D&P20 - Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  She grinned at him, looking wickedly sexy, and said, 'No, I am aggressively hetero, Mr Dalziel. But you're going to have to take my word for that.'

  'Missed the bus, eh? Story of my life. But I never like to climb aboard unless I'm sure I can afford the ride. On you go with your tale.'

  'There is not much more to tell,' she said. 'On the tapes I have of her alone, sometimes there is sobbing. Sometimes there is the sound of her pacing around in the night. And sometimes she talks aloud, to her dead brother, often very angrily, as if she blames him for her unhappiness. Also to Hat, full of love, and regret, and apology. More like someone taking leave than someone talking to the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with. But this was before’

  'Before what?'

  She emptied her whisky glass, filled it up again, emptied it again.

  'I do not know if I have the right to tell you this, and I do not think I could tell you this if I was going to stay and be her friend as she believes I am. And I believe it too, or believe it could be so, which is why I am leaving and why I will never see her again, and also why I am able to break the word I have given.'

  'Slow down, luv,' said Dalziel. That Scotch is turning you German. Breaking confidence is like taking off a sticky plaster. There's only one way, short and sharp.'

  She nodded, took a long slow breath, then said, 'On Monday she went to the hospital for tests. She has a brain tumour. She is going to die.'

  'Well fuck me rigid and sell me to the Tate!' exclaimed Dalziel, who had let his mind rehearse half a dozen possible revelations without getting close. 'Can't they do owt?'

  'She does not want anything done’ said Richter.

  'Shit. Someone's got to talk to her’ said the Fat Man agitatedly. 'These days they can cure owt save foot and mouth and politicians. Does Bowler know?'

  'No one knows. Except me. Now you. So now it is your responsibility not mine to decide what to do. This is why I am glad to go. My job, which was never a job I should have undertaken, is done. Now I can go to a real job’

  'Run away, you mean, and leave the poor lass to suffer all this alone, after you've weaselled your way into her confidence? Jesus! What they say about you bastards doesn't tell the half of it!'

  His contempt left her unmoved.

  She said, 'You mistake, Superintendent. If she was as unhappy as I would be in her situation, then I doubt if I could have decided so easily to go. No, the thing that makes me go is that the news has not made her miserable, it has made her happy! She acts as if she had gone along to the hospital anticipating confirmation that she had cancer and instead been told that she was free! I can offer comfort to despair. I cannot try to bring despair to joy. Now I think I have said all that I want to say to you, Superintendent. Aufwiedenehen, but not too soon, eh?'

  Dalziel finished his drink and said, 'Just one thing afore I go. If you'd not mind taking off that nightie or whatever you call it. . ‘

  She looked at him, puzzled, then smiled, stood up and pulled the T-shirt over her head.

  'Turn around’ he said.

  She obeyed.

  'Right’ he said. 'You can put it back on.'

  'For a moment I thought you'd changed your mind’ she said, parodying a disappointed pout.

  'Nay, don't take it personal, lass’ he said, rising. 'Just making sure there was nowt but flesh to see. And very nice flesh it was.'

  She smiled at him as he went to the bureau, picked up her gun, examined it, put the safety catch on, then slipped it into his pocket.

  'You couldn't take it out of the country’ he said. 'Not legally, anyway. So best I take care of it’

  'I am being permitted to leave then, am I?'

  'Can't see why not. One thing more, but. Just in case you're hoping this tape you switched to record when you came in might have summat on it that would embarrass me, don't be too disappointed when you find I disconnected the recording switch. Just as well, eh, else you'd have ruined old Wagner’

  He reset the deck and once again the doom-filled music rolled around the room.

  'What would I have used it for anyway?' she said indifferently. 'Tell me, Mr Dalziel, why did you choose this music?'

  'Don't know. Why do you ask?'

  'There are some who say that it contains all that is best and worst in the German psyche’ she said. 'I thought perhaps it was some kind of statement, a bit racist, even’

  'Racist? Me?' he said indignantly. 'Nay, lass, I just dearly love a catchy tune, even if it were written by a dead Kraut. You'll be seeing Charley afore you go?'

  'Yes’

  'What will you tell him?'

  'As much as he needs to know’ she said.

  'A man can't ask more than that from his woman’ said Andy Dalziel.

