Dialogues of the Dead (48 page)

4°5 Rye Pomona and whether she was still with Dee. But these troublesome thoughts seemed to lose their pace and energy as they ran up against the invisible barrier of this zone of calm elsewhereness. It's like, thought Pascoe (and even this thought did not set his pulses racing), it's like those moments described in the Dialogues when time slows towards a halt . .. it's as if the Wordman has trailed his aura and I am on the edge of his dimension, that passive world in which he is the only active element. This is where I should be looking for him, not out there in the busy world of routines, and elimination, and forensics. This is the secret place of his dwelling. He let his body relax even more. Psalm 27. He is back in church reading Psalm 27. The Lord is my light. He tries to move elsewhere, that part of his mind which is still a Detective Chief Inspector wanting to use this weird feeling to range over the whole of the case but not finding any response to the controls. This is what the Wordman must feel, he thinks. Whatever I do in this timeless time is what I have to do, not what I want to do. Still in the church reading the Psalm, but also in his office at the station, he reaches out to pull the Wordman file across his desk towards him. He intends to open it and look at the psalm references that have been isolated. But instead he opens it at the very beginning, at the strange drawing, the In Principio. His fingers have no strength to turn further. What am I looking for? he asks himself. The twin oxen. The two alephs. The AA man. This I know already. What else? In principio erat verbum. The opening of the gospel according to St John. Dee was at St John's College. Roote is in the St John Ambulance Brigade. Johnny Oakeshott's real name was Stjohn. Stjohn, the 'son of thunder', Stjohn, symbolized by the eagle, St John who bored his followers by his too often repeated exhor tation to them to 'love one another' because if you do that 'you do enough'; who came close to being dumped into a cauldron of boiling oil under the persecution of the Emperor Domitian but escaped to die a natural death of ripe old age at Ephesus where he'd had a run in with a high priest of the goddess Diana, whose worship also brought a lot of trouble Paul's way .. . Very interesting but not relevant, not at the moment anyway or rather not at the non-moment, not in this segment of non-time. Something else, he knows there is something else. And outside his door, in the CID room, less self-consciously perhaps, Hat Bowler too sits on this shore of time and feels its mighty turbulent ocean recede. Rye, Rye, he wants to think of Rye but all he can conjure up is that date in the Dialogue: 1576. Fifteen seventy-six. It means something to him ... Once more he rehearses all that he has been able to discover about it but nothing cries out to him ... or rather nothing stops crying, for that's what it feels like ... like hearing a baby crying in a big empty house and rushing from room to room but finding them all empty ... and still the baby cries . .. One more door remains ... behind this last door must lie the truth . . . The door bursts open . . . 'Sorry, did I wake you, lad?' says Sergeant Wield. 'Mr Pascoe in?' And without waiting for an answer he crashes just as unceremoniously into Pascoe's office and with him comes surging back the relentless tide of time. 'Wieldy,' said Pascoe, reaching for his cold coffee. 'No need to knock. Just come right in. Make yourself at home.' With a confidence of welcome that put him beyond the reach of irony, Wield said, 'Something you ought to see. First off, that partial on Ripley's mule, we've got a match.' 'A match? I don't follow. They reported no match on record.' 'Aye, but that was before the matching print was part of the record,' said Wield. 'You recall we took Dee's prints to match them with the prints on the axe that topped the Hon. . ..' 'Dee. You're saying we've got a match with Dee?' 'Not a complete, but ten points, which, considering what little there was to work with, is a big step,' said Wield, laying a couple of sheets of paper in front of Pascoe. 'Ten's a long way from sixteen,' said Pascoe disappointedly. 'And how the hell did this come up anyway? Officially, Dee was never anything but a witness and his prints were taken purely for elimination, because he'd been using the axe.'

