Dialogues of the Dead (30 page)

In the event, Urquhart turned up alone, Pottle having been overtaken by the rampaging virus which had laid low Rye Pomona and Hat Bowler. He sent in a written summary of his conclusions which didn't add a lot to what he'd said at the previous meeting. The Wordman was growing increasingly bold as each killing confirmed his sense of invulnerability. His purpose had clearly been to render Johnson defenceless by the drug before dispatching him by stifling. But when the lecturer had died without need of hands-on contact, this had been seen as yet another affirmation that he was on the right path. 'The Wordman is ruthless in performance, but not in retrospection,' wrote Pottle. 'The Dialogues are being held with three respondents. The first is the Underworld being who is at the same time both a shade of some individual and the Power which connives at this series of murders; the second is you, me, anyone reading the Dialogues, who will (he hopes) at the same time understand and approve his purpose, and admire and be baffled by his ingenuity; the third is himself. In the real world, as opposed to the timeless world of his ritual, he sees the victims as real people, not just necessary signposts on his mysterious path, and needs to persuade himself that they personally, or those who remain, benefit from their death.' Cautiously he refused to put down on paper any suggestion as to the kind of person they should be looking for but in a handwritten note invited Pascoe to give him a ring next week when he hoped to be recovered. Urquhart appeared, more, it seemed to Pascoe, for the pleasure he got out of provoking Andy Dalziel than because he felt he had anything useful to contribute. Or perhaps it was that a lifetime of adopting anti-authoritarian attitudes had left him unable to offer assistance to the police directly so he slipped it in obliquely under the guise of mocking them. And the Fat Man too, realized Pascoe in a flash of insight, actually enjoyed the bouts. His dismissal of the linguist as an over-educated underwashed blot on the Scottish escutcheon was an equally knee-jerk reaction. How much benefit he felt he derived from Urquhart's input was hard to guess, but he enjoyed the crack. 'So what've you got for us, Rob Roy?' he opened. 'Haud yer weesht, Hamish, and ye'll maybe find oot,' replied Urquhart. That was twice the Scot had shot Hamish at Dalziel like a custard pie, and twice Dalziel had looked momentarily spattered. Am I missing something? thought Pascoe. What Urquhart had got for them wasn't much, and at least as literary as linguistic, which made Pascoe suspect his isee hairie in the Eng. Lit. Department was seeing more of the Dialogues than she ought to be. Well, as long as the leak stopped there and didn't trickle into the tabloids, no harm done, and they were getting two experts for the price of one.

2JJ 'Pozzo said something about this guy and religion, didn't he? Not a religious maniac in the obvious sense, in fact probably totally a-religious on the surface. That's always the way with these trick-cyclists, isn't it? They give with one hand while they're taking away with the other, and in the end you're left with fuck all.' 'Better a handful of fuck all than a handful of crap, which is all I'm looking at so far,' growled Dalziel holding up a great paw as if in illustration. The too,' said Urquhart, staring hard at him. 'Like I said, lots of religious language, both in tone and direct reference, but you've probably noticed that yourself, Mr Pascoe.' Nice stress there, implying that I'm the police force's token literate, thought Pascoe. 'Yes, I did notice a few,' he said. 'But one thing keeps on coming up. First Dialogue: "the force behind the light, the force which burns away all fear ..." Third: "be the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid ..." Fourth: "in the light of that aura, I had no one to fear ..." Fifth: "my light and salvation which is why I don't have to fear any sod." I checked these out. And what I got was Psalm 27.' He produced a Bible and read, 'The Lord is my light and my salvation; inborn shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?' then looked around triumphantly, as if the silence which followed were tumultuous applause. 'Interesting,' said Pascoe hurriedly. 'May I see?' He took the book from Urquhart and read the beginning of the psalm. Dalziel said, 'And?' 'And me no ands, Andy,' said Urquhart. 'Except maybe I did wonder, looking at yon illustration in the First Dialogue, could that object in the bowl of the P be a book, maybe the Bible itself, or a missal in which you'd find the psalms?' Pascoe put the Bible down and looked at the illuminated letter. 'You could be right,' he said. 'It could be the spine of book. But what about the design on it? Any thoughts on that?' 'Maybe it's meant to be the specific codex that contains the illuminated In Principio this is based on?' suggested Urquhart. 'But you'd need a specialist to help you there.' Dalziel, who'd picked up the Bible to thumb through it, recited sonorously, '"Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." Please, no more specialists.' 'Aye, I can see how they'd be a bother to you,' said Urquhart. But he soon after brought his textual analysis to a conclusion. 'So it would seem to me that our wee Wordman could regard certain printed texts as a sort of coded gospel. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding, sort of thing.' 'That's Revelation, not a gospel,' said Dalziel. 'Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man.' 'Now why am I not surprised you know that, Superintendent?' said Urquhart. 'One last thing. In the Fifth Dialogue "life became too great a bore ..." that looks like a quote from the last letter that guy Beddoes poor Sam Johnson was researching wrote before he topped himself. "Life was too great a bore on one leg and that a bad one." Seems the poor sod had tried killing himself before and only succeeded in having a leg amputated. Him a doctor, too. Would have made a great NHS consultant from the sound of it!' 'That it?' said Dalziel. 'All right, young Lochinvar, you can ride back into the west.' This time Urquhart let the Fat Man have the last word and as if in acknowledgement, Dalziel waited till the door had closed behind him before he said, 'Another waste of fucking time!' 'I don't think so, sir,' said Pascoe firmly. 'We're building up a profile. And that last thing about the Beddoes quote, that tells us something.' 'Oh aye? From what you said about your mate being a bit of a piss-artist, mebbe it means he died legless too,' said Dalziel. 'Very good, sir. But it means the Wordman must be quite well acquainted with Beddoes' writings. And I know someone who's deeply interested.' 'Oh God, not Roote again!' groaned the Fat Man. 'Give it a rest, will you?' 'Arrest?' said Pascoe. 'That's exactly what I want to give him.' Dalziel regarded him sadly and said, 'Pete, tha's beginning to sound like this Wordman. You ought to get out more. What is it the kids say nowadays? Get a life, lad. Get a rucking life!'

