I can’t say that I was too pleased to see him as my head was full of ideas, but I owe him a lot for recent kindnesses and could not decently refuse his invitation to pop out for a coffee and a chat.
As we drank our coffee, I told him about my excitements in Cambridge, which he found mildly entertaining, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere.
Finally I said, ‘Charley, you seem a bit down. Book going badly?’
‘No, that’s going fine, except I sometimes wonder, what’s the point? Heine, Beddoes, we work our knackers off to produce “the definitive work”, except of course it never is. At best it replaces the last definitive work and with a bit of luck we may pop our clogs before it gets replaced by the next one. Why do we do it, Fran?’
‘You know why,’ I said rather pompously. ‘We pursue the Holy Grail of Truth.’
‘Oh yeah? Well there’s only one truth I want to pursue and I’ve been getting nowhere.’
Oh God, I thought. Here we go. Dick Dee is innocent, OK!
I said, ‘Charley, if you’re getting nowhere, maybe it’s ’cos there’s nowhere to get.’
He shook his head and said, ‘Not true. But they’re clever, I’ll give ’em that. This is a fucking X-file. The truth is out there, under Andy Dalziel’s fat buttocks or up yon Pascoe’s tight arse. I wanted to do this by myself, but I’m not too proud to admit I need help. If the authorities won’t listen to me, I’ve got friends that will!’
I wasn’t sure what this meant. I don’t think he’s wrong about needing help, but I suspect that’s not the kind of help he’s got in mind. I could speculate, but I’m not going to. Frankly, if Charley’s obsession leads him into illegalities, I don’t want to know. A man in my situation needs to keep his relationship with the Law plain and unambiguous.
Which is why I feel I need to pass on my fears that Charley is so obsessed with proving his friend’s innocence that he’s capable of almost anything.
I do this not in any spirit of delation – my time at the Syke has conditioned me irredeemably to regard a grass as the lowest form of life – but in the sincere hope that by alerting you to Charley’s state of mind, you might be able to head him off from any indiscretion or, worse, illegality of behaviour.
Enough of that. On my return to the library, I found I was uncomfortably aware of Charley’s presence at the next table. It was like having Poe’s raven or Beddoes’ old crow of Cairo (which Sam amusingly points out is homophonous with the Christian monogram chi-rho, a pretty fancy which he plays with entertainingly for a page and a half before discarding it) brooding at my shoulder. So, though as I said before, I normally hate to be interrupted at my work, it was quite a relief when my mobile began to vibrate.
To my surprise it was Linda ringing from Strasbourg. Instantly I started to fantasize that Emerald had been on the phone to her, telling her she’d met me and later realized that I was the only man on earth for her! What idiots sex makes of us, eh?
Naturally it was nothing like this, though she knew of my meeting with Emerald as she’d been talking to Jacques on the phone. What concerned her more was the account she’d read in her paper of the events at God’s.
She questioned me closely, asked if I was all right, then with that savage ability to cut to the chase which is her political hallmark went on to say, ‘At least this means that you have a clear field for Sam’s book. You’ll want to get down to some serious work. When we met in Belgium, you mentioned that there were still a few things Sam had been working on about Beddoes’ time in Basel and Zurich. Worth following up, you reckon?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I mean, even if they turn out dead ends, the only way to be sure is to follow them as far as possible …’
‘Quite right. Like in politics, always cover your back so that you don’t find some pushy little squirt second-guessing you. Right, here’s what we do. Some chums have got a place in Switzerland. They’re heading for warmer climes for a month or two so they’ve given me use of their bunkhouse while they’re away and I’ll be spending Christmas there with a few people. It’s called Fichtenburg-am-Blutensee in Canton Aargau. The chalet there’s the perfect place for you to work, lovely and quiet – my party won’t be turning up till the twenty-fourth – and there’s easy access to both Zurich and Basel. How’s that sound?’
‘It sounds very nice,’ I said. ‘But maybe …’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘You’ll join us for the festivities, but otherwise you’ll be your own master. I’ve spoken to the housekeeper, Frau Buff, and she’ll expect you this evening …’
‘This evening!’ I exclaimed. It dawned on me that Linda wasn’t discussing possibilities but dictating arrangements! It had been the same when she’d contacted me last month to say that she was in Brussels for a meeting and had decided to spend the weekend in the Stranger House at Frère Jacques’ monastery and wouldn’t it be a good idea for me to actually meet the founder of Third Thought face to face? While I was still wondering how to refuse politely, she was telling me about my travel arrangements!
The same thing was happening now. I was booked on a tea-time flight from Manchester and my ticket would be waiting for me at the airport. A taxi driver would meet me at the arrivals gate at Zurich.
She rattled on in that peremptory manner of hers for a little while, but after the initial shock, I found that all I could think of was, will Emerald be there at Christmas?
I said, ‘That sounds marvellous, Linda. Both for the work, and for Christmas. It was beginning to look like being a bit lonely. But I don’t want to intrude on your family …’
‘You won’t,’ she said brusquely. ‘It will be a couple of political chums. And Frère Jacques will be with us, God willing. So, all fixed, right?’
