Death's Jest-Book

7

Letter 5 Received Mon Dec 24 th P. P

Monday Dec 17th (Midnight!)

Dear Mr Pascoe,

My mind's in a turmoil so here I am writing to you once more. Let me skip over my nightmare journey here. Suffice it to say that my efforts at economy were rewarded by two train breakdowns and I ended up reaching Manchester Airport only five minutes before my departure time, and I still had to collect my ticket! No way could I do that and run the gauntlet of baggage and security checks in less than half an hour, I thought. Oh dear. Linda, who likes her arrangements to stay arranged, would not be pleased.

But I needn't have worried. Even Linda's organization is like a dry reed beneath the brutal tread of the airlines.

My flight was delayed… And delayed… And delayed…

Finally we took to the air. Clearly they hadn't let the delay interfere with their catering schedule. What arrived on my plate made the Chapel Syke cuisine look attractive. And I was seated next to a fat talkative estate agent with a bad cold.

Nor did my problems end when we landed in Zurich.

My case was the very last to appear on the carousel, a neanderthal customs officer could not be persuaded that I wasn't a Colombian drugs baron, and when I finally emerged into the public concourse, nowhere amongst all the attendant banners bearing sjiange devices did I see one with my name on it.

Some time later, I almost literally stumbled across my taxi driver snoozing in the coffee bar. Only the fact that he'd placed the sheet of paper bearing an approximation of my name (Herr Rutt) over his eyes to keep the light out gave me the necessary clue. He seemed to resent being woken and set off into what looked to me like an incipient blizzard without more than a guttural grunt in my direction, but after the estate agent's mucous maunderings, I was not too sorry about this.

(I seem to recollect saying I was going to skip over all this, but it's too deeply impressed on my psyche to dismiss so easily! Sorry.)

Linda had assured me that Fichtenburg was within easy driving distance of Zurich but not, I felt, in this weather or with this driver. It seemed to take forever. In the end my fatigue overcame my fear and I dozed off. When I was awoken by the car coming to a halt with a suddenness which threw me forward quite violently, my first thought was we'd had an accident. Instead, as I recovered my senses, I realized the driver had placed my luggage outside the taxi and was standing holding the passenger door open, not, I hasten to add, in any spirit of flunkeydom but merely to expedite my exit.

Still half asleep, I staggered out, he slammed the door, climbed into the driver's seat, slammed that door also and roared off into the night without so much as a Leb 'wohl!

It was snowing gently. I strained my eyes to pierce the curtain of flakes. All I could make out in vague outline was rank upon rank of tall fir trees.

The bastard had dropped me off in the middle of a forest!

Alarmed, I span round. And with infinite relief my eyes, now adjusting to the darkness, this time made out the solid-faced and sharp angles of a building. I let my gaze run to the left and couldn't find its limit. To the right the same. I leaned backwards to look up and through the floating veils of snowflakes I glimpsed turrets and battlements.

Fichtenburg!

'Oh my God!' I said out loud.

My school German has almost vanished, but I seemed to recollect that Fichten meant pine trees and I was certain Burg meant castle.

I had assumed this was just some fancy name Linda's chums had given to their holiday chalet. I should have known better.

Fichtenburg was exactly what its name stated – a castle among the pines!

And, what was worse, apparently a deserted castle.

Feeling like Childe Roland when he finally made it to the Dark Tower and started to wonder if it had been such a great idea after all, I advanced towards what looked like the building's main door. Constructed of heavy oak planks bound together with massy plates of iron, it had clearly been designed by a man who didn't care to have his relatives dropping by unexpectedly.

A bolus of metal attached to a chain hung from one of the granite doorposts. I seized it and pulled. After a while, somewhere so distant it might have been in another world, a bell rang.

In a Gothic novel, or a Goon Show script, the next sound effect would have been a slow shuffle of dreadful feet growing louder as they approached.

I was almost glad when my straining ears detected nothing.

Almost, for now the possibility that there'd been some misunderstanding and I wasn't expected and there was no one here to greet me began to loom frighteningly large. My knowledge of Switzerland derives largely from early nineteenth-century literature in which it figures as a confusion of towering mountains, huge glaciers and snowy wastes. Since the airport, I had seen little to correct that impression. Even when I turned my back on imagination and applied to common sense, the answer I got was scarcely more reassuring. People who built castles rarely did so within striking distance of neighbours to whom they could apply for the loan of a barrel of boiling oil if ever they ran short.

The alternative to trudging off into the snow in search of help was to break in.

Now with your average suburban house, this (my acquaintance at the Syke assured me) normally involves little more than putting your elbow through a pane of glass and unlatching a downstairs window.

Your average castle, however, is a horse of a different colour. For a start, and indeed for a finish, the only windows I could see through the drifting snow were well out of my elbow's reach and protected by bars.

It would be easier to break into Chapel Syke!

My one remaining hope was that in a building of this size, there might be a servants' quarter round the back, full of life and warmth, with a TV set playing so loud that the doorbell went unnoticed. Such hopeful fantasies crowd thick upon a desperate man. In any case, any movement seemed preferable to standing here and freezing to death.

I set off along the front and then down the side of the castle, following the twists and turns of its coigns and embrasures, till I had no idea whether I was still at the front or the side or the back! The snow had stopped falling and slowly the cloud was beginning to break up, allowing occasional glimpses of a nearly full moon. But its beams brought little comfort, showing the solid unwelcoming stonework broken only by barred and darkened windows.

In despair, I turned my back on the castle and strained my eyes outwards into the crowding forest.

Was it rescue? Was it an evil delusion? For a second, I was sure I saw a distant light! Then it was gone. But welcome or will-o'-the-wisp, it was all I had and I rushed in the direction I'd seen it, even though it meant leaving the guiding wall of the castle behind me and heading into the forest, all the while slipping and floundering in deep folds of snow, and shouting, 'Help! Help!' then, recalling where I was, 'Zur Hilfe! Zur Hilfe!'

Finally and inevitably, I fell flat on my face in a drift. When I pushed myself upright and looked around me (the breaking of the clouds giving me the full benefit of the moon at that moment), I saw that I was in a clearing in which stood a building. For a second I had hope that this might be the source of the light I had seen, but as I moved nearer, I saw that it was a ruined chapel. Strange how powerful the human imagination can be, isn't it? You'd think that sheer physical fright at the prospect of dying from exposure in this cold and inhospitable terrain would have left little room for any more metaphysical fear. But as I examined that place, all my awareness of mere bodily discomfort and peril was subsumed in superstitious terror! It wasn't just the post-Romantic knee-jerk reaction to a Gothic ruin in a wild and remote setting. No, what really broke me out in a sweat despite the temperature was what I saw painted on the chapel's internal walls. The plaster had fallen completely in many areas and where it remained it was cracked and flaking, but I had no doubt what it was the artist had depicted there.

It was the Dance of Death.

A grisly enough subject, you are probably thinking, and not one a chap in young Fran's situation would wish to dwell upon, but why should it affect him so strongly?

The answer is this. In Beddoes' Jest-Book, that most terrifying scene in which the Duke, hoping to raise his wife from the dead instead resurrects the murdered Wolfram, is set before a ruined Gothic church on whose cloister wall is depicted the Dance of Death. My quest for Beddoes had brought me to this place, and now he seemed to be saying in that typically sardonic way of his, ‘‘ you want to see me plain, this way lies your route!

I know it sounds silly. After all, unlike the Duke, I have no murdered rival whose resurrection I need fear, have I?

And in any case my God-given reason tells me, as it told Beddoes, there are no ghosts to raise, Out of death lead no ways. Oh, that there were! How I would labour to raise dear Sam. But what horror if instead of Sam I found myself confronted by… some less welcome revenu!

What nonsense this seems in broad daylight.

But there in the dark forest close by the ruined chapel, I have to admit, Mr Pascoe, that both innocence and rationality failed me and I closed my eyes and said a prayer.

When I opened them, I saw that some god had heard me, but whether in the Christian heaven or some darker colder Nordic place, I wasn't yet ready to say. The light I had seen before showed itself again, much nearer this time, and approaching! I could see it intermittently among the trees, moving with a serpentine motion, now visible, now masked by the long straight trunks of the pines, a circle of brightness growing larger as it neared, putting me in mind of that shining sphere which marks the arrival of Glenda in The Wizard of Oz.

It was a happy comparison, for as – guided I presume by my almost hysterical shouting – it emerged from the forest into the clearing, I saw that it was the headlight on one of those snow buggies, and though the goggled and furred creature that bestrode it was sexless to the eye, I knew she was my Good Fairy when she spoke and said, 'Herr Roote? Willkommen in Fichtenburg.'

This, God bless her, was Frau Buff, the housekeeper, a woman it emerged of few words, and all of those German, but one whose good sense and ratiocinative powers make you understand why the Swiss lead the world in the manufacture of timepieces.

Mind you, it did occur to me as she indicated I should climb up behind her (she'd already found my luggage at the castle entrance) and we set off along a winding track through the dark pine trees, to wonder if she might not be a good fairy after all but the Snow Queen, and I, like little Kay, was being abducted to her ice palace at the North Pole.

No ice palace this, I'm glad to say, but a warm and comfortable and roomy cabin with all mod cons! This was the chalet Linda had referred to, belonging to the castle and used, I presume, to accommodate visitors like myself who for whatever reason were best kept separate from the beau monde in the big house. Frau Buff had been waiting for me here. When I didn't arrive at the expected time she'd made enquiries and discovered my plane was delayed. When I still hadn't appeared by the revised expected time, she contacted the taxi company and was told their driver had reported dropping his passenger at the castle some minutes earlier. She, deducing that the Dummkopf had dumped me at the wrong place, had come looking for me.

All this I pieced together with my slowly resurrecting schoolboy German and her sparing replies.

She was, God bless her, much more interested in feeding me than conversing with me. Fortunately, what she'd been preparing was one of those all-inclusive casserole dishes which, unlike airline food, only gets better the longer it stays in the oven.

Once she saw me tucking in, she indicated apologetically that she was leaving me to my own devices. I tried to say that it was me who should apologize for taking up so much of her free time, and I must have got my message across because as she furred herself up preparatory to stepping out into the cold night, she seemed to my slowly adjusting ear to say it wasn't her own pleasure which was taking her away but getting rooms ready in the castle for Frau Lupin.

Thinking I'd got her wrong, I said in my fractured German, 'But Frau Lupin isn't coming till next week.'

And as she went out of the door she tossed something over her shoulder which froze my forkload of delicious stew in mid-air.

'Nicht Frau sondern Frd'ulein Lupin. Ihre Tochter.'

Not Mrs but Miss Lupin. Her daughter.

Perhaps I had misheard!

I broke the spell and rushed out after Frau Buff. She was already on the snow buggy.

'Fraulein Lupin,' I cried to her. 'Wann kommt sie?'

'Morgen’ she called. 'Urn Schnittschuhlaufen!'

That baffled me. What in the name of hell was Schnittschuhlaufen?

