D&P20 - Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  She gathered her wits and answered, 'It's not for me to say, of course, but I think they're really impressed by the quality of your proposal. I know that Jay in particular is keen to see that you get approval ... all things being equal, of course

  Oh my Amaryllis, is chess one of the sports you play in the shade? I wondered, hiding a smile as I interpreted her words. Good old Jay would love to be your advocate, but that might be difficult if you're making some silly complaint about his wife .. .

  'Now that would be kind,' I said. 'Is there any chance your husband would be interested in supervising me himself?'

  'Oh no,' she said hurriedly. 'He's taking up a new post next term in his old college, so he won't be around, you see. But there is a colleague of his, Dr Johnson, who's showing a very positive interest

  And that was the first time I heard dear Sam's name, but I hardly felt it as an epiphanic moment, I was more concerned with pressing home my advantage.

  'So now you've happened to find out about my PhD proposal, what do you reckon it shows about me?' I asked. 'Do you really think I'm secretly harbouring thoughts of revenge against the people I blame for putting me here?'

  'That's putting it too strongly, perhaps,' she said. T don't see you as a strongly vengeful personality. While it would be surprising if you didn't feel some resentment, I see your choice of thesis subject as a sublimation of these feelings. In other words, it's part of the healing process rather than part of the trauma.'

  This was Reader's Digest stuff, I thought gleefully. This was the kind of simple diet I wanted the boneheads who decided my future to be fed on.

  'So in fact, Doctor, you think the topic of my PhD proposal, and its acceptance at Sheffield, will be a help in getting me transferred to Butler's Low? I mean, I wouldn't want to be too far away from my supervisor, would I?'

  'I can see that’ she said, nodding and making a note. 'That makes a lot of sense.'

  I took that as a yes, and a yes is what it proved to be, though in fact I got transferred to Butlin's before I had my PhD proposal accepted. So it was there I met Sam for the first time. I was glad later that he never had to come to the Syke and see me in that context, and smell me too, probably, for one of the first things they told me when I reached Butlin's was that I'd brought the prison stink with me. You don't notice it yourself, but the others notice it, and I noticed it myself later when a new transferee arrived.

  Curious, the creative power of a smell! It took me straight back to slamming doors and crowded cells and slopping out and constant fear - oh yes, even when you were Polchard's chess playmate, you still lived in fear - a sadistic screw, some nutter running amuck, dodgy smack, a new king rat knocking Polchard off his perch - you never knew what deadly changes the day might bring. So that smell was a potent incentive to behave myself in Butlin's. Here we were in the Land of Beulah. Every day we could look across the river to the Promised Land.

  Only a fool would ever let himself be sent back to that other place.

  I wasn't a fool then and I'm not a fool now.

  I can see you might find it hard to believe my prison experience has rehabilitated me, but you can surely understand it's left me resolved never ever to risk going back inside.

  So, no threats of revenge, nor even any thoughts of revenge, not even under provocation - and you must admit you have been somewhat provocative, dear Mr Pascoe.

  What I want from life I can get by simple honest means, or at least what passes for such in the groves of academe! I look around me - at the old oak panelling of the room I'm writing in, its honeyed depths returning the glow of the open fire which fends off the chill of the crisp winter day whose pale sunlight fills the quiet quad outside my window.

  I only arrived a couple of hours ago and, as I've told you, I'm only here for the weekend, but, I knew the moment I set foot in the place that this or something very like it is what I want. That's why I'm writing to you, Mr Pascoe. I'd been thinking for some time it would be nice to clear the air between us, but now I know it's essential, as much I admit for my own selfish reasons as to ensure your peace of mind.

  Have I said enough? Perhaps, perhaps not. I'll check later. But now I've got to go. It's the opening session of the conference in five minutes. Dwight has already left, pointing to his watch then making a drinking motion with his hand.

  It wouldn't do for a new boy to be late. There's a post box by the porter's lodge so I'll drop this in when I go down. I don't expect I'll be writing to you again, dear Mr Pascoe. I hope that I've cleared the air between us. The past is Hades, the past is the cities of the plain; look back and disaster strikes. My eyes are set firmly on the future.

