Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  ‘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 necessari
ly 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 clearly 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!

  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 looked back at Rose’s car through the mirror of the Praesidium security van.

  The pigs were still keeping their distance. He’d banked on this. Not for them the plain fare of successfully escorting the Hoard to the Mid-Yorkshire Heritage Centre. No, they wanted to dip their snouts in the great steaming trough of arrests, and bodies in cells, and headlines in papers. But they hadn’t thought to escort the empty van down from Mid-Yorkshire. Forcing it to divert into the Estoti service area off the underpass had been easy. And while the strong-arms in his team dealt with the driver and guard, the substitute vehicle, its call-sign signal carefully adjusted, emerged from the southern end of the underpass.

  Reversing the process required a bit more guile.

  ‘Keep it steady,’ he said to his driver.

  They’d gradually diminished their speed for the past quarter-hour so that now they were barely doing forty-five. Were the pigs suspicious? Why should they be? In any case it was too late now, he thought, focusing his gaze beyond the trailing car.

  The pantechnicon coming up fast in the outside lane had no problem in getting past the police car just as the van began its shallow descent into the underpass. Signs warned, no stopping or overtaking, but the pantechnicon flashed its indicator after passing the police saloon and began to pull in front.

  ‘Plonker!’ yelled Rose. ‘Get past him, for Christ’s sake.’

  His driver began to flash to pull out, but there was a white transit van slowly overtaking him now, blocking the manoeuvre.

  Polchard watched all this in his mirror, then said ‘Go,’ when the saloon was completely out of sight.

  The driver rammed down the accelerator.

  Ahead was a sign with an arrow pointing off left, saying ESTOTILAND SERVICE AREA – AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. The security van roared along the slip road. Further on, down the exit slip road from the service area, the original Praesidium van joined the underpass road at a sedate pace.

  ‘It’s all right, guv, he’s turning off,’ said Rose’s driver reassuringly as the pantechnicon began to move over on to the exit slip road. ‘No need to worry. There’s the van up ahead.’

  ‘Where the fuck did you expect it to be? Vanished into thin air?’ snarled Rose, annoyed to have let his anxiety show so clearly. ‘Close up a bit, will you? And try not to let any other fucker get between us.’

  ‘… fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen … there they are,’ said Berry as the blip reappeared on the computer screen. ‘Not long now. Beginning to look like much ado about nowt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Hat Bowler. ‘Nowt.’

  This oppo couldn’t finish too early for him. Though the extreme effects of whatever malaise had hit him over an hour ago hadn’t been repeated, he still felt somehow physically cold and mentally spaced out. Another reaction had been a desire verging on a need to hear Rye’s voice, so when Berry was called out of the control centre for a few minutes he’d taken the chance to ring the library, only to be told that Rye wasn’t due in today.

  This had surprised him. When he’d told her he was going to be tied up on Saturday, he’d got the impression she was working too. He then rang her flat. Nothing but the answer machine.

  So she was out. What did he expect her to do when he wasn’t around? Sit at home and mope?

  But he felt uneasy though he knew no reason why.

  The door of the control room opened.

  ‘Hello, Superintendent. Come to check up on things?’ said Berry. ‘Must say you lot are taking this very seriously, but it’s all going like a dream so far.’

  Hat didn’t turn from the screen. All his earlier symptoms were back mob-handed. He knew it wasn’t Dalziel who’d come into the room, it was Death.

  Death that master of role-play who was yet always himself. For he could come garbed as a nurse, or a close friend, or in the cap and bells of a jester, or as a great fat policeman, but the cavernous eyes and grinning jawbone were still unmistakable.

  So he sat and stared at the light pulsing like a heart across the screen.

  ‘Hat,’ said Dalziel, ‘could you step outside for a moment. I need a word.’

  ‘Watching the van, sir,’ said Hat stiffly. ‘Won’t be long now till it gets to the museum.’

  ‘Mr Berry will watch for us,’ said Dalziel gently. ‘Come on, lad. We need to talk. Your office all right, Mr Berry?’

  By now the manager too knew that a darkness more than the semi-dusk of a grey January day had entered the room.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  Hat rose and, still without looking at the Fat Man, went out of the room.

  ‘Will he be back?’ said Berry.

  ‘No,’ said Dalziel. ‘I don’t think he will. You can manage here, I expect?’

  ‘What’s to manage?’ said Berry, glancing at the screen. ‘I reckon it’s all over now.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Dalziel. ‘It’s all over.’

  Pascoe was beginning to wish he’d stayed in bed.

  He sat on a chair and looked uneasily round Franny Roote’s flat.

  Normally he was the most meticulous of searchers, missing no possible hiding place in his pursuit of whatever it was he was pursuing, and just as assiduous in leaving no messy traces of his searching. In fact it was a standing joke among his less particular colleagues that if you wanted to give a room a good tidying, you got Pascoe to search it.

  But something had gone wrong today.

  Roote’s flat looked like it had been done over by a disturbed juvenile on his first job.

  With no effect whatsoever, except to waste so much energy he’d broken out in a muck sweat. He took off his jacket and wiped his brow.

  What to do? he asked himself desperately.

  Flee, and hope it got put down to said disturbed juvenile?

  Stay and brazen it out if and when Roote turned up?

  Or try to tidy things up and cover all traces of
his passage?

  That was going to be hard, he thought as he looked around. He’d made a real mess and he knew he couldn’t put it all down to his illness. He’d often looked at the after-effects of a destructive burglary and wondered why it was that as well as stealing the thief had needed to wreck what he left behind. Now he began to understand. For some people it wasn’t enough simply to rob; they had to hate and even blame those they robbed.

  He’d found nothing to use against Roote, but by God! he’d let the bastard know what he thought of him!

  It was a shameful thing to have done, quite inexcusable.

  Though, thank God, there were limits.

  There was a bookcase against one wall, serviceable rather than ornamental and stained a funereal black. The only things he hadn’t laid violent hands upon were the books.

  And, though there’d been nothing conscious in the omission, he thought he knew why.

  He went to the case and took a book down. He’d been right. The name on the fly cover was Sam Johnson. These were part of Roote’s inheritance from his old friend and tutor. If there was anything at all about Roote that Pascoe trusted, it had to be the genuineness of his grief for Johnson’s death.

  And, of course, it helped that his theory that Roote was involved in Jake Frobisher’s death depended on the existence of a love for Johnson that led to a murderous jealousy.

  But it made him feel a little better to think he hadn’t reached the point where true pathological hatred would have started, the destruction of what the object loved the most.

  There was a two-volume edition of Beddoes’ poems he thought he recognized, quite old with marbled paper boards. He took down one of the books and opened it. Yes, it was the Fanfrolico Press edition. This was Volume Two, the very book that had been found open on the dead academic’s lap.

  He started to replace it carefully, and only then saw there was something behind it, a narrow package wrapped in a black silk handkerchief, rendering it almost invisible against the dark wood.