'Was ist das?' I shouted as she started up and began to move away.

She pointed away from the chalet with her right hand.

'Auf dem See!' she tossed over her shoulder. Then she was gone.

On the sea? I stood there baffled. Then for the first time I noticed the snow had stopped, the clouds were breaking up and going about their business, leaving the sky to a scatter of diamond dust such as those of us in city pent never see, and a slice of moon hung there, bright enough to light up before me a level meadow almost perfectly round.

Except it wasn't a meadow! It was a small lake. Idiot! This must be the Blutensee which Fichtenburg was am, frozen over and besprinkled with snow. (See only means 'sea' when it's feminine; I once got my knuckles rapped for forgetting that!)

Skating. Schnittschuhlaufen was skating. Emerald was coming here in the morning for the skating!

Now my ever-optimistic mind was racing. Was this coincidence, I asked myself, or was it planned? Could Emerald have learned her mother's plans for me and decided to cut in? Or was I being absurdly arrogant to even imagine that it might be so?

These things distracted me so much that on my return inside I hardly noticed the delights of Frau Buff's casserole or the smoothness of the bottle of excellent burgundy I had chosen from a well-stocked wine rack. And I have even postponed the plateful of scrumptious-looking Sahnetorte the good woman has left for pudding so that once more I can write to you, my friend, my spiritual father, to clear my mind and remind me that in the midst of no matter what fiery -turbulence of spirit I can always find a small circle of coolness and calm, like the lake outside my window, to bring me peace.

Well, it's worked. Now I feel ready to face the future – and to enjoy my Sahnetorte.

Thank you.

Franny

In England on the whole even criminals celebrate Christmas, but rest for the wicked does not automatically mean rest for the law's guardians also. The crimes of greed which are proper to Advent may fade to nothing on the day itself, but they are more than compensated for by those crimes of new rage and old resentment which spring naturally from the close confinement, with large supplies of alcohol, of blood relations who have had the good sense to keep far apart for the previous three hundred and sixty-four days.

So as Pascoe hastened home on Christmas Eve, bearing with him gifts for Rosie which several of his generous colleagues had placed on his desk, he also bore the fear that the two days off he had won after much hard wheeling and dealing could be interrupted by a phone call saying, Sorry, but there's so much domestic mayhem going on we can't cope, and could you come in and give us a hand, please?

Or, if it were Dalziel calling, scrub the question mark and the please.

As he put his key into his front door lock, he looked at the brass lion's-head knocker which Ellie had 'rescued' from a derelict farmhouse up on Greendale Moor and waited to see if it would turn into the Fat Man's face..

No change, so maybe he was going to be spared a haunting.

But when he went in and saw on the hall table where Ellie left his personal mail an envelope with a Swiss stamp on and the address written in what was becoming a familiar hand, he felt he'd relaxed too soon.

He would have thrown it in the fire except that Ellie would have known, and he'd resolved to try and keep to himself just how much these letters bothered him.

But he did manage to ignore it till he'd embraced his wife, thrown his daughter into the air, persuaded her fiercely protective dog, Tig, that this was not a form of personal assault, got into his comfortable, back-flattened, dog-chewed slippers, which he did not doubt would be replaced tomorrow by a new stiff pair which he and Tig would have to start working on immediately, and taken a long pull at a long gin-and tonic.

'See you got some more Fran-mail,' said Ellie.

'I noticed. So what's it say?'

'How should I know?'

'You mean you haven't steamed it open?'

'If I were that keen to read it I would rip it open,' said Ellie. 'But I don't deny I'm mildly interested to see how he's getting on hobnobbing with the idle rich.'

'It's their nobs that are likely to get hobbed,' said Pascoe.

He opened the envelope, scanned through the letter then tossed it across to his wife.

She read it more slowly, then turned back to the beginning and started again.

'Hell's bells,' he said. 'It's not Jane Austen.'

'Oh, I don't know. Hero and heroine meet, exchange yearning glances, part perhaps for ever, then by a strange turn of fate are thrown together in a remote Gothic setting. Not a million miles from Northanger Abbey,' said Ellie.

'When Roote's involved, there's a good chance the Gothic stuff will turn out to be really supernatural’ said Pascoe.

'No. He's a realist at heart. An explanation for everything. Except that thing about having a vision of you. Very odd. I mean, the Virgin Mary's one thing, but you!'

'You won't laugh when I'm a cult,' said Pascoe negligently.

He hadn't told Ellie about his own vision of Roote by St Margaret's Church at the same time the man was allegedly seeing him. One thing being a policeman taught you was that the world was awash with coincidences. In fact it often seemed to him when critics moaned about a book relying too much on them that usually the false note was struck by writers refusing to admit just how large a part they did play in our day-today existence.

So he persuaded himself he had a rational argument for saying nothing. But he found himself childishly eager to have her approve his reaction to the letters in some degree.

'You've got to see he's taking the piss’ he urged.

'Have I? So what precisely do you think he's mocking you about?'

'You see the way he compares the Duke's desire to raise his dead wife with his own longing to resurrect Sam Johnson? Instead, the Duke gets this rival he's murdered. And I ask myself, where do I find a dead rival of Roote's? All over the place, that's where! Albacore for a start. Then there's that student in Sheffield, Jake Frobisher, the one who overdosed himself trying to catch up on his work, the one whose death was responsible for Johnson's sudden move to Mid-Yorkshire Uni.'

'The one whose death you had Wieldy double-check with no result? Come on! At the very worst Franny might be gently mocking your obsession with dragging him into your investigations, but I defy you to point to anything that even a fully paid-up paranoid like yourself can take as positively, threatening.'

'What about the bit about envying my domestic bliss?' said Pascoe stubbornly.

She checked it out, looked up at her husband and sadly shook her head.

'He tells you you're lucky to have such a lovely wife and delightful daughter, and you think that's a threat? Come on!'

'Well, how about all that crap about me providing him with a circle of peace and calm. You've got to admit that's just a bit weird’ said Pascoe, annoyed that he'd let himself be drawn into an argument about the letter in spite of all his resolutions.

'Maybe. But you've been elected his guru, his spiritual father, remember? You can't blame an orphan boy with growing pains for turning to his wise old spiritual daddy!'

This might have provoked an outburst most unfitting for the eve of this great family festival had not Rosie come into the room at that moment, yawning widely and demanding to know if it wasn't past her bedtime. This being akin to the Prince of Darkness suddenly expressing a desire to close down Hell and open a care home, her parents burst into sadly unsympathetic laughter and then had to repair the damage done to her tender sensibilities.

There is a story somewhere of a man in his last night in the condemned cell trying to pretend he is a child waiting for Christmas in order to turn his baring hours into those tortoise-paced minutes of childhood. Fast or slow, good or bad, all things come in the end, and the following morning it took only a paler shade of blackness in the eastern sky to have Rosie bursting into the parental bedroom demanding to know if they intended lying there all day.

After that things proceeded more or less according to her timetable, with Pascoe made to feel that his insistence on having coffee and toast before starting to open the presents was a manifest offence against the European Declaration on Human Rights.

The pile of parcels beneath the tree was large, not because the Pascoes were over-indulgent parents, but because their daughter had a strong sense of equity and insisted that everyone else should have as many parcels to unwrap as she did, including the dog.

Her unselfish delight in watching her mother and father in receipt of their gifts more than compensated for the strain on Pascoe's dramatic abilities as he declared with rapture that a pair of electric blue cotton socks was all he needed to make his life complete.

Of course others of his gifts were more luxurious and’ or more interesting.

'Let me guess,' he said to Ellie, hefting a book-shaped parcel. 'You've bought me a Bible? No, it's too light. The Wit and Wisdom of Prince Charles? No, too heavy. Or is it that intellectual treat I've been after for ages: The Pirelli Calendar: the Glory Years?'

'Don't get your hopes up,' said Ellie.

He ripped off the wrapping paper and found himself looking at a book with a jet black jacket design broken only by a small high window of white which bore the title Dark Cells by Amaryllis Haseen.

‘I saw it in that remainder shop in Market Street,' said Ellie. 'And I thought, if you're going to be hung up on Roote, you might as well read what the experts have got to say.'

'Well, thank you kindly’ said Pascoe, uncertain how he felt about it. Then he caught Rosie's gaze upon him and was reminded. That's absolutely marvellous. I've been looking for a copy everywhere, how clever of you to find one, and so heavily discounted at that.'

Satisfied, Rosie turned her attention to Tig whose pleasure at his prezzies, as long as they were instantly edible, was genuine and unconfined.

Finally the ceremony was over. Rosie now had the difficult task of deciding which of her many gifts to concentrate on first. Her pecking order, which Ellie was glad to see had nothing to do with expense, placed equal top a trace-your-ancestors genealogy kit and a silent dog whistle which the instructions assured her would provide instant control of her pet over distances up to half a mile. Finally, because as she said it was Christmas for Tig too, and ignoring the disincentive of a biting east wind, she opted for the whistle and took the dog out into the garden to change its life. Ellie went upstairs to ring her mother who was coming to them tomorrow but insisted on spending Christmas Day itself with her Alzheimer-stricken husband in his nursing home. To her daughter's proposal that they would all make the two-hour drive to join her there on Christmas afternoon, Mrs Soper had replied briskly, 'Don't be silly, dear. I know you feel guilty, but you really mustn't let your guilt spoil things for others. It's a bad habit I hoped you'd got out of.'

When Ellie had protested, her mother had reminded her of a ruined Christmas Day when, aged twelve, Ellie had decided she was going to send all her presents plus her Christmas dinner to Oxfam. That was only one of many times,' she'd concluded.

'Your father's right out of it now. It's my place to be with him on Christmas Day. It's yours to be at home.'

Good for her! Pascoe had applauded internally. But he had tried not to let it show.

Now seated alone with another mug of coffee, he glanced at his watch, groaned to see that though his body-clock told him it must be dinner-time, its hands told him it was still only nine forty-five, then reached out and picked up Dark Cells.

He skipped through the introduction in which the author assured him that this was a serious in-depth analysis of the relationship between penological theory and the practicalities of incarceration, a claim somewhat at odds with that made on the jacket sleeve where he was invited to be titillated by a riveting account of evil unmasked and a disturbing analysis of the failure of our prison system to contain it. Do not read this book unless you feel strong enough to meet some of the worst men in our society. Be prepared to be shocked, to be scandalized, to be terrified!

A perfect antidote to Christmas, he thought. He went out to the hall and from a shelf in the cupboard under the stairs he took his private Roote file. Dalziel's gaze had noted it on his office desk, and doubtless noted too the drawer into which he'd slipped it. The drawer had a sturdy lock as did the office door, but Pascoe would not have bet sixpence against the Fat Man breaking through. So that same day he had brought the file home.

He sat down again and from the file he took Roote's first letter and glanced through it. Here it was… I am Prisoner XR pp193-207…

He picked up Dark Cells and turned to page 193, where sure enough the author began her case history of Prisoner XR.

