Recalled to Life dap-13

by Reginald Hill

  Happily his doubt was a purely intellectual matter and had no channel of communication with his appetites. Even as his inner eye weighed his own attractions to the last scruple, his outer eye was totting up Linda's, and he felt his Y-fronts taking the strain. He said, 'Rampling give you a leaving present, did he?' She laughed and said, 'OK, Andy. I can see there's no fooling you. Never was. So here's the bottom line. I wanted out, that's true enough. But in that line of work, you don't just hand in your notice and walk away. Not if you want to be able to walk, that is. You part friends. I saw Rampling personally. He said, OK, if I didn't see my future with the Company, that was my business. But he'd esteem it a personal favour if I could contrive to run into you and check what you got up to, who you were talking to, since you got back home.' 'And you said yes.' 'People like me always say yes to people like Scott Rampling,' she said seriously.

  'So you are here on business.' 'Yeah, but I wasn't lying, Andy,' she said. 'The only reason I'm here on business is because I was going to be here in the first place. I told Rampling I was planning to try my luck in the UK, meaning I wanted to put a whole ocean between his boot and my sweet butt. That's when he started talking about favours.

  What I hadn't told him was, I was going to look you up in any case.'

  'Because of my bonny blue eyes, you mean?' said Dalziel cynically.

  'No. Because I felt I'd like to be close to someone who did know how to say no to someone like Scott Rampling,' she said. He looked down at her assessingly. The doubts were still there, but so was the pressure in his groin. Her gaze seemed to take in both. She said, 'That's it, Andy. That's the best I can do. If it's not enough…' 'Nay, lass,' he said, holding up a forbidding hand as she made to slip off the bed.

  ‘It strikes me, as long as you're still connected to that lot, mebbe before you left, you remembered to collect my expenses?' She relaxed and smiled wickedly. 'Do you take American Express?' she asked.

  'That'll do nicely,' said Andrew Dalziel.

  FOUR

  'I carry about with me not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, "Recalled to Life", which may mean anything.' So in the end it had been neither the best of crimes nor the worst of crimes, just another murder, ending nothing except a life. The death of James Westropp's first wife hardly troubled his thoughts at all as he died in the arms of his second. Perhaps, indeed, for the first time he dimly acknowledged that, once the massive shock of events at Mickledore Hall Wad faded, he had been not unrelieved to have an excuse at last to back away from the tiresome trade of treachery. He had offered a defence to Dalziel, but to tell the truth he had long been perplexed to recall why he'd decided to betray his country at a time when it was a much nicer place to live than it had since become, when he felt no inclination to betray it at all. He opened his eyes one last time to see the candid, loving, grieving face of Marilou, and suddenly knew that his silence on this subject which he'd always thought of as protective, was in fact the greatest betrayal of all. He opened his mouth to speak, but his life, so eager to escape, darted out, and his body had to be satisfied with the more general atonement of at last providing some genuine Hanoverian dust to mingle with the honoured remains of Williamsburg's patriotic martyrs. It was a quiet funeral. Westropp's family was represented, first, by his son, Philip (later to distinguish himself as a CIA operative specializing in destabilizing friendly regimes to keep them grateful); and, secondly, by a tasteful wreath of red and white roses, beribboned in blue, delivered via the British Embassy with an unsigned card inscribed In One's Thoughts At This Sad Time. Marilou's family was represented by her son, but not her daughter. To tell the truth, William was there only because he could fit it in as a legitimate expense en route to New York to try to interest his American publisher in The Golden Age of Murder. The book was completely free of any reference to Mickledore Hall, though the final chapter on the Chester Races case still opened with the words, It was the best of crimes, it was the worst of crimes, proving that in the desperate quest for publication, a writer will sacrifice anything except a nice turn of phrase. Scott Rampling was there too. For years he had misused his authority by having Westropp's phone calls monitored and mail opened in the hope of getting a pointer to the whereabouts of the tell-tale photo. Now, finding himself appointed as executor to Westropp's will, he was able to go through all the man's papers with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing. Just when he was considering himself totally safe, a Presidential aide tossed the photo on to his desk and said, 'Thought you might like a look at that, Scott.' He could not speak, his bowels felt loose, his bladder painfully full.

  Then the man went on, 'Came over the fax a while back. Probably some joker, but we've shown it around and one or two people have a feeling there's something familiar about the guy with the tackle. Could be worthwhile getting your people to check it out.' 'I'll put someone on it,' said Rampling. Shortly after this he began to wear spectacles and grow a moustache, and fellow members of his exclusive Washington sports club noticed that he no longer took his daily sauna and cold plunge. Jay Waggs did not attend the funeral, nor send any flowers. A man whose muddled upbringing had left him permanently confused about his own motives and emotions, he had surprised in himself a fondness for Cissy Kohler which made him reluctant to subject her to the indignities of creative journalism. Yet, in the absence of her cooperation, there was no other way of giving Hesperides anything like their due, so he had retired to Canada till such time as his fertile mind would come up with an even more amazing story to placate his predators. As for Cissy herself, she waited till the last black car crawled away before approaching the grave. She was here, not because of what she felt but because of what she hoped she might feel. There had been a moment when she fumbled in her bag before Dalziel pushed her from the room which might have provided the cathartic climax she was seeking, but even now she wasn't sure if she would have pulled out the gun or her handkerchief. The coffin was still visible beneath the obsequial scatter of earth. It was plain oak with dull brass handles.

