Dialogues of the Dead (37 page)

3°9 Looking forward to a bit of miracle-making, Hat called out as he approached, 'So what's the hold-up? Top athlete like you, I thought you'd just leap across.' She turned to look at him and he immediately regretted his frivolous words. Her face was set, her eyes wide and startled. After her previous showing he couldn't understand why such a small obstacle should cause such a strong reaction, but he hurried for ward to reassure her there really wasn't any problem. Before he could speak she pointed and said, 'Hat . .. down there . ..' He looked downstream, his brain anticipating a distressed ani mal ... a fox with a gangrenous trapped leg perhaps ... or a drowned sheep ... And at first he saw nothing. Then he made it out. In the water, mostly submerged, held by the fast moving current against the hidden stepping stones over which he had planned to run so miraculously, was a body. Or perhaps it wasn't a body. The eye is easily deceived. Perhaps it was just some green plastic farm-feed bag, blown here by the autumn gales, bulked out by trapped air and floating vegetation. He ran along the bank, hoping to be able to turn to Rye and with his laughter at her error bring the colour back to her face. But as he stepped out along the hidden stones and bent down for a closer look, he saw there was no cause for laughter here. Rye was on the bank alongside him. He looked up at her and said warningly, 'I'm going to pull it out.' She turned away with affected indifference and said, 'There's a boat down there. I'll take a look.' He glanced downstream. Thirty yards or so, just before the creek entered the tarn, a flat-bottomed boat was moored. The policeman in him wanted to say, No. Don't go near. This could be a crime scene and the less we contaminate it the better. Instead he said, 'Yeah, why don't you do that?' He'd only seen one drowned body before, but that had been enough to demonstrate what water without and decay within could do to weak human flesh. Rye looked shaken enough already with- , out that. She moved away, and he stooped and with both hands took hold of what looked like a waxed outdoor jacket. It was difficult to get a grip but finally he succeeded and began to drag the body out of the water. 'Oh shit,' he said as he got the torso on to the bank. It was a body all right, but not all of it. Or not all a body. Or only part of a body. Or a body with a bit missing. In fact, was a body a body if you didn't have all of it? Which questions of semantics were only occupying his mind to divert it from the fact that the corpse had no head. He forced himself to concentrate. >From the look of it, the head hadn't been detached through the depredations of water life. In fact he doubted very much if this fast-flowing freshwater stream harboured denizens capable of inflicting such damage. No, if he had to make a quick pathological guess based on the evidence of his eyes, he'd say that it had been chopped off. And it had taken several blows. He dragged the corpse fully out of the water and stood up, glad to put even the distance of his height between himself and the monstrous thing at his feet. He looked to see where Rye was. She had clambered aboard the moored boat and was stooping over something. Now his police training got the upper hand. This was beyond doubt the scene of a crime. He recalled the advice of a police college training officer. 'At a crime scene, put your hands in your pocket and play with your dick. That way you won't be tempted to touch anything else.' 'Rye,' he called, moving towards her. She stood up and turned to him. Even in these circumstances he could admire the graceful balance of her body as she adjusted easily to the gentle rocking of the boat beneath her feet. She was holding something, a basket of some kind, the sort that fishermen use, what was it called? A creel, that was it. And she was pulling the straps from the buckles that held the lid down. She shouldn't be doing that. And not just because of the risk of contaminating the scene. No, there was something else.

311 Precognition, instinct, detective work, call it what you will, but he knew beyond all doubt what was in that basket. 'No!' he cried running towards her. 'Rye, leave it!' But it was always going to be too late. She pulled up the lid and peered inside. She tried not to scream or perhaps it was just that her vocal cords were too constricted to produce anything more than a dim echo of the grate of the grindstone on the axehead. For a moment he thought she was going to topple backwards into the water, but her weakening knees flexed, and as if in acknowledgement that something had to go, either herself or what she held in her hands, she hurled the basket from her on to the bank. It hit the ground, bounced, turned over, and out of it rolled a human head. Even before it came to a halt at his feet, Hat had recognized that in one sense at least it was not out of place in this setting. If a man has to die, then let him die on his own land. This was beyond all dispute the head of Geoffrey, Lord PykeStrengler of the Stang. Chapter Thirty-six

THE SIXTH DIALOGUE

Hello again.

