Читать книгу Death’s Jest-Book - Reginald Hill - Страница 17

Earlier that same Saturday morning, Detective Constable Hat Bowler had awoken from a dream.

Ever since the incident in which he sustained the serious head injury he was officially still recuperating from, his sleep had been broken by lurid nightmares in which he struggled once more with the naked blood-slippery figure of the Wordman. The difference from the reality was that in his dreams he always lost and lay there helpless while his towering assailant clubbed him again and again with a heavy crystal dish till he slipped into unconsciousness with the despairing screams of Rye Pomona echoing through his broken head. And when he awoke into a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets, it was the memory of those screams as much as his own pain and fear that he brought with him out of the dark.

This morning he woke once more into a tangle of sheets and a memory of Rye calling out, but this time there was nothing of fear or pain in his memory, only love and joy.

In his dream he’d been lying in his hotel bed, his body a burning brand in a cold, cold waste of circumspection, wondering whether he was a wise man or an idiot not to have pressed his suit with Rye to either a conclusion or a rejection, when he had heard his door open and next moment a soft naked body had fused its warmth with his and a voice had murmured in his ear, ‘Thank God for equal opportunities, eh?’ And after that she had spoken no more till those final wordless but oh so eloquent cries which had climaxed their passionate coupling.

He groaned softly at the sweet memory of the dream, tried to relax once more into that happy slumber, rolled over in the broad bed, and sat up wide-awake.

She was there. Either he was still dreaming, or …

Her arms went round him and drew him down.

‘How’s your head?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know. I think I’m having delusions.’

‘So why don’t we delude ourselves again?’

If this was dreaming, he was happy to sleep forever.

Afterwards they lay intricately twined together, listening to the hotel coming to life around them and the birds, later than the humans on these dark mornings, beginning to waken outside.

‘What’s that?’ she said.

‘Goldfinch.’

‘And that?’

‘Mistle thrush.’

‘I like a man who knows more than I do,’ she said. ‘Hungry?’

‘What had you in mind?’

‘Sausage, bacon and egg, for starters.’

She rolled away from him, picked up the bedside phone and dialled.

He listened as she ordered the full English for two in his room.

‘Have you no shame?’ he asked.

‘Just as well I haven’t,’ she said. ‘Or were you planning to surprise me last night?’

He shook his head and said, ‘No. I’m sorry. I wanted to, Jesus, how I’ve been wanting to! But I just lost my bottle …’

‘Why?’ she said curiously. ‘You’ve never struck me as the retiring virgin type, Hat.’

‘No? Well, usually … not that there’s been a lot … but in most cases it didn’t matter, being turned down, I mean. Some you lose, some you win, that sort of thing. But with you I was terrified I’d lose everything by pressing too hard. I had to be sure you really fancied me.’

‘Girl fixes up a three-night break in a romantic country hotel and you’re not sure?’ she said incredulously.

‘Yeah, well, I thought … then we got here and you’d booked separate rooms.’

‘Fail-safe in case … anyway, you had the cue to look disappointed and say, “Hey, do we really need two rooms?’”

‘Oh, I was disappointed,’ he said with a grin. ‘If I’d been on duty, I’d have gone out and arrested the first ten people I saw smiling and charged them with being happy. So, disappointed yes, but maybe not altogether surprised.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that during these past few weeks you’ve been concerned and caring and great fun to be with, all those things, but I always felt there was some kind of limit, you know: this far is fine but one more step and it’s on your bike, buster! Am I making sense?’

She was listening to him with a frowning intensity.

She said, ‘You think I was playing hard to get?’

‘Crossed my mind,’ he admitted. ‘But it didn’t seem your style. Though a couple of weeks back when things seemed to be going really well … do you remember? And I was thinking, this is the night! Then you got a headache! Jesus! I thought. A headache! How unoriginal can you get?’

‘You’ve been mixing with too many dishonest people, Hat,’ she said. ‘If I say I’ve got a headache, I mean I’ve got a headache. So you thought because I didn’t jump into bed with you the first time you got horny, I must be … what? What have you been thinking these past few weeks, Hat?’

He looked away then looked back straight into her eyes and said, ‘I sometimes thought, maybe you’re just grateful because of what happened. Maybe that’s the limit, whatever gratitude can give but no more. Well, I couldn’t have put up with that forever, but I wasn’t ready yet to take the risk of making you say it. So that’s the kind of wimpish wanker you’ve got yourself mixed up with.’

‘Wimp you may be, but you can give up the wanking, eh, Constable?’ she said, drawing him close to her. ‘I love you, Hat. From now on in, you’re safe with me.’

Which seemed to Hat even in these days of equal opportunity a slightly odd way of putting it, but he wasn’t about to complain, and indeed in her arms he felt so utterly invulnerable to anything fate could hurl against him, even if it took the form of Fat Andy Dalziel in berserker mode, that perhaps she had the right of it.