He took it out and carefully unwound the silk.
It contained an Omega watch with a gold bracelet, very expensive looking.
He turned it over and looked at the back of the watch.
There it was, a circlet of writing, which had been easier to make out on Sophie Frobisher’s rubbing than on this shiny surface, but he knew it off by heart anyway.
TILL TIME INTO ETERNITY FALLS OVER RUINED WORLDS YOUR S
Well, time into eternity had fallen for both of them now, leaving, like all deaths, ruined worlds behind.
And now at last, he thought with less glee than he’d imagined he’d feel at this moment of justification, he had it in his power to ruin forever the world of Francis Xavier Roote.
Behind him the door opened.
He turned so quickly that his Kung Flu dizziness hit him again.
When his vision cleared, he was looking at Franny Roote.
‘Hello, Mr Pascoe,’ said the young man, smiling. ‘I’m so glad you could come. Sorry the place is such a mess. Hey, you look a little pale. Are you sure you’re all right?’
When the pantechnicon pulled in front of Rose’s car, Wield’s instinct had been to pull out straightway and overtake, but he too found himself blocked by the white transit.
He finally managed to squeeze by through the narrow space between the vehicle and the central reservation barrier just as the pantechnicon began to turn into the slip road. A long way ahead he glimpsed the rear of the security van.
A very long way ahead.
Perhaps it had speeded up. But why should it? The natural thing to do if you momentarily lost sight of your escort in your rear-view mirror was slow down.
He accelerated till he got close behind it. The transit had speeded up too and went by him. Some drivers are like that, hate to be overtaken, especially by a superannuated rocker in black leathers with EAT MY DUST in silver studs on his back. The guy in the passenger seat wound down his window as he went by and Wield half expected to get the finger. But the gesture when it came wasn’t the finger, it was a thumbs-up.
And it wasn’t aimed at him, it was directed at the Praesidium van as the transit went rushing past it.
What the hell did that signify? Could be nothing more sinister than the camaraderie of the road, one working lad greeting another, as you might nod and say How do? to a stranger encountered on your way to work in the morning.
But as the van rejoined the inside lane ahead of the security vehicle and slowed to match pace with it, his heart misgave him.
Suddenly he was recalling Lee Lubanski’s tip about Praesidium which had ended in the fiasco of the only thing going missing being the van itself. They’d all laughed at this new evidence that most crooks were a full stop short of a sentence, but suppose that in fact things had gone perfectly to plan and all they wanted was the van? Which could mean …
He slowed till Rose’s car was overtaking him, then speeded up again to keep pace, mouthing urgently at the DI in the passenger seat.
Rose wound down the window.
‘What?’ he yelled.
‘I think they’ve done a switch,’ shouted Wield. ‘I don’t think that’s our van.’
It was like knocking at some poor bastard’s door and telling him his wife has been in a crash. Rose’s face went white as he struggled to resist the words.
This was the young DI’s big test. Now he could get angry, refuse to believe it, carry on as though nothing had happened. Or …
‘Don’t be daft,’ he yelled scornfully, desperate not to see Operation Serpent swallowing its own tail.
‘Ours is back at Estotiland,’ cried Wield urgently. ‘The decoy’ll lead you into town, stop at lights, the driver and his mate’ll get out, go round a corner and get into that transit.’
He wasn’t sure, he couldn’t be sure, but he knew he had to sound sure if Rose was to summon up the cavalry.
They were out of the underpass now. Estotiland was falling behind. They were back at ground level, the road curving between shallow embankments running up to fields.
Time for decision, not debate.
‘I’m going back,’ he yelled.
He hit the accelerator and sent the bike across the hard shoulder and bucketing up the rough grassy slope.
‘By God, he can handle that machine,’ said Rose’s driver with untroubled admiration. He could afford to be calm. All he had to do was what he was told, no come-back.
In the same spirit, the three men crushed together in the back looked at their leader with blank expressions which said, This is where you earn your pay, guv.
