Dialogues of the Dead (10 page)

77 or the ruling party had failed in theirs by keeping it to themselves. Minus her police ally, Jax was delighted to have whatever highlevel support she could hang on to in Mid-Yorkshire and she let the halitotic councillor rabbit on for ten minutes or so before cutting him off with a promise to keep him up to speed. Now she settled back to await the final category of calls. This was the constabulary. The one she expected from her furious Deep-throat didn't come, but an hour after the programme ended, Mid-Yorkshire's press officer, a user-friendly inspector with a pleasant homely manner which disguised a very sharp mind, rang to wonder if the best interests of both the BBC and the Force might not be served by a bit of mutual cooperation. For example, if he promised to keep her in the picture, maybe she could tell him where she'd got her information? She'd laughed out loud and he'd laughed with her then said, 'Please yourself, luv. But don't be surprised if you hear a loud barking just now. It'll be them upstairs coming round with the Rottweilers.' In the event the Deputy Chief Constable who turned up was dogless, but did his best with his own teeth. He asked her to reveal her sources. She refused on the grounds of journalistic privilege. He spelled out the obligations the law placed upon anyone with information relevant to a crime, whether already or still to be committed. He then wished her all the best in her future career, hoped for her sake it would be in an area far removed from Mid-Yorkshire, smiled caninely, and left. You'd better get this London job, girl, she told herself. I think things could get pretty uncomfortable for you round here. But the pluses were too many for the negativisms of Mary Agnew and the DCC to depress her spirits for long and when she finally decided to call it a night, she was bubbling inside like a bottle of champagne about to pop. John Wingate was still around, looking slightly less anxious now that it seemed likely her revelations on air were going to attract plaudits rather than brickbats. Sex seemed a good way to uncork her energies and she said, 'Fancy coming back with me for a celebratory drink, John?' He looked at her, looked at his watch, all the anxiety back on his face. He's recalling what it was like, she thought. He's thinking that with a bit of luck I'll be out of his hair and his life in a very short while, so why not one for the road? If I reached out and touched him and said, 'Let's do it here,' he'd be on me like a flash. But she didn't want a quickie on a dusty office floor. She said, 'You're right, John. Family first, eh?' kissed him lightly on the cheek and walked away, aware that the sway of her end in retreat was probably making him ache with regret. But she didn't want a man who'd be thinking of going even as he was coming. Tonight was an all or nothing night, and as she ran through a list of possibles in her head, it began to seem more and more like nothing. No one seemed to fit the bill perfectly . .. except maybe . .. but no, she couldn't ring him! She let herself into her flat and kicked off the murderously high heels she wore to work. Despite or perhaps because of coming at people like Penthesilia on the charge, she was desperately selfconscious about her height, particularly on camera. Her clothes followed. She let them lie where they fell and slid her arms into her fine silk robe and her feet into a pair of unbecoming but supremely comfortable soft leather mules. Too wound up to think of sleep, she went to her computer and rattled off an e-mail to the one person she could talk to with (almost!) complete freedom: her sister, Angle in America. It wasn't sex, but it was a form of relief after a day spent weighing her words as closely as she'd been doing for the past several hours. As she finished, the phone rang. She picked it up and said, 'Hi.' A voice started speaking immediately. She listened then said incredulously, 'And you've actually got this third Dialogue with you?' 'Yes. But it will have to be handed in tomorrow. If you want to see it...' 'Of course I want to see it. Could you come round to my place?' 'Now?' 'Yes.' 'OK. Five minutes.' The phone went dead. She put down the receiver and punched the air, a gesture she'd always thought rather naff when she saw footballers and gameshow contestants using it. But now she knew what it was expressing. 'Ripley,' she said. 'Someone up there really likes you.'

79 Chapter Nine

THE THIRD DIALOGUE

Why not? In the beginning was the Word, but what language was the Word in? Spirits always speak in English at seances. Except probably in France. And Germany. And anywhere else. So what language do the dead really speak if, as I presume, all the dead are capable of conversing with each other? A kind of Infernal Esperanto?

No, I reckon the dead must understand everything or else they understand nothing. So how are things going? Comment ^a va? Wie geht's?

