Death's Jest-Book

18

The Burrthorpe Canal, constructed in the age of Victoria to bring the coal from the mines of South Yorkshire to new industries springing up further north, had been one of the first to fall victim to the competition of improved roads, mechanical trucks and developing rail services after the turn of the twentieth century. Because of this it was in an advanced state of decay when the age of canal refurbishment came, and the fact that it was relatively short and did not link up with any navigable river meant that it had little attraction as a recreational waterway, so it lay neglected except by a few hardy fishermen who dreamt of monstrous carp lying in its weedy depths.

The towpath had long since vanished, the banks were overgrown and the only evidence remaining to show that this was a work of man not of nature was the Chilbeck Tunnel not far over the border into Mid-Yorkshire. Drilled through a low mound (which was in fact a Bronze Age barrow, a fact known only to the engineer who shored up the evidence behind his shiny brick walls without compunction rather than risk a delay in the completion of his contract) it ran for a distance of less than thirty yards, but its interior proved so attractive to small boys and others with troglodytic tendencies that the ends had been boarded up in the interests of public safety.

But nails rust and wood rots, and when two hardy Sunday anglers whose boast it was that not even the foulest January weather could keep them from their sport saw the skies darken and the rain come down at a rate beyond even their tolerance, they pulled aside a dislodged board and stepped into the tunnel for shelter.

When their eyes had adjusted to the gloom, one of them noticed a rope floating in the water. To an angler any line is an object of interest, particularly if one end dives steeply into the depths. Using his rod, he hooked the rope to the edge and began to haul it in.

After a while it stuck.

'Gie's a hand here,' he said to his friend.

And together they hauled at the rope.

Whatever was on the end of it was heavier even than a big carp.

And certainly heavier than a pair of trainers, which were the first things they saw breaking the surface.

Then another heave revealed that the trainers still contained feet, and the feet were attached to legs…

At this point one of them let go and the other made only a token effort to retain his grip. Heedless now of the rain they hurried out of the tunnel to ring the police.

An hour later, with several police cars and an ambulance pulsing their lights into the teeming rain on the road a hundred yards away, the body of what looked at first glance like a child was laid on the canal bank. The rope was bound tight around his ankles.

The police doctor declared what no one doubted, that death had taken place. Photo flashes lit up the scene both inside and outside the tunnel. Radios crackled.

Rain hissed.

Then a new sound was heard, the roar of a powerful motorbike engine being pressed hard.

It skidded to a stop on the wet road, the rider dismounting as it did so and letting the machine come to rest against a hedge. He pulled his helmet off and at the sight of his face the officers advancing to remonstrate fell back.

He pushed his way past them, slithered down the slope into the field and stumbled across the tussocky grass to the canal bank.

There he stood for a moment looking down at the small young face at his feet.

Then he moved through the broken board into the tunnel and a second later all work stopped as a cry like the rage of a wounded Minotaur came trailing out of the dark.

It was not till the following morning that Pascoe learned of the grim discovery. Sunday he'd spent down in Lincolnshire on a visit to Ellie's mother. He'd faxed in a digest of the official part of his Sheffield visit to the Fat Man and suggested they meet first thing on Monday morning to examine the implications. A trip into outer space wouldn't have prevented Dalziel from tracking him down if he'd wanted an earlier consult, but the discovery of the body had kept that great mind occupied.

'Definitely Lubanski,' said Dalziel. 'Dead for a couple of days at least. Being in the water makes it hard to be precise.'

'How'd he die?' asked Pascoe.

'Drowned. But there's evidence he took a beating first. After that it looks like someone tied the rope round his ankles and tossed him into the cut, then dragged him along a bit afore hauling him out. Several times maybe.'

Pascoe grimaced, then said, 'Asking questions, you reckon?'

'Could be.'

'So it could be they didn't mean to kill him, just went too far?'

'Or that they heard all they wanted to hear, so dropped him in and left him to drown. Either way, it's murder in my book.'

'Mine too. How's Wieldy taking it?'