After giving details of crime and sentence, Ms Haseen got straight down to her sessions with Roote.

His recorded responses during the investigation, the psychological assessment prepared in concurrence with his trial, and the whole raft of subsequent and consequent reports I had read of his reactions and behaviour since sentence all contained significant indices that here was a highly intelligent man sufficiently in control of himself to use that intelligence to make his stay in prison as comfortable and as short as possible, and, though I am very aware of the need to proceed with great caution in matters of analysis, in his case I felt within a few minutes of our first meeting fairly sanguine that the proposed course of analysis would affirm the accuracy of those advance impressions.

God, this was turgid stuff! No wonder the book had been remaindered!

From the start he was keen to demonstrate, and to underline in case I missed the point, that he was accepting these sessions absolutely on my terms. Unlike many of the others (see Prisoner JJ pp! 04ff and Prisoner PR pp! 84 ff) he never showed any overt sexual awareness of me, nor when my investigation touched on matters pertaining to his sexuality did he see this as an opportunity to indulge in self-titillating sex talk (see Prisoners AH and BC pp209 ff). Yet despite this strict propriety, I often felt the atmosphere between us was highly charged, sexually speaking.

You can bet your sweet ass it was! thought Pascoe.

This fitted in very well with my developing judgment that Prisoner XR was going to be a difficult case to put under the magnifying glass of detailed analysis.

He was dearly determined to provide me with no insight into his psyche that might be at odds with what he saw as the only truly important objects of our sessions viz. his rapid transfer from Chapel Syke to an open prison, and subsequently his early parole.

She may be a lousy writer, old Amaryllis, thought Pascoe, but at least she got that right. Let's see if she managed to get under his guard at all. Though, remembering that it was Roote himself who'd drawn his attention to her book, it didn't seem likely.

Our first few sessions therefore were in the nature of preliminary skirmishes whose main function in his eyes was to establish that he was in charge while I endeavoured to persuade him that I was unaware of his efforts so to do. Once past that point, though he always remained on a high level of vigilance, I was able to utilize his greater relaxation to make contact with him at a deeper level than hithertofore.

Hithertofore! He smiled, then, recalling what a sad Christmas this must be for the woman, he stopped smiling and read on.

Lot of background stuff. No names or identifying details, of course, but he fitted these in from his own researches.

Family background: mother and stepfather; the latter a well-heeled businessman called Keith Prime who married Mrs Roote when Franny was six and clearly didn't take long to decide it was worth spending a little of his wealth on keeping his stepson out of his hair.

Boarding schools from age seven – first a prep school, then Coltsfoot College, a progressive public school near Chester. At some point, apparently for business reasons, the Primes had set up home in the Virgin Isles and most of young Franny's vacations were spent staying with friends in England, a practice continued when he went to Holm Coultram College of Liberal Arts where his and Pascoe's paths had first crossed.

Thereafter the vacation problem was solved by residence at HMP Chapel Syke.

His mother, according to Pascoe's own records, had visited her son once during pre-trial custody, thereafter pleading poor health as reason for not attending the trial. Prime had never appeared. There was no record of the mother ever visiting her son in the Syke, but her claim to physical debility was supported the hard way when she died during his second year of detention. She was buried in the Virgin Isles. No application was made by Roote to attend the funeral. No contact with Keith Prime was recorded.

It was evident that Amaryllis Haseen had been fascinated by the relationship between Roote and his mother and father and stepfather, which must have made it easy for him to jerk her around with fictitious memories of the father he couldn't recall at all.

XR was clearly father-fixated to a degree which must have been psychologically disabling till he developed techniques of control, though not without detriment to other more conventional emotional procedures. His obviously enhanced memories of incidents involving his father all tended to stress qualities which made the dead man a worthy object of admiration and affection, yet underpinning them always was that syndrome in which the subject's sense of being abandoned by the object, even though the cause of abandonment is death, manifests itself in angry and abusive resentment.

An example of the exaggerated memory was the following, being an account of an incident when the subject was four or five years old.

XR: we were walking through the park one day, me and my dad, when this big guy jumped out of a bush brandishing a knife. He grabbed me by the hair and put the knife to my throat and said to my dad, 'Here's the deal, give me your wallet and the kid lives.'

And my dad reached into his jacket and pulled out this huge pistol and he said, 'No, here's the deal, let go the kid and you live.'

And the big guy said, 'Hey man, no need to get heavy,' and let me go. And my dad jumped forward and smashed him across the side of his head with the gun, and when he fell down my dad stamped on the hand carrying the knife till he dropped it.

And the big guy lay on the ground screaming, 'I thought we had a deal, man!'

And my dad said, 'The deal was, you get to live, but I didn 't say anything about you living healthy.'

That an incident occurred in which the subject as a small boy was frightened in a park and was defended by his father is possible. In this and other recollections the father is always referred to as 'my dad', the possessive and the familiar abbreviation being together indicative of a deep sense of loss and an almost painful desire for repossession. The gun-toting Dirty Harry accretions have probably been developed over many years of creative recollection and it is likely that the subject is by now completely persuaded of the truth of this version. It is interesting to note that the qualities this embellished narrative stresses have less to do with the kind of story-book heroism which might have appealed to a young boy and more to a cold and calculating self-sufficiency. It would have been interesting to hear the version of this story that the subject was telling at the ages of, say, ten, and then again at fifteen. Alongside this let us set the subject's response when it was suggested to him that he must have missed his dead father greatly.

'Miss him? Why the fuck should I miss him? He never earned any more than kept us out of the gutter. Useless bastard, getting himself killed like that. We were better off without him even though he didn't even leave us a pension. Fortunately Mother found herself this drooling dickhead who was so loaded we could afford to buy ourselves all the stuff we wanted.'

Subject's attempts to reduce his bereavement to economic terms are a typical grief-controlling stratagem in which the discomforts of poverty are substituted for the pain of loss. Accusations of selfishness aimed at the dead for dying appear in this light to have a real and computable base, and the return of prosperity can then be projected on to the subject's ego-view as a healing of any wounds the bereavement may have caused.

At the same time the source of the new prosperity is likely to be viewed with suspicion, or indeed as in this case contempt verging on hatred. I could discern little trace here of any Oedipal jealousy – subject always refers to his mother simply as 'mother', never using 'mum' or any other diminutivization, or employing the possessive pronoun, and never offering any anecdotes in which she features other than as a functional presence – so the unfailing choice of pejorative descriptions for his stepfather must be ascribed to subject's appreciation of his stepfather's wealth as a criticism of his real father's failure to provide for his family and his determination that the newcomer is never going to get close to taking the dead man's place.

There was a lot more like this and soon Pascoe was yawning. What was it the blurb had said? Be prepared to be shocked, to be scandalized, to be terrified. It hadn't mentioned the danger of being bored out of your skull.

The author blurb seemed to indicate that Haseen had a good track record as a serious academic psychologist, but even this seemed non-proven to Pascoe in the light of the way she swallowed hook, line and sinker everything that Roote dangled in front of her about his memories of his father.

'I'm glad to see that at least one of my gift choices has not been in vain’ said Ellie, who'd returned undetected.

'It would be a comic masterpiece if it wasn't dull’ said Pascoe. 'How's your mum?'

‘Fine. At least she says she is. Celebrating Christmas surrounded by people most of whom can't even remember who they are let alone what day it is can't be a bundle of fun.'

'It's happening all over the country’ said Pascoe. 'Sorry. You're right. It can't be. Still, she'll be with us tomorrow. We'll see she has a great time. Your dad, is he…?'

'No miracle cures, Pete’ she said. 'Or, if there are, they're going to be too late for him, I fear. It's really pissy, isn't it? Losing someone without being able to grieve properly because they're not officially dead.'

'I know, I know’ said Pascoe. He stood up, poured a drink and took it to Ellie. But before he gave it to her, he put his arms round her and pulled her close. After a while she moved away, took the glass and said, 'Thanks. That helped. This too.'

'Part of the service’ he said lightly. 'But do me a favour, any time you think of getting real help, don't apply to Ms Amaryllis Haseen!'

'No? And apart from her sex, what objective evidence do you have for that slur on a well-respected professional woman's competence?'

Pascoe tried to detect how much self-mocking irony there was in Ellie's reaction, found no clue in her expression and decided to play it straight.

'Maybe I'm being a bit hard’ he said. 'Lots of bright people have been given the run around by our Franny. Listen to this.

Subject evinced a comprehensive mental blink-ering with regard to interpretation of his father's evidently increasingly eccentric behaviour. He said, 'Mother never gave my dad credit for anything he did, in fact she 'd deliberately take things the wrong way. When he was away from home on dangerous missions he couldn 't tell us about, she got very angry and talked about him going off and enjoying himself boozing with his fancy woman. She even refused to go down to London with him when he was being awarded a medal. He wanted to take me but she wouldn't let him, I don't know why.'

And Ms Haseen takes all this as gospel! I know how good Roote is at pulling people's strings, but surely a pro should be able to see through him.'

'But what makes you so sure he's pulling her strings?' asked Ellie.

'What? Ah, you think that Roote Senior might indeed have been an MI5 undercover agent who died bravely in the line of duty? Well, let me disenchant you.'

He picked up his file and riffled through the papers.

'Here we are, Roote's father was a civil servant who died when his son was two years old. Confirmation of what Roote himself says in his letters several times, that he lost his father so early he has no memories of him whatsoever.'

'What is that, Peter?' said Ellie, staring at the file.

‘This?' said Pascoe, suddenly remembering that Dalziel's were not the only sharp eyes it was sometimes wiser to keep things hidden from. 'Oh, just some notes about Roote I had lying around. Seemed a sensible place to keep these letters in.'

'Looks a bit bulky for just some notes’ said Ellie. 'And that note you were extracting that stuff about Roote Senior from…?'

'Well, actually it's a copy of Roote's college file, just background details

'Holm Coultram College, you mean?' said Ellie. 'Those files were confidential!'

'Come on! He was a suspect in a serious investigation.'

'Oh yes. You don't happen to have a copy of my file there too, do you?'

'No, really subversive material I keep in a safe down the nick,' said Pascoe.

She smiled, with just the slightest sign of effort as if it had occurred to her that it was after all Christmas Day.

'Enough shop talk,' she said. 'I thought we'd get the troughing over early so that we can walk it off together while there's still some light in the sky, OK?'

'Fine,' said Pascoe. 'I'll pop out and work up an appetite with our two monsters.'

Take Rosie a woolly, will you? She's beginning to look quite blue out there, but don't tell her that or she'll just insist on stripping off to show she doesn't feel the cold.'

'Can't think who she gets it from,' said Pascoe.

He rose with Dark Cells in one hand and in the other the file which he shook at her as he headed for the door, saying, 'See? Next to nothing in it. I know I may be just a bit obsessive about the guy, but doesn't it make sense to keep some sort of track on him now he's elected me his number one correspondent?'