  * * *

  A few miles away, close entwined by choice and by necessity in the narrow single bed, Rye and Hat lay in the dark.

  'You awake?' said Hat.

  'Yes.'

  'Not worried about anything, are you?'

  'What should I worry about when I've got everything I want? Do I look worried?'

  'Well, no . . .'

  In fact during the past few days she had seemed to exude happiness. It was true that sometimes when he glimpsed her without her knowledge, he thought she looked paler and the shadows beneath her eyes looked darker. But the moment she became aware of his presence, she glowed with a joy that made such thoughts seem a blasphemy.

  He ran his hands down her body and said, 'Not losing a bit of weight, are you?'

  'Perhaps. After Christmas I like to start the New Year with a diet to get rid of all those chocs. But I've noticed that cops seem to prefer their women with a bit of weight.'

  'Not me,' said Hat fervently. 'But I don't want to feel I'm going to bed with a xylophone - ouch!'

  She had rammed a finger up his backside till it hurt.

  'My body's my business,' she said. 'You'll just have to learn to play the xylophone. And if you keep on living off junk food, I'll just have to learn to play the

  bagpipes.'

  'We'd better get a house in the country or else the neighbours'll be complaining every time we make love. Talking of which’

  'So soon? Are you taking something?'

  'No, I meant talking of a house in the country . . . when are we going to move in together? I mean permanently, not turn about, your place and mine. In fact, I mean really permanently. How do you feel about getting married?'

  She didn't reply and after a while he said, 'You thinking about it, or just thinking how to say no?'

  'I'm thinking about it,' she said. 'Best advice seems to be it's not such a good idea marrying a policeman.'

  'You've been taking advice?' he said, faking large indignation to conceal small hurt.

  'Of course not, but I read a lot of books, and wherever there's a cop there's usually a marriage in trouble.'

  'Books! What do these writers know? They should get out more instead of spending all their time at home inventing stuff.'

  'But it's true’ she said. 'It's a demanding job. And it's dangerous.'

  She pushed herself away from him as far as she could, which wasn't far without falling to the floor, and said, That's one thing that does worry me, Hat. Your job is dangerous, and it's getting more so. I just don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you.'

  'Don't be daft,' he said. 'Chances of anything like that must be ... I don't know what, but they've got to be longer than winning the lottery.'

  'It almost happened, remember?' she said. 'I came close to losing you.'

  'OK, but lightning doesn't strike twice, so that makes it even less likely it could happen again.'

  'I wish I could believe that. All I know is, if anything did happen that would be the end for me. Of everything, I mean. My life would be over too. There'd be no point in going on.'

  'No, you mustn't say that,' he urged fiercely. 'Look, nothing's going to happen

  'But if it did?'

  'Then you'd have to bea
r it, I suppose

  'No way.'

  'Yes, you could. You're strong, Rye. Stronger than me. I think you could come through anything if you put your mind to it.'

  'I wouldn't want to put my mind to it.'

  'You'd have to. Promise me!'

  'What? That I'd throw roses on your grave then head down to the singles club?'

  'No, don't be silly. That you'd give life a chance.'

  'That sounds like something off a calendar!'

  'I'm sorry I don't have some Fancy Dan way of putting it. It's just that I think these days everyone seems so concerned with getting ready for death. It's all about hospices and such things. Well, death's not that much of a problem, it seems to me, and if it is, it soon gets solved. Living's the hard thing to get right. Living's the important thing.'

  He fell silent. She put her hand on his face and traced his eyes and his mouth in the darkness.

  'That's a good calendar you've got,' she said. 'OK, I'll promise. Only you've got to promise too.'

  'Eh?'

  'Fair's fair. If anything should ever happen to me, you've got to promise that you'll practise what you've just been preaching, that you won't confuse grief with despair, that you'll mourn but not forever, that you will never forget me, but you'll never forget this promise that you made to me either. That you understand I won't be at rest till you are happy again. Can you promise that? If you can't, I won't.'

  He put his hand up to take hers.

  'I promise,' he said.

  'OK, then so do I.'

  He drew her to him. Her softness, her scent, her warmth enveloped him like the air of lost Eden, but he frowned into the dark as he tried to analyse a strange feeling that something had happened which he didn't understand.

  Rye lay with her head pressed against his chest and her lips were smiling.

