The Language of the Dead (8 page)

“I knew. But I had no choice.” Rivers smiled his lopsided grin. “No reason to lie, after all. Fact is, I bollixed a case. I got a little impatient with the way things were going and pressed the matter; broke into a bloke's house and got the goods. But it wasn't allowed into evidence, so the bastard is a free man today.” He shrugged. “My ‘mistake,'” he added, in a tone that suggested that he hadn't really considered it a mistake. “Then they suddenly needed men down south and the man I worked for up there saw his chance to be rid of me.”

“Does Harding know about your mistake?”

“He knows. But he decided he'd rather have an experienced man with a blemish than someone green. It also didn't hurt that the man I worked for in Warwickshire is one of Harding's old chums.” He smiled again—bitterly, Lamb thought. “Lucky for me, eh?”

“A second chance, then?” Lamb asked.

“You might say that.”

That seemed to end their initial skirmish. They drove the rest of the way to Winchester in silence, each wondering what the other was thinking.

Wallace walked alone through the blacked-out streets of Winchester to The Fallen Diva.

He arrived a little after nine and was pleasantly surprised to find the woman he'd seen earlier that day sitting alone at the same table,
the same half-expectant look on her face. Her purse was on the table, along with a half pint of beer and an ashtray partially filled with stubbed-out cigarettes. As Wallace passed her, he caught the scent of her perfume and glanced at her; she met his eyes and then glanced away. He was thirsty and hungry—hungry for something he hadn't had enough of in too long a time.

He went to the bar and ordered a pint. He told himself that he would limit himself to three beers. “Who's the bird at the table?” he asked the man behind the bar.

“No idea. Never saw her before until three days ago. Just sits there, all alone.”

“Is she waiting for someone?”

“If she is, he hasn't shown up.”

“Any blokes try it on with her?”

“One did last night. But he gave up.”

Wallace took his beer to the woman's table. She looked up at him.

“May I join you?”

She smiled, faintly. “Suit yourself.”

Wallace offered his hand. “David Wallace,” he said. She shook his hand but said nothing. Wallace thought that she must be playing a game. But he didn't mind a game now and again. He smiled. “So, you have no name, then?”

She didn't answer. Her faint smile reappeared.

“Do I have to guess?” Wallace asked.

“If you like.”

He pretended to appraise her. “Let me see,” he said. “Green eyes, green dress.” He pulled his chair back from the table and looked beneath it. “Ha!” he said. “Green shoes! Your name is Miss Green.”

She laughed—a kind of twitter. “Not even close.”

“You have auburn hair. Miss Brown, then?”

“No.”

“Let's see. I'm running out of colors. Miss Yellow?”

She laughed.

“Turquoise? No? I know—you're French! Blanc. Miss Blanc! Hold on! You're blushing. Miss Rose?”

He believed the game to be a test. She wanted to see not only if he was willing to play, but how well he played. Apparently, he'd done well. The bloke of the night before likely hadn't.

“Very well,” she said. “I suppose I'll have to tell you.”

“I'm all ears,” Wallace said. He tugged at his ears, pulling them out from his head.

She laughed again—snorted. She put her right hand over her mouth, as if the unfeminine sound mortified her.

“Seriously, my dear,” Wallace said, affecting an upper-class accent. “What
is
your name? Mother
insists
on knowing.”

She twittered again. “Delilah,” she said.

Wallace sipped his beer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Delilah what?”

“Just Delilah.”

Another game
. Delilah intrigued him. He quietly appraised her plump body. She was
voluptuous
—that was the word. He reckoned she was maybe twenty-one. A good age. She had neither the look nor attitude of a virgin. Her modesty—the hand over the mouth and the rest of it—was affected, which added to her mystery.

She told him that she worked as a secretary in a firm of solicitors and was considering joining the WAAFs. He said that he was a copper, a sergeant. When she asked—as they always did—if he was stalking a killer, he told her as much about the Blackwell case as seemed prudent. She listened, rapt, as he described how they'd found Will Blackwell's body.

“It all sounds so frightening,” she said.

Wallace shrugged. “I suppose. Though dead is dead, after all.” He smiled.

“Yes, but the
way
he died.” She looked at her beer, which she'd hardly touched. “Poor old man.”

“It's possible he didn't feel anything beyond a knock on the back of the head. The killer drove in the pitchfork while the old boy was
unconscious. So the doc says.” He wondered if he was saying more than he should—if the beer was loosening his tongue. He must watch himself.

They talked for another half hour. Wallace tried to get more out of Delilah—who she was, really, and why she had come to The Fallen Diva to sit alone. But Delilah deflected his questions. At closing, she said “I must get home now.” She offered no explanation and Wallace asked for none. He wondered if he'd pressed her too hard for information.

She picked up her purse and stood. Wallace escorted her to the dark street. He'd had his three pints and felt within himself. He was prepared to go home, get a decent night's sleep, and appear in the nick on the following morning ready to go, like a loyal dog. Except that he didn't want to go home. Not yet.

The night had grown cool enough for a sweater, though Delilah had none. Wallace removed his coat and put it around her shoulders. To his surprise, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and said “Thank you, David. You're very charming.” She drew Wallace's jacket around herself and added, “I'd ask you to walk me home but I'm afraid it's a bit of a distance. It's fifteen minutes, at least.”