z^3 Chapter Twenty-eight

But getting a life isn't easy when there's so much death around. On Saturday morning Pascoe woke, stretched, thought with pleasure, 'I'm off duty.' Then recalled he was going to a funeral, his second of the week. For a cop, weekends usually meant more rather than less work. Yet Pascoe, like a slave dreaming of home, had never lost an in-the-grain feeling that Saturdays were for football matches, odd jobs, partying, getting married, taking the family on a picnic, all that sort of good stuff. So, despite the fact that the pressures of the Wordman investigation were causing a huge contraction of official time off (without any proportionate expansion of official paid overtime), he'd clung on to his scheduled Wbrdman-free Saturday like a drowning man to a life-belt. But Linda Lupin, Loopy Linda, had changed all that. Murdered bodies, especially where poison is involved, are usually kept on ice until all parties with a forensic concern - police, coroner, DPS, and (if someone's in custody) defence counsel are content that every last drop of evidence, incriminatory or exculpatory, has been squeezed from them. Fond relatives are advised to put their grief in cold storage too against the day of its proper obsequial display. But when the fond relative is Linda Lupin, MEP, before whom even French officials have been known to quail, things may be arranged differently. Her reasoning (which, as always, came carved on tablets of stone) was that her step-brother's death was already causing Europe to suffer one period of her absence and it was doubtful if it could survive another so soon following. Therefore the funeral must take place during her current stay, i.e. before next week when she purposed to return to her divine task of keeping the Continent fit for AngloSaxons. And so it came to pass that Samjohnson was buried on Saturday morning. Linda would have preferred the finality of cremation, but here the coroner dug his heels in. The body must remain accessible. So the ceremony took place in St Hilda's, the university church. Official admission that Steel and Johnson were the Wordman's fourth and fifth victims was in itself enough to provoke the British media into a feeding frenzy of speculation and accusation, and the unexpected involvement of Linda Lupin was the ox-tail in the olio. The funeral could have degenerated into a cross between a pop-concert and an England away-match if the wise Victorian founders of the university hadn't extended the principle that any building likely to house students should be surrounded by high stone walls topped with shards of glass to include the church. University security guards, like a castle garrison in a siege, circumambulated the perimeter, pushing off the ladders by which the most depraved of invaders attempted to capture a view within, while a sharp radio message from the police soon took care of the helicopter which swooped, harpy-like, out of the low cloud cover above. But local knowledge, like love, can o'erperch the highest walls, and as Peter and Ellie Pascoe made their way up the gravelled path towards the church door, what looked like a lapidary Death detached itself from a tombstone and revealed itself as Sammy Ruddlesdin. 'Time for a quick word, Peter?' he asked. Pascoe shook his head and pressed on. Ruddlesdin kept pace with them. 'At least say if you're here in your official capacity or as a family friend,' he insisted. Pascoe shook his head again and went through the doorway into the church porch. Ellie paused on the steps and hissed into Ruddlesdin's ear, 'In which of his capacities would you like to be told to fuck off, Sammy?' As she followed her husband, the reporter yelled after her, 'Is that a quote, Mrs Pascoe?'