Me too. What a wondrously varied path this is you've put me on! A Right to Roam Bill which did not need an Act of Parliament to make it law. Winding though private properties and public buildings, tracking ancient highways and rural byways, and now leading me far from the populous city to the dark heart of the countryside. For it is the path that leads, not 1 who lead my chosen ones along the path. Indeed it is the path that does the choosing, letting them think always that they advance of their own accord. I myself am merely an instrument.

Or a French horn, maybe. 1 like the idea of being a French horn. Seriously, my role as simple instrument has never been clearer than it was today. The chosen one answered his cues like one who had spent long hours conning the part. Never at the Athenian bouphonia did ox approach the sacrificial altar more willingly. All the necessary instruments he provided himself, even putting the guilty weapon into my hands with his own. And in that moment time stopped. Nothing gradual, no slow slowing down as often before. Time is ... time isn't. And the burbling of the creek around the moored boat joins with the twarting of a whaup into one long melancholy line of sound stretching up from the dimpled tarn into the vast inane of the sky, like a phone-line to the Gods. How comforting to think of Them reclining up there, listening with solemn approval to all that goes on here below.

^ In my hands the oiled steel column trembles and throbs towards its spontaneous climax. And now its seed spurts out, as black and round as sturgeon roe, fanning through the air to plant immortal life in this mortal flesh before me. His mouth gapes wide in the ecstasy of that moment of ultimate penetration, but not as wide as this new red orifice about his throat out of which I see his soul fly like a bird escaping its cage. Off it goes, winging its way across the glimmering tarn, rejoicing in its sudden freedom, while here on the dull earth its empty cage collapses beside the laughing creek. The guilty weapon I hurl into the cleansing waters. No arm rises up to take it. I have work still to do. The head, half-severed from its fleshy stalk by the shotgun blast, must be completely plucked and set in its container. The axe is at hand - where else would it be? Three blows complete the work, no more, no less. For this is a truly trinal day, three in one, the trinity completed as I roll the corpse into the sounding stream. What of the axe? I heft it in my hand and contemplate the inscrutable waters. But it bears no guilt. It is an instrument of my path not his departure. So let it be. Bearing it with me I move away, and with each step I feel time's drag return. Oh, let me come soon to that safe haven where I shall mark time forever. And time will lose power to mark me. Chapter Thirty-seven

'The bouphonia,' said Drew Urquhart, 'which can be translated as "the murder of the ox", was an Athenian rite aimed at bringing an end to a period of drought and its associated deprivations. You'll likely have read about it in The Golden Bough...' He paused and directed a smile at Dalziel, who said, 'I don't do much reading in pubs. Just give us the gist.' 'Frazer describes the ritual thus. Barley and wheat were laid on the altar and oxen driven close by. The animal that went up to the altar and started eating was sacrificed by men using axe and knife, which weapons they immediately threw away from them and fled. Ultimately everyone concerned in the animal's death stood trial, each passed on the blame till it came to be laid completely at the door of the knife and the axe which were judged guilty, condemned and hurled into the sea.' Pascoe, who had been listening closely - unlike his master who had cupped his great hands round his great face and was groaning softly into the resultant funnel with a sound like a rising westerly echoing through Fingal's Cave - asked, 'So you think this is why the Wordman threw the gun away but not the axe? The Hon. was dead when his head got chopped off so the axe wasn't guilty.' 'That's right. You'll have noticed how he talks about the weapon more or less firing itself, just as he talks about the victim selecting itself, like the Athenian ox. By the by, did the PM find any sign he'd been eating anything?' Pascoe glanced at Dalziel who was the arbiter of how much information they gave non-officials, but before he could get eye contact, Dr Pottle (back to full smoking strength after his recent illness) said, 'More significant than all these word games he clearly likes playing could be the strong sexual imagery he uses here. It's what's happening in his psyche that will give us the clue to track