'How do you bloody think?' snarled Dalziel. 'I just about had to tie him down to stop him heading straight off to kick the shit out of Belcher.'

'Doesn't sound such a bad idea,' said Pascoe.

'Oh aye? Old Mr Human-rights Pussyfoot has suddenly become an expert on kicking shit, has he? Well, I've got gold medals and, believe me, this isn't an option. Belchamber gets warned off, Wieldy gets locked up, how's that help anything?'

'If they made Lubanski talk, won't they be warned off anyway?'

'Depends. If all he knew was what he told Wieldy, that was fuck all, wasn't it? Any road, from what Wieldy said about the lad, I wonder if he told them owt, except maybe that Wieldy was a punter after his arse. Easy enough to credit. I don't doubt Belchamber knows Wield's gay. Gay cop in tight black leathers rides into Turk's with a rent boy in tow, what's the criminal mind to think but he's a bent cop in every way, using his clout to get freebies. No, I reckon that's the tale the lad would stick to.'

'You think someone like Lubanski was capable of that sort of resolution?'

'Someone like Lubanski? Hark at you, Chief Inspector. OK, if you won't give the little scrote credit for any noble feelings, how about self-interest? Some psycho's asking you if you've been grassing him up to the pigs. Tell him yes, and you're absolutely certain you're going to die. Keep telling him no, and perhaps, just perhaps, you'll make it. Didn't work out, that's all. Either the psycho miscalculated or he's a real psycho. Either way, it don't matter. Here's how we play it. For the papers, body found in the cut, identification difficult because of deterioration in the water, enquiries proceeding.'

'And Wieldy, is he going to play along?'

'He'd better. I sent for yon Digweed to take him home and keep him there for now, even if it means chaining him to the bed. Yon old fart's likely got the chains anyway.'

Did he actually say that to Digweed? Pascoe decided he didn't want to know and remarked, 'Wieldy won't be happy.'

'Don't want him happy. Just don't want him doing owt that'll make him look like anything but a bent cop shit scared 'cos this lad he's been forcing to give him freebies has turned up dead. That should convince Belcher's boys that Lubanski's told us nowt.'

Pascoe considered then said, 'You've been persuaded that this idea that Belchamber's planning to heist the Elsecar Hoard's got legs, have you? You were a bit sceptical on Friday. My trip to Sheffield persuaded you, did it?'

Dalziel grinned.

'It helped, but it was the phone ringing with news of a definite ident on the body that did it. There's an upside to everything, Pete. Lubanski alive and feeding Wieldy with titbits because he liked to see him smile meant nowt. Lubanski tortured and dead means there's definitely something going off and most likely it's Belchy trying to get his hands on the Hoard. So God bless the lad, eh? But don't tell Wieldy I said that!'

Pascoe looked at his boss with a distaste he made no effort to disguise. From time to time he had tried to persuade Ellie that most of the Fat Man's callousness, not to mention his occasional racism, sexism, and general political incorrectness, was deliberately provocative rather than deep engrained.

'Or maybe it's a safety valve to help him deal with the crap, like a surgeon making bad jokes as he carves open a patient,' he theorized.

'Or maybe you thinking like that is your technique for stopping you kicking the fat bastard in the balls,' said Ellie.

'Probably break my foot if I did’ said Pascoe. But listening to the Fat Man now made him think it might be a risk worth taking.

On the other hand, his own reaction might have less to do with the natural sensitivity of his soul than with (a) guilt that his own attitude to Wield's relationship with the youth had been pretty ambivalent, and (b) the fact that he'd had a lousy night and was feeling a bit under the weather. It was two days since his trip to fluey Sheffield, just about the right incubation time, and he'd breakfasted on orange juice and some proprietary brand anti-flu capsules which consumer tests showed were less effective than simple aspirin, though costing six times as much, but in whose efficacy he had an almost superstitious trust.

Dalziel glowered back at him and said, 'What's up wi' thee? Ellie kick you out of bed last night?'