  I must admit to feeling somewhat nervous, but also very excited.

  This could be the beginning of the rest of my life.

  Wish me luck!

  And a Very Merry Christmas to you and yours!

  Franny Roote

  Ellie Pascoe was a fast reader and soon she was picking up his discarded sheets and she snatched the last one from his fingers before he could let it fall.

  Pascoe watched her finish it then said, 'So what do you think?'

  'Well it's always nice to have one's judgment confirmed.'

  'Your judgment being like the court's, that Roote is a devious amoral psychopath?'

  'Is that what the judge said? I must have missed it. I thought he was found guilty of being an accessory to murder. In any case, the judgment I refer to is the one by which Charley Penn and me awarded him first prize in the Gazette short-story competition. He writes very entertainingly, doesn't he?'

  'Does he? I'd rather-read a gas meter.'

  'Each to his own taste. But you've got to give it to him. He's really making the most of his opportunities.'

  'That's a good working definition of most crimes.'

  'I didn't see any reference to crimes.'

  'Killing Brillo wasn't a crime?'

  ‘The fault, dear Peter, lies not in our Fran but in the system that put him there.'

  'How about blackmailing Haseen to get him into Butlin's? And what about conning Linda Lupin into taking him under her wing? The poor cow had better keep her eyes skinned else she'll find she's got a permanent stowaway on the European gravy train.'

  'Haseen seems to have behaved unprofessionally, so she had it coming. As for Loopy Linda, she deserves everything she gets. And besides, I suspect she can look after herself. She certainly doesn't waste much energy looking after anyone else.'

  Pascoe smiled, knowing he wasn't going to get anywhere inviting sympathy for Linda Lupin, who was a Tory MEP and a particular bêtesse noire of the left-wing feminist tendency. The fact that she was also the late lamented Sam Johnson's half-sister and sole heir had come as a shock to Ellie, but to Franny Roote it had clearly come as an opportunity which he'd grasped with both hands.

  'And aren't you being a touch paranoid?' continued Ellie. 'All he's doing is telling you he's doing well for himself, so why should he be nursing grudges?'

  'Doing well for a criminal involves criminality,' muttered Pascoe.

  'Maybe. But what better area for the legitimate use of criminal talent than the life academic?' said Ellie, who since being officially confirmed as a creator by acceptance of her first novel tended to look back rather patronizingly at her old existence as a college lecturer. 'Anyway, he's paid his debt and all that, and he'd probably never have come to your notice again if you hadn't gone after him in a not very subtle way.'

  This was so unjust it might have taken Pascoe's breath away if life with Ellie hadn't left him pretty well permanently breathless.

  He said mildly, 'I only turned him up in the first place because someone was threatening you and he looked a possible candidate.'

  'Yeah, and the other times? Pete, admit it, you've always gone in hard with Franny Roote. Why is that? There must be something about him that bugs you specially.'

  'Not really. Except he's weird, you've got to admit that. No? OK, let's look at it another way. Don't you thin
k it's just a little bit screwy to be writing to me like this?'

  'You're acting like this is a threatening letter,' said Ellie. 'Despite the fact that he goes out of his way to say this isn't a threatening letter! What more does he have to say?'

  'A man comes towards you in a dark street,' said Pascoe. 'He stops in front of you and says reassuringly, "It's OK, I'm not going to rape you." How reassured do you feel?'

  'A lot more reassured than if he's stark naked and waving a knife, like Dick Dee when young Bowler rode to the rescue. How is he, by the way?'

  'He looked fine when I saw him on Thursday. Should be back with us by the middle of next week, if he doesn't overtax his strength this weekend.'

  'Doing what?'

  'Seems Rye Pomona, his light of love, is showing her gratitude by taking him away for a long weekend at some nice romantic hotel in the Peaks. He was full of it on Thursday. Well, it should either make him or break him.'

  'How nice it must be to have a part of you that's eternally adolescent,' said Ellie. 'But I'm glad he's come through it all OK. How about the girl?'

