Reginald Hill: Recalled to Life

He turned and pushed past Dalziel. 'Poor John,' said Westropp. 'For a man who makes a living out of selling ideas, his forecasts seem sadly off the mark.' 'At least he's worried about that woman out there,' growled Dalziel. Westropp shrugged, shoulder bones moving like sticks in a sack. Then he turned his attention to his son. 'Pip,' he said.

'We've never been as close as I could have wished. I lost too much of your childhood, but I had to send you away to school till I finally settled down with Marilou…' His son said, 'Dad, please, it's OK, forget it…' His face was soft with grief. He leaned over Westropp as if to kiss him but the sick man turned his head away and patted his shoulder and in that moment Dalziel saw how distasteful the memory of his dead wife was still to him. Philip straightened up. Westropp said, 'We'll talk later. Ask Marilou if she'd mind not coming in till Mr Dalziel comes out.' The young man turned away, looked at Dalziel as if about to say something, but left without speaking. 'Funny,' said Dalziel. 'What?' 'Lot of men would make more of a live son than a dead daughter.' 'Well, well. A moralist perchance appears, led, heaven knows how, to this poor sod. You are a father perhaps yourself to know so much about these relationships?' 'No, but I know enough to guess that it's the lad who's the real poor sod here,' growled Dalziel. 'I'd put money it was your missus insisted he should come back from yon school in England to live with you.' He saw he'd hit home and he pressed on, 'Been working long for Rampling, has he?' 'I'm sorry?'

'Didn't you know he was one of that lot? Breaking and entering hotel bedrooms a speciality. Well, not really. He weren't much good at it.

Only did it, I dare say, 'cos he got told the bugger whose bedroom it was might be a threat to his dear old dad.' 'Your room, you mean? That was Pip? Well, well.' Westropp frowned, then said, 'But this is a diversion. I have little time for such things. You want something from me, I assume?' 'The truth.' ‘Iindeed? And perhaps you will perform me one or two little services in return?' 'Such as?' 'Always leave the bathroom as you'd like to find it. That was one of my old nanny's maxims. It's tidying-up time for me. For a start, perhaps you could dispose of this.' He produced a little automatic pistol from beneath his cushions. Dalziel took it gingerly, checked the safety was on, tried to put it in his left pocket, found it full of gun already, and transferred it to the right. 'Keeps me well balanced,' he said. 'Like you.' 'You think so?' 'Man has to be well balanced to live what you've lived through without cracking. Or completely cracked to start with.'

'Now that's not for me to say. All I know is that the greater obstacle to human progress is our capacity for bearing things. Ah, as the heart grows older, It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh…' It was, Dalziel guessed, a poem. Pascoe used the same funny voice when he slid into poetry too. But his face was never striated with pain and weariness like Westropp's. 'You want me to call a quack?' he asked. 'No, thank you. I have my medication.' He opened his hand to show a tiny pillbox. The lid snapped up at the touch of his finger. He took out a green and black capsule and examined it quizzically. 'Sometimes coals are needed in Newcastle after all,' he said. 'Catch.' He tossed the box to Dalziel who plucked it from the air and examined the coat of arms. 'It's all right. I didn't nick it from Windsor. It's mine by right of inheritance.' 'Worth a bob or two.' 'Probably. Keep it. Souvenir.' 'I don't need to be reminded.'

'No, you don't, do you? Interesting, that. Keep it anyway. You said you'd help tidy up. Let's press on. There's not much time.' 'I thought you had weeks.' 'Not weeks of control. Weeks of growing pain, increasing helplessness. No, thank you. I prefer to do my own tidying.' 'With my help?' ‘That's right. But the task is not onerous.

What precisely you are doing here, Mr Dalziel, I don't pretend to know, and I have not time to find out. I suspect your motives and your function go far beyond anything which can be called simply official.

But you will, I am sure, make an impressive messenger. And you need have no fear of maltreatment, for the message is good.' 'Oh aye? I hope it's short too.' 'Tell them…' 'Who's them?' interrupted Dalziel. 'Don't worry. You'll have no difficulty identifying them.

Tell them that when last you saw me, I was in full possession of my faculties and you found my assurance of tidiness convincing.' Dalziel thought a moment, then shook his head and said, 'No.' 'No? Is it perhaps too long for you? Shall I write it down?' 'Funny,' growled Dalziel. 'What you say about possession of your faculties, I'll need a lot more evidence of that. Like the truth, for instance. Let's stop farting about. Did you kill your missus or not?' 'Did I kill her?’ mused Westropp. 'You speak as if killing is a single act of a single person upon another single person.' 'Stop pissing around!' said Dalziel angrily. 'There's a woman out there needs to know what happened.' Westropp gave a thin, knowing smile. 'She needs to know or you need to know, Superintendent? Whose peace of mind is it you're worried about?' Even arrows that strike home cannot divert the charging buffalo. 'She was your mistress. You were lovers. You owe her something!' Westropp shook his head. 'If I do, it's beyond payment.

What's best for her to know? For all these years, I've believed her guilty, Dalziel. Not necessarily as charged, but guilty none the less.

And I still think it. You don't do things like that to yourself unless you're guilty!' 'Or obsessed.' 'Guilt. Obsession. Bedfellows, when you get down to it. As I suspect you know. Do you understand women, Dalziel? I don't. Or men either, I suspect. I had a wife who turned out a whore. Well, I could live with that. It's an old tradition of the upper classes. Anything goes as long as you don't frighten the horses. I didn't even mind too much when Mick got in on the act. But it ruined our friendship. He despised me for not minding! Dear old Mick. Strange man. But he paid, of course. You see, Pam didn't just want his lily-white body, she turned obsessional, she wanted… everything! Me, I bedded little Cissy from time to time. She was young, she was attractive, she was there. But damn me, if she didn't turn obsessional too! Why am I telling you all this, Dalziel?'

'Because I remind you of your mother,' said Dalziel. 'Also because you're afraid if you tell your wife, she might not be obsessional enough to go on loving you. So go on. The gist. That's all I want. The gist.' 'And if I don't care to?' 'Then I'll mebbe shake you till that little bit of Newcastle coal falls out of your pocket, and have a word with your missus and your quack, and make sure you fall off your perch, legally, naturally, and very slowly.' Westropp regarded him closely and said, 'Oh Dalziel, I wonder, what really is your own particular obsession?' 'Beer,' said Dalziel. 'I'm parched for a decent pint, so the sooner I get done here, the sooner I'll get back to Yorkshire. Are you sitting comfortably? Then why don't you begin?'

I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the streets.' Everything ends, and everything starts again. Justice returns, Saturn rules OK, and the first-born son of the new golden age is already dropping out of the skies on his way down to earth. In other words, Dalziel was flying home. Preferring people to clouds, he'd asked for a seat on the aisle from which he studied those around him in hope of booking the same kind of free ride through Heathrow officialdom as he'd got in New York. A nun with five o'clock shadow held his attention for a while, but when he saw her pour three Irish miniatures into one glass and down them in three sips, he acknowledged that such instinctive Trinitarianism could not be affected, and followed her good example with single malt. At Heathrow he found he needn't have worried. As he came out of the tunnel from the plane, a young woman in the kind of smart black and white clothing which stops just short of being a uniform approached him, smiling, and said, 'Superintendent Dalziel?