'I'm fine,' snapped Pascoe. 'By the way, am I ever going to get to hear what's going off in regard to that German journalist and Rye Pomona? Or is it a national security matter, for your eyes only?'

'Could be. Like you and Roote maybe.' It was a telling counterpunch. He'd kept very quiet about his continued concern with and about Franny Roote, and he was sure that Wield wouldn't have engaged in a deliberate act of delation over his researches into ex-Sergeant Roote's background. But it was difficult to do anything in this building without twanging one of the threads that ran straight to Shelob's lair.

'If you show me yours, I'll show you mine,' he said.

'You think that'll be a fair swap?' said Dalziel doubtfully. 'I reckon I'd need change. But all right. Two cocks are better than one, as the actress said to the Siamese twins.'

Despite his show of reluctance, it was, Dalziel had to admit to himself, a relief to share the details of his interview with Mai Richter. In the week since, he'd looked at what he'd learned from every which side and found he'd no idea what it meant. He'd already contemplated laying it out before Pascoe, but whenever he thought he'd made up his mind, the counter-argument had come surging back, that this was merely the indulgence of weakness, off-loading on to someone else a burden he'd wilfully hoisted on to his own shoulders, and anyway the woman was long gone back to the land of Siegfried and Lorelei.

But one of his strengths was he was aware of his weaknesses, which happily were to some degree Pascoe's strengths. All right, sometimes he went out of his way to get up that narrow sensitive nose, like when he'd sounded off about Sore Arse and Rusty Bum and the Aral Sea. The difference was that while he knew poetry by rote, he knew nowt about poetry, what made it work, what it was for. Pascoe knew these things. Sensitivity, intuition, imagination, these were the gifts tossed into the infant Pascoe's cradle which had maybe been crushed in his own by the weightier prezzies of a cast-iron gut and sledge-hammer will. No escaping it, Pascoe was a useful, perhaps a necessary complement.

Thank God after a sticky start, he'd actually grown to like the bugger!

So now it was with relief that he shared everything he'd done and discovered.

Pascoe listened intently. Physical unwellness, as long as it didn't involve active pain, always seemed to hone his mind to a more than usually keen edge. The Fat Man offered little explanation of his own thought processes, but Pascoe filled out the bald description of events easily, recognizing and being touched by his boss's willingness to accept total responsibility for the 'tidying-up' (or 'cover-up' as it would no doubt have appeared in the tabloid headlines) of Dick Dee's death, both at the scene and in the subsequent witness statements. But the risk of that kind of accusation seemed to have passed, leaving a very different problem, and Dalziel's implied acknowledgement that he needed help and perhaps comfort here was even more touching. Not that it came very close to being openly implied. 'So there it is’ he growled in conclusion. 'What do you make of that, clever clogs?'

'Forget it’ said Pascoe.

'What?'

'That's the clever clogs answer. Be ready to collect Bowler's pieces and try to put them back together when Rye dies, but till then forget it. There's going to be grief to spare when that happens. Why go looking for more in advance?'

Tables turned, he thought. Here's me being pragmatic, down-to-earth. And there's him, wrestling with doubt and maybe even conscience!

But he knew what Dalziel was really wrestling with because it was the thing which, despite all differences, united them – the need to know the truth. 'Except…' he said,

'Might have known there'd be an except’ said Dalziel.

'Except it's no use us forgetting it unless everyone else is forgetting it too. This woman, Rogers’Richter, how'd she look to you?'

'Nice tits’ said Dalziel reminiscently.

Pascoe resisted the bait and said, 'You think she's going to drop it?'

'Aye. Not her cup of tea. Also she got to like Pomona and started feeling guilty. Plus there's this feminist solidarity thing, sisters, sisters… weren't there a song?'

Fearful that Dalziel was about to burst out singing once again, Pascoe hurried on.

'Tick her off then. Charley Penn?'

'Charley 'nil never shut up, but he's like a clock. People will only take notice when he stops ticking.'

