Death's Jest-Book (65 page)

'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 necessarily
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
dearly 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 I

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 back at Rose's
car through the mirror of the 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.