Pascoe smiled. Even though he was now living openly with his partner, Edwin Digweed, at work Wield rarely let slip the mask with which he’d concealed his gayness for so many years. This brief flash of campness was a reassurance stronger than a dozen notarized oaths sworn on Bibles and mothers’ graves.
He said, ‘In the letter, you remember the bit where Roote stands up to give Sam Johnson’s paper? He looks at the clock and it’s nine o’clock on Saturday morning, and then he looks down and he sees … here it is … it was you, Mr Pascoe. There you were, looking straight at me.’
He raised his eyes from the paper and looked at Wield with such appeal that the sergeant touched his arm and said urgently, ‘Pete, it’s just a try-on. It’s that German doppelganger stuff he’s picked up from Charley Penn. It’s for frightening kids with …’
‘Yes, I know that, Wieldy. Thing is, last Saturday I took Rosie to her music lesson in St Margaret Street, and I parked outside the church to wait for her. And I saw him.’
‘The teacher?’
‘No, dickhead! Roote. In the churchyard, standing there looking straight at me. St Margaret’s clock began striking nine. I saw him for two chimes of the bell. Then I started getting out of the car and, by the time I’d got out, he’d vanished. But I saw him, Wieldy. At nine o’clock like he says. I saw Franny Roote!’
It came out more dramatically than intended. Not thought I saw or imagined I saw, the plain assertion I saw! He waited impatient for Wield’s reaction.
The phone rang.
Wield picked it up, said, ‘Yes?’ listened, said, ‘OK. Turk’s. But not for an hour,’ and replaced the receiver. He stood in thought for a long moment till Pascoe said, ‘Well?’
‘What? Oh, just someone, owt or nowt.’
Normally such imprecision would have aroused Pascoe’s curiosity but now it merely aggravated his impatience.
‘I mean about Roote,’ he said.
‘Roote? Oh yes. You thought you saw him but he’s in Cambridge. Had your eyes tested lately, Pete? Look, I’d best get along to make sure Andy understands what he’s going to be telling Dan. Good luck with Belchamber. See you later.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Pascoe to the empty air. ‘It’s bad enough seeing things but it gets worse if you turn invisible at the same time.’
And was relieved to find he could still laugh.
It had been the best weekend of Hat Bowler’s life, no competition, not even from the winter weekend a couple of years ago when he’d trudged back from a long unproductive stint in a hide looking for a reported Rock Thrush and there it had been, perched on the bonnet of his MG where it stayed long enough to get three good shots with his camera.
It hadn’t just been the sex but the sense of utter togetherness they shared in everything they did. Saturday had been a perfect day till dinner when she’d pushed away her plate and said, ‘Shit, I’m getting one of my headaches.’ At first he’d laughed, taking it as a joke, then had felt a huge pang of selfish disappointment as he realized it wasn’t. But this had quickly been blanked by anxiety as her face drained of colour. She’d assured him it was nothing, taken a tablet, and when, instead of retiring to her own room, she lay willingly and trustingly in his arms the whole night through, this had seemed an affirmation of love more powerful than sex. Gradually the next morning the colour had returned to her cheeks and by lunchtime she was as active and joyous as ever, and that night … if ever joy was unconfined, it was in the boundless universe which was their bed that night.
They didn’t leave the room till halfway through Monday morning, and only then because they were due to check out. Slowly they drove back into Mid-Yorkshire. They were in Rye’s Fiesta – Hat’s MG was taking even longer than its owner to recover from the injuries sustained during the rescue mission – but it was lack of volition rather than lack of power which dictated their speed. Both knew from experience that joy is a delicate fabric and life’s shoddy sleeve has a thousand tricks up it which can be played to bankrupt poor deluded humans even as they rake their winnings in. This journey was a time-out. In the car with them they carried all the joyous certainties of that hotel room, but what lay ahead could never be certain. Out of some part of Hat’s subconscious, the existence of which he had hitherto not even suspected, the Gothic fancy leapt that if they had been driving along a narrow mountain road with a rock face on one side and a precipice on the other, it might have been well to seize the wheel and send them plunging to their deaths. Happily a hawthorn hedge and a turnip field didn’t offer quite the same incentive, so it was a fancy easy to resist and one he decided to keep to himself. What after all was he feeling so pessimistic about? Had not Rye promised he would be safe with her, and he certainly intended exerting all his strength to ensure she stayed safe with him.
Impulsively he leaned over and kissed her, nearly bringing the turnip field into play.
‘Hey,’ she said, ‘don’t they do road safety in the police any more?’
‘Yeah, but some of us get special exemption.’
She reached over and touched him intimately.
‘And that’s a special exemption, is it? Hang on.’
The turnip field came to an end to be followed by a meadow full of sheep with a rutted overgrown lane in between. Rye swung the wheel over and they bumped up the lane for twenty yards or so before jolting to a halt.
‘Right,’ she said, undoing her seat belt. ‘Let’s have a road safety lesson.’
For the rest of the journey his heart was like a nest of singing birds which permitted no discordant future possibilities to be heard. The world was perfect and all that lay ahead was an eternity exploring its perfections.
But, for all his certainties, he was sorry when the journey came to an end and they turned into Peg Lane where Rye lived. Somehow, cocooned in the car, they had seemed as solitary as Adam and Eve at the world’s dawn. Still, God was obviously smiling upon them as there was a parking space right in front of Church View, the big converted townhouse which contained Rye’s flat.
He followed her up the stairs, wondered as she inserted the key in the lock whether it would be naff to offer to carry her over the threshold, decided it wouldn’t and who the hell cared anyway? put the cases down and stepped forward as the door swung open.
And saw over her suddenly rigid shoulder that the flat had been burgled.
The flat was a mess. It looked as if stuff had been removed from cupboards and drawers and hurled about recklessly in a desperate search, but as far as he could see the only thing that had been broken was a Chinese vase in the bedroom. It lay beneath the shelf it had fallen from. It struck Hat as he stood there looking down at it that this was the first time he’d been in Rye’s bedroom. But not the last, he told himself complacently.
Then he saw her face and all such smug self-congratulation vanished.
She was staring at the shards of the broken vase, her face as pale as the fine white dust which surrounded them.
‘Oh shit,’ said Hat.
He could guess what the vase had held. Aged fifteen, her twin brother Sergius had been killed in the car accident which left his sister with the head injury whose healing was marked by a distinctive