Dialogues of the Dead (46 page)

LorD haVe MerCIe Vpon Vs

'Add this up and you will see we get 1666. The reference incidentally isn't to the Great Fire but to the^other great event which Dryden celebrates in his Annus Mirabilis, the naval warfare between Britain and Holland.' It was interesting, thought Pascoe. The more he got into his teaching mode, the less marked his Scots accent became. 'This one uses U's as V's too, though it's not in Latin,' said Wield. 'A licence carried over from the craft of lapidary inscription,' said Urquhart. 'Before they got power tools, it was a lot easier for masons to carve straight lines and angles than curves. Our Wordman, however, is a purist. In his triplet, only Vs count numerically. And you will note that as in all the best chronograms every numerically significant letter is capitalized and therefore counts. It's much easier if you just pick out those that add up to the sum you want. Anyway, let's see what we have.' He wrote:

1+5+1+1+5+50+1+500+500+1+1+1+500+1+5+1+1+1 = 1576

'Well, there you go,' he said complacently, returning to his seat. They all sat looking at the board like Belshazaar's courtiers staring at the wall. 'And that's it?' said Andy Dalziel. 'Unless my arithmetic's wrong.' 'But what the fuck does it mean?'

385 'Hey, man, I'm just the language man, you're the fucking detectives. But when he says "a date I have", I take that to mean with his next victim, so 1576 has got to be some kind of pointer.' 'I'm sorry, my history's pretty lousy,' said Peter Pascoe. 'Did anything significant happen in 1576?' 'I expect shit happened, it usually does,' said Urquhart indiffer- '| ently. 'Look, that's it for me. Unless you've got any questions I ' can answer, I've got a lecture to give.' I 'I too have promises to keep,' said Pottle. 'So unless there islj anything else . ..' 'Else!7 echoed Dalziel under his breath but not that far. Pascoe looked around the room then said, 'No that looks like it for now. Again, many many thanks, both. I'll be in touch. And' of course, if anything occurs to you, don't hesitate to contact me at any time.' The two academics left. After an uncomfortable moment, the Chief Constable said, 'Well, that solves at least one problem,, Andy. Now we can get down to all those details of advanced investigative techniques and likely suspects you didn't want to share with civilians.' 'Right,' said the Fat Man. 'Peter?' Well, thanks a bunch, thought Pascoe. He said, 'Sir, we're throwing everything at this. Forensic, com-'i puter records, plus all the manpower we can muster interviewing 8 everyone who got within half a mile of the library yesterday'; evening. All the library security tapes and all the tapes from every- . where else in the shopping precinct are being gone over inch by], inch. And as you've seen with Dr Pottle and Dr Urquhart, we're i drawing on every kind of outside help we can think of.' ; 'Suspects?' said Trimble. ;| 'Yes, sir. Immediately upon establishing that a crime had been committed last night, we sent officers to ascertain the whereabouts and movements of the three men we have in the frame.' I 'Who are...?' | Pascoe drew a deep breath and said, 'Charley Penn, Franny: Roote, Dick Dee.' j The Chief Constable had to know there were no others, yet' he still managed to look disappointed. 'I see,' he said. 'So after eight deaths your thinking doesn't take;

j86 you past this trio whom I understand you have already looked very closely at. Charley Penn, the nearest thing we have in the area to a media celebrity. And Franny Roote, in whom I gather you have a strong personal interest, Mr Pascoe. And Dick Dee, the man who was instrumental in getting us to take this matter seriously in the first place.' He raised his eyebrows at Pascoe who felt like saying, 'Well, thank you kindly, sir, for pointing out the sodding obvious to us poor dumb detectives. Now why don't you piss off back to your big office and leave us to get on with our underpaid jobs?' Instead he said mildly, 'The Wordman too is a media celebrity. And I have a strong professional interest in Mr Roote. As for Dee, fire investigators advise taking a close look at the guy who reports the fire, also the main man on the spot when you arrive.' Trimble considered this, seemed to spot the subtext, smiled faintly and said, 'I do hope we're not anticipating arson attacks too. Any joy when you checked them out?' 'Nothing positive. But none of them had a firm alibi for the early part of the evening.' 'Well, that's something, I suppose. Though, come to think of it, I don't think I've got a firm alibi either.' Trimble stood up suddenly and the others rose too. 'I won't keep you back from your work any longer. I don't need to impress on any of you how urgent it is we bring this business to a rapid and satisfactory conclusion, just as I didn't need our local Member of Parliament impressing it on me this morning. Andy, be sure to keep me up to speed on progress, won't you?' 'Anything happens, you'll be the first to know,' assured the Fat Man. As the door closed behind the Chief, they all slumped back into their chairs and studied the floor and/or ceiling as if in hope that someone else was going to burst forth with an inspired insight. Finally Dalziel said, 'Nowt for it, we're going to have to arrest Clan. You heard him say he hadn't got an alibi. Unless young Bowler can help us out.' 'Sir?' 'Well, you're sitting there pursing your lips like a cat's arsehole. It's either wind or words that are trying to get out. So do we listen or duck?'

387 'Sorry, sir. I was just looking at that date he wrote on the board - 1576. Seems it ought to mean something to me.' 'Oh aye? You got 0-level history?' 'I took it,' said Hat evasively. 'Good enough. You bugger off down to the library and check out everything that happened in that year. If you do nowt else, you'll be letting Dee and likely Charley Penn too know we've got the message.' Doing his best to conceal his delight at being given an excuse to see Rye, Hat made for the door. But his joy was pricked a little when Dalziel called after him, 'And make sure that's the only date that's on your mind in yon library. Young women can seriously damage a young detective's career.' The Fat Man winked at Pascoe then said, 'How about you, Ivor? Owt strike you?' 'Sorry, sir, were you talking to me?' said Novello with a histri onic little start. It had taken her some time to find out why Dalziel called her Ivor and when she did, she affected an isn't-it-sad indifference to yet another example of male infantilism. But secretly, particularly after the correct Pascoe's injunction to all others against using this sobriquet left the Fat Man as its sole source, she had to admit a certain pleasure in being so singled out. After all, when Samuel heard God calling him in the Temple, he didn't retort sourly, 'It's Mr Samuel to you.' 'That bullet sent you deaf as well? Christ, you look terrible. Time you went home.' It occurred to her to suggest that if looking terrible were reason for sending people home, Dalziel and Wield would