Dalziel was out rehearsing and Pascoe had to wait till that afternoon before he could see him. He was sitting behind the Superintendent's desk when the fat man walked into his room. He stopped short in the doorway when he saw his Chief Inspector smiling at him from his own chair with a broken-shafted pitchfork in his hand.
'Bloody hell, you've finally flipped,' said Dalziel. 'Think you're Britannia, do you?'
'No, sir. I've just come to wish you happy birthday.'
'It's not my birthday.'
'You'll think it is by the time I'm finished,’ said Pascoe.
He talked. Dalziel listened. There was no doubt about the intensity of his listening, but no other emotion showed on his face.
'And what started you on this tack?' Dalziel asked sombrely when the story was finished.
'Like I said, Swain's either a right bastard or a loyal friend. A right bastard wouldn't have helped Stringer in the first place unless circumstances forced him. And if he was a right bastard when he helped Arnie, that meant it wasn't Arnie he was covering up for when he had the barn cleared out. Simple, really, when you think about it.'
'If it's that simple, I won't be grateful,' growled Dalziel. 'But what I meant was, what decided you to turn your massive intellect to proving me right when for months you've been going around behind my back telling any bugger that would listen that I was wrong?'
Blow, blow, thou winter wind! thought Pascoe.
He said, 'Because I wanted you to be right. Who needs a fallible God?'
Dalziel advanced; a great threatening hand thrust forward. Pascoe half rose in trepidation, then his own hand was enclosed and shaken till it lost all sensible contact with his wrist, and Dalziel intoned, 'This day's work is done ilka deal, And all this work likes me right well, And bainly I give it my blessing.'
'Sorry?' said Pascoe.
'Sorry? Being God means never having to say you're sorry! All that I ever said should be, Is now fulfilled through prophecy, Therefore now is it time to me To make an ending of man's folly! Play it through for me again, lad. Play it again!'
part eight
Devil: For it is written, as well is kenned, How God shall angels to thee send, And they shall keep thee in their hend Whereso thou goes, That thou shall on no stones descend To hurt thy toes.
And since thou may without wothe Fall and do thyself no scathe, Tumble down to ease us both Here to my feet;And but thou do I will be wroth, That I thee hete.
The York Cycle:
'The Temptation'
May 29th
Dear Andy,
I've thought of you as Andy for a long time, only I was brought up to respect authority and it seemed better to keep this particular correspondence on a formal footing. But this is the last, so I think I can safely drop all that formal respect stuff, don't you?
So tomorrow's your big day, the day you finally get to play God. It's been in all the papers and I'm looking forward to reading all about you in the Post's souvenir edition tomorrow morning. Through the town you'll go, riding high, looking down on the ordinary folk and seeing everything. I've never doubted that God does see everything, but that just makes it worse, doesn't it? For seeing's not the same as caring, and priests and terrorists both favour black.
I'm sorry. I mustn't ramble. It's just that I'm rather nervous. You see, I've decided tomorrow's my big day too. Don't worry. I'll hang around long enough to look out as you ride by in triumph. I wouldn't miss that, not for all the world, tower and town, forest and field! Then I'll slip quietly away and leave you in peace.
I'm not sure if you'll be reading this before or after the event. No post today, or tomorrow either, being a holiday, so I'll drop it in by hand. Are you the conscientious kind, I wonder, who'll look in to check things over, even on a Bank Holiday when you're on leave? I doubt it somehow! Not that it makes any difference as I'm not about to sign myself. That's for you to guess, though by this time tomorrow, you should have a clue even you can't miss!
I gather you did manage to clear up that other little puzzle. Did my pathetic suggestions help at all? Probably not. Probably, as usual, you did it all by yourself, you and your sidekicks, the pretty inspector and the ugly sergeant. The Holy Trinity! Three in One, and that One's you! And this is your day, isn't it? Trinity Sunday. Well, praise where it’s due. But what about that other trinity, the ones you dug out of the concrete in your carpark? Shouldn't we remember them today also? In fact, when we set your little triumph alongside the pain, the grief the emptiness, the loss, that their discovery has caused, shouldn't we forget your triumph altogether and think of nothing else? What kind of world is it where things like this. . . but I'm sorry, we both know what kind of world it is, only you feel it's controllable, and I know it's out of control, and that's why I'm going to leave it while you ride by in triumphal majesty.
Goodbye, Andy Dalziel. Will you remember me? I doubt it. But try to remember in your triumph that you're not really a god.
Thanks for everything you've done.
Which is to say, thanks for doing nothing.
Except making it easy.
CHAPTER ONE
Andrew Dalziel got out of his car, stretched, yawned, scratched, and critically examined the blue sky, the golden sun, the russet-bricked walls edged with a neatly tended border of green grass broken at regular intervals by quincunxes of orange marigolds. And he saw that it was good.
There was something about an old prison, even when declined into a mere remand centre, that brought
