REGINALD HILL
DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain

in 2001 by HarperCollins

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Reginald Hill 2001

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007313198

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN 9780007396368

Version: 2015-06-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Chapter One: the first dialogue

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four: the second dialogue

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine: the third dialogue

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen: the fourth dialogue

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four: the fifth dialogue

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six: the sixth dialogue

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two: the seventh dialogue

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight: the last dialogue

Keep Reading

About the Author

Praise for Dialogues of the Dead

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Epigraph

paronomania (pəronə'meInIə) [Factitious word derived from a conflation of PARONOMASIA [L. a. Gr. παρoνoμασια] Word-play + MANIA (see quot. 1823)]

1. A clinical obsession with word games.

1760 George, Lord LYTTELTON Dialogues of the Dead: No XXXV BACON: Is not yon fellow lying there Shakespeare, the scribbler? Why looks he so pale? GALEN: Aye, sir, ’tis he. A very pretty case of paronomania. Since coming here he has resolved a cryptogram in his plays which proves that you wrote them, since when he has not spoken word. 1823 Ld. BYRON Don Juan Canto xviii So paronomastic are his miscellanea, Hood’s doctors fear he’ll die of paronomania. 1927 HAL DILLINGER Through the Mind-Maze: A Casebook So advanced was Mr X’s paronomania that he attempted to kill his wife because of a message he claimed to have received via a cryptic clue in the Washington Post crossword.

2. The proprietary name of a board game for two players using tiles imprinted with letters to form words. Points are scored partly by addition of the numeric values accorded to each letter, but also as a result of certain relationships of sound and meaning between the words. All languages transcribable in Latin script may be used under certain variable rules.

1976 Skulker Magazine, Vol 1 No. iv Though the aficionados of Paronomania contested the annual Championships with all their customary enthusiasm, ferocity and skill, the complex and esoteric nature of the game makes it unlikely that it will ever be degraded to the status of a national sport.

OED (2nd Edition)

Du sagst mir heimlich ein leises Bort Und gibst mir den Strauss von Inpressen. Ich wache auf, und der Strauss ist fort, Und’s Bort hab’ ich vergessen. *

Harry Heine (1800–1856)

I fear there is some maddening secret

Hid in your words (and at each turn of thought

Comes up a skull,) like an anatomy

Found in a weedy hole, ’mongst stones and roots

And straggling reptiles, with his tongueless mouth

Telling of murder …

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)

* A word in secret you softly say And give me a cypress spray sweetly. I wake and find that I’ve lost the spray And the word escapes me completely.

CHAPTER ONE
the first dialogue

Hi, there. How’re you doing?

Me, I’m fine, I think.

That’s right. It’s hard to tell sometimes, but there seems to be some movement at last. Funny old thing, life, isn’t it?

OK, death too. But life …

Just a short while ago, there I was, going nowhere and nowhere to go, stuck on the shelf, so to speak, past oozing through present into future with nothing of colour or action or excitement to quicken the senses …

Then suddenly one day I saw it!

Stretching out before me where it had always been, the long and winding path leading me through my Great Adventure, the start so close I felt I could reach out and touch it, the end so distant my mind reeled at the thought of what lay between.

But it’s a long step from a reeling mind to a mind in reality, and at first that’s where it stayed – that long and winding trail, I mean – in the mind, something to pass the long quiet hours with. Yet all the while I could hear my soul telling me, ‘Being a mental traveller is fine but it gets you no suntan!’

And my feet grew ever more restless.

Slowly the questions began to turn in my brain like a screensaver on a computer.

Could I possibly …?

Did I dare …?

That’s the trouble with paths.

Once found, they must be followed wherever they may lead, but sometimes the start is – how shall I put it? – so indefinite.

I needed a sign. Not necessarily something dramatic. A gentle nudge would do.

Or a whispered word.

Then one day I got it.

First the whispered word. Your whisper? I hoped so.

I heard it, interpreted it, wanted to believe it. But it was still so vague …

Yes, I was always a fearful child.

I needed something clearer.

And finally it came. More of a shoulder charge than a gentle nudge. A shout rather than a whisper. You might say it leapt out at me!

I could almost hear you laughing.

I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it. But the more I thought, the less clear it became. By three o’clock in the morning, I’d convinced myself it was mere accident and my Great Adventure must remain empty fantasy, a video to play behind the attentive eyes and sympathetic smile as I went about my daily business.

But an hour or so later as dawn’s rosy fingers began to massage the black skin of night, and a little bird began to pipe outside my window, I started to see things differently.

It could be simply my sense of unworthiness that was making me so hesitant. And in any case it wasn’t me who was doing the choosing, was it? The sign, to be a true sign, should be followed by a chance which I could not refuse. Because it wouldn’t be mere chance, of course, though by its very nature it was likely to be indefinite. Indeed, that was how I would recognize it. To start with at least I would be a passive actor in this Adventure, but once begun, then I would know without doubt that it was written for me.

All I had to do was be ready.

I rose and laved and robed myself with unusual care, like a knight readying himself for a quest, or a priestess preparing to administer her holiest mystery. Though the face may be hidden by visor or veil, yet those with skill to read will know how to interpret the blazon or the chasuble.

When I was ready I went out to the car. It was still very early. The birds were carolling in full chorus and the eastern sky was mother-of-pearl flushing to pink, like a maiden’s cheek in a Disney movie.

It was far too early to go into town and on impulse I headed out to the countryside. This, I felt, was not a day to ignore impulse.

Half an hour later I was wondering if I hadn’t been just plain silly. The car had been giving me trouble for some time now with the engine coughing and losing power on hills. Each time it happened I promised myself I’d take it into the garage. Then it would seem all right for a while and I’d forget. This time I knew it was really serious when it started hiccoughing on a gentle down-slope, and sure enough on the next climb, which was only the tiny hump of a tiny humpback bridge, it wheezed to a halt.

I got out and kicked the door shut. No use to look under the bonnet. Engines, though Latin, were Greek to me. I sat on the shallow parapet of the bridge and tried to recall how far back it was to a house or telephone. All I could remember was a signpost saying it was five miles to the little village of Little Bruton. It seemed peculiarly unjust somehow that a car that spent most of its time in town should break down in what was probably the least populated stretch of countryside within ten miles of the city boundary.

Sod’s Law, isn’t that what they call it? And that’s what I called it, till gradually to the noise of chirruping birdsong and bubbling water was added a new sound and along that narrow country road I saw approaching a bright yellow Automobile Association van.

Now I began to wonder whether it might not after all be God’s Law.

I flagged him down. He was on his way to a Home Start call in Little Bruton where some poor wage-slave newly woken and with miles to go before he slept had found his motor even more reluctant to start than he was.

‘Engines like a lie-in too,’ said my rescuer merrily.

He was a very merry fellow altogether, full of jest, a marvellous advert for the AA. When he asked if I were a member and I told him I’d lapsed, he grinned and said, ‘Never mind. I’m a lapsed Catholic but I can always join again if things get desperate, can’t I? Same for you. You are thinking of joining again, aren’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said fervently. ‘You get this car started, and I might join the Church too!’

And I meant it. Not about the Church maybe, but certainly the AA.

Yet already, indeed from the moment I set eyes on his van, I’d been wondering if this might not be my chance to get more than just my car started.

But how to be certain? I felt my agitation growing till I stilled it with the comforting thought that, though indefinite to me, the author of my Great Adventure would never let its opening page be anything but clear.

The AA man was a great talker. We exchanged names. When I heard his, I repeated it slowly and he laughed and told me not to make the jokes, he’d heard them all before. But of course I wasn’t thinking of jokes. He told me all about himself – his collection of tropical fish – the talk he’d given about them on local radio – his work for children’s charities – his plan to make money for them by doing a sponsored run in the London marathon – the marvellous holiday he’d just had in Greece – his love of the warm evenings and Mediterranean cuisine – his delight in discovering a new Greek restaurant had just opened in town on his return.

‘Sometimes you think there’s someone up there looking after you special, don’t you?’ he jested. ‘Or maybe in my case, down there!’

I laughed and said I knew exactly what he meant.

And I meant it, in both ways, the conventional idle conversational sort of way, and the deeper, life-shapingly significant sort of way. In fact I felt very strongly that I was existing on two levels. There was a surface level on which I was standing enjoying the morning sunshine as I watched his oily fingers making the expert adjustments which I hoped would get me moving again. And there was another level where I was in touch with the force behind the light, the force which burnt away all fear – a level on which time had ceased to exist, where what was happening has always happened and will always be happening, where like an author I can pause, reflect, adjust, refine, till my words say precisely what I want them to say and show no trace of my passage …

For a moment my AA man stops talking as he makes a final adjustment with the engine running. He listens with the close attention of a piano tuner, smiles, switches off, and says, ‘Reckon that’ll get you to Monte Carlo and back, if that’s your pleasure.’ I say, ‘That’s great. Thank you very much.’ He sits down on the parapet of the bridge and starts putting his tools into his tool box. Finished, he looks up into the sun, sighs a sigh of utter contentment and says, ‘You ever get those moments when you feel, this is it, this is the one I’d like never to end? Needn’t be special, big occasion or anything like that. Just a morning like this, and you feel, I could stay here for ever.’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

‘Would be nice, eh?’ he says wistfully. ‘But no rest for the wicked, I’m afraid.’

And he closes his box and starts to rise.

And now at last beyond all doubt the signal is given.

Down in the willows overhanging the stream on the far side of the bridge something barks, a fox I think, followed by a great squawk of what could have been raucous laughter; then out of the trailing greenery rockets a cock pheasant, wings beating desperately to lever its heavy body over the stonework and into the sky. It clears the far parapet by inches and comes straight at us. I step aside. The AA man steps backwards. The shallow parapet behind him catches his calves. The bird passes between us, I feel the furious beat of its wings like a Pentecostal wind. And the AA man flails his arms as if he too is trying to take off. But he is already unbalanced beyond recovery. I stretch out my hand to the teetering figure – to help or to push, who can tell? – and my fingertips brush against his, like God’s and Adam’s in the Sistine Chapel, or God’s and Lucifer’s on the battlements of heaven.

Then he is gone.

I look over the parapet. He has somersaulted in his fall and landed face down in the shallow stream below. It is only a few inches deep, but he isn’t moving.

I scramble down the steep bank. It’s clear what has happened. He has banged his head against a stone on the stream bed and stunned himself. As I watch, he moves and tries to raise his head out of the water.

Part of me wants to help him, but it is not a part that has any control over my hands or my feet. I have no choice but to stand and watch. Choice is a creature of time and time is away and somewhere else.

Three times his head lifts a little, three times falls back.

There is no fourth.

For a while bubbles rise. Perhaps he is using these last few exhalations to rejoin the Catholic Church. Certainly for him things are never going to be more desperate. On the other hand, he is at last getting his wish for one of those perfect moments to be extended forever, and wherever he finally lies at rest will, I am sure, be a happy grave.

Fast the bubbles come at first, then slower and slower, like the last oozings from a cider press, till up to the surface swims that final languid sac of air which, if the priests are right, ought to contain the soul.

Run well, my marathon messenger!

The bubble bursts.

And time too bursts back into my consciousness with all its impedimenta of mind and matter, rule and law.

I scrambled back up the bank and got into my car. Its engine sang such a merry song as I drove away that I blessed the skilful hands that had tuned it to this pitch. And I gave thanks too for this new, or rather this renewed life of mine.

My journey had begun. No doubt there would be obstacles along my path. But now that path was clearly signed. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

And just by standing still and trusting in you, my guide, I had taken that step.

Talk again soon.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Good lord,’ said Dick Dee.

‘What?’

‘Have you read this one?’

Rye Pomona sighed rather more stentoriously than was necessary and said with heavy sarcasm, ‘As we decided to split them down the middle, and as this is my pile here, and that is your pile there, and as the script in your hand comes from your pile and I am concentrating very hard on trying to get through my own pile, I don’t really think there’s much chance I’ve read it, is there?’

One of the good things about Dick Dee was that he took cheek very well, even from the most junior member of his staff. In fact, there were lots of good things about him. He knew his job as custodian of the Mid-Yorkshire County Library’s Reference Department inside out and was both happy and able to communicate that knowledge. He did his share of work, and though she sometimes saw him working on the lexicological research for what he called his minusculum opusculum., it was always during his official breaks and never spread further, even when things were very quiet. At the same time he showed no sign of exasperation if her lunch hour overflowed a little. He passed no comment on her style of dress and neither averted his eyes prudishly from nor stared salaciously at the length of slim brown leg which emerged from the shallow haven of her mini dress. He had entertained her in his flat without the slightest hint of a pass (she wasn’t altogether sure how she felt about that!). And though on their first encounter, his gaze had taken in her most striking feature, the single lock of silvery grey which shone among the rich brown tresses of her hair, he had been so courteously un-nosey about it that in the end she had got the topic out of the way by introducing it herself.

Nor did he use his seniority to offload all the most tedious jobs on to her but did his share, which would have made him a paragon if in the context of the present tedious job he’d been able to read more than a couple of pages at a time without wanting to share a thought with her. As it was, he grinned so broadly at her putdown that she felt immediately guilty and took the sheets of paper from his hand without further protest.

At least they were typed. Many weren’t and she’d soon made the discovery long known to schoolteachers that even the neatest hand can be as inscrutable as leaves from the Delphic Oracle, with the additional disincentive that when you finally teased some meaning out of it, what you ended up with wasn’t a useful divine pointer to future action but a God-awful dollop of prose fiction.

The Mid-Yorkshire Short Story Competition had been thought up by the editor of the Mid-Yorkshire Gazette and the Head of Mid-Yorkshire Library Services towards the end of a boozy Round Table dinner. Next morning, exposed to the light of day, the idea should have withered and died. Unfortunately, both Mary Agnew of the Gazette and Percy Follows, the Chief Librarian, had misrecollected that the other had undertaken to do most of the work and bear most of the cost. By the time they realized their common error, preliminary notices of the competition were in the public domain. Agnew, who like most veterans of the provincial press was a past mistress of making the best out of bad jobs, had now taken the initiative. She persuaded her proprietor to put up a small financial prize for the winning entry, which would also be published in the paper. And she obtained the services of a celebrity judge in the person of the Hon. Geoffrey Pyke-Strengler, whose main public qualification was that he was a published writer (a collection of sporting reminiscences from a life spent slaughtering fish, fowl and foxes), and whose main private qualification was that being both chronically hard-up and intermittently the Gazette’s rural correspondent, he was in a position of dependency.

Follows was congratulating himself on having come rather well out of this when Agnew added that of course the Hon. (whose reading range didn’t extend beyond the sporting magazines) couldn’t be expected to plough through all the entries, that her team of ace reporters were far too busy writing their own deathless prose to read anyone else’s, and that therefore she was looking to the library services with their acknowledged expertise in the field of prose fiction to sort out the entries and produce a short list.

Percy Follows knew when he’d been tagged and looked for someone on the library staff to tag in turn. All roads led to Dick Dee who, despite having an excellent degree in English, seemed never to have learned how to say no.

The best he could manage by way of demur was, ‘Well, we are rather busy … How many entries are you anticipating?’

‘This sort of thing has a very limited appeal,’ said Follows confidently. ‘I’d be surprised if we get into double figures. Couple of dozen at the very most. You can run through them in your tea break.’

‘That’s a hell of a lot of tea,’ grumbled Rye when the first sackful of scripts was delivered from the Gazette. But Dick Dee had just smiled as he looked at the mountain of paper and said, ‘It’s mute inglorious Milton time, Rye. Let’s start sorting them out.’

The initial sorting out had been fun.

The idea of refusing to read anything not typewritten had seemed very attractive, but rapidly they realized this was too Draconian. On the other hand as more sackloads arrived, they knew they had to have some rules of inadmissibility.

‘Nothing in green ink,’ said Dee.

‘Nothing on less than A5,’ said Rye.

‘Nothing handwritten where the letters aren’t joined up.’

‘Nothing without meaningful punctuation.’

‘Nothing which requires use of a magnifying glass.’

‘Nothing that has organic matter adhering to it,’ said Rye, picking up a sheet which looked as if it had recently lined a cat tray.

Then she’d thought that perhaps the offending stain had come from some baby whose housebound mother was desperately trying to be creative at feeding time, and residual guilt had made her protest strongly when Dick had gone on, ‘And nothing sexually explicit or containing four-letter words.’

He had listened to her liberal arguments with great patience, showing no resentment of her implied accusation that he was at best a frump, at worst a fascist.

When she finished, he said mildly, ‘Rye, I agree with you that there is nothing depraved, disgusting or even distasteful about a good fuck. But as I know beyond doubt that there’s no way any story containing either a description of the act or a derivative of the word is going to get published in the Gazette, it seems to me a useful filter device. Of course, if you want to read every word of every story …’

The arrival of yet another sackful from the Gazette had been a clincher.

A week later, with stories still pouring in and nine days to go before the competition closed, she had become much more dismissive than Dee, spinning scripts across to the dump bin after an opening paragraph, an opening sentence even, or, in some cases, just the title, while he read through nearly all of his and was building a much higher possibles pile.

Now she looked at the script he had interrupted her with and said, ‘First Dialogue? That mean there’s going to be more?’

‘Poetic licence, I expect. Anyway, read it. I’d be interested to hear what you think.’

A new voice interrupted them.

‘Found the new Maupassant yet, Dick?’

Suddenly the light was blocked out as a long lean figure loomed over Rye from behind.

She didn’t need to look up to know this was Charley Penn, one of the reference library’s regulars and the nearest thing Mid-Yorkshire had to a literary lion. He’d written a moderately successful series of what he called historical romances and the critics bodice-rippers, set against the background of revolutionary Europe in the decades leading up to 1848, with a hero loosely based on the German poet Heine. These had been made into a popular TV series where the ripping of bodices was certainly rated higher than either history or even romance. His regular attendance in the reference library had nothing to do with the pursuit of verisimilitude in his fictions. In his cups he had been heard to say of his readers, ‘You can tell the buggers owt. What do they know?’ though in fact he had acquired a wide knowledge of the period in question through the ‘real’ work he’d been researching now for many years, which was a critical edition with metrical translation of Heine’s poems. Rye had been surprised to learn that he was a school contemporary of Dick Dee. The ten years which Dee’s equanimity of temperament erased from his forty-something seemed to have been dumped on Penn, whose hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes and unkempt beard gave him the look of an old Viking who’d ravished and pillaged a raid too far.

‘Probably not,’ said Dee. ‘Be glad of your professional opinion though, Charley.’

Penn moved round the table so that he was looking down at Rye and showed uneven teeth in what she called his smarl, assuming he intended it as a smile and couldn’t help that it came out like a snarl. ‘Not unless you’ve got a sudden budget surplus.’

When it came to professional opinions, or indeed any activity connected with his profession, Charley Penn’s insistence that time equalled money made lawyers seem open-handed.

‘So how can I help you?’ said Dee.

‘Those articles you were tracking down for me, any sign yet?’

Penn had no difficulty squaring his assertion that the labourer was worthy of his hire with using Dee as his unpaid research assistant, but the librarian never complained.

‘I’ll just check to see if there’s anything in today’s post,’ he said.

He rose and went into the office behind the desk.