'Which still leaves the other eavesdropper. The second bug, remember? Where was it by the way?'

'In the bedroom behind the headboard. I went in and had a look afore I left Church View. According to what Lilley told Richter, it was self-powered, voice-activated, range of mebbe fifty yards tops, and likely to have run out of gas after a fortnight. So the bugger could listen in from a car parked in Peg Lane. Or, if he didn't want to sit around there all night, he could have had a radio cassette tuned in and left somewhere handy. There's St Margaret's churchyard opposite, lots of nice overgrown tombstones to hide summat like that under. I had a poke around but didn't find owt. What's up wi' thee?'

Pascoe had jumped up and grabbed at the phone on the desk between them.

He dialled, listened, said, 'Hi, it's Chief Inspector Pascoe. I need to speak to Dr Pottle. Yes, urgent police business. Or clinical business, whatever gets him to the phone.'

A pause, then Pascoe spoke again, 'Yes, sorry, I'm making a habit of it, aren't I? Listen, all I want is Haseen's mobile number. No, I won't tell her how I got it.'

He scribbled on the desktop, dialled again.

'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.'

'Unless you plan to hold me down while you operate, I don't see there's much you can do about it,' she said, smiling.

'What about young Bowler? How's he going to feel?'

'As bad as anyone can feel and still go on living,' she said sombrely. 'But he will go on living. I'm glad you know the truth, Mr Dalziel, because you'll be ready to help Hat. You and Mr Pascoe. He thinks you're both marvellous. This is your chance to prove he's right.'

He thought of all the arguments he could put forward to make her change her mind, and dismissed them. In the interrogation room, he generally knew after a couple of minutes when there was no point going o m.

He knew that now.

He said, 'You'll do what you want, lass. In my experience that's what lasses usually do. One thing, but – are you planning to leave any little billy-doos behind you?'

'In my experience, you can be a bit more direct than that’ she said.

'All right. There's buggers like Charley Penn and maybe others who don't think the Wordman's dead. I'm not interested in what you and Dee were getting up to that day out at the Stang. But I'd like to know what you think. Is the Wordman dead?'

She thought about this long enough to make him feel uneasy. Then she said in a low voice, 'Yes, I believe he is. And I'm sure that when he looks back at what he did, whatever pleas there might be in mitigation, he is filled with a horror that makes death welcome. But Charley Penn is right. Dick Dee was a lovely man. Charley's right to remember him like that. When we die I don't think anything matters much, but if anything matters a little, it's how our friends remember us. Goodbye now, Mr Dalziel.'

She watched him go. And Pascoe through his feverish gaze watched him go too at the end of his sick-room visit and found he was watching through Rye Pomona's cool brown eyes and thinking what she was thinking, which was so unthinkable that he twisted in his turbulent thoughts like a drowning man and struck out wildly for some impossible shore and found himself in the middle of Edgar Wield's pain…

'I'm sorry’ Wield said. This is stupid. I shouldn't be like this. It's worse than stupid, it's unfair. I shouldn't be doing this to you.'

'And who else should you be doing it to?' said Digweed. 'So shut up and eat your frikadeller. They are, though I say it myself as shouldn't, being the one who has slaved away in the kitchen to produce them, quite perfect.'

Wield, who found them indistinguishable from frozen meatballs cooked in the microwave, dutifully put one in his mouth.

'I don't know why I should feel like this,' he said, chewing. There really was nothing between us, Edwin, you know that, don't you?'

'Oh yes there was,' said Digweed. 'He must have been a remarkable child. I told you at Christmas he was looking for a dad, and, against all the odds, I think he succeeded. You're not acting like a bereft lover, Edgar, but a bereaved father. Which is fine. Odd but fine. But for once I agree with that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox, Superintendent Dalziel. What you mustn't act like is an avenging fury. No man can profit from assaulting a lawyer. Besides, from what I know of Marcus Belchamber, he seems unlikely to have countenanced this brutal assault.'