‘Shut up the lot of you,’ said Rose savagely. Then grabbing the radio, he said, ‘Serpent One to all units …’
‘It’s over, Franny,’ said Pascoe wearily.
Roote smiled with pleasure.
‘I think that’s the first time you’ve called me Franny,’ he said. ‘What’s over?’
‘The games,’ said Pascoe. ‘This is the closing ceremony.’
‘Surely the awards come first,’ said the young man. ‘Would you care for a drink? Have to be a tea-bag. I seem to be out of coffee.’
He was looking ruefully at the heap of grounds Pascoe had emptied out of the jar into the sink.
‘I’ll leave awards to the judge,’ said Pascoe.
‘Please, don’t tell me you’ve found something else you imagine I’ve done,’ cried Roote. ‘I thought we’d put all that behind us. No, I see you’re serious. All right, let’s get it out of the way, then we can really talk. So what is it this time?’
He didn’t look or sound in the least worried, but then when did he?
Pascoe gathered his thoughts. The clever thing would be to get him down to the station and sit him in an interview room properly cautioned with the tapes running.
But you didn’t get anywhere with Roote by being clever. So be open, tell him what you’ve got, get a preview of how he’s going to play it so that you’re at least partially prepared to counter his tactics when things get official.
He let his mind run over everything he suspected. None of that stuff from the letters was any good here. Roote himself had planted it in his mind and was no doubt fully covered. Hit him with the unexpected.
‘You burgled Rye Pomona’s flat,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ agreed Roote without hesitation. ‘Though I think burglary implies felonious intent.’
‘Which you didn’t have? I don’t think you can deny criminal damage though.’
‘Well,’ said Roote, looking around his wrecked room with a smile, ‘I bow to your expertise there, Mr Pascoe.’
Pascoe flushed and said, ‘So what was your intention, if not to steal?’
‘I’m sure you’ve guessed. It’s dear old Charley Penn, really. He went on so much about his chum Dee being innocent that in the end he got me wondering. I don’t give a toss about Dee, but if it were true that he wasn’t the Wordman, this meant the guy who did kill Sam Johnson was still roaming free. Of course Charley’s obsessed and a man with an obsession tastes with a distempered appetite, as I’m sure you are aware, Mr Pascoe. I must say I have always sensed something … different about Ms Pomona, an odd sort of aura. Anyway, without having the slightest idea what I might be looking for, I thought I owed it to Sam to have a poke around.’
‘And you chose a solitary woman’s flat to have a poke around in?’
‘Where else to start, Mr Pascoe? Charley was full of police conspiracy theory. I knew of course that, as far as you were concerned, that was out of the question, and I certainly didn’t fancy breaking into Mr Dalziel’s house. But young Mr Bowler, one look tells you he’d sell his soul for the sake of Ms Pomona. So she had to be the starting point. I knew she was going to be away that night, I had an excellent alibi in the conference. My session was a bit early, but it was easy to get it changed. It was a bit of a shock to run into you, I must admit. You looked like you’d seen a ghost, so I thought maybe I could persuade you that in a sense you had. Hence my se
cond letter. Would I have written it if we hadn’t encountered? I don’t know. My first letter was genuinely intended to clear the air between us. But after the second, I found I was really enjoying having someone I could unburden myself to. In a sense, I regard our encounter as a nudge from God. But I’m sorry if the letters have caused you any distress.’
If he sounded any sincerer, I’d buy his old car, thought Pascoe savagely.
He said, ‘So you found there was nothing to find, but left a bug anyway?’
‘You found that? Clever. My intention, of course, was to leave no trace of my passage. But I accidentally knocked a vase over, which turned out to be a funerary urn. This confirmed my sense of Ms Pomona’s otherness. People who keep dead people in their bedrooms are, you must admit, different. No way to clear it up, so I set about making it look like your normal burglary, rather as you have done here, Mr Pascoe. Then as I was leaving I took the precaution of peering through the peephole, and who should I see lurking on the landing but Charley Penn! That gave me the idea of leaving something on her computer which might make Charley suspect number one.’