Penn remained, his gaze fixed on Rye.

She looked back unblinkingly and said, ‘Yes?’

From time to time she’d caught the old Viking looking at her like he was once more feeling the call of the sea, though so far he’d stopped short of rapine and pillage. In fact his preferred model seemed to be that guy in the play (what the hell was his name?) who went around the Forest of Arden, pinning poems to trees. From time to time scraps of Penn’s Heine translations would be put in her way. She’d open a file or pick up a book and there would be a few lines about a despairing lover staring down at himself staring up at his beloved’s window or a lonely northern fir-tree pining for the hand of an unattainably distant palm. Their presence was explained, if explanation were demanded, by inadvertence, accompanied by a knowing version of the smarl which was what she got now as Penn said, ‘Enjoy,’ and went after Dee.

Now Rye gave her full attention to the ‘First Dialogue’, skimming through it rapidly, then reading it again more slowly.

By the time she’d finished, Dee had returned and Penn was back in his usual seat in one of the study alcoves from which he had been known to bellow abuse at young students whose ideas of silence did not accord with his own.

‘What do you think?’ said Dee.

‘Why the hell am I reading this? is what I think,’ said Rye. ‘OK, the writer’s trying to be clever, using a single episode to hint at a whole epic to come, but it doesn’t really work, does it? I mean, what’s it about? Some kind of metaphor of life or what? And what the hell’s that funny illustration all about? I hope you’re not showing me this as the best thing you’ve come across. If so, I don’t want to look at any of the other stuff in your possibles pile.’

He shook his head, smiling. No smarl this. He had a rather nice smile. One of the rather nice things about it was that he used it alike to greet compliment or insult, triumph or disaster. A couple of days earlier for instance a lesser man might have flapped when a badly plugged shelf had collapsed under the weight of the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary, scattering a party of civic dignitaries on a tour of the borough’s newly refurbished Heritage, Arts and Library Centre. Only one of the visitors had been hit, receiving the full weight of Volume II on his toe. This was Councillor Cyril Steel, a virulent opponent of the Centre whose voice had frequently been raised in the council against ‘wasting good public money on a load of airy nowt’. Percy Follows had run around like a panicked poodle, fearing a PR disaster, but Dee had merely smiled into the TV camera recording the event for BBC Mid-Yorks and said, ‘Now even Councillor Steel will have to admit that a little learning can be a dangerous thing and not all our nowts are completely airy,’ and continued with his explanatory address.

Now he said, ‘No, I’m not suggesting this as a contender for the prize, though it’s not badly written. As for the drawing, it’s part illustration and part illumination, I think. But what’s really interesting is the way it chimes with something I read in today’s Gazette.’

He picked up a copy of the Mid-Yorkshire Gazette from the newspaper rack. The Gazette came out twice weekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. This was the midweek edition. He opened it at the second page, set it before her and indicated a column with his thumb.

AA MAN DIES IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT

The body of Mr Andrew Ainstable (34), a patrol officer with the Automobile Association, was found apparently drowned in a shallow stream running under the Little Bruton road on Tuesday morning. Thomas Killiwick (27), a local farmer who made the discovery, theorized that Mr Ainstable, who it emerged was on his way to a Home Start call at Little Bruton, may have stopped for a call of nature, slipped, and banged his head, but the police are unable to confirm or to deny this theory at this juncture. Mr Ainstable is survived by his wife, Agnes, and a widowed mother. An inquest is expected to be called in the next few days.

‘So what do you think?’ asked Dee again.

‘I think from the style of this report that they were probably wise at the Gazette to ask us to judge the literary merit of these stories,’ said Rye.

‘No. I mean this Dialogue thing. Bit of an odd coincidence, don’t you think?’

‘Not really. I mean, it’s probably not a coincidence at all. Writers must often pick up ideas from what they read in the papers.’

‘But this wasn’t in the Gazette till this morning. And this came out of the bag of entries they sent round last night. So presumably they got it some time yesterday, the same day this poor chap died, and before the writer could have read about it.’

‘OK, so it’s a coincidence after all,’ said Rye irritably. ‘I’ve just read a story about a man who wins the lottery and has a heart attack. I dare say that this week somewhere there’s been a man who won something in the lottery and had a heart attack. It didn’t catch the attention of the Pulitzer Prize mob at the Gazette, but it’s still a coincidence.’

‘All the same,’ said Dee, clearly reluctant to abandon his sense of oddness. ‘Another thing, there’s no pseudonym.’

The rules of entry required that, in the interests of impartial judging, entrants used a pseudonym under their story title. They also wrote these on a sealed envelope containing their real name and address. The envelopes were kept at the Gazette office.

‘So he forgot,’ said Rye. ‘Not that it matters, anyway. It’s not going to win, is it? So who cares who wrote it? Now, can I get on?’

Dick Dee had no argument against this. But Rye noticed he didn’t put the typescript either into the dump bin or on to his possibles pile, but set it aside.

Shaking her head, Rye turned her attention to the next story on her pile. It was called ‘Dreamtime’, written in purple ink in a large spiky hand averaging four words to a line, and it began:

When I woke up this morning I found I’d had a wet dream, and as I lay there trying to recall it, I found myself getting excited again …

With a sigh, she skimmed it over into the dump bin and picked another.

CHAPTER THREE

‘What the fuck are you playing at, Roote?’ snarled Peter Pascoe.

Snarling wasn’t a form of communication that came easily to him, and attempting to keep his upper teeth bared while emitting the plosive P produced a sound effect which was melodramatically Oriental with little of the concomitant sinisterity. He must pay more attention next time his daughter’s pet dog, which didn’t much like men, snarled at him.

Roote pushed the notebook he’d been scribbling in beneath a copy of the Gazette and regarded him with an expression of amiable bewilderment.

‘Sorry, Mr Pascoe? You’ve lost me. I’m not playing at anything and I don’t think I know the rules of the game you’re playing. Do I need a racket too?’

He smiled towards Pascoe’s sports bag from which protruded the shaft of a squash racket.

Cue for another snarl on the line, Don’t get clever with me, Roote!

This was getting like a bad TV script.

As well as snarling he’d been trying to loom menacingly. He had no way of knowing how menacing his looming looked to the casual observer, but it was playing hell with the strained shoulder muscle which had brought his first game of squash in five years to a premature conclusion. Premature? Thirty seconds into foreplay isn’t premature, it is humiliatingly pre-penetrative.

His opponent had been all concern, administering embrocation in the changing room and lubrication in the University Staff Club bar, with no sign whatsoever of snigger. Nevertheless, Pascoe had felt himself sniggered at and when he made his way through the pleasant formal gardens towards the car park and saw Franny Roote smiling at him from a bench, his carefully suppressed irritation had broken through and before he had time to think rationally he was deep into loom and snarl.

Time to rethink his role.

He made himself relax, sat down on the bench, leaned back, winced, and said, ‘OK, Mr Roote. Let’s start again. Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’

‘Lunch break,’ said Roote. He held up a brown paper bag and emptied its contents on to the newspaper. ‘Baguette, salad with mayo, low fat. Apple, Granny Smith. Bottle of water, tap.’

That figured. He didn’t look like a man on a high-energy diet. He was thin just this side of emaciation, a condition exacerbated by his black slacks and T-shirt. His face was white as a piece of honed driftwood and his blond hair was cut so short he might as well have been bald.

‘Mr Roote,’ said Pascoe carefully, ‘you live and work in Sheffield which means that even with a very generous lunch break and a very fast car, this would seem an eccentric choice of luncheon venue. Also this is the third, no I think it’s the fourth time I have spotted you in my vicinity over the past week.’

The first time had been a glimpse in the street as he drove home from Mid-Yorkshire Police HQ early one evening. Then a couple of nights later as he and Ellie rose to leave a cinema, he’d noticed Roote sitting half a dozen rows further back. And the previous Sunday as he took his daughter, Rosie, for a stroll in Charter Park to feed the swans, he was sure he’d spotted the black-clad figure standing on the edge of the unused bandstand.

That’s when he’d made a note to ring Sheffield, but he’d been too busy to do it on Monday and by Tuesday it had seemed too trivial to make a fuss over. But now on Wednesday, like a black bird of ill omen, here was the man once more, this time too close for mere coincidence.

‘Oh gosh, yes, I see. In fact I’ve noticed you a couple of times too, and when I saw you coming out of the Staff Club just now, I thought, Good job you’re not paranoiac, Franny boy, else you might think Chief Inspector Pascoe is stalking you.’

This was a reversal to take the breath away.

Also a warning to proceed with great care.

He said, ‘So, coincidence for both of us. Difference is, of course, I live and work here.’

‘Me too,’ said Roote. ‘Don’t mind if I start, do you? Only get an hour.’

He bit deep into the baguette. His teeth were perfectly, almost artistically, regular and had the kind of brilliant whiteness which you expected to see reflecting the flash-bulbs at a Hollywood opening. Prison service dentistry must have come on apace in the past few years.

‘You live and work here?’ said Pascoe. ‘Since when?’

Roote chewed and swallowed.

‘Couple of weeks,’ he said.

‘And why?’

Roote smiled. The teeth again. He’d been a very beautiful boy.

‘Well, I suppose it’s really down to you, Mr Pascoe. Yes, you could say you’re the reason I came back.’

An admission? Even a confession? No, not with Franny Roote, the great controller. Even when you changed the script in mid-scene, you still felt he was still in charge of direction.

‘What’s that mean?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Well, you know, after that little misunderstanding in Sheffield, I lost my job at the hospital. No, please, don’t think I’m blaming you, Mr Pascoe. You were only doing your job, and it was my own choice to slit my wrists. But the hospital people seemed to think it showed I was sick, and of course, sick people are the last people you want in a hospital. Unless they’re on their backs, of course. So soon as I was discharged, I was … discharged.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Pascoe.

‘No, please, like I say, not your responsibility. In any case, I could have fought it, the staff association were ready to take up the cudgels and all my friends were very supportive. Yes, I’m sure a tribunal would have found in my favour. But it felt like time to move on. I didn’t get religion inside, Mr Pascoe, not in the formal sense, but I certainly came to see that there is a time for all things under the sun and a man is foolish to ignore the signs. So don’t worry yourself.’

He’s offering me absolution! thought Pascoe. One moment I’m snarling and looming, next I’m on my knees being absolved!

He said, ‘That still doesn’t explain …’

‘Why I’m here?’ Roote took another bite, chewed, swallowed. ‘I’m working for the university gardens department. Bit of a change, I know. Very welcome, though. Hospital portering’s a worthwhile job, but you’re inside most of the time, and working with dead people a lot of the time. Now I’m outdoors, and everything’s alive! Even with autumn coming on, there’s still so much of life and growth around. OK, there’s winter to look forward to, but that’s not the end of things, is it? Just a lying dormant, conserving energy, waiting for the signal to re-emerge and blossom again. Bit like prison, if that’s not too fanciful.’

I’m being jerked around here, thought Pascoe. Time to crack the whip.

‘The world’s full of gardens,’ he said coldly. ‘Why this one? Why have you come back to Mid-Yorkshire?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I should have said. That’s my other job, my real work – my thesis. You know about my thesis? Revenge and Retribution in English Drama? Of course you do. It was that which helped set you off in the wrong direction, wasn’t it? I can see how it would, with Mrs Pascoe being threatened and all. You got that sorted, did you? I never read anything in the papers.’

He paused and looked enquiringly at Pascoe who said, ‘Yes, we got it sorted. No, there wasn’t much in the papers.’

Because there’d been a security cover-up, but Pascoe wasn’t about to go into that. Irritated though he was by Roote, and deeply suspicious of his motives, he still felt guilty at the memory of what had happened. With Ellie being threatened from an unknown source, he’d cast around for likely suspects. Discovering that Roote, whom he’d put away as an accessory to murder some years ago, was now out and writing a thesis on revenge in Sheffield where he was working as a hospital porter, he’d got South Yorkshire to shake him up a bit then gone down himself to have a friendly word. On arrival, he’d found Roote in the bath with his wrists slashed, and when later he’d had to admit that Roote had no involvement whatsoever in the case he was investigating, the probation service had not been slow to cry harassment.

Well, he’d been able to show he’d gone by the book. Just. But he’d felt then the same mixture of guilt and anger he was feeling now.

Roote was talking again.

‘Anyway, my supervisor at Sheffield got a new post at the university here, just started this term. He’s the one who helped me get fixed up with the gardening job, in fact, so you see how it all slotted in. I could have got a new supervisor, I suppose, but I’ve just got to the most interesting part of my thesis. I mean, the Elizabethans and Jacobeans have been fascinating, of course, but they’ve been so much pawed over by the scholars, it’s difficult to come up with much that’s really new. But now I’m on to the Romantics: Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, even Wordsworth, they all tried their hands at drama you know. But it’s Beddoes that really fascinates me. Do you know his play Death’s Jest-Book?’

‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘Should I?’

In fact, it came to him as he spoke that he had heard the name Beddoes recently.

‘Depends what you mean by should. Deserves to be better known. It’s fantastic. And as my supervisor’s writing a book on Beddoes and probably knows more about him than any man living, I just had to stick with him. But it’s a long way to travel from Sheffield even with a decent car, and the only thing I’ve been able to afford has more breakdowns than an inner-city teaching staff! It really made sense for me to move too. So everything’s turned out for the best in the best of all possible worlds!’

‘This supervisor,’ said Pascoe, ‘what’s his name?’

He didn’t need to ask. He’d recalled where he’d heard Beddoes’ name mentioned, and he knew the answer already.

‘He’s got the perfect name for an Eng. Lit. teacher,’ said Roote, laughing. ‘Johnson. Dr Sam Johnson. Do you know him?’

‘That’s when I made an excuse and left,’ said Pascoe.

‘Oh aye? Why was that?’ said Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel. ‘Fucking useless thing!’

It was, Pascoe hoped, the VCR squeaking under the assault of his pistonlike finger that Dalziel was addressing, not himself.

‘Because it was Sam Johnson I’d just been playing squash with,’ he said, rubbing his shoulder. ‘It seemed like Roote was taking the piss and I felt like taking a swing, so I went straight back inside and caught Sam.’

‘And?’

And Johnson had confirmed every word.

It turned out the lecturer knew his student’s background without knowing the details. Pascoe’s involvement in the case had come as a surprise to him but, once filled in, he’d cut right to the chase and said, ‘If you think that Fran’s got any ulterior motive in coming back here, forget it. Unless he’s got so much influence he arranged for me to get a job here, it’s all happenstance. I moved, he didn’t fancy travelling for supervision and the job he had in Sheffield came to an end, so it made sense for him to make a change too. I’m glad he did. He’s a really bright student.’

Johnson had been out of the country during the long vacation and so missed the saga of Roote’s apparent suicide attempt, and the young man clearly hadn’t bellyached to him about police harassment in general and Pascoe harassment in particular, which ought to have been a point in his favour.

The lecturer concluded by saying, ‘So I got him the gardening job, which is why he’s out there in the garden, and he lives in town, which is why you see him around town. It’s coincidence that makes the world go round, Peter. Ask Shakespeare.’

‘This Johnson,’ said Dalziel, ‘how come you’re so chummy you take showers together? He fag for you at Eton or summat?’

Dalziel affected to believe that the academic world which had given Pascoe his degree occupied a single site somewhere in the south where Oxford and Cambridge and all the major public schools huddled together under one roof.

In fact it wasn’t Pascoe’s but his wife’s links with the academic and literary worlds which had brought Johnson into their lives. Part of Johnson’s job brief at MYU was to help establish an embryonic creative writing course. His qualification was that he’d published a couple of slim volumes of poetry and helped run such a course at Sheffield. Charley Penn, who made occasional contributions to both German and English Department courses, had been miffed to find his own expression of interest ignored. He ran a local authority literary group in danger of being axed and clearly felt that the creative writing post at MYU would have been an acceptable palliative for the loss of his LEA honorarium. Colleagues belonging to that breed not uncommon in academia, the greater green-eyed pot-stirrer, had advised Johnson to watch his back as Penn made a bad enemy, at a physical as well as a verbal level. A few years earlier, according to university legend, a brash young female journalist had done a piss-taking review of the Penn oeuvre in Yorkshire Life, the county’s glossiest mag. The piece had concluded, ‘They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but if you have a sweet tooth and a strong stomach, the best implement to deal with our Mr Penn’s frothy confections might be a pudding spoon.’ The following day Penn, lunching liquidly in a Leeds restaurant, had spotted the journalist across a crowded dessert trolley. Selecting a large portion of strawberry gateau liberally coated with whipped cream, he had approached her table, said, ‘This, madam, is a frothy confection,’ and squashed the pudding on to her head. In court he had said, ‘It wasn’t personal. I did it not because of what she said about my books but because of her appalling style. English must be kept up,’ before being fined fifty pounds and bound over to keep the peace.

Sam Johnson had immediately sought out Penn and said, ‘I believe you know more about Heine than anyone else in Yorkshire.’

‘That wouldn’t be hard. They say you know more about Beddoes than anyone in The Dog and Duck at closing time.’

‘I know he went to Göttingen University to study medicine in 1824 and Heine was there studying law.’

‘Oh aye? And Hitler and Wittgenstein were in the same class at school. So what?’

‘So why don’t we flaunt our knowledge in The Dog and Duck one night?’

‘Well, it’s quiz night tonight. You never know. It might come up.’

Thus had armistice been signed before hostilities proper began. When talk finally turned to the writing course, Penn, after token haggling, accepted terms for making the occasional ‘old pro’ appearance, and went on to suggest that if Johnson was interested in a contribution from someone at the other end of the ladder, he might do worse than soon-to-be-published novelist Ellie Pascoe, an old acquaintance from her days on the university staff and a member of the threatened literary group.

This version of that first encounter was cobbled together from the slightly different accounts Ellie received from both participants. She and Johnson had hit it off straightaway. When she invited him home for a meal, the conversation had naturally centred on matters literary, and Pascoe, feeling rather sidelined, had leapt into the breach when Johnson had casually mentioned his difficulty in finding a squash partner among his generally unathletic colleagues.

His reward for this friendly gesture when Johnson finally left, late, in a taxi, had been for Ellie to say, ‘This game of squash, Peter, you will be careful.’

Indignantly Pascoe said, ‘I’m not quite decrepit, you know.’

‘I’m not talking about you. I meant, with Sam. He’s got a heart problem.’

‘As well as a drink problem? Jesus!’

In the event it had turned out that Johnson suffered from a mild drug-controllable tachycardia, but Pascoe wasn’t looking forward to describing to his wife the rapid and undignified conclusion of his game with someone he’d categorized as an alcoholic invalid.

‘Mate of Elbe’s, eh?’ said Dalziel with a slight intake of breath and a sharp shake of the VCR which, with greater economy than a Special Branch file, consigned Johnson to the category of radical, subversive, Trotskyite troublemaker.

‘Acquaintance,’ said Pascoe. ‘Do you want a hand with that, sir?’

‘No. I reckon I can throw it out of the window myself. You’re very quiet, mastermind. What do you reckon?’