3^ him down, not his warped rationality. That is an area over which, by its very nature, he still has some control. It's the emotions, the passions, running out of control which will betray him in the end. At the very least, they may result in the deposit of significant physical traces. You've checked the ground thoroughly for signs of semen, I presume? It reads to me as if ejaculation almost cer tainly took place either during or immediately after the event.' Dalziel's head emerged from its cavern and he said coldly, 'I'm not right sure what your job is, Dr Pottle, but one thing I'm sure it's not is telling me mine. By a stroke of luck which was long overdue it were one of my own officers who was first on the scene; so as far as possible it's been kept uncontaminated. Yes, we've gone over every inch of that terrain for half a mile in all directions. Yes, everything there was to be recorded, removed, examined and analysed has been taken care of. We've dragged the tarn and found the gun and a deal of rubbish beside, none of which looks like it might be relevant. We've got the axe from the cottage and found traces of blood on it which show it was the same as was used on the Hon. Geoffrey. And, yes, Mr Urquhart, the post mortem found traces of cucumber sandwich in his mouth and on the bank by the boat we found a sandwich, wholewheat bread, by the bye, with a single bite out of it. All this is confidential police information which I'm telling you just to show how far I'm willing to go to catch this lunatic. If any of it helps either of you two jokers to tell us owt useful, speak now or forever hold your pieces.' He regarded the visiting experts with the open expression of a . man who had laid all his cards on the table. Except of course, thought Pascoe, he hadn't mentioned that Bowler had confessed to allowing his bit of skirt to seriously contaminate the scene, he hadn't mentioned that they'd turned Stangcreek Cottage upside \softline down and questioned Dick Dee for five hours straight off (during which time he hadn't asked for his solicitor and at the end of ' which time he'd looked a lot fresher than his interrogators) before ;, releasing him, and he hadn't mentioned that a very alert forensic examiner had noticed faint traces of blood on the fish hook on | one of the rods in the boat, which on examination had proved to ) be human and AB, unlike the Hon.'s which was A. And he certainly ) hadn't mentioned that the Hon.'s Land Rover, which they'd alerted police forces nationally to look out for, had just been discovered in the police car-pound to which it had been removed for illegal parking behind the railway station. The Dialogue hadn't turned up till Monday morning when it was discovered among the library mail, but from the moment Bowler had rung in on Sunday with news of his grisly discovery, they'd treated it as a Wordman killing. Not, as Wield had observed, that this made them feel like they were one step ahead of the game, only that the bugger now had them all playing it according to his rules. Now, on Tuesday morning, Pascoe had persuaded a reluctant Dalziel that it was time to hear what the 'experts' had to say. 'Well?' growled Dalziel. Urquhart scratched his stubbly chin with a noise which sounded like a challenge to the heavyweight champion of carnal frication who sat before him and said, 'Trinal, trinity, in three parts. Find out what he's on about there and you might be in sniffing distance of what makes the bugger tick.' 'Doesn't it just refer to the three blows used to chop the head off?' suggested Pascoe. 'That certainly reinforces it,' said the linguist. 'But a head and a body make two parts not three, so it's not that. And why roll the body into the water and put the head into the fishing basket? There's something going on here that we're missing.' 'That it?' said Dalziel. 'There's summat we're missing? Well, thank you, Sherlock. Dr Pottle, owt you can add to that, or mebbe you feel your colleague's said it all?' Pottle lit a fresh cigarette from the one he was smoking and said, 'He's really getting into his swing. I don't know how far away the proposed end is, but he's completely sure he's going to get there now. This is by far the shortest Dialogue yet. The further he gets, the shorter they're likely to become. Reliving the last experience in Words is merely occupying precious time which could better be devoted to looking forward to the next one. Now he's certain he's on the right path, his dialogue with his victims and with his spirit-guide can just as easily continue in his mind as on the page.' 'You think he might stop writing altogether?' said Pascoe. 'No. That part of the writing which is part of the game he's playing with us will remain. It's in the rules, so to speak. And he