  Letter 9. Received Fri Jan 18thP.P

  The UNIVERSITY of SANTA APOLLONIA Ca.

  Guest Suite No 1

  Faculty of Arts

  Wed Jan 16th

  Dear Mr Pascoe,

  What a week this has been! What a rare mood I'm in! You cannot believe how much I'm enjoying America. It's been like stepping into a movie and finding I was a star! Have you been here? I'm sure you have - a cultured, well-rounded man like yourself will not have been content to take the rest of the world on report. You will have travelled everywhere, observed, sampled, judged. My exuberance probably strikes you as ingenuous, perhaps naive, even jejune. But remember, this brave new world is indeed new to me. All my acquaintance with it hitherto has been through the cinema, so no wonder I saw and felt it as a movie set!

  Of course my good impression of this bright sunlit world was helped by the contrast with what I had left behind. Frankfurt was wet and windy, Gottingen locked in ice and snow. Anyone wanting to understand the Gothic glooms of the German character should spend a winter there! Not that I suffered any particular discomfort, being able to afford, at Linda's insistence, decent lodgings. But I made no noticeable advance in my researches in either place. I did track down some people called Degen in Frankfurt who may or may not be of the same family as young Konrad, the baker whom Beddoes lived and travelled with and attempted to turn into a Shakespearean actor. But they had no papers or artefacts that could be linked to their distant relative and I got the impression that their few alleged family memories of the man were in fact gleanings from various predecessors (including Sam himself) who had come here on Beddoes' trail. (Though there was a young blond Degen who fluttered his silky eyelashes at me . . .ah, the things we biographers do in search of empathy with our subjects!)

  As for Gottingen, it's a pretty, enough little town, much of which has survived intact since Beddoes' day. My hopes soared, but, apart from viewing his name in the university records, I could find nothing to add to what his own letters tell us of his life there. Sam wrote one of his 'Imagined Scenes' in which Beddoes and Heine, both students at the university and sharing an interest in poetry and radical politics, met and quarrelled, but the dates don't really fit and eventually Sam scored through it on the grounds that even imagination's wings need at least one feather of fact to achieve lift-off.

  So all in all, what with the foul weather, the lack of progress, the weighty echt Deutchheit of everything, I grew daily duller and more stupefied, and time seemed to crawl by as if I'd been put into an uncomfortable seat between two fat men with BO at the start of one of Wagner's longer operas sung by an amateur music society and accompanied by a school band, and told there weren't going to be any intervals.

  At this juncture I thought how wise you had been, dear Mr Pascoe, to eschew the life academic in favour of the life detective. The mean streets your work takes you down seemed as nothing compared to the gloomy avenues I found myself lost in. No wonder that poor Beddoes with his death fixation opted to spend most of his adult life here. Even now in this age of universal light when it's possible in England or America for a child to grow up in a big city without ever having noticed a star, shades and miasmas and Gothic glooms are available on tap out here. What it must have been like in the early eighteen hundreds pains the imagination! Beddoes sought enlightenment through medicine, that most socially beneficial of sciences, and through support of radical egalitarian movements, but each of these avenues led him back to the same conclusion, that man was a botched creation whose proper domain was darkness and whose only salvation was death.

  The longer I stayed there, the closer I could feel myself coming to agreeing with him!

  Happily at this juncture the US Embassy in London, with whom I had been in close correspondence since talking to Dwight, now summoned me for interview, so I took my conge with considerable relief!

  Not that things improved in England. The weather was foul and the Embassy officials treated me like their Public Enemy No.l, bent on bringing down the Republic. The only good thing was I once again found Frere Jacques in residence at Linda's Westminster pad, and this time, having become such chums, neither of us objected to me bedding down on the couch for a couple of nights. It turned out he was heading north on his promotional tour and, as I wanted to touch base back in Mid-Yorkshire before heading off into the west, he offered me a lift in his hired car as far as Sheffield.

  It was an interesting trip. I got the feeling that something has changed for him. Perhaps Frere Dierick's death has something to do with it. I'm sure the man and the monk in Jacques must always have been in delicate balance, and with the removal of that death's head reminder of his commitment to the life celibate, the man is very much in the ascendancy. He talked of Emerald, and I have a strong suspicion that in the very near future he might be contemplating the huge step of changing his vows monastic for vows marital! (I must confess, shame-faced, that I also for a moment entertained a very faint suspicion that perhaps Jacques knew more about the circumstances of Dierick's death than he should do ... But I soon thrust this aside. Ungrounded suspicions are a mental cancer. We should trust our friends absolutely, don't you agree, Mr Pascoe?)