To his surprise, Ellie said, 'You may be right, love. Listen, last word on the subject today, OK? Either drop the whole thing or do the job properly. Dig deep as you can into Roote's roots; and while you're at it, before you go around badmouthing Ms Haseen, why not check her out professionally with someone like Pottle? Rosie, luv, what's up?'

Their daughter had burst into the room wearing her best exasperated look.

'It's this whistle,' she said. 'I think it's broken.'. 'Why's that?'

'I can't hear it.'

'But you're not meant to be able to hear it.'

'But I don't think Tig can hear it either. I blow and I blow and he pays no heed at all.'

Ellie shot a warning glance at her husband, who was grinning broadly, and said, 'I know exactly what you mean, darling. But it doesn't mean Tig can't hear it. It's just that male dogs can be very stubborn, and sometimes you've got to work really hard to get them to do the simplest things. Why don't you get your dad to help you? I think you'll find he's a bit of a specialist.'

Hat Bowler, not being a particularly literary sort of chap, though he was making efforts in that direction to keep pace with Rye Pomona, might have found it hard to offer a detailed gloss of the phrase hoist with his own petard, but he knew exactly what it meant. Christmas had posed a problem. His parents were expecting him home. The only unmarried one of four children, he'd been looking forward to at last quieting their unease at his continued lack of attachment by showing off Rye, who, admitting to no family of her own, might have been expected to jump at the chance of Yuletide with the Bowlers.

Instead she had turned down the invitation flat. At first he had taken her refusal as tactical, a (he hoped) Parthian shot in the bad time she had given him for going against her wish not to make the break-in official. So he had waited till they were emerging from a moment of maximum closeness and repeated the invitation.

She rolled away from him and said, 'Hat, don't you listen? I said, no thanks, I'm just not up for a big family Christmas, OK? But I understand how much your parents and your brothers and sister and their offspring will be looking forward to seeing you. And I'll look forward just as much, or even more, to seeing you when you get back. Don't try to turn me into a little Orphan Annie out in the snow while everyone else is in the warm having a good time. I shall be perfectly happy celebrating Christmas by myself.'

He was corning to recognize the note of finality in her voice and he'd protested no more. But he had gone away and brooded and determined that it was time she too discovered he could take a stand. Take away one member of a large family having a good time and what was left was still a large family having a good time. Take away one lover from a pair of lovers and what was left was two unhappy people.

So he crossed his fingers and, before he could change his mind, pausing only to check that he had the CID room to himself, he took out his mobile and rang his parents' number.

As he spilled out his carefully prepared lie about losing out in the Christmas leave lottery, he could feel his mother's huge disappointment even before she tried to hide it, and by the time he put down the phone, he felt like the worst kind of criminal low-life who deserved everything a gouty judge could throw at him.

And it seemed that God agreed.

'Well, that's good,' said Sergeant Wield's voice behind him. 'Here's me just heard Seymour's down with flu, so having to decide whether it's you or Novello gets pulled in to fill the gap on the Christmas roster, and what do I find but a volunteer? Well done, lad.'

'Come on, Sarge,' said Hat desperately. 'At least ask Novello. She might prefer New Year.'

'Nay, good Catholic girl like her 'ull want to be off at Christmas.'

'Good Catholic! You know she's been going out with that big bearded sergeant in the Transport Police and he's married with four kids.'

That's between her and Father Kerrigan, who no doubt gets a blow-by-blow account at confession, so let's not be having any religious prejudice here, eh?'

'But, Sarge…' Hat began to plead. Then he looked into that rocky landscape of a face and realized there was nothing for him here but a hard landing.

He kept his come-uppance to himself, accepting DC Novello's gratitude at his reported volunteering with a self-deprecating grimace and Rye's sympathy with a philosophic shrug. For a moment when she pulled him down on the sofa to show how far her sympathy went, he started feeling guilty again, but not for long.

Christmas morning itself was so quiet that he didn't even have the consolation of usefulness to salve his disappointment at not being with Rye.

About eleven o'clock Dalziel came wandering in, softly whistling 'God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen'. He nodded approvingly when he saw the amount of paperwork Hat had shifted and said, 'That's it, lad. Improve the shining hour.'

'Yes, sir. Nothing for us yet then?'

The Fat Man laughed, scratched his crotch like a boy scout trying to start a fire, and said, 'Don't worry, lad. Early days. There's lots of folk out there have travelled many a weary mile just to put themselves in striking distance of their nearest and dearest, and it's getting near kick-off time. Prezzies opened, irritations building, down the pub for a few soothing bevvies, back an hour later full of good cheer, turkey burnt, pudding hard-boiled, kids fratching, in-laws sniping – it's a powder keg, and anything can be a spark. Had a chap couple of years back slit three throats with the carving knife just because his missus told him he were making a mess of the bird and why didn't he let her dad do it?'

'Even that's not exactly demanding, is it? I mean, it doesn't take much real detective work.'

'Like in the whodunnits? Shouldn't pay too much heed to them poncy writers, lad. What do they know? Most on 'em 'ud honk their rings if they saw a bit of real blood.'

Hat's acquaintance with poncy writers was limited to Ellie Pascoe and Charley Penn. His dislike of the latter was strong enough to discount his liking for the former, so he nodded enthusiastic agreement which probably wasn't a bad career move anyway.

It occurred to him to wonder how come the Fat Man, who cracked the whip and sent all the animals galloping round the ring, should have ended up stuck in the empty Big Top on Christmas Day. A disaster in his private life? Or a sudden rush of altruism to the head? On the whole, Hat thought it wise not to push his luck by asking.

In fact neither mischance nor nobility had played a part in the Fat Man's decision to take Christmas duty. Amanda 'Cap' Marvell, his inamorata, was spending the holiday with her son, Lieutenant Colonel Pitt-Evenlode MC (the Hero, as Dalziel called him), who had finally found himself a woman sufficiently unimpressed by his heroics to contemplate becoming his wife. Dalziel wasn't invited.

'Worried I'll frighten her off?' Dalziel had asked.

'More likely worried I'll drink too much bubbly and start feeling you up under the table and that frightens her off,' said Cap, who had a nice way of putting things.

'Save the bubbly for Boxing Day,' he'd replied, then told his senior officers they could spend Christmas with their families as he was coming in and he was worth any six of them.

He returned to his office now, opened the huge jar of pickled walnuts he'd found in one of his socks that morning, poured himself a healthy slug from the bottle of Highland Park he'd found in the other, and settled down with The Last Days of Pompeii, with his radio monitor bubbling softly in the background. The minutes ticked by, the pages turned, the whisky and the walnuts sank, and, as he'd forecast, the radio-recorded tide of merry Christmas mayhem rose as the Queen's Speech sailed majestically nearer.

The mayhem so far had all remained at the 'domestic' level, which meant it hadn't risen above bruising and cutting with the occasional breaking of bones, all of which fell within the proper purlieu of Uniform, who were getting more stretched by the minute.

Then like a hooked fish the Fat Man felt his attention jerked from first century Campania to twenty-first century Mid-Yorkshire.

'Disturbance at Church View House, Peg Lane. Informant Mrs Gilpin, Flat 14. Sounds like another drunk. Can anyone take it?'

Dalziel laid down his book, scooped up his radio and said, Tommy, that Peg Lane call, I'll take it.'

'You will?' The sergeant couldn't hide his amazement. 'It's just a D and D, sir…'

'I know, but it's the season of goodwill, and I can tell your lads are getting a bit overstretched, so have this one on CID. Unless you're too proud, that is…'

'No, sir. It's yours and welcome. Cheers!'

Dalziel switched off and bellowed, 'Bowler!'

Five seconds later Hat appeared round the door just as Dalziel came through it.

He leapt aside, then fell into step behind the Fat Man as he raced down the stairs.

'Sir,' he gasped. 'What have we got?'

'Probably nowt, but I could do with a breath of fresh air. You drive.'

In the car, Hat said, 'Where to?'

'Peg Lane.'

'Peg Lane? That's where Rye lives!'

'Aye. And it's Church View we're heading for. Disturbance. Informant your friend Mrs Gilpin. And I'm just wondering if the disturber could be our old friend, Charley Penn. Christ, lad, this is the town I live in you're driving through, not Le Mans!'

But Hat wasn't listening. He sent the car hurtling through the thankfully empty streets recalling that other mad drive only a couple of months before when he'd gone rushing to Rye's rescue. Could lightning strike twice? Could the second strike be fatal…?

Peg Lane was fairly central so the journey took less than five minutes, though to Hat it felt like an hour. The narrow street running between the terraced houses and the eighteenth-century church which gave Rye's building its name was still as an unused film set. Remove the parked cars and you could have shot an episode of Emma here.

An upstairs window opened and a woman wearing a red and yellow paper hat leaned out and said, 'I'm not coming out. It's gone very quiet, but he hasn't left.'

'Who?' demanded Dalziel.

'Him. The mad-looking one your lad asked about who was here before.'

His lad, Dalziel now realized, had already vanished into the building.

With a mild oath at the impetuosity of youth, Dalziel followed.

On the flat over short distances his bulk was little impediment to velocity, but uphill he went steady, not caring to arrive wheezing like a badly maintained set of bagpipes.

He paused on the first landing. Above him he could hear a thunderous knocking and Bowler's voice crying, 'Rye! Rye! Are you there?'

Groaning gently, Dalziel resumed his ascent.

When he reached the next landing, he saw Charley Perm sitting slumped against the wall beside a door which Bowler was bouncing off like a demented squash ball. Fearing that Penn might have been put there by Bowler's fists, he took hold of the writer's shag of greying hair and raised his head. To his relief the slack and dull-eyed face showed no sign of physical assault and every sign of alcoholic impairment.

He caught the DC on his next bounce and held him tight.

'You'd do better using your head, lad’ he said. 'Your lass changed the lock, right?'

'Yes, and it's locked and bolted, which means she's in there, doesn't it?' cried Hat.

'Aye, and she's probably terrified 'cos this idiot's been banging and shouting out here on the landing. So what makes you think she's going to open up straight off when some other idiot starts banging and shouting?'

It was a good point and Hat seemed to be taking it on board till Mrs Gilpin's door opened revealing the red and yellow hat.

Is it safe now?' said Mrs Gilpin. 'I told them when I rang, I thought they might need an armed response team, he was making such a racket. You've not shot him, have you?'

'Just the anaesthetic dart, luv,' said Dalziel.

Hat cried, 'It was you who rang, not Rye?'

And started bouncing himself off the door again till Dalziel got him in a neck lock.

'Missus,' he said. 'Would you mind tapping at that door and telling Ms Pomona who you are and asking her if she'd mind opening up? Thank you.'

Moving gingerly around the slumped form of Penn, Mrs Gilpin did as she was asked.

After a long pause, they heard the lock click and the door swung slowly open.

Rye stood there, and Dalziel's first thought was maybe she'd been attacked after all.

She was wearing a bathrobe and so far as he could see not much else. Her face was deathly pale except for the twin black pits out of which her eyes peered like those of a prisoner who does not know if she's been called forth to freedom or execution.

