Death's Jest-Book (25 page)

Half a day wasted with no result.
These things happened, policemen got used to them, but such
philosophy did not dilute his intention of being seriously sarcastic
with Wield.

He saw him on the phone as he
entered the CID room. The sergeant made a summoning gesture, then
said into the phone, 'He's just come in.'

'Who?' mouthed Pascoe as he
approached.

'Rose’ mouthed Wield in
return, giving Pascoe a moment of fright as he wondered what crisis
had got his young daughter ringing him at work. Then Wield, who
missed little, saw the reaction and expanded, 'DI Rose.'

This, though a relief, meant
nothing, till he took the phone and said, 'Pascoe.'

'Hi there. Stanley Rose.'

'Stanley . .. ? Stan! Hello. And
DI! When did this happen? Many congratulations.'

The last time he'd talked to
Rose, the man had been a DS in South Yorkshire and the occasion had
been the case which brought Franny Roote back into his life.

Looking at people who might think
threatening Ellie was a good way to pay old scores, he'd liaised with
Rose when he discovered Roote was living in Sheffield. It had all
been done by the book, but when Pascoe had turned up to interview
Roote, he'd found him lying in his bath with his wrists cut. In fact,
the cuts were not very deep and he was more likely to have died from
hypothermia than blood loss, but naturally rumours of undue pressure
had circulated and for a while both Rose and Pascoe looked
susceptible to charges of harassment. But Roote was (in Pascoe's
eyes) far too subtle a serpent to risk all on a single strike. So he
had made no complaint, but his silence was, (to Pascoe's ears) the
silence of the snake lurking in the long grass.

So, no official action or
come-back. But in the ledgers of CID, to go on to someone else's
patch and cause them embarrassment left you with a debt to pay, and
Pascoe guessed it was being called in now.

'Beginning of the month,' said
Rose. They must have been wondering what to give me for Christmas and
I'd been dropping hints all year.'

'I'm delighted. Long overdue,'
said Pascoe. 'Remind me to buy you a drink next time we meet. So what
can I do for you, Stan?'

On the surface it was a simple
request for liaison and co-operation. Rose had got a whisper from a
snout of a job that was being planned in the New Year. The
information was vague. The forward planning suggested it was big, as
did the fact that it involved the recruitment of a top driving and
muscle team - which was how the snout had got the whisper. And though
the organizational nerve centre was in South, word was that the job
itself could be over the Mid-Yorkshire border.

'Sorry it's all so waffly,'
concluded Rose. 'But it occurred to me that you might spot a few
straws in the wind your side, and they might not seem worth much by
themselves, but together . . . well, maybe we could make a brick.'

So, there it was, a more or less
token request, a formality which if not quite empty would in the vast
majority of cases prove lamentably unproductive.

But Pascoe, because he owed Rose
and because he could recall those early days after he had taken that
large step from sergeant to DI, read the sub-text.

Rose wanted to make a good early
impression. He'd been delighted when his snout was the first with
this sniff. Probably he'd made rather more of it than it merited at
that stage and when, after a couple of weeks, nothing more had been
forthcoming, he'd begun to feel rather foolish. Certainly his
colleagues in the rough and ready ethos of the CID wouldn't be
backward in asking him how the great crime of the new century was
coming on! Perhaps he'd been provoked into once more overselling what
remained an insubstantial maybe. So he looked around for help. Who
owed him? DCI Peter Pascoe, one of the famous Andy Dalziel's
brightest and best, who happened to work on the patch mentioned as a
putative location for the putative job, that was who!

So it was worth a punt calling in
that debt which, furthermore, would be understood to include the
major share of credit should anything ever come of this business.

Pascoe asked questions, made
notes and encouraging noises.

'OK,' he said finally. ‘I’ll
pull out all the stops, Stan, believe me.'

I'm grateful,' said Rose. This is
really good of you.'

'Self-interest,'laughed Pascoe.
'If we don't help each other, we'll be a long time waiting for any
other bugger. You see a Samaritan coming towards you these days, it's
probably because he fancies putting the boot in.'

