leaving the door slightly ajar to make sure he didn't miss the crash of those mighty footsteps, but the Fat Man still hadn't returned an hour later when the door swung open and Wield came in bearing a sheet of paper and a folder.
Thomas Roote,' he said without preamble. 'Good old-fashioned copper from the sound of it. Started in the Met. Couple of commendations for bravery. CID, then got moved into the Drug Squad. It was a drug scare at Anthea Atherton's school in Surrey that got the two of them involved. Reason the Squad was called in, dad of one of Atherton's posh chums was a distributor in the Smoke and there was a strong suspicion she was keeping the family tradition going in the school. Nothing came of it except Roote got involved with Anthea. Question, would collaring the suspect dealer have meant laying hands on Anthea too? Answer, not proven. But you can be sure when the sergeant married the girl soon as she turned eighteen, there'd be a query set against his name.'
'So, not a good career move,' said Pascoe.
'No. He'd made sergeant early and looked like he was set to move smoothly up the ladder. But now he stuck. Could also have been that things were on the change way back then and the PR boys were getting control of the Force. Not the kind of approach Tommy Roote seems to have favoured. Complaints now instead of commendations. Beat up some guy who grabbed a hold of his son in the park. Lucky to get away with an admonishment… that mean something to you?'
'Might do,' admitted Pascoe reluctantly. 'So Sergeant Roote was living dangerously.'
That's right. Reading between the lines, he was getting increasingly bolshie at work while at home his marriage was in a tail spin. He was also drinking heavily. Crisis point reached when he was so heavy handed on a big bust that another sergeant reported him. When Tommy heard about it, he went for the guy in the locker room. A DI stuck his nose in and asked what the hell was going on. Roote told him to mind his own fucking business and when he didn't Roote decked him. That was that. Rolled into his hearing drunk and bolshie and sent any chance of being retired early with his pension intact up in smoke. After that it was downhill all the way. Guy like him had plenty of enemies outside and, without the protection of his badge, he was easy meat. Ended up in an alley behind a pub, his ribs kicked in. Choked on his own vomit. Death by misadventure. It's all here.'
He dropped the sheet of paper face-down on the desk.
'Hell's bells. That's a terrible tale,' said Pascoe.
'Yeah. Explains a few things about Roote, maybe.'
'Like why he hates the police, you mean?'
'Like why he's so mixed up about his father, I meant. I think it's back.'
Along the corridor echoed the tread of mighty footsteps and a discordant whistling of something which to Wield's sensitive ears might have been 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. A moment later Dalziel filled the doorway.
His two subordinates stared at him so unwelcomingly that he took a step backwards and said, 'Be, I've not been met with looks like that since my dear wife left me. What have I done? Left my dirty socks in the bidet again?'
'More like dirty fingerprints on the polished table, sir,' said Pascoe, going straight on the attack. 'What's all this about Mai Richter? Or Myra Rogers? More to the point, what's it all got to do with Rye Pomona?'
Dalziel's response was to advance towards Wield and hold out one huge paw.
'Before the cock's crowed thrice, eh?' he said, shaking his head sadly. That for me?'
Silently Wield handed over the folder containing his findings on Richter and Lilley.
'It was me who asked Wieldy what he were up to’ said Pascoe.
'Oh aye? Ask him what he were up to at links last weekend and he sings a song, does he?'
'I just think that anything to do with Rye Pomona and Bowler, I'm entitled to know.'
'And why's that then?'
'Because I was with you when we interfered with a crime scene and when we edited Pomona's statement’ said Pascoe baldly.
The Fat Man backheeled the door shut with a slam that had constables in the canteen three floors below bolting their scalding coffee and heading back out several minutes early.
'Nay, lad, you weren't with me’ he said fiercely. 'Except maybe in your dreams. And I'd keep quiet about them, even when you're letting it all hang out on yon Pozzo's couch.'
Jesus, thought Pascoe. Has he got me bugged?
Wield was staring out of the window at the cloudy sky with an intensity that suggested all his senses except for sight were disengaged.
Dalziel suddenly relaxed and smiled ruefully, shaking his great head.
'My torture!' he said, using a strange oath allegedly passed down from his Highland forebears. 'You're getting me as daft as yourselves. Mebbe I should have put you in the picture, but it didn't seem that important. All that's happened is I were told a foreign national might be living on our patch under an assumed name. You know what them sods at Immigration are like, so I thought it best to get ahead of the game and take it seriously.'
'Well, that's awfully conscientious of you, sir’ said Pascoe. 'Can't have anonymous foreigners getting up to their disgusting tricks in Mid-Yorkshire, can we? So tell me, Wieldy, what have you found out about this wolf in sheep's clothing?'
'Born 1962 in Kaub in the Rhine-Palatinate’ recited Wield in an old-fashioned schoolroom voice. 'Studied at Heidelberg, Paris and London. Freelance journalist, concentrating on political corruption stories at a national and local level with a special interest in environmental affairs. Convictions in Germany for breaches of the peace, obstruction, possession. No UK convictions. No warrants outstanding
'Yeah yeah’ said Dalziel, holding up the folder he'd taken from the sergeant. 'Got all that without wasting your precious time. Hope there's summat a bit more useful in here’
'Can't say, as I don't know what you want to use it for’ said Wield.
Dalziel gave him a glower and Pascoe hastily interposed his own body, saying, 'Kaub. That's on the Rhine, I recall. Few miles south of the Lorelei.'
'Is it now?' said the Fat Man. 'You been there?'
'Yes. Did a Rhine tour a few years back. Lovely spot. Very romantic, in every sense’
'One sense at a time is as much as I can manage’ said Dalziel. 'And seeing as we're in such a sharing mood, anything else I should know about?'
His gaze was focused on the sheet bearing the new info on Roote Senior, which, despite the fact that it was face-down on the desk at a distance of several feet, he looked to be reading like a billboard poster.
'No, sir’ said Pascoe firmly.
'And you, Wieldy. Owt more from Boy George?'
'No, sir.' Equally firmly.
'Grand. Then we can all get down to some work, can't we?'
He left.
'Why is it that I feel like I've been told, 'You scratch my back or I'll have the skin off yours'?' said Pascoe.
'Me too,' said Wield. 'It's like having a pet bear. A lot of the time it's all warm cuddles, then suddenly you realize the bugger's crushing you to death!'
Mai Richter dreamt she was back in her home town of Kaub, standing in Metzger-gasse, its lovely main street, looking towards the town tower, silhouetted against a ghastly sky. Higher still, a looming presence on even the sunniest days, was the bulk of Gutenfels with its restored ruins reminding those beneath where the real power in this land once lay.
But Mai Richter's gaze was fixed much lower. Before the tower a bonfire raged, its teeth of flame ripping through the ribs of pinewood which formed its frame to reveal the orange heart pulsing within. Figures danced around, cloaked and hooded, with just enough firelight stealing beneath the cowls to reveal pallid faces and staring eyes and mouths twisted in terrible pleasure. They were hurling books into the fire's maw, which received them greedily, devouring whole volumes in a second. She knew that these were her books, books she had written with sweat and tears and love and devotion, all the copies of all her books, every word she had ever written, reducing to ashes before her eyes, vanishing forever from libraries and bookshops and, worst of all, from her mind.
What use to think of books when she knew beyond doubt that when they'd burnt all her words, it would be her body they turned to next. Already she could feel the heat of the ravening flames, yet she had no power to flee or to resist. Somewhere close she could hear the pulse and the roar of the mighty Rhine but its cooling waters
