Reginald Hill: Death

His first reaction had been to talk of cancelling the whole job.

Polchard had smiled his cold smile and made it clear that he and his team would still require payment in full. Already because Linford in his grief had reneged on the further payments which had fallen due, Belchamber had had to promise Polchard a large portion of the monies projected from the sale of the disposable part of the Hoard. That was bad enough, but worse was the fear that now that the initial agreement had been broken by Linford's default, Polchard might simply take the lot, ruthlessly melting down individual items to make them more easily disposable.

Or perhaps the crown would suffer the fate of so many stolen works of art and end up as permanent collateral in a series of squalid drug deals.

He couldn't bear the thought of that.

In the end he had to accept Polchard's assurance – no; not assurance; the man didn't feel the need to reassure, simply to assert – that all he wanted was his agreed cut. Which made it easier to accept his further assertion that Lee's death had been caused by an overenthusiastic minion and that to the end the youth had insisted that his relationship with the ugly cop was purely professional. In other words, the dirty little scrote had been giving freebies in return for protection. So fuck him. No problem.

So he gave the go-ahead, trying to retain the illusion that he was still in charge. And he sat in his study trying to recall the thrill he had felt when he held the serpent crown.

And failed…

Death is a very great adventure, but to many people, especially to those who find the experience of going on a package holiday traumatic enough, the idea of embarking on an adventure is completely horrifying. Yet with holiday trips, most of us enjoy ourselves when we get there. And at a distance, are we not all full of delighted anticipation?

An unexpected visitor to Pascoe's sickbed had been Charley Penn, or rather he'd come to see Pascoe not knowing he was sick. Why he came wasn't clear… something to do with Rye Pomona… or maybe with Mai Richter… or maybe because his search for answers had left him uncertain of the original questions he'd been asking…

Charley Penn sat in the library and tried to concentrate on the poem he was working on.

It was called Der Scheidende, literally 'The Parting One' which he'd translated as 'Man on his way out', though perhaps he should try to preserve that idea of parting in the sense of division, which he was sure must have been in the mind of dying Heine with his doppelgdnger obsession.

He'd done the first six lines while Dick Dee was still alive.

Within my heart, within my head

Every worldly joy lies dead, And just as dead beyond repeal

Is hate of evil, nor do I feel

The pain of mine or others' lives,

For in me only Death survives.

But since Dick's death, he hadn't been able to return to the poem. Not till now.

Why had Mai gone so abruptly?

She'd said it had all been a waste of time, there was nothing to find, he should forget his obsession and get on with life. But it hadn't rung true.

Somehow Pomona had magicked her. Mai was the clearest-minded woman he knew. He respected her hugely, which came as close to love as he'd ever felt for a woman. But she'd let herself be magicked.

He twisted in his seat and looked towards the desk.

She was there in her usual place, apparently absorbed in whatever she was doing. But after only a second she raised her eyes to meet his. Once he had been proud of what he thought of as his ability to make her aware of his accusatory gaze, but in the past few days he had found himself wondering if perhaps these eye encounters might not owe more to some power she had of precognition rather than any he had of will. He broke off contact and returned to the second part of the poem.

The curtain falls, the play is done,

And, yawning, homeward now they've gone

My lovely German audience.

These worthy folk don't lack good sense.

They'll eat their supper with song and laughter

And never a thought for what comes after

A bit free but it got the feel, which in a poem is the greater part of sense. He looked at his draft of the final six lines. Did it matter that he'd changed Stuttgart to Frankfurt because the Main suited his rhyming better than the Neckar? He hadn't been able to find any evidence that the inhabitants of Stuttgart had any particular reputation for Philistinism. Frankfurt on the other hand was certainly a great German metropolis even in the 1850s. Goethe called it 'the secret capital', though Heine's short work experience there, in banking then grocery, hadn't been very happy. What the hell, if some scholar somewhere wanted to write to him after the book's publication and explain the special significance of Stuttgart, it would give the pedant pleasure and himself enlightenment!

He made a couple of minor changes then began to write a fair copy.

He got it right that man of glory

Who said in Homer's epic story

'The least such thoughtless Philistine

Is happier living in Frankfurt am Main

Than I, dead Achilles, in darkness hurled,

The Prince of Shades in the Underworld.'

He turned and looked towards Rye again. This time she was watching him already. Her face was surely a lot paler than it had been, even the natural Mediterranean darkness of her colouring couldn't disguise that, and her eyes, always large and dark, now looked even larger and darker. But this seemed less the pallor of sickness than that cool radiance the Old Masters gave to saints at their moment of martyrdom.

Or something, he added to himself in reaction against the weirdly fanciful thought. But there was something about the girl that encouraged a man's mind down such exotic avenues, an otherness, a sense of disjunction giving you vistas over altered landscapes which returned in a blink to what they'd always been, leaving you doubtful of the experience.

What the future might hold for her and Hat Bowler, who struck him as an uncomplicated young man inhabiting a world of straight lines and primary colours, he could not guess. He had a feeling that they were players in some drama in which his own pain at Dick Dee's death no longer had a major role.

She had a faint gentle sweet smile on her lips. Was it for him?

He wasn't sure, but he found himself hoping so.

Perhaps he was being magicked too?

Mist rolling down the hills, a still sea silvered by a rising moon, silence and loneliness in a populous city, eyes meeting strange eyes in the Tube then breaking off but not before a moment of recognition, the feeling of what now? after the applause for your greatest achievement has died, your dog suddenly no longer a puppy, a line of melody which always twists your heart, a ruined castle, casual farewells, plans for tomorrow: the list could go on forever of the prompts to think of death that life never tires of giving us. Don't ignore them. Use them. Then get on with living.

Late on the evening of Friday January 25th Peter Pascoe broke the surface of the surging ocean of strange dreams and visions he had been floundering in for three days and thought of a hot Scotch pie with peas and Oxo gravy and, for a whole five minutes before he closed his eyes again, wondered, almost disappointedly, if perhaps he wasn't going to die after all.

On Saturday the twenty-sixth of January, Rye Pomona woke on the floor of her bathroom. She recalled feeling sick in the night and climbing out of bed, but she recalled no more. She stood up and realized she had fouled herself. Stripping off her nightgown, she stepped into the bath and turned the shower full on.

As the icy blast slowly turned warm, she felt life return to her limbs and her mind. She found herself singing a song, not the words but the catchy little tune. This puzzled her, as recently she'd found no problem in recalling anything, even things from her very earliest years.