Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

“Not much of a motive for murdering someone,” said Hat. “Being pissed off, I mean.”

“It’s enough for some people. But suppose he got to thinking that now she’d let him down, it was only a matter of time before, either by accident or design, she named her inside source, and where would that leave his career? And if he was going to shut her up, this must have seemed a great time to do it, straight after she’d been on telly, sounding off about this madman. Where else were you guys going to look, especially as he’d be in a good position to help push things in that direction?”

“You’re saying you know who this man is?” demanded Hat.

“No,” said Angie. “At least I didn’t. She never gave his actual name, only said he was pretty high up.”

“Listen, Angie,” said Hat, “it’s not me you should be talking to. I’m going to have to take this to my bosses, Mr. Dalziel and Pascoe, that’s them you were talking to before, so you might as well see them now. They’re coming along behind us, I think …”

He glanced over his shoulder to confirm this and felt her gentle grip on his arm become a savage elbow-lock.

“Don’t be stupid!” she hissed. “That was what I was going to do earlier when I met them and realized they were top cops.”

“Oh,” said Hat, feeling inappropriately miffed to realize he hadn’t been her first choice of confidant. “So what did they say?”

“Nothing. I said nothing. Jax never gave me his name. Whatever they say about e-mail security, if you’re a journalist, you don’t trust it that much. But over the past few months, she’d given me a description, a pretty detailed intimate description, I mean. Like I say, we let it all hang out. So I think I could be dead sure if I saw him in the skin, but even with his clothes on, the description fitted well enough to make me think it might not be such a good idea to talk to this guy, which is why I came looking for you.”

“Hold on,” said Hat. “You’re saying you think that one of them …”

He glanced back again to where Dalziel and Pascoe were tracking their path.

“Which one, for God’s sake?”

“She described him as middle-aged, what hair he had going grey, always nicely turned out in an old-fashioned kind of way, and so well padded that being on top of him was like bouncing on sponge rubber but having him on top of you was like wrestling with a large gorilla. Not just his weight, he was also very hairy, and there was other stuff about his sports tackle that means I could pick him out pretty definitely in a sauna, but even with his clothes on, that guy Dalziel came close enough for me not to take any risks.”

“Dalziel? For God’s sake, he’s my boss, he’s head of CID!”

“And that means he doesn’t enjoy sex with a woman half his age? If that’s a condition of promotion, I’d get out as soon as you can. No, listen, I can’t be definite, but everything fits. And I think he suspects something. When I asked if you were here, because Jax had mentioned you to me, I thought his eyes were going to start smoking. You want to watch out for him.”

“No, I think that’s something else …I think you’re wrong …”

But part of him, not a big part but large enough to make itself felt, was speculating with something close to glee on the possibility that the Fat Man himself had been Jax’s mole, which meant his aggressive attitude to Hat might be based on …jealousy?

“You mean you’re going to let some silly sense of loyalty stop you from following this up?” she said fiercely. “Maybe I should do what Jax did and go public.”

“No, please. I’ll check it out, I promise. Was there anything else she said? We found a diary, more of an appointments book, and she jotted down the letters GP from time to time, but there didn’t seem to be anything medically wrong …”

“No,” said Angie excitedly. “No, that was him. Georgie Porgie. You know, pudd’n and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. That was what she called him because he was so fat. Hey, your Dalziel’s not called George, is he?”

And suddenly Hat saw the truth, almost as unbelievable as discovering Dalziel was Deep-throat, and infinitely sadder.

“No,” he said unhappily. “No, he’s not.”

But he knew somebody who was.

“So what are you going to do about it?” asked Rye.

“If I knew that I wouldn’t be sitting here spoiling your coffee break,” said Hat.

He should have gone to Dalziel straightaway, or Pascoe at least, or even Wield. Off-loaded his suspicions, let them earn the extra money they got for being in positions of authority and responsibility. In fact he wouldn’t even have needed to point the finger himself, merely handed over the copies of Jax Ripley’s e-mail which her sister had given him and let them draw their own conclusions. Instead he’d gone back to the station, found that George Headingley was still off sick, and persuaded himself that it could do no harm to sleep on it.

It hadn’t done any good either. The first person he’d seen when he entered the CID office the following morning was Headingley. He was a very different man from the relaxed, rather genial figure who’d been navigating his way serenely into the imminent harbour of retirement, and unrecognizable as the sexual athlete described in the e-mails. Jax had told her sister that she first detected her GP’s interest at a media briefing when she’d caught him eyeing her, not with the calculation of a sexual predator but with the yearning of a small boy outside a sweet shop whose only calculation is that he can’t afford to go in. She’d stayed behind and when he asked, “And what can I do for you, Miss Ripley? Something you want to chew over?” she’d replied, “Yes, as a matter of fact. I was wondering about chewing over your dick and my pussy,” and watched his face turn such a vein-bulging puce that she feared their relationship might be about to end before it had begun. But these symptoms, she soon discovered to her amusement and also to her pleasure, were merely the facial expression of a sexual arousal which turned the whole of his body into an erogenous zone. Now his portly figure seemed to have collapsed in on itself, his clothes hung baggily on his sagging frame and he looked a good ten years older than before.

It was easy to trace the earth-slide of emotions which had been carrying him along for the past ten days. First the shock of Ripley’s TV revelations and the fear that his own involvement might soon come out. Then her death, a second shock, accompanied by an initial great surge of relief followed almost immediately by a still greater surge of self-disgust that he could find comfort in the death of someone he’d been so intimate with. After that he’d headed for home, to the security of the undemanding domestic comfort which he probably expected to be ripped from him at any moment. It must have seemed impossible that the close and detailed investigation of Jax’s affairs following her murder plus Dalziel’s natural desire to find out who’d been leaking CID secrets to her, wouldn’t rapidly bring the Fat Man to his door. And then everything would go. Pension …marriage …reputation …character …the rest of his life as he had planned it …

And now with Jax Ripley buried, he was perhaps beginning to allow himself to hope that, despite his sins, all manner of things could still be well. At the very least it must have seemed better to come into work and check for himself what was going on.

He’d greeted Hat like a prodigal son and then questioned him about the course of the investigation in a manner which was both probing and hesitant, like a man who fears he may have cancer but does not dare ask his doctor direct.