Death's Jest-Book

2

Letter 1 Received Sat Dec 15 ^ th P. P

Reginald Hill

D amp;P20 – Death's Jest-Book

St Godric’s College

Reginald Hill

D amp;P20 – Death's Jest-Book

Cambridge

Fri Dec 14th The Quaestor's Lodging

Dear Mr Pascoe,

Cambridge! St Godric's College! The Quaestor's Lodging!

Ain't I the swell then? Ain't I a Home Office commercial for the rehabilitating powers of the British penal system?

But who am I? you must be wondering. Or has that sensitive intuition for which you are justly famous told you already?

Whatever, let me end speculation and save you the bother of looking to the end of what could be a long letter.

I was born in a village called Hope, and it used to be my little joke that if I happened to die by drowning in Lake Disappointment in Australia, my cruciform headstone could read

Here lies

Francis Xavier Roote

Born in HOPE

Died in DISAPPOINTMENT

Yes, it's me, Mr Pascoe, and guessing what could be your natural reaction to getting mail from a man you banged up for what some might call the best years of his life, let me hasten to reassure you: THIS ISN'T A THREATENING LETTER!

On the contrary, it's a REASSURING letter.

And not one I would have dreamt of writing if events over the past year hadn't made it clear how much you need reassurance. Me too, especially since my life has taken such an unexpected turn for the better. Instead of grubbing away in my squalid little flat, here I am relaxing in the luxury of the Quaestor's Lodging. And in case you think I must have broken in, I enclose the annual conference programme of the Romantic and Gothic Studies Association (RAGS for short!). There's my name among the list of delegates. And if you look at nine o'clock on Saturday morning, there you will see it again. Suddenly I have a future; I have friends; out of Despair I have found my way back to Hope and it's starting to look as if after all I may not be heading for the cold waters of Disappointment!

Incidentally, I shared my macabre little jest with one of my new friends, Linda Lupin MEP, when she took me to meet another, Frere Jacques, the founder of the Third Thought Movement.

What brought it to mind was we were standing in the grounds of the Abbaye du Saint Graal, the Cornelian monastery of which Jacques is such a distinguished member. The grounds opened with no barrier other than a meandering stream choked with cresses on to a World War One military cemetery whose rows of white crosses ran away from us up a shallow rise, getting smaller and smaller till the most distant looked no larger than the half-inch ones Linda and I carried on silver chains round our necks.

Linda laughed loudly. Appearances can deceive (who knows that better than you?) and finding Linda possessed of a great sense of humour has been a large step in our relationship. Jacques grinned too. Only Frere Dierick, who has attached himself to Jacques as a sort of amanuensis with pretensions to Boswellian status, pursed his lips in disapproval of such out-of-place levity. His slight and fleshless figure makes him look like Death in a cowl, but in fact he's stuffed to the chops with Flemish phlegm. Jacques happily, despite being tall, blond and in the gorgeous ski-instructor mould, has much more of Gallic air and fire in him, plus he is unrepentantly Anglophile.

Linda said, 'Let's see if we can't dispose of you a bit further south in Australia, Fran. There's a Lake Grace, I believe. Died in Grace, that's what Third Thought's all about, right, Brother?'

This reduction of the movement to a jest really got up Dierick's bony nose but before he could speak, Jacques smiled and said, ‘This I love so much about the English. You make a joke of everything. The more serious it is, the more you make the jokes. It is deliriously childish. No, that is not the word. Childlike. You are the most childlike of all the nations of Europe. That is your strength and can be your salvation. Your great poet Wordsworth knew that childhood is a state of grace. Shades of the prison house begin to close about the growing boy. It is the child alone who understands the holiness of the heart's affections.'

Getting your Romantics mixed there, Jacques, old frere, I thought, at the same time trying to work out if the bit about shades of the prison house was a crack. But I don't think so. By all accounts Jacques' own background is too colourful for him to be judgmental about others, and anyway he's not that kind of guy.

But it's funny how sensitive you can get about things like a prison record. These days I know that some ex-cons make a very profitable profession out of being ex-cons. That must really piss you and your colleagues off. But I'm not like that. All I want to do is forget about my time inside and get on with my life, cultivate my garden, so to speak.

Which is what I was doing quite successfully, and ultimately literally, till you came bursting through the hedge I'd built for protection and privacy.

Not once, not twice, but three times.

First with suspicion that I was harassing your dear wife!

Next with allegation that I was stalking your good self!!

And finally with accusation that I was involved in a series of brutal murders!!!

Which is the main reason I'm writing to you. The time has come, I think, for some straight talking between us, not in any spirit of recrimination but just so that when we're done, we can both continue our lives, you in the certainty that neither you nor those you love need fear any harm from me, and myself with the assurance that, now my life has taken such a strong turn for the better, I needn't concern myself with the possibility that once again the tender seedlings in my garden shall feel the weight of your trampling feet.

All we need, it seems to me, is total openness, a return to that childlike honesty we all possess before the shades of the prison house begin to close, and perhaps then I can persuade you that during my time in Yorkshire's answer to the Bastille, Chapel Syke Prison, I never once fantasized about taking revenge on my dear old friends, Mr Dalziel and Mr Pascoe. Revenge I have studied, certainly, but only in literature under the tutelage of my wise mentor and beloved friend, Sam Johnson.

As you know, he's dead now, Sam, and so, God damn his soul, is the man who killed him. Unless of course you pay any heed to Charley Penn. Doubting Charley! Who trusts nobody and believes nothing.

But even Charley can't deny that Sam's dead. He's dead.

When thou know'st this, thou know'st how dry a cinder this world is.

I miss him every day, and all the more because his death has contributed so much to the dramatic upturn in my life. Strange, isn't it, how tragedy can be the progenitor of triumph? In this case, two tragedies. If that poor student of Sam's hadn't overdosed in Sheffield last summer, Sam would never have moved to Mid-Yorkshire. And if Sam hadn't moved to Mid-Yorkshire, then he wouldn't have become one of the monstrous Wordman's victims. And if that hadn't happened, I would not be basking in the glow of present luxury and promised success here in God's (which, I gather, is how the illuminati refer to St Godric's!)

But back to you and your fat friend.

I'm not saying that I felt any deep affection for the pair of you or gratitude for what you'd done to me. If I thought of you at all it was in conventional terms, good cop, bad cop; the knee in the balls, the shoulder to cry on, both of you monsters, of course, but the kind that no stable society can do without, for you are the beasts that guard our gates and let us sleep safe in our beds.

Except when we're in prison. Then you cannot protect us.

Mr Dalziel, the ball-crushing knee, would probably say that we have foregone your protection.

But not you, dear Mr Pascoe, the damp shoulder. What I've heard and seen of you over the years since our first encounter makes me think you are more than just a role-player.

I'd guess you've got doubts about the penal system as it stands. In fact I suspect you've got doubts about many aspects of this creaky old society of ours, but of course being a career policeman makes it difficult for you to speak out. Doesn't stop your good lady, though, dear Mrs Pascoe, Ms Soper as she was in those long lost days when I was a young and fancy-free student at Holm Coultram College. How delighted I was to hear that you'd got married! News like that brings a little warmth and colour seeping through even the damp grey walls of Chapel Syke. Some unions seem to be made in heaven, don't they? Like Marilyn and Arthur; Woody and Mia; Chas and Di…

All right, can't win 'em all, can we? But at the time each of those marriages had that things-are-looking-up feel-good quality and, in terms of survival, yours looks like it could be the exception that proves the rule. Well done!

But, as I was saying, within those walls not even the nice worrying cops like you can do much to protect the rights of young and vulnerable cons like me.

So even if I'd wanted to plan revenge, I wouldn't have had time to do it.

I was too busy looking for a route to survival.

I needed help, of course, for one thing I quickly worked out.

You can't survive alone in prison.

As you well know, I'm not defenceless. My tongue is my chief weapon, and given room to wield it in, I reckon I can nimble my way out of most predicaments.

But if one nasty con is twisting your arms up your back while another's sticking his cock in your mouth, wagging your tongue tends to be counter-productive.

This was the likely fate a guy I got banged up with on remand took some pleasure in mapping out for me if I got sent down to the Syke. Good-looking, blond, blue-eyed boy with a nice slim figure would be made very welcome there, he assured me, adding with a bitter laugh that he used to be a good-looking blond blue-eyed boy himself.