Then they registered Hat and her features were suffused with such joy that even Dalziel's hyperborean heart had to admit a respondent glow.

He relaxed his grip on the boy and watched with sad envy as he rushed forward to fold his arms round the girl.

'I knew you'd come,' she said, collapsing against him. 'Such dreams I was having… horrid, horrid… but I knew you'd come

'I always will,' said Hat fervently. 'Let's get you inside, shall we?'

He half carried her into the flat.

'Story of my life,' said Dalziel to Mrs Gilpin. 'I take the call, someone else gets the girl.. Thanks for your help, luv. You can get back to your party now. Merry Christmas.'

Reluctantly the woman retreated behind her door, which she left slightly ajar till Dalziel glared it shut. Then he turned to Charley Penn, who was showing signs of revival. Dragging him over to the stairs, the Fat Man cuffed his left hand to the metal balustrade.

As he straightened up he heard footsteps on the stairs. He looked down to see a woman ascending. She was in her thirties, with fashionably short hair and a pleasant round face well suited to show concern, which was what registered there now as she took in the manacled man and his menacing captor.

'Police,' said Dalziel. 'Who are you?'

'Mrs Rogers. Myra Rogers. I live there -' She indicated the door on the other side of Rye's from Mrs Gilpin. 'What's going on?'

'Just a drunk causing a fuss. You heard nowt?'

'No. I've been out…' Her gaze went to Rye's open door. 'Is Miss Pomona all right?'

'I think so. This man look familiar?'

'Vaguely. He could be the one I glimpsed that morning the nice young officer asked about, Rye's boyfriend, only I didn't know that till later. You're sure she's all right?'

'Aye, she's grand,' said Dalziel. 'Young Hat's in with her now. You know her well?'

'Quite well… not that I've known her long… in fact just since that same day, you know, when she came back and there'd been the bother… it's good for us both, I think, women alone, to know we've got a friend next door… just for reassurance

More reassuring than Mrs Gilpin, Dalziel guessed. There was beneath her diffidence an air of competence about Mrs Rogers. Widow? Divorced? Didn't matter. On her own long enough to know she could hack it. Not that she'd be without offers. Hers wasn't a face to stick in your mind – though there was something familiar about her – but close up, those gentle brown eyes and smoothly rounded features were rather attractive.

There's nowt like a good neighbour for reassurance,' he said. 'Nice to meet you, missus. Merry Christmas.'

The woman came on to the landing, skirted Penn fastidiously, and went into her flat.

'Don't go away, Charley,' said Dalziel.

He went through Rye's door.

There was no sign of disturbance here, confirming his belief that Penn had never got inside. Hat had placed Rye on a sofa and was trying to pour a full bottle of vodka into a wine glass. The girl had recovered sufficiently to make a protective adjustment to her robe under the Fat Man's appreciative gaze.

'Not to worry, luv,' he said. 'When you've seen one you've seen two. Thanks, lad.'

He took the glass from Hat's hand, emptied it with a shudder, and said, 'No wonder them Russkis talk mush. Get the lass a cup of tea, will you? Strong, lots of sugar.'

For a second Hat looked insubordinate, but a narrowing of Dalziel's eyes was enough to send him into the kitchen.

'Right, Ms Pomona,' said the Fat Man, helping himself to another slug of vodka. 'Just a couple of quick questions. Has Charley Penn been inside your flat today?'

'Penn?' She looked bewildered. 'No. Why?'

'That was him banging at your door. You did hear someone banging at your door?'

'I was asleep… I didn't feel so good this morning, I had this dreadful headache, and I took some tablets and went to bed. There was a lot of noise, but I thought it was in my dream… I was dreaming about being back out at Stang Tarn… it was all mixed up, the noise and everything… even when I woke up I didn't know if I was only dreaming I'd woken up… then I heard Mrs Gilpin… it was Mrs Gilpin, wasn't it?'

'Aye. So, you weren't feeling too well, went to bed, had a nightmare, that sum it up?'

She shook her head to clear it, not in denial, and said in a stronger voice, 'Yes, I suppose it does. Mr Dalziel, it's always good to see you, but why are you here?'

She was definitely coming out of it. Hat reappeared with a steaming mug. Dalziel said, 'Young Bowler will explain. I've got someone waiting for me outside.'

Hat looked gratefully at the Fat Man who mouthed at him, 'Five minutes,' then left.

Outside he found Penn had been sick on the landing.

Uncuffing him from the balustrade, Dalziel half led, half dragged him down the stairs. In the street the bitter east wind hit the novelist like a bucket of ice water. He swayed for a moment then stiffened himself against the blast.

Dalziel nodded approvingly and said, 'Back in the land of the living, Charley?'

'Heading that way. You wouldn't have a flask in your pocket, would you, Andy?'

'Aye, and it's staying there.'

'Can't we get in your car at least?'

'With honk all down your gansy? You must be joking.'

'You're not arresting me then?'

'You done owt I should arrest you for?'

Penn tried a laugh, it changed to a cough, then a bout of dry retching.

'How should I know?' he gasped. 'Don't remember much since lunch.'

'Which you had where?'

'None of your business.'

'No? Let me guess.'

It wasn't too difficult. Penn's mother (original name Penck) lived in a grace-and-favour cottage on Lord Partridge's estate at Haysgarth. She felt her son had betrayed his Teutonic heritage, he resented the way she bowed and scraped to the Partridges.

Dalziel went on, 'You had a good old traditional Wein-acht with your good old traditional Mutti out at Haysgarth, but the only way you could block out the sight of her kowtowing to Budgie Partridge and the sound of her going on about your dad spinning in his grave to see how completely his son has gone native was to get pissed out of your skull on schnapps or some such muck. Then you headed back here to pass on a bit of your misery to some other bugger. We won't go into how you got here, though if I hear of any corpses, human or animal, on the road between here and Haysgarth, I'll be jumping up and down on your belly till you bring up your ribs. How am I doing, Charley?'

'Nice story, pity about the style. Andy, if I'm not under arrest, I'll be on my way afore I freeze to death.'

'Long as you understand there's no one would give a toss, Charley, except mebbe your publishers, and they'd just be thinking of their profits. Even your old Mutti would likely just set about transforming you into one of them dead Kraut heroes, my son the Teutonic bard who's up there in Valhalla, serenading the gods. That's what you sentimental Krauts do with dead folk, isn't it? Turn them into summat they're not when they're too dead to answer back. Get it into that thick noddle of thine, Charley. Your mate Dick Dee was a sick, evil bastard and if you can't get your head round that, you'd best stand out here till you catch pneumonia, then go and ask him yourself.'

Penn shivered and pulled his jacket closer around him.

'You done?' he said.

'For now.'

'Thank Christ for that. What's happened to you, Andy? Always thought of you as vulgar and violent. But never verbose. Tell you what I think. You're too wise an old porker to believe you're going to get anywhere grunting at me. So just who are you trying to convince with all those words? Yourself mebbe? Worried about how it's going to look if the truth comes dropping through your letter box one fine morning? Or rather not if. When! Watch this space, Andy. Watch this space. I'm off. Merry fucking Christmas.'

He turned and walked away across the road rather unsteadily. When he reached the small back gate which led into the churchyard opposite, he pushed it open, raised his right hand in derisive farewell without looking round, and vanished among the gravestones.

Dalziel stood in thought for a moment, then shook his head like a man dislodging a bee, glanced at his watch, stooped to the car, reached in and leaned on the horn.

Upstairs, Hat heard the noise and guessed its source.

So did Rye. She said, 'Better run.'

'No hurry,' said Hat bravely. 'He can wait till I'm sure you're OK.'

She looked better but was still very pale. She said, 'I'm fine, really.'

'You don't look fine. Have you had anything to eat?'

'What had you in mind? Roast turkey and the trimmings? No thanks!'

'I could rustle you up…'

He paused while his mind scanned his limited culinary range.

The horn sounded once more.

Rye said, 'I don't know if I'm ready for the Bowler book of boy nosh. Go, go.'

Still he hesitated. There was a tap at the door. He looked round and saw Myra Rogers. He'd met her a couple of times in the last few days. Rye seemed to have taken a shine to her and Hat had been delighted to know she had a neighbour she felt she could turn to. Inviting Mrs Gilpin into your life would be like volunteering to go on Big Brother.

Mrs Rogers said uncertainly, 'I'm sorry, I just wanted to see if you were all right… I've been out and when I came back and saw that terrifying man on the stairs

'It's all right, he's too drunk to do any harm,' said Hat.

'Yes, well actually, I meant the policeman. I'm sorry, I just wanted to say, if there was anything I could do, but I don't want to intrude

She looked as if a blink of the eye would send her running.

The horn again, this blast long enough to summon Charlemagne back to Roncesvalles.

Rye said, 'Myra, don't be silly. Hat's got to go, and I'll be glad of the company. Hat, give me a ring later, will you? I think we both need to rearrange Christmas!'

Relieved, even though he suspected Rye may have invited the woman in to make it easier for him to go, Hat ran down the stairs.

Outside he found the Fat Man sitting on the bonnet of the car, which gave it a very lopsided look, and regarding him grimly.

'I hope you've not been shagging,' he said. 'Bad manners to shag and shog off.'

'She's got someone with her, Mrs Rogers from next door… Where's Penn?'

He'd just registered that the writer wasn't in the car.

'Gone.'

'You let him go?'

'Aye. Here's a tip, lad. Always keep in with your custody sergeant. You never know when you'll need a favour. And one certain way to make a custody sergeant your enemy for life is to turn up on Christmas Day with a drunk who's not got blood on his hands.'

Hat was regarding him with a lack of gratitude bordering on insubordination.

'What if he comes back? At the very least shouldn't we put a watch on Rye's flat?'

'Taken care of, lad’ said Dalziel.

He waved up at a second-floor window where a red and yellow party hat was visible.

'Now let's get into the car and back to the station afore my bollocks drop off and crack the pavement’ said Dalziel.

Letter 6. Received Dec 27 th P. P

Tues Dec 18th

Dear Mr Pascoe,

I must have been exhausted by yesterday's adventures as the sun was shining brightly when I was woken by the sound of activity somewhere in the chalet. I emerged from my bedroom to find a young woman with bright red cheeks and wearing what I presume is some version of traditional costume, a combination giving her the look of an animated doll, making my breakfast. None of your muesli either but a substantial British fry-up!

My Coppelia chatted incessantly, and incomprehensibly, till, as she was leaving, she pointed at the letter I wrote last night and said, 'Post?' I quickly scribbled your address (excellent quality stationery, don't you think?) and off she went with it.

After breakfast, I decided to get my bearings and, wrapping myself up well, I went for a stroll around the policies.

The grounds of the castle are extensive and lovely, and made even more so by last evening's snowfall and this morning's frost. But my appreciation that I was in a wilderness of groaning glaciers and towering Alps has proved quite false! True, looking to the south. or west I can see the white swell of the Jura, but in the other direction the land is much flatter and predominantly pastoral. Nonetheless to one whose boundaries were for so long prison walls and security fences, this sense of space and distance was exhilarating. I strolled without plan, drinking in the beauty of the frost-laced landscape where every tree seemed festooned with glittering diamonds which seemed to my suddenly poetic mind to harbinge the arrival of that still fairer jewel, the lovely Emerald!