With me? Well, things are picking up speed. Yes, it's harder. Don't think I'm not glad to be getting more responsibility, but I won't disguise, it's harder. I knew she would be back late after the broadcast, but 1 didn 't mind waiting. What's a couple of hours in a journey as long as mine? And part of the pleasure lies in the anticipation of that moment when time will stop completely and everything will happen in an infinitely savourable present. She'd been a possibility ever since the bazouki player, of course, but there'd been others with equal claim. I had to listen to them all to make sure. Nation shall speak unto nation, but it was that individual speaking to this individual that I wanted to hear. Then she made her broadcast and though her words vjere measured, -with one eye fixed firmly on the Law, I could hear her underlying message aimed at one person only. Write me another Dialogue, she was saying. Please, I beg you, write me another Dialogue. How could I resist such a clear invitation? How would I dare resist it -when in this, as with the others, I feel myself your chosen instrument? But being chosen does not exempt me from responsibility. Help I would be given, 1 knew that, but, after last time, only in the same measure as I shewed myself able to help myself. That is why I sat in the car and waited to make sure she came home by herself. A woman with her appetites might easily bring back a companion for her bed. I waited a little while longer after I'd rung. I could have been with her in thirty seconds but I didn't want her thinking I was so close. When I pressed her bell she answered immediately through the intercom. 'Is that you?' 'Yes.' The front door opened. I went in and started climbing the stairs. Already I could feel time slowing till it flowed no faster than oil paint squeezed on to an artist's palette. I was the artist and I was ready to set my new mark on this canvas which, complete, will place me in that dimension outside of time where all great art exists. The door to her flat is open. But the chain is still on. I applaud such carefulness. 1 see her face in the interstice. 1 raise my left hand which is clutching a brown foolscap envelope. And the chain comes off, the door opens fully. She stands there, smiling welcomingly. I smile back and move towards her, putting my hand inside the envelope. I see her bright eyes glisten with anticipation. She is in that moment of expectancy truly beautiful. But like Apollonius looking at Lamia, I see through that fair-seeming to what she really is, the corrupter, the distorter, the self-pleaswer and the self-destroyer too, for there is at the heart of the worst of us a nugget of that innocence and beauty we all bring with us into this world, and though I purpose to cut the depraved part out, that nugget will, I hope, remain, sending her out of the world as beautiful and innocent as she came into it. I seize the haft of the knife inside the envelope and slide the long thin blade into her body.

81 I've read about the blow - under the ribs then drive upwards - but naturally I've had no chance to practise on living flesh. It's the kind of thing people notice. But for all the trouble it causes me, you might imagine I came from a long line ofMafiosi. Oh, how good it is when the word so surely conveys the deed and theory blends so smoothly into practice. The current runs along the wire and the bulb begins to glow; the spaceship balances on its tail of flame then begins to climb into the sky. Just so the blade slices under the ribs and almost of its own volition angles up through the lung to the beating heart. For a moment I hold her there, all the sphere of her life balanced on a point of steel. The fulcrum of the planets is here, the still centre of the Milky Way and all the unthinkable intervacancies of infinite space. Silence spreads from us like ripples on a mountain tarn, rolling over the night music of distant traffic noises borne on a gusting wind, deaden ing all of humanity's living, loving, sleeping, waking, dying, birthing gasps and groans, snores and sniggers, tattle and tears. Nothing else is. Only we are. Then she is gone. I raise her in my arms and carry her into the bedroom and lay her down reverently, for this is a solemn and holy step in both our journeys. The parents still watch anxiously, but now the child, with wandering step and slow, begins to move alone. 1 pray you, do not let me stumble. Be the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid? Speak soon, I beg you, speak soon. Chapter Ten

On Saturday morning Rye Pomona had to field so many questions about Ripley's TV programme from her colleagues en route to the reference library that she arrived ten minutes late and found that she'd missed the beginning of a half-furious row in the office. The furious half was Percy Follows whose angry tirade bounced off the placid surface of Dick Dee, leaving no trace but a faint puzzlement. 'I'm sorry, Percy, but I got the distinct impression you didn't want to be troubled with anything to do with the short story competition. In fact I recall your exact words - you always put things so memorably. You said that this was such an inconsiderable task, you could see little reason why it should disturb any of the essential routines of the department and none whatsoever why you yourself should be troubled with it beyond news of its successful completion.' Rye took a positive pride in her boss's performance. That attention to and memory for detail which made him such an efficient Head of Reference also gave him a forensic precision in an argument. Not wanting to interrupt such good entertainment, she didn't go into the office but sat down at the enquiry desk. The department's morning mail had been placed there plus the all too familiar plastic bag containing the latest and (her spirits rose) presumably the last batch of short stories from the Gazette. Lying at the top of the bag, half in, half out, was a single sheet with only a few lines typed on it. Still listening to the row, she picked it up and read.

