Death’s Jest-Book

‘No? Oh well, I expect by the time you got to school, it ’ud be all this modern stuff, full of four letter words and no rhymes.’

‘Blank verse doesn’t rhyme,’ said Pascoe unwisely.

‘I know it bloody doesn’t. But it doesn’t need to ’cos it sounds like poetry, right? And it’s a bit miserable. This poem’s right miserable. Sore Arse kills Rusty Bum and then finds out the bugger’s only his own son. So he sits there all night next to the body in the middle of this sort of desert, the Chorasmian waste he calls it, while all around these armies are busy doing what armies do, one of the saddest scenes in Eng. Lit., Beenie said, and this river, the Oxus, keeps on rolling by. Bit like “OL’ Man River” really.’

‘So where’s the Aral Sea come in?’ asked Pascoe.

‘I’m telling you,’ said Dalziel.

He struck a pose and started to declaim in a sing-song schoolboy kind of way, end-stopping each line with no regard for internal punctuation or overall sense.

............................................... till at last.

The long’d-for dash of waves is heard and wide.

His luminous home of waters opens bright.

And tranquil from whose floor the new-bathed stars.

Emerge and shine upon the Aral Sea.

‘Now that’s fucking poetry, no mistake,’ he concluded.

‘And that’s the end of this sore and rusty poem?’ said Pascoe. ‘And old Beenie … ?’

‘Mr Beanland, MA Oxon. He could have thrown chalk for England. Put your eye out at twenty feet. He went on and on about this Aral Sea, how remote and beautiful and mysterious it were. And now this Yank says it’s drying up, and tourists go to see it, and it’s not there. Like life, eh? Like fucking life.’

‘It isn’t a correspondence that leaps up and hits me in the eye,’ said Pascoe sourly.

‘Which is what I’d do if I had a stick of chalk,’ growled the Fat Man. ‘Any road, talking of correspondence, why’m I wasting precious police time reading your mail?’

‘Because it’s from Franny Roote, because it contains implied threats, because in it he admits complicity in several crimes. And,’ Pascoe concluded, like an English comic at the Glasgow Empire seeing his best gags sink in a sea of indifference and desperately reaching for any point of contact, ‘because he refers to you as Rumbleguts.’

But even this provocation to complicity failed.

‘Oh aye. When you’ve been insulted by experts that sounds like a term of endearment,’ said the Fat Man indifferently.

‘Glad to find you so philosophical,’ said Pascoe. ‘But the threats …’

‘What threats? I can’t see no threats. How about you, Wieldy? You see any threats?’

The sergeant glanced apologetically at Pascoe and said, ‘Not as such.’

‘Not as such,’ mimicked Dalziel. ‘Meaning not at fucking all! The bugger goes out of his way to say that he’s not writing a threatening letter. In fact he seems to rate you so highly, it wouldn’t surprise me if he ended up sending you a Valentine card!’

‘That’s all part of it, don’t you see? Like this play he goes on about, Death’s Jest-Book, it’s all some kind of grisly joke. That stuff about the ambiguities of revenge, one brother becoming dead friendly with the Duke, the other bursting with hate, that’s Roote telling me how he feels.’

‘No it’s not. In fact I recall he says quite clear he feels like the friendly brother. And all these crimes you’re going on about, what would they be?’

Pascoe opened the file he was carrying and produced several sheets of paper.

‘You’ve not been playing with your computer again?’ said Dalziel. ‘You’ll go blind.’

‘Harold Bright, known as Brillo,’ said Pascoe. ‘Banged up in the Syke the same time as Roote. Had an accident in the shower. Cracked his head. Traces of ammonia-based cleansing fluid found in eyes but never explained. Complications during treatment. Died.’

‘And good riddance,’ said Dalziel. ‘I remember the Brights. Hospitalized two of ours when they got arrested, one of ’em had to take early retirement. Dendo still inside?’

‘No. Finished in Durham, but he got out last month.’

‘Problem solved then. Send him Roote’s address. He sorts out your lad, we bang Dendo up again for the duration. Two for the price of one.’

Over the years Pascoe had come to a pretty good understanding of when the Fat Man was joking, but there were still some grey areas where he felt it better not to enquire.