  What Linda will make of it, I don't know. We shall see.

  My stay in M-Y was brief, all too brief, alas, for me to make contact with you. How good it would have been to see you face to face and get direct assurance of the rapport I am psychically convinced my letters are building between us. But I had news of you from one or two common acquaintance, and it was generally good, though dear old Charley Penn, who'd glimpsed you in town, thought you were looking just a little bit peaky. Do take care of yourself, my friend. I know your job necessarily involves irregular hours and takes you out in all weathers, but you're not getting any younger and you mustn't let the indestructible Dalziel overstretch you.

  Back to my Great Adventure. At last I left these clouded hills behind and, after an interminable passage through fog and filthy air followed by an even longer passage through the morass of US Immigration, I was greeted by a young god and goddess wearing baseball caps and beaming smiles (literally beaming; dear old Apollonia clearly knows how to honou
r her devotees!) and waving a banner bearing my name. They turned out to be Dwight's teenage twins, whom he'd sent to meet me, and all my troubles seemed to drop away as they led me, blinking, out into the bright sunshine, and drove me to their lovely home which stands on stilts rising out of a beach of golden sand running down to the deep deep blue of the Pacific ocean. Stout Cortez, I get the message, man!

  I spent the first couple of days relaxing and acclimatizing in the bosom of Dwight's family -not literally; this was strictly hands-off territory, though the kids' fondness for skinny-dipping with their friends kept temptation before my eyes. Happily, despite a pleasant air temperature when the sun shines, the ocean is still pretty cold at this time of year and that kept my interest from becoming embarrassing, though maybe Dwight's sharp eye detected something, for once I'd got over my jet lag and was ready to strut my stuff before his publishing friends, he suggested that, now that term was beginning (bit of an earlier start out here than you were probably used to at Oxford - or was it Cambridge? I can't recall), it might be more convenient if I had a room on campus. Nice to think even a modern West Coast liberal academic dad keeps an eye on his kids' virtue.

  Being on campus is great, especially as I'm occupying one of the faculty guest suites - not quite as impressive historically as the Quaestor's Lodging at God's, but a lot more user-friendly -and I've been introduced around as a distinguished academic visitor. Dwight got me to sit in on a couple of his classes, then persuaded me to do a seminar on Beddoes' poetry with a specially selected group of students and a few faculty members. It went really well and the students seemed to take to Beddoes in a big way and soon I was getting invitations to talk to all kinds of groups. Dwight was delighted, so long as they didn't get in the way of his own programme, whose purpose I quickly gathered was to do such a good PR job on me that when I finally made my pitch to the top men at the St Poll University Press, I would make my entrance on a wave of golden opinion.

  I went along with this, did the parties, pressed the flesh, talked the talk and walked the walk, but I really got a lot more enjoyment out of being with the students. How reluctantly do we all admit that we are taking leave of our youth! With what slow steps and fondly lingering backward glances do we move onward! When at last you begin to understand the truth of Byron's lines There's not a joy the world can give ‘ Like that it takes away' then you know you've started the long goodbye. Being with these kids reminded me of the way I felt in those few days at Fichtenburg when I skated and tobogganed and drank sweet coffee and ate cream cakes with Zazie, Hildi and Mouse, pleasure without responsibility, time without definition, world without end. Perhaps the cruel suddenness with which my own student days hit the rocks (yes, yes, my own fault, no resentment, no reproach!) makes me all the more desperate to clutch at these straws floating round the wreckage. Did you ever feel like this Mr Pascoe? You will be well past such immaturities, I know, but was there ever a time, even after your marriage perhaps, with your lovely daughter still little more than a voice and an appetite in swaddling clothes, when you felt a yearning to be as you had been age eighteen, nineteen, twenty, when nothing you had now seemed worth the loss of those boundless horizons, that unfathomable joy? Or even later, when your little girl lay desperately ill, or when your beloved wife was under threat, did it ever flash across your mind that if you had known it was going to be like this, you'd never have given such hostages to fortune?