Sergeant Edgar Wield was standing before the deep sash-window. Silhouetted against the golden autumn sunlight, his face deep shadowed, he had the grace and proportions to model for the statue of a Greek athlete, thought Pascoe. Then he moved forward and his features took on detail, and you remembered that if this were a statue, it was one whose face someone had taken a hammer to.

‘I reckon you need to look at the whole picture,’ he said. ‘Way back when Roote were a student at Holm Coultram College before it became part of the university, he got sent down as an accessory to two murders, mainly on your evidence. From the dock he says he looks forward to the chance of meeting you somewhere quiet one day and carrying on your interrupted conversation. As the last time you saw him alone he was trying to stove your head in with a rock, you take this as a threat. But we all get threatened at least once a week. It’s part of the job.’

Dalziel, studying the machine like a Sumo wrestler working out a new strategy, growled, ‘Get a move on, Frankenstein, else I’ll start to wish I hadn’t plugged you in.’

Undeterred, Wield proceeded at a measured pace.

‘Model prisoner, Open University degree, Roote gets maximum remission, comes out, gets job as a hospital porter, starts writing an academic thesis, obeys all the rules. Then you get upset by them threats to Ellie and naturally Roote’s one of the folk you need to take a closer look at. Only when you go to see him, you find he’s slashed his wrists.’

‘He knew I was coming,’ said Pascoe. ‘It was a set-up. No real danger to him. Just a perverted joke.’

‘Maybe. Not the way it looked when it turned out Roote had absolutely nothing to do with the threats to Ellie,’ said Wield. ‘He recovers, and a few months later he moves here because (a) his supervisor has moved here and (b) he can get work here. You say you checked with the probation service?’

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe. ‘All done by the book. They wanted to know if there was a problem.’

‘What did you tell the buggers?’ said Dalziel, who classed probation officers with Scottish midges, vegetarians and modern technology as Jobian tests of a virtuous man’s patience.

‘I said no, just routine.’

‘Wise move,’ approved Wield. ‘See how it looks. Man serves his time, puts his life back together, gets harassed without cause by insensitive police officer, flips, tries to harm himself, recovers, gets back on track, finds work again, minds his own business, then this same officer starts accusing him of being some sort of stalker. It’s you who comes out looking like either a neurotic headcase or a vengeful bastard. While Roote … just a guy who’s paid his debt and wants nothing except to live a quiet life. I mean, he didn’t even want the hassle of bringing a harassment case against you, or a wrongful dismissal case against the Sheffield hospital.’

He moved from the window to the desk.

‘Aye,’ said Dalziel thoughtfully. ‘That’s the most worrying thing, him not wanting to kick up a fuss. Well, lad, it’s up to you. But me, I know what I’d do.’

‘And what’s that, sir?’ enquired Pascoe.

‘Break both his legs and run him out of town.’

‘I think perhaps the other way round might be better,’ said Pascoe judiciously.

‘You reckon? Either way, you can stick this useless thing up his arse first.’

He glowered at the VCR which, as if in response to that fearsome gaze, clicked into life and a picture blossomed on the TV screen.

‘There,’ said the Fat Man triumphantly. ‘Told you no lump of tin and wires could get the better of me.’

Pascoe glanced at Wield who was quietly replacing the remote control unit on the desk, and grinned.

An announcer was saying, ‘And now Out and About, your regional magazine programme from BBC Mid-Yorkshire, presented by Jax Ripley.’

Titles over an aerial panorama of town and countryside accompanied by the first few bars of ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht ’at’ played by a brass band, all fading to the slight, almost childish figure of a young blonde with bright blue eyes and a wide mouth stretched in a smile through which white teeth gleamed like a scimitar blade.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Lots of goodies tonight, but first, are we getting the policing we deserve, the policing we pay for? Here’s how it looks from the dirty end of the stick.’

A rapid montage of burgled houses and householders all expressing, some angrily, some tearfully, their sense of being abandoned by the police. Back to the blonde, who recited a list of statistics which she then précis’d: ‘So four out of ten cases don’t get looked at by CID in the first twenty-four hours, six out of ten cases get only one visit and the rest is silence, and eight out of ten cases remain permanently unsolved. In fact, as of last month there were more than two hundred unsolved current cases on Mid-Yorkshire CID’s books. Inefficiency? Underfunding? Understaffing? Certainly we are told that the decision not to replace a senior CID officer who comes up to retirement shortly is causing much soul searching, or, to put it another way, a bloody great row. But when we invited Mid-Yorkshire Constabulary to send someone along to discuss these matters, a spokesman said they were unable to comment at this time. Maybe that means they are all too busy dealing with the crime wave. I would like to think so. But we do have Councillor Cyril Steel, who has long been interested in police matters. Councillor Steel, I gather you feel we are not getting the service we pay for?’

A bald-headed man with mad eyes opened his mouth to show brown and battlemented teeth, but before he could let fly his arrows of criticism, the screen went dark as Dalziel ripped the plug out of the wall socket.

‘Too early in the day to put up with Stuffer,’ he said with a shudder.

‘We must be able to take honest criticism, sir,’ said Pascoe solemnly. ‘Even from Councillor Steel.’

He was being deliberately provocative. Steel, once a Labour councillor but now an Independent after the Party ejected him in face of his increasingly violent attacks on the leadership, hurling charges which ranged from cronyism to corruption, was the self-appointed leader of a crusade against the misuse of public money. His targets included everything from the building of the Heritage, Arts and Library Centre to the provision of digestive biscuits at council committee meetings, so it was hardly surprising that he should have rushed forward to lend his weight to Jax Ripley’s investigation into the way police resources were managed in Mid-Yorkshire.

‘Not his criticism that bothers me,’ growled Dalziel. ‘Have you ever got near him? Teeth you could grow moss on and breath like a vegan’s fart. I can smell it through the telly. Only time Stuffer’s not talking is when he’s eating, and not always then. No one listens any more. No, it’s Jax the bloody Ripper who bothers me. She’s got last month’s statistics, she knows about the decision not to replace George Headingley and, looking at the state of some of them burgled houses, she must have been round there with her little camera afore we were!’

‘So you still reckon someone’s talking?’ said Pascoe.

‘It’s obvious. How many times in the last few months has she been one jump ahead of us? Past six months, to be precise. I checked back.’

‘Six months? And you think that might be significant? Apart from the fact, of course, that Miss Ripley started doing the programme only seven months ago?’

‘Aye, it could be significant,’ said Dalziel grimly.

‘Maybe she’s just good at her job,’ said Pascoe. ‘And surely it’s no bad thing for the world to know we’re not getting a replacement DI for George? Perhaps we should use her instead of getting our knickers in a twist.’

‘You don’t use a rat,’ said Dalziel. ‘You block up the hole it’s feeding through. And I’ve got a bloody good idea where to find this hole.’

Pascoe and Wield exchanged glances. They knew where the Fat Man’s suspicions lay, knew the significance he put on the period of six months. This was just about the length of time Mid-Yorkshire CID’s newest recruit, Detective Constable Bowler, had been on the team. Bowler – known to his friends as Hat and to his arch-foe as Boiler, Boghead, Bowels or any other pejorative variation which occurred to him – had started with the heavy handicap of being a fast-track graduate, on transfer from the Midlands without Dalziel’s opinion being sought or his approval solicited. The Fat Man was Argos-eyed in Mid-Yorkshire and a report that the new DC had been spotted having a drink with Jacqueline Ripley not long after his arrival had been filed away till the first of the items which had seen her re-christened Jax the Ripper had appeared. Since then Bowler had been given the status of man-most-likely, but nothing had yet been proved, which, to Pascoe at least, knowing how close a surveillance was being kept, suggested he was innocent.

But he knew better than to oppose a Dalzielesque obsession. Also, the Fat Man had a habit of being right.

He said brightly, ‘Well, I suppose we’d better go and solve some crimes in case there’s a hidden camera watching us. Thank you both for your input on my little problem.’

‘What? Oh, that,’ said Dalziel dismissively. ‘Seems to me the only problem you’ve got is knowing whether you’ve really got a problem.’

‘Oh yes, I’m certain of that. I think I’ve got the same problem Hector was faced with last year.’

‘Eh?’ said Dalziel, puzzled by this reference to Mid-Yorkshire’s most famously incompetent constable. ‘Remind me.’

‘Don’t you remember? He went into that warehouse to investigate a possible intruder. There was a guard dog, big Ridgeback I think, lying down just inside the doorway.’

‘Oh yes, I recall. Hector had to pass it. And he didn’t know if it was dead, drugged, sleeping or just playing doggo, waiting to pounce, that was his problem, right?’

‘No,’ said Pascoe. ‘He gave it a kick to find out. And it opened its eyes. That was his problem.’

CHAPTER FOUR
the second dialogue

Hi.

It’s me again. How’s it going?

Remember our riddles? Here’s a new one.

One for the living, one for the dead, Out on the moor I wind about Nor rhyme nor reason in my head Yet reasons I have without a doubt.

Deep printed on the yielding land Each zig and zag makes perfect sense To those who recognize the hand Of nature’s clerk experience.

This tracks a chasm deep and wide, That skirts a bog, this finds a ford, And men have suffered, men have died, To learn this wisdom of my Word –

– That seeming right is sometimes wrong And even on the clearest days The shortest way may still be long, The straightest line may form a maze.

What am I?

Got it yet?

You were always a smart dog at a riddle!

I’ve been thinking a lot about paths lately, the paths of the living, the paths of the dead, how maybe there’s only one path, and I have set my foot upon it.

I was pretty busy for a few days after my Great Adventure began, so I had little chance to mark its beginning by any kind of celebration. But as the weekend approached, I felt an urge to do something different, a little special. And I recalled my cheerful AA man telling me how chuffed he’d been on his return from Corfu to discover that a new Greek restaurant had just opened in town.

‘In Cradle Street, the Taverna,’ he said. ‘Good nosh and there’s a courtyard out back where they’ve got tables and parasols. Of course, it’s not like sitting outside in Corfu, but on a fine evening with the sun shining and the waiters running around in costume, and this chap twanging away on one of them Greek banjos, you can close your eyes and imagine you’re back in the Med.’

It was really nice to hear someone being so enthusiastic about foreign travel and food and everything. Most Brits tend to go abroad just for the sake of confirming their superiority to everyone else in the world.

Down there too?

There’s no changing human nature.

Anyway, I thought I’d give the Taverna a try.

The food wasn’t bad and the wine was OK, though I abandoned my experiment with retsina after a single glass. It was just a little chilly at first, sitting outside in the courtyard under the artificial olive trees, but the food soon warmed me up, and with the table candles lit, the setting looked really picturesque. Inside the restaurant a young man was singing to his own accompaniment. I couldn’t see the instrument but it gave a very authentic Greek sound and his playing was rather better than his voice. Eventually he came out into the courtyard and started a tour of the tables, serenading the diners. Some people made requests, most of them for British or at best Italian songs, but he tried to oblige everyone. As he reached my table, the PA system suddenly burst into life and a voice said, ‘It’s Zorba time!’ and two of the waiters started doing that awful Greek dancing. I saw the young musician wince, then he caught my eye and grinned sheepishly.

I smiled back and pointed to his instrument, and asked him what its name was, interested to hear if his speaking voice was as ‘Greek’ as his singing voice. It was a bazouki, he said in a broad Mid-Yorkshire accent. ‘Oh, you aren’t Greek then?’ I said, sounding disappointed to conceal the surge of exultation I was feeling. He laughed and admitted quite freely he was local, born, bred and still living out at Carker. He was a music student at the university, finding it impossible like so many of them to exist on the pittance they call a grant these days and plumping it out a bit by working in the Taverna most evenings. But while he wasn’t Greek, his instrument he assured me certainly was, a genuine bazouki brought home from Crete by his grandfather who’d fought there during the Second World War, so its music had first been heard beneath real olive trees in a warm and richly perfumed Mediterranean night.

I could detect in his voice a longing for that distant reality he described just as I’d seen in his face a disgust with this fakery he was involved in. Yorkshire born and bred he might be, but his soul yearned for something that he had persuaded himself could still be found under other less chilly skies. Poor boy. He had the open hopeful look of one born to be disappointed. I yearned to save him from the shattering of his illusions.

The canned music was growing louder and the dancing waiters who’d been urging more and more customers to join their line were getting close to my table, so I tucked some coins into the leather pouch dangling from the boy’s tunic, paid my bill and left.

It was after midnight when the restaurant closed but I didn’t mind sitting in my car, waiting. There is a pleasure in observing and not being observed, in standing in the shadows watching the creatures of the night going about their business. I saw several cats pad purposefully down the alleyway alongside the Taverna where they kept their rubbish bins. An owl floated between the chimneys, remote and silent as a satellite. And I glimpsed what I’m sure was the bushy tail of an urban fox frisking round the corner of a house. But it was the human creatures I was most interested in, the last diners striding, staggering, drifting, driving off into the night, little patches of Stimmungsbild – voices calling, footsteps echoing, car doors banging, engines revving – which played for a moment against the great symphony of the night, then faded away, leaving its dark music untouched.

Then comes a long pause – not in time but of time – how long I don’t know for clocks are blank-faced now – till finally I hear a motorbike revving up in the alleyway and my boy appears at its mouth, a musician making his entry into the music of the night. I know it’s him despite the shielding helmet – would have known without the evidence of the bazouki case strapped behind him.

He pauses to check the road is empty. Then he pulls out and rides away.

I follow. It’s easy to keep in touch. He stays well this side of the speed limit, probably knowing from experience how ready the police are to hassle young bikers, especially late at night. Once it becomes clear he’s heading straight home to Carker, I overtake and pull away.

I have no plan but I know from the merriment bubbling up inside me that a plan exists, and when I pass the derestriction sign at the edge of town and find myself on the old Roman Way, that gently undulating road which runs arrow-straight down an avenue of beeches all the five miles south to Carker, I understand what I have to do.

I leave the lights of town behind me and accelerate away. After a couple of miles, I do a U-turn on the empty road, pull on to the verge, and switch off my lights but not my engine.

Darkness laps over me like black water. I don’t mind. I am its denizen. This is my proper domain.

Now I see him. First a glow, then an effulgence, hurtling towards me. What young man, even one conditioned to carefulness by police persecution, could resist the temptation of such a stretch of road so clearly empty of traffic?

Ah, the rush of the wind in his face, the throb of the engine between his thighs, and in the corners of his vision the blur of trees lined up like an audience of old gods to applaud his passage!

I feel his joy, share in his mirth. Indeed, I’m so full of it I almost miss my cue.

But the old gods are talking to me also, and with no conscious command from my mind, my foot stamps down on the accelerator and my hand flicks on full headlights.

For a fraction of a second we are heading straight for each other. Then his muscles like mine obey commands too quick for his mind, and he swerves, skids, wrestles for control.

For a second I think he has it.

I am disappointed and relieved.

All right, I know, but I have to be honest. What a weight – and a wait – it would be off my soul if this turned out not to be my path after all.

But now the boy begins to feel it go. Yet still, even at this moment of ultimate danger, his heart must be singing with the thrill, the thrust, of it. Then the bike slides away from under him, they part company, and man and machine hurtle along the road in parallel, close but no longer touching.

I come to a halt and turn my head to watch. In time it takes probably a few seconds. In my no-time I can register every detail. I see that it is the bike which hits a tree first, disintegrating in a burst of flame, not much – his tank must have been low – but enough to throw a brief lurid light on his last moment.

He hits a broad-boled beech tree, seems to embrace it with his whole body, wrapping himself around it as if he longs to penetrate its smooth bark and flow into its rising sap. Then he slides off it and lies across its roots, like a root himself, face up, completely still.

I reverse back to him and get out of the car. The impact has shattered his visor but, wonderfully, done no damage to his gentle brown eyes. I notice that his bazouki case has been ripped off the pillion of the bike and lies quite close. The case itself has burst open but the instrument looks hardly damaged. I take it out and lay it close to his outstretched hand.

Now the musician is part of the night’s dark music and I am out of place here. I drive slowly away, leaving him there with the trees and the foxes and owls, his eyes wide open, and seeing very soon, I hope, not the cold stars of our English night but the rich warm blue of a Mediterranean sky.

That’s where he’d rather be. I know it. Ask him. I know it.

I’m too exhausted to talk any more now.

Soon.

CHAPTER FIVE

On Thursday morning with only one day to go before the short story competition closed, Rye Pomona was beginning to hope there might be life after deathless prose.

This didn’t stop her shovelling scripts into the reject bin with wild abandon, but halfway through the morning she went very still, sighed perplexedly, re-read the pages in front of her and said, ‘Oh hell.’

‘Yes?’ said Dick Dee.

‘We’ve got a Second Dialogue.’

‘Let me see.’

He read through it quickly then said, ‘Oh dear. I wonder if this one too is related to a real incident.’

‘It is. That’s what hit me straight off. I noticed it in yesterday’s Gazette. Here, take a look.’

She went to the Journal Rack and picked up the Gazette.

‘Here it is. “Police have released details of the fatal accident on Roman Way reported in our weekend edition. David Pitman, 19, a music student, of Pool Terrace, Carker, was returning home from his part-time job as an entertainer at the Taverna Restaurant in Cradle Street when he came off his motorbike in the early hours of Saturday morning. He sustained multiple injuries and was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. No other vehicle was involved.” Poor sod.’

Dee looked at the paragraph then read the Dialogue again.

‘How very macabre,’ he said. ‘Still, it’s not without some nice touches. If only our friend would attempt a more conventional story, he might do quite well.’

‘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.’

‘And the other, guv? Driving straight at that kid on the bike? If the Wordman did that, well, that’s not neglect, is it? That’s pretty positive, wouldn’t you say?’

‘What did you call him?’ said Headingley, postponing answering the question.

‘The Wordman,’ said Hat. He explained about the In principio, then explained his joke, and if anything got an even dustier response than he had in the library. Clearly the DI felt that giving the author of the Dialogues a nickname gave him substance, making him harder to ignore, which was what he would have liked to do.

But Hat was determined to pursue him to a decision.

‘So you think we should just drop it, guv?’ he persisted.

He watched with hidden amusement as uncertainties chased each other like clouds across Headingley’s broad open face.

‘Well, I suppose you’d better take a look. Likes his t’s crossed with a ruler, that coroner,’ said Headingley finally. ‘But don’t waste too much time on it. I want a full report on my desk first thing tomorrow. That’s the real test of a theory, son, how much of it you’re willing to put in writing.’

‘Yes, guv. Thank you, guv,’ said Bowler, just staying this side of open mockery. Headingley might be a boring old fart, ambling towards retirement with little interest in anything other than protecting his ample back, but he still had rank, plus he had survived for many years under the unforgiving eye of Andy Dalziel, so there had to be something there.

He went to his desk, checked out the names and addresses he wanted, then set out on his quest. He had a double reason for being meticulous now – first, to impress Rye Pomona; second, to satisfy George Headingley. Not that he needed either part of the reason to motivate him. One thing he’d quickly learned as a young graduate cop was to be nit-pickingly thorough if you didn’t want some antique plod who’d come up the hard way shaking his head and saying, ‘Nay, lad, just because tha’s on the fast track don’t mean tha’s allowed to cut corners.’