Looking at his scarred, hollow-cheeked, broken-nosed, ochre-toothed face, I found it hard to believe, but something in his voice carried conviction. Something in his judge's too, and next time we met was when we arrived at Chapel Syke together.

He was an old hand at this and though I soon sussed out that he was far too far down the pecking order to have any value as a protector, I squeezed every last detail I could get out of him about how the place worked as we went about our new-boy task of cleaning the bogs.

The main man was a ten-year con called Polchard, first name Matthew, known to his intimates as Mate, though not because of any innate amiability. He wasn't much to look at, being scrawny, bald, and so white faced it was like seeing the skull beneath the skin. But his standing was confirmed by the fact that during 'association' he always had a table to himself in the crowded 'parlour' which is what they called the association room. There he sat, scowling down at a chessboard (Mate: gerrit?) and studying a little book in which he occasionally made notes before moving a piece. From time to time someone would bring him a mug of tea. If anyone wanted to talk to him, they stood patiently by, a couple of feet from the table, till he deigned to notice them. And on rare occasions if what they said was of particular interest, they'd be invited to pull up a chair and sit down.

Polchard himself didn't do sex, my 'friend' informed me, but his lieutenants were always on the lookout for new talent and if he gave them the go-ahead, I might as well touch my toes and think of England.

But in the short term, he went on to say, I was most at risk from a freelancer like Brillo Bright. You may have encountered him and his twin brother, Dendo. God knows where their names came from, though I have heard it suggested that Brillo got his after spending some time in a padded cell (Brillo Pad, OK?) At some point Brillo had decided that having a spread eagle tattooed across his bald pate and beetling brow with its talons wrapped around his eye sockets was a good way of improving his facial beauty. He might have been right. What it certainly must have improved was the odds on his being recognized whenever he pursued his chosen profession of armed robbery, which possibly explained why he'd spent half of his thirty-odd years in jail. Brother Dendo was by comparison an intellectual, but only by comparison, being an unpredictably vicious thug. The Brights were the only cons to have an existence independent of Polchard. On the surface they were all chums together, but in fact they were far too unstable for Polchard to risk the hassle of a confrontation. So they existed like the Isle of Man, offshore, closely related to the mainland, but in many ways a law unto themselves.

And helping themselves to a tasty newcomer would be a way for Brillo and Dendo to affirm their independence without risking any real provocation of the main man.

To survive I had to find a way of getting myself under Polchard's protection which didn't involve getting under one of his boys. Not that I've got any serious objection to a close same sex relationship, but I knew from anecdote and observation that letting yourself become a centre-fold spread in prison means you're pinned down at the bottom of the heap just as surely as if you'd got a staple through your belly button.

First off, I had to show I wasn't to be messed with. So I laid my plans.

A couple of days later I waited till I saw Dendo and Brillo go into the shower room, and I followed them.

Brillo looked at me like a fox who's just seen a chicken come strolling into his earth.

I hung my towel up and stepped under the shower, plastic shampoo bottle in hand.

Brillo said something to his brother who laughed, then he moved towards me. He wasn't all that well hung for such a big man, but what there was certainly had a strong sense of anticipation.

'Hello, girlie,' he said. 'Like someone to do your back?'

I unscrewed the top of my shampoo bottle and said, 'Have you got that chicken sitting on your head so everyone will know you've got scrambled egg for brains?'

It took him a moment to work this out, then his eyes bulged in fury, which was fine as it doubled my target area.

As he lunged towards me, I raised the bottle and squeezed and sent a jet of the lavatory cleaning bleach I'd filled it with straight into his eyes.

He screamed and started to knuckle at his eyes and I gave the skinned end of his rampant dick another quick burst. Now he didn't know what to do with his hands. I stooped, hooked his left ankle from under him, then stood back as he tumbled over, hitting his head against the wall with such force that he cracked a tile.

All this in the space of a few seconds. Dendo meanwhile had been standing there in sheer disbelief but now he began to advance. I waved the shampoo bottle towards him and he halted.

I said, 'Either get bird-brain here to a medic or buy him a white stick.'

Then I picked up my towel and retreated.

You see how I'm putting myself in your hands, my dear Mr Pascoe. A confession to assault and grievous bodily harm occasioning death. For it turned out that Brillo had a surprisingly thin skull for so thick a man, and there was damage which led to a tardily diagnosed meningeal problem which led to his demise. You could probably get an investigation going even after all this time. Not that I think the authorities at the Syke would applaud you. They went through the motions at the time, but brother Dendo who couldn't bring himself to co-operate with the Law even in circumstances like these, lost it when one of the screws dissed his dead brother and broke his jaw.

That got him out of the way for which I was mightily relieved. Of course all the cons knew what had happened, but in the Syke no one grassed without Polchard's say-so, and as there was a touch of negligence in Brillo's death, the screws were glad to bury him and the affair, very few questions were asked.

That was stage one. Polchard too probably wasn't sorry to see the back of the Brights, but there were plenty of people around who would be happy to do Dendo a favour, so I still needed the top man's protection.

So to stage two.

At the next period in the parlour, I approached his table and stood at what I'd worked out was the appropriate petitioning distance.

He ignored me completely, not even glancing up under his bushy eyebrows. Conversation and activity went on elsewhere in the room but it had that hushed unreal quality you get when people are simply going through the motions.

I studied the chessboard as he worked out his next move. He'd obviously started with an orthodox Queen's Pawn opening and countered it with a variation on the Slav defence. Playing yourself is a form of exercise by which the top-flight chess-player can keep his basic skills honed, but the only real test, of course, lies in pitting them against the unpredictability of an equal or superior player.

Finally after what must have been twenty minutes and with only another five of the association period left, he made his move.

Then, still without looking up, he said, 'What?'

I stepped forward, picked up the black bishop and took his knight.

The room went completely silent.

Leaving the knight open to the bishop was a trap, of course. One which he'd laid for himself and would therefore not have fallen into. But I had. What he needed to know now was, had I done it out of sheer incompetence, or did I have an agenda of my own?

At least that's what I hoped he needed to know.

After a long minute, still without looking up, he said, 'Chair.'

A chair was thrust against the back of my legs and I sat down.

He spent the remaining period of association studying the board.

When the bell went to summon us back to our cells he looked me in the face for the first time and said, Tomorrow.'

And thus I moved out of the first, which is the most dangerous, stage of my prison career, Mr Pascoe. If I'd just sat around rehearsing revenge on yourself, I would by this point probably have been raped, possibly mutilated, certainly established as everyone's yellow dog, to be kicked and humiliated at will. No, I had to be pragmatic, deal with the existing situation as best I could. Which is what I'm doing now. I make no bones about it. I-no longer want to be constantly glancing back over my shoulder, fearful that you are out there, driven to pursue me by your own fears.

Perhaps one day we may both come to recognize that flying from a thing we dread is not so very different from pursuing a thing we love. If and when that day comes, then I hope, dear Mr Pascoe,. that I may see your face and take your outstretched hand and hear you say, '

‘Jesus bloody Christ!' said Peter Pascoe.

'Yes, I know it's that time of year’ said Ellie Pascoe who was sitting at the other side of the breakfast table looking without enthusiasm at a scatter of envelopes clearly containing Christmas cards. 'But is it fair to blame a radical Jewish agitator for the way western capitalism has chosen to make a fast buck from his alleged birthday?'

'The cheeky sod!' exclaimed Pascoe.

'Ah, it's a guessing game,' said Ellie. 'OK. It's from the palace saying the Queen is minded to make you a duchess in the New Year's Honours list. No? OK, I give up.'

'It's from bloody Roote. He's in Cambridge, for God's sake!'

'Bloody Roote? You mean Franny Roote? The student? The short story writer?'

'No, I mean Roote the ex-con. The psycho criminal.'

'Oh, that Roote. So what's he say?'

'I'm not sure. I think the bastard's forgiving me.'

'Well that's nice,' yawned Ellie. 'At least it's more interesting than these sodding cards. What's he doing in Cambridge?'

'He's at a conference on Romantic Studies in the early nineteenth century,' said Pascoe, looking at the programme enclosed with the letter.

'Good for him,' said Ellie. 'He must be doing well.'