'He's countenancing what could turn out to be a brutal assault on some security guards,' retorted Wield.

Usually he was as discreet as a confessor about the details of his job, but grief and anger had unlocked his lips.

'At a distance, in pursuit of an obsession, and on people he doesn't know’ said Digweed. 'I dare say this has given him pause. Shock at Lee's death plus fear of what he may have revealed to you could well result in the whole thing being cancelled.'

'I hope not’ said Wield. 'Because if we can't get him for this, I'll need to go round to his office and punch his lights out.'

He spoke tough but he didn't feel tough. Vengeance was for heroes. He did not feel heroic. Nothing he could do to anyone was going to remove either of those memories which would forever have the power to leave him feeling weak as a tired child trying to weep away this life of care. The first was of that other tired child's battered, drowned face looking up at him on the canal bank. The second was of that same face, smiling encouragingly, lovingly, as it belted out the words of the song on the karaoke screen.

I really need you tonight… forever's going to start tonight

…

Perhaps Pascoe had picked this up from Wield's monosyllabic references… perhaps the sergeant had opened up to Ellie with whom he'd always been very close… but there were other projections which were much harder to explain…

In the comfortable study where Lee Lubanski had visited him so often, Marcus Belchamber sat and tried to recapture the sublime thrill he had felt when he held the serpent crown. And failed. All he could see was Lee's slim body being hauled out of the cold murky waters of the Burrthorpe Canal. He had never felt anything for the boy. He was a whore. You rented his body like a hotel room, looked to find everything there that you'd paid for, made yourself perfectly at home in it, but you never thought of it as home. At the end of each rental period you left without a backward glance. And yet…

If the boy had died in a road accident, he wouldn't have thought of it other than as an inconvenience. Like your hotel burning down. You have to find another place to stay.

This was different. Though he refused to accept responsibility, he could not deny that between himself and that sordid death ran an unbroken chain of causality. It was not his fault that the boy was dead. But he was attainted by the death in too many ways.

His first reaction had been to talk of cancelling the whole job.

Polchard had smiled his cold smile and made it clear that he and his team would still require payment in full. Already because Linford in his grief had reneged on the further payments which had fallen due, Belchamber had had to promise Polchard a large portion of the monies projected from the sale of the disposable part of the Hoard. That was bad enough, but worse was the fear that now that the initial agreement had been broken by Linford's default, Polchard might simply take the lot, ruthlessly melting down individual items to make them more easily disposable.

Or perhaps the crown would suffer the fate of so many stolen works of art and end up as permanent collateral in a series of squalid drug deals.

He couldn't bear the thought of that.

In the end he had to accept Polchard's assurance – no; not assurance; the man didn't feel the need to reassure, simply to assert – that all he wanted was his agreed cut. Which made it easier to accept his further assertion that Lee's death had been caused by an overenthusiastic minion and that to the end the youth had insisted that his relationship with the ugly cop was purely professional. In other words, the dirty little scrote had been giving freebies in return for protection. So fuck him. No problem.

So he gave the go-ahead, trying to retain the illusion that he was still in charge. And he sat in his study trying to recall the thrill he had felt when he held the serpent crown.

And failed…

Death is a very great adventure, but to many people, especially to those who find the experience of going on a package holiday traumatic enough, the idea of embarking on an adventure is completely horrifying. Yet with holiday trips, most of us enjoy ourselves when we get there. And at a distance, are we not all full of delighted anticipation?

An unexpected visitor to Pascoe's sickbed had been Charley Penn, or rather he'd come to see Pascoe not knowing he was sick. Why he came wasn't clear… something to do with Rye Pomona… or maybe with Mai Richter… or maybe because his search for answers had left him uncertain of the original questions he'd been asking…

Charley Penn sat in the library and tried to concentrate on the poem he was working on.

It was called Der Scheidende, literally 'The Parting One' which he'd translated as 'Man on his way out', though perhaps he should try to preserve that idea of parting in the sense of division, which he was sure must have been in the mind of dying Heine with his doppelgdnger obsession.