He started with Constable Dave Insole who’d been driving the first police car to arrive at the scene. Once Bowler’s easy manner had dissolved his natural suspicion that CID was second-guessing him, Insole was co-operative enough. In his view, the most likely explanation was that Ainstable had stopped for a pee, clambered down the bank, slipped and fell as he reached the bottom.

‘You mentioned some scuffs on the parapet in your report,’ said Bowler.

‘That was my partner, Maggie Laine,’ said Insole, grinning. ‘Got ambitions to join your lot, has Maggie. Always looking for clues. No, he got caught short, and was in such a hurry to get out of sight of the road, he slipped. If he’d wanted to sit on the parapet or piss over it or whatever, he’d have parked on the bridge itself, wouldn’t he?’

‘His tool box was by the parapet, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but by the time we arrived there were half a dozen yokels gawking, any one of them could have moved it out of the way.’

‘But hardly have taken it out of his van,’ said Hat. ‘Which was parked where? Not actually on the bridge, I gather?’

‘No. He stopped just before it, right where he could scramble down the side to the bank of the stream,’ said Insole triumphantly.

‘Just about where he’d have stopped if there’d already been a car parked on the bridge then?’ said Bowler.

‘Yeah, I suppose, but what are you driving at?’

‘Better ask Maggie,’ laughed Bowler, heading for the door.

The Ainstable house was a thirties semi on the northern fringe of town. The stout woman who answered the door turned out to be Mrs Ainstable’s sister from Bradford who’d come to stay. The first thing Bowler noticed as he was ushered into the living room was a tank of tropical fish standing on top of a sideboard. The second thing was a small pale-faced woman curled up on a large settee. Grief usually ages, but in Agnes Ainstable’s case it had shrunk the mature woman into an ailing child who looked more like her sister’s daughter than her sibling.

But when she spoke, Bowler began to understand why the coroner had opted to adjourn the inquest for further enquiries. Her attitude was simple. If something as slight as a slip of the foot had deprived her of her husband, she wanted the circumstances to be laid out before her in unambiguous detail. There was nothing rational in her demands, but they were made with an intensity that would have daunted the most insensitive of men.

The upside of this was that she answered all Bowler’s questions without showing the slightest curiosity about his reasons for asking them. It was enough that they related to the further enquiries the coroner had promised her.

Yes, Andrew had once talked about his tropical fish on a local radio chat show; yes, they’d been to Corfu for their holiday this year; yes, they’d had a meal at the Taverna.

At the front door as he left, the sister said, half apologetically, ‘It’s her way of hanging on to him. Once she admits she knows everything there is to know, he’s gone completely, and that terrifies her. All these questions you’re asking, they mean anything or are you just going through the motions?’

‘Wish I knew,’ said Bowler.

He wasn’t being disingenuous. There were many ways in which the writer of the First Dialogue could have got the details it contained. He could simply have known Ainstable, be a workmate or a member of the tropical fish fancy, have travelled to Corfu on the same package holiday … the possibilities if not endless were numerous enough to leave suspicion uselessly fluid. Facts were the only hardener that a good detective took any heed of. And he was a long way short of anything he’d like to hear himself explaining to a nit-picking coroner.

Now he drove south, leaving the town behind, and speeding along Roman Way as young David Pitman had sped on his way home to Carker.

The Pitman house was a spacious whitewashed cottage in a large garden, very different from the Ainstable semi, but the grief it contained was much the same. Bowler spent a heart-rending hour being taken through a family photograph album by Mrs Pitman, David’s mother. But he came away with confirmation that everything written in the Second Dialogue about the bazouki was accurate.

On his way back into town along Roman Way he stopped at the accident site. It was easy to identify. The tree which the bike had hit bore a scorched scar like a roughly cauterized wound. The impact of the boy’s body against the neighbouring tree had left damage less visible, but close up the bruising of the smooth beech bark was unmistakable.

He didn’t know why he’d stopped. Even Sherlock Homes would have been hard put to glean anything significant from the scene. Without the Dialogues, there was little suspicious in either of the deaths and in both cases it was easy to think of ways the Wordman could have got hold of the information they contained.

So really he’d got nothing, which was precisely what George Headingley hoped he would get. But he hadn’t joined CID to keep the likes of old George happy.

He raised his eyes to take in the long straight road down which the Roman legions had marched for the last time seventeen hundred years ago when the order came to abandon this chilly corner of the empire to its troublesome natives. The town boundary was only a mile away but the brow of the hill completely hid any sign of its encroaching sprawl. Only one building was visible among the fields bordering the road and that was an old grey farmhouse which looked like it had been there long enough to be naturalized as part of the landscape.

You’d have a perfect view of the road from its windows, thought Bowler.

He started the MG and drove up the long potholed driveway to the house which had the initials I.A.L. and the date 1679 engraved over the door.

A woman answered his ring. At first glance to Bowler’s young eye she looked as old as the house. But the voice which demanded his business was strong, and now he saw that through a fringe of grey hairs he was being observed by a pair of bright blue eyes, and if her skin was beginning to wrinkle like an old apple’s, she still had the flush of a sweet pippin in her cheeks.

He introduced himself and learned he was speaking to Mrs Elizabeth Locksley. When he mentioned the accident, she said, ‘How many times do you need told?’

‘Someone’s been round?’

‘Yes. Next morning. Lad in uniform.’

So they had been thorough. No mention of the visit in the report, which meant it was subsumed under the terse comment, No witnesses forthcoming or discovered.

‘And you told him?’

‘Nothing. Which was all there was to tell. We go to bed early here and sleep sound.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ called a man’s voice from within.

‘Nowt wrong with your lugs then,’ she shouted back.

‘Nor my eyes either. I told you what I saw.’

Bowler looked at the woman enquiringly and she sighed and said, ‘If you want to waste your time …’ then turned and vanished into the house.

He followed her into a long living room which, apart from the addition of a TV set on which Mad Max was playing, didn’t look like much had been done to it since the seventeenth century. A man rose from a chair. He was a giant, at least six and a half feet, and there was very little clearance between his head and the exposed crossbeams. He shook Bowler’s hand with a vigour that made him wince and said, ‘You’ve come to ask about the lights. Didn’t I tell you, Betty?’

‘Not more than fifty times, you daft old sod,’ she said, switching off the television. ‘So tell him, you’ll not be satisfied till you do.’

There was some exasperation in her voice but it got nowhere close to overpowering the strong affection in her gaze as she looked at the man.

‘I will,’ he said. ‘I got up to have a pee – old man’s trouble, it’ll come to you, lad, if you live that long. I looked out the landing window and I saw this headlight going down the hill there, just the one. Bike, I thought. And the bugger’s moving. Then I saw these other headlights, two on ’em, so, a car, coming this way. Out of nowhere they came. One moment dark, next there they were. Then the single light were all over the place. Till suddenly it went out. And then there were a puff of flame.’

‘And what happened then?’

‘Don’t know. If I’d stayed any longer I’d have pissed down the stairs and then I’d have been in trouble.’

He roared with laughter and the woman said, ‘You’re not wrong there, lad.’

‘And did you tell this story to the other policeman who came?’ asked Bowler.

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Didn’t recall it till later,’ said the man.

‘Later?’

‘Aye,’ said the woman. ‘Later. He usually recalls things later if he recalls them at all.’

There was something going on here he didn’t yet fully understand. He decided to concentrate on the woman.

‘You didn’t think it worthwhile ringing us when you heard Mr er …?’

‘Locksley,’ she said.

‘Your husband?’ he said, looking for clarity where he could find it.

‘Well, he’s not my bloody tallyman!’ she said, which seemed to amuse them both greatly.

‘You didn’t think to contact us?’ persisted Bowler.

‘What for? Sam, what night was it you saw the lights?’

‘Nay, lass, that’s not fair. It was this year, but, I’m certain of that.’

‘And what film would you have been watching that day whenever it was?’

He thought a moment then said, ‘Likely Mad Max, it’s my favourite. Do you like it, mister? He was a cop, too.’

‘It takes all sorts,’ said Bowler. ‘Yes, I’ve seen it on the box. Bit too violent for my taste.’

He was beginning to get the picture. In the interests of diplomacy he’d have liked to get the woman by herself, but he had a feeling that she wouldn’t take kindly to any attempt to talk behind her husband’s back.

He said, ‘So you think that Mr Locksley might be confusing what the other policeman told you about the accident with images from the movies he watches?’

He kept his voice low but the man’s sharp ears picked him up with ease.

‘You could be right there, lad,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I do get things mixed up and as for recalling what happened when, I’m hopeless. Doesn’t bother me mostly, but there’s some things from the past it’d be nice to bring back now I’m getting old. For instance, I can’t recall the last time I had a good jump, and that’s sad.’

‘You silly old bugger,’ said his wife fondly. ‘It was just afore you had your breakfast this morning.’

‘Was it?’ he said, regarding her with bright hopeful eyes. ‘And did I enjoy it?’

‘Well, you asked for a second helping of porridge,’ she said.

Their laughter was infectious and Bowler was still chuckling as he let himself out. As he began to drive away, Mrs Locksley came to the door and called, ‘Hey, just because his memory’s going and he gets a bit confused, doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but.’

‘That,’ said Bowler, ‘is very much the trouble.’

But it wasn’t his trouble; it was or soon would be DI Headingley’s. Something obliging him to make a decision would drop into Jolly George’s broad lap like a mug of hot coffee. It was a prospect not altogether displeasing.

But the DI, when provoked to action, could be a nimble ducker and weaver, and it would be wise not to leave any gaps for him to slip through, saying accusingly, ‘But you forgot to do that, Constable.’

Bowler scanned the possibilities and saw one he hadn’t covered. The Greek restaurant where the Wordman claimed to have dined on the night he talked to David Pitman. He glanced at his watch. Five forty. Probably the Taverna didn’t open till seven or half six at the earliest. He’d never eaten there – young detectives got used to eating on the hoof and became uneasy if they found themselves spending more than ten minutes on a meal – but he had followed Franny Roote there one night last week, watched him go inside, thought, Sod this, it’s unofficial and I’m not on overtime, and headed home to a takeaway and a soccer match on the telly.

That was when? Suddenly he felt uneasy. Wednesday, Pascoe had given him the job, so it had to be … He pulled over and took out his pocketbook to check the date.

Shit! It was Friday, the same night that young Pitman had had his ‘accident’.

Best not to mention it, he decided. It would just muddy the waters. He hadn’t gone inside, he hadn’t seen any other customers, he hadn’t done anything except sit in his car for a minute watching Roote go into the building. If his own bad vibes about the two deaths were translated by the brass into a full-scale investigation – which he doubted, given George Headingley’s determination not to let his boat be rocked with the harbour of retirement in sight – then he might speak. Or perhaps not. Somehow he suspected from the way Dalziel had been looking at him lately that the fat bastard would be glad to put a black mark against his name simply for being in the vague vicinity of a possible crime.

For a moment he even thought of scrubbing his plan to visit the Taverna, but only for a moment. Wanting to cover his back didn’t stop him from being conscientious. Then, because he was a positive thinker, much happier looking on the upside of things than contemplating possible downsides, he suddenly grinned as he saw a way of getting something good out of the situation.

He took out his mobile and dialled the Central Library number. It rang for a long time before someone answered. He recognized the voice.

‘Mr Dee? Hi, it’s DC Bowler. Listen, is Rye there?’

‘I’m sorry, she’s gone home, like all sensible people,’ said Dee. ‘The only reason you got me was that I often stay on after closing time to do some work.’

‘That’s very noble of you,’ said Bowler.

‘I fear you credit me with more virtue than I possess. I don’t mean work for the public weal. This is private research for a book I’m writing.’

‘Oh yes. Detective story, is it?’

Dee laughed, picking up the irony.

‘I wish. No, it’s a history of semantic scholarship. A sort of dictionary of dictionaries, you might call it.’

‘Sounds fascinating,’ said Bowler unconvincingly.

Dee said, ‘I think I should work on your projection of sincerity if you fancy trying your hand at undercover work, Mr Bowler. Now, is there any way that I can be of help to you?’

‘Only if you’ve got a number I can reach Rye at,’ said Bowler.

There was a pause then Dee said, ‘Well, I do have her home number, but I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give such things out to the public at large. But I could pass on a message, if you like.’

Bastard! thought Bowler.

He said, ‘It was just about my enquiries. I’m going to the Taverna this evening to check out a few things and I thought as Rye was so interested she might care to join me. I’ll be there at seven.’

‘Now that does sound fascinating. I’ll pass your message on. I’m sure Rye will be as intrigued as I am.’

But you’re not invited, Dick-head Dee, thought Bowler.

Then, being both a fair and a self-analytical young man, he asked himself, Am I jealous? But quickly, because he was above all a young man, he went on to dismiss as absurd the idea that in matters of love a dotard of at least forty years could give him any cause for jealousy.

Showered, shaved, and arrayed in his sharpest gear, he was in the Taverna by six forty-five. He ordered a Campari soda because he loved the colour and it gave him a sense of sophistication. At seven ten he ordered another. A third at seven twenty. At seven thirty, tired of sophistication, he ordered a pint of lager. At seven forty-five he ordered a second pint and asked to see the manager.

This was Mr Xenopoulos, short, fat and genuinely Greek though he spoke English with a disconcerting Liverpool accent. Suspicious at first that Bowler was an Environmental Health snoop, he became more helpful when he learned that his enquiries were to do with Dave Pitman, though he did wonder mildly whether it might not have been more sensible for the detective to have started interviewing his staff an hour earlier when he first arrived rather than now when the restaurant was getting busy. Both he and the waiters expressed what seemed like genuine sorrow at the dreadful accident which had overtaken their bazouki player, but were unable to recall anything pertinent about the patrons that night. Solitary diners were not unusual, attracted by the sense of communal jollity which often developed as the evening wore on and the dancing began.

‘But why’re you asking all these questions?’ enquired Xenopoulos finally. ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it?’

‘So far as we know,’ said Bowler carefully. ‘But it’s possible one of the diners that night could have been a witness. You keep a record of table bookings, I suppose?’

‘Natch. Like a copy of that page in the reservation diary, would you?’ said the manager, pre-empting Bowler’s next request. ‘No sweat. Have a seat at the bar and a drink on the house, I’ll be with you in a jiff.’

Bowler had another pint of lager and was sitting staring into the empty glass like Frank Sinatra about to burst into ‘One More for the Road’ when a hand tapped gently on his shoulder, a musky perfume rubbed seductively against his nose and a voice breathed in his ear, ‘Hi. Whatever you lost in that glass, I think you’ve swallowed it.’

He spun round on his stool smiling, and found himself looking at a small, slim blonde in her mid-twenties, with piercing blue eyes and a generous mouth whose smile matched his, except that it did not fade as his now faded.

‘Oh, hi,’ he said. ‘Jax. How’re you doing?’

Jax Ripley considered the question for a moment then said, ‘Well. I’m doing well. And you, Hat. How are you? All by yourself?’

‘Yeah. That’s right. I am. You?’

‘With friends, but when I saw you at the bar, I thought no one so good looking should be so sad so early in the evening and came across. So what are you here for, Hat? Business or pleasure?’

Discretion vied with ego. She was wearing a dress which didn’t offer much hope of concealment to even the smallest of microphones, but with Jax the Ripper, you never could tell.

He said, ‘Pleasure. Or it would have been if I hadn’t got stood up.’

‘My favourite policeman? Tell me her name and I’ll let the world know what a stupid cow she is.’

‘Thanks, but maybe not. I’m a great forgiver,’ he said.

She regarded him quizzically for a moment then her gaze drifted over his shoulder.

‘Mr Bowler, here’s that page you wanted. Hope it’s useful, but a lot of our customers just come in off the street on the off chance.’

He turned to find Xenopoulos proffering a photocopied sheet.

‘Yes, thanks, that’s great, thanks a lot,’ he said, folding it and shoving it into his jacket pocket.

He turned back to the woman to find her expression had shifted from quizzical to downright curious.

‘Just improving the not so shining hour,’ he said.

‘Yes? Anything that would improve mine?’ she asked. ‘Over a friendly drink?’

‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Really, Jax, it’s nothing.’

Her unblinking eyes made him feel like a guilty child, so he let his gaze drift over her shoulder. And found himself looking straight at Andy Dalziel who had just come into the restaurant with the well-rounded woman rumour had it he was getting it on with. But the expression on the Fat Man’s face suggested he had slaughter rather than sex on his mind.

Bowler jerked his gaze back to Jax Ripley whose eyes by comparison were soft and kind.

‘That drink,’ he said, ‘make it a tequila sunset.’

‘You mean sunrise?’

‘I know what I mean,’ he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Detective Inspector George Headingley was a stickler for punctuality. With the end of his career in sight, he might have decided he wasn’t going to do anything he didn’t want to do, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be unpunctual not doing it. He was due at his desk at eight thirty the following morning and at eight twenty-nine he was approaching it with the measured tread which made his footsteps recognizable at fifty paces.

He could see that the cleared top which he prided himself on leaving at the end of every shift had been sullied by a document. At least the sullier had taken care to place it dead centre so that in many ways it enhanced rather than detracted from the effect of perfect order which Headingley was always at pains to achieve.

He hung his coat up, removed his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair, then sat down and pulled the document towards him. It was several pages thick and the first of these declared that its author was DC Bowler who, as requested, had gathered together all available information which might help DI Headingley to assess whether anything in the deaths of Andrew Ainstable or David Pitman required his, that is DI Headingley’s, further investigation.

Why was it that something legalistic about this form of words made his heart sink?

He opened it and began to read. And soon his heart was sinking deeper, faster. He’d wanted firm no-no’s so that he could consign these daft Dialogues to the waste bin, but all he was getting was a series of boggy maybe’s.

When he finished he sat for a moment, then gathered all the papers together and set out in search of Bowler.

There was no sign of him. He encountered Wield and made enquiry after the young DC.

Wield said, ‘Saw him earlier. Think he went off to do something for Mr Pascoe. Was it urgent?’

‘Was what urgent?’ said Andy Dalziel, whose approach was sometimes audible at twice the distance of the DI’s but who could also exercise the option of materializing like the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, moving silent as mist over the ground.

‘The DI’s looking for Bowler,’ said Wield.

‘And the bugger’s not in yet?’

‘In and out,’ said Wield reprovingly.

‘Aye, like Speedy Gonzales,’ said Dalziel with a lip curl like a shed tyre. ‘What do you want with him, George?’

‘Well, nothing … just a query about a report he’s done for me,’ said Headingley, turning away.

‘About those deaths, was it?’ said Wield. ‘The library thing.’

Headingley shot him a glance which came as close to malevolence as a man of his amiable temperament could manage. He still had hopes of squashing this bit of awkwardness or, in the unlikely event of there being anything in it, at least shelving it till such time as he was long gone. To that end, the less Dalziel knew, the better.

‘Library thing?’ said Dalziel. ‘Not a body-in-the-library thing, I hope, George. I’m getting too old for bodies in libraries.’

Headingley explained, playing it down. Dalziel listened then held out his hand for the file.

He scanned through it quickly, his nostrils flaring as he came to the end of Bowler’s report.

‘So that’s what the bugger were doing at the Taverna,’ he muttered to himself.

‘Sorry?’

‘Nowt. So what do you reckon, George? Load of crap or a big one for you to go out on?’