'He's only there because of Sam Johnson,' said Pascoe dismissively. 'Here we are. Nine o'clock this morning. Mr Francis Roote MA will read the late Dr Sam Johnson's paper entitled Looking for the laughs in Death's Jest-Book. That sounds a bundle of fun. What the hell does it mean?'

'Death's Jest-Book? You remember Samuel Lovell Beddoes, whose life Sam was working on when he died? Well, Death's Jest-Book is this play that Beddoes worked at all his life. I've not read it but I gather it's pretty Gothic. And it's a revenge tragedy.'

'Revenge. Aha.'

'Don't make connections which aren't there, Peter. Let's have a look at the letter.'

'I'm not finished yet. There's reams of the bloody thing.'

'Well, give us the bit you've read. And don't take too long reading the rest. Time and our daughter wait for no man.'

There had been a time when an off-duty Saturday meant a long lie in with the possibility of breakfast or, if he was very lucky, even tastier goodies in bed. But this was before his daughter Rosie had discovered she was musical.

Whether any competent authority was going to confirm this discovery, Pascoe didn't know. While not having a tin ear, his musical judgment wasn't sufficiently refined to work out whether the faltering and scrannel notes he could even now hear issuing from her clarinet were much the same as those produced by a pre-pubescent Benny Goodman, or whether this was as good as it got.

But while he was waiting to find out, Rosie had to have lessons from the best available teacher, viz. Ms Alicia Wintershine of the Mid-Yorkshire Sinfonietta, whose excellence was evidenced by the fact that the only session she had available (and that only because another budding virtuosa had discovered ponies) was nine o'clock on Saturday morning.

So goodbye to breakfast in bed, and all that.

But a man is still master in his own head if not his own house, and Pascoe buttered himself another piece of toast and settled down to the rest of Roote's letter.

Letter 1 cont.

Sorry about the hiatus!

I was interrupted by the entrance of a train of porters carrying enough luggage to keep the Queen of Sheba going for a long state visit. Behind them was a small lean athletic man with a shock of blond hair which looked almost white against his deeply tanned skin, whom I recognized instantly from his dust-jacket photos as Professor Dwight S. Duerden of Santa Apollonia University, California (or St Poll Uni, CA, as he expressed it). He seemed a little put out to find himself sharing the Quaestor's Lodging with me, even though I had modestly chosen the smaller bedroom.

(You will already, I'm sure, have worked out that I'm not the Quaestor – whatever that is – of God's, but merely a temporary occupant of his rooms during the conference. The Quaestor himself is, I gather, conducting a party of Hellenophiles around the Aegean on a luxury cruise liner. This is a line of work that interests me strangely!)

Professor Duerden and most of his luggage have now finally disappeared into his bedroom. If he intends a complete unpacking, he may be some time, so I shall continue.

Where was I? Oh yes, in the midst of what looks dangerously like becoming a rather tedious philosophical digression, so let me get back to straight narrative.

The following day, I played Polchard to a draw. I think I could have beaten him, but I wouldn't like to swear to it. Anyway, a draw seemed best for starters.

After that we played every day. At first he always had white but after our third draw he turned the board round and thereafter we alternated. The sixth game I won. There was a moment of cenotaph silence in the room, only more in anticipation of sacrifice than remembrance of it, and as I made my way back to my cell, men who'd become quite friendly over the past couple of weeks drew away from me. I paid no heed. They were thinking of Polchard as. King Rat, I was thinking of him as Grand Master. There's no fun playing someone not good enough to beat you, and less in playing someone who's good enough but too scared. My long-term survival plan depended on establishing equality.

That was my thinking, but I knew I could be wrong. I dreamt that night I was in that scene in Bergman's Seventh Seal where the Knight plays Death at chess. I woke up in a muck sweat, thinking I'd made a terrible mistake.

But next day he was sitting with the board set up and I knew I had been right.

Now all I had to do was find a way of letting him beat me without him spotting it.

But not straight off, I thought. That would be too obvious, and for him to catch me losing would be worse than constantly winning. So I played my normal game and planned ahead. Then Polchard made a move three times quicker than usual, and when I studied the board I realized I didn't need to worry. All that solitary exercise had turned him into a fine defensive player. Well, it's bound to when you're resisting attacking gambits you've devised yourself. But the bastard had been soaking up the details of the way I played and suddenly he'd gone into full attacking mode and I was in trouble.

It would have been easy to fold up before his onslaught, but I didn't. I twisted and turned and weaved and ducked, and when I finally knocked over my king, we both knew he'd beaten me fair and square.

He smiled as he re-set the pieces. Like a ripple on a dark pool.

'Chess, war, job,' he said. 'All the same. Get them thinking one way, go the other.'

Not a bad game plan I suppose if you're a career criminal.

After that I stopped worrying about results.

Now everyone was my friend again but I played it cool. I wanted to be accepted as an equal not envied as a favourite. I knew as long as I played my cards, and my pieces, right, I'd got a fully paid-up ticket to ride my stretch as comfortably as I could hope.

But make yourself as comfortable as you like in a noisy stinking overcrowded iron-barred nineteenth-century prison and it's still a fucking jail.

Time to turn my energies to my next project, which was to get myself an exeat.

You can see why I didn't have any time for the luxury of plotting revenge! I had a delicate balancing act to perform, staying. Polchard's friend and at the same time getting myself a sufficient reputation as a reformed character to get a transfer to a nice open prison. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Powers That Be still have a touching belief in a correlation between education and virtue, so I did an Open University degree, opting for a strong sociological element on the grounds that this would give me the best opportunity to impress the PTB with my revitalized sense of civic responsibility. Also it's the easiest stuff imaginable. Anyone with half a mind can suss out in ten minutes flat which buttons to press to get your tutors cooing over your essays. Whisk up a froth of soft left sentiments with a stiffening of social deprivation statistics and you're home and dry, or home and wet as the old unreconstructed Thatcherites would see it. With that out of the way, I started on an MA course on the same lines. My dissertation was on the theme of Crime and Punishment, which gave me the chance to really strut my born-again-citizen stuff. But it was so deadly dull!

It would have been all right if I could have told them the truth about my fellow cons, which was that to most of them crime was a job like any other, except there was no unemployment problem. Treating prison as a retraining opportunity is pointless when you're dealing with people who think of themselves as out of circulation rather than out of work. Better to spend all that public money sending them on holidays abroad in the hope they'd get food poisoning or Legionnaire's. But I knew that advancing such a theory wasn't going to get me letters after my name, so I dripped out the usual gunge about socialization and rehabilitation and in the fullness of time became Francis Roote, MA.

But I was still in the Syke, though by now I'd hoped to have smoothed my way out to Butlin's, which is what my ingenious fellow felons called Butler's Low, Yorkshire's newest and most luxuriously appointed open prison on the fringe of the Peak District.

I couldn't understand why I didn't seem to be making any progress in that direction. OK, I played chess with Polchard, but I wasn't one of his mob in the heavy sense. I put this to one of the screws I'd sweet-talked into semi-confidential mode.

'You lot can't keep giving me black marks for playing chess,' I protested.

He hesitated then said, 'Maybe it's not us who're giving you the black marks.'

And that was it. But it was enough.

It was Polchard who was making sure I didn't get a transfer.

He didn't want to lose the only guy on the wing, probably in the whole of the Syke, who could give him a run for his money on the chessboard and all he had to do to keep me was let the screws know that losing me would make him, and therefore everyone else, very unhappy.

I could see no way of changing this, so I had to find a way of countering it.

I needed some big hitters in my corner. But where to look?

The Governor was too busy watching his back against political do-gooders to have any time for individual cases, while the Chaplain was an old-fashioned whisky priest whose alcoholic amiability was so inclusive he even spoke up for Dendo Bright, who, thank God, had been transferred to some distant high-security unit.

As for my obvious choice, the Prison Psychiatrist, this was a jolly little man with the unreassuring nickname of Bonkers, whom it was generally agreed you'd have to be mad to consult. But then came a Home Office inspection, which led to a temporary improvement in menu and the permanent removal, under some kind of cloud, of a still-smiling Bonkers.

A short time later all over the jail ears and other things pricked when it was announced that a new trick cyclist had been appointed, and that it was a woman!

Professor Duerden has interrupted me again.

