Dialogues of the Dead

‘That’s all you think it is, then?’ said Rye rather aggressively. ‘Some plonker using news stories to fantasize upon?’

Dee raised his eyebrows high and smiled at her.

‘We seem to have swapped lines,’ he said. ‘Last week it was me feeling uneasy and you pouring cold water. What’s changed?’

‘I could ask the same.’

‘Well, let me see,’ he said with that judicious solemnity she sometimes found irritating. ‘It could be I set my fanciful suspicions alongside the cool rational response of my smart young assistant and realized I was making a real ass of myself.’

Then his face split in a decade-dumping grin and he added, ‘Or some such tosh. And you?’

She responded to the grin, then said, ‘There’s something else I noticed in the Gazette. Hold on … here it is. It says that AA man’s inquest was adjourned to allow the police to make further enquiries. That can only mean they’re treating it as a suspicious death, can’t it?’

‘Yes, but there’s suspicious and suspicious,’ said Dee. ‘Any sudden death has to be thoroughly investigated. If it’s an accident, the causes have to be established to see whether there’s any question of neglect. But even if there’s a suspicion of criminality, for something like this to have any significance …’

He held up the Dialogue and paused expectantly.

A test, she thought. Dick Dee liked to give tests. At first when she came new to the job she’d felt herself patronized, then come to realize it was part of his teaching technique and much to be preferred either to being told something she already knew or not being told something she didn’t.

‘It doesn’t really signify anything,’ she said. ‘Not if the guy’s just feeding off news items. To be significant, or even to strain coincidence, he’d have to be writing before the event.’

‘Before the reporting of the event,’ corrected Dee.

She nodded. It was a small distinction but not nit-picking. That was another of Dee’s qualities. The details he was fussy about were usually important rather than just ego-exercising.

‘What about all this stuff about the student’s grandfather and the bazouki?’ she asked. ‘None of that’s in the paper.’

‘No. But if it’s true, which we don’t know, all it might mean is that the story-teller did have a chat with David Pitman at some time. I dare say it’s a story the young man told any number of customers at the restaurant.’

‘And if it turns out the AA man had been on holiday in Corfu?’

‘I can devise possible explanations till the cows come home,’ he said dismissively. ‘But where’s the point? The key question is, when did this last Dialogue actually turn up at the Gazette? I doubt if they’re systematic enough to be able to pinpoint it, but someone might remember something. Why don’t I have a word while you …’

‘… get on with reading these sodding stories,’ interrupted Rye. ‘Well, you’re the boss.’

‘So I am. And what I was going to say was, while you might do worse than have a friendly word with your ornithological admirer.’

He glanced towards the desk where a slim young man with an open boyish face and a sharp black suit was standing patiently.

His name was Bowler, initial E. Rye knew this because he’d flashed his library card the first time he appeared at the desk to ask for assistance in operating the CD-ROM drive of one of the Reference PCs. Both she and Dee had been on duty, but Rye had discovered early on that in matters of IT, she was the department’s designated expert. Not that her boss wasn’t technologically competent – in fact she suspected he was much more clued up than herself – but when she felt she knew him well enough to probe, he had smiled that sweetly sad smile of his and pointed to the computer, saying, ‘That is the grey squirrel,’ then to the booklined shelves: ‘These are the red.’

The disc Bowler E. wanted to use turned out to be an ornithological encyclopaedia, and when Rye had expressed a polite interest, he’d assumed she was a fellow enthusiast and nothing she’d been able to say during three or four subsequent visits had managed to disabuse him.

‘Oh God,’ she said now. ‘Today I tell him the only way I want to see birds is nicely browned and covered with orange sauce.’

‘You disappoint me, Rye,’ said Dee. ‘I wondered from the start why such a smart young fellow should make himself out to be a mere tyro in computer technology. It’s clearly not just birds that obsess him but you. Express your lack of enthusiasm in the brutal terms you suggest and all he’ll do is seek another topic of common interest. Which indeed you yourself may now be able to suggest.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Mr Bowler is in fact Detective Constable Bowler of the Mid-Yorkshire CID, so well worth cultivating. It’s not every day us amateur detectives get a chance of planting a snout in the local constabulary. I’ll leave him to your tender care, shall I?’

