Death

He slightly stressed assisting. Rose sighed. 'Be my guest, Pete. I can always say you pulled rank on me.'

'That was my next move,' grinned Pascoe.

At the university, Pascoe entered the lecture theatre just as Dr Pottle was concluding his introduction of Frere Jacques. The front rows were full but there were plenty of empty seats near the back. Perhaps the flu bug was to blame. Pascoe seated himself in the rearmost row alongside a trio of world-weary female students who looked like they'd only come in to get out of the cold. Pottle finished and stepped down to take a seat at the front. A woman next to him turned her head to speak and, though he'd only seen a book jacket photo, Pascoe thought he recognized Amaryllis Haseen. Frere Jacques was a surprise. With his cropped blond hair and his tight-fitting black turtleneck, which showed a muscular torso with no sign of fat, he looked more like a ski instructor than a monk.

'Well, hello sailor,' said one of the girls sitting near Pascoe. 'Wonder if he's got a dick to match?'

It came out perfectly natural, on a par with a young man's not many of them in a pound on sight of a big- breasted woman. Was this an advance to equality or a backward step? wondered Pascoe.

Jacques began talking. His English was structurally perfect with just enough of an accent to be sexy. He talked easily of death, his own experiences as a soldier, his belief that Western man's growing obsession with longevity and wonder cures had foolishly made a foe out of the one fact of nature we couldn't hope to defeat. 'Pick your friends carefully is a wise motto’ he said. 'But pick your enemies even more carefully is a wiser one. Losing a friend is much easier than losing an enemy.'

His ideas were carefully couched in the language of psychology and philosophy rather than of religion. Only once did he stray in the direction of Christian dogma, and that was when he referred with an ironic twinkle of those luminous blue eyes to the unique comforts of the English Prayer Book 'which assures mourners at a funeral that 'man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower.' No wonder the tradition has grown up after a funeral of heading back to a house or pub and downing as many drinks as are necessary to blot out this cheerful message!'

A thread of humour ran through all his exposition of the stratagems and disciplines by which Third Thought aimed to make its practitioners more comfortable with that awareness of death which he argued was essential to a full life. But there was never anything frivolous or factitious or tinged with mere bravado in his talk. He ended by saying 'It is commonplace, as many great truths are commonplace, to talk of the miracle of life. But being born is only the first of the two great miracles which humanity is involved in. The second is of course death and in many ways it is the greater. The fine Scottish poet Edwin Muir understood this, as expounded in the opening verse of his poem 'The Child Dying'.

Unfriendly friendly universe

I pack your stars into my purse and bid you, bid you so farewell.

That I can leave you, quite go out,

Go out, go out beyond all doubt,

My father says, is the miracle.'

He sat down. The applause, led by the three no longer bored girls, was enthusiastic. Pottle stood up to say that Frere Jacques would now take questions and afterwards would be happy to sign copies of his new book.

The questions were as usual led by the tyro academics eager to count coup. One quoted with heavy irony from a later stanza of Muir's poem which referred to 'the far side of despair' and 'nothing-filled eternity' and wondered what the good Brother's religious superiors thought of this alternative to the Christian heaven he seemed to be promising his proselytes. One of Pascoe's neighbours said very audibly, 'Dickhead!' but Jacques needed no external shield, parrying the blow easily with the assurance that the questioner, whether atheist or Christian or anything else, need not fear his beliefs were being challenged as Third Thought was non-secular, non-proselytory, and concerned only with the living.

The girl who'd said, 'Dickhead', then asked very seriously what part sex with its 'little death' played in Third Thought philosophy, to which Jacques replied equally seriously that if she cared to read chapter seven of his book, he was sure she'd find her question answered. As he finished speaking, he smiled, not at the questioner but at someone seated at the other end of Pascoe's row. He leaned forward to look and saw a stunningly beautiful blonde-haired young woman smiling back at the monk.

Afterwards Pascoe bought a copy of the book and was wondering whether to join the signing queue (which included all three of his young neighbours) when Pottle tapped his shoulder and said, 'Peter, how nice to see that the policeman's pursuit of enlightenment doesn't stop in the forensic laboratory. Let me introduce you to Amaryllis Haseen.'

As he shook hands with the woman, Pascoe thought that Roote's description had been a bit over the top but not much. She was definitely sexy in a slightly overblown and garish kind of way. He could see how she might provoke many stirrings and rustlings and scratch-ings in the wainscot of St Godric's SCR.

He said, 'I was very sorry to hear of the death of your husband, Ms Haseen. Sir Justinian will be a great loss to scholarship.'

Englishmen are notoriously bad at offering condolences and Pascoe thought he'd done it rather well, but the woman regarded him with unconcealed scepticism and said, 'You knew my husband, Mr Pascoe?'

'Well, no…'

'But you know his books? Which one impressed you most?'

Pascoe glanced appealingly at Pottle who, smiling faintly, said, 'In fact, Amaryllis, you and the Chief Inspector do have a common acquaintance, I believe. A Mr Franny Roote.'

Grateful for both the change of subject and the opening, Pascoe said, 'I read with great interest what you said about him in Dark Cells, which -I was really impressed with, by the way. Fine work. If you've got a moment to talk about him, I'd really appreciate it.'

His attempt at diversion by flattery failed miserably.

She said coldly, 'I cannot talk about my clients, Mr Pascoe, none of whom was identified in the book anyway.'

He said, 'No, but Franny identified himself to me in a letter. Prisoner XR, if I remember right. So perhaps the rules of confidentiality no longer apply. He was certainly very open about his sessions with you and the debt he feels he owes you for supporting his transfer from the Syke to Butler's Low.'

'If you've got a whip’ said the Gospel according to St Dalziel, 'just a little crack will usually do the trick -so long as they're convinced you're willing to draw blood.'

Pascoe fixed her with what he hoped was a stare full of Dalzielesque conviction.

Get 'em in a corner then show 'em a get-out, was another of the Master's tips.

'But you met him again recently at St Godric's, I believe, long after he'd ceased to be a client, so no ethical problems talking about that, are there? I know it must be a very painful memory to you, that conference. But at the same time it must have been a source of great pleasure seeing someone you'd helped as a prisoner receiving the applause of a distinguished academic audience for his paper. Weren't you impressed?'

'By the paper, no. Like most literary analyses, so called, it was big on waffle, low on psychological rigour. Hardly worth rushing lunch for. But of course it wasn't Roote's work, was it? I was rather more interested in his relationship with the late Dr Johnson.'

'You must have known Sam when Sir Justinian worked at Sheffield?'

'Oh yes. We met.'

He said, 'I knew him too. Very bright, very attractive guy, I thought.'

'You found him attractive?' She gave him an assessing glance.

'Yes, I did. I gather there was some kind of falling out with your husband.'

She shrugged and said, 'On Johnson's part, perhaps. A certain type of character always comes to resent those who have helped them as much as Jay helped Johnson with his Beddoes book. For some people it is easier to quarrel with the helper than to acknowledge the help. I did not know him well, but he always struck me as a very volatile, perhaps even unstable character. I was not surprised when I heard of the circumstances of his departure from Sheffield.'

'The death of that student, Jake Frobisher, you mean?'

'You know of that? Of course, you would. Again the closeness followed by the rejection, the same pattern as with Jay, except of course the closeness in this case was sexual rather than academic collaboration. I think