I see now that I misinterpreted his reaction when he first saw me. He wasn't dismayed to find he was sharing the Quaestor's Lodging but puzzled to find he was sharing it with someone he'd never met and never heard of.

An Englishman would have slid around the subject, and some Americans can be pretty devious too, but he was of the straight-from-the-shoulder school.

'So where're you working, son?' he asked me.

'Mid-Yorkshire University’ I replied.

'That so? Now remind me, who's running your department these days?'

'Mr Dunstan,'I said.

'Dunstan?' He looked puzzled. 'Would that be Tony Dunstan the medievalist?'

'No, it would be Jack Dunstan, the head gardener,' I said.

Once he got over his surprise, that really tickled him, and I saw no reason not to be completely open with him. I explained about being Sam Johnson's pupil and how Sam had got me a job in the gardens, and how, as well as being Sam's student, I'd also been a close friend and was, through the good offices of his sister, his literary executor.

'Sam was scheduled to present a paper at the conference,' I concluded, 'and when the Programme Committee contacted me to ask if I would be willing to read his paper, I felt I owed it to him to accept. I presume my name's been substituted for his all down the line, which is how I come to be in the Quaestor's Lodging.'

He said, 'Yeah, that must be it,' but I suspect he didn't really reckon that even Sam rated high enough to be his roomy.

In fact, I've been wondering about this myself and I think I've got it sussed. The programme says that special thanks are due to Sir Justinian Albacore, the Dean of St Godric's, under whose auspices we are the guests of the college. That name rings a bell. Could this be the same J. C. Albacore whose study of the Gothic psyche, The Search for Nepenthe, you probably know? I've never read it myself, but I often saw it propping up the broken leg of a sofa in Sam Johnson's study. For this man was the great hate of Sam's life. According to Sam, he'd given a lot of help to Albacore when he was writing Nepenthe, and the man had shown his gratitude by ripping off his Beddoes project! Sam got suspicious on finding someone had been ahead of him when he delved into a couple of rare and apparently unrelated archives. Finally it emerged that Albacore was also working on a Beddoes critical biog. to appear in 2003, the bicentenary of TLB's birth. And not long before his death, Sam was spitting fire at the news heard on the grapevine that Albacore's publishers intended to preempt the field by publishing at the end of 2002.

I described myself to Dwight as Sam's literary executor, which wasn't precisely true. What in fact occurred, as you probably heard, was that Linda Lupin, MEP, Sam's half-sister and sole heir, decided out of the generosity of her spirit to place the reins of Sam's researches into my hands. It probably won't surprise you to learn that the publisher with whom Sam's biography was contracted wasn't best pleased.

I can see his point of view. Who am I, after all? In literary terms, nobody, though my 'colourful' background was something their sales department felt they might have been able to use if the field had remained clear. But with Albacore's book already being hyped around as the 'definitive' biography, their judgment now was that setting me up to carry on where Sam had left off was throwing good money after bad.

So, sorry, mate, but no deal for the big book that Sam was aiming at.

They did however make an alternative proposal.

Because Beddoes' life is so thinly documented, Sam had been interlarding his script with what he clearly labelled 'Imagined Scenes'. These, as he explains in a draft preface, made no claim to be detailed accounts of actual incidents. Though some were based on known facts, others were simply imaginative projections, devised in order to give the reader a sense of the living reality of Beddoes' existence. Many would, I believe, have been much modified in or totally expunged from the finished book.

How would I feel, I was asked, about cutting out most of the hard-core lit. crit. stuff, working up a few more of these 'Imagined Scenes', well spiced with a sprinkling of sex and violence, and producing one of those pop-biogs which had done so well in recent years?

I didn't need the time offered to think about it.

I told them to get stuffed. I owe Sam a lot more than that.

But while I was still reeling from the injustice of it all came this invitation for me to take up Sam's place at the conference.

I'd taken it on face value as the programmers paying a posthumous tribute to a valued colleague and at the same time saving themselves the bother of rejigging their programme. But this was no explanation of why, instead of being stuck in a student's pad like the commonalty of lecturers, I was queening it in the Q's lodging alongside Dwight Duerden. There had to be another motive and, since seeing Albacore's name, I've been suspecting he might have hopes of sweet-talking Sam's Beddoes research database out of me.

Maybe I'm being paranoid. But the groves of academe are crowded with raptors, so Sam always assured me. Anyway, I'll be in a better position to judge once I've actually met the conference organizers, which will be at the Welcome Reception and Introductory Session in fifteen minutes' time.

Now where was I? Oh yes, the new female psych. Her name, believe it or not, was Amaryllis Haseen!

Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade was, you will recall, one of the alternatives to writing poetry which Milton's most un-Puritanical imagination suggested to him. My only acquaintance with the flower is the garishly fleshy specimens that sometimes turn up at Christmas. Well, by those standards, Ms Haseen lived up to her name and was generally regarded by most of the sex-starved cons as an early Christmas prezzie. As one of Polchard's top lads said dreamily, ‘Tart like that you can tell all your sexual fancies to, it's better than pulling your plonker over Women on Top.'

Everyone developed psychological problems. Ms Haseen was no fool, however. Her purpose in taking on the Chapel Syke consultancy was to garner material for a book on the psychology of incarceration, which she hoped would put more letters after her name and more money in her bank. (It came out last year, called Dark Cells, lots of nice reviews. I'm Prisoner XR pp. 193-207, by the way.) She quickly sorted out the wankers from the bankers. When Polchard's lieutenant complained that he'd been dumped while I'd got a twice-weekly session, I smiled and said, 'You've got to make 'em feel they can help you, and that doesn't mean flashing your bone and asking her to give it the once over like you did!' That made even Polchard smile and thereafter whenever I came back from a session I had to face a barrage of obscene questions as to the progress I was making towards getting into her underwear.

To tell the truth, I think I might have managed it, but I didn't even try. Even if successful, what would I have got out of it?

A few top-C's of mindless delight (no chance in the circumstances for more than a quick knee-trembler) and a coda of post-coital sadness that might stretch for years!

For I had to be a realist. Even if Amaryllis could be seduced into enjoying a bit of sport in the shade, when she walked out into the bright sunshine beyond the Syke's main gates and thought of her promising career and her happy marriage, she was going to shudder with shame and fear and pre-empt any future accusations I might make by marking me down as a dangerous fantasist. (You think I'm being too cynical? Read on!)

So I set my mind to finding out what it was that she wanted from me professionally and making sure that she got it.

There was another danger here. You see, what she really wanted was to get a clear picture of what made me tick. And the trouble was that this subject fascinated me also.

I've always known I'm not quite the same as other people, but the precise nature of this otherness eludes me. Is it based on an absence or a presence? Do I have something others lack, or am I lacking in something that others possess?

Am I, in other words, a god among mortals or merely a wolf among sheep?

The temptation to let it all hang out before her and see what her professional skills made of the fascinating tangle was great. But the risks were greater. Suppose her conclusion was that I was an incurable sociopath?

So, regrettably, I felt I had to postpone the pleasures of complete analytical honesty till such time as 1 could pay for it out of my pocket rather than out of my freedom.

Instead I devoted my energies to letting Amaryllis find what suited us both best – that is, a slightly fractured personality which would make an interesting paragraph in her book.

It was good fun. The checkable facts about my background I was careful to leave intact. But after that, it was creativity hour as, like Dorothy after the twister, I stepped out of the black and white world of Kansas into the bright bold colours of Oz. Like most of these trick cyclists, she was fixated on my childhood and I had a great time inventing absurd stories about my dear old dad, who actually vanished from my life so early that I have no recollection of him whatsoever. You'll find most of them in her book. I knew I had a talent for fiction long before I won that short-story competition.

Yet at the same time I was very aware that Amaryllis was no one's fool. I had to assume she knew that my agenda was to help myself by apparently helping her. So, as with my chess games, I needed to play on many levels.

It didn't take many sessions before I began to think I was truly in control.

Then she took me by surprise. Her opening was to ask me, 'How do you feel about the people you hold responsible for putting you in the Syke?'

'Apart from myself?' I said.

This seemed like a good answer, but she just grinned at me as if to say, 'Come off it!'

So I smiled back and said, 'You mean the policemen who arrested me and built the case against me?'

'If that's who you think responsible,' she said.