‘Lorelei,’ said Pascoe.
‘You picked it up. Good. Then I went into the churchyard to plant my receiving cassette under the eave of a rather vulgar tomb, and that’s when I saw you. Waste of time, by the way. A few sound effects and a little pre- and post-coital converse, then the useless thing packed up. So you’ve got me bang to rights for that. On the other hand, will Mr Dalziel be all that keen to force me to explain my behaviour in detail under the public gaze in open court? Perhaps we should move on. I presume from the way you are clutching that watch that there is more?’
Why do I always feel like I’m speaking lines he’s written for me? thought Pascoe desperately. Why can’t I be a good old-fashioned dull unimaginative cop who at some point would give him a good old dull unimaginative kicking and send him on his way? What am I doing here? There’s all kinds of places I’d rather be. Home in bed. Chasing around the county on Operation Serpent. Even, God help me, watching twenty little girls creating mayhem in the Jumbo Burger Bar at Estotiland!
Why in the name of sanity am I here?
For a while as the kids tucked into their Jumbo burgers, there was relative peace. Even Rosie found it difficult to talk with her teeth sunk deep into a succulent wad of prime beef and chopped onion, crimson with ketchup. Ellie nibbled at hers, admitted its excellence, then took another long draught of the black coffee which fell some way short of the standard set by the burgers but would have to do as a restorative till she could get within annihilating distance of a big gin and tonic. Some of the other mums were still trying to be sparkling and sprightly, but Ellie could read the tell-tale signs.
Rosie finished her burger, washed it down with a quarter pint of something which was fluorescent mauve in colour and looked as if it could strip wallpaper, then approached her mother and said, ‘Can I go with Mary to play on the Dragon?’
The Dragon was a feature of the play area which in Ellie’s view could have been marketed as a pervert’s sex-aid. Made of soft but tough plastic in vomit green and arterial blood red, the creature crouched menacingly with its head on the ground. You entered it via its anus and clambered up through its guts to emerge at the top of its spine. Then you slid, legs astride, down its neck over a series of savage bumps, till your weight triggered off some mechanism which produced a climactic roar and an orgasmic jet of scarlet smoke as you shot over its gaping mouth into a sandpit.
Rosie loved it.
Ellie shot a glance at Mary’s mum, who shot a glance back. Both nodded and a moment later the two girls rushed out, screaming with anticipation.
Ellie watched them fondly and sipped her coffee. She heard the roar of an engine and saw a motorbike go shooting by on the walkway. Some moron in black leathers. Where the hell was Security? Anywhere near the children’s areas was designated a completely pedestrianized zone. Worth an angry word to someone, she noted. But not now. Rest while you could. And besides, the bike was long gone.
Wield had cut across a couple of fields till he joined the Complex approach road. There was a small queue of traffic at the main entrance. He wove his way through it at speed till an irritated-looking security man blocked his passage.
Happily it turned out he was ex-job. He recognized Wield’s warrant at a glance and reacted to his terse summary of the situation with equally concise directions to the main service level. He was already on his radio by the time Wield sent the mud-spattered Thunderbird racing forward.
The man’s directions were good and within a minute he was on a curving ramp which took him down to the lower service deck. At the extreme point of the first curve his heart leapt as he glimpsed below the unmistakable shape of a Praesidium security van.
But had they had time to transfer the Hoard to another vehicle and escape down the slip road to the underpass?
He tail-skidded round the final curve and saw with relief that he was in time. Two figures wearing the Praesidium uniform were in conversation with an Estotiland security man. He brought the bike to a halt about thirty yards away and assessed the situation.
The pantechnicon was parked alongside the security van. Two other men, one short and square, the other tall and well muscled, were carrying a crate from the van to the larger vehicle. Both men wore navy blue overalls and woollen hats pulled low over their brows. Wield guessed the Complex security man had noticed the presence of these unaccounted for vehicles and come to ask what the problem was. They wouldn’t be looking for trouble if it could be avoided and so far the conversation looked pretty amicable. But any second the security man’s radio could sound an alert and then things might get nasty. They needed bodies down here fast. What was DI Rose doing? Did he have the bottle for this? Where was the cavalry?