These were Dalziel's views rather
than his own; indeed it was possibly the Fat Man's very phraseology.
But he felt few qualms about voicing them. Just as Wield had kept his
gayness under wraps in order to survive in his chosen profession, so
Pascoe had recognized early on that educational achievement and
liberal humanism were not exactly episematic qualities in the still
very traditional police force. A common soldier may have a field
marshal's baton hidden in his knapsack, but he was never going to get
the chance to wield it if he didn't learn the language of the barrack
room.

'You're right there,' said Rose.
Things don't go away either. I was just telling your Sergeant Wield,
that student he was asking about a while back in connection with a
possible suicide

'Sorry?' said Pascoe. 'I don't
recall.. .'

But of course he did. Roote's
tutor at Sheffield University, Sam Johnson, had (according to rumour)
made his move to Mid-Yorkshire as a result of his reaction to the
sudden death of Jake Frobisher, a student he'd put under pressure to
bring his work up to date or be sent down. When Johnson himself died
in suspicious circumstances, Pascoe had used the possibility that
he'd committed suicide to instruct Wield to check up on Frobisher's
death, allegedly with a view to providing the coroner with a full
picture of the lecturer's state of mind. But he knew, and Wield had
guessed, that his real hope had been to find some link, however
remote, between Franny Roote and both tragedies.

'Jake Frobisher. Some link with
that lecturer who was one of your Wordman victims.'

'Of course. Yes, I remember.
Turned out he was popping pills to keep himself awake to meet some
work deadline, wasn't that it?'

That's right. Accidental death,
clear cut. Only complication was, when his gear was sent to his
family, his sister started asking questions about some expensive
watch she said was missing, implication being that one of our lot had
nicked it. Well, it all got sorted, no evidence, no case, his mum
didn't want a fuss, in fact she didn't even recollect the watch in
question. End of story, right?'

'Should be,' said Pascoe
neutrally, letting his gaze drift towards Wield, who was peering into
a screen as if he saw his future there. 'But I'm not going to bet on
it.'

'Wise man,' said Rose. 'Sophie,
that's the sister, - started here as a student in September, and lo
and behold, end of last term she got pulled in with a bunch of other
kids all high as kites on speed. Must run in the family, eh? We found
a great stash of the stuff in her room, which incidentally is in the
same house her brother died in - how's that for morbid? Anyway, the
little cow, instead of putting her hand up, starts claiming it was
planted there so we could get our own back for her daring to accuse
us of nicking her brother's watch! Case came up yesterday. The bloody
magistrate lets her ramble on through the whole sad story, wipes a
tear away from his eye, glowers at me on the witness bench, and gives
her a conditional discharge! I told her afterwards she was lucky and
she'd better be careful or she'll, end up like her brother. Having my
watch nicked, you mean? she says, and gives me the finger, then takes
off with her mates, laughing. It's a great job we've got, isn't it?'

'Yes,' said Pascoe thoughtfully.
'Yes, I believe it is. I'll be in touch, Stan.'

He put down the phone and stared
at Wield until the sergeant's head turned, as if compelled by the
force of Pascoe's gaze.

The DCI jerked his head in
summons and went through into his office.

The sergeant followed, closing
the door behind him.

Succinctly, Pascoe filled him in
on the day's debacle.

'So thanks a lot for that,
Wieldy,' he concluded. 'Nothing I like better than a scenic tour of
the county in mid-winter instead of wasting my time doing useful
things.'

'Pete, I'm sorry. I'll talk to my
informant and see . . .'

'Yeah yeah,' said Pascoe
impatiently. The failed job had dropped a long way down his priority
list of things to be pissed off with Wield about. 'Forget it. But
there's something else. Remember when Sam Johnson died, I asked you
to check out that student death in Sheffield, boy called Frobisher,
the one people seemed to think had upset Johnson so much he made the
move here to MYU?'

'I remember’ said Wield.

'And you told me it was all done
and dusted, accidental overdose, no loose ends.'

‘That's right.'

'What about this missing watch? I
don't recollect you mentioning that in your report. That not a loose
end?'

'Didn't look like one to me,'
said Wield. 'In fact it looked like it was probably nowt at all, not
worth mentioning, just a young lass being silly.'