‘Don’t know yet,’ said Headingley as judiciously as he could manage. ‘That’s why I want to see Bowler. Check through a couple of points with him. What do you think, sir?’

Hopeful of dismissal.

‘Me? Could be owt or nowt. I know I can rely on you to do the right thing. But while you’re thinking about it, George, mum’s the word, eh? Go off half-cocked on summat like this and we’ll look right wankers. Don’t want them blowflies from the media sniffing around till we know there’s dead meat, and it’s not us.’

A mobile rang in Headingley’s pocket. He took it out and said, ‘Yes?’

He listened then turned away from the other two men.

They heard him say, ‘No, not possible … of course … well, maybe … all right … twenty minutes.’

He switched off, turned back and said, ‘Need to go out. Possible information.’

‘Oh aye. Anything I should know about?’ said Dalziel.

‘Don’t know, sir,’ said Headingley. ‘Probably nowt, but he makes it sound urgent.’

‘They always do. Who’ll you take? We’re a bit short-handed with Novello still off sick and Seymour on leave.’

‘I can go,’ said Wield.

‘No, it’s OK. This one’s not a registered snout,’ said Headingley firmly. Registered informants required two officers to work them for protection against disinformation and attempted set-ups. ‘I’m still working on him. He’s a bit timid, and I reckon that seeing me turn up mob-handed might put him off for ever.’

He turned and began to move away.

Dalziel said, ‘Hey, George, aren’t you forgetting something?’

‘Eh?’

‘This,’ said the Fat Man, proffering the Dialogues file. ‘You don’t get shut of it that easy.’

The bugger’s a mind reader, thought Headingley, not for the first time. He took the file, tucked it under his arm and headed out of the office.

Dalziel watched him go and said, ‘Know what I think, Wieldy?’

‘Wouldn’t presume, sir.’

‘I think it was his missus reminding him to pick up her dry-cleaning. One thing you’ve got to say about George, he’s been real conscientious helping us break in his replacement.’

‘Thought we weren’t getting a replacement, sir.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Andy Dalziel.

He returned to his office, sat looking at the phone for a minute, then picked it up and dialled.

‘Hello,’ said a woman’s voice which even on the phone was filled with a husky warmth which communicated itself straight to his thighs.

‘Hi, luv. It’s me.’

‘Andy,’ said Cap Marvell. ‘How nice.’

She made it sound like she meant it too.

‘Just rang to say how’re you doing. And sorry you didn’t enjoy that place last night.’

She laughed and said, ‘As you well know, it wasn’t the place I didn’t enjoy, it was you going on about that handsome young officer and the very pretty TV girl. I thought we had an agreement. No shop till after sex when you can unburden yourself to your heart’s content and I can go to sleep.’

‘Chance would have been a fine thing,’ he grumbled.

‘Chance went out of the window with my pleasant night out. I’m game to experiment with most kinds of foreplay, but police politics I find a real turn-off. But I accept your apology for an apology.’

‘Grand. Then let’s fix summat else up. Your choice. Anything you say and I promise you’ll think I’m a civilian.’

‘You say so. OK, couple of invitations I’ve got this morning. One is to my son’s regimental ball. It’s being held a fortnight on Saturday out at Haysgarth, that’s Budgie Partridge’s country seat. He’s the regiment’s Colonel-in-Chief …’

Cap’s son by her dissolved marriage was Lieutenant-Colonel Piers Pitt-Evenlode MC of the Yorkshire Fusiliers, known to Dalziel as The Hero.

‘Budgie? That’s Lord Partridge to us commoners, is it?’

‘Sorry. I knew him in another life.’

This other life had been the period of marriage into the landed gentry which had lead to the Hero, self-knowledge, disillusionment, rebellion, divorce, and ultimately Dalziel.

‘Met him once myself in this life,’ said the Fat Man, ‘but I doubt he’d remember me. What’s the other invite?’

‘That’s to the preview of the art and craft exhibition in the Centre Gallery. A week on Saturday.’

‘That it? No one want you to open a new brewery or summat?’

‘Choose,’ she said unrelentingly. ‘It’s either tin soldiers and champagne cocktails or nude paintings and cheap white wine.’

He thought then said, ‘Don’t know much about art but I know what I like. I’ll pick the mucky pictures.’

Hat Bowler yawned widely.

He’d had a restless night, his bed afloat on a turbulent ocean of lager and Campari and the sky full of dull red stars each glowing down upon him with the accusing intensity of Andy Dalziel’s gaze. He’d risen very early and made his way to work where he ordered his notes into the report which, not without malice aforethought, had so upset George Headingley. Franny Roote’s name hadn’t been on the Taverna reservation list. He examined his reasons for not mentioning him, decided albeit uneasily they were as good this morning as they’d appeared last night – better maybe after that encounter with Dalziel’s glowering glare – then, partly to avoid being present when the DI read his report, and partly to reassure himself that Pascoe was getting his knickers in a twist over nothing, he’d driven out to the suburb where Franny Roote had his flat and resumed surveillance.

There was, he was glad to confirm, nothing here to wake a young DC up. In fact, for a convicted felon and a suspected stalker, Roote really led an incredibly boring life. The guy got up in the morning, got into his old banger (correction: it looked like an old banger but the engine sounded remarkably sweet), drove to work, and worked hard all day. Most evenings he spent reading and taking notes in the university library. His social life seemed to consist of attendance at a St John Ambulance class and occasional visits to a restaurant (like the Taverna, bugger it!) or a cinema, always alone. No, this was one very dull character. And Wield had said he’d got an eye like a hawk! The sergeant was a man to admire and listen to, but he didn’t know much about birds, thought Bowler complacently as he watched Roote pruning a rosebush with such methodical concentration that he’d probably not have noticed if a full-scale film crew had turned up to take pictures.

Time to move before he fell asleep.

As he drove away from the university, Bowler let his thoughts drift to Rye Pomona. Now that he’d reported on his investigations to the DI, he felt obligated to bring her up to speed too. He had convinced himself that she hadn’t got his message last night. Probably Dee, through indolence or inadvertence, or, more likely, simple indisposition, hadn’t made contact with her. He pulled over and dialled the library and asked for Reference.

He recognized her voice at once. She on the other hand didn’t recognize his and seemed to require an effort of memory even to register his name.

‘Oh yes. Constable Bowler. Message last night? Yes, I believe I did get a message, but I had other plans. So how can I help you now?’

‘Well, I thought you might like to hear how I got on.’

‘Got on? With what?’

‘With looking into these Dialogues you gave me.’

‘Oh yes. The Wordman of Alcatraz.’

She sounded more amused at the memory of his attempted joke than she’d been at the attempt.

He decided this was a positive sign.

‘That’s right. The Wordman.’

‘All right. Tell me. How did you get on?’

‘Actually it’s quite complicated,’ he said cunningly. ‘I’m a bit rushed now. I wondered if you could spare a few minutes at lunchtime, say?’

A pause.

‘I don’t have long. One of us has to be here. And I usually eat a sandwich in the staffroom.’

A staffroom was not what he had in mind.

‘I thought perhaps a pub …’

‘A pub?’ As if he’d suggested a House of Assignation. ‘I don’t get long enough to spend time in pubs. I suppose I could meet you in Hal’s.’

‘Hal’s?’

‘The café – bar on the Centre mezzanine. Don’t policemen get asked the way any more?’

‘Yes, yes, I’ll find it.’

‘I won’t hold my breath. Twelve fifteen.’

‘Yes, twelve fifteen would be fine. Maybe we can …’

But he wasn’t talking to anyone but himself.

At twelve thirty Dick Dee was perched behind the Reference enquiry desk, peering pensively at a computer screen when he heard a sexy cough.

It is not everyone who can cough sexily and he looked up with interest to see a young woman with blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes smiling at him. She was small and slightly built, but exuded the kind of energy a man could imagine being put to very good use.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I’m Jax Ripley.’

‘And I’m Dick Dee, Miss … Ripley, was it?’

Jax thought, the bastard’s pretending not to remember me!

Or, worse, she emended, looking into those guileless eyes, he really doesn’t remember me!

She said, ‘We met the other week. On the council tour … when the shelf collapsed … I did want to interview you but wherever we pointed the camera, dear old Percy seemed to be in shot, talking about the way he’d like to see the Centre develop …’

She raised her eyebrows, inviting him to join in her amusement at Percy Follows’ well-known appetite for publicity, especially with the council considering the appointment of an overall Centre Director.

Dee let his gaze run up and down her body, assessingly but without lubricity, and said, ‘Of course. Miss Ripley. Nice to see you again. How may I help?’

‘It’s about the short story competition. I gather you’re in charge of the judging panel.’

‘Far from it,’ he said. ‘I’m merely one of the preliminary sorters.’

‘I’m sure you’re more than that,’ she said turning her charm on full blast. She knew men and thought she’d detected beneath his politely neutral examination a definite effervescence of interest along the arteries. ‘When do entries close?’

‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘So you’ll have to hurry.’

‘I’m not thinking of entering,’ she said sharply, then saw from his faint smile that he was taking the piss.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t a bad-looking guy, a long way from a hunk but the kind who might grow on you.

She laughed out loud and said, ‘But tell me, if I did want to enter, is the standard high?’

‘There’s a great deal of promise,’ he said carefully.

‘Promise as in politicians, marriage or the Bank of England?’ she asked.

‘You’ll need to wait till the result is announced to decide that,’ he said.

‘Which is when?’ she said. ‘I’d be interested in doing a piece on Out and About, maybe interviewing the shortlisted authors. Or perhaps we could even have the result announced live on air.’

‘Nice idea,’ he said. ‘But I suspect Mary Agnew will want the news of the winner to be announced in the Gazette. Sell more newspapers that way, you see.’

‘Oh, I know Mary well. I used to work for her. In fact I was just talking to her earlier this morning and I’m sure we can come to some arrangement,’ said Jax with the confidence of one who takes as read the superiority of television over newsprint. ‘What I was after was a bit of preliminary information. I might even do a trail on tonight’s show. Do you have a few moments? Or maybe I could buy you lunch?’

Dee was beginning to refuse politely when the library door burst open and a tall willowy man with a mane of golden hair framing a face as small as a monkey’s came in and approached them with arms outstretched.

‘Jax, my dear. They told me you were loose in the building. Your face is too famous to pass my sentinels unremarked. I hope you were going to come and see me, but I couldn’t take the risk.’

He rested his arms on Jax’s shoulders and they exchanged a three-kiss salute.

Jax at her very first meeting with Percy Follows had marked him down as a prancing prat. But in the world of men, being a prancing prat didn’t necessarily mean he was either stupid or incapable of rising to heights from which he might be able to extend a helping hand to an ambitious woman, so she said sweetly, ‘I assumed you’d be far too busy at some important working lunch, Percy, which incidentally is where I’m trying to take Mr Dee here, but he was just telling me you work him far too hard for such frivolities.’

‘Do we?’ said Follows, slightly nonplussed.

‘It seems so. He doesn’t even seem to have time for a working fast. And I’m desperate to pick his brain for a series of pieces I’m planning to do on this short story competition you thought up. It’s the kind of cultural initiative we really need in Mid-Yorkshire. I’ll want to interview you later on, of course, but I always like to start at factory-floor level …’

She’s very good, thought Dee as she flashed him a smile and the hint of a wink from the eye furthest from Follows.

‘Is that so?’ said Follows. ‘Then of course you must go, Dick. I hereby unlock your chains.’

‘I’m by myself,’ said Dee. ‘Rye is on her lunch break.’

‘No problem,’ said Follows expansively. ‘I’ll mind the shop myself. We’re a true democracy here, Jax, everyone ready and able to do everyone else’s work. Go, Dick, go, while the giving mood is on me.’

Dee, Harold Lloyd to his boss’s Olivier, cleared the computer screen, put on his leather-patched tweed jacket and with an old-fashioned courtesy took Jax’s arm and ushered her through the door.

‘So where are you taking me?’ he enquired as they walked down the stairs.

Her mind printed out the alternatives. Pub? Too crowded. Hotel dining room? Too formal.

His hand still rested lightly on her arm. To her surprise she found herself thinking, rest it anywhere you like, darling.

This was quite the wrong way round, this feeling that he would be easy to like, easy to talk to. That was how he was supposed to be feeling!

She recalled the wise words of Mary Agnew when she’d worked for her.

You’ll recognize a good story by what you’re willing to do to get it. One thing though … lay yourself on the table by all means, darling, but never lay your cards. Knowing more than other people know is the only virginity in our game. Keep it.

Still, nothing wrong with enjoying yourself along the way.

‘You call it,’ she said. ‘My treat. But I make a lovely open sandwich if I can find the right topping.’

‘This is nice,’ said Bowler. ‘Why’s it called Hal’s?’

They were sitting opposite each other at a table on the balcony of the café – bar which gave a view down the length of the main shopping precinct. On a clear day you could see as far as Boots the Chemist. The disadvantage of the situation was that the prurient youth of the town had discovered that a seat on the edge of the fountain in the atrium below gave them with luck an excellent view up the short skirts of those sitting above. But on entering Hal’s, she had discovered Bowler at an inside table next to one occupied by Charley Penn. Had to be coincidence, but preferring the prying eyes of youth to the flapping ears of age, she’d suggested they move outside.

‘Think about it,’ said Rye. ‘Heritage, Arts and Library complex? H.A.L.’

‘Disappointing,’ said Bowler. ‘I thought it might be named after an artificial intelligence which had gone wrong and was trying to control our lives.’

She laughed and said, ‘You could be right.’

Encouraged, he said, ‘You know what I thought the first time I saw you?’

‘No, and I’m not sure I want to know,’ said Rye.

‘I thought redwing.’

‘As in Indian Maid?’

‘You know that song? Odd company you keep, or do you play rugby? Don’t answer. No, as in turdus iliacus, the smallest of the common thrushes.’

‘I hope, for your sake, this is an extremely attractive, highly intelligent bird.’

‘Naturally. Also known as Wind Thrush or Swine Pipe from its sharp voice.’

‘And iliacus because it comes from Troy? The resemblances to the way I see myself don’t seem to be multiplying.’

‘Helen came from Troy.’

‘No she didn’t. She got abducted and ended up there. So forget the soft soap and tell me, where’s the connection, Constable?’

‘Simple really and entirely soap-free,’ he murmured. ‘The redwing is a bird with lovely chestnut colouring and a prominent pale strip over the eye. So when I saw this, I thought redwing.’

He reached over and brushed his index finger against the tongue of silvery grey running through her hair.

That’s enough, buster, thought Rye. Verbal jousting is one thing, but stroking my hair’s a familiarity too far.

‘So you really are a bird nerd,’ she said. ‘And here’s me thinking it was just a cover story. Ah well, each to his own anorak.’

She saw she’d scored a palpable hit and should have felt gleeful but didn’t.

‘Anyway, it’s a better come-on than the guy who said it reminded him of Silver Blaze,’ she went on.

‘Sorry?’

‘Silver Blaze. The racehorse in the Sherlock Holmes story? Don’t you all get issued those at Hendon, or is being a detective a cover story too?’

‘No, that’s for real too, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh yes? So prove it.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘First off, this Wordman stuff is confidential, OK?’

‘Confidential? It’s me who brought you these Dialogues, remember? And now you’re telling me just because you’ve invented a nickname for him, it’s confidential.’

‘What I’ve found out in the course of my investigation is police business and I can’t share it with you unless you accept its confidentiality,’ he said, deliberately ponderous.

She thought, nodded, said, ‘OK. So let’s hear it.’

‘First, all that stuff about Ainstable – the tropical fish and the Greek holiday – is true. As is the story about where the bazouki came from. Plus there’s a witness who might have seen a car’s headlights just before the motorbike crash. And there could have been a car on the humpback bridge in front of where the AA van was parked.’

‘Oh, shit. So this lunatic really did kill them!’ exclaimed Rye, horrified.

‘Not necessarily. There are other ways the Wordman could have got the information and there’s no way of knowing for certain if Ainstable stopped to help someone. And my witness who saw the lights is going senile and isn’t a hundred per cent sure what he had for breakfast.’

‘Great! And this is what I’ve been sworn to secrecy over?’

Bowler said seriously, ‘It’s important either way. If there’s nothing in it, then we don’t want to be spreading alarm and despondency about a possible serial killer on the loose, do we? And if there is something in it …’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘So you’re right, which could be an irritating habit. All right, Sherlock, what’s your professional opinion?’

‘Me? I’m far too junior to have opinions,’ said Bowler. ‘I just pass things up to my superiors and they’ve got to decide what to do next.’

He smiled as he spoke and Rye said coldly, ‘You think it’s something to joke about?’

‘Hell, no. I’m not laughing at that. I’m just thinking about my DI who’s only interested in sailing into retirement peacefully and just hates the idea of having to make a decision about something as difficult as this.’

‘I’m glad to know the public weal’s in such safe hands.’

‘Don’t worry. He’s not typical. You should see the guy at the top.’

His expression turned sombre at the thought of Andy Dalziel. Why did the guy dislike him so much? Couldn’t just be because of his degree. Pascoe was a graduate too and he and the Fat Man seemed to be able to work together without too much blood on the carpet.

‘Hello?’ said Rye. ‘You still with me or are you getting messages from Planet Zog?’

‘Yes. Sorry. Just the thought of our super does that to me. Look, I’ll keep you posted about any further developments on the Wordman front, I promise. I assume there’s been nothing more at your end?’

‘Any more Dialogues, you mean? No, of course not, or we’d have called you. And the closing date for entries is tonight so there’s not much time left.’

He regarded her gravely and said, ‘Maybe if our Wordman really is killing people, he won’t be much bothered by a closing date for a short story competition.’

She looked irritated but with herself not him and said, ‘Thanks for making me feel stupid. That part of your job?’

‘No. Is it part of yours?’

‘When did I do it?’

‘When you and Dee started using long words you assumed, rightly, I wouldn’t understand.’

‘Such as?’

‘When I told you what people called me, you said something about that being very paranoidistic or something.’

‘Paronomasiac,’ she said. ‘Sorry. You’re right. It’s just the adjective from paronomasia which means any form of word-play, like a pun.’

‘And what Dee said?’

‘Paronomaniac.’ She smiled and said, ‘From paronomania, meaning an obsessive interest in word games. It’s also the name of a board game Dick’s very fond of. Bit like Scrabble, only harder.’

He didn’t really want to hear about Dee’s cleverness or anything which hinted at intimacy between Rye and her boss, but couldn’t help saying, ‘You’ve played this para whatsit, then?’

She gave him a cool smile which seemed to say she understood precisely the direction of his thoughts and said, ‘No. It seems only two can play and those two are Dick and Charley Penn.’

‘The writer?’

‘Is there another?’

He decided this was leading nowhere and said, ‘So now we’ve both made each other feel stupid, what about this Sunday?’

She didn’t pretend not to understand but said, ‘I don’t know if I’m that stupid. What’s the E stand for?’

‘What E?’

‘E. Bowler. On your library card. That E. Come on. What are you hiding under your hat, Hat?’

He looked at her doubtfully then took a deep breath and said, ‘Ethelbert.’

‘Ethelbert,’ she repeated, savouring the name like a jam doughnut, then running her tongue round her lips as if to pick up the residual sugar. ‘I like it.’

