Death’s Jest-Book

He found himself looking straight into Roote’s dark unblinking eyes.

He was standing on the path which ran down the side of the church, partially obscured by a large memorial cross in weathered white marble. The distance was thirty or forty feet, but the expression of compassionate mockery was as clear as a close-up.

The church clock started striking the hour.

For two strikes of the bell they looked at each other.

Then Pascoe started to open the car door but found he’d parked too close to a wizened yew tree, so he slid over to the passenger side and scrambled out.

As he stood upright and looked towards the church, the clock’s ninth strike sounded.

The churchyard was empty.

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

Nothing. Nobody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her arms went round him and drew him down.

‘How’s your head?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know. I think I’m having delusions.’

‘So why don’t we delude ourselves again?’

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

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

‘What’s that?’ she said.

‘Goldfinch.’

‘And that?’

‘Mistle thrush.’

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

‘What had you in mind?’

‘Sausage, bacon and egg, for starters.’

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

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

‘Have you no shame?’ he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Meaning?’

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

She was listening to him with a frowning intensity.

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

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

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