'Even young lasses get over being
silly’ said Pascoe. 'Not this one though, eh?'

He hadn't wanted to sound
confrontational, but the sheer unreadability of the sergeant's face
was a provocation to provocation. For the first time he understood
how it must feel to be sitting opposite Wield in the interrogation
room.

The reply came in the quiet
reasonable voice of a patient father explaining life to a
recalcitrant son.

'If you remember, the reason you
gave for being interested in Frobisher was it might be relevant to
Johnson's state of mind if it turned out he'd topped himself. By the
time I got the details of Frobisher's accidental overdose, we knew
that Johnson had been murdered by the Wordman, so there was no way
for the lad's death to be relevant, not even if it had had more loose
ends than you'd find at a monk's wedding.'

The tone remained constant
throughout, but the concluding Dalzielesque image sent a message of
strong feeling which Pascoe gleefully registered as a minor victory,
of which he was almost simultaneously ashamed.

Wield had been then, and was now,
trying to save him from what he and probably everyone else regarded
as a dangerous obsession.

But they were wrong, Pascoe
assured himself. Not that he was absolutely,
bet-the-deeds-of-the-ranch certain he was right. But obsessions were
irrational and as he wasn't going to do anything that couldn't be
tested by reason, this was no obsession. As for danger, how could
this particular pursuit of truth be more dangerous than any other?

The only real danger he would
admit was that of falling out with those he loved most.

He said gently, 'Sorry, Wieldy.
I'm being a plonker, but everyone's entitled this time of year. Rose
tell you what he was after? No? Ah, well, it's me he feels owes him.'

He quickly ran through Rose's
request for help.

'Not much,' said Wield.

'Not much is overstating it.
Still, he's a good cop, so let's pull out the stops. Any sniff of
anything big going down on our patch, I want to know. Pass the word.'

'Even to Andy? He'll not be
chuffed at you paying off old debts on company time.'

'He's going to be even less
chuffed if something big did happen and South were sitting there
smugly saying, "Well, we did warn you!"'

Wield gave a small nod which
might have meant anything from he was totally convinced to he was
totally unpersuaded, but Pascoe watched him go, certain that his
instructions would be carried out to the full.

He took off
his overcoat, hung it up, then sat at his desk and on a piece of
paper wrote
Sophie Frobisher.
Then he added a question mark.

What the question was he wasn't
certain, nor indeed whether he'd ever ask it.

One thing was certain, thank God,
and that was that he needn't make any decision about it till next
month when the new university term began.

Perhaps by then Roote would have
faded to distant irritation. Perhaps the last letter in which he said
goodbye to England would prove to be a farewell letter in every
sense.

And perhaps Christmas would be
cancelled this year!

Pascoe laughed.

Dalziel said, 'Glad to see you're
in such a good mood.'

Shit! Is there a secret passage
he uses to get into my room? wondered Pascoe.

'I was just coming to see you,
sir. Dud tip, I'm afraid, complete waste of time

'Half right’ said the Fat
Man. 'About the waste of time, but not the tip.'

'Sorry?'

'I've just had an angry call from
Berry at Praesidium. Says he thought we were taking care of his wages
van today.'

'Yes, sir, and we did until it
made its last drop . . . Shit, you're not saying .. . ?'

He was.

The Praesidium security men,
after a day spent in the expectation of imminent attack, had felt
they deserved a soothing cup of tea on the way back, to which end
they had pulled into the lorry park of a roadside cafe on the bypass
just north of town. As they got out of the van, they were jumped on
by a bunch of masked men armed with baseball bats and at least one
sawn-off shotgun. Surprised in every sense, they put up no resistance
and were left unharmed, locked in a white transit van, tucked away in
a remote corner of the lorry park where they might have remained a
lot longer if Morris Berry, the Praesidium boss, hadn't noticed his
van suddenly vanish from the screen. He'd sent someone to investigate
at the last known location and they'd heard noises from the transit.
By the time Pascoe arrived on the scene, he found the security men
enjoying their now even more necessary soothing cup of tea and
sufficiently recovered to be much amused at the image of the thieves'
gobsmacked expressions when they found they'd got a vanload of
nothing.