‘Really?’ He examined her closely in search of ambush. ‘You’ll be the first. Most people fall about laughing.’

‘When you’ve got a name that makes you sound like an alcopop, you don’t laugh at other people’s names,’ she said.

‘Rye Pomona,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. But it’s nice. Isn’t Pomona a place in Italy?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But it is Italian. Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruit trees.’

She watched to see if he would lumber into a joke or ooze into a compliment.

He nodded and said, ‘And Rye, is that a nickname, or what?’

‘Short for Raina,’ she said.

‘Sorry? Never heard that one.’

She spelt it for him, and pronounced it carefully, stressing the three syllables, Rye-ee-na.

‘Raina,’ he echoed. ‘Raina Pomona. Now that’s really nice. OK, it’s unusual, but it’s not naff, like Ethelbert Bowler.’

She found herself pleased that he didn’t make a big deal of asking where the name came from but just took it in his stride.

‘Don’t undersell yourself,’ she said. ‘Think positive. Ethelbert Bowler … it has an artistic ring … makes you sound like a minor Victorian watercolourist. Are you interested in art, Ethelbert? Under any of your hats?’

‘I could probably dig out an old French beret,’ he said cautiously. ‘Why?’

‘The Centre’s new gallery opens week after next with a local arts and crafts exhibition. There’s a preview the Saturday before, lunchtime. Care to come?’

He said, ‘Are you going by choice or because you’re on the payroll?’

She said, ‘Does it matter? OK, it’s sort of semi-duty. Centre politics, you wouldn’t be interested.’

‘Try me till I yawn,’ he said.

‘OK. The Centre’s tri-partite, right? Heritage, Arts, Library. Library was easy, Percy Follows was Head of Library Services already, so he just slid into the new position. And it looked like Philomel Carcanet who ran the old municipal museum/art gallery on Shuttleworth Hill would likewise take over the new Heritage and Arts strands in the Centre. Except it’s all proving a bit much for her. You yawning yet?’

‘No, just breathing deeply with excitement.’

‘Fine. Dead things Philomel is really good with, living things in any quantity scare her stiff. She was delirious with excitement when the builders’ digging unearthed that mosaic pavement. Then they decided to incorporate it into this Roman Experience thing – you must have read about it, a Mid-Yorkshire marketplace at the height of the Roman occupation?’

Hat nodded, he hoped convincingly.

‘I believe you,’ she said, not bothering to sound convinced. ‘Anyway, that meant Phil had to start thinking about catering for live punters, live people again and it all got on top of her. So she’s on sick leave. Meanwhile, someone’s had to sort out the new gallery. Normally our Percy would run a mile rather than get involved with extra work, but there’s a new factor. Word is that the council, Stuffer Steel apart, are contemplating appointing an overall director of the Centre. And our Percy imagines he’s at the front of the queue for the job. But a trumpet sounds upstage left. Enter Ambrose Bird, the Last of the Actor – Managers.’

‘Who?’

‘Where do you live? Ambrose Bird, who ran the old municipal theatre till it was closed last month, mainly as a result of Councillor Steel’s opposition to the large grant needed to refurbish it up to health and safety standards. This has left the Last of the Actor – Managers (that’s his own preferred title) with nothing to act in or manage but the Centre’s much smaller studio theatre. That was definitely a yawn!’

‘No, it was the beginning of an interjection. I was going to guess that this Bird guy has decided he’d like to put in for the Centre Director’s job too.’

‘Have you ever thought of becoming a detective?’ asked Rye. ‘Spot on. So Bird and Follows are locked in deadly combat. It’s quite fun to watch them, actually. They don’t try very hard to conceal the way they feel about each other. Anything in the Centre they can lay claim to, the pair of them are there, like dogs after a bone. The Roman Experience is drama, says Ambrose, so he takes responsibility for sound effects and training the people playing the market stallholders. Poor old Perce is left with language and smells.’

‘Smells?’

‘Oh yes. The authentic smells of Roman Britain. Cross between a rugby changing room and an abattoir, as far as I can make out. Look, I’m beginning to yawn myself. The upshot of this is that Percy has countered by grabbing the lion’s share of the preview arrangements and, with typical sexist insensitivity, has volunteered all his female staff to run around with the chardonnay and nibbles. End of story. You did pretty well, unless like a horse you can sleep with your eyes open.’

‘So why is a bright, lively, independent, modern woman like yourself putting up with this crap?’ said Hat with what he hoped was convincing indignation.

She said defensively, ‘It’s no big deal. I’d have gone anyway. Dick will have a couple of paintings in. He’s a bit of an artist.’

She saw him toy with a crack, but was glad to see he was bright enough to drop the idea.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘and as I too am on the public payroll, why not? Dress casual, is it?’

‘Dress artistically,’ she murmured. ‘Which brings me to a very important question. What does the well-dressed twitcher wear in Stangdale, Hat?’

He studied her seriously to hide his delight at having guessed rightly that he was being offered a trade-off, then said, ‘Well, starting from the inside out, have you got any thermal underwear?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jax Ripley’s colleagues had noticed that she was in vacant or pensive mood all that Friday afternoon. Normally as she put together the items for her early evening show, she was incisive and openly impatient with anyone who wasn’t moving at her speed. But today she didn’t seem to be able to make up her mind about things. Out and About was usually made up of several pre-recorded pieces linked by Jax, concluding with a live studio piece on some topic of particular local interest. All that she had pencilled in for this today was short story comp trail?

‘Who are the guests?’ asked John Wingate, the station manager. He was a middling aged plump man with a lean and hungry face, as if his chronic anxiety about everything had done a deal with his body and drawn a demarcation line around his neck. Below this, the soft folds of pink flesh glowed with health, and, warmed by sun or sex, gave off an odour which reminded Jax of her childhood bed beneath which her provident mother laid out rows of apples to see them through the North Yorkshire winter. Screwing Wingate had been a pleasure as well as a career move.

‘No guests … Just me.’

‘So, couple of minutes,’ he said doubtfully. ‘That leaves us well short, Jax.’

‘No, I need the time.’

‘Why? How the hell can you spin something as boring as a short story competition trail out beyond ninety seconds?’

‘Trust me,’ she said.

‘You up to something, Jax?’ he said suspiciously. ‘I hate it when you say “trust me”.’

She finally made up her mind, reached out a hand to rest on his thigh and smiled.

‘It’ll be all right, John,’ she said.

In a life of bad career moves, John Wingate wasn’t certain where he placed screwing Jax Ripley. She’d been a journalist on the Gazette when they first met and the chance of a one-night stand after a media party which Moira, his wife, hadn’t attended because she was over in Belfast visiting her sick mother had seemed too good to pass by. And it had been good. He grew warm now just recalling it and the other encounters that followed, one in particular which had taken place in his office a couple of weeks later when she presented herself for interview. ‘I’ve come about the position,’ she said, climbing on to his desk and spreading herself before him. ‘How about this one for starters?’

And under the doubtless approving gaze of the members of Unthank College Old Boys’ rugby fifteen whose photo, holding the Mid-Yorkshire Cup which they’d won some years ago under his captaincy, hung on the wall behind his chair, he accepted the invitation, after which she accepted the job.

She’d learned quick and her rapid advancement was easily justifiable in terms of sheer talent, or so he reassured himself whenever, as now, he gave way to her wishes. There’d never been any hint of menace from Jax and she’d always behaved with the utmost discretion, but this didn’t stop him from feeling that he had less control over his life, both professional and personal, than before her arrival. At least, thank God, he knew he didn’t have to worry she was after his job. She had set her sights over the hills and faraway, in the greener pastures of Wood Lane, and if golden opinions from himself could speed her on her way, all the better.

Maybe that was the explanation of her distraction today.

He said, ‘Big day next Monday, then. Getting nervous? No need. You’ll piss it.’

She said, ‘What? Oh, the interview. No, I’ll wait till I’m on the train before I get nervous.’

He believed her. She was, he reckoned, that controlled. She might let herself get nervous as she drew near to her interview for the job with the national news service because taut nerves made you sharper, pitched you higher. But she’d know exactly how far to go.

Yet, though Wingate didn’t know it, he’d hit pretty close to the mark.

Jax Ripley had a decision to make. Wingate’s assurances that with her record and his recommendation she’d walk into the job were very comforting and she had no false modesty about her abilities. Sex she might use as a shortcut but only to get where she felt she deserved to be. Yet though she rated her talents high, she was not so arrogant as to rate them unique. It hadn’t been difficult to come to the fore in the small show ring of Mid-Yorkshire, but the provinces are full of thrusting talents and it would take something extra to stand out among the ranks of competing clones nationwide, all desperate to march on the Big Time.

And now she felt she might have the something extra.

But there were risks.

It would be burning boats, that’s for sure. She was sworn to secrecy. Her revelations would this time be tracked unrelentingly to their source, and such a public act of betrayal would ensure that no one in Mid-Yorkshire would ever again open their mouths to her, not even with the promise that she would open her legs to them.

Plus, if it all went wrong and just came out as a bit of journalistic scaremongering, then she could even end up being dumped by BBC MY.

On the other hand, it was a good story. A couple of phone calls would alert some friends in London. National air coverage over the weekend plus the Sunday tabloids descending on Mid-Yorkshire to dig up – or make up – something really sensational could raise a news tsunami to sweep her into her interview on Monday. Once she got that job, it didn’t matter what happened back here in Sleepy Hollow. In the real world down there, no one minded if today’s scoop was tomorrow’s poop. It happened all the time. It wasn’t the apologies and retractions that stayed in people’s minds, it was the banner headlines.

So why was she pussy-footing around? In this life you were either a player or a stayer. And I’m a player! she told herself as she headed into her office to make the necessary wake-up calls. No point jumping off a skyscraper unless you had the audience you wanted.

It was, viewers opined later, by Jax Ripley’s usual standards a rather slow show. In her intro and her link passages she seemed somewhat muted, a little lacking in her usual sparkle. Usually she almost came out of the screen at you. But not tonight. Tonight she clearly had something on her mind.

The last of the filmed items was an interview with Charley Penn about the new Harry Hacker series starting on television the following week. It was a good interview, with Jax at her seductive and Penn at his saturnine best. It ended with her asking him about the doppelgänger effect which he often used in his books, with Hacker finding himself being warned or otherwise aided by glimpses of a mysterious shadowy figure which seemed to bear a close resemblance to himself.

‘Charley, tell me, do you really think it’s possible for a person to be in two places at the same time, or are you going to surprise us one day by revealing that Harry’s got a twin?’

Penn smiled at her, then looked straight into the camera.

‘I don’t know about being in two places at the same time, but I have no problem with a character being in two times at the same place.’

She’d laughed at that. She was one of those few people whose mouth wide open in close-up was an on-turning rather than an off-putting experience.

‘Too deep for me, Charley. But I love the new book. And though I say it as shouldn’t, reading it’s much better than watching the telly.’

End of film. Cut to Jax live in the studio, no longer relaxing, bare legs folded beneath her, on the white leatherette sofa she shared with her interview guests, but sitting on a hard upright chair, knees locked tight together, fingers closely clasped, face set and serious, looking like a young schoolteacher about to administer a stern rebuke.

‘Doppelgängers apart,’ she said, ‘it’s usually agreed that truth is stranger than fiction, but I did not realize just how much stranger it could be until a little earlier this week.

‘The fiction in the case is contained in most of the entries submitted to the Gazette’s short story competition. Entries close tonight, so those of you still scribbling had better get your skates on. I hope to announce the short list and perhaps interview some of the hopeful authors on the show next week.

‘But there is one person submitting material who probably won’t be rushing forward to be interviewed, the person the police are calling the Wordman …’

As she went on, around the county most listeners carried on with what they were doing, only gradually increasing their focus on what she was saying as its import struck home. But some there were who at the first mention of the short story competition had raised their heads, or reached forward to turn up the volume, or risen out of their seats, and a couple there were who as she went on began to swear violently, and there was one who sat back and laughed aloud and gave thanks.

After she’d finished and the brass band had played the show out, Jax sat still for a moment. Then John Wingate came bursting in.

‘Jesus, Jax! What the hell was that all about? Is it true? It can’t be true! Where’d it come from? What evidence have you got? You should have cleared this with me first, you know that. Shit! What’s going to happen now?’

‘Let’s wait and see,’ she said, smiling, back to her old self now that the die was cast.

They didn’t have long to wait.

Even Jax was taken aback by the sheer weight of the reaction.

It came in a confusion of telephone calls, faxes, e-mails and personal visits, but it was divisible into four clear categories.

First came her employers, at levels stretching up from Wingate himself to top management in London and their legal oracles. As soon as these had pronounced, with all the usual caveats and qualifications, that there did not on the face of it seem to be anything actionable in what she had said, she passed rapidly from potential liability to embryonic star. This was a hot news scoop in the old style, something rarely seen on national let alone provincial television. Hence the interest from category two, the rest of the media.

Once she’d made up her mind to go ahead, Jax had seeded word of her intention in several potentially fruitful areas. Long hardened against hype, no one had fallen over with excitement, but now the smell of blood was in the air and jackals everywhere were raising their snouts and sniffing. If this turned out to be a story that ran, then it was crazy not to be in at the beginning and by the end of the evening Jax had signed up for a national radio spot, a TV chat show and a Sunday tabloid article, while a broadsheet had opened negotiations for a profile. Mary Agnew of the Gazette had rung too. A pragmatist, she didn’t waste time reproaching her former employee for scooping the story out of her lap.

‘Well done, dearie,’ she said. ‘You got a head start, but you’re going to need my help now.’

‘Why’s that, Mary?’

‘Because now you’ve done the dirty, your police source is going to dry up like a mummy’s crotch,’ said Mary. ‘And because it’s the Gazette that this nut – if there is a nut which I’m not yet convinced – is sending his material to. So when the next one comes …’

‘What makes you think there’ll be a next one, seeing you’re such a sceptic?’ interrupted Jax.

‘You do, dearie. You’ve practically guaranteed it. Even if it was a joke before, you’ve made sure every nut in the county will want to get in on the act, and God knows how far some of them will be willing to go. I’ll keep in touch. Sleep well.’

Bitch, thought Jax. Sick as a parrot and trying to get her own back by getting inside my skull. Do I need her? Probably not. On the other hand, pointless telling her to piss off till I’m sure.

But category three, calls from the public, made her think that maybe Agnew had called it right after all. Some were concerned, some abusive, some plain dotty, a couple positively threatening, but none obviously useful. All were recorded and copies of the tapes made ready for the police. One tape definitely wasn’t for the police, however. This was the call she had from Councillor Cyril Steel eager for any further ammunition she could supply him to aid his anti-cop crusade. Like Agnew, he was insignificant nationally but locally a big-hitter in his crusade against inefficiency and corruption. He’d given her a lot of good leads and what was more his omnivorous gut was the only appetite she was expected to satisfy in return. Now he was delighted at what he saw as a win-win situation. Either the police had failed in their duty by not telling the council about a possible serial killer in the town, or the ruling party had failed in theirs by keeping it to themselves. Minus her police ally, Jax was delighted to have whatever high-level support she could hang on to in Mid-Yorkshire and she let the halitotic councillor rabbit on for ten minutes or so before cutting him off with a promise to keep him up to speed.

Now she settled back to await the final category of calls.

This was the constabulary. The one she expected from her furious Deep-throat didn’t come, but an hour after the programme ended, Mid-Yorkshire’s press officer, a user-friendly inspector with a pleasant homely manner which disguised a very sharp mind, rang to wonder if the best interests of both the BBC and the Force might not be served by a bit of mutual co-operation. For example, if he promised to keep her in the picture, maybe she could tell him where she’d got her information? She’d laughed out loud and he’d laughed with her then said, ‘Please yourself, luv. But don’t be surprised if you hear a loud barking just now. It’ll be them upstairs coming round with the Rottweilers.’

In the event the Deputy Chief Constable who turned up was dogless, but did his best with his own teeth. He asked her to reveal her sources. She refused on the grounds of journalistic privilege. He spelt out the obligations the law placed upon anyone with information relevant to a crime, whether already or still to be committed. He then wished her all the best in her future career, hoped for her sake it would be in an area far removed from Mid-Yorkshire, smiled caninely, and left.

You’d better get this London job, girl, she told herself. I think things could get pretty uncomfortable for you round here.

But the pluses were too many for the negativisms of Mary Agnew and the DCC to depress her spirits for long and when she finally decided to call it a night, she was bubbling inside like a bottle of champagne about to pop. John Wingate was still around, looking slightly less anxious now that it seemed likely her revelations on air were going to attract plaudits rather than brickbats. Sex seemed a good way to uncork her energies and she said, ‘Fancy coming back with me for a celebratory drink, John?’

He looked at her, looked at his watch, all the anxiety back on his face. He’s recalling what it was like, she thought. He’s thinking that with a bit of luck I’ll be out of his hair and his life in a very short while, so why not one for the road? If I reached out and touched him and said, ‘Let’s do it here,’ he’d be on me like a flash. But she didn’t want a quickie on a dusty office floor.

She said, ‘You’re right, John. Family first, eh?’ kissed him lightly on the cheek and walked away, aware that the sway of her end in retreat was probably making him ache with regret. But she didn’t want a man who’d be thinking of going even as he was coming. Tonight was an all or nothing night, and as she ran through a list of possibles in her head, it began to seem more and more like nothing. No one seemed to fit the bill perfectly … except maybe … but no, she couldn’t ring him!

She let herself into her flat and kicked off the murderously high heels she wore to work. Despite or perhaps because of coming at people like Penthesilia on the charge, she was desperately self-conscious about her height, particularly on camera. Her clothes followed. She let them lie where they fell and slid her arms into her fine silk robe and her feet into a pair of unbecoming but supremely comfortable soft leather mules. Too wound up to think of sleep, she went to her computer and rattled off an e-mail to the one person she could talk to with (almost!) complete freedom: her sister, Angie, in America. It wasn’t sex, but it was a form of relief after a day spent weighing her words as closely as she’d been doing for the past several hours.

As she finished, the phone rang.

She picked it up and said, ‘Hi.’

A voice started speaking immediately.

She listened then said incredulously, ‘And you’ve actually got this third Dialogue with you?’

‘Yes. But it will have to be handed in tomorrow. If you want to see it …’

‘Of course I want to see it. Could you come round to my place?’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK. Five minutes.’

The phone went dead.

She put down the receiver and punched the air, a gesture she’d always thought rather naff when she saw footballers and gameshow contestants using it. But now she knew what it was expressing.

‘Ripley,’ she said. ‘Someone up there really likes you.’

CHAPTER NINE
the third dialogue

Ave!

Why not?

In the beginning was the Word, but what language was the Word in?

Spirits always speak in English at seances. Except probably in France. And Germany. And anywhere else.

So what language do the dead really speak if, as I presume, all the dead are capable of conversing with each other? A kind of Infernal Esperanto?

No, I reckon the dead must understand everything or else they understand nothing.

So how are things going? Comment ça va? Wie geht’s?

With me? Well, things are picking up speed. Yes, it’s harder. Don’t think I’m not glad to be getting more responsibility, but I won’t disguise, it’s harder.