Above all, where the hell was Andy Dalziel when you needed him?
Andy Dalziel stood with his arms locked around Hat Bowler’s body. Whether he was offering comfort or applying restraint he didn’t know. He was experiencing a very odd feeling. Utter helplessness.
Later when he gathered together every scrap of information on the circumstances of Rye Pomona’s death, he would be able to put them together with all those other scraps and hints and intuitions which added up to a conclusion too monstrous to articulate, and tell himself, this way was best. This drew a necessary line under everything.
But there in that untidy office with the boy in his arms, his body feeling as lifeless as that other sad corpse now lying in the mortuary, he would have given anything to have the power to breathe life back into both of them.
His mobile started squeaking like a bat in his pocket.
He ignored it.
The squeaking went on.
‘Answer it,’ commanded Hat.
He thinks it might be a message saying it’s all been a dreadful mistake, thought Dalziel. In a life with too many deaths in it, he had come to understand at what pathetically flimsy straws desperate fingers may grasp.
He removed one arm from its embrace and took the phone out.
‘Dalziel,’ he said.
Hat’s ear was pressed close so that he could catch the voice coming out of the mobile.
‘Guv, it’s Novello. I’ve been trying to get you. Serpent’s gone pear-shaped. They’ve done a switch out at the Estotiland complex. No one seems sure where the Hoard is …’
‘Jesus wept!’ exclaimed Dalziel.
He let Hat go and headed back to the control room.
Berry looked up from his newspaper.
‘Nearly there,’ he said cheerfully, nodding towards the screen where the flashing light was just crossing the city boundary. ‘Going to join the welcome committee, are you?’
‘Wanker!’ snarled Dalziel.
He went out again and met Hat coming out of the office.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded.
‘To the hospital, where else?’ retorted the young man.
One straw crumples, you grab
at the next.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Hat savagely. ‘You’ve got work to do.’
He pushed the Fat Man aside and ran down the stairs.
Dalziel watched him go, that unfamiliar feeling back with reinforcements.
Then he put the phone to his ear again and said, ‘Ivor, you still there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m on my way. Listen, you get yourself down to the hospital morgue. Bowler’s on his way there. I want you to stick to him like shit to a blanket, OK? Don’t let him out of your sight. If he goes to the bog, count ten then kick the door down. Got that? Good.’
He thrust the phone into his pocket and headed down the stairs at a speed to match the young DC’s. This was feeling like a very bad day indeed.
At least there was no way he could see for it to get worse.
Pascoe said, ‘Yes, there’s more and it gets more serious. Jake Frobisher. You remember him?’
Roote’s expression turned solemn.
‘Yes. I knew him vaguely. A bright young man. Tragic accident. Greatly missed.’
‘Especially by Sam Johnson.’
‘Indeed. Sam was very close to Jake, and naturally he was cut up when it turned out Jake had overdone it, popping pills to keep him awake to catch up with his course work.’
He enunciated the words carefully, like a kid reciting a lesson.
‘Yes, I understand that was the official verdict,’ said Pascoe. ‘And I can see why, in the circumstances, Sam should feel so cut up he couldn’t wait to get away from Sheffield. Which explains his rather precipitous move to MYU, with all its sad consequences. Funny that. You could say, if Jake hadn’t died, Sam would still be alive too.’
That got to you! thought Pascoe gleefully as for a second pain fractured the mask of polite interest on Roote’s face.
‘I’ve often thought the same,’ said the young man quietly.
‘I bet you have,’ said Pascoe. ‘I bet you could write a nice little paper on tragic irony, couldn’t you, Mr Roote? Tragic irony and the eternal triangle, by F. X. Roote MA. A new research topic after you’ve finished exploring Revenge.’
Death's Jest-Book Page 50