He headed for the office. Clever old Dick, thought Rye, watching him go. While I’m being a smart-ass, he’s busy being smart.

Bowler was coming towards her. She looked at him with new interest. She knew it was one of her failings to make snap judgments from which she was hard to budge. Even now, she was thinking that him being a cop and possibly motivated in his visits to the library by pure lust didn’t stop him being a bird nerd.

The suit and tie-less shirt were hopeful. Not Armani but pretty good clones. And the shy little-boy-lost smile seemed to her newly skinned eye to have something just a tad calculating in it which she approved too. The way to her heart wasn’t through her motherly instincts, but it was nice to see a guy trying.

‘Hello,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Sorry to bother you … if you’re too busy …’

It would have been entertaining to play along for a while but she really was up to her eyes in work even without this short story crap.

She said briskly, ‘Yes, I’m pretty well snowed under. But if it’s just a quickie you’re after, Constable …’

The shy smile remained fixed but he blinked twice, the second one removing all traces of shyness from his eyes (which were a rather nice dove-grey) and replacing it with something very definitely like calculation.

He’s wondering whether I’ve just invited him to swing straight from boy-next-door into saloon-bar-innuendo mode. If he does, he’s on his way. Bird nerd was bad, coarse cop was worse.

He said, ‘No, look, I’m sorry, I just wanted to ask, this Sunday I was thinking about driving out to Stangdale – it’s great country for birds even this time of year, you know, the moor, the crags and of course the tarn …’

He could see he wasn’t gripping her and he changed tack with an ease she approved.

‘… and afterwards I thought maybe we could stop off for a meal …’

‘This Sunday … I’m not sure what I’ve got on …’ she said screwing up her face as if trying to work out what she was doing seventy-two weeks rather than seventy-two hours ahead. ‘And a meal, you said …?’

‘Yeah, there’s the Dun Fox this end of the moor road. Not bad nosh. And now the law’s changed, they’ve starting having discos on Sunday nights as well as Saturdays …’

She knew it. An old-fashioned road-house on the edge of town, it had recently decided to target the local twenty-somethings who wanted to swing without being ankle-deep in teenies. It wasn’t Stringfellows but it was certainly a lot better than a twitchers’ barn dance. Question was, did she want a date with DC Bowler, E?

She studied his hopeful face. Why not? she thought. Then distantly behind him she glimpsed Charley Penn, who’d twisted round in his usual kiosk and was observing the scene with that smarl which suggested he could overhear not only their dialogue but their thoughts.

She said abruptly, ‘I’ll think about it. Look, sit down if you can spare a moment from keeping the world safe from crime.’

‘Thought it was you who was up to your eyes in it,’ he said, sitting.

Touch of satire there.

‘I am. And this is work, Your work, maybe.’

She explained briefly as she could, which wasn’t all that brief as awareness of how weird it all sounded made her veer towards longwindedness.

To do him credit, he didn’t fall about laughing but asked if he could see the Dialogues. She showed him the Second which he read while she retrieved the First from the drawer where Dee had stored it.

He read this as well then said, ‘I’ll hang on to these. Got a plastic folder or something?’

‘For fingerprints?’ she said, half mocking.

‘For appearances,’ he said. ‘Don’t think there’s going to be much in the way of prints with you and your boss crawling all over them.’

She got him a folder and said, ‘So you think there could be something in this?’

‘Didn’t say that, but we’ll check.’

Not a trace of shy smile here, just professional brusqueness.

‘Like at the Gazette, you mean?’ she said, slightly irritated. ‘I think you’ll find Dick Dee, my boss, is taking care of that.’

‘Yeah? Fancies himself as a private dick, does he?’ he said, smiling now.

‘Ask him yourself,’ said Rye.

Dee had come back into the library and was approaching them.

His gaze took in the transparent folder and he said, ‘I see Rye has brought you up to speed, Mr Bowler. I’ve just been talking to the Gazette. No joy, I’m afraid. No record of time or even date of receipt kept. Stuff marked Story Competition gets dumped straight into a bag for dispatch round here when it’s full, plus anything else looking like fiction.’

‘Would have thought that covered half the stuff they print,’ said Bowler.

‘An observation I resisted,’ said Dee.

