Dialogues of the Dead (34 page)

And as Dalziel escorted his lady on to the dance floor, Peter Pascoe escorted Franny Roote out of the police station. 'Let me say again how sorry I am about this misunderstanding, Mr Roote,' he said. 'A simple breakdown in communication, I'm afraid.' 'That's what lies at the root of most human problems, isn't it, Mr Pascoe?' said the man earnestly. 'A simple breakdown in communication. If only words always did what we want them to. Goodnight.' He climbed into the police car provided to take him back to his flat, smiled up at Pascoe through the window and gave a little wave as the vehicle moved off into the darkness. Pascoe watched it go. 'I think words always do exactly what you want them to do, Franny, my boy,' he murmured. 'The root of most human problems. Oh yes, that fits you to a tee. But I shall pull you up out of the earth before I'm finished and consign you to the bonfire like any other noxious weed. I shall. I shall. Believe me, I shall!' He went to his own car, climbed in, and drove home.

283 Chapter Thirty-one

'My God,' said Rye Pomona as she opened the door. 'The birdman cometh!' 'What?' said Hat Bowler, his face darkening. 'What what'? It's called a joke. Or is there some rule which says twitchers' gear mustn't be a source of merriment?' Hat, though he felt rather dashing in a Great Outdoors windswept sort of way, was more baffled than offended by this reference to his camouflage forage cap, RSPB tanktop and moleskin breeks. Then his error dawned on him. 'Sorry. You said birdman. I thought you said Wordman, which I didn't think was very funny. ..' 'Which indeed it would not have been, had I indeed said it,' replied Rye coolly. 'Is there anything else I haven't said which you would care to be offended by?' This wasn't the start he'd hoped for, thought Hat. Time to regroup. 'You look great,' he said, running his eyes down her yellow top and burgundy shorts. 'The birds will be watching you.' She made a face like she'd just sucked a lemon, which was not the optimum reaction to what had in the past been a pretty successful chat-up line but nonetheless preferable to chilly reproach. 'You'd better come in before someone sees you and sends for help,' she said. 'As I suspect you've guessed, I'm not ready. You're early, aren't you?' He followed her into her flat. There were old movies, he recollected, where a guy drove up to a girl's front door, blew his horn, and watched her come running down the steps, big smile on her face, hoping she hadn't kept him waiting. But this was a recollection he thought better to keep to himself, as was the observation that no, he wasn't early, but so dead on time you could have set a nuclear clock by him. He sat down and said, 'Hey, I saw you on telly last night.' 'You did? You must have sharp eyes.' 'Twitchers' eyes,' he said. 'Spot a redwing at three hundred paces. By the way, don't know if it's the same for girls, but my mother used to tell me to be careful pulling funny faces or I might stop like that.' That worked. The renewed sour-lemon look vanished to be replaced by a broad grin. 'You think it's easy scowling when what I planned was . ..' 'What?' 'Something like this.' She stooped over him and kissed him on the lips, lightly but with a definite hint of tongue. This was even better than smiling girl running down the steps to the car. She said, 'I'll be with you in a couple of minutes.' He watched her go into what he presumed was the bedroom and fantasized about following her. Decided no. That kiss was encouraging but not an invitation. Besides, these moleskin breeks were hell to get out of in a hurry, and in the distant future he wanted their first time to be replayable for passion not for laughs. The distant future. Why was he so certain they were going to have a distant future together in which to remember a first time? Because he couldn't imagine any kind of future apart. 'So what was that all about last night?' she called to him through the partially open door. 'All what where who?' 'Don't be coy. All that with your two colleagues, Dorian Grey and the attic.' He worked this out. 'DCI Pascoe and Sergeant Wield,' he said. 'You mean at the presentation?' He'd seen it on TV. And he'd got a detailed background when he called in at the station that morning, thinking, with the kind of logic he'd have probably laughed at in a woman, that after a