'I don't feel anything,' I said. 'In fact I've hardly thought about them since the trial.'

'So revenge never enters your mind? No little fantasies to while your nights away?'

It was funny, I'd been feeding her lies and half-truths for weeks, and now when I was telling her it like it is, no prevarication whatsoever, I was getting that disbelieving grin.

'Read my lips,' I said distinctly. 'Thoughts of revenge haven't broken my sleep nor troubled my waking hours. Cross my heart. Kiss the Book. Swear on my father's grave.'

I meant it, every word. Still do.

'Then how do you explain the topic you propose for your PhD thesis?' she asked.

This took my breath away for two reasons.

First, how the hell did she know what my proposed thesis topic was?

And second, how did I explain it?

The Revenge Theme in the English Drama.

Could it be that all the time I thought I was coolly, calmly and collectedly planning my future like a rational man, deep down inside me some bitter scheming fury was obsessed with thought of vengeance against you and Mr Dalziel?

Well, since then I've had a lot of time to think about it, and I can put my hand on my heart and declare with complete honesty that not one thought of you or Mr Dalziel crossed my mind as I chose my thesis topic.

Like I said earlier, I was bored to tears by all the sociological crap I'd had to shovel out for my degrees. I wanted something different. I wanted something to do with real people feeling real passion and I knew I had to turn from sociology to literature for that, and to the theatre in particular. I remembered an old English teacher who used to say there are three springs of action in the drama – love, ambition and revenge – and the greatest of these is revenge. So I started reading the Elizabethans and Jacobeans and very soon realized he was right; In terms of dramatic energy, nothing was more productive than revenge. Love moved, ambition drove, but revenge exploded! I knew I had found my theme, but it was an artistic, an academic, an autotelic choice, having nothing to do with extraneous matters like my own situation.

But I could see how it must look to Amaryllis with her Freudian squint.

I opened my mouth to argue, decided this was the wrong tactic, and said instead, 'I'd really never thought of that. Good God. And here's me thinking… well, I never!'

Let her see me gobsmacked, I thought. Let her feel completely in charge.

And all the time my brain was racing to work out how she knew about my proposal. I'd never mentioned it to her. Indeed I'd only put it together myself last week and sent it off to the extra-mural department of the University of Sheffield who had still to reply…

That was it! Her husband. I knew from the grapevine he was a university teacher. Her presence at the Syke meant it was likely it was one of the Yorkshire universities. I'd assumed his discipline would be the same as hers, but why should it be?

If I was right… but first check it out.

I could see no easier way than the most direct.

I said, 'This would be your husband telling you about my application, I presume? And you filling him in about me. Funny that. Don't the usual rules of patient confidentiality and pastoral responsibility apply in the case of convicted felons then?'

A fishing expedition she might have wriggled away from, but this was a grenade lobbed into the water.

She did her best but she was floundering belly-up from the start.

'No, really, nothing sinister,' she said, flashing me an all-sophisticates-together smile from those tubulous lips. 'Just one of life's little coincidences. Jay, that's my husband, happens to be in the English Department there, you see, and he happens to chair the committee which looks at these things, and he happened to mention that there'd been an application from someone in Chapel Syke

An expert interrogator like yourself would have easily spotted the symptoms of evasion, too many happenses, trying to cover the fact that when she leaves here, she heads home and chats away quite happily with her poncy husband about the funny things her banged-up clients have been telling her, fuck professional confidentiality, probably livens up the chat round the dinner table with little anecdotes plucked from our soul-baring confessions. For a moment I felt genuinely indignant till I recalled that most of what I personally had told her was crap, more arsehole-baring than soul-baring.

I said, 'Well, that's handy. Maybe you could give me a hint how my application's going, seeing as they're taking forever to respond to me direct. I was thinking of having a word with the Visitor about it. He's always banging on about prisoners' rights.'

That gave her something to think about. Lord Threlkeld, our Chief Visitor, must be familiar to you. I bet he's one of old Rumbletummy's pet hates, being a notorious bleeding heart who likes nothing better than a good case of professional misconduct either from the police or the prison service to wave at his peers in the House.

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 betesse 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 think 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 amp;R complex (R amp;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 pavement. 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.

The churchyard was empty.

He went through the gate and hurried down the path past the white cross to the rear of the church.

Nothing. Nobody.

He returned to the cross and checked the ground. The grass was still laced with morning frost and showed no sign of any footprint.

He raised his eyes to look at the inscription carved on the cross.

It was dedicated to the memory of one Arthur Treebie who quit this vale of tears aged ninety-two, grievously deplored by his huge family and armies of friends. Possibly Treebie himself, anticipating the gap he was going to leave, had chosen the consoling text:

'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'

Pascoe read it, shivered, glanced once more around the empty churchyard, and hurried back to the comfort of his car.

Earlier that same Saturday morning, Detective Constable Hat Bowler had awoken from a dream.

Ever since the incident in which he sustained the serious head injury he was officially still recuperating from, his sleep had been broken by lurid nightmares in which he struggled once more with the naked blood-slippery figure of the Word-man. The difference from the reality was that in his dreams he always lost and lay there helpless while his towering assailant clubbed him again and again with a heavy crystal dish till he slipped into unconsciousness with the despairing screams of Rye Pomona echoing through his broken head. And when he awoke into a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets, it was the memory of those screams as much as his own pain and fear that he brought with him out of the dark.

This morning he woke once more into a tangle of sheets and a memory of Rye calling out, but this time there was nothing of fear or pain in his memory, only love and joy.

In his dream he'd been lying in his hotel bed, his body a burning brand in a cold, cold waste of circumspection, wondering whether he was a wise man or an idiot not to have pressed his suit with Rye to either a conclusion or a rejection, when he had heard his door open and next moment a soft naked body had fused its warmth with his and a voice had murmured in his ear, Thank God for equal opportunities, eh?' And after that she had spoken no more till those final wordless but oh so eloquent cries which had climaxed their passionate coupling.

He groaned softly at the sweet memory of the dream, tried to relax once more into that happy slumber, rolled over in the broad bed, and sat up wide-awake.

She was there. Either he was still dreaming, or…

Her arms went round him and drew him down.

'How's your head?' she whispered.

'I don't know. I think I'm having delusions.'

'So why don't we delude ourselves again?'

If this was dreaming, he was happy to sleep forever.

Afterwards they lay intricately twined together, listening to the hotel coming to life around them and the birds, later than the humans on these dark mornings, beginning to waken outside.

'What's that?' she said.

'Goldfinch.'

'And that?'

'Mistle thrush.'

'I like a man who knows more than I do’ she said. 'Hungry?'

'What had you in mind?'

'Sausage, bacon and egg, for starters.'

She rolled away from him, picked up the bedside phone and dialled.

He listened as she ordered the full English for two in his room.

'Have you no shame?' he asked.

'Just as well I haven't,' she said. 'Or were you planning to surprise me last night?'

He shook his head and said, 'No. I'm sorry. I wanted to, Jesus, how I've been wanting to! But I just lost my bottle

'Why?' she said curiously. 'You've never struck me as the retiring virgin type, Hat.'

'No? Well, usually… not that there's been a lot… but in most cases it didn't matter, being turned down, I mean. Some you lose, some you win, that sort of thing. But with you I was terrified I'd lose everything by pressing too hard. I had to be sure you really fancied me.'

'Girl fixes up a three-night break in a romantic country hotel and you're not sure?' she said incredulously.

'Yeah, well, I thought… then we got here and you'd booked separate rooms.'

‘Fail-safe in case… anyway, you had the cue to look disappointed and say, "Hey, do we really need two rooms?'"

'Oh, I was disappointed,' he said with a grin. 'If I'd been on duty, I'd have gone out and arrested the first ten people I saw smiling and charged them with being happy. So, disappointed yes, but maybe not altogether surprised.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning that during these past few weeks you've been concerned and caring and great fun to be with, all those things, but I always felt there was some kind of limit, you know: this far is fine but one more step and it's on your bike, buster! Am I making sense?'

She was listening to him with a frowning intensity.

She said, 'You think I was playing hard to get?'

'Crossed my mind’ he admitted. 'But it didn't seem your style. Though a couple of weeks back when things seemed to be going really well… do you remember? And I was thinking, this is the night! Then you got a headache! Jesus! I thought. A headache! How unoriginal can you get?'