  'Oddly enough, she looked a lot worse than him last time I saw her.'

  'Why oddly?'

  'He was the one who got his skull fractured and ended up in hospital, remember?'

  'And she was the one who nearly got raped and murdered,' retorted Ellie.

  They sat in silence for a while, each recollecting the dramatic climax of what came to be known as the Word-man case. The prime suspect, Dick Dee, head of the public library reference section, had lured his assistant, Rye Pomona, out to a remote country cottage. When DC Hat Bowler, who was madly in love with her, had discovered this, he'd gone rushing off to the rescue, with Pascoe and Dalziel in hot pursuit. Bowler had arrived to discover Rye and Dee, both naked and covered with blood, locked in a deadly struggle. In the fight that followed, Hat had managed to get hold of the knife Dee was wielding and stab the man fatally, but not before receiving severe head injuries himself. Pascoe, who'd been next on the scene, had feared the young man might die from his wounds, a fear compounded by his own sense of guilt that he had allowed too much of his own attention to be diverted by the presence among the list of suspects of the man who had come once more to disturb the even tenor of his ways - Franny Roote.

  He'd been wrong then. Perhaps he was over-reacting now. Ellie certainly thought so.

  She returned to the attack.

  'Getting back to our Fran’she said. 'We are entering the season of comfort and joy, or so the telly ads keep telling us, the season for making contact with people far away in space and time, hence all these sodding cards, which incidentally you might care to help me open. It's the time to put records and relationships straight. What's so odd about Roote wanting to do that, especially now things are looking up for him?'

  'OK, I give in’said Pascoe. 'I accept Roote's forgiveness. But I'm not going to send him a Christmas card. Jesus, look at the size of this one.'

  He'd opened an envelope to reveal a reproduction of some alleged Old Master showing what looked like a bunch of sheep rustlers gazing up in understandable alarm at what could have been a police helicopter spotlight surrounded by an all-girl jazz band.

  'And who the hell's Zipper with three kisses?' he asked, opening the card. 'We don't send cards to anyone called Zipper, do we? I certainly hope we don't.'

  'Zipper. Rings a bell. Let me see . . .'

  Ellie turned the envelope over and said, 'Shit. It's addressed to Rosie. Zipper was that little boy Rosie took up with on holiday. Parents were hang-'em-high Tories. We'd better reseal it else she'll report us to the Court of Human Rights.'

  'Why not just bin it? Can't have our daughter mixing with the wrong set, can we?'

  Ellie ignored his satirical intent and said, 'It's her first billy-doo. Girls treasure such things. I'll take it up to her and tell her to get her coat on. If you can drag yourself away from your own fan mail, shouldn't you be getting the car started? You know what it's like these cold mornings. You really ought to take more care of it.'

  This was unjust enough to provoke rebellion. The reason Pascoe's car froze outside most nights was that Ellie's ancient vehicle usually occupied the garage on the basis of first come, first protected.

  He said, 'Seeing your wreck is so highly tuned, why don't you take Rosie?'

  'No chance. I'm meeting Daphne for coffee in Estotiland at ten, then we're going to break the back of Christmas shopping or die in the attempt. Unless you want to swap?'

  'You for Daphne, you mean? Might be OK . . . Sorry! But Rosie might be happy to trade in Miss Wintershine for Estotiland.'

  Estotiland was a huge R&R complex (R&R standing for Recreation and Retail, and also for Rory and Randy, the Canadian Estoti brothers who'd developed the concept) built on a mainly brownfield site across the boundary between South and Mid-Yorkshire. The Estotis boasted that Estotiland provided everything a man, woman or child could reasonably want. It was as user friendly as such a place could be, with clubs and sports facilities as well as retail floors, and its Junior Jumbo Burger Bar and associated play areas had become the site of choice for kids' parties.

  'The girl wants to be an infant prodigy, prodigious is what she's going to be,' said Ellie, who saw enough of herself in Rosie to be up to all her wiles. ‘I’ll get her moving.'

  She went out. Pascoe shoved the rest of his toast into his mouth, emptied his coffee cup, thrust Roote's letter into his pocket and headed out to his car.

