Reginald Hill - Death

'No? This the same mad bastard who topped the kid in the canal?'

'You know a lot,' said Polchard, looking at Roote speculatively. 'That was definitely nothing to do with me. What are you doing here anyway?'

'Helping out a friend. Two friends, if I include you, Mate. Think about it. Good lawyer, few years improving your chess, no sweat.'

'Good lawyer.' Polchard smiled wanly. 'Used to have one of those. Reckon I might be needing another now. What you got in mind for the endgame, Franny?'

'I walk out of here with the girl, tell them you're coming out too. Couple of minutes later, you show; the hard men with guns do a lot of shouting but no shooting, and before you know it, you're nice and comfy where you don't have to worry about the taxman.'

Polchard bent his head over the board for a long moment. Then with his forefinger he flicked the black king off its magnetic base.

'Off you go then,' he said.

'Right,' said Franny. 'How about the guns? You want I should take them too?'

Polchard laughed.

'There's only the one, and I knew nothing about it till it went off. No, Franny, leave the gun to me. I really don't think you want to hang around and try to persuade your old chum to hand it over to you, do you?'

'My old chum?' said Franny, puzzled.

For the first time Polchard looked surprised.

'You don't know? Well, well. And here's me thinking you were really brave! He's wandering around looking for a way out.' Polchard glanced towards the stock-room door and lowered his voice. I'd push off before he comes back if I were you.'

'But who…?'

'Go while you can!'

When Polchard spoke with that degree of urgency, even the screws at Chapel Syke had jumped.

He went to Rosie and offered her his hand. She stood up. Her mouth was stained with chocolate. The serpent crown which was too big for her slim head slipped to one side. She looked like a tipsy cupid.

'Your dad sent me’ he said.

She looked at him assessingly. He had seen the same expression in her father's eyes. This time it was followed by belief and acceptance, which had never happened with Pascoe.

They walked hand in hand to the door. He opened it slowly and stood there a moment just to make sure the watchers on the far side of the display area registered who it was.

It was a moment too long.

'Roote! It is you that Roote, you fucking bastard! I've been waiting a long time for this! Bring the kid back inside.'

Franny's brain, always hyperactive behind that calm front, had already worked out who Polchard had to be talking about. It wasn't hard. All he had to do was run a finger down the list of people he'd met in the Syke, looking for the kind of madman who'd disobey even the great Mate's instructions and smuggle a gun on a job and use it.

He reached down and took the serpent crown off the girl's head and said in a low voice, 'Rosie, when I say run, run! But not straight. Run right. OK?'

'OK,' said the little girl, deciding she'd been wrong and maybe he was fun after all.

Slowly Roote turned and faced the man who stood in the stock-room doorway.

He was big, very big. He had a black woolly hat like a funeral parlour tea-cosy pulled very low over his brow. And he was holding a shotgun.

Seeing he had Franny's full attention, he took one hand off the weapon and tore off the hat to reveal a bald head tattooed with an eagle whose talons were poised over his eyes.

Roote's face split in a broad grin.

'No, Dendo, you didn't… it's real, is it? You got yourself tattooed in loving memory of poor old Brillo! Now that's really touching. You make a great tombstone!'

'Get inside! Brillo would want this to be slow!'

'Of course he would,' said Franny Roote, stepping forward so that his body was between the gunman and the girl. 'He needed everything slow, didn't he, the poor bastard. Run!'

Rosie set off right. Roote sent the serpent crown spinning towards Bright then hurled himself left. The first shot ripped along his shoulder but he kept running. Bright came to the doorway, his face mottled with such rage it was hard to see where the tattoo ended and unsullied flesh began. And then a fusillade from the waiting marksmen punched a new and final pattern into his body. But he still managed to get off one more shot.

Roote felt a blow in the middle of his back. It didn't feel all that much, the kind of congratulatory slap one overhearty sportsman might give another to acknowledge a good move. But it switched off the connection between his brain and his limbs and he went down like a pole-axed steer.

Men in police combat gear carrying guns came running across the floor to the stock room. Rosie Pascoe leapt into Ellie's arms with such force they both collapsed to the ground and already, even as they lay there locked together, the girl was describing her wonderful adventure. Dalziel took possession of an unresisting Mate Polchard. Wield stepped over Dendo Bright's body like it was a dog dropping and stooped to pick up the serpent crown. He saw nothing of its beauty. To him it was a bit of bent metal which wasn't worth the loss of a single second of Lee Lubanski's life.

And Pascoe, after sinking his face briefly in his daughter's hair, left her to her mother and went straight to Franny Roote.

He put his arm round him to make him more comfortable and felt the warm blood oozing between his fingers.

"Medics!' he screamed. 'Get some help here, for fuck's sake!'

'Made up your mind yet, Mr Pascoe?' said the youth in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper. 'Going to put me on trial? No, of course you're not. It's not in you…'

'Don't be too sure. I can be a right bastard when I try’ said Pascoe with an effort at lightness. 'We'll talk t about it when you're convalescing.'

'Convalescing? I don't think so.'

His eyes clouded for a moment then cleared again and he seemed to take in his surroundings and began to laugh, painfully.

'Remember that inscription I told you about? Need a change now. Franny Roote… Born in Hope… Died in Ladies Underwear… even better, eh?'

A paramedic arrived and knelt down beside the wounded man. Pascoe tried to move aside but Roote's fingers found strength from somewhere to hold him back.

'Know what the date is?' he said. 'January the twenty-sixth. Same day Beddoes died. Funny that.'

'Don't talk about dying,' said Pascoe sharply. 'You can't die yet. It's not your time.'

'Want to keep me alive, Mr Pascoe? It would be a good trick. For all his talk of death, I sometimes think Beddoes would have liked to master it. But why should you want me alive if you're not going to try me?'

'So I can thank you, Franny’ said Pascoe desperately. 'So you can't die.'

'You know me, Mr Pascoe… always looking for someone who'd tell me what to do’ said Roote smiling.

The paramedic was doing what he could, all the while talking urgently into his lapel radio, demanding to know where the hell the stretcher was and saying they needed a chopper here, an ambulance would be too slow. Franny showed no reaction to the sound of his voice or the touch of his hands or the prick of his needle. Still he kept tight hold of Pascoe's hand and never once took his eyes off his face, and Pascoe locked on to the young man's gaze as if by sheer force of will he could hold it steady and bright.

All around them was noise and bustle, people moving swiftly, men shouting orders, radios crackling, distant sirens wailing; but for all the heed either of them took of this, they might have been a pair of still and isolated figures sitting under the solitary moon in the hush'd Chorasmian waste where the river Oxus flows on his long and winding journey to the Aral Sea.

Imagined Scenes from

AMONG OTHER THINGS: The Quest for Thomas Lovell Beddoes by Sam Johnson MA, PhD