What pickleheads love, or lust, makes of us rational thinkers!

Eventually, shame at finding myself behaving more like an adolescent boy than a rational adult made me force my mind back to the real purpose of my presence here. I recalled my feelings of the previous night when I found myself confronted by those weird paintings which reminded me so much of Beddoes' play. The circumstances and my state of mind had been peculiarly Gothic, of course, and probably in daylight there would be very little correspondence.

I decided to test this out and, more by luck than judgment, found my way back to the ruined chapel.

I saw at once that I was right and my impressions of the night before had been considerably distorted. In daylight the chapel was much smaller than I had recalled and thus even further removed from the 'spacious Gothic cathedral' of Beddoes' play. Nor was there anything there to correspond to the sepulchre of the dukes of Munsterberg from which the resurrected Wolfram emerges. As for the frescos, there seemed to be much less to see by daylight than moonlight. Any fancy I may have entertained that perhaps Holbein or one of his pupils had popped across from Basel to try out designs for his Dance of Death soon evaporated. The style of these is pretty crude, completely lacking the Holbein wit and energy my imagination had given them the night before.

Yet I found myself thinking that Beddoes lived in north Switzerland for some time. And doesn't Gosse say in his memoir that when he fled from Zurich after the troubles of 1839, he went to the neighbouring canton of Aargau, which is where I am now?

Brooding on these matters, I strolled away from the chapel not paying much heed to my direction, till finally I came out of the forest at the crest of a gentle rise overlooking the castle. Distantly I saw a car crawling up the snow-covered driveway towards the main entrance, and all thought of Beddoes and rationality went clean out of my mind.

This had to be the car bringing Emerald to Fichtenburg. Without conscious decision, I was running down the slope, driven by my desire to be the first person to greet her as she stepped out.

I believe I even had some crazy notion of throwing my cagoule on to the ground before her, so that her dainty feet wouldn't have to touch the snow.

Well, naturally I paid for my impetuosity, and instead of the perfect gentle knight greeting his lady with due courtesy, the first glimpse the inmates of the car had of me was more like a court jester desperate for laughs, rolling down the slope in a human snowball.

By the time I picked myself up and brushed off the worst of the snow and made my way to the forecourt, the new arrivals were already unloading their vehicle and Frau Buff was standing in the doorway of the castle to greet them.

One glance told me that Emerald was not among them. How could I have imagined she might be travelling in a battered VW Estate with snow chains!

The party consisted of three young women, all strangers to me, though the smallest of them did have something familiar about her.

This familiarity and the nature of the huge misunderstanding I had been labouring under became clear when we exchanged introductions:

The small woman was Musetta Lupin! This was the Tochter Frau Buff had been preparing for. A moment's thought should have told me that the divine Emerald in search of winter sport wouldn't waste her time and beauty on a little pond like Blutensee; she would be adorning some fashionable resort where the beautiful people strut their stuff.

Naturally I was at pains to conceal my disappointment, but when the girls (for that is what they are; all under twenty and none of them, I suspect, much experienced in life) invited me to share the lunch that Frau Buff had prepared for them, I refused politely and returned to the chalet to nurse my wound. And to seek solace in starting this letter to you.

How lucky I am to have someone like yourself I feel I can turn to in my troubles, though I sometimes suspect that my good luck may be based on your bad luck. What I mean is, I would have anticipated that a man of your ability and amiability -would have napped his wings and flown far afield during the years following our first encounter.

Please don't be offended. I'm not belittling your achievement. For many officers, being a Detective Chief Inspector at your age would seem pretty. fair progress. And you were very lowly (meaning highly!) rated in the Syke; a clever, sharp player, one not easily deceived, and offering you a bung was a waste of time! Your one perceived weakness was your reluctance to cut corners. Not that they rated you soft. Oh no. Hard as nails and a terrier once you took hold. I didn't need anyone to give me chapter and verse on that!

The main hope of the MYCF (the Mid-Yorkshire Criminal Fancy!) was that you'd soon take off, leaving space for someone more malleable, and I doubt if anyone would have put money on you still being in your present job these several years on.

So why are you, I ask myself?

Could it be that, like an elegant schooner sailing in the lee of a huge battle-scarred man o' war, you have been both protected from the weather and at the same time had some of the wind taken out of your sails? In other words, is it the Good Ship Dalziel which in some way has hindered the fair and speedy voyage which all have mapped for you?

This is not to aim any sniping criticism at the dear Superintendent. What use to snipe at Juggernaut? He is, you will not be surprised to learn, the Public Enemy Number One of the MYCF, their Hound of Heaven, the man they most love to hate.

Oh, do not let yourself be hidden too long in his huge shadow, dear friend, condemned to do the flitting of the bat. Rather let yourself be the rapid falcon who perches on the fabled roc's shoulders until those mighty pinions have carried him as high as they can – then at last launches himself into blue empyrean!

But I fear I have let enthusiasm carry me into impertinence, and, worse, euphuism. My apologies. I shall not send this letter till I have pondered whether I have earned the right to speak to you with the frankness my heart so desires between us.

Fri Dec 21st

I don't know whether I've earned that right, but if I haven't I must purchase it on credit for once more I find myself in emotional turmoil and, like an addict turning to his drug of choice, I find my hand reaching out for my pen.

Let me take you back to that first day at Fichtenburg.

I wasn't -left alone for long to brood over Emerald's non-arrival. Early in the afternoon I heard a knocking at my door and I found the girls had come down to skate on the lake, which I only now noticed someone had swept clear of snow during the morning. How rich a man must be to employ so many silent workers to keep him comfortable! Shyly, the girls asked whether I would mind if they used the chalet verandah for putting their skates on. Naturally I said of course not, feel free to use all its facilities. Then they said they'd brought a spare pair of skates and would I care to join them? I replied I didn't skate. And they giggled like Yum-Yum, Pitti-Sing and Peep-Bo and said it was a doddle.

It wasn't! But it was good knockabout fun. They were all pretty expert and each took it in turn to act as my tutor and, more importantly, supporter while the other two whizzed around with vigorous grace. There is nothing like making a fool of yourself for breaking the ice (not quite literally) between young people, and nothing like being in statu pupillari for making you feel young! So by the time we all retired to the chalet for in their cases a cooling and in mine a warming drink, we were chatting away like any bunch of kids.

It turns out that they are all teachers at the International School in Strasbourg. Zazie is (guess!) French, Hildi is Austrian, and Mouse is of course English, but they're all fluent in each other's languages and pretty hot, so far as I can make out, at many others. Zazie is by far the prettiest, full of vivacity and natural grace, definitely the girl to take to the ball. Hildi is stocky and muscular. I suspect she never misses her daily work-out in the gym, and from one or two things that were said I gather she is a top-notch cross-country skier. If I get lost in a blizzard, it's Hildi I want to come looking for me! As for Mouse, well, she isn't pretty, that's for sure. In fact she's plain plain, with many of her mother's features but none of that dominatrix edge which can provoke a sexual shiver. And she's almost as timid as her sobriquet. I'm sure she's great with young kids and it's probably my childish antics on the lake that made her relax with me.

It seems she's spending Christmas here with her mother's party and. her friends have just come for a few days of pre-festive frolics. It was a subject of some mirth that Linda's approval of their visit had been qualified by a warning not to disturb the guest in the chalet, whom they'd pictured as some ancient scholar, impatient of company, interested only in his books and in need of absolute silence.

Well, during the next couple of days there was practically no silence, lots of company and not much scholarship, though I did make use of their linguistic skills. I showed them the chapel and explained my interest in it. Hildi, who had a genuine rather than a casual interest in antiquities, said I should ask Frau Buff about it and volunteered to interpret, so off we all went to beard our chatelaine in her den. Buff's knowledge of the family history was extensive if anecdotal, and she shared this with us as she took us on a tour of the castle, including the unused apartments which take up more than half of it.

Johannes Stimmer (she told us), the founder of the family's fortunes, was a mercenary soldier whose military talent gained him rapid promotion and who managed the difficult balancing act of both amassing considerable wealth, surviving the country's many political changes, and preserving his reputation as a social radical during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. After Waterloo, he decided for reasons ranging from status to security that it was time the family had its own personal fortified seat and purchased Fichtenburg from its previous owners, who'd managed to back every wrong horse that had run across Switzerland in the past fifty years. (His descendants had clearly moved far enough away from old Joe's radicalism to gain admittance into Linda's circle of friends, I observed slyly, and to my delight, Mouse laughed.)

Frau Buff also provided two explanations of the name Blutensee (bleeding lake). One is that at certain seasons the last rays of the setting sun catch it in such a way as to turn the waters red. The other is that during the long independence struggle against the Habsburgs in the fourteenth century, a marauding troop of Leopold's cavalry surprised the castle during a wedding celebration, massacred everyone they could lay sword on, and threw their bodies in the lake. Naturally (like Beddoes, I'm sure) I prefer the latter!

As we were walking through one of the unused rooms whose walls were lined with murky oil paintings, something must have registered in that corner-of-the-eye way and at the door I turned back to view the pictures again.

There it was, a modestly sized pen-and-ink wash of three young men, posed in front of what looked like the ruined chapel, and wearing Elizabethan doublet and hose.

Two things hit me. The first was the artist's name, scrawled rather modestly and obscurely in the bottom left-hand corner. It read G. Keller.

Now the only Keller I have heard of is Gottfried of that ilk, the Swiss writer. You probably know his autobiographical novel, Green Henry, whose hero, like Keller himself, trains as an artist but ultimately, recognizing his lack of real talent, turns to literature. Well, the picture certainly suggested that, if G did stand for Gottfried, he'd made the right decision! But more interesting to me was the recollection that Beddoes had been acquainted with Keller, who shared his radical views, and that, according to Gosse, it was in Keller's company that Thomas had fled from Zurich to Aargau.

The second thing was the figure on the left, slight, with an oval face and big brown eyes that looked out at us with a somewhat sardonic expression.

There is only one known portrait of TLB, a painting done by one Nathan Branwhite when Tom was eighteen or nineteen. The original has vanished, but a photograph of it still survives which shows a somewhat introverted face staring out at the world through what we are assured were large, clear, decidedly brown eyes with an expression between natural reserve and weary scepticism. And, this, I swear, was the same face I was looking at!

So, three young men passing the time doing theatricals (could they have been acting out one of Beddoes' own plays? I fantasized) and caught forever, not as they would have been a century later by someone snapping them with his Kodak, but by the then equivalent, a quick sketch worked up later into the picture I saw before me.

This was exciting. I made a note to ask Linda to get her friends to permit a proper examination of the picture, and then, feeling virtuously that I hadn't after all allowed myself to be seduced totally from my task, I resumed the much more interesting business of having that time of my life which my new friends seemed determined I should enjoy!