‘Probably right. They can be sensitive souls, these journalists. OK, I’ll take these with me and check them out when I’ve got a spare moment.’

His offhand manner got to Rye and she said, ‘Check them out? How? You said you doubted if there’d be any prints. So what are you going to do with them? Call in the police clairvoyant?’

‘That’s been tried too, but I don’t think we’ll be getting out the ouija board for this one,’ grinned Bowler.

He’s enjoying this, thought Rye. Thinks he’s making a better impression on me as cocky cop than shy ornithologist. Time to disabuse him with a withering put-down.

But before the withering could commence, Dick Dee spoke.

‘I think DC Bowler plans to check whether any information given in the Dialogues is (a) true and (b) not obtainable from newspaper reports,’ he said. ‘As for example the AA man’s holiday habits or the origins of the bazouki.’

‘Right. Sharp thinking, Mr Dee,’ said Bowler.

Meaning, you’ve thought along the same lines as me therefore maybe you’re brighter than you look, parsed Rye.

‘Thank you,’ said Dee. ‘I took the liberty of enquiring about that also when I talked to the Gazette. No, the reports which we have drawn your attention to were the only items touching on the two deaths. And, in case you’re worried, I was careful not to alert them to a possible police interest. We have a local interest computer reference programme and they’re used to such cross-checking.’

He smiled at Bowler, not a smart-ass grin but a pleasant all-friends-together smile at which it was impossible to take offence, but offence was what the young DC felt like taking, except that he guessed it wouldn’t be a smart move in his campaign to impress Rye Pomona.

In addition, a good cop didn’t spurn help from any source, especially when that source was likely to be more clued up about something than the good cop’s self.

‘This funny drawing at the start of the First Dialogue. Any thoughts on that?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I have been wondering about that,’ said Dee. ‘And something did come to mind. I was going to tell you, Rye. Take a look at this.’

He went to the office and returned with a large folio which he set on the table. He began turning the pages, revealing a series of, to Bowler’s eyes, weird and wonderful designs, often in rich and vibrant colours.

‘I need to be able to read Celtic scripts for some research I’m doing,’ he explained. ‘And that’s made me aware of the huge range of illuminated initials their scribes used. This is what the Dialogue illustration reminded me of. Oh, here, look at this one. The Dialogue version has no colour of course and is greatly simplified, but basically they have much in common.’

‘You’re right,’ said Rye. ‘It’s obvious now you’ve pointed it out.’

‘Yeah,’ said Hat. ‘Obvious. What is it, then?’

‘It’s the letters I N P. This particular illumination is taken from an Irish manuscript of the eighth century and it’s the opening of the Gospel according to St John. In principio erat verbum et verbum erat apud deum et deus erat verbum. All the letters of which seem to have tumbled into that little pile under the P.’

‘And what do they mean, exactly?’ said Hat, adding the last word to suggest, falsely, that it was merely detail he wanted adding to his own rough translation.

‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word, or the Word was God, as the Authorized Version has it. An interesting way for our dialogist to introduce himself, don’t you think? Words, words, words, much in love with words.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Rye taking the folder from Hat and staring hard from the ornate illumination to the black and white sketch. ‘But maybe it means something else. As well as the words.’

‘That struck me too. It’s clearly illustrative. That could be the humpback bridge with the unfortunate AA man in the water …’

‘And there’s a bird, though it doesn’t look much like a pheasant … and are those things with horns meant to be cows?’

Hat, feeling he was being sidelined, retrieved the folder from her hands and said, ‘Let’s wait till we see if there’s been a crime committed before we start looking for clues, shall we? And if there has been, don’t worry, we’ll soon have this word-lover banged up. Pity they’ve shut Alcatraz.’

‘Alcatraz?’ they said in simultaneous puzzlement.

‘Yes, then he could be the Wordman of Alcatraz.’

If it had fallen any flatter it would have been a map.

He said, ‘It was a movie … on telly the other night … there was this guy, Burt Lancaster, who killed somebody and got locked up …’

‘Yes, I recall the film,’ said Dee. ‘Well, well, the Wordman. Very droll, Mr Bowler.’

Again, it didn’t sound like a put-down, but Hat felt put down.