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The rules were very clear. All fingerprints provided voluntarily for purposes of elimination had to be destroyed the minute the elimination process was complete. 'Don't know what happened,' said Wield. 'Must somehow have got put in the system for cross-checking against the record and by the time they reached the top of the queue, that partial from Ripley's mule was part of the record. Something like that, I expect.' When a master of precise detail starts being vague, it is best to : look the other way, especially when the possible illegalities have • a smell of Dalziel about them. ,' Pascoe looked the other way and said, 'OK, but I can't get ; excited, Wieldy. It's not usable in court and even if we had a full sixteen-point match, with the bad press prints have had recently, ;'j we'd need a hell of a lot more.' i Wield said with just a hint of reproof, 'Worked that out for ', myself. I thought, what else? And I remembered the bite.' • 'The bite? Ah, yes. We had forgot the bite. And .. . ? 'I've been round to see Mr Molar. Had to get him out of a lecture, he weren't best pleased. But it was worth it. He compared Dee's dental record with the bite and he says that it's a definite maybe verging on a possible definitely that those teeth made that bite.' 'Dee's dental records .. . ?' Pascoe's mind was spinning. 'How : the hell did you get hold of Dee's dental records.' 'All above board,' said Wield briskly. 'He gave us written per mission to see his medical records when we were talking to him about the Hon.'s death, remember? Almost fell over himself to , do it. Well, dental comes under medical, and as the permission : was still on the file ...' There were more potential illegalities floating around here than in a Marbella swimming pool, thought Pascoe. ; Sod them! He shook them out of his head, opened his mouth to shout for Hat, then saw it wasn't necessary. The DC was standing-in the doorway, his face aglow at the ; thought of getting Dick Dee into the middle of the frame. '( Pascoe said, 'Right. Let's talk to Mr Dee again, but softly, softly. No point in putting the boot in till we know what we're kicking. All this could mean owt or it could mean nowt.' The use of Dalzielesque phraseology emphasized the point he was making. There'd been too many instances recently of policemen going in hard with too little evidence and either warning off the guilty or provoking official complaints from the innocent. 'We'll need someone to stay here and co-ordinate matters. And try to raise the super at the Black Bull.' He looked at Hat, saw the disappointment and the pleading in his eyes, and said, 'Better be you, Wieldy. There's a trail here which could need some tidying up if it leads anywhere, and you're best equipped to do it.' No doubt about that. At the moment what little they had could be dispersed instantly by one indignant snort from a smart lawyer's nostrils. 'Hat, you come with me to the library.' 'But it's closed today. Mark of respect.' 'Hell, I'd forgotten. But that doesn't mean the staff won't be there. Dee and Rye Pomona drove straight off after the funeral. Clearly they weren't going to the Lichen.' 'No, sir,' said Hat unhappily. Pascoe thought a moment then said, 'Tell you what, you try Dee's flat, see if he's there. I'll do the library, which still seems the best bet. OK?' 'Fine,' said Hat. They got into their respective cars simultaneously but the little sports car was burning rubber out of the car park before Pascoe had fastened his seat belt. He still felt pretty sure of finding Dee at the library and when he reached the Centre and saw the main doors were open, his confidence seemed justified. A security man stopped him to tell him the Centre was closed to the public that day. Pascoe showed him his ID and discovered that, as he'd suspected, a lot of staff were taking the chance to catch up on jobs that under normal workaday pressures got pushed to the back burner. He made his way to the reference library, rehearsing the sweet words which were going to lure Dee down to the station. But he found the place empty except for a young female library assistant he didn't know who was painstakingly checking the shelves to make sure that all the reference books had been returned to their rightful positions and order.

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He showed his ID again and asked if Dee had been in. She said she hadn't seen him, but she'd just arrived herself. Pascoe went behind the enquiry desk and tried the office door on the remote chance that the man was working inside, too rapt to hear conversation without. The door opened and suddenly Pascoe had a vision of discovering Dee sitting there with his throat cut. The office was empty. Pascoe went in and sat behind the desk to collect his thoughts. He must be getting hard. He felt relief that his absurd imagining had turned out to be just that, but it wasn't relief that a human being wasn't dead, but rather relief that a promising line of enquiry hadn't been nipped in the bud - or nicked in the jugular! Just how promising was this line anyway? Dee was a good fit for the profile Pottle and Urquhart had produced between them. There was the obsession with word games, the delight in his own cleverness, and if he wanted the other world focus which the Dialogues seemed to illustrate, then perhaps he didn't need to look further than this photograph on the desk. The three boys, two of them bright and sharp and fighting their way out of adolescent adversity into premature adult control, the third still childish, innocent, in need of love and protection. He recalled that poem again, the one on the page opened in the book in Sam Johnson's dead hands.

If there are ghosts to raise, What shall I call, Out of hell's murky haze, Heaven's blue pall? Raise my loved long-lost boy To lead me to his joy .. .