Just how far that determination went, I was soon to discover. It was the third day of our acquaintance when it happened.

The girls had left the chalet after their apres-skating drinks. I'd just got into my shower when I heard someone call from the main room. I wrapped a towel round me and went out to find Zazie there. She said she'd left her gloves, which we found without much difficulty. Then she looked at me, sighed enviously and said she'd love a really hot shower too but the boiler in the castle was playing up and the water was running lukewarm. Uncertain how to take this, I said she was very welcome to use mine after I'd finished, which wouldn't be long. I then returned to the shower, and all uncertainties vanished a moment later when the glass panel slid open behind me and Zazie stepped in.

No details, except to say that I rapidly revised my initial judgment, in her case at least, that here was someone not very experienced in life.

No harm done, I thought afterwards, and a great deal of pleasure taken. Zazie, like Hildi, would be heading off in a day or two to spend Christmas with her own family. I'd probably never see her again and all I'd be left with (and her too, I hoped) was a happy memory of a lively jig arranged for two players! And if she'd enjoyed it enough to desire a reprise, then I was very happy to make my instrument available again.

That was yesterday. Today I was pleased to see that Zazie showed none of that post-coital possessiveness which might have sounded a jarring note in our now very well-tuned quartet. But, I wondered as I got ready for my shower this afternoon, did this mean it was after all a one-off performance?

Then I heard a noise in the next room and joyfully headed through to greet her.

Only it wasn't Zazie but Hildi.

As I hadn't bothered with a towel this time, the way my thoughts were tending was obvious. Unabashed, Hildi said something in German which I could translate roughly as, 'Seems a pity to waste it’ and next thing…

Well again, no detail, but those hours in the gym certainly hadn't been wasted.

I still hadn't quite caught on to what was happening here, but a suspicion was tickling the inside of my brain as I lay on the rugged floor like a defeated wrestler and watched Hildi dress, blow me a kiss, and leave.

After a moment I rose and stretched and was about to return to the shower room when I thought I heard a voice calling outside.

I went to the window and looked.

Out on the frozen lake were Zazie and Mouse. They must have put their skates on again after leaving the chalet to take a last spin round before the daylight went. Hildi was standing on the edge calling to attract their attention. And when they turned and saw her, she clenched both fists and punched them in the air with thumbs upturned.

And then I knew. These charming 'inexperienced' girls had decided to liven up their stay and mine at Fichtenburg by each having me in turn!

And how did I feel about that? Flattered? Outraged? Amused?

None of these. What I felt was afraid.

Two down, one to go, and that one was Mouse.

Mouse who wasn't going to vanish in a couple of days but would be around all through the holiday. Mouse who in my judgment had little talent to deceive. Mouse who was, according to Jacques, the apple of her mother's eye.

My conclusion, which may sound a tad ungallant, was that if we'd been talking about Emerald, who knows? But when it came to Mouse, nothing she seemed likely to have to offer was worth risking even the merest shadow of Linda's disapproval for!

Yet rejection seemed potentially just as dangerous. How would she react if she turned up tomorrow to bring this jolly girls' game to its triumphant conclusion and then had to go out to her friends with her thumbs turned down?

Would she be able to laugh it off? Or would she be distressed? Angry? Humiliated? Vengeful?

I don't know. Whatever I do, I can see trouble. You can see why I wish I had you here by my side so I could lay out the situation before you and beg for your wise advice. But I can't, so I've decided to do what any sensible man would do in such circumstances.

I'm going to run.

Not far and not for long. It's Saturday tomorrow. On Sunday Hildi and Zazie are heading off to join their families for the festive season. And on Monday, Christmas Eve, Linda and her cronies will arrive at Fichtenburg. So tomorrow's the real danger point. I suppose I could find an excuse for keeping out of the way, but I've learned from experience that no risk is negligible. Elimination is the better part of avoidance!

So I've packed a bag, written a note to Frau Buff asking her to make my apologies, and tomorrow first thing I'm going to start doing what I came to Switzerland to do in the first place. I'm off to Zurich to pursue my researches into Thomas Lovell Beddoes, and I shan't come back to Fichtenburg till Monday, when hopefully her mother's presence and her friends' absence will combine to keep Mouse in her right senses.

Ihrer guter Freund

Franny

In the no-man's land between Christmas and New Year, a deathly stillness falls across the ravaged landscape with devastated survivors picking their way carefully round the shops exchanging rubbish they have been bought for rubbish more to their taste, while in empty offices telephones shrill their urgent summonses in vain. It's as if the great heart of the city has paused to breathe, and even crime itself has taken a rest.

It is a lull which policemen take advantage of in many different ways. Andy Dalziel used it for a bit of deep thought, which might have surprised the casual spectator, for in his work as in his play on the rugby fields of his younger days what caught the eye was the sheer brutality of his approach.

But there was more to him than just destruction. Not for him the expense of energy in vain pursuit of the fleet young gazelles behind the scrum. Instead he sent his mind after them, plotting the likely progress of a move on the basis of what he knew of his opponents, what he saw of the conditions. He wasn't always right, but at the end of a game many an opposing winger wondered how it was that after jinking his way round the full back, instead of open countryside ahead, he had found himself, like Childe Roland, suddenly confronted by the Dark Tower.

For Dalziel this calm between the two great orgies was time to sit and read the game.

There was a smell of danger in his nostrils and he didn't yet know precisely where it was coming from except that it had something to do with the Wordman case.

The case was officially resolved and he had the plaudits to prove it. What was more, it had been resolved in the best possible way. Not only had the perpetrator been caught in the act, he'd been killed in the act, thus at the same time providing incontrovertible evidence of his guilt and depriving all those arty-farty-Number-10-party, greenery-yallery-play-to-the-gallery lawyers of any opportunity to controvert it.

Of course only the Law could decide a man's guilt, but you can't libel the dead, and the papers hadn't held back from doing what the courts couldn't by crying Gotcha! and proclaiming Dick Dee Guilty as not charged!

A good story. But how much better a story it became, now that everyone except those most personally involved had forgotten the triumphing tabloid headlines, if one of the same papers could dig up evidence to suggest a doubt.

He thought of Penn's crack about the truth dropping through his letter box some morning. Watch this space! he'd said.

And hadn't Pascoe's chum, Roote, said that Penn was mouthing off about getting help?

That dangerous smell had a strong reek of investigative journalism about it.

This was bad news. Nowadays investigative journalism wasn't just some nosey reporter wanting to make a name, it was big business. If a paper felt there was something to get its teeth into, there would be no shortage of money, expertise or advanced surveillance equipment. And they didn't play by the rules.

He'd thought Dee's death had blown no-side on the Wordman game, but now it looked like somewhere out there the ball might be back in play.

A lesser man might have expended emotion agonizing over the possibility that the police had got it wrong, and wasted his time going over the whole investigation with a fine-tooth comb in search of flaws. Not Andy Dalziel. OK, he'd put someone on it, but meanwhile his place was not at post mortems. Out there on the field was where things got settled. Be first at the breakdown and make sure that after all the shoving and wrestling and kicking and punching are over, you're the man who comes up with possession.

And the best way of doing that was to be the man who hit the bastard with the ball in the first place. So, who to hit?

Not Charley Penn. He'd hit him already and it was clear Charley was indestructible in his conviction that Dee was innocent. Didn't matter. Charley was a nuisance, but writers weren't newsworthy, not unless they were very old, very rich, or very obscene. No, the guy who needed chopping off at the knees was the sodding journalist.

He'd be out there somewhere. And he wouldn't be coming at you like good old Sammy Ruddlesdin of the Gazette, fag on lip, notebook in hand, asking where you'd buried the bodies. Nowadays the sting was the thing; they donned disguises, got you relaxed, listened sympathetically as you talked, and all the time the little recorder they'd got taped to their dick was whirring away. Or to their tit. Let's not be sexist about this.

Targets? They'd want a cop. Bowler was an obvious choice. Key witness to Dee's murderous attack on Rye Pomona, plus he was young and impressionable. Definitely the tit-tape there. Rye herself. Get her to admit what Dalziel had gleaned from her tearful ramblings while Bowler lay at death's door – that she had been stripped off, all systems go for a bit of bump and grind with Dirty Dick before the cavalry came on the scene. By the time she was fit to make a written statement, he had nudged her into several small shifts of emphasis so that her readiness to perform had been reduced to a pleasant relaxation induced by wine and warmth from an open fire. Her voluntary nudity was nowhere mentioned. In the confrontational atmosphere of a criminal court, there was no way she could have got away with such fudgings, but the gentle questionings of a sympathetic coroner had sketched a picture of a modern young woman believing her boss was making a play for her and trying to turn him down, when suddenly to her horror it became clear that it was a knife Dee wanted to stick into her, not his knob.

Clearly the version of the incident which Penn would have been urging on his tabloid accomplice was that, having been led to the very brink of passion's pool by this prick-teasing tart then told he couldn't drink, Dee had reacted like any normal stallion and kicked out in fury and frustration. Enter jealous boyfriend, and battle was joined. As for Dee's knife, well, he was going to make toast, wasn't he? And when the big boys arrived on the scene and realized that one of their own had been in a fight and a member of the public lay dead, they'd set about rearranging the facts to make it look like a good killing.

Dalziel was uncomfortably aware that the tidying up he'd done both of the scene and of both Rye's and Hat's account of events would provide some sustenance for Penn's version. His motive had been to protect his young officer from accusation of undue force and the girl from any hint that she was no better than she ought to be, and everything that he'd said or done had been underpinned by his utter conviction that Dick Dee was the Wordman. But he didn't think the tabloids would be much interested in making fine distinctions between a tidy-up and a cover-up.

So, apart from Hat and Rye, what would an investigative journalist go after?

The transcript of the inquest proceedings was in the public domain, so they'd already have that. But there were other things the bastard would be eager to get his hands on. Like police and medical records, particularly the PM on Dee. And GPS records. Dan Trimble, ever a belts-and-braces man, had wanted a GPS opinion to back up the assumption of Dee's guilt. What the CPS had replied was that their business was with realities not hypotheses, but all things being equal maybe there was just a chance that a prosecution could possibly have been successful… perhaps…

Par for the course, Dalziel had growled. And now he groaned at what the Sunday Smear or the Daily Dirt might make of all those hesitations and qualifications.

Frankly, but, it didn't matter what they made of it. It was, from their point of view, such a very good case, weird, bloody, baffling, terrifying and at times grimly comic, that even though the dust had hardly settled, already it must feel ripe for a re-run, and if some smart hack could make a story out of Penn's half-baked allegations, let's go for it!

So, how to proceed? Cover everything was the textbook policy. He'd worked out the road he thought this still-hypothetical hack would take, so warn those who needed warned, and send one of your own down the same road. Preferably a new face, fresh eyes.

He picked up his phone, pressed a number, said, 'Ivor there? Send her in, will you?'