‘Yeah, well, thanks for your input, we’ll bear it in mind,’ he said, trying to regain the professional high ground.

‘My pleasure,’ said Dee. ‘Well, back to the grind.’

He sat down at the table, picked up another story and started to read. Rye followed his example. Bowler remained standing, gradually deflating from cocky cop to would-be wooer.

There are more ways of withering than a blast of hot words, thought Rye gleefully.

Dee glanced up and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bowler, was there something else?’

‘Just something I was asking Rye, Miss Pomona.’

‘About the … Wordman?’

Hat shook his head.

‘Ah, a library enquiry then. Concerning your ornithological studies, I’ve no doubt. Rye, are you able to help?’

‘Not straightaway,’ said Rye. ‘It’s something I’ll need to think about, Mr Bowler …’

‘Hat,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘My friends call me Hat.’

‘How very paronomasiac of them,’ she said, glancing at Dee, who smiled and murmured, ‘One might even say paronomaniac.’

‘Yeah, well, what about it?’ said Hat, his irritation at what felt like the intimacy of mockery making him abrupt.

‘Tell you what,’ said Rye. ‘Leave it with me. Perhaps we can talk again when you come back to tell us what you’ve found out about the accuracy or otherwise of the Dialogues. That suit you, Mr Bowler? Hat?’

He frowned for a moment then the smile broke through.

‘OK. That’s fine. I’ll get back to you. Meanwhile I’d keep this to yourselves. Not that there’s like to be anything in it, but better safe than sorry. See you.’

He turned and walked away. He moved well, with a cat-like grace. Perhaps that explained his interest in birds.

She glanced at Dee. He gave her a conspiratorial smile. Then he dropped his gaze to the sheets before him and shook his head ruefully.

‘Truth really is so much more interesting than fiction, isn’t it?’ he said.

She looked down at her next story.

The writing was familiar, large and spiky and purple.

It began Last night I had another wet dream …

‘You could be right,’ she said.

CHAPTER SIX

Detective Constable Bowler’s considered professional opinion of the suspicions roused by the two Dialogues was that they were a load of crap, but if taking them seriously was a way to Rye Pomona’s heart and/or bed, then it was pursed lip and furrowed brow time. But only in her sight. Once out of the library, he did a little jig of delight at his luck and the sight of a wavering line of greylags crossing the rectangle of sky between the police station and the coroner’s court tuned up his spirits another notch.

He watched them out of sight then ran up the stairs to the CID floor whistling merrily.

‘You sound happy,’ said Edgar Wield. ‘Found Lord Lucan, have you?’

‘No, Sarge, but got something almost as odd.’

He showed the sergeant the two Dialogues and told him the tale.

‘It’s certainly odd,’ said Wield, sounding like he meant daft. Bowler couldn’t blame him.

‘Thought we should check it out,’ he said. ‘Just a feeling.’

‘A feeling, eh?’ said Wield, those dark eyes surveying him coldly from that fragmented face, as if well aware that the feeling in question had more to do with Rye Pomona and hormones than detective intuition. ‘You’re a bit junior for feelings. Even sergeants are only allowed three or four a year, between consenting adults. You’d best try this out on someone with a bit more brass about him.’

Bowler’s spirits hit an air pocket and sank as he contemplated taking something as airy-fairy as this to Andy Dalziel. It had been made quite clear to him that his fast-track transfer from the Midlands had been effected without Dalziel’s approval. ‘We’ll see how you shape,’ had been the gist of his welcome six months earlier. In his own eyes, he had shaped pretty well, or at least not made any major mistakes. But far from wriggling his way into the Fat Man’s affection, from time to time in the past few weeks he’d turned round as though prodded in the back to find those ice-pick eyes fixed on him with an expression somewhere between simple distrust and out-and-out loathing.

On the other hand, it was a comfort that only last week, the DCI hadn’t hesitated to pick him out for a bit of delicate investigation, checking out some nutter he thought was harassing him.

‘Yes, I thought maybe I’d mention it to Mr Pascoe. Need to chat to him anyway,’ he said airily, trying to give the impression of a special relationship existing between graduate entrants.

Wield, noting the attempt, said, ‘When you next report to him about Franny Roote, you mean?’