  As forecast, it showed a reluctance to start to match his own and its morning cough was a lot worse. Some time during its third or fourth bout, Rosie climbed into the passenger seat. She sat there in silence for a while then said in her nobly suffering martyr's voice, 'When I go with Mum, I'm never late.'

  'Funny that,' said Pascoe. 'My experience has been precisely the opposite. Gotcha!'

  The cough turned into a splutter then a rhythmic rattle and finally into something like the sound of an internal combustion engine ready to go about its proper business.

  'Now let's see who's late’ said Pascoe.

  Ms Wintershine lived in St Margaret Street, which unfortunately meant taking the main road into the city centre. At first they made reasonable progress then the traffic began to thicken.

  'Jesus’ said Pascoe. 'There's not a football match on or something, is there?'

  'It's Christmas shopping’ said Rosie. 'Mum said we should have set off a lot earlier.'

  'You weren't ready a lot earlier’ returned Pascoe. Which might have been worth a point if he'd been sitting in the drive with the engine revving when Rosie got into the car.

  Gradually the traffic declined from a meander to a crawl and finally to a stop.

  Rosie said nothing, but she had inherited from her mother the ability to communicate I-told-you-so by an almost indiscernible flexing of her nose muscles.

  'OK’ said Pascoe. 'Here's something your mother can't do.'

  He reached into the back seat, picked up his magnetic noddy light, opened the window, slammed it on to the roof, and pulled into the empty bus lane to his left.

  Siren howling, light flashing, he raced past the stationary traffic.

  Rosie expressed her delight at this turn of events by beaming from cheek to cheek and waving madly at the people in the stalled cars.

  'Do me a favour, love’ said Pascoe. 'Cut the Royal Progress act. Either look like a dying infant being rushed to hospital or a deadly criminal on her way to jail.'

  With some complacency he saw from the clock on St Margaret's Church as they turned into St Margaret Street that they had almost five minutes to spare. All the parking spaces in front of the house were filled so he pulled into the Hearses Only spot in front of the church, switched off the siren, and said to Rosie, 'There we are. Early’

  She gave him a quick kiss and said, 'Thanks, Dad. That was great.'

  'Yeah. But do me another favour. Don't tell your mum. See you in an hour.'

  He watched her run along the paveme
nt. She paused at the top of the steps leading up to the terraced house, waved at him, then disappeared inside.

  He relaxed in his seat. Now what? With the shopping traffic the way it was, there was little point in heading home as he'd have to turn round and come back almost straight away. Too early for weddings or funerals, so he might as well wait here. Something to read would have been nice. He should have brought a newspaper. or a book.

  All he had was Franny Roote's letter.

  He took it out of his pocket and started at the beginning again.

  What's the bastard up to? He thought as he read.

  In his mind's eye he could see that pale oval face with its dark unblinking eyes, which somehow managed to be at the same time compassionate and mocking, whether their owner was beating him over the head, lying in a bath with his wrists slit, or merely observing what a lovely day it was.

  Had he got anything to reproach himself with in his relationship with Roote? Did his legitimate questioning of the man in pursuit of his investigative duties have any smack of persecution about it?

  No! He told himself angrily. If there was any persecution going on here, it was quite the other way round. The obsessiveness was all Roote's. And why the hell was he worrying about him anyway? At this very moment the bastard would be standing up to deliver the late Sam Johnson's paper on Death's Jest-Book.

  'Hope he gets hiccoughs!' declared Pascoe, glaring towards the church as if challenging it to condemn his lack of charity.

  He found himself looking straight into Roote's dark unblinking eyes.

  He was standing on the path which ran down the side of the church, partially obscured by a large memorial cross in weathered white marble. The distance was thirty or forty feet, but the expression of compassionate mockery was as clear as a close-up.

  The church clock started striking the hour.

  For two strikes of the bell they looked at each other.

  Then Pascoe started to open the car door but found he'd parked too close to a wizened yew tree, so he slid over to the passenger side and scrambled out.

  As he stood upright and looked towards the church, the clock's ninth strike sounded.