And now disappointment made me dig my heels in a bit.
‘Getting to Manchester might be a problem. My car’s knackered … and there’s my work …’
‘Take a cab, bill it to me. As for work, that’s why you’re going,’ she snapped.
‘I meant, my job in the university gardens …’
I heard that snort of disbelief so familiar to millions of British viewers and listeners from her appearance on various chat shows. It had also been a distinctive punctuation of Labour speeches in parliamentary broadcasts before she fell out with her own leadership and flounced off to give the Europeans the benefit of her incredulity.
‘You’re a full-time scholar now, Fran, so it’s no longer necessary to cultivate your garden. The book’s the thing.’
Strange, I thought, that after so many years of estrangement from her stepbrother while he was alive she should be such an enthusiast of his work now that he was dead.
In the end, I did what most people do when Linda comes at them with their lives mapped out. I gave in.
And indeed the more I thought about her plan, the more attractive it seemed.
I really did want to do some serious work and what better place to do it in than a luxurious house (the wooden shack image of chalet I’d immediately discounted as the kind of pseudo-modest understatement by which the rich emphasize their wealth) in beautiful countryside with a nice motherly housekeeper to take care of my comfort?
I didn’t really need the uni library for anything other than a chair, as Linda had told me to extract from Sam’s personal library all those books I felt relevant to his researches. And I would be completely free from the oppressive presence of poor old Charley.
I went back in to collect my things and tell him of my change of plan.
He said indifferently, ‘Switzerland? Don’t stand in front of any cuckoo clocks.’
Finally I scribbled a note to Jack Dunstan, the Head Gardener, offering him my thanks and my notice.
So where am I now? On another train, that’s where! This time heading for Manchester. Some innate parsimony made me unable to take up Linda’s kind suggestion of travelling there by taxi. It would cost a fortune, and this train gets me there with plenty of time to spare.
&nb
sp; So there we are. I hope you and dear Mrs Pascoe and your lovely little girl have a merry Christmas, and now that I know why I’m writing to you, I hope you won’t think it an imposition if I drop you another line in what looks like it might be a very Happy New Year indeed!
Fondly yours,
Franny
Idon’t believe it!’ said Pascoe. ‘Here’s another one.’
‘Another what?’
‘Letter from Roote.’
‘Oh good. Anything’s better than these round robins so many people send with their cards. It’s the modern disease. The media’s full of it. The obsession with trivia.’
‘So how come you find Roote’s trivia so interesting?’
‘How come you find it so significant? Come on, let’s have a look.’
‘Hang on. There’s reams of it again.’
As he read, Ellie picked up the discarded pages and read in tandem.
Finishing just behind him she regarded his long pensive face across the breakfast table and said, ‘Well, friend, guru, father-figure, what’s bugging you this time?’
‘I feel … stalked.’
‘Stalked? That’s a bit strong, isn’t it? A couple of letters …’
‘Four. I think four letters constitutes a nuisance if not a stalking, especially when each of them separately is long enough to make several normal letters!’
‘In this e-mad age, perhaps. But there’s something rather touching about someone taking the time to write a good old-fashioned long narrative letter. And I don’t see how your detective neuroses can find anything even vaguely threatening in this one. In fact he goes out of his way to warn you to watch out for Charley Penn who, I must admit, has been rather odd since Dee’s death. Not that he ever says anything to me about it, being as I’m compromised by shagging one of the chief conspirators, but I can tell there’s something simmering down there somewhere.’
Ellie knew Penn much better than Pascoe. She’d been a member of a literary group he ran, and with the publication of her first novel scheduled for the spring, he had admitted her to the adytum of real writerhood and their acquaintance had taken a step towards friendship till Dee’s death had brought the barriers down.
‘You don’t think Charley’s going to come after me with a poisoned ballpoint, do you?’ said Pascoe.
‘There you go, paranoid every time. If he does have a go, he’s more likely to start sniping at you in print. That would be his way of attack. He’s a word man, after all.’
She realized what she’d said even as she said it. The last Wordman who’d touched their lives had used more than words to dispose of his many victims.
‘Well, there’s a comfort,’ said Pascoe. ‘So you think I should write to Roote and thank him fulsomely for his kind concern? Maybe invite him over for supper so that we can have a heart to heart about his love life?’
‘Could be interesting,’ said Ellie as if she took him seriously. ‘I think I could help him. There was a piece in one of the supplements not so long back about famous mothers and disaffected daughters, you know, the kind of thing hacks dredge up when they don’t have an original idea in their heads, which is ninety per cent of the time.’
‘And you treated it with the contempt it deserved, of course.’
‘No, I devoured every word avidly on the grounds that a few years hence, when I’m a rich and famous author, it could be my revolting child they’re writing about. Loopy Linda and her Emerald got a couple of paras. That girl sounds like she’s made it her life’s mission to disoblige her parents. So it could be Fran’s right and she’s just using the fornicating frère for her own ends.’
He said, ‘She’d better watch out if she tries that on Roote. She’ll need to get up very early in the morning to use that clever sod.’
