Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

“Me? You get to my age, you don’t want to be looking back too much. But professionally speaking, it’s somewhere I spend a lot of time,” said Dalziel.

“But not, I’m sure, in any glitzy hi-tech way like the modern Heritage industry?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You mind that old TV science-fiction series, Doctor Who? Fellow travels around in a time machine that looks like a police box from the outside? Load of old bollocks, most of it, but I always felt that bit were right. A police box. ’Cos that’s what I do with the past. Like yon Doctor, I spend a lot of time visiting bygone days where villains have done things to try and change the future, and I don’t much care how I get there. It’s my job to mend things as far as I can and make certain the future’s as close to what it ought to be as I can get it.”

Dee regarded him wide-eyed.

“A time-lord!” he exclaimed. “You see yourself as a time-lord? Yes, yes, I think I get it. Someone commits a murder, or robs a bank, it’s because they want to change the future as they see it, usually to make it more comfortable for themselves and those they are close to, right? But by catching them, you restore the status quo, so far as that’s possible. Naturally if someone has been killed, there’s little you can do by way of resuscitation, is there?”

“I can’t bring folk back to life, that’s for sure,” said Dalziel. “But I can keep them living. This Wordman, for instance, how many’s he killed now? Started with Andrew Ainstable, if you count letting someone die, then there was young David Pitman and Jax Ripley, and after that …who came next?”

“Councillor Steel,” said Dee readily. “Then Sam Johnson and Geoff Pyke-Strengler.”

“They tripped nice and easy off your tongue, Mr. Dee,” said Dalziel.

“Oh dear. Was that a trap? If so, let me make a suggestion, Mr. Dalziel. I have up till now been happy to play my part in the charade that I was being questioned as a witness. But your continuing interest makes me wonder if it might not be time for both of us to come out in the open and acknowledge that I am a suspect.”

His expression now was one of eager almost ingenuous enquiry.

“You want to be a suspect?” said Dalziel curiously.

“I want to have the opportunity to remove myself from your list-if, as I fear, I’m on it. Am I on it, Mr. Dalziel?”

“Oh yes,” said the Fat Man, smiling. “Like Abou Ben Adhem.”

“Thank you,” said Dee, smiling back. “Now let’s try to discover some single point of fact that will prove to you I’m not the Wordman. You may ask me anything you like and I will answer truthfully.”

“Or pay a forfeit.”

“Sorry?”

“Truth, Dare, Force or Promise. Used to play it a lot when I were a kid. You had to choose one of them. Or you could pay a forfeit, like taking your knickers off. You’ve chosen Truth.”

“And I intend to keep my knickers on,” said Dee.

“Oh aye. You bent?”

“Bent as in crooked, or sexually deviant?”

“Both.”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Well, I have in my time committed various offences, like breaking road traffic regulations, shading my expenses, and using library stationery for my own purposes. Also there are one or two small amatory idiosyncrasies which I enjoy if I can find a willing partner of the opposite sex. But I believe that all of these fall within the margins of normal human behaviour, so I feel able to answer no even though I am not strictly able to answer never.”

“So you and Charley Penn never pulled each other’s plonkers?”

“As young adolescents, yes, occasionally. But only as, if you’ll forgive the expression, a stop-gap strategy to fill that anguished period between the onset of puberty and access to girls. Once girls appeared on the scene, our friendship became nunlike in its chasteness.”

“Nunlike? Not monklike?”

“After the bad press many of the Catholic male Orders have been getting in recent years, I think I’ll stick to nunlike.”

“Could Charley be the Wordman?”

“No.”

“How so sure? ’Less you’re the Wordman yourself, of course.”

“Because, as I’m sure you have already ascertained, on the first of the two evenings you questioned me about, when I was enjoying the company of Percy Follows, Charley was culturally engaged with his literary group. And on the second evening he was with me.”

“Who says the killing took place in the evening? OK, that second day, you gave each other alibis in the evening, and your work means you’ve got an alibi for the day. But not Charley. He’s very vague about what he was doing that day. Says he thinks he probably went to the library but nobody seems able to confirm this. Not unless you’re suddenly going to remember seeing him there?”

“Now why should I do that?”

“One good turn, mebbe. But like mutual masturbation.”

“You mean in return for the good turn he has done me by alibiing me for that evening? But that would only make sense if we were both the Wordman.”

“That’s an interesting thought.”

“And one which I doubt has just sprung ready-formed into your mind, Superintendent. A folie à deux , is that the way you’re seeing things? Oh dear, and here was I thinking it was only myself I had to remove from your hook.”

“Hook. Like in fishing. Do any fishing yourself?”

“I have done, yes. Why?”

“The Hon. Geoff had a couple of rods with him. Like he’d mebbe gone out to fish with a mate.”

“I think perhaps you are mistaking our relationship.”

“Oh aye? How about your relationship with that lass of yours. You banging her?”

“Sorry?”

“Her with the silver flash and the funny name.”

“Rye. I assumed it was Rye you were referring to. It was the participle I had difficulty with.”

“There’s these tablets you can take. I said, are you banging her? whanging her? slipping her the yard of porridge? stirring her custard with your spoon? twiddling with her twilly-flew?”

That got a reaction but it was only a faint almost complimentary smile.

“Am I having a relationship with Rye, you mean? No.”

“But you’d like to?”

“She is an attractive woman.”

“That a yes?”

“Yes.”

“Got anything going at the moment?”

“A sexual outlet, you mean? No.”

“So how do you manage?”

“Manage what?”

“Manage not to embarrass yourself every time you stand up. Man in his prime, all parts working, getting horny whenever you look at your assistant, and you and Charley have grown out of giving each other a helping hand, so what do you do? Pay for it?”

“I don’t get the drift of your questions, Mr. Dalziel.”

“We never said owt about drift, just that I could ask anything I wanted and you’d answer truthfully. You got a problem with that?”

“Only an intellectual one. I understood there’d been no sexual overtones in these killings, so I’m curious why you seem concerned to focus on my sexuality.”

“Who said there’d been no sexual overtones?”

“You’ll recall I have in fact read three of the five Dialogues so I can draw my own conclusions from them. Only one woman has been attacked and there was nothing in what I read in that episode which suggested a sex motive. In fact there is, how shall I put it, an almost sexually sterile atmosphere about the whole affair.”

“You’re sounding a bit defensive.”

“Am I? Ah, I’m with you. You’re being provocative again. If I am the Wordman and my motive is completely non-sexual, then all these questions about my sex life might trigger a reaction at being so grossly misunderstood, is that the idea?”