  She nodded approvingly. An unostentatious man, Jamie would have wanted no more. Then the nod changed to a wild shaking as she tried to dislodge this complacent assumption of knowledge. What the hell did she know about his likes and dislikes? What did she know about anything! She had loved with the total passion of first love. She had given herself without stint and without question, and because he had accepted the gift with such delight, she had assumed a commitment as complete as her own. But it hadn't all been naive self-deception. When she ran into Mickledore as he came out of the gunroom and glimpsed behind him the bleeding body and staring eyes of her rival, it hadn't been simply the hyper-egotism of love which caused her unhesitating acceptance of his assertion, 'Cissy, it's terrible… Jamie's killed Pam… He did it for you!' She had known it was true, because this was what she and Jamie had planned to do. No. Not planned. That was too precise, too cold a word for what had passed between them as, drifting in those deliciously warm shallows left by the receding tide of ecstasy, she had whispered, 'If I died now, I'd be truly happy.' He laughed and said, 'It's not dying yourself that brings true happiness. Cissy. It's having the strength to will the death of others if they stand in your way.' 'I don't know if I've got that kind of strength.' 'Few people have. And few of those are willing to use it.' 'Are you one of the few, Jamie?' she asked, sensing a meaning, a commitment. 'Oh yes,' he said, pulling her to him and caressing her so that she felt the distant tide begin to surge back once more. 'I've got strength enough for both of us.' He had been talking about Pam – what else? – and from that moment she had been warmed by the certainty that, one way or another, this sole obstacle to their permanent happiness would be removed. Now it had happened.

  The bloody reality of the removal almost overwhelmed her, but strength returned as Mickledore urged the danger Jamie was in and told her of his own efforts to make the death look like suicide. If mere friendship co
uld make a man act so nobly, how much further should love be able to go? She had wanted to go in with him to Jamie, but he insisted this would be madness. Any hint now of a connection closer than employer and servant could be fatal. She had returned to her room and borne the police questioning on Sunday with the strength of love.

  But on Monday morning after another sleepless night, she knew she could not face them again. She had paddled out to the island with the children and hidden there under the shading willows till she heard her name booming like gunfire across the shining waters and knew she was being summoned to betray her lover. After Emily's death, everything changed. Now she knew that there could be no limits to what she must do to protect Jamie, and at the same time she knew there could be no reward. It had taken a whole afternoon to work out precisely what it was the police superintendent wanted her to say. Every form of confession she made, he painstakingly copied out, then read it to her and asked if it was true. Each time she answered, 'Yes,' he tossed it aside and told her it was worthless. 'What do you want me to say?' she screamed at him finally. 'The truth. That you were Mickledore's mistress, that you and he planned and carried out the murder together, that there was a false key which you threw in the lake…' 'Yes yes yes!' she cried, sobbing with relief. 'That's true. That's true. I'll write it!' That Mickledore should be willing to die for his friend, and that Jamie should have allowed him to die, was no problem. He had betrayed his friendship by sleeping with Pam and this sacrifice was a fitting atonement. Hers was the harsher penalty, the longer pain, and she had no will to move to free herself till Jamie should give her a sign that enough was enough, the account was balanced. Madly, she had weakened when she learnt that Pip was at Beddington College. It seemed like a sign, not strong enough to make her pay for the help offered by that monstrous woman but enough to make her turn to Daphne Bush, hinting promises she had no intention of keeping. Jamie's letter had destroyed hope and with it, incidentally, Daphne's life. More guilt, more years. She had sunk beneath them once again, this time with no intention of ever resurfacing. And then had come Jay with the news that Jamie was dying. Suddenly she had known that unless she saw him before he died, this life-in-death was all she would ever know. Now she had seen him and what had altered? She heard the sound of an engine and looked up to see that the small bulldozer employed to push the earth back into the grave had emerged from behind the chapel. It paused as the driver spotted her. She also saw she was not alone.

  Philip Westropp was walking towards her. Sombre-suited, sombre-faced, with a Bible clutched in his left hand, he could have been a young preacher come to offer comfort. ‘I guessed you'd be here,' he said. 'I didn't want to cause any embarrassment.' 'All those years, and you don't want to embarrass us?' 'None of you harmed me. I harmed myself.

  Pip, about Emily, I was, I am, I always will be, so, so sorry…'

  'That's OK. Water under the… It was a long time ago.' He smiled faintly. 'When I first understood what had happened, I used to fantasize that you saved me because I was your favourite.' She shook her head. 'You saved me,' she said. 'It was dark down there. Dim shapes and waving weeds. I just grabbed. If there hadn't been anything to grab at, I think I would never have come up.' 'Are you glad you did?' 'For your sake, of course. For my own? I can't say.' 'What will you do?" ‘Is this official?' 'It can be if you like.' 'Then the answer is, I don't know. But I'll do it quietly, that's for sure. ‘What about you? Do you really work for the CIA?' 'Why not? It's in the blood, so to speak.' 'But you're British…' 'I was born here, remember? Mom was American. And I renounced any claim I had to dual nationality way back. I prefer the American Way.' 'Because it's better?' 'Because it could be,' he said. 'You can cure sickness, you can't resurrect a corpse.' The image seemed to remind them where they were. They looked down into the grave in silence for a while. 'Did you really know him?' asked Philip. 'No,' she said, surprised. ‘Didn't you?' 'No. There was always something… a barrier…' Cissy dug into her purse. 'This was his,' she said, proffering the pillbox. 'Would you like it?' 'No,' he said without hesitation. OK.' She opened her fingers and the crested box fell into the grave. 'Goodbye, Pip,' she said. 'Goodbye.

  Oh, this is yours, I think,' he added, handing over the Bible. 'We have no use for it.' She took it, opened it, read her mother's inscription with a faint smile. 'Me neither,' she said, tossing it into the grave alongside the glittering pillbox. Then she beckoned the waiting bulldozer to advance, turned, and walked swiftly away.

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