255 She sat down next to Peter, kicked her shoes off and rested her feet on a hassock. Pascoe murmured, 'Thought I'd lost you.' 'Just having a word.' 'Oh hell. What did you say?' he asked in alarm. 'Nothing printable,' she assured him. 'I told him to mck off.' 'You didn't? You did. Bit rough, weren't you? It's only old Sammy.' She turned her head to look at him and said, 'Peter, I don't know what capacity you are here in, but me, I've come to say goodbye to someone I'll miss, someone I regarded as a good friend, and that doesn't involve being polite to journalists, whether it's old Sammy or any of those other hyenas prowling around out there. So just let me get on with mourning, OK?' 'Fine,' he said. 'So you won't be assaulting Loopy Linda with a custard pie then?' Linda Lupin was one of the Left's pet hate figures. Ellie considered. 'No. Not till she's off holy ground, anyway.' One thing that even her many enemies had to acknowledge of Linda Lupin was that she had presence. Not even a coffin could upstage her. The solemn progress of the last remains of Sam Johnson up the aisle went almost unremarked as all gazes focused on the unexpected sister. She was of stocky build, medium height, with cropped black hair, wide-set eyes which never seemed to blink, a long nose, a rubber mouth and a chin to break ice with. Yet she was not unattractive. Indeed a retired politician famous for his amours had confessed to getting more pleasure out of a recurring fantasy involving Linda and a cat-o'-nine-tails than real-life affairs with two or three women he most ungallantly named. Her strength, thought Pascoe, was that in any company on any occasion she never for one moment showed doubt that she was the most important person present. Her current entourage, con sisting of the university Vice-Chancellor and the senior members of the English Department all in their academic robes, looked like a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus doing their stiltedly intricate little routines behind the principal singer. Indeed most of the chief mourners were university people, including several colleagues Pascoe had heard Johnson in his cups categorize as 'plagiarizing plonkers who haven't had an original idea since they cut off their bollocks to see where their watery spunk came from.' Two in particular he'd mocked for their alleged attempts to wheedle their way into his confidence so that they could gain access to his painstakingly acquired Romantic database. Well, perhaps now was their chance. He couldn't see Loopy Linda having much use for it, so presumably it would go to the most successful sycophant. One absentee, whom he'd expected to see if not among the chief mourners, at least on the fringe of the group, was Franny Roote. He and Ellie were seated quite near the back of the church and the student/gardener certainly wasn't in front of them. Odd, he found himself thinking. Then, recalling Dalziel's warning against obsessionalism, he firmly put the matter out of his mind. The service got under way. The university chaplain, a young man who was almost brutal in his determination to avoid the old orotund style, gave an account ofjohnson's life which, whatever it did to the traditionalists, moved Ellie to tears. When he finished, the chaplain said, 'And now, if anyone here would like to say something more about Sam, please come forward ... We don't often get the chance to speak from the heart. Don't be afraid to take it.' He descended from the pulpit and took his seat below, gazing out with an encouraging smile at the congregation who, naturally, being British, lowered their eyes, shifted uneasily on their buttocks, and generally gave every sign of acute embarrassment. Pascoe bowed his head in deep prayer, in fact in two deep prayers, the first being that Loopy Linda wouldn't seize the chance for one of her famous bring-back-the-bastinado rants. The second, and more fervent, was that Ellie wouldn't make a move. Believing that God helps those who help God, with his right foot he edged one of her discarded shoes out of her reach. Not that that would stop her. If the fit came on her, she was quite capable of advancing bare-footed, like a penitent of old. He felt her muscles tense preparatory to rising. Then good old God at last showed his appreciation of his servant Pascoe's efforts to give Him a helping hand. Or foot. Somewhere behind them there was a susurrus of rising bodies and speculation as someone