She was an odd bird, but he liked her. And he wanted her. Their mutual teasing and the beer had loosed something in him. A walk would do him good, he thought. Clear his head.

“I don't mind the walk,” he said. “I can't very well let you walk home all alone in the dark.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, and smiled at him.

She walked beside him, shivering a little. He slipped his arm around her shoulders. She was young and firm, very well put together, and Wallace began to conjure images of what she looked like with her clothes off and that playful smile on her face.

He was surprised to find that she lived in a small, semi-detached brick house with a front garden in the middle of a street of similar houses called Chatham Close. When she'd said that she lived alone on a secretary's salary, he'd imagined her in a tiny flat with just enough
room for a bed and table and a bath at the end of the hall. He walked her to her door and waited while she unlocked it. She pushed open the door and turned to face him. “Would you like to come in?” she asked. “I could make you a cup of tea—fortify you a bit for your walk home.”

“I could use a cup of tea.”

They stepped into a small sitting room; Delilah turned on a lamp. Wallace found the room typical-looking, with a couch and coffee table against the right wall, a couple of chairs facing them, a narrow stair on the left that led to the second floor, and a small hall, on the right, which he guessed led to the kitchen. Perhaps her father had money, he thought.

Delilah turned to him. “Thank you for the coat, David,” she said. Rather than hand it to him, she let it fall from her shoulders to the floor.

She moved close to him and Wallace caught the full scent of her. She put her arms around his neck; he felt her breasts against his chest. He moved his hands to her hips and they kissed—a lengthy, slow kiss. He couldn't quite believe his luck. Then Delilah let her arms drop from his shoulders and took a step backward, leaving him hard and ready.

“Would you rather a nightcap than a cup of tea?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She went to a small cupboard against the far wall and withdrew a bottle of Irish whiskey and two small glasses. She filled them and offered one to Wallace. They eyed each other as they drank, almost as if they were sealing a pact, Wallace thought. She drank her whiskey quickly, tossing it back; Wallace did the same. He was giving in again. A year earlier he'd gone through a patch in which he'd drunk too much; he'd shown up late for work in a disheveled state once too often. He'd confessed his problem to Lamb, who'd verbally kicked his arse, then helped him to regain a grip on his life. Wallace told himself that the transgression he was about to make was only temporary, a one-off. He moved to take Delilah in his arms but she resisted. “Sit on the floor,” she said. She pointed to a place in front of the sofa. “Just there.”

Another game
. He did as she ordered.

“Take off your shoes,” she said. He obeyed.

She stood before him, a few feet away, unzipped her green dress and let it fall to the floor. She unhooked her bra, freeing her effusive breasts, her eyes fixed on Wallace. She pushed off her knickers and stood before him naked, in her black heels. She took the bottle in her hand and raised her chin toward the ceiling, tossing her hair. She poured a stream of the whiskey down the front of her neck; the brown liquid ran quickly between her breasts and over her soft belly and into her sex. She touched herself there, then brought her fingers to her lips. The whiskey glistened on her body. She looked at Wallace and asked, “Are you ready, David?”

Then she put her wet fingers in her mouth.

HARRY RIVERS WAS SITTING AT DICK WALTERS'S OLD DESK WHEN
Lamb arrived at the nick on the following morning.

Wallace hadn't arrived yet, though he normally just made it under the wire. Eight or nine uniformed PCs, along with a uniformed sergeant named Bill Cashen, milled about the incident room waiting for Harding to begin his morning briefing.

Lamb nodded at the men, then went to his small office and closed the door. He hung his jacket and hat on the coatrack in the corner and went to his desk. He would have to get used to working with Rivers again, though Harding had said that Rivers's posting wasn't necessarily permanent. Obviously, Rivers was on probation. In any case, he refused to allow Rivers to drag him back into the mud of the Somme, into the old discord and recriminations.

On the way to the nick, he'd stopped at the newsagents and bought the latest issue of
Sporting Life
. He looked at the telephone. Several
races were scheduled at Paulsgrove that day, and he had the four quid he'd won on the back of Winter's Tail to work with. He reached for the phone, intending to make a call, then withdrew his hand.

No.

Someone rapped on his door. He opened it to find Wallace standing in the hall. Wallace's suit was uncharacteristically rumpled and his shoes scuffed. A blood vessel had burst in his right eye, giving his gaze a vaguely supernatural appearance.

Wallace had awakened that morning alarmed to find the sun slanting through the window and himself in a strange bed with his head aching. He became aware of Delilah sleeping on his arm, her left leg across his stomach, snoring. Only a few hours before, he and Delilah had devoured each other on the floor of her sitting room. He'd never known anything quite so exhilarating. After the second time, they'd drained the bottle of whiskey, then fallen asleep in her bed.

He'd managed to extricate himself from Delilah's grasp without waking her and walked to his flat, where he'd quickly bathed and shaved and downed a cup of tea. Miraculously, he'd made it to work on time. He hadn't had a drink in seven hours and, despite his headache, believed himself sober. Even so, his heart quickened when he saw Lamb.