Reginald Hill - The Death of Dalziel - A Dalziel and Pascoe Novel

The Mirely Mecca has changed a lot since his last visit which was…he can’t recall when. Never mind. The ceiling’s higher now and the soaring windows, spring-bright with coloured glass, wouldn’t disgrace a cathedral. The walls are lined with long tables, covered in white linen cloths on which rest a royal banquet of everything he loves—on one table crowns of lamb, barons of beef, loins of pork ridged with crackling, honey-glazed hams; on another roasted geese, Christmas turkeys, duck with cherries, pheasant adorned with their own feathers; on a third whole salmon, pickled herring, mountain ranges of oysters and mussels. Yet another is crowded with desserts: bread-and-butter pudding, rhubarb crumble, Spotted Dick, and his childhood favourite, Eve’s Pudding.

And there, by a table laden with bottles of every kind of malt whisky he’d ever tasted, stands Peter Pascoe, an open bottle of Highland Park in one hand and in the other a king-size crystal tumbler full to the brim which he is holding out in smiling invitation…

Later, lad, he mouths. Later. First things first. Dance till the music reaches its climax, then straight out of the door into that dark alcove at the end of the corridor to reach his and hers…

After which, being a gentleman, he’ll wait a decent interval of mebbe a minute and a half before heading back inside for another helping of Eve’s Pudding…

But just as he begins to wonder if he can hold out any longer, the music changes, accelerating from the sensuous pulse of the tango into the mad whirl of a Viennese waltz. His muscles obey the new commands effortlessly though his mind wonders what the fuck the band leader’s playing at. Round and round and round he spins, till the high walls and coloured windows and laden tables retreat to a blur of Arctic whiteness and Tottie’s body, which during the tango had been a comfortable armful of warm softness moulding itself ever closer to his, begins to feel like a sackful of old bones.

Now he too is beginning to feel tired, as if age and exertion and all the excesses of a life spent in mad pursuit of God knows what are at last catching up with him. He wants to rest. Surely Tottie would want to sit this one out too? He nuzzles his lips against her ear to whisper the suggestion, but he can’t find it. The cheek pressed against his no longer feels soft and warm but cold and hard and smooth.

He moves his head back to look into his partner’s face. Instead of the lustrous brown bedroom eyes of Tottie Truman, he finds himself peering into the deep shadowy sockets of a skull whose toothy leer and vacant gaze have something familiar about them.

Then recognition dawns.

Dalziel laughs.

‘Hector, lad,’ he cries. ‘I always said tha’d be the death of me, but I never meant it so literal!’

The skeletal figure does not reply but its grip tightens round the Fat Man’s broad frame and he finds his weary legs being urged into an even wilder dance which feels as if it will only end when those bony arms have squeezed out of him everything that makes up the life force—sun and wind and air and rain, good grub and mellow whisky, light and laughter—and whirled what little remains away into some icy eternity.

For a moment he is lost. He, the great Dalziel, who on his day has danced from dusk to dawn and then washed down the Full British Breakfast with a tumbler of whisky, has no strength to resist as Death, or Hector, bears him off to oblivion.

Then at the very point of submission, something happens.

New resolve seems to course through his weary limbs like an electric shock. Then another, even stronger. A third…a fourth…a fifth…

Sod this for a lark! he thinks. I’ll give this bugger a run for his money afore I let him dance me off my feet!

Pressing Death or Hector even closer to his chest, he rises on to his toes and goes whirling round the room, once more the leader not the led, faster and faster, till he leaves the wild music trailing in his wake. And this time, instead of blurring out his surroundings, the speed of the dance seems to bring them back into focus. First the high windows with their multi-coloured lights, and then white-clothed tables laden with provender, and finally he becomes aware that the brittle bones in his arms are once more clothed in the warm and yielding flesh of Tottie Truman from Donny.

‘He’s stable now, but it was a close-run thing,’ said Dr John Sowden. ‘With anyone else I’d have called it after the fifth shock. But I looked down at the fat old bastard lying there and I thought, I’m not going to risk being haunted by you! And I gave him one more go.’

Dr Sowden was an old acquaintance of the Pascoes, a relationship which had started way back in a close encounter with Andy Dalziel under suspicion of causing death by drunk driving.

‘And that did the trick?’ said Ellie Pascoe.

‘It started his heart beating again. Which is something, but don’t get your hopes up. He’s only back to where he was. Still showing no sign of regaining consciousness. And we’ve no idea what state he’ll be in if and when that happens. You, Peter, on the other hand are looking remarkably spry, considering.’

‘So when can I go home?’ said Pascoe. ‘I feel fine.’

It was almost true. The anxiety caused by the news about Fat Andy, the relief at hearing they’d got him back, and the pleasure of having Ellie sitting on his bed, had seemed to combine as a sort of tonic. John Sowden ought to be showering praise on him for his resilience rather than pursing his lips.

‘Let’s see how you are in a couple of days,’ said the doctor dismissively. ‘Ellie, nice to see you again. Make sure he behaves himself.’

He went out.

‘John ought to brush up his bedside manner, don’t you reckon?’ said Pascoe.

‘I think he’s a bit worried there may be some delayed emotional reaction,’ said Ellie carefully.

‘He’s been talking to you, has he? Don’t tell me he actually used those tired old words posttraumatic stress disorder!’ Pascoe laughed harshly. ‘Listen, if ever I start feeling sorry for myself, I just have to think of Andy lying up there in a coma.’

Ellie took his hand and squeezed it.

‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘I often wished the earth would open up and swallow the fat bastard, but it’s almost impossible to imagine a world without Andy, isn’t it?’

‘Not almost,’ said Pascoe. ‘You said you’d seen Cap. How’s she taking it?’

‘Hard to say. She once told me that the only worthwhile thing she learned at St Dot’s Academy was to deal with crisis and catastrophe by not letting it mark your upper crust. While us plebs scream and shout and run about, people of Cap’s class maintain an even keel and look to the practicalities.’

Pascoe smiled at ‘us plebs’. Ellie’s family were irremediably petit bourgeois despite all her efforts to downgrade them to acquire street cred in the class war. By contrast Cap Marvell, while making no effort to deny her upper-class background and education, had been much more successful in her efforts to disoblige her old connections. Having a secret weapon like Andy Dalziel you could produce at will can’t have been a disadvantage either.

Pascoe liked her in a cautious kind of way. She was good for Dalziel emotionally and intellectually and, one presumed, physically, but her readiness to strain the law in pursuit of her animal rights causes was a ticking bomb for a working cop. On the other hand it struck him as one of God’s better jokes that after many years of heavy-handed jesting about Ellie’s unbecoming behaviour as a political activist, Dalziel should find himself hoist with the same petard.

‘What are you grinning at?’ demanded Ellie.