Reginald Hill - Death

'I love it when you talk down to me, Charley. Makes me really humble to be the friend of someone so famous.'

Penn's limited fame and fortune rested on his authorship of a sequence of historical romances which had been turned into a popular romping claret-and-cleavage TV series. His hopes of a lasting reputation rested on the critical biography of Heinrich Heine he'd been researching for many years, researches which had provided him with much of the material he used in his fictions. This was an irony which confirmed his cynical outlook on the way things were arranged. As if, he declared, the Venerable Bede had found the only way he could keep body and soul together was by selling plastic crucifixes that lit up in the dark and played 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot'.

'Andy, let's both cut the blunt down-to-earth Yorkshire crap. Just tell me what it is you think I've done that brings you out here looking for me.'

A waitress approached and enquired timidly if she could help them.

'Aye,' said Dalziel. 'Coffee. One of them frothy ones with bits of chocolate. And a hot doughnut. Charley? My treat.'

'By God, it must be serious. Another double espresso, luv. Right, Andy, spit it out.'

Dalziel settled more comfortably in his chair, spreading its legs a little wider.

'First off’ he said, 'I've not come here looking for you, I was on my way to the Reference when I clocked you. Though happen I did think I might find you sitting in your usual spot in the library. I've just bought one of your books, thought I'd get you to sign it for me, make it more valuable when I send it up to Sotheby's.'

He tossed on to the table the paperback he'd picked up at the Centre bookstall when he'd spotted Penn in Hal's. It was entitled Harry Hacker and the Ship of Fools. Its cover showed a ship crowded with agitated men in a turbulent sea being driven on to rocks on which basked several well-endowed women in a state of deshabille.

Penn frowned at it and said, 'So what made you pick this one?'

'Liked the cover. Ship driven on the rocks. Seemed to say something about you, Charley.'

'Like what?'

'Like out of control, mebbe.'

This seemed to reassure the writer. He pushed the book aside and said, 'If it's not me you're after in the Reference, then what is it?'

'Well, it's related to you in a way’ said Dalziel. 'Just tell me straight, Charley. You know where Ms Pomona, the librarian, lives?'

For a moment Penn went still, like a wolf freezing when the wind brings it some trace of its prey.

'Got a flat in Peg Lane, hasn't she?' he said.

'That's right. Church View House. You been round there recently?'

'Why should I? We're not exactly on social visiting terms.'

'Question answered with a question is a question answered, that's what they taught us at police college,' said the Fat Man. 'Thanks, luv.'

He raised the cappuccino the waitress had set in front of him to his mouth and licked the chocolate-flecked foam with an apparently prehensile tongue.

'And a suspect beaten with a table is a criminally damaged table,' said Penn. 'Bet they taught you that as well.'

'Hope it won't come to that,' said the Fat Man, studying his doughnut with the keen eye of a man expert at finding where the sac of jam is hidden. 'So?'

Penn let out a long sigh and said, 'OK, you've got me bang to rights. I' did call round there for a chat, last weekend it was. No harm in that, is there?'

'When at the weekend?'

'Oh, Saturday I think,' said Penn vaguely. 'No one home, so I came away.'

Dalziel chose his point of incision, raised the doughnut to his mouth and bit.

Through red-stained teeth he said, 'Precision is important, Charley, else you miss the full pleasure. Saturday. When on Saturday?'

'Morning, was it? Yes, morning. Does it matter?'

'Morning starts at twelve midnight. Between twelve and one, was it?'

'Don't be daft!'

'One and two then? No? Two and three? No? Give us a clue at least, Charley!'

'And spoil your game? Play's important to kids, isn't that what the psychs say?'

'How about between eight and half past?' said Dalziel, pushing the rest of the doughnut into his maw.

‘That would be about right, I dare say,' said Penn.

‘Thought it might, as a man matching your description were seen lurking in Church View around eight twenty-five.'

'Can't have been me,' said Penn indifferently. 'I gave up lurking years back. Case of mistaken identity then.'

'We got a description,' said Dalziel, taking out a notebook and looking at a blank sheet. 'Bearded, furtive, mad-looking. Like a nineteenth-century Russian anarchist who'd just planted a bomb.'

'Yeah, that does sound like me’ said Penn. 'So I called at about eight fifteen and she wasn't in so I left. So what?'

'Bit early for a social call, weren't it?'

'You know what they say about early birds, Andy.'

'Catch colds, don't they? Still sounds a bit odd to me. Can't remember the last time I called on a lass so early. Not unless I had a warrant and wanted to catch 'em afore they got their clothes on.'

'No such ambition. I just wanted to catch her before she went to work.'

'Works Saturdays, does she?'

'Aye. In the mornings. Mostly.'

'Yes, you'd know that 'cos you'd be in the library yourself most days, right, Charley? So why not have your little chat with her there?'

'Because it's hard to be private there.'

'Private? So there was something private you wanted to discuss with her, Charley?'

'Not particularly.'

'Not particularly? But particularly enough to call on her at sparrow-fart! Come on, Charley! There's only one thing you're interested in discussing with Ms Pomona and it's not something that Ms Pomona would want to discuss with you any time, seeing as it was a nasty traumatic experience which she'll have been doing her very best to forget! So what do you think she was going to say if she opened her door at eight a.m. and saw Cheerful Charley Penn standing there? Sod off! That's what she was going to say.'

Penn drank his coffee, then asked quietly, 'Andy, what's going off here? She made some kind of complaint about me?'

'Not yet.'

'Meaning, but she will? Doesn't surprise me. She has to be dancing to your tune in this, no other way I can see it working.'

‘I won't ask you what that means 'cos I don't like hitting a man I've just invested a coffee in. So what you're saying, Charley, is, you've never been in Ms Pomona's flat?'

'You're slow, Andy, but you get there in the end.'

'That's what all the girls tell me. So if we happened to find one of your fingerprints in Ms P's flat, you'd be hard put to explain how it got there?'

Penh raised his coffee cup, looked at it speculatively and said, 'If you took this cup and left it in the Vatican, you'd find my print there, but that doesn't mean I'm the Pope. Andy, don't you think it's time you told me what you're really after here?' 'Just having a coffee with an old friend.' Penn made a play of looking round then said, 'Must have missed him.'

Dalziel emptied his cup and said, 'No rest for the wicked, eh? Oh, just one thing more. Lorelei. What's one of them when it's at home?'

'Why do you ask, Andy? Owt to do with little Miss P's intruder?'

Dalziel didn't answer but just stared at the writer till he raised his hands in mock surrender and said, 'She's a German nymph who lives on the Rhine. Her beautiful song lures fishermen to steer their boats on the rocks and drown. Heine wrote a poem about her. "Ich weifi nicht was soil es bedeuten Daft ich so traurig bin. Bin Marchen aus alien Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.'"

'You're hard enough to follow in English, Charley.' '"I don't know of any good reason For me to feel so sad. A legend from some old season Keeps running around in my head."'