'You've been mixing with too many dishonest people, Hat’ she said. 'If I say I've got a headache, I mean I've got a headache. So you thought because I didn't jump into bed with you the first time you got horny, I must be… what? What have you been thinking these past few weeks, Hat?'

He looked away then looked back straight into her eyes and said, 'I sometimes thought, maybe you're just grateful because of what happened. Maybe that's the limit, whatever gratitude can give but no more. Well, I couldn't have put up with that forever, but I wasn't ready yet to take the risk of making you say it. So that's the kind of wimpish wanker you've got yourself mixed up with.'

'Wimp you may be, but you can give up the wanking, eh, Constable?' she said, drawing him close to her. 'I love you, Hat. From now on in, you're safe with me.'

Which seemed to Hat even in these days of equal opportunity a slightly odd way of putting it, but he wasn't about to complain, and indeed in her arms he felt so utterly invulnerable to anything fate could hurl against him, even if it took the form of Fat Andy Dalziel in berserker mode, that perhaps she had the right of it.

A blizzard rages across a desolate landscape, thunder rolls, wolves howl. Away in the distance there is movement. Gradually as the swirling snow parts the viewer sees that it's a horse, no, three horses, pulling a sleigh. And as it gets nearer the passengers became visible, a man and a woman and two children, and they are all smiling, and as the din of the raging storm dies to be replaced by the swelling strains of Prokofiev's 'Troika' music, the viewpoint swings round to show over the horses' tossing heads the turrets and towers of what looks like a small city emerging from the white plain, above which arcs with a brilliance like the Northern Lights the word ESTOTILAND.

'Christmas starts in Estotiland,' intones a voice like the voice of a transatlantic God. 'Here in Estotiland you'll get so much fun out of shopping you'll never think of dropping. And don't forget, Estotiland is open from eight a.m. to ten p.m., and all day Sunday. So all you kids, git your mom and pop to hitch up the pony to the sleigh and head out here first thing tomorrow. But be careful. You may never want to go home again!'

Music climaxes as the sleigh, which is now seen to be the point of a broad arrow of many other sleighs, leads them all into the shining city.

'What a load of crap’ observed Andy Dalziel from his sitting-room door.

'Andy. Didn't hear you come in.'

'Not surprised, with that din on. Do I get a kiss or will that make you miss your favourite commercial?'

He leaned over the sofa and pressed what a less welcoming and resilient recipient than Cap Marvell might have felt as a blow rather than a buss on her lips.

The advertising break was ending and the presenter of Ebor TV's early evening show was revealed half-engulfed in a deeply yielding armchair.

'Welcome back,' he said. 'Just to remind you, my guest tonight is that man of many hats, lawyer, campaigner, charity worker and historian, Marcus Belchamber.'

The picture changed to a shot of a man of early middle age, wearing a dinner jacket of immaculate cut, who was sitting in a sister chair to the presenter's, but with no threat to his steadiness of posture or alertness of mien. Steady grey eyes looked out of the head of an idealized Roman senator topped by lightly greying locks so immaculately groomed that they might indeed have been set there by a maestro's chisel rather than a barber's craft. This was a gentleman in whom you could place an absolute trust.

Dalziel made a farting noise with his lips.

'Mind if I watch this item, love?' said Cap.

'I'll get us a drink,' said the Fat Man, heading for the kitchen.

He and Cap Marvell didn't cohabit, but as their relationship matured, they'd exchanged keys, and now one of the delights of returning home for Dalziel was the possibility of finding a light on, a fire burning and Cap sitting on his sofa, or sleeping in his bed. She assured him that she felt the same, though he'd exercised his privilege of entry to her flat with great care after the occasion on which he'd been woken, stark naked on her hearth rug, by the scream of a campaigning nun who was her house guest.

From the sitting room he could hear the presenter's voice.

'Before we talk more about the Round Table Disadvantaged Children's Christmas Party which you're in charge of this year, Marcus, I'd like to have a word with you about another treat for both adults and kids which you've helped make available for us over the next few weeks. This is the chance, possibly for most of us the last chance, to see the Elsecar Hoard. For anyone out there that doesn't know it, I should say that under one of his many hats, Marcus is President of the Mid-Yorkshire Archaeological Society and is acknowledged nationally, indeed I might say internationally, as one of the country's foremost experts on Yorkshire during the Roman occupation.'

'You're too kind,' said Belchamber in that rich timbred voice which some had compared not unfavourably with that of the late Richard Burton.

'Perhaps you'd give us a bit of background just in case there's anyone left in the county who hasn't been following the saga?'

'Certainly. The Elsecar Hoard is perhaps Yorkshire's most precious historical treasure, though strictly – and herein lies the nub of the problem which emerged about a year ago – it doesn't belong to Yorkshire but to the Elsecar family. The first Baron Elsecar emerged as a power in the county at the end of the Wars of the Roses and the family flourished for the next three centuries, but a natural conservatism, with a small c, left them ill-prepared for the industrial revolution and by midway through Victoria's reign they had fallen on hard times. The greater part of their land, much of which later proved to be rich in minerals and coal, was sold at depressed agricultural prices to pay off their debts.

'In 1872, the eighth baron was draining a boggy section of one of the few remaining estates, in what any competent geologist could have told him was a vain hope of finding coal, when his workers hauled up a bronze chest.

'When opened, it proved to contain a large quantity of Roman coinage mainly of the fourth century, plus, more importantly, numerous ornaments of widely varied provenance, ranging from native Celtic designs to Mediterranean and Oriental. Particularly striking was a golden coronet formed of two intertwining snakes -'

'Ah yes’ interrupted the presenter, who had the TV personality's terror that if left out of shot long enough he would cease to exist. 'This is what's known as the serpent crown, right? Isn't it supposed to have belonged to some brigand queen?'

'A queen of the Brigantes, which is not quite the same thing’ murmured Belchamber courteously. 'This was Cartimandua, who handed over Caractacus to the Romans, but her connection with the crown is tenuous and owes more, I believe, to Victorian sentimental horror at the betrayal than any historical research. Snakes in our Christian society have come to be linked with treachery and falsehood. But, as you know, in the symbolism of Celtic art they have quite a different significance

'Yes, of course’ said the presenter. 'Quite different. Right. But this Hoard, where did it actually come from? And was it simply a question of finders keepers?'

'In law, there is no such thing as a simple question’ said Belchamber, smiling.

'You can say that again, you bastard’ muttered Dalziel in the kitchen.

'Scholars theorized that the Hoard was probably the collection of an important and well-travelled Roman official who found himself, either through choice or accident, isolated in Britain when the Roman rule broke down early in the fifth century. The big legal question was whether the chest had been deliberately hidden by its owner, thinking it prudent to conceal his treasure till quieter times came, in which case it would have been treasure trove and the property of the Crown; or whether it had simply been lost or abandoned, in which case it was the property of the land-owner. Fortunately for the Elsecars, the matter was settled in their favour when further drainage revealed the remains of a wheeled vehicle, suggesting the chest was being transported somewhere when accident or ambush had caused the carriage to overturn and sink in the swamp.'

'So it was theirs, no question? Why didn't they sell it straight away if they were so hard up?' asked the presenter.

'Because good things like bad often come in bundles, and at just about the same time the heir apparent to the baronetcy caught himself a rich American heiress, so they stowed the Hoard in the bank vault against a rainy day

'Which has now arrived’ interrupted the presenter, seeing his producer making for-God's-sake-hurry-this-along signals from the control room.

Dalziel clearly felt much the same. He'd returned with drinks and was sitting next to Cap on the sofa, glowering at the screen with an intensity of hatred which he usually only saved for winning Welsh rugby teams.

'So Lord Elsecar has put the Hoard on the market’ continued the presenter at a gallop. 'The best offer to date has been from America, the British Museum has been given the chance to match it, but so far, even with lottery money and a public appeal, they're still well short of the mark. So as a last gasp, and following a suggestion made, one might even say a pressure exerted, by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society led by yourself, the Elsecars have agreed for the Hoard to go on tour, with all profits from admission charges to go to the Save Our Hoard Fund. Will they do it?'

Belchamber made hopeful noises. Cap Marvell laughed derisively.