He'd done the first six lines while Dick Dee was still alive.

Within my heart, within my head

Every worldly joy lies dead, And just as dead beyond repeal

Is hate of evil, nor do I feel

The pain of mine or others' lives,

For in me only Death survives.

But since Dick's death, he hadn't been able to return to the poem. Not till now.

Why had Mai gone so abruptly?

She'd said it had all been a waste of time, there was nothing to find, he should forget his obsession and get on with life. But it hadn't rung true.

Somehow Pomona had magicked her. Mai was the clearest-minded woman he knew. He respected her hugely, which came as close to love as he'd ever felt for a woman. But she'd let herself be magicked.

He twisted in his seat and looked towards the desk.

She was there in her usual place, apparently absorbed in whatever she was doing. But after only a second she raised her eyes to meet his. Once he had been proud of what he thought of as his ability to make her aware of his accusatory gaze, but in the past few days he had found himself wondering if perhaps these eye encounters might not owe more to some power she had of precognition rather than any he had of will. He broke off contact and returned to the second part of the poem.

The curtain falls, the play is done,

And, yawning, homeward now they've gone

My lovely German audience.

These worthy folk don't lack good sense.

They'll eat their supper with song and laughter

And never a thought for what comes after

A bit free but it got the feel, which in a poem is the greater part of sense. He looked at his draft of the final six lines. Did it matter that he'd changed Stuttgart to Frankfurt because the Main suited his rhyming better than the Neckar? He hadn't been able to find any evidence that the inhabitants of Stuttgart had any particular reputation for Philistinism. Frankfurt on the other hand was certainly a great German metropolis even in the 1850s. Goethe called it 'the secret capital', though Heine's short work experience there, in banking then grocery, hadn't been very happy. What the hell, if some scholar somewhere wanted to write to him after the book's publication and explain the special significance of Stuttgart, it would give the pedant pleasure and himself enlightenment!

He made a couple of minor changes then began to write a fair copy.

He got it right that man of glory

Who said in Homer's epic story

'The least such thoughtless Philistine

Is happier living in Frankfurt am Main

Than I, dead Achilles, in darkness hurled,

The Prince of Shades in the Underworld.'

He turned and looked towards Rye again. This time she was watching him already. Her face was surely a lot paler than it had been, even the natural Mediterranean darkness of her colouring couldn't disguise that, and her eyes, always large and dark, now looked even larger and darker. But this seemed less the pallor of sickness than that cool radiance the Old Masters gave to saints at their moment of martyrdom.

Or something, he added to himself in reaction against the weirdly fanciful thought. But there was something about the girl that encouraged a man's mind down such exotic avenues, an otherness, a sense of disjunction giving you vistas over altered landscapes which returned in a blink to what they'd always been, leaving you doubtful of the experience.

What the future might hold for her and Hat Bowler, who struck him as an uncomplicated young man inhabiting a world of straight lines and primary colours, he could not guess. He had a feeling that they were players in some drama in which his own pain at Dick Dee's death no longer had a major role.

She had a faint gentle sweet smile on her lips. Was it for him?

He wasn't sure, but he found himself hoping so.

Perhaps he was being magicked too?

Mist rolling down the hills, a still sea silvered by a rising moon, silence and loneliness in a populous city, eyes meeting strange eyes in the Tube then breaking off but not before a moment of recognition, the feeling of what now? after the applause for your greatest achievement has died, your dog suddenly no longer a puppy, a line of melody which always twists your heart, a ruined castle, casual farewells, plans for tomorrow: the list could go on forever of the prompts to think of death that life never tires of giving us. Don't ignore them. Use them. Then get on with living.

Late on the evening of Friday January 25th Peter Pascoe broke the surface of the surging ocean of strange dreams and visions he had been floundering in for three days and thought of a hot Scotch pie with peas and Oxo gravy and, for a whole five minutes before he closed his eyes again, wondered, almost disappointedly, if perhaps he wasn't going to die after all.