He said, ‘My point is, we know a man died, and now we have Roote’s confession.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Dalziel. ‘His admission might as well have been written by Hans Andersen. And, like he says himself, where are you going to get witnesses? Any road, if he did do it, he deserves a medal. Owt else?’

‘I checked that Polchard was there the same time as Roote, and the Syke’s Chief Officer remembers they played chess together,’ said Pascoe sulkily.

‘You going to do Roote for cheating then? I remember Mate Polchard. Right tricky sod. He out yet?’

Wield whose job it was to know everything said, ‘Yes, sir. Came out in the summer. Went off to his place in Wales to recuperate.’

Polchard was out of the normal run of thugs in more than just his penchant for chess. Not for him the comforts of a Spanish villa with a plethora of Costa fleshpots on his doorstep. His preferred hideaway was a remote Welsh farmhouse in Snowdonia. But when it came to protecting his interests, he ran true to type. Shortly after he bought the farm, a barn belonging to it was burnt down and a message sprayed on a wall in Welsh with under it a helpful translation. Go home Englishman or next time it’s the house. A few days later the local leader of the main Welsh activist group awoke in the early hours to find three men in his room. They were unarmed and unmasked, which he found more worrying than reassuring. They spoke to him politely, showing him a list of the addresses of perhaps a dozen members of his group, his own at the head, and assured him that in the event of any further interference with Mr Polchard’s property, every one of these houses would be reduced to rubble within a fortnight. Then they left. Fifteen minutes later his garden shed blew up and burned with such ferocity it was a pile of cinders long before the fire brigade got near. No complaint was made, but Police Intelligence soon picked up the story, which Dalziel retailed now, at length, to signal his interest in Roote was over.

But Pascoe listened with barely concealed impatience to the oft-told tale and used it as a cue to wrest the subject back.

‘Polchard’s not the only one who’s good at fires,’ he said. ‘This fire Roote writes about at St Godric’s, I’ve got several newspaper reports here and I’ve been on to the Cambridge Fire Service Investigation Department and they’re getting back to me …’

‘Hold on, lad. Stop right there,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ve not had this letter X-rayed and tested for poisoned ink like you, but I have read it, and I don’t recall owt in it coming in hosepipe distance of an admission of arson! Did I miss summat? Wieldy, how about you?’

The sergeant shook his head.

‘No, definitely no admission, not as such …’

‘There you go again. Not as such! As what then if not such?’

Pascoe had had enough.

He interrupted angrily, ‘For Christ’s sake, what’s up with you two? It’s as plain as the nose on your face, he’s mocking us, that’s the whole point of the letter. Even without the letter, I’d have known something was wrong. Look at the facts. Franny Roote is a nobody, an ex-con, working as a gardener. Then his tutor, Sam Johnson, gets killed and Roote manages to sweet-talk Johnson’s sister into dropping his almost completed book on Beddoes into Roote’s lap. Suddenly from being an academic nobody, he’s set for the big league. One obstacle – there’s competition in the shape of this guy Albacore, who looks set to get his oeuvre in the shops several months earlier. Roote and Albacore meet. Albacore thinks he’s cut a deal. Take Roote on board, squeeze the juice of Johnson’s researches out of him, and then, of course, he’d be able to drop Roote like the nasty little turd he is. Only he doesn’t know yet that this turd’s got teeth.’

Dalziel who’d been listening with his great maw open in maximum gobstopped mode burst out, ‘A turd with teeth! I told thee, this is what comes of reading modern poetry!’

Pascoe who was a trifle vain about his style looked embarrassed but pressed on, ‘But what happens? There’s a fire and Albacore ends up dead and his work goes up in smoke. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Like I say, I’d have been suspicious if I’d read about it in the paper. But that’s not enough for the scrote! He has to write to me and gloat about it!’

‘Gloat? I got no gloat. How about you, Wieldy? You step in any gloat? And if you say not as such, I’ll pull your tongue out and ram it up your neb!’

Wield touched his lips with his tongue as if rehearsing the manoeuvre and said, ‘Not … that I could say definitely was gloating. But like I say, if Pete’s got a feeling … and I agree that Roote’s a tricky bastard …’