Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

He got through to Wield who sounded if not sympathetic, at least neutral; then he heard in the background Dalziel’s voice demanding who he was talking to and Wield explaining that it was Bowler who wasn’t coming in because he was ill.

“Not coming in because he’s ill ?” said Dalziel with the amazement of a man who rated illness as an excuse for absence well below abduction by aliens. “Here, let me speak to him.”

He grabbed the phone and said, “What’s going off, lad?”

“Sorry, sir,” croaked Hat. “You were right, I’ve got that flu-bug.”

“Oh. My bloody fault, is it? What’s that music I can hear? You’re not in a night club with some totty, are you?”

“No!” cried Hat indignantly. “It’s the radio. I’m in bed. By myself.”

“Don’t get uppity. Remember Abishag and David. Or mebbe not. He died, if I recall right.”

“That’s what I feel like,” said Hat, playing for the sympathy vote. Then the faint bell he’d heard at Rye’s rang louder. “Sir, there’s something …”

“No last requests, lad. That’s just gilding the lily.”

“No, sir. It’s just that, in that last Dialogue, wasn’t there a bit about death at the end? Something about the best thing of all being never to be born?”

“Aye, that’s right, got it here. So?”

“So, I know it probably means nothing, but I think that guy, Heine, the one Penn’s translating, said something like that.”

It was remarkable how distance lent courage. After Pascoe’s discomfiture, he probably wouldn’t have dared bring up poetry again to the Fat Man’s face.

“Didn’t realize you were a German scholar,” said Dalziel.

“I’m not, sir. It’s just that Rye …Miss Pomona at the library, well, Penn sometimes leaves stuff lying around where she can see it, by accident on purpose, so to speak …”

“Aye, I read that in the DCI’s report. But I thought that were romantic stuff, trying to get his end away. How’d he get on to death?”

“Trying for the sympathy vote, maybe,” said Hat.

This tickled the Fat Man’s fancy and he laughed so loud Hat had to distance his earpiece.

“Aye, you can get a long way with the sympathy vote,” said Dalziel. “But it only works on lasses, not on superintendents. Get well soon, lad, else I may come visiting with a wreath.”

He put the phone down and returned to his office without speaking to Wield. There he sat for a little while deep in thought. He had to admit he was floundering. Well, he’d floundered before and always reached the shore, but this was more public than usual, and there were too many buggers out there eager to celebrate his drowning. Time to grasp a few straws.

He picked up his phone and dialled.

“Eden Thackeray, please. Nay, luv, don’t give me crap about important meetings. He’ll have just got into his office and he’ll only be there ’cos it’s quieter than home and he can smoke a cigar without his missus throwing a bucket of cold water over him. Tell him it’s Andy Dalziel.”

A moment later he heard the urbane tones of Eden Thackeray, Senior Partner though now officially semi-retired of Messrs. Thackeray, Amberson, Mellor and Thackeray, Mid-Yorkshire’s most prestigious solicitors.

“Andy, you’ve been frightening my new receptionist.”

“Part of the learning curve. How’re you doing, lad? Still pulling the strings?”

“It gets harder. It’s all right knowing, as you might put it, where all the bodies are buried, but the trouble is at my age it gets harder to remember.”

“Trick is, not letting any bugger know you’ve forgot. Any road, I don’t believe you. I’ll give you a test. You’re Lord Partridge’s lawyer, right?”

“Indeed I am, but, Andy, as you well know, professional ethics do not permit-”

“Nay,” interrupted Dalziel. “No need to lock your door and switch on your scrambler, I’m not after His Lordship. But, knowing you, I’d bet you’d know everything worth knowing about a big client like old Budgie, right down to his domestic staff, right?”

“Old Budgie? I didn’t realize you were on such close personal terms with His Lordship, Andy.”

“Old mates from way back,” said Dalziel. “Now, what I’m interested in is, there’s this German woman lives on the estate, used to be some kind of maid or cook or housekeeper …”

“You mean Frau Penck, mother to our own literary lion, Charley Penn?”

“That’s the one. So, from your knowledge of her, how’s she get on with Charley? OK to tell me that?”

“I suppose,” said Thackeray judiciously, “that, as I act for neither of them, I am able, without commitment and off the record, to entertain such a question. Let me see. A fraught relationship, I would say. She thinks that Charley should be living with her, taking on the job of the head of the Penck household, vacated when her beloved husband died some twenty years ago. This would be the good old German way. She feels that he has forgotten his heritage and gone native. Not even his success as a writer counts too much. His books are not what in Germany is known as ‘serious literature,’ and besides, they are in English.”

“She does speak English?”

“Oh yes, fluently, though with a strong accent which grows stronger if she does not wish to understand what you say.”

“She got money?”

“Not that I know of. But she doesn’t need any. The family place a high value on her, and she on them. She lives in a grace-and-favour cottage and seems content to remain there for the rest of her days.”

“So how come Charley went to yon posh school, Unthank College? Old Budgie pay, did he?”

“His Lordship is not quite so profligate of his money,” said Thackeray drily. “The boy won a scholarship. I’m not saying strings might not have been pulled, but he was, by all accounts, a bright child.”

“And a rich one now, I dare say. Could easily set his old mam up in a nice house somewhere.”

“Which I believe he has offered to do. I gather he regards the Partridge’s grace and favour as cause for resentment rather than gratitude. His mother, however, tends to look upon England outside of the Haysgarth estate as an extension of the old East Germany, with people like yourself as lackeys of the English branch of the Stasi.”

“So if a cop turned up asking questions about her Charley, how would she react?”

“Uncooperatively, I would guess. He would be transfigured into the perfect devoted son against whom she would not hear a word said, in English or in German.”

“But if old Budgie or one of his chums spoke to her about Charley …?”

“If it was implied that she should feel herself lucky to have mothered a son who’d done so well in the great outside world, she would very forcibly point out his shortcomings as a good German boy. I know this because when I first encountered her, I fell into this error.”

“That’s grand,” said Dalziel. “Remind me I’m in the chair next time I see you at the Gents.”

This was a reference not to an assignation in a public toilet, but to their common membership of the Borough Club for Professional Gentlemen.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in my asking what you are up to, Andy?”

“Right as always, Eden. Cheers!”

Dalziel put the phone down, thought for a moment, then picked it up again and dialled.

“Cap Marvell.”

“Hello, chuck, it’s me,” he said.

“Again? This is twice in a fortnight you’ve rung from work. Could I claim harassment?”

“No, them as I harass know they’ve been harassed,” he said. “Listen, luv, got to thinking, I’m a selfish sod, not good for a relationship.”

“Andy, are you feeling all right? You haven’t had a fall, banged your head, seen a flash of very bright light?”