I knew she would be back late after the broadcast, but I didn’t mind waiting. What’s a couple of hours in a journey as long as mine? And part of the pleasure lies in the anticipation of that moment when time will stop completely and everything will happen in an infinitely savourable present.

She’d been a possibility ever since the bazouki player, of course, but there’d been others with equal claim. I had to listen to them all to make sure. Nation shall speak unto nation, but it was that individual speaking to this individual that I wanted to hear. Then she made her broadcast and though her words were measured, with one eye fixed firmly on the Law, I could hear her underlying message aimed at one person only. Write me another Dialogue, she was saying. Please, I beg you, write me another Dialogue.

How could I resist such a clear invitation? How would I dare resist it when in this, as with the others, I feel myself your chosen instrument?

But being chosen does not exempt me from responsibility. Help I would be given, I knew that, but, after last time, only in the same measure as I shewed myself able to help myself.

That is why I sat in the car and waited to make sure she came home by herself. A woman with her appetites might easily bring back a companion for her bed. I waited a little while longer after I’d rung. I could have been with her in thirty seconds but I didn’t want her thinking I was so close.

When I pressed her bell she answered immediately through the intercom.

‘Is that you?’

‘Yes.’

The front door opened. I went in and started climbing the stairs.

Already I could feel time slowing till it flowed no faster than oil paint squeezed on to an artist’s palette. I was the artist and I was ready to set my new mark on this canvas which, complete, will place me in that dimension outside of time where all great art exists.

The door to her flat is open. But the chain is still on. I applaud such carefulness. I see her face in the interstice. I raise my left hand which is clutching a brown foolscap envelope.

And the chain comes off, the door opens fully. She stands there, smiling welcomingly. I smile back and move towards her, putting my hand inside the envelope. I see her bright eyes glisten with anticipation. She is in that moment of expectancy truly beautiful.

But like Apollonius looking at Lamia, I see through that fair-seeming to what she really is, the corrupter, the distorter, the self-pleasurer – and the self-destroyer too, for there is at the heart of the worst of us a nugget of that innocence and beauty we all bring with us into this world, and though I purpose to cut the depraved part out, that nugget will, I hope, remain, sending her out of the world as beautiful and innocent as she came into it.

I seize the haft of the knife inside the envelope and slide the long thin blade into her body.

I’ve read about the blow – under the ribs then drive upwards – but naturally I’ve had no chance to practise on living flesh. It’s the kind of thing people notice. But for all the trouble it causes me, you might imagine I came from a long line of Mafiosi.

Oh, how good it is when the word so surely conveys the deed and theory blends so smoothly into practice. The current runs along the wire and the bulb begins to glow; the spaceship balances on its tail of flame then begins to climb into the sky. Just so the blade slices under the ribs and almost of its own volition angles up through the lung to the beating heart.

For a moment I hold her there, all the sphere of her life balanced on a point of steel. The fulcrum of the planets is here, the still centre of the Milky Way and all the unthinkable inter-vacancies of infinite space. Silence spreads from us like ripples on a mountain tarn, rolling over the night music of distant traffic noises borne on a gusting wind, deadening all of humanity s living, loving, sleeping, waking, dying, birthing gasps and groans, snores and sniggers, tattle and tears.

Nothing else is. Only we are.

Then she is gone.

I raise her in my arms and carry her into the bedroom and lay her down reverently, for this is a solemn and holy step in both our journeys.

The parents still watch anxiously, but now the child, with wandering step and slow, begins to move alone.

I pray you, do not let me stumble. Be the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?

Speak soon, I beg you, speak soon.

CHAPTER TEN

On Saturday morning Rye Pomona had to field so many questions about Ripley’s TV programme from her colleagues en route to the reference library that she arrived ten minutes late and found that she’d missed the beginning of a half-furious row in the office.

The furious half was Percy Follows whose angry tirade bounced off the placid surface of Dick Dee, leaving no trace but a faint puzzlement.

‘I’m sorry, Percy, but I got the distinct impression you didn’t want to be troubled with anything to do with the short story competition. In fact I recall your exact words – you always put things so memorably. You said that this was such an inconsiderable task, you could see little reason why it should disturb any of the essential routines of the department and none whatsoever why you yourself should be troubled with it beyond news of its successful completion.’

Rye took a positive pride in her boss’s performance. That attention to and memory for detail which made him such an efficient Head of Reference also gave him a forensic precision in an argument. Not wanting to interrupt such good entertainment, she didn’t go into the office but sat down at the enquiry desk. The department’s morning mail had been placed there plus the all too familiar plastic bag containing the latest and (her spirits rose) presumably the last batch of short stories from the Gazette.

Lying at the top of the bag, half in, half out, was a single sheet with only a few lines typed on it. Still listening to the row, she picked it up and read.

I see thee as a flower, so fair and pure and fine. I gaze on thee and sadness steals in this heart of mine.

‘But this wasn’t about the competition, was it?’ Follows was blustering. ‘These Dialogues, so far as I can make out, must have got mixed up with that by accident. Ripley said they were probably meant for the news desk of the Gazette.’

Trying to put distance between the library and any bad fall-out from the Dialogues, thought Rye as her eyes continued to scan the verses.

It is as though my fingers should linger in your hair, praying that God preserve thee so fine and pure and fair.

In the office Dee was enquiring courteously, ‘Are you saying I should have known this and returned them to the Gazette?’

‘That’s what Mary Agnew thinks,’ said Follows. ‘She was on to me as soon as that Ripley woman finished last night. I don’t think she believed me when I protested total ignorance.’

‘I’m sure on mature reflection she won’t have any difficulty with that concept,’ said Dee.

This was good stuff, uttered so politely that Follows could only do himself damage by acknowledging the insult, thought Rye. The poem was pretty good stuff too. It would be nice to think that Hat Bowler had broadened his chat-up technique to include this old-fashioned approach, but somehow she couldn’t see him as a lovelorn poet. In any case, she didn’t need to be Miss Marple to detect the true source of the stanzas. Slowly she raised her eyes and found herself, without surprise, looking across the library at Charley Penn, twisted round in his usual chair, regarding her with undisguised pleasure.

She let the sheet slip to the floor, wiped her hand as if to remove some sticky substance, then ostentatiously applied herself to the task of opening the mail. There wasn’t much and what there was didn’t require her special attention, so finally with reluctance she turned her attention to the story bag. This might be the last consignment, but its bulk suggested there’d been a last-minute rush.

The row was still going on though clearly not going anywhere.

Dee was saying, ‘If I’d any idea this was going to blow up the way it has, of course I would have filled you in, Percy. But the police urged absolute discretion upon us, no exceptions.’

‘No exceptions? Don’t you think you ought to have consulted me before involving the police in the first place?’

At last Follows had laid a glove on Dee, thought Rye. But the Library Chief didn’t have enough sense to jab at this weak point but kept flailing away in search of a knockout blow.

‘And how the hell did Ripley get to know about this anyway? She took you to lunch yesterday. What did you talk about, Dick?’

Not a bad question, thought Rye, easing the stories out on to the counter.

‘The short story competition, of course. It was clear she was on a fishing expedition, asking about strange and unusual entries. Without direct reference to the Dialogues, she gave me the impression she somehow knew a great deal about them, but I certainly didn’t add to her knowledge.’

True or false?

She certainly couldn’t imagine Dick Dee being indiscreet unless he wanted to be. On the other hand, he would probably be scrupulous in a deal, even if the terms were unspoken. And just because he’d never used the opportunities offered by their working proximity to make even the most casual of physical contacts, let alone cop a feel, why should she be surprised, and even a little jealous, to find that Jax Ripley with her blue eyes, blonde hair and wide mouth had proved the type to ring his bell? As for the journalist herself, she thought with less generosity, her burning passion for a good story would probably have made her very willing to waggle Dee’s clapper.

She almost laughed aloud at the way her metaphor had developed, and close by heard an answering chuckle. Penn had left his seat and come to the desk.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘I’m so glad I got here early. Ah, there it is. I should hate it to get mixed up with these … effusions.’

He stooped and picked up the poem from the floor.

‘I stopped at the desk with a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk over with Dick, but the fun was just starting and I didn’t want to interrupt. This must have slipped out. A version of ‘Du bist wie eine Blume’. I quite like it. What did you think?’

‘Me? Didn’t really take it in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy. Unless you’d like to help me sort out your fellow writers?’

He grinned at the attempted gibe and moved away, saying, ‘I fear not. How could my little light bear the glare of all that talent?’

But she wasn’t paying attention. As was her usual practice, she’d been dividing the stories into handwritten and typewritten, following which she would dump all those in the former group which didn’t reach her increasingly exacting standards of legibility. But it was a typewritten sheet she had in her hands and was studying with growing agitation.

‘Oh shit,’ she said.

‘In any case,’ Dick Dee was saying, ‘I dare say that despite Miss Ripley’s efforts to stir it up, this will after all turn out to be nothing more than a storm in a tea-cup, leaving her (to re-direct the image) with egg on her face, and your good self without so much as a breadcrumb on the snow-white lace doyley of your reputation.’

It was, Rye had come to know, a habit of Dee’s to coat his more acerbic ironies with garishly colourful layers of language, but the assurance seemed enough to mollify Percy Follows, a process signified physically as he came out of the office by an attempted smoothing down of his mane of golden hair which at times of stress exploded electrically like the tail feathers of a randy bird of paradise.

I shouldn’t bother, Perce, thought Rye.

Dee followed, smiled at Rye and said, ‘Good morning.’

‘Morning. Sorry I was late,’ she said, watching Follows and hoping he would leave the Reference.

‘Were you? I’m not in a position to notice. I seem to have mislaid my watch again. You haven’t seen it?’

Dee’s watch was a running joke. He didn’t like working at a keyboard with it on, claiming it unbalanced his prose, but once removed it seemed to have what Penn called Fernweh, a longing to be somewhere distant.

‘Try the middle shelf. It seems very fond of there.’

He ducked down behind the reception desk, came up smiling.

‘How clever of you. I’m back in time’s ever rolling stream which means I suppose we should get down to some work. Percy, are we finished?’

Follows said, ‘I hope so, Dick. I hope we’ve heard the last of this silly business, but if there are any further developments, I want to be the first to know. I hope you and your staff understand that.’

He looked accusingly at Rye who smiled at him, thought, OK, Perce, if that’s what you want, let me make your day, and said to Dee, ‘Dick, I’m afraid we’ve got another one.’

She held up the sheets of paper carefully by one corner.

She could see Dee understood her instantly but Follows was a little slower to catch on.

‘Another …? Oh God, you don’t mean another of these Dialogue things? Let me see.’

He attempted to snatch it from her fingers but she moved away.

‘I don’t think it would be too clever for anyone else to handle it,’ she said. ‘I think we ought to get it round to the police straightaway.’

‘That’s what you think, is it?’ said Follows, his hair sun-bursting once again.

She thought for a moment he was going to try ordering her to hand the Dialogue over. The library staff, he liked to claim, were one big happy family, but, as Dick Dee had once remarked, democracy was not a form of organization much practised in family life.

But on this occasion Follows had enough sense not to push things to confrontation.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘And perhaps we should make a copy for Miss sodding Ripley while we’re at it. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t have one already.’

‘No,’ said Rye. ‘I don’t think so. Though she may be privy to the gist.’

She shook the sheets of paper gently.

‘I hope it’s all a sick fantasy, but if I read this aright, I think the Wordman is telling us that he’s just murdered Jax Ripley.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hat Bowler stared down at Jax Ripley’s body and felt a pang of grief which for a second almost took the strength out of his legs.

He had seen bodies before during his short service and had learned some of the tricks of dealing with the sight – the controlled breathing, the mental distancing, the deliberate defocusing. But this was the first time he’d seen the corpse of someone he knew. Someone he liked. Someone as young as he was.

It’s yourself you’re grieving for, he told himself savagely, hoping to regain control via cynicism. But it didn’t work and he turned away unsteadily, though careful not to grasp at anything in an effort to control his unsteadiness.

George Headingley was moved too, he could see that. In fact the portly DI had turned away and left the bedroom before Bowler and was now sitting in an armchair in the living room of the flat, looking distinctly unwell. He hadn’t looked too good when he arrived at work that morning. Indeed he’d been five minutes late, inconsequential in the routine of most CID officers over the rank of constable, but a seismic disturbance of the Headingley behaviour pattern.

When Bowler had burst into his office with the news that Rye had just given him over the telephone, he seemed to have difficulty taking it in. Finally, after Bowler had tried to contact the TV presenter at the studios, then by phone at home, Headingley had allowed himself to be persuaded that they ought to go round to Ripley’s flat.

Now, sitting in the armchair, staring into space, instead of a healthy fifty-year-old sailing serenely into a chosen retirement, he looked more like a superannuated senior citizen who’d hung on till decrepitude forced him out.

‘Sir, I’ll get things under way, shall I?’ said Bowler.

He took silence for an answer and rang back to the station to get a scene-of-crime team organized, adding, sotto voce, ‘And make sure the DCI knows, will you? I don’t think Mr Headingley’s up to it this morning.’

He’d managed to persuade the DI that an armchair in a murder victim’s flat was not the cleverest place to let a senior officer find you in and got him outside into the damp morning air before Peter Pascoe appeared.

‘George, you OK?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. Well, no, not really. Touch of flu coming on. Could hardly get out of bed this morning,’ said Headingley in a shaky voice.

‘Then if I were you I’d go and get back into it,’ said Pascoe crisply.

‘No, I’ll be OK. Got to get back inside and take a look round while the trail’s still hot …’

‘George, you know no one’s going inside there till everything’s been done that needs to be done. Go home. That’s an order.’

And to take the sting out of pulling rank on an old colleague who’d been a DI ever since Pascoe first arrived in the Mid-Yorkshire force as a DC, Pascoe said in a low voice as he ushered Headingley to his car, ‘George, with days to do, you don’t want this, do you? I mean, who knows, it could roll on forever. Grab the money and run for the sun, eh? And don’t worry, I’ll see you get credit for what you’ve done so far. Love to Beryl.’

He watched the DI’s car drive slowly away then with a shake of the head he turned back to the apartment building.

‘Right,’ he said to Bowler. ‘Better bring me up to speed on this.’

‘Yes, sir. Hope you didn’t mind me asking for you to be brought in. The DI really didn’t look well …’

‘No, you were quite right,’ said Pascoe. ‘You don’t look too clever yourself. Hope that there isn’t something going around.’

‘No, sir, I’m fine. Just a bit of a shock seeing Jax … Miss Ripley … I knew her a bit, you see …’

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe regarding him thoughtfully. ‘See her show last night, did you?’

‘Yes. Bit of a turn up, I thought. You saw it, did you, sir?’

‘No, as a matter of fact.’

But he’d heard about it when Dalziel had rung him up, uttering dreadful threats about what he was going to do to Ripley and Bowler, together and separately, when he got his hands on them.

Pascoe had calmed him down, pointing out that it wasn’t good policy to publicly assault a TV personality, and as for Bowler, if it could be proved he’d passed on the information, he’d be dealt with by a Board of Enquiry which at the very least would get him out of the Fat Man’s thinning hair.

The thought occurred to the DCI that maybe Dalziel had ignored his advice and that the DC’s pallor and maybe even the woman’s death were down to his direct intervention.

But when the scene-of-crime team had finished their preliminary examinations and he finally got to look at the body, he crossed the Fat Man off his list of suspects. The stiletto wasn’t his weapon. He’d have torn her head off.

Such frivolous thoughts were his usual technique for distracting himself from the close encounters with the dead kind which were his most unfavourite occupational hazard. A greater distraction was imminent. He heard it first like a distant mighty rushing wind entering the building and he checked his head for cloven tongues of fire in the long mirror above the bed. But of course it was only the most unholy spirit of Andrew Dalziel that burst into the room.

‘Fuck me,’ he said, coming to a halt at the foot of the bed. ‘Fuck me rigid. Last night I wished her dead, I really did. You should never wish things, lad, less’n you’re sure you can thole it if they come true. How long?’

‘Eight to ten hours estimate from body temp and the degree of cyanosis, but we’ll need to wait …’

‘… for the PM. Aye, I know. Always the sodding same, these medics. More scared of commitment than a randy Iti. That’s a handy mirror.’

Long used to such sudden changes of direction, Pascoe studied the reflection in the long wall glass above the bed-head. Ripley looked very peaceful. The silk robe she was wearing had been parted to permit the medical examiner to check the fatal wound but Pascoe had drawn the garment together again to cover her torso.

‘For sex, you mean?’ he said.

‘Nay, wash tha mind out with carbolic! You’ve been reading them mucky books again. Has she been moved?’

‘Only as much as was necessary for the ME to do his job. I said you’d want to see her in situ.’

‘Oh aye? That one of them Japanese beds? This one’s old-fashioned Yorkshire by the look of it. Nice strong bed-end to give a man something to push against. No, lad, take a look at her in the mirror. What do you see?’

Pascoe looked.

‘Roots?’ he hazarded. ‘She dyed her hair blonde?’

‘Yes,’ said the Fat Man impatiently. ‘But we’d have spotted that on the slab, wouldn’t we? No, I mean the other end.’

Pascoe looked at the woman’s feet up against the bed-end which Dalziel so favoured. She was wearing a pair of comfortable-looking leather mules. From the bottom of the bed they were invisible. From the side, they were unremarkable. But viewed in the mirror, there was something … hard to tell, they were so shapeless, but …

‘They’re on the wrong feet?’ he said tentatively.

‘Right. And how’d they get on the wrong feet?’

‘Presumably they dropped off as the Wordman carried her through …’

‘The Wordman? Aye, where did that bloody name come from anyway?’

‘Seems it was DC Bowler’s nickname for the lunatic who’s writing these Dialogues.’

‘Boghead’s name, you say? And Ripley were bandying it about on her programme?’ Dalziel scowled. ‘I want a word with that young man. Where’s he at?’

‘I sent him to the library to pick up this new Dialogue, the one that put us on to … this.’

‘You sent him? Nay, come to think of it, doesn’t matter, does it? Who’s he going to leak it to with the Ripper dead? This Wordman bang her, front or back, before or after the event, did he?’

Dalziel’s apparent callosity in face of murder was, Pascoe hoped, his preferred way of dealing with distress. Or maybe he was just callous.

‘We’ll need to wait for the PM results, but the preliminary exam didn’t turn up signs of sexual interference in any quarter. Sir, these shoes …’

‘Mules, lad. Wordman must have put ’em back on. Ergo, he touched them. And they’ve not been dusted for prints, have they?’

He was right. Every other likely surface in the flat bore a light scattering of powder.

‘I’ll see they get done,’ said Pascoe. ‘Here’s Bowler now.’

The young DC came hurrying into the flat but stopped short when he saw Dalziel.

‘You look like you’ve just remembered somewhere else you ought to be, lad,’ said the Fat Man. ‘That this Dialogue thing drooping in your hand or are you just sorry to see me?’

‘Yes, sir. The Dialogue, sir,’ stuttered Bowler.

He handed it over in its transparent plastic folder.

Dalziel scanned through it then passed it to Pascoe.

‘Right, young Bowels,’ he said. ‘Let’s you and I have a look around, to see if she kept a notebook or a diary.’

