Death's Jest-Book (62 page)

'Ms Haseen, hi. It's DCI Pascoe,
we met in Sheffield on Saturday. Sorry to trouble you again, but
there was something you said when we were talking about Franny Roote

Dalziel
groaned, rolled his eyes and generally did his
How long, o lord,
how long?
act.

'No,' said
Pascoe. 'Nothing personal or private. It was just that you said when
talking about listening to him delivering Johnson's paper on the
laughs in
Death's Jest-Book,
it wasn't worth spoiling your
lunch for. But in the conference programme, Roote was scheduled for
nine o'clock on Saturday morning . . . yes . . . yes , . . that's
fine. Very helpful. Thank you very much, sorry to have troubled you.'

He put the phone down and turned
triumphantly to Dalziel, who said, 'Don't tell me. You've found a way
of dragging Roote into this. Jesus, Pete, you'll be telling me next
he were Jack the Ripper, after he finished killing the princes in the
Tower, that is.'

'His conference session was
rescheduled from nine a.m. at his request because he developed
terrible toothache the evening before and managed to arrange an
emergency appointment for first thing on Saturday morning. Professor
Duerden, who had the one thirty session, was pleased to do a swap. I
bet Roote was touchingly grateful! But Amaryllis was pissed off
because in order to hear Roote, which she wanted to do either for her
own professional reasons or because hubby wanted her expert opinion
on his state of mind, she had to duck out halfway through a posh
lunch someone else was paying for.'

'Pete, I don't know what the fuck
you're talking about’ said Dalziel.

'I saw him that morning, in St
Margaret's Churchyard. Bang on nine. I thought it was some kind of
optical delusion, or even worse, some kind of psychic apparition when
I got that letter in which he claimed he'd had a vision of me as he
started to give his address at nine a.m. But the bastard was just
covering his tracks, don't you see?'

'Hang about. You're saying that
Roote were here early that morning ... how?'

'He drove.'

'Weren't one of them letters you
got written on a train? And weren't his car in dock?'

'You do pay attention, sir’
said Pascoe. 'So he hired a car . . . no, wait a sec, Blaylock, that
Cambridge DI, he said something about some absent-minded academic
reporting his car stolen that morning then finding he'd parked it on
the other side of the college. Roote stole it, drove up, got here
about half seven maybe, did what he had to do, drove back ... he
could make it by half ten or eleven, plenty of time to show his face
and be ready for his post-lunch session.'

'Why?' asked Dalziel.

'Because he's listened to Penn
banging away so much about Dick Dee being innocent that he's begun to
wonder if maybe he could be right, maybe the guy who really killed
his chum Sam Johnson is walking free. So he decided to check out
Penn's theory of a police cover-up himself. He knew Rye was away that
night, he realized being down at the conference gave him an alibi if
anything went wrong, so he thought, here's a great chance to have a
poke around her flat and also to plant a bug. He must have just
hidden the cassette when I saw him. He probably picked it up last
time he came back. It all fits!'

Except for one or two holes, such
as, why did he turn the place upside down when bug planters
traditionally took care to leave no trace of their passage?

Dalziel didn't look for holes,
merely shook his head wonderingly, and said, 'Don't know if you're
right or wrong, lad, but it makes no difference. What you're saying
is, if there's some other bugger out there still sniffing around,
it's up to us to find out afore he does where the smell's coming
from.'

'Or put him somewhere that his
nose can't bother us’ said Pascoe.

He related his latest discoveries
in Sheffield.

'So he killed this Frobisher 'cos
he were jealous of his relationship with Johnson?'

'He's killed before. For less
reason.'

'Mebbe,' said Dalziel. 'And your
evidence for this is what? Something a nurse going on early shift
might have seen? After a night spent on the nest, she were probably
too knackered to tell which way were up on a bedpan!'

‘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
YOUR’S TILL TIME INTO ETERNITY FALLS OVER RUINED
WORDS.
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 bom, 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 comer of the bouncy castle to lay him out
in.'

When the sun shims 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 Frere 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 precis 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.'