Detective Constable Shirley Novello had been hors de combat during most of the Wordman investigation. When she returned, Bowler had been on convalescent leave. Now he was back too, it was evident to the Fat Man's sharp eye that a healthy rivalry for top DC status existed between them. Meaning, given the right direction, both would go the extra mile in the hope of impressing their lord and master.

Yes, Ivor would do very nicely as a key figure in defence.

But this didn't affect Dalziel's gut feeling that this wasn't one to counter with subtle defensive tactics, this was one to hit in mid-flight with a hospital tackle!

Such was the conclusion he reached after long dark brooding, and now the light of action came back to his eyes, and he rose like that famous bull from the sea summoned by Theseus to destroy his own son as he fled from the scene of his monstrous crime.

Of course, Hippolytus was completely innocent, but Theseus didn't know that, and it made not a jot of difference to the bull.

Peter Pascoe had pondered long and hard Ellie's well-reasoned assertion that the best way to deal with his Franny Roote 'obsession' was to test it to destruction.

His own conclusion, reached with impeccable male logic, was that when the woman whose body you worship and whose wisdom you respect above all others takes time off to analyse your problems, the only thing to do is prove she is completely wrong.

Roote, he told himself, was not a problem either to resist or resolve. He was a minor irritation which if ignored would eventually go away.

On the twenty-sixth he returned to work, refreshed and ready to make huge inroads into the paper mountain that towers on the desk of most modern CID officers. He did well and didn't think about Roote more than three times. Or four if you counted the time the phone rang and for nearly a minute he didn't pick it up, convinced it was Franny ringing from Switzerland, but it turned out to be DI Rose from South Yorkshire just wondering if maybe he'd got a whisper about the Big Job which he was sure was on, not because he'd heard anything more but because his snout had mysteriously gone missing… Of course while Rose wasn't Roote, the connection was there (making a fifth time) and had to be broken again after he'd assured the DI that Edgar Wield was burrowing away on his behalf even as they spoke.

But he went home pretty pleased with himself on the whole and he woke up the following morning convinced he'd heard the last from Roote and certain that today would see him well on the way to that most desirable of states – a clear desk for a New Year.

Then in the hall he saw the envelope with the familiar handwriting and a Swiss stamp.

From the car on the way to work he rang Dr Pottle to make an appointment and was told he could come instantly as the doctor's first two patients that morning had cancelled as a result of a Yuletide suicide pact.

Pottle, Head of the Central Hospital Psychiatric Unit, part-time lecturer in Mid-Yorkshire University and adviser to the police on matters where his discipline and theirs overlapped, was Pascoe's occasional analyst and sort of friend, meaning Pascoe liked him on the possibly irrational ground that he resembled the kind of psychiatrist you might meet in a Woody Allen film, with sad spaniel eyes and explosive hair whose luminous greyness was in fetching contrast to an Einstein moustache stained a gingery brown as a result of the endless chain of cigarettes depending from his nether lip.

Patients who objected were told, 'I'm here to help with your problems. If my smoking figures among them, leave now and I'll bill you for solving one of them.'

Pascoe showed him the letters. He didn't have to explain about Roote. They'd talked about him before.

Pottle read the letters as he read everything at an amazing speed which Ellie suspected was spoof and done simply to impress. But Pascoe knew she was wrong. Pottle in his consulting room was the Sibyl in her cave, a mortal conduit for the voice of a god, and it was the god's eyes that scanned the words at a rate beyond a human's.

'Should I be worried?' asked Pascoe.

'Should you be asking me that question?' said Pottle.

Pascoe considered, rephrased.

'Is there anything in the letters which you would interpret as concealing, or containing, or implying a threat to me or to mine?'

'If you are threatened by mockery, certainly. If you are threatened by dependency, perhaps. If you are threatened by sheer incomprehension, I can't help you, as I do not have sufficient data fully to understand the letters myself.'

'Yes, but should I be worried?' repeated Pascoe impatiently.

'There you go again. Do you want me to try to understand you, Peter, or do you want me to try to understand Mr Roote?'

Another pause for reflection then Pascoe said, 'Roote. Me I can cope with. Him I've no idea about, except that I don't think he's up to any good.'

'So what do you think he's up to?'

'I think he's enjoying trying to screw up my mind. I think he's probing all the time for weak points. And I think he's getting off on telling me about illegalities he's involved with in such a way I can't do anything about them.'

'Examples?'

The assault in the shower at Chapel Syke, he admits to that. And then at St Godric's, I think he set fire to the Dean's Lodging, and I've got a strong suspicion he assaulted Dean Albacore and left him to die.'

'Good lord. When I read about it, I saw no reference to the possibility of foul play.'

'No, you wouldn't. That's my point.'

'Sorry, I missed that. Evidence?'

'Nothing outside the letters, except a bit of circumstantial with regard to Albacore’

He spelt out his theory.

'And is this suspicion shared by your colleagues in Cambridge?'

'They're thinking about it’ said Pascoe evasively.

'I see. This probing for weak points – what would they be exactly?'

'He's telling me that maybe I took the wrong path becoming a cop instead of heading into academe. He's showing me that time in jail can move you on a lot further than time in the police force. He keeps drumming on about me being a sedate old married man whose willpower he admires and whose advice he desires while all the time he's trying to make me envious of him being fancy-free, with girls falling into his bed more or less ad lib.'

'Wow,' said Pottle. 'And does he make you envious?'

'Of course not. Most of the stuff he writes is fantasy anyway.'

'Except the bits you want to believe where he seems to be admitting to some crime?'

'No, I mean yes… Look, I thought you were going to concentrate on Roote not me?'

'It's proving hard to separate the two. Anything else you want to tell me, Peter?'

'Such as?'

'Anything about this vision of you he claims to have had, for instance?'

Pascoe blinked then said quietly, 'Why do you ask that?'

'Because the letters are full of interesting things, but not many truly odd ones. The vision, however, was very odd indeed. And the omission of it from your catalogue of complaints strikes me as odd too. I mean, you clearly want to think that Roote is mentally unhinged, yet you make no reference to the only piece of prima-facie evidence that he may be two groats short of a guinea. So?'

Another blink, then Pascoe said helplessly, 'I saw him too.'

He told the tale. Pottle said, 'Interesting. Let's turn to his sessions with Ms Haseen.'

'Hey, what happened to my visionary moment?'

'Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must keep silent. You've read her book?'

'Yes; well, the relevant bits.'

The relevant bits,' echoed Pottle. 'Indeed. Interesting how our friend gave you the precise reference to save you the bother of ploughing through all that clayey prose and making educated guesses. Let me see…'

He reached to the bookcase behind him and plucked a black-jacketed volume which Pascoe recognized off a shelf. Then, without reference to the letters, he flicked to what Pascoe could see upside down was the right page and did his speed-read trick again.

'Poor Amaryllis,' he said. 'She is pretty well the opposite of dear Goldsmith who, you recall, according to Garrick, wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.'

'You know her,' said Pascoe, interested.

'We have met professionally. Indeed, should be doing so again next month when the Winter Symposium of the Yorkshire Psychandric Society, of which I am the current Chair, takes place in Sheffield. Amaryllis Haseen is scheduled to give a paper.'

'But surely in view of what happened, she'll be cancelling?'

'I suggested so in my letter of condolence. She has replied that on the advice of her analyst she is minded to keep the date. She is a woman of great resilience.'

'Evidently’ said Pascoe. 'So how do you rate her? I mean, if you've invited her to address your society, I presume you don't think she's a dud?'

'Far from it,' said Pottle. 'What you're really asking is how much notice you should take of what she says about Roote in her book. I would advise you not to disregard it. She is, as you would see if you'd read the whole book rather than just the bits Roote directed your attention to, a meticulous worker, capable of great insight and not easily fooled.'

'And yet,' said Pascoe, 'in the question of Roote's relationship with his father, she has had the wool pulled completely over her eyes. The man died while he was still a babe in arms. All these so-called memories are pure invention.'

'Is that so? You surprise me.'

If you'd met Roote you wouldn't be surprised,' said Pascoe fervently. 'He's the great deceiver.'

'Except in your case? Perhaps, Peter, you should retrain as a psychiatrist.'

'Maybe I will. And maybe I'll come along to your Symposium if I'm free.'

'Be my guest’ said Pottle. 'Indeed it might be doubly worth your while for, by one of those coincidences which people only object to in detective novels, another of our speakers is this chap Frere Jacques that your friend Roote refers to.'

'I didn't think your members would have much interest in all that hippy-happy stuff.'

'Peter, I hope you won't be offended if I point out that from time to time you sound disturbingly like your lord and master, Mr Dalziel. Man's relationship with death is a very proper area of study for people in my profession. Indeed you might argue that in some ways it is the only thing that we study. Frere Jacques, though far from free of religion's tendency to poetic waffle at the expense of systematic rigour, has many interesting things to say. We are fortunate to get the chance to listen to him. Also, as he's touring the country promoting the book, we are fortunate to get him for free and his publishers even cough up for a small amount of relaxing booze’

'Cheap and cheerful then’ said Pascoe. 'So when exactly is this knees-up?'

'Saturday January nineteenth’ said Pottle. 'Your motive in attending would be…?'

To see for myself a couple more experts whose strings Franny Roote is pulling.'

'Ah. I see. The open-mind approach then. Peter, don't rush to judgment. Read Frere Jacques' book. He has a fine perceptive mind, not easily fooled, I'd say. And, like I said before, read Haseen's book all the way through.'

'And if I do, will I find any mention of the way he more or less blackmailed this objective professional into recommending his transfer to Butlins?' asked Pascoe cynically.

'Peter, once again you're cherry-picking. If you distrust parts of Roote's letters then you must distrust the whole, until you have evidence to the contrary. A common feature of the obsessive personality is a belief that everybody else has got everything wrong’

Pascoe's face assumed what Ellie called his sulky look, which he himself, if pressed, might have described as the politely stoical expression of one who has heard all the arguments to the contrary but prefers to trust his own judgment.

He glanced at his watch. He should have been at work fifty minutes ago.

'So, bottom line, how do you read Roote's motives in writing these letters?' he asked.

Pottle did the little piece of legerdemain which turned the glowing cinder at his lip into a whole new cigarette and said, 'Difficult. I think he has motives which he knows, and motives which he believes he knows, and motives which he is only dimly aware of. Perhaps your best approach is to simplify matters. To this end, I would advise that you ask yourself why he wrote to you in the first place. Then ask yourself why he wrote to you in the second place. And then in the third place. And so on, till the picture is complete.'

He clapped his hands together then threw them apart in a gesture which momentarily cleared the veil of smoke that hung before his face.

Pascoe knew from old experience that this signalled the end of the session and for a second he felt some sympathy with Andy Dalziel's most printable reaction to trick cyclists and their works. 'Any other bugger made my brain hurt like that, I'd kick him in the goolies till his eyes popped out of their sockets.'

But only for a second.

'Thank you kindly. Doctor,' he said. 'That's been a great help. I think.'

'Good. Till next time then, when perhaps we can start looking at you.'