbed had been Charley Penn, or rather he’d come to see Pascoe not knowing he was sick. Why he came wasn’t clear … something to do with Rye Pomona … or maybe with Mai Richter … or maybe because his search for answers had left him uncertain of the original questions he’d been asking …

  Charley Penn sat in the library and tried to concentrate on the poem he was working on.

  It was called Der Scheidende, literally ‘The Parting One’ which he’d translated as ‘Man on his way out’, though perhaps he should try to preserve that idea of parting in the sense of division, which he was sure must have been in the mind of dying Heine with his doppelgänger obsession.

  He’d done the first six lines while Dick Dee was still alive.

  Within my heart, within my head

  Every worldly joy lies dead,

  And just as dead beyond repeal

  Is hate of evil, nor do I feel

  The pain of mine or others’ lives,

  For in me only Death survives.

  But since Dick’s death, he hadn’t been able to return to the poem. Not till now.

  Why had Mai gone so abruptly?