‘From what he says, all she’ll need to do is go to bed very early in the evening,’ said Ellie. ‘But no need for you to lose any sleep, love. Even if he is planning to destroy you, Franny Roote is safely stowed in faraway Switzerland for the rest of the month, so we can concentrate all our attention on trying to survive the more conventional perils of Christmas, to wit, bankruptcy, mental breakdown and chronic dyspepsia.’
‘To wit?’ said Pascoe. ‘I hope getting published isn’t going to turn you precious.’
‘Piss off, noddy,’ said Ellie, grinning. ‘That basic enough for you?’
‘I hear and obey,’ said Pascoe, finishing his coffee. He rose, stooped over Ellie to give her a lingering kiss which she much appreciated. But her appreciation didn’t prevent her from noticing that during its execution, he slipped Franny Roote’s letter into his pocket.
In his office he read it again. Was he over-reacting? There was nothing in this letter which a just and rational man could interpret as a threat. And he could see how his attempt to turn the account of the fire at St Godric’s into a mockingly oblique confession of arson might appear to have more to do with neurotic prejudice than rational thought. He hadn’t got anything from the Cambridge Fire Department to back up his suspicions of criminality. The call he’d made to the Cambridge police had been more diplomatic than detective, just to put it on record that he’d been talking to the fire people. He’d spoken briefly to what sounded like an overworked sergeant, referred vaguely to a couple of cases of suspected arson in Mid-Yorkshire educational establishments and the usefulness of correlating statistics nationally, and asked to be kept informed of any developments. No mention of Roote. Why risk feelers being put out along that intricate net of unofficial police contacts which is just as important to the Force as the National Computer, resulting in the firm establishment of Franny Roote as dotty DCI Pascoe’s King Charles’s head?
He unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out an unlabelled file. When during the course of a couple of recent cases Roote had drifted back into his ken – or, as some might say, been dragged back – Pascoe had quite legitimately collated all existing material on the man. That remained in the official records. But this file, for private consumption only, contained copies and digests of that official material plus much unofficial stuff including all the recent letters, carefully marked with date of receipt.
It occurred to Pascoe that if it hadn’t been for the very first case of all, his path and Ellie’s, so divergent since their student days, might never have crossed again.
So Roote could claim to be their Cupid. Or Pandarus.
Not that he’d ever made such a claim, Pascoe rebuked himself. Stick with the facts.
And the facts were that this man had served his time, been a model prisoner earning maximum remission, co-operated fully with the services administrating his release programme, and settled down to a couple of worthy jobs (hospital portering and gardening) while pursuing a course of studies which would settle him eventually in the academic world, a shining example of the regenerative powers of the British penal system.
Hooray. Wild applause all round.
So why am I the only person sitting on his hands? wondered Pascoe.
In his eyes, Roote was neither reformed nor deterred, he was just a lot more careful.
But no defences are impregnable, else the country wouldn’t be full of ruined castles.
The phone rang.
‘DCI Pascoe.’
‘Hello. DCI Blaylock, Cambridge here. You were talking to one of my sergeants yesterday about the fire at St Godric’s and I gather you’ve been asking the local fire people about the way the fire started too. Something about possible parallel cases involving educational establishments on your patch? Would that be at one of the Yorkshire universities then? I don’t recall reading anything recently.’
It was little wonder. The allegedly possibly related cases with which Pascoe had salved his conscience had been two junior school fires, one of which had been set by disaffected pupils while the other had been started by an errant rocket on Bonfire Night.
Pascoe felt it was time to come at least partially clean.
He explained in measured rational tones that, happe
ning to know that one of the delegates at the St Godric’s conference was an ex-con to whom the destruction of Professor Albacore’s research papers might afford some small advantage, he had thought it worth enquiring if there were any suspicious circumstances.
‘My sergeant picked you up wrong then?’ said Blaylock.
‘Let us rather say that I could see no reason to add to your CID workload by suggesting otherwise without any supporting evidence. Therefore my call, which was in the nature of a courtesy marker rather than a passing on of information, perhaps erred on the side of underplaying my slight and distant interest. The fault if any is mine.’
Such circumlocution might bamboozle a plain-speaking Yorkshireman, but those working in the shadow of our older universities are more practised in threading their way through verbal mazes.
‘So you had a hunch but didn’t want to put it upfront because Fat Andy thinks it’s a bladder full of wind,’ said Blaylock.
‘You know Superintendent Dalziel?’
‘Only like a curate knows Beelzebub. Heard a lot about him, but hope I’ll never have the pleasure of meeting him personally.’
Something defensive almost formed on Pascoe’s lips, but he let it fade unspoken. As Dalziel himself once said, when offered the sympathy vote, sigh deeply and limp a bit.
‘Anyway, sorry I stuck my nose in without talking to the main man. Incidentally, are you so overstaffed down there, they put DCIs in charge of non-suspicious fire cases?’
‘No, just something one of the smart young chaps who wants my job mentioned, so I stuck my nose in and found to my surprise that it rubbed against yours. Thought it worth giving you a bell just in case you knew anything I ought to.’
‘So what was it your smart young chap mentioned?’ said Pascoe, trying to keep the hopeful excitement out of his voice.
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