Such was the conclusion he reached after long dark brooding, and now the light of action came back to his eyes, and he rose like that famous bull from the sea summoned by Theseus to destroy his own son as he fled from the scene of his monstrous crime.
Of course, Hippolytus was completely innocent, but Theseus didn't know that, and it made not a jot of difference to the bull.
Peter Pascoe had pondered long and hard Ellie's well-reasoned assertion that the best way to deal with his Franny Roote 'obsession' was to test it to destruction.
His own conclusion, reached with impeccable male logic, was that when the woman whose body you worship and whose wisdom you respect above all others takes time off to analyse your problems, the only thing to do is prove she is completely wrong.
Roote, he told himself, was not a problem either to resist or resolve. He was a minor irritation which if ignored would eventually go away.
On the twenty-sixth he returned to work, refreshed and ready to make huge inroads into the paper mountain that towers on the desk of most modern CID officers. He did well and didn't think about Roote more than three times. Or four if you counted the time the phone rang and for nearly a minute he didn't pick it up, convinced it was Franny ringing from Switzerland, but it turned out to be DI Rose from South Yorkshire just wondering if maybe he'd got a whisper about the Big Job which he was sure was on, not because he'd heard anything more but because his snout had mysteriously gone missing… Of course while Rose wasn't Roote, the connection was there (making a fifth time) and had to be broken again after he'd assured the DI that Edgar Wield was burrowing away on his behalf even as they spoke.
But he went home pretty pleased with himself on the whole and he woke up the following morning convinced he'd heard the last from Roote and certain that today would see him well on the way to that most desirable of states – a clear desk for a New Year.
Then in the hall he saw the envelope with the familiar handwriting and a Swiss stamp.
From the car on the way to work he rang Dr Pottle to make an appointment and was told he could come instantly as the doctor's first two patients that morning had cancelled as a result of a Yuletide suicide pact.
Pottle, Head of the Central Hospital Psychiatric Unit, part-time lecturer in Mid-Yorkshire University and adviser to the police on matters where his discipline and theirs overlapped, was Pascoe's occasional analyst and sort of friend, meaning Pascoe liked him on the possibly irrational ground that he resembled the kind of psychiatrist you might meet in a Woody Allen film, with sad spaniel eyes and explosive hair whose luminous greyness was in fetching contrast to an Einstein moustache stained a gingery brown as a result of the endless chain of cigarettes depending from his nether lip.
Patients who objected were told, 'I'm here to help with your problems. If my smoking figures among them, leave now and I'll bill you for solving one of them.'
Pascoe showed him the letters. He didn't have to explain about Roote. They'd talked about him before.
Pottle read the letters as he read everything at an amazing speed which Ellie suspected was spoof and done simply to impress. But Pascoe knew she was wrong. Pottle in his consulting room was the Sibyl in her cave, a mortal conduit for the voice of a god, and it was the god's eyes that scanned the words at a rate beyond a human's.
'Should I be worried?' asked Pascoe.
'Should you be asking me that question?' said Pottle.
Pascoe considered, rephrased.
'Is there anything in the letters which you would interpret as concealing, or containing, or implying a threat to me or to mine?'
'If you are threatened by mockery, certainly. If you are threatened by dependency, perhaps. If you are threatened by sheer incomprehension, I can't help you, as I do not have sufficient data fully to understand the letters myself.'
'Yes, but should I be worried?' repeated Pascoe impatiently.
'There you go again. Do you want me to try to understand you, Peter, or do you want me to try to understand Mr Roote?'
Another pause for reflection then Pascoe said, 'Roote. Me I can cope with. Him I've no idea about, except that I don't think he's up to any good.'
'So what do you think he's up to?'
'I think he's enjoying trying to screw up my mind. I think he's probing all the time for weak points. And I think he's getting off on telling me about illegalities he's involved with in such a way I can't do anything about them.'
'Examples?'
The assault in the shower at Chapel Syke, he admits to that. And then at St Godric's, I think he set fire to the Dean's Lodging, and I've got a strong suspicion he assaulted Dean Albacore and left him to die.'
'Good lord. When I read about it, I saw no reference to the possibility of foul play.'
'No, you wouldn't. That's my point.'
'Sorry, I missed that. Evidence?'
'Nothing outside the letters, except a bit of circumstantial with regard to Albacore’
He spelt out his theory.
'And is this suspicion shared by your colleagues in Cambridge?'
'They're thinking about it’ said Pascoe evasively.
'I see. This probing for weak points – what would they be exactly?'
'He's telling me that maybe I took the wrong path becoming a cop instead of heading into academe. He's showing me that time in jail can move you on a lot further than time in the police force. He keeps drumming on about me being a sedate old married man whose willpower he admires and whose advice he desires while all the time he's trying to make me envious of him being fancy-free, with girls falling into his bed more or less ad lib.'
'Wow,' said Pottle. 'And does he make you envious?'
'Of course not. Most of the stuff he writes is fantasy anyway.'
'Except the bits you want to believe where he seems to be admitting to some crime?'
'No, I mean yes… Look, I thought you were going to concentrate on Roote not me?'
'It's proving hard to separate the two. Anything else you want to tell me, Peter?'
'Such as?'
'Anything about this vision of you he claims to have had, for instance?'
Pascoe blinked then said quietly, 'Why do you ask that?'
'Because the letters are full of interesting things, but not many truly odd ones. The vision, however, was very odd indeed. And the omission of it from your catalogue of complaints strikes me as odd too. I mean, you clearly want to think that Roote is mentally unhinged, yet you make no reference to the only piece of prima-facie evidence that he may be two groats short of a guinea. So?'
Another blink, then Pascoe said helplessly, 'I saw him too.'
He told the tale. Pottle said, 'Interesting. Let's turn to his sessions with Ms Haseen.'
'Hey, what happened to my visionary moment?'
'Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must keep silent. You've read her book?'
'Yes; well, the relevant bits.'
The relevant bits,' echoed Pottle. 'Indeed. Interesting how our friend gave you the precise reference to save you the bother of ploughing through all that clayey prose and making educated guesses. Let me see…'
He reached to the bookcase behind him and plucked a black-jacketed volume which Pascoe recognized off a shelf. Then, without reference to the letters, he flicked to what Pascoe could see upside down was the right page and did his speed-read trick again.
'Poor Amaryllis,' he said. 'She is pretty well the opposite of dear Goldsmith who, you recall, according to Garrick, wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.'
'You know her,' said Pascoe, interested.
'We have met professionally. Indeed, should be doing so again next month when the Winter Symposium of the Yorkshire Psychandric Society, of which I am the current Chair, takes place in Sheffield. Amaryllis Haseen is
