Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

The Dialogue hadn’t turned up till Monday morning when it was discovered among the library mail, but from the moment Bowler had rung in on Sunday with news of his grisly discovery, they’d treated it as a Wordman killing.

Not, as Wield had observed, that this made them feel like they were one step ahead of the game, only that the bugger now had them all playing it according to his rules.

Now, on Tuesday morning, Pascoe had persuaded a reluctant Dalziel that it was time to hear what the “experts” had to say.

“Well?” growled Dalziel.

Urquhart scratched his stubbly chin with a noise which sounded like a challenge to the heavyweight champion of carnal frication who sat before him and said, “Trinal, trinity, in three parts. Find out what he’s on about there and you might be in sniffing distance of what makes the bugger tick.”

“Doesn’t it just refer to the three blows used to chop the head off?” suggested Pascoe.

“That certainly reinforces it,” said the linguist. “But a head and a body make two parts not three, so it’s not that. And why roll the body into the water and put the head into the fishing basket? There’s something going on here that we’re missing.”

“That it?” said Dalziel. “There’s summat we’re missing? Well, thank you, Sherlock. Dr. Pottle, owt you can add to that, or mebbe you feel your colleague’s said it all?”

Pottle lit a fresh cigarette from the one he was smoking and said, “He’s really getting into his swing. I don’t know how far away the proposed end is, but he’s completely sure he’s going to get there now. This is by far the shortest Dialogue yet. The further he gets, the shorter they’re likely to become. Reliving the last experience in words is merely occupying precious time which could better be devoted to looking forward to the next one. Now he’s certain he’s on the right path, his dialogue with his victims and with his spirit-guide can just as easily continue in his mind as on the page.”

“You think he might stop writing altogether?” said Pascoe.

“No. That part of the writing which is part of the game he’s playing with us will remain. It’s in the rules, so to speak. And he enjoys it. I said last time that his growing confidence is likely to be his downfall. I think that more and more he will be dropping little clues into his Dialogues. He’s like a squash player who is so certain of his vast superiority that he’ll start playing with the racket in his wrong hand, or boasting all his shots off the back wall. But the subconscious self-revelations which I am looking for will be much harder to find. Though it hurts me to say it, I think that from now on Mr. Urquhart’s skills are going to be more useful than mine.”

Dalziel let out a sigh so redolent of tragic despair he could have sold it to Mrs. Siddons. As if in response, his phone rang.

He answered. With most people it’s possible to gauge something of their relationship with a caller from tone of voice, vocabulary, body language, et cetera, but Pascoe had never found a way of working out whether Dalziel were speaking to the Queen or an estate agent.

“Dalziel,” he snarled. Listened. “Aye.” Listened. “Nay.” Listened. “Mebbe.” Dropped the receiver on to the rest so that it bounced.

Cap Marvell perhaps asking if he fancied a bout of violent sexual activity in his lunch hour? The PM offering him a peerage? The Wordman threatening his life?

“That it, gents?” said Dalziel hopefully.

Pottle and Urquhart looked at each other, then the Scot said, “Way I see it, words are the key. This is like breaking a text-based code. You can do it the long way, by sheer hard work, or you can hit lucky and find the significant text, or texts.”

“Or you can hope his growing arrogance results in a clue that someone can solve before rather than after the event,” said Pottle.

“I’ll make a note of that,” said the Fat Man dismissively. “Thanks, gents. Work to do. DC Bowler here will see you out.”

Pottle and Urquhart gathered their papers together. Pascoe said effusively, “Good of you both to come. Please don’t hesitate to give me a ring if anything occurs.”

At the door Urquhart said with heavy irony, “Don’t know why it is, Superintendent, but whenever I leave these meetings, I sometimes get to worrying just a wee bittie how much you really think I’ve managed to help you.”

“Nay, Mr. Urquhart,” said Dalziel with a fulsome orotundity, “I’d be real sorry to think I’d left you in any doubt about that.

“Plonker,” he added as the door closed, or maybe just a moment earlier.

“Then I don’t really see why you bother to sit in on these sessions,” said Pascoe, letting his irritation show.

“Because if I weren’t ready to spend time with plonkers, I’d likely be a lonely man,” said Dalziel. “Any road, I didn’t say he were a useless plonker. And if Pozzo says we ought to listen to him, then mebbe we should. He sometimes puffs out a bit of sense.”

This was a roundabout concession to Pascoe, who had a good personal relationship with Pottle, and knowing it was the closest he was likely to get to an apology, the DCI put aside his irritation and said, “So where do we go from here, sir?”

“Me, I’m going to see Desperate Dan. That were him on the phone. You, if I remember right, have got a date with the vultures. Don’t know what Wieldy here has got on. Mebbe he can find time to do a bit of police work if some bugger doesn’t want him to judge a bonny baby competition.”

Desperate Dan was Chief Constable Trimble. The vultures were the media. Interest in the Wordman killings had increased exponentially with each new death and this latest killing had rocketed it into an international dimension. Not only was the Hon. a peer of the realm, but one of the tabloids had worked out that there was a distant royal connection which put him at something like three hundred and thirty-seventh in line to the throne. American and European interest had exploded. One German TV company had dug up a would-be telly don whose claim that a Pyke-Strengler had been beheaded during the Civil War sparked speculation that a left-wing revolutionary movement was behind the killing. Attempts to fit the earlier killings into such a political pattern were proving ludicrous, but journalists haven’t reached the depths of their profession by allowing ludicrosity to get in the way of a good story.

Pascoe, who had ambiguous feelings about being regarded as the acceptable face of policing, had been elected spokesman at the forthcoming press conference. His ambiguity rose from a reluctance to accept the kind of type-casting which, while it might be good for his career, could also take it in directions he was not yet ready to go. The world of policy committees and high-level political contacts might get a lot of scrambled egg on your shoulders, but it was far removed from that other world of practical investigation which got a lot of honest dirt under your fingernails. Like St. Augustine and sex, he knew he’d have to give it up one day, but preferably not yet.

“Mr. Trimble wants an update, does he?” he asked.

“Update?” said Dalziel. “Nay, the bugger wants a result and he wants it yesterday. Someone up there’s giving him a hard time.”

He spoke with the grim satisfaction of one who knows what a hard time is. Pascoe observed him with a sympathy he was careful not to show. Dalziel drove his troops mercilessly when the occasion demanded, but he took his own bumps and rarely passed them on to his underlings. Going up or coming down, the buck stopped with Andy Dalziel, and Pascoe could only guess at the strain the Wordman case was putting the Fat Man under.

Hat came back into the room. His reaction to the discovery of the body had won grudging praise from Dalziel, though he had advised for future consideration that on the whole it was best not to let your bit of fluff play netball with the victim’s severed head.