285 couple of days on sick leave it might be well to establish that he was recovered sufficiently to take his day off. 'You see, you do know all what where who,' Rye said from the bedroom. 'When that creepy guy Roote came up to get his prize, I saw beauty and the beast watching him like they'd have preferred to be massaging his extremities with a cattle prod. At least, that's how the good-looking one looked. The other always looks like that, I guess.' 'Well, there's a bit of a history there,' said Hat. She came out of the bedroom. The top and shorts had been replaced by jeans and a chunky brown sweater and her crown of hair tucked into a drab green beret. 'Will the birds still be watching me?' she said challengingly. 'Only if they've any sense,' he said. She nodded and said, 'Good answer. So what's this history, and what had been going on last night to hot things up? Was it something to do with the security cameras?' 'How the hell do you know that?' he demanded. 'That ugly sergeant started asking me questions again about the morning I found the Ripley Dialogue. But what he seemed particularly interested in was me finding Charley Penn's transla tion of "dm hist wie eine Blume". It felt like he'd been watching me and the only way I could figure that was, the camera must have been on. If that's right and you lot have only just realized, it looks like someone's been sleeping on the job, eh?' 'What did Wield say about Penn?' asked Hat, trying to keep his voice neutral. 'Not a lot. He's not exactly effusive, is he? I suggested leaving poetry lying around was an oblique form of sexual harassment which he might care to investigate, and I think he smiled but it might just have been wind.' 'But he didn't actually mention the tapes?' 'No. I worked that out all by my little self.' 'Clever,' he said. 'Really. I'm not taking the piss.' 'Yeah. Well, I did sweet-talk Dave, the security man, just to be sure,' she admitted. 'So come on. Fill me in on Franny Roote and your DCI.' It did not seem a good time to plead police confidentiality, and besides he was in so deep sharing Wordman stuff with Rye that it was easier to go on than pull back, so he told her about Pascoe's fraught relationship with Franny Roote. 'When I saw him going up to the stage last night, I was gobsmacked,' he said. 'Especially after what they'd said about the winning story. Didn't sound like him at all.. .' 'Like your Mr Pascoe's version of him, you mean?' she said. 'I have met him myself a couple of times,' said Hat defensively. 'And you called him creepy.' 'Yeah, but I meant it sort of literally. He gets in the library sometimes, and he moves so lightly, you never know he's there till suddenly he's next to you. So Pascoe fancies him for the Wordman? Hey, I've just thought. His wife was helping Penn to judge, wasn't she? Co-operating with one suspect to give the prize to another! I bet Pascoe was delighted about that. I bet they lay awake all night chuckling about it.' 'She wasn't to know, was she?' said Hat, who was an Ellie Pascoe fan. 'You must have read the story. How did it sound to you?' 'Good,' she admitted. 'Dick thought it was the tops. I wasn't quite so enthusiastic, but I did think it was good. Moving, you know. Lot of uplift. Not really my thing.' The seed of a quip about a girl with a figure like hers not needing a lot of uplift spurted across his mind but died before it got close to ejaculation. 'Well, it seems what actually happened last night was this . ..' said Hat, who when he gave his trust didn't care to stint. It was Wield who'd filled him in. He'd have probably preferred to keep the whole business low key but the way things panned, this hadn't been an option. The story of Roote's return visit was being told all over the station with advantages, and it seemed sensible to give Bowler a fall account, to help set the record straight. 'It's not CID at its best, but it's a lot better than some of the versions that are fluttering about,' concluded the sergeant. 'You hear them, you stamp on them, OK?' 'OK,' said Hat. 'What's the super's reaction to all this?' 'Mr Dalziel must have danced himself off the ground,' said Wield. 'He's not been seen yet. But no doubt he'll appear shortly. And if you want to enjoy your day off, lad, I'd advise you to make

287 yourself scarce. The super has a tendency to count days spent on sick leave as normal rest days.' All this Hat now told Rye who frowned and said, 'He does sound a bit weird.' 'Roote?' 'No. This Pascoe. I thought when I met him that this was one tightly held together guy.' 'Perhaps he needs to be. He feels threatened.' 'That's it, isn't it? He feels threatened. From what you say, there haven't actually been any threats, have there?' 'No. But this Roote's something else. I can see how he could threaten you without actually threatening you, if you know what I mean.' She looked at him quizzically and said, 'You're a loyal man, Constable Bowler. Decided what you're going to do about Georgie Porgie yet?' That had been something else Wield had said. There'd been two or three more phone calls from Angela Ripley. Wield himself had taken one and, according to him, she didn't sound altogether persuaded that Hat was really sick. The sergeant paused to allow explanation but when it didn't come, he didn't press. And he'd said absolutely nothing about talking to Rye about Charley Penn. Discretion or distrust? 'Cat got your tongue?' said Rye. 'Sorry. Nothing is what I'm going to do about the DI,' said Hat defiantly. 'Angela Ripley will be on her way back to the States today. I don't see any reason to muck up George's retirement party.' Suddenly she kissed him again. 'And you're a very nice man too,' she said. 'Let's go and look at some birds.' It was a day of sun and light showers with a brisk west wind driving clouds down the sky and swirling leaves across the road in the MG's path. He'd kept the hood up because of this but Rye had said, 'Can't we have it down?' and now as they sped along, she pulled off her beret and leaned her head back with eyes closed and such an expression of sheer delight on her face that now the dancing leaves seemed to Hat like rose petals scattered before a marriage procession. Watch it, son, he mocked himself, or she'll have you writing poetry next, you whose appreciation of verse never got much beyond 'The Good Ship Venus'. The thought was mother to a couplet.