/ see thee as a flower, so fair and pure and fine. I gaze on thee and sadness steals in this heart of mine

83 'But this wasn't about the competition, was it?' Follows was blustering. 'These Dialogues, so far as I can make out, must have got mixed up with that by accident. Ripley said they were probably meant for the news desk of the Gazette.7 Trying to put distance between the library and any bad fallout from the Dialogues, thought Rye as her eyes continued to scan the verses.

/( is as though my fingers should linger in your hair, praying that God preserve thee so fine and pure and fair.

In the office Dee was enquiring courteously, 'Are you saying I should have known this and returned them to the Gazette?' 'That's what Mary Agnew thinks,' said Follows. 'She was on to me as soon as that Ripley woman finished last night. I don't think she believed me when I protested total ignorance.' 'I'm sure on mature reflection she won't have any difficulty with that concept,' said Dee. This was good stuff, uttered so politely that Follows could only do himself damage by acknowledging the insult, thought Rye. The poem was pretty good stuff too. It would be nice to think that Hat Bowler had broadened his chat-up technique to include this old-fashioned approach, but somehow she couldn't see him as a lovelorn poet. In any case, she didn't need to be Miss Marple to detect the true source of the stanzas. Slowly she raised her eyes and found herself, without surprise, looking across the library at Charley Penn, twisted round in his usual chair, regarding her with undisguised pleasure. She let the sheet slip to the floor, wiped her hand as if to remove some sticky substance, then ostentatiously applied herself to the task of opening the mail. There wasn't much and what there was didn't require her special attention, so finally with reluctance she turned her attention to the story bag. This might be the last consignment, but its bulk suggested there'd been a last-minute rush. The row was still going on though clearly not going anywhere. Dee was saying, 'If I'd any idea this was going to blow up the way it has, of course I would have filled you in, Percy. But the police urged absolute discretion upon us, no exceptions.' 'No exceptions? Don't you think you ought to have consulted me before involving the police in the first place?' At last Follows had laid a glove on Dee, thought Rye. But the Library Chief didn't have enough sense to jab at this weak point but kept flailing away in search of a knockout blow. 'And how the hell did Ripley get to know about this anyway? She took you to lunch yesterday. What did you talk about, Dick?' Not a bad question, thought Rye, easing the stories out on to the counter. 'The short story competition, of course. It was clear she was on a fishing expedition, asking about strange and unusual entries. Without direct reference to the Dialogues, she gave me the impression she somehow knew a great deal about them, but I certainly didn't add to her knowledge.' True or false? She certainly couldn't imagine Dick Dee being indiscreet unless he wanted to be. On the other hand, he would probably be scrupulous in a deal, even if the terms were unspoken. And just because he'd never used the opportunities offered by their working proximity to make even the most casual of physical contacts, let alone cop a feel, why should she be surprised, and even a little jealous, to find that Jax Ripley with her blue eyes, blonde hair and wide mouth had proved the type to ring his bell? As for the journalist herself, she thought with less generosity, her burning passion for a good story would probably have made her very willing to waggle Dee's clapper. She almost laughed aloud at the way her metaphor had developed, and close by heard an answering chuckle. Penn had left his seat and come to the desk. 'Good, isn't it?' he murmured. 'I'm so glad I got here early. Ah, there it is. I should hate it to get mixed up with these ... effusions.' He stooped and picked up the poem from the floor. 'I stopped at the desk with a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk over with Dick, but the fun was just starting and I didn't want to interrupt. This must have slipped out. A version of 'Du bist ivie eine Blume'. I quite like it. What did you think?' The? Didn't really take it in. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm busy. Unless you'd like to help me sort out your fellow writers?'