But these were not the kind of ideas the GPS liked to be presented with. They wanted something with much more shape and substance, hard physical evidence, preferably accompanied by a water-tight confession. And he had ... a thumb print and a bite mark. Neither definite. Both of doubtful admissibility. He closed his eyes and tried to ease his way back into that state of timelessness in which the answer had seemed almost within his grasp ... the Twentyseventh psalm: "God is my light. .." Dominus ilhiminatio men... Then he opened his eyes and he saw everything.

Hat's heart leapt up as he dragged the MG round the corner of the street in which Dee's apartment was situated. He had been frightened he would find Rye's car parked outside, lending weight to a fantasy he fought against but could not resist of Dee's door opening in response to his frenzied knocking to reveal over the man's bare shoulder a bedroom, and a bed, and Rye's tousled chestnut hair with its distinctive blaze of grey spread out across the pillow .. . But of course there was no sign of the car. No, she'd be safe at home. He thought of ringing her number, then decided that contact was better delayed till Dee was safely down the nick and he could see which way things were going. With luck she need never know that he himself had done the arresting. Not the arresting, he corrected himself. Pascoe wanted this played cool. A smiling invitation to have a friendly chat. No frenzied knocking then. None needed at the front entrance, which was open. He went sedately up the stairs and tapped gently on the door. It opened almost at once. 'What's this? A raid?' said Charley Penn. 'Don't tell me. Andy Dalziel's lying out there with a Kalashnikov, right?' 'Mr Penn. I was looking for Mr Dee ...' 'Well, you've come to the right place, but not at the right time,' said Perm. 'Step inside before someone shoots me.' Hat went in. 'Mr Bowler, how nice.' Franny Roote was smiling up at him from a chair placed before a table on which lay an open Paronomania board. There was no one else in the room. Unhappily, Hat let his gaze rum towards the bedroom door. 'Is Mr Dee ...' Penn went and threw the door open. 'No, not in here. Unless he's under the bed. Nor in the kitchen or the bog either, take a look. Sorry.'

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Hat pulled himself together and said, 'Mr Perm, what are you doing here?' 'Teaching my young chum, Roote, the rudiments of Paronomania. I'd ask you to join in, but only two can play.' Hat's gaze flickered to the third rack on which he could see the name Johnny, then returned to Penn's mocking mask. 'I meant, why are you here, in Mr Dee's flat?' 'Because at present my pad is, as you'll recall, uninhabitable. The workmen from hell are still creating pandemonium. The library is closed to celebrate its release from the dead hand and limp wrist of poor Percy. So Dick kindly allowed me the use of his humble property to pursue my studies. But I ran into young Roote on my way here and let him inveigle me into initiating him into the rites of the second greatest game known to man.' Hat listened with growing impatience. 'So where is Mr Dee?' he demanded. 'Ah, that's what you want to know? Why didn't you ask?' said Penn. 'Mr Dee is, to the best of my knowledge, out at that rustic slum which for some reason he so enjoys. Or used to. Recent events have changed his perception, I gather. Et in Arcadia ego. Since his landlord's unfortunate death, Dick no longer feels at ease out there and he has gone to retrieve his gear.' 'You're saying he's gone out to Sfangcreek Cottage?' 'I'm glad you agree that's what I'm saying because that is cer tainly what I was attempting to convey,' said Penn. The man's face was twisted into that cross between a smile and a snarl Rye called his smarl. He's got something else to say, something, Hat guessed, he thinks I won't be pleased to hear. His heart jolted as his thoughts outdistanced Penn's words. But he still had to hear them. 'Yes,' said the writer. 'Really bugs him, that place now. Didn't even fancy going out there by himself. Also the stuff he's got there would overflow that jalopy of his. So he dropped a hint or two I might like to give him a hand. But I had to say no. Bad back, my car's on the blink, and I hate the fucking countryside anyway. Still, it all worked out for the best. He came back from Percy's funeral mil of the joys of spring.' 'Why was that?' asked Hat unnecessarily. There was a singing in his ears, the air seemed dark with foreboding, and through the murk he could see Franny Roote regarding him with an expression of grave concern. 'Seems he asked young Rye if she'd hold his hand and she jumped at the chance. Yes, old Dick dragged off the funeral blacks, got into his tracksuit and trainers, and headed off to rendezvous with young Ms Pomona. Who knows? Perhaps in such pleasant company he'll get back his feel for nature. Hadn't you better answer that? It might be Andy Dalziel wanting to know if it's time to throw the stun grenades.' And Hat realized that part at least of the singing in his ears was the sound of his mobile ringing.