It didn’t do to let junior members of the team imagine they knew anything he didn’t. Peter had probably stressed to young Bowler that his interest in the behaviour and habits of Roote was technically unofficial and should not be mentioned in the super’s presence. In his present mood, the Fat Man seemed to believe that telling Bowler anything was like ringing up the tabloids.

‘Found anything interesting, have you?’ pursued Wield.

‘Not yet,’ admitted Bowler.

‘Keep trying. But keep out of sight. He’s got an eye like a hawk by all accounts.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Sarge,’ said Bowler confidently. ‘I won’t raise enough breeze to stir a feather. So what do you think about these Dialogues? Speak to Mr Pascoe?’

‘No,’ said Wield judiciously. ‘I think you’ll find that Mr Headingley’s your man.’

Detective Inspector George Headingley had a reputation for being a by-the-rules, straight-down-the-middle cop who treated hunches with embrocation and gut feelings with bismuth. ‘A safe pair of hands’ Pascoe had once called him in Bowler’s hearing, to which Dalziel had replied, ‘Nay, that were true once, but since he started counting the days to demob he’s become a safe pair of buttocks. Give owt to George and his first thought now is to sit on it till it can’t do him any harm. I blame all this new legislation. I’d hang bent cops by the bollocks till they twanged, but you can’t do the job properly if you’ve got to be looking over your shoulder all the time.’

This was a reference to the new climate of accountability. Gone, or at least going, were the good old days when a policeman who made a mistake could slip gratefully into a secure pension ‘on medical grounds’. And even those who’d retired in the fullness of time were no longer secure from retrospective investigation and changed pensionable status.

So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that someone as cautious as George Headingley entering the final straight of an honourable if not over-distinguished career, should have decided that the best way of not blotting his copybook was to write in it as little as possible.

Bowler’s suspicion that Wield was saying indirectly that the best place for something as daft as the Dialogues was under the DI’s ample buttocks was slightly allayed when he discovered that the case of the AA man’s death was there already. When the coroner had adjourned the inquest for the police to make further enquiries, Uniformed had passed it upstairs for CID to take a look at. Headingley had taken a glance, yawned, and was on the point of tossing it back downstairs with the required annotation that CID found no evidence requiring further investigation.

‘Now you come along with this,’ said the DI accusingly. ‘It’s a load of nothing. Can’t see why you think it’s worth bothering with.’

‘There has to be some reason why the coroner adjourned,’ said Bowler evasively.

‘Yeah, well, I suppose so. Silly old buffer’s always been terrified of making a mistake so when the family started causing a fuss, he took the easy way out. Anything goes wrong, it’ll be our fault.’

Takes one to know a one, thought Bowler as he studied the inquest report.

He soon saw there was a bit more to it than Headingley had implied, but not a lot. The question of why Ainstable had stopped in the first place hadn’t been satisfactorily answered. Call of nature had been theorized, losing his balance as he relieved himself over the shallow parapet. But his wife had tearfully protested that her Andrew was not the kind of man to pee off a bridge situated on a public highway, the pathologist had pointed out that his bladder was still fairly full, and PC Dave Insole, first cop on the scene, had confirmed that his flies were fastened.

Perhaps then he’d had a dizzy turn before he got started and had fallen? The post mortem hadn’t found evidence of any kind of ‘dizzy turn’, though the pathologist could think of several versions of this syndrome which would have left no sign, and the police report mentioned rather tentatively some scuffs on the parapet of the bridge which might possibly indicate he’d been sitting down and gone over backwards.

But the really puzzling thing was his tool box, which had been found resting on the road by the parapet.

Headingley didn’t think this was significant.

‘Clear as daylight,’ he said. ‘Driving along, feels dizzy, stops to get some air, climbs out, automatically picks up his tool box en route, ’cos that’s what he always does and, having a dizzy turn, he’s not thinking straight, right? Sits down on the bridge, everything goes black, over he goes, bangs his head on a stone, unconscious, drowns. Pathologist found no signs of foul play, did he?’

‘There wouldn’t be, would there, guv?’ said Hat respectfully. ‘Not when the crime’s letting someone die without trying to save them.’

‘Murder by neglect? On the basis of this?’ Headingley waved the Dialogues folder scornfully in the air. ‘Get real, son.’