'Not a hope,' she said. 'They're so far short they'd need everyone in Yorkshire to go five times to get anywhere near! First time I've seen a lawyer who can't add up!'

That's great,' said the presenter. 'So there you are, all you culture vultures, take the family along to see the money your ancestors spent and what they spent it on back in the Dark Ages. The Hoard will be on exhibition in Bradford till the New Year, then in Sheffield till Friday, January twenty-fifth, after which it moves to Mid-Yorkshire. Don't miss it! And now the Christmas Party. How many kids are you hoping to get this year, Marcus?'

Dalziel stood up and said, 'Like another drink?'

I've hardly touched this one,' said Cap as she picked up the remote control and zapped the sound off. 'But I can take a hint. Is there some all-in wrestling on another channel you want to watch?'

'No. It's just I hear quite enough of yon turd, Belcher, without letting him into my own parlour’ said Dalziel.

'I take it this means he represents criminals and does a rather good job of it?'

'He does better than a good job,' said Dalziel grimly. 'He bends the law till it nigh on breaks. Every top villain in the county's on his books. I'm late tonight 'cos there was a scare with our one witness in the Linford case, and guess who's representing Linford.'

'You're not suggesting that Marcus Belchamber, solicitor, gentleman, scholar and philanthropist, goes around intimidating witnesses?'

'Of course not. But I don't doubt it's him as told Linford's dad, Wally, that the case was hopeless unless they got shut of our witness. Any road, it turned out a false alarm and I left Wieldy soothing the lad.'

'Oh yes. Is the sergeant a good soother?'

'Oh aye. He tells 'em if they don't calm down, he'll have to stay the night. That usually does the trick.'

Cap, who sometimes had a problem working out when Dalziel's political incorrectness was post-modern ironical and when it was prehistoric offensive, turned the sound back on.

'You look awfully smart, Marcus,' the presenter was saying. 'Off clubbing tonight?'

Belchamber gave the weary little smile with which in court he frequently underlined some prosecution witness's inconsistency or inanity, and said, 'I'm driving to Leeds for the Northern Law Society's dinner.'

'Well, don't drink too much or you could end up defending yourself.'

'In which case I would have a fool for a client,' said Belchamber. 'But rest easy. I shall be spending the night there.'

'Only joking! Have a good night. It's been a privilege having you on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Marcus Belchamber!'

Belchamber rose easily from the depths of his chair, the presenter struggled to get upright, the two men shook hands, and the lawyer walked off to enthusiastic applause.

'He's a fine-looking man’ said Cap provocatively.

'He'd look better strapped on the end of a ducking stool’ said Dalziel.

'And did you notice that DJ? Lovely cut. Conceals the embonpoint perfectly with no suggestion of tightness. Next time you see him, you really must ask who his tailor is.'

This was a provocation too far.

'Right, lass, if you just came round here to be rude, you can bugger off back to that fancy flat of thine. What did you come round for anyway?'

She grinned at him and ran her tongue round the rim of her glass.

'Actually I just thought I'd pop round to see what you wanted for Christmas’ she said languorously.

‘I’ll need at least thirty seconds to have a think’ said Dalziel. 'But it's not a tangerine in a sock, I can tell you that for starters.'

Delective Sergeant Edgar Wield was in a good mood as he mounted his ancient but beautifully maintained Triumph Thunderbird and said farewell to Mid-Yorkshire's Central Police Station with a quite unnecessary crescendo of revs. A couple of uniformed constables coming into the yard stood aside respectfully as he rode past them. He was still a man of mystery to most of his junior colleagues, but whether you thought of him as an ageing rocker who ate live chickens as he did the ton along the central reservation of the Ml or believed the rumours that he was matron -in-chief of a transvestite community living in darkest Eendale, you didn't let any trace of speculation and or amusement show. Dalziel was more obviously terrifying, Pascoe had a finger of iron inside his velvet glove, but Wield's was the face to haunt your dreams.

It had been a long day but in the end quite productive. With time running out, a suspect had finally cracked under the pressure of Wield's relentless questioning and unreadable features. Then, just as he was leaving, Dalziel had tossed into his lap the job of reassuring Oz Carnwath, the Linford case witness, that the burly man on his doorstep talking about death really had been an undertaker who'd mixed up addresses. He'd left the young man happy and arranged for a patrol car to stop by from time to time during the night. Then he'd returned to the station to put on his leathers and pick up his bike, and finally he was on his way home with all the pleasures of a crime-free Sunday in the company of Edwin Digweed, his beloved partner, stretching ahead. Nothing special, he doubted if they'd get further than the Morris, their local, or perhaps take a stroll along the Een whose valley had the bone structure to remain lovely even in midwinter, or go up to Enscombe Old Hall to check haw Monte, the tiny marmoset he'd 'rescued' from a pharmaceutical research laboratory, was coping with the cold weather.

Things must be beautiful which, daily seen, please daily, or something like that. One of Pascoe's little gags which usually drifted across his hearing with small trace of their passage, but that one had stuck. As he recalled it now, he tried superstitiously not to let the thought ‘ am a very lucky man join it in his head.

He came to a halt at traffic lights. Straight ahead the road which tracked the western boundary of Charter Park stretched out temptingly. Parks are the lungs of the city, and the fact that Mid-Yorkshire possessed an abundance of beautiful countryside, easy of access and to suit all tastes, did not mean the founding fathers had stinted when it came to pulmonary provision in the towns. Over the years many unsentimental eyes had looked greedily at these priceless green sites, but that lust for 'brass' which is proper to a Yorkshireman comes a poor second in his defining characteristics to the determination that 'what's mine's me own, and no bugger's going to take it from me'. Try as they might, not an acre of ground, not a spadeful of earth, not a blade of grass, had the developers ever managed to wrest from the grip of Charter Park's owners in perpetuity – the taxable citizenry. So the road alongside the park stretched straight and wide for a mile or more and a man on a powerful machine might hit the ton, though it's doubtful if he'd have much time to digest a live chicken.

Wield let himself be tempted. It was a safe indulgence. Over the years he had grown sufficiently strong in resisting temptation to be able to drink the heady potion more deeply than most men.

The lights turned green, the engine roared, but it was the roar of an old lion saying he could run down that wildebeest if he wanted but on the whole he thought he'd probably stretch under a bush and have a nap.

The sergeant moved forward sedately and legally.

It was his slowness that permitted him to see the attempted abduction taking place in the car park which ran much of the length of the park.

Separated from the main road by a long colonnade of lime trees, it was in fact more like a parallel thoroughfare. During the day, visitors to the park left the cars there in a single line. On a summer night it might be quite crowded, but in the middle of winter, apart from the odd vehicle whose steamed-up windows advertised the presence of young love or old lust, there was rarely much activity. But as he went by, Wield saw a man trying to drag a young boy into his slow-moving car.

He braked sharply, went into a speedway racer's skid, straightened up to negotiate the gap between two lime trees, found it was already occupied by a bench, realigned his machine at the next gap, went through, lost a bit of traction on the loose shaley surface as he straightened up, and lost some time wrestling the Thunderbird back under control. All the while he was blasting out warnings of his approach on the horn.

Prevention was better than cure and the last thing he wanted was a high-speed chase through city streets in pursuit of a car carrying a kidnapped child.

It worked. Ahead he saw the boy sprawling on the ground with the abductor's vehicle roaring off in a cloud of dust which, aided by the fact that the car's lights weren't switched on, made it impossible to get the number plate.

He pulled up alongside the boy, who had pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked about ten, maybe a bit older, twelve, say. He had big dark eyes, curly black hair and a thin pale face. He had grazed his hand on falling and he was holding it to his mouth to wash it and ease the pain. He looked angry rather than terrified.

'You OK, son?' said Wield, dismounting.

'Yeah, I think so.'

His accent was local urban. He began to rise and Wield said, 'Hold on. Got any pain anywhere?'

'Nah. Just this fucking hand.'

'You sure? OK. Easy does it.'

Wield took his arm and helped him up.

He winced as he rose then moved all his limbs in turn as if to show they worked.

'Great,' said Wield. He reached inside his leathers and pulled out his mobile.

'What you doing?' demanded the boy.

'Just getting someone to look out for that guy who grabbed you. Did you notice the make of car? Looked like a Montego to me.'

'No. I mean, I didn't notice. Look, why bother? Forget it. He's gone.'