3H enjoys it. I said last time that his growing confidence is likely to be his downfall. I think that more and more he will be dropping little clues into his Dialogues. He's like a squash player who is so certain of his vast superiority that he'll start playing with the racket in his wrong hand, or boasting all his shots off the back wall. But the subconscious self-revelations which I am looking for will be much harder to find. Though it hurts me to say it, I think that from now on Mr Urquhart's skills are going to be more useful than mine.' Dalziel let out a sigh so redolent of tragic despair he could have sold it to Mrs Siddons. As if in response, his phone rang. He answered. With most people it's possible to gauge some thing of their relationship with a caller from tone of voice, vocabulary, body language, et cetera, but Pascoe had never found a way of working out whether Dalziel were speaking to the Queen or an estate agent. 'Dalziel,' he snarled. Listened. 'Aye.' Listened. 'Nay.' Listened. 'Mebbe.' Dropped the receiver on to the rest so that it bounced. Cap Marvell perhaps asking if he fancied a bout of violent sexual activity in his lunch hour? The PM offering him a peerage? The Wordman threatening his life? 'That it, gents?' said Dalziel hopefully. Pottle and Urquhart looked at each other, then the Scot said, 'Way I see it, words are the key. This is like breaking a text-based code. You can do it the long way, by sheer hard work, or you can hit lucky and find the significant text, or texts.' 'Or you can hope his growing arrogance results in a clue that someone can solve before rather than after the event,' said Pottle. 'I'll make a note of that,' said the Fat Man dismissively. 'Thanks, gents. Work to do. DC Bowler here will see you out.' Pottle and Urquhart gathered their papers together. Pascoe said effusively, 'Good of you both to come. Please don't hesitate to give me a ring if anything occurs.' At the door Urquhart said with heavy irony, 'Don't know why it is, Superintendent, but whenever I leave these meetings, I some times get to worrying just a wee bittie how much you really think I've managed to help you.' 'Nay, Mr Urquhart,' said Dalziel with a fulsome orotundity, 'I'd be real sorry to think I'd left you in any doubt about that. 'Plonker,' he added as the door closed, or maybe just a moment earlier. 'Then I don't really see why you bother to sit in on these sessions,' said Pascoe, letting his irritation show. 'Because if I weren't ready to spend time with plonkers, I'd likely be a lonely man,' said Dalziel. 'Any road, I didn't say he were a useless plonker. And if Pozzo says we ought to listen to him, them mebbe we should. He sometimes puffs out a bit of sense.' This was a roundabout concession to Pascoe, who had a good personal relationship with Pottle, and knowing it was the closest he was likely to get to an apology, the DCI put aside his irritation and said, 'So where do we go from here, sir?' The, I'm going to see Desperate Clan. That were him on the phone. You, if I remember right, have got a date with the vultures. Don't know what Wieldy here has got on. Mebbe he can find time to do a bit of police work if some bugger doesn't want him to judge a bonny baby competition.' Desperate Clan was Chief Constable Trimble. The vultures were the media. Interest in the Wordman killings had increased exponentially with each new death and this latest killing had rocketed it into an international dimension. Not only was the Hon. a peer of the realm, but one of the tabloids had worked out that there was a distant royal connection which put him at something like three hundred and thirty-seventh in line to the throne. American and European interest had exploded. One German TV company had dug up a would-be telly don whose claim that a Pyke-Strengler had been beheaded during the Civil War sparked speculation that a left-wing revolutionary movement was behind the killing. Attempts to fit the earlier killings into such a political pattern were proving ludicrous, but journalists haven't reached the depths of their profession by allowing ludicrosity to get in the way of a good story. Pascoe, who had ambiguous feelings about being regarded as the acceptable face of policing, had been elected spokesman at the forthcoming press conference. His ambiguity rose from a reluctance to accept the kind of type-casting which, while it might be good for his career, could also take it in directions he was not yet ready to go. The world of policy committees and high-level