/ went out with Raina. By God, you should have seen her.

He laughed to himself but she noticed. 'Come on,' she said, having to shout above the rushing air. 'Today we share.' He told her. It didn't sound all that fanny but it got a fullthroated laugh. Encouraged, he said, 'Seeing it's share time, how about the story of your life? How come you're a librarian?' 'What's wrong with librarians?' she demanded. 'Nothing,' he assured her. 'Bit of an image problem, maybe. All I meant was you, with your background and looks and everything, how come you didn't end up in the theatre? I mean, Raina Pomona, if ever a name looked custom-built for bright lights, that must be it!' She said something but the wind caught it and whirled it away. 'Sorry?' he shouted. 'I said, once upon a time, maybe . .. but that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead.' She laughed as she said this, not like before, but this time with an edge as bright and sharp as the wind that was rippling the silver blaze in her hair like a pike in a dark mere. 'You OK?' he said. 'Do you want the hood up?' 'No,' she cried. 'Of course not. Doesn't this thing go any faster?' He said, 'How fast do you want to go?' 'Fast as you like,' she said. 'OK.' They were off the main road now and on to narrow country byways. He leaned his weight into the accelerator and sent the hedgerows blurring by. He was a good driver, good enough to know that he was driving too fast, not for the bends in the road - those his technique could deal with - but for the unexpected which might lie in wait around any one of them. But Rye was leaning against him, her right arm round his shoul 289 ders, her left hand gripping his forearm tight, her mouth so close to his cheek that he could feel the warmth of her breath mingling in the cold blast of air which their speed was driving in their faces. He took a long left-hand curve, shallow enough to present no problems or even require any diminution of speed, but as the car came out of the bend, a deer jumped over the hedgerow on the right, paused long enough to register their approach, then bounded effortlessly into the field on the left. Probably there was no risk of collision but instinctively his foot hit the brake, only for a second, but with the car still off-line and a scatter of wet leaves on the road, it was enough to set up a skid. As skids go, it was nothing, the kind of thing he could control in his sleep. But the road was narrow and the offside wheels were on to the grass verge in the brief moment before he regained full control. Fortunately the ground wasn't boggy and there was no ditch, but it did make the whole thing a little more dramatic as hawthorn branches whipped across the windscreen and their faces before he brought the car to a halt which threw them forward against the seat belts. 'Well, that was fun,' said Hat. 'Thank you, Bambi. Shit! Rye, are you OK?' For the girl's response to his attempted lightness was to let out a piercing cry of pain and collapse forward, sobbing convulsively. He released his seat belt and turned to her. 'What's happened? Where's it hurt?' he demanded, looking for but not finding any signs of bleeding. 'It's all right,' she gasped. 'Really ... there's nothing...' Gently he raised her head and looked into her face. There was no colour in her cheeks and her eyes were full of tears, but he felt no physical response as his fingers touched her neck and collarbone in search of damage. She took several deep breaths, knuckled the tears from her eyes, and said, 'Honestly, before you start getting too gynaecological, I'm OK.' 'You didn't sound OK.' 'Shock.' 'Yeah?' He looked at her doubtfully. What?' 'A little skid. Over in a second. You don't seem ...' 'The type?' she completed. 'So suddenly you know all about me, do you, Detective?' 'No. But I'd like to. After all, it was you who said that today was for sharing.' 'I said that? Yes, I believe I did.' She opened the door and got out and stood there, stretching as if it were bed she'd just got out of. Then she turned to him and said, 'Didn't you promise to provide the provisions for this expedition? Would that include coffee? Because if it does, that's certainly something I've no objection to sharing.'