He observed the DC closely for signs of a guilty start as he said this but got nothing, or maybe the youngster’s expression was already too unhappy for anything else to show.

When the Fat Man found a small appointments book, he tossed it to Pascoe as if afraid that Hat would snatch it from his hand and try to eat it, then said, ‘Right, lad. Why don’t you pop downstairs and tell those grave robbers out there that the late Ms Ripley is ready for removal to the mortuary?’

When he’d gone. Dalziel turned to Pascoe, who’d been riffling through the pages of the book, and said, ‘Anything?’

‘Relevant to the murder? Not that I can see, sir.’

‘Relevant to who’s been leaking this stuff,’ snarled the Fat Man.

‘Looking back, there’s a significant number of appointments with someone or something designated as GP,’ said Pascoe.

‘GP? What’s that? Her sodding doctor?’

‘Whatever it is, I can’t see how you could turn it into DC Bowler. Initial E. Nickname Hat.’

‘Code, mebbe,’ said Dalziel, disgruntled.

He turned away and Pascoe rolled his eyes upward.

‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, lad,’ said Dalziel without even looking.

‘I’m just thinking, shouldn’t we concentrate a little harder on solving this case, sir, rather than finding out who the mole is?’

‘Nay, that’s down to you, Pete. This is one of them clever-cuts cases. Old-fashioned bugger like me’s right out of his depth. I’ll fade into the background and let you call the shots on this one.’

Oh yes? thought Pascoe sceptically. Previous experience had taught him that having the Fat Man in the background tended to block out the light.

He continued his examination of the appointments book and said, ‘That solves one mystery.’

‘What one’s that?’

‘Why she went public last night. She must have known that she was going to have us down on her like a ton of bricks and probably scare off her police contact forever. But it was a risk worth taking. She’s got … she would have had an interview with BBC News in London on Monday. And a big story like this a couple of days before wouldn’t have done her chances any harm, I reckon. That’s probably why she tried to sensationalize it.’

‘Well, she’s certainly succeeded now,’ said Dalziel as the mortuary men came in accompanied by Bowler and started preparing the corpse for removal.

The three policemen watched in silence, not broken till the men bore their sad burden out of the apartment.

‘Lesson to us all there,’ said Dalziel.

‘What’s that, sir?’ said Pascoe.

‘Ambition,’ said the Fat Man. ‘It can be a killer. Right, I’m off. Keep me posted.’

Hat watched him go with unconcealed relief.

Pascoe said, ‘Hat, I looked at the report you did for Mr Headingley. It was good. Really gave the indicators there was something nasty going off. Tragic it had to be confirmed like this, but no one’s going to be able to say we weren’t on the ball. Well done.’

‘Yes, sir, thank you,’ said Hat, recognizing the DCI’s kindness in so reassuring him and feeling all the worse for it. ‘Sir, there’s something else, just occurred to me now really … that guy Roote you’ve had me watching …’

He had Pascoe’s full attention.

‘I think he was … I mean, he certainly was eating at the Taverna the night David Pitman was killed …’

And now Peter Pascoe was looking at him with no kindness whatsoever in his eyes.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The good thing about Pascoe was that he didn’t nurse grudges, or at least didn’t seem to, which might of course be the bad thing about Pascoe.

Hat had volunteered to go and interview Roote about his visit to the Taverna but the DCI had said no, and then, as was usual with him though unusual in most senior officers, gone on to explain his reasoning.

‘Roote doesn’t know your face – unless you’ve alerted him?’

‘No way, sir,’ said Hat confidently.

‘Let’s keep it that way then. I’ll send Sergeant Wield to do the interview. He is, of us all, the most … how shall I put it? … unreadable. If anyone can convince Roote he’s just a possible witness like everyone else who dined at the Taverna, then it’s Wield. Of course, that’s all that Roote probably really is. A possible witness.’

Oh yes, thought Hat. But you’re hoping like mad he’s a lot more than that!

‘Meanwhile,’ said Pascoe, ‘you get yourself round to the Gazette. Ripley was killed late last night. Unless the Dialogue was written in advance, and it certainly doesn’t read like that, it must have got into the bag some time in the ten hours before nine this morning when it was found. I want to know how. I’ll double check the library end. Meet me there when you’re done. And, Hat, play it cool, eh? All hell’s going to break loose when the press get on to this story. Let’s stretch out the calm before as long as we can!’

Hat’s visit to the Gazette office didn’t last long. Pascoe’s hopes for a breathing space proved vain. News of the latest Dialogue had already reached here, and Mary Agnew was more interested in trying to get information than in giving it. Eager to be out of her reach, Hat stonewalled stubbornly till he got what he’d come for. It wasn’t very helpful. Friday night was always hectic with preparation for the Saturday edition, and Jax Ripley’s broadcast had made it even more so, giving Mary Agnew a last-minute lead story she couldn’t ignore. This meant that no one had noticed a secondary effect of Ripley’s revelations which was that for some reason they seemed to have reinforced her reminder of the closing date for entries to the story competition. Early next morning the post-boy who, having better things to do than watch television on a Friday night, remained blissfully ignorant of all the excitements, discovered the dozen or more late entries, shoved them into the sack with all the others which had turned up during the day on Friday and, glad to see the end of what he found a very tedious task, delivered them post haste to the Centre. Mary Agnew, who’d naturally checked everything in the sack after watching Ripley’s show, was furious when she now realized for the first time that more had been added later and Hat sneaked away under cover of the fire and fury she was raining on the post-boy’s bewildered head.

As he reached the Centre, which was only a couple of minutes’ walk away, he saw the DCI’s lean and rangy figure pushing through the glass doors and hurried to catch up with him.

‘You’ve been quick,’ said Pascoe accusingly.

Hat, who’d been expecting compliments for his speed, gave what he thought was a very professional almost Wield-like summation of his findings, but found insult added to injury when Pascoe seemed inclined to believe he must have let the cat out of the bag about the Dialogue. He defended himself vigorously but it turned out unnecessarily, for when they entered the Reference, evidence that Agnew already knew everything was there in the shape of the spare, stooping nicotine-impregnated figure of Sammy Ruddlesdin, the Gazette’s senior reporter.

He was in the middle of what seemed a heated exchange with Percy Follows and a short stocky man wearing a check suit bright enough to embarrass a bookie and a ponytail like a donkey’s pizzle. Standing to one side like adjudicators at a livestock show were Dick Dee and Rye.

Dee, noting their arrival first, said, ‘Visitors, Percy,’ in a quiet voice which somehow had sufficient force to cut through the debate. The three men looked towards the newcomers. Follows’ mouth stretched into a smile almost too broad for his small face and with an equine toss of his luxuriant mane he made a bee-line for Pascoe, thwarting the attempts of ponytail to interpose his own body, but unable to prevent the man from interposing his own voice which was astonishingly deep and resonant, as if issuing from the depths of a cavern.

‘DCI Pascoe, isn’t it? I have the pleasure of your wife’s acquaintance, sir. Ambrose Bird. This is a dreadful business. Dreadful.’

So this was Ambrose Bird, the Last of the Actor – Managers. Hat recalled what Rye had said about the rivalry between Bird and Follows for the proposed overall directorship of the Centre. This, it became clear, was the reason for his presence. As news of the murder and the Dialogue had run round the building (no prizes for guessing its source, thought Hat, looking at the still vainly chirruping librarian), Bird had decided that his self-assumed status as Director Apparent if not yet Elect would be enhanced by appearing as the Centre spokesperson to the media. He was probably the one who’d picked up the phone and tipped off the Gazette.

Pascoe, with a diplomatic ease that Hat could only admire and hope to learn, quickly relegated the trio to the public area of the reference library while Hat ushered Rye Pomona and Dick Dee into the office.

Pascoe closed the door, checked on the trio of men through the glass panel, then murmured to Hat, ‘Keep your eye on that lot. Any of them come close, especially Sammy, get out there and break their legs.’

The office had a lived-in feel about it. Coffee machine, tin of biscuits, one old armchair that didn’t look like municipal issue, a square of Oriental carpet the same, and the walls crowded with pictures, some prints, some photos, all of men. Maybe Dee was gay, thought Hat hopefully. But he didn’t feel gay, though this was a dangerous touchstone to be applied by anyone who worked with Edgar Wield. Looking for evidence that the librarian was a family man, he spotted on the desk a silver-framed photo of three schoolboys. The one on the right looked like it might be Dee junior. Or perhaps, indeed, Dee senior when junior. Also on the desk was a box containing small plastic tiles with letters and numbers on, plus three wooden tile racks, standing on a large folded board. Presumably this was Paro-whatsit, the crazy word game Rye had told him about.

He caught her eye and risked a smile.

She didn’t smile back.

Pascoe took her and Dee through the events of the morning with clinical precision while Hat took notes, glancing through the panel from time to time to make sure the journalist was keeping a safe distance.

When she said that the first thing she picked out of the open sack had been Charley Penn’s translation of one of Heine’s poems, Hat felt yet another pang of this silly jealousy.

‘So Mr Penn was in the library already when you arrived?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And saw everything?’

‘Mr Penn doesn’t miss much,’ said Rye carefully.

‘I didn’t notice him when we arrived just now,’ said Pascoe.

‘No,’ intervened Dee. ‘Charley said that there would probably be so much fuss in the library that he’d be better off working at home.’

From the faint smile that accompanied this, Hat guessed it was a paraphrase of what Penn had actually said.

‘And home is where?’

Dee stumbled over the address and Rye came in and recited it correctly. Did this mean she’d actually been there? wondered Hat, jealousy once more bubbling up, without, he hoped, showing on his face. She’d already picked up he was jealous of her fondness for Dee. Let her get the impression he was some kind of possessive nut and that could really fuck up his prospects.

Finally Pascoe was satisfied.

Leaving the two librarians in the office, he moved out with Hat. Near the library door, Bird and Follows were continuing their running row while Ruddlesdin, chewing on an unlit cigarette, spectated with world-weary indifference. The dispute stopped when Pascoe called, ‘Gentlemen!’ and all three moved to join him.

He stepped aside to usher them into the office.

‘I’m finished here,’ he said. ‘Thank you for waiting so patiently.’

Then, to Hat’s delight and admiration, he gently closed the door behind them and moved towards the exit at a pace which stopped just short of running.

Ruddlesdin caught up with them just before the door of the car-park lift closed.

‘Quote, Pete,’ he gasped. ‘Give us a quote.’

‘Smoking can seriously damage your health,’ said Pascoe.

‘Where are we going, sir?’ asked Hat as they got into the car.

‘To talk to Charley Penn, of course,’ said Pascoe.

Penn’s flat was on the top floor of a converted Edwardian townhouse which was corralled in scaffolding and resonant with the shouts, crashes, clangs and radio music which proclaim to the world that the British workman is earning his pay.

They found Penn on his way out. With a resentful glower, he turned round and led them back into his apartment, saying, ‘Would you bloody believe it, I fled the library, thinking it was soon going to be echoing to the heavy plod of constabulary feet, making it impossible to work, and came back to this hell?’

‘But you must have known that work was going on,’ said Pascoe.

‘They hadn’t started when I left and I thought, Saturday morning, maybe the buggers refuse to get out of their pits unless they get quadruple time.’

‘So what are they doing?’

‘My landlord’s tarting the building up, reckons he can get five times what he paid for it a couple of years back if he sells it as a single dwelling.’ The writer showed his uneven teeth in a canine grin. ‘But he’s got to get shut of me first, hasn’t he?’

While these pleasantries were being exchanged, Hat took a look around.

The flat, so far as he could work out without being too obvious, consisted of a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and the room they were in. High-ceilinged and with a deep bay window which gave a good view (even framed in scaffolding) over the interesting roofscape of the older part of town, it had a sense of spaciousness which not even the detritus of a determined bookman could disguise. There was a huge desk in the bay, its surface completely hidden by papers and books which overflowed on to the floor a couple of metres in all directions. At the other side of the room stood a green-baized antique card table with a rotatable top on which very neatly laid out was a large board in the shape of a five-pointed star, marked in squares, some coloured, some bearing strange symbols, flanked by a dish full of letter tiles and three wooden tile racks.

They really must enjoy this game, him and Dee, thought Hat. A board each! Maybe there were more. Presumably there’d be one in Dee’s home too, and God knows where else.

Then his attention was diverted to the wall directly behind the table on which hung a framed photograph. It showed three boys standing close together, arms round each other. It was the same picture he’d seen on Dick Dee’s desk, except that this print was much larger. The enlarging had exaggerated the fuzziness caused by the poor focus to produce a strange otherworldly effect, so that the boys appeared like figures seen in a dream. They were standing on grass and in the background were trees and a tall castellated building, like a castle in a misty forest. The two outer boys were almost of a height, one perhaps two or three inches taller than the other, but they were both a good six inches taller than the boy in the centre. He had a mop of curly blond hair and a round cherubic face which was smiling with undisguised delight at the camera. The shorter of the other two, the one who looked like Dee, was smiling also, but a more inward-looking, secretively amused kind of smile, while the third wore an unambiguous scowl which Hat saw again as a voice snarled, ‘Having a good poke around, are you?’ and he turned to look at Charley Penn.

‘Sorry, it was just the game,’ he said, indicating the board. ‘Rye – Miss Pomona, mentioned it … some funny name … para something …’

‘Paronomania,’ said Penn, regarding him closely. ‘So Ms Pomona mentioned it, did she? Yes, I recall her taking an interest when she saw me and Dick playing one day. But I told her that like all the best games, only two could play.’

He smiled salaciously, his gaze fixed on Hat, who felt his face flush.

‘Some kind of Scrabble, is it?’ said Pascoe.

‘Oh yes. Like chess is some kind of draughts,’ sneered Penn.

‘Fascinating. My young daughter loves board games,’ murmured Pascoe. ‘But we mustn’t detain you any longer than necessary, Mr Penn. Just a couple of questions …’

But before he could begin there was a loud knock at the outer door.

Penn left them and a moment later they heard the outbreak of a loud and increasingly acrimonious discussion between the writer and the foreman of the renovators, who required access to the windows of Penn’s flat and seemed to think some written instruction from his employer gave him a legal right to this.

Pascoe moved across to a tall bureau and examined the books on the shelves. All of Penn’s Harry Hacker series were there.

‘Read any of these, Hat?’ enquired Pascoe.

‘No, sir. Better things to do.’

Pascoe regarded him curiously then said, ‘Maybe you should. You can learn a lot about a writer from his books.’

He reached up and took from a shelf not a book but one of two leather-cased files marked SKULKER. Opening it, he found bound inside copies of a magazine with that name. It was clearly an amateur production, though well organized and laid out. He opened a page at random.

A Riddle

My first is in Dog House, though not in demand: My second’s incrassate until it’s in hand: My whole is in Simpson when it isn’t in Bland.

(Answer on p. 13)

Hat was looking over his shoulder.

‘A riddle,’ he said excitedly. ‘Like in the Second Dialogue.’

‘Don’t get excited,’ said Pascoe. ‘This is a different kind of riddle, though it is not the kind of riddle it at first appears to be. It sounds as if it should be one of those simple spelling conundrums. But in fact it isn’t.’

‘So what is it?’

‘Let’s look at the answer and see, shall we?’

He turned to page thirteen.

Answer: Lonesome’s loblance.

‘What the hell does that mean?’ said Hat.

‘I would guess it’s a schoolboy joke,’ said Pascoe.

But before he could speculate further, Penn came back in.

‘Make yourselves at home, do,’ he snarled. ‘I keep my private correspondence in the filing cabinet.’

‘Naturally, which is why I did not anticipate finding anything private on your bookshelves,’ said Pascoe urbanely. ‘But I apologize.’

He replaced the volume and said, ‘Now, those few questions …’

Penn quickly recovered his equilibrium and readily confirmed Rye’s account of the sequence of events. He explained in unnecessary detail that on his arrival in the reference library, he’d approached the desk in search of Mr Dee but, seeing he was busy in his office, he’d returned to his seat, inadvertently leaving some of his work on the counter where Ms Pomona had found it. He even produced the translated poem for them to read.

‘I got the impression,’ he added, eyes fixed sardonically on Hat, ‘that she might have mistook it for a billy-doo. Kind of billy-doo lots of lasses would like to get, I reckon. Not enough old-style romance around these days, is there?’

Hat’s hardly suppressed indignation came out as a plosive grunt and he might have got down to some really hostile interrogation if Pascoe hadn’t said, ‘That’s been very helpful, Mr Penn. I don’t imagine we’ll need a written statement. We can see ourselves out.’

In the street he said, ‘Hat, it’s not a good idea to let your personal animosity towards a witness shine through quite so clearly,’ adding, to soften the reproof, ‘I speak from experience.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry. But he really rubs me up the wrong way. I know it’s not evidence, but I can’t help feeling there’s something weird about that guy. Maybe it’s part of his job description, being a writer.’

‘I see. Writers have to be weird, do they?’ said Pascoe, faintly amused.

Suddenly Hat remembered Ellie Pascoe.

‘Oh, shit. Sorry, I didn’t mean …’

‘Of course you didn’t. It’s only elderly male writers who leave romantic poems lying around for impressionable young women to find who are weird, I understand that.’

Laughing, he got into their car.

Well, so long as I’m keeping the brass amused, I must be doing something right, thought Hat.

The first few days of a murder enquiry, particularly one which promised to be as complex as the hunt for the Wordman, are always incredibly busy. At this stage it’s impossible to say what will prove productive busy-ness and what will turn out to be a complete waste of energy, so everything is done with a time-consuming attention to detail. The one positive thing that had come up was a partial thumbprint, not Ripley’s, on her left mule. Dalziel to his credit didn’t even look smug, but maybe this was because the experts said that even if they found a possible match, it was likely to be well short of the sixteen points of comparison necessary for a print to be admissible in evidence. Computerization permitted much quicker checks than in the old days, but so far nothing had come up.

The post mortem had confirmed cause of death as a single stab wound from a long thin knife. The ME’s on-site opinion that he could see no external evidence of sexual assault was also confirmed. She may have had protected intercourse some time on the day of her death, but if it had been against her will, she’d been too frightened to resist.

So the initial I’m report had not been very helpful, but later the pathologist had rung up to say that a second examination had produced evidence of a bite mark on her left buttock, difficult to spot because it was right in the area of maximum hypostasis or post mortem lividity. The implication was that it might have been missed had it not been for the pathologist’s devotion to duty. ‘More likely it was the mortuary assistant or the cleaning lady,’ said Dalziel cynically. Photographs were taken and shown to Professor Henry Muller, Mid-Yorkshire’s forensic dental expert, known to his students and the police alike as Mr Molar. The professor’s diagnosis was as vague as the fingerprint expert’s. Yes, he’d be able to say definitely which teeth had definitely not made these marks, but doubted if he would be able to go beyond a strong possibility if presented with teeth that seemed to fit.

‘Experts,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’ve shat ’em. It’s blood, sweat and good honest grind that’ll catch this bugger.’

From the start Hat Bowler was one of the grinders. On the first Saturday he found he hardly had a minute to spare to ring Rye and confirm what he’d known from the moment he saw Jax’s body, that his free Sunday was free no longer, and their trip to Stangdale had to be cancelled.

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