A very self-possessed youngster.

'You might forget it, son. But that doesn't mean he's not going to try again.'

Try what?'

'Abducting someone.'

'Yeah… well

The boy thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his thin windcheater, hunched his shoulders and began to move away. He looked waif and forlorn.

'Hey, where are you going?' said Wield.

'What's it to you?'

'I'm worried, that's all’ said Wield. 'Look, you've had a shock. You shouldn't be wandering round here at this time of night. Hop up behind me and I'll give you a lift.'

The boy regarded him speculatively.

'Lift where?' he said.

Wield considered. Offering to take the boy home might not be a good move. Maybe it was what awaited him at home that sent him wandering the streets so late. Best way to find out could be a low-key, friendly chat, unencumbered by the revelation that he was a cop. He put the phone away. The car would be long gone by now and what did he have anyway? A dark blue Montego, maybe.

'Fancy a coffee or a Coke or something?' he said.

'OK’ said the boy. 'Why not? You know Turk's?'

'Know of it’ said Wield. 'Hop on. You got a name?'

'Lee’ said the boy as he swung his leg over the pillion. 'You?'

'You can call me Mac. Hold on.'

The boy ignored the advice and sat there loosely as if not anticipating any need for anchorage. Wield said nothing but accelerated along the car park till the lime trees began to blur, then braked to swing between them and rejoin the main road. He smiled as he felt the boy's arms swing round his midriff and lock on tight.

Turk's caff was situated in the lee of the Central Station. It was basic just this side of squalid, but had the advantage of staying open late, the theory being it would catch hungry travellers after the station snackbars pulled down their shutters early in the evening. In fact the regular – indeed one might say the permanent – clientele seemed to consist of solitary men in shabby parkas hunched over empty coffee mugs, who gave few signs that they ever contemplated travelling anywhere. The only person who showed any sign of life, and that only enough to offer a customer slow and resentful service, was the morose and taciturn owner, the eponymous Turk, whose coffee was reason enough to keep a country out of the EU, never mind Human Rights, thought Wield, as he watched the boy drink Coke and tuck into a chunk of glutinous cheesecake.

'So, Lee,' he said. 'What happened back there?'

The boy looked at him. He'd shown either natural courtesy or natural indifference when Wield had removed his helmet to reveal the full ugliness of his face, but now his gaze was sharp.

'Nowt. Just a bit of hassle, that's all.'

'Did you know the guy in the car?'

'What difference does it make?'

'Could make the difference between some nutter driving around trying to kidnap kids and a domestic.'

The boy shrugged, chewed another mouthful of cake, washed it down with Coke, then said, 'What're you after?'

'What do you mean?'

'Getting mixed up with this.'

'You mean I should've ridden on by?'

'Mebbe. Most would.'

'I didn't.'

'OK, but the chat and this -' he waved the last forkful of cheesecake in the air then devoured it – 'what's all that for? You some sort of do-gooder?'

'Sure,' said Wield. 'Let me buy you another piece then I'll save your soul.'

This amused the boy. When he laughed, his age dropped back to the original low estimate. On the other hand, being smart put as many years on him.

'OK’ he said. ‘`Nother Coke too.'

Wield went up to the counter. The cheesecake looked like it contravened every dietary regulation ever written, but the boy needed fattening up. Watch it, Edgar, he told himself mockingly. You're thinking like your mother! Which thought provoked him into buying a ham sandwich. Edwin was going to be miffed that he was even later than forecast, and it wouldn't help things if Wield disturbed the even tenor of their pristine kitchen with his 'disgusting canteen habits'.

As he resumed his seat, the boy pulled a face at the sandwich and said, 'You gonna eat that? He makes them out of illegals who didn't survive the trip.'

‘I’ll take my chances,' said Wield. 'OK. Now, about your soul.'

'Sold up and gone, long since. What's your line?'

'Sorry?'

'What you do for dosh? Let's have a look…'

He took Wield's left hand and ran his index finger gently over the palm.

'Not a navvy then, Mac,' he said. 'Not a brain surgeon neither.'

Wield pulled his hand away more abruptly than he intended and the boy grinned.

He's sussed me out, thought Wield. A couple of minutes and he's got to the heart of me. How come someone this age is so sharp? And what the hell signals am I sending out? I told him to call me Mac! Why?

Because Wield sounds odd? Because only Edwin calls me Edgar? Good reasons. Except nobody's called me Mac since…

It was short for Macumazahn, the native name for Allan Quartermain, the hero of some of Wield's beloved H. Rider Haggard novels. It meant he-who-sleeps-with-his-eyes-open and had been given to him by a long-lost lover. No one else had ever used it until a few years ago a young man had briefly entered his life…

He put the memory of the tragic end of that relationship out of his mind. This wasn't a young man, this was a kid, and, thank God, he'd never fancied kids. It was time to wrap things up here and get himself back to the domestic peace and safety of Enscombe.

He finished his drink, pushed his chair back and said, 'OK, let's forget saving your soul and get your body delivered safely home.'

'Home? Nah. It's early doors yet.'

'Not for kids who're roaming the streets getting into fights with strange men.'

'Aye, you're right, it's been my night for strange men, hasn't it? Anyway, not sure if I want to get back on that ancient time machine of yours. No telling where you'd take me.'

Again the knowing grin. It was time to stop messing around.

Wield took out his wallet and produced his police ID.

'I can either take you home or down the nick till we find out where home is,' he said.

The boy studied the ID without looking too bothered.

He said, 'You arresting me, or wha'?'

'Of course I'm not arresting you. I just want to make sure you get home safe. And as a minor if you don't co-operate by giving me your address, then it's my job to find it out.'

'As a minor?'

The boy reached into his back pocket, pulled out a billfold thick with banknotes and from it took a ragged piece of paper. He handed it over. It was a photocopy of a birth certificate which told Wield he was in the company of Lee Lubanski, native of this city in which he'd been born nineteen years ago.

'You're nineteen?' said Wield, feeling foolish. He should have spotted it from his demeanour straight off… but kids nowadays all acted grown up… or maybe he hadn't been looking at the youth like a copper should…

'Yeah. Always getting hassled in pubs is why I carry that around. So no need to see me home, Mac. Or should I call you sergeant now? I should have sussed when you went on about domestics. But you seemed. .. OK, know what I mean?'

He smiled insinuatingly.

Wield now saw things very clearly. He said, 'That car… he wasn't trying to pull you in, he was pushing you out.'

Lee said, That's right. Don't do the park any more, upmarket, that's me. But I were at a loose end, went for a stroll and this guy. .. well, he seemed all right, said the money was fine but he only gave me half upfront and, when we'd done the business, he tossed the rest out the window. Didn't surprise me, lot of 'em are like that, gagging for it till they've had it then they can't get away quick enough. But when I picked it up I saw it were twenty light. I got the door open as he tried to drive away and… well, you saw the rest.'

'Yes, I saw the rest. Why are you telling me this, Lee?'

'Just wanted to save you the bother of putting out a call on that Montego. Unless you fancy getting my money back? But you wouldn't want your mates to know how wrong you got things, would you? Can't imagine what you were thinking of’ he said, grinning.

'Me neither,' said Wield. 'Thought you were in trouble. Well, you are in trouble, Lee. But I reckon you know that. OK, no use talking to you now, but one day maybe you'll need someone to talk to…'

He handed the youth a card bearing his name and official phone number.

'Yeah, thanks,' said Lee. He looked surprised, as if this wasn't the reaction he was expecting. 'Bit of a do-gooder after all, are you, Mac?'

'Sergeant.'

'Sorry. Sergeant Mac. Look, don't rush off, my treat now. Have a bit of cheesecake, it's not bad. Could be an antidote to that immigrant ham.'

'No thanks, Lee. Got a home to go to.'

'Lucky old you.'

He said it so wistfully that for a second Wield was tempted to sit down again. Then he caught the gleam of watchful eyes beneath those long, lowered lashes.

'See you, Lee,' he said. 'Take care.'

'Yeah.'

Outside, Wield mounted the Thunderbird with a sense of relief, of danger avoided.

Through the grubby window of Turk's he could see the boy still sitting at the table. No audience to impress now, but somehow he looked more waif and forlorn than ever.

Making as little noise as possible, Wield rode away into the night.