Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

It wasn’t often his underlings had the pleasure of seeing their Great Master nonplussed but for a moment after the door closed behind Pottle, Urquhart and Wield, this was an experience Pascoe and Bowler enjoyed.

Then he turned his gaze on them and they both smoothed away all signs of anything but alert intelligence from their faces.

“So, Peter, you happy now?” demanded Dalziel.

“I think it was a very useful meeting, sir, and with luck we’ll get a great deal more help from the pair of them.”

“You reckon? And mebbe I’ll join the Women’s Institute. Jesus, you’d think on the Sabbath, we could get just a little bit of real help in taking things forward. Owt ’ud do. Just a name with enough justification for me to go and kick shit out of it.”

“There’s always Roote.”

“Still whistling that tune, Pete? Thought your dog here had sniffed him out and found nowt.”

First Wield, now the Fat Man. Not forgetting, of course, Roote himself. Did the whole world know about his so-called secret surveillance? wondered Hat.

“And there weren’t owt in his statement nor anyone else’s to put him in the frame for the councillor, were there?”

“He’s a clever fellow,” said Pascoe.

“Ah, I see. That means the cleaner he looks, the guiltier he obviously is, does it? Tell you what, minute you see him walking on water with an angelic choir singing ‘Jerusalem,’ you pull your wellies on and put him under arrest. Bowler, how about you? Are you good for owt more than kissing strange men in public lavatories?”

It wasn’t a very inviting invitation, but Hat guessed it was the only one he was likely to get.

He said, “I checked out one or two people, and something came up, probably nothing …”

“You’d best not be wasting my time with it if it’s probably nothing, lad,” growled Dalziel.

“No, sir. It’s this writer fellow, Charley Penn. He was at the preview, and it’s reported that he had a bit of a set-to with Councillor Steel, so that’s why I ran him through the computer. And it turns out he has a record.”

“For writing crap?” said Dalziel.

“No, sir. For assault. Five years ago he got bound over in Leeds for assaulting a journalist.”

“Oh aye? Should have given him the George Cross. Pete, you know owt about this bugger’s homicidal tendencies?”

“Yes, sir,” said Pascoe almost apologetically, not wanting to sound like he was putting Hat down. “I mean, I’ve heard a story, though I wasn’t sure how apocryphal it was. Version I heard, Penn got pissed off with a review and crowned said journalist with a slice of gateau, so not exactly a deadly weapon.”

“Way my missus baked, it was,” said Dalziel. “That it then, Bowler? You reckon we should pull Penn in and wire his bollocks to a table lamp just because he shampooed some miserable reporter with a cream cake?”

“No, sir. Not exactly …what I mean is, I thought he might be worth a chat …”

“Oh aye? Give me half a good reason.”

“The journalist’s name was Jacqueline Ripley, sir.”

Dalziel’s jaw dropped in exaggerated amazement.

“Jax the Ripper? By God! Pete, why’d you not tell me it was Jax the Ripper?”

“Didn’t know, sir. Sorry. Well done, Hat.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Bowler, blushing faintly. “I even managed to get a copy of the article.”

“How on earth did you manage that?” said Pascoe.

“Well, I rang the Yorkshire Life office. Chances of finding anyone there on a Sunday didn’t seem good, but I hit lucky and got the editor, Mr. Macready, and he was very helpful and dug out the piece and faxed me a copy …”

“You mean you’ve alerted a journalist to the fact that we’re trying to make connections between Charley Penn and a murder victim?” snapped Pascoe. “For God’s sake, man, what were you thinking of?”

Hat Bowler, who had produced the fax sheet with the flourish of a Chamberlain announcing peace in our time, looked aghast at the speed with which war had been declared.

But help came from an unexpected source.

“Nay, never fear,” said Dalziel, plucking the fax from his nervous fingers. “I know Alec Macready, big church man, big swordsman too. He’ll be no bother, not if he wants to stay on the Bishop’s Christmas card list. Well done, young Bowler. It’s good to know there’s still someone round here willing to do a bit of old-fashioned police work. Charley Penn, eh? Now, if I recall aright, his chosen place of worship on a Sunday morning is The Dog and Duck. Let’s go and find him.”

“Sir, wouldn’t it be better to ask him to come here perhaps …I mean, it’s a bit public …”

“Aye, that’s why they call them pubs, lad. For God’s sake, I’m not going to arrest him. Hit Jax the Ripper with a slice of cake, did he? Good old Charley! I’ll mebbe buy the bugger a drink.”

“I think,” said Pascoe, “in view of the fact that Ripley has just been murdered it would be undiplomatic to take that line in the pub, sir.”

“Bad taste, tha means? Likely you’re right. I’ll not buy him a drink then. Bowler, got your wallet? You can buy us both one!”

Charley Penn said, “Aye,” into his mobile phone for the second time, switched it off and replaced it in his pocket.

“Interesting,” said Sam Johnson.

“What?”

“You answer your mobile without that expression, or at least grimace, of apology with which most civilized men of a certain age usually preface its use, then you have a conversation, or should I say transaction, to which your sole contribution is the word Aye , used once as an exordial interrogative and once as a valedictory affirmative.”

“And that’s interesting? You lecturers must lead very quiet lives. Cheers, lad.”

Franny Roote, just returned from the bar, placed a pint of bitter in front of Penn and a large Scotch in front of Johnson, then pulled a bottle of Pils out of his duffel-coat pocket, twisted off the top, and drank directly from the bottle.

“Why do you buggers do that?” asked Penn.

“Hygiene,” said Roote. “You never know where a glass has been.”

“Well, I know where it’s not been,” said Penn through the froth on his pint. “It’s not got the shape.”

Roote and Johnson exchanged smiles. They’d discussed Penn’s self-projection as a hard-nosed northerner and come to the conclusion it was a protective front behind which he could write his historical romances and pursue his poetical researches with minimum interference from the patronizing worlds of either the literary or the academic establishments.

“On the other hand,” Johnson had said, “it may be he’s gone on too long. That’s the danger with concealment. In the end we may become what we pretend to be.”

Which was the kind of clever-sounding thing university teachers were good at saying, thought Roote. He himself had got the patois off pat and didn’t doubt that when the time came to move from the economically challenged freedom of student life to the comfortable confines of an academic job, he would be accepted as a native son.

Meanwhile there were worse things to be doing on a Sunday morning than sitting having a drink with this pair of, in their different ways, extremely entertaining and potentially useful men, and worse places to be doing them than in the saloon bar of The Dog and Duck.

“So Charley, did you settle on a satisfactory honorarium with the dreaded Agnew?” asked Johnson.

“Nothing’s settled with a journalist till it’s down on paper and witnessed by a notary public,” said Penn. “But it will be. Not that I was helped in my negotiations by the evident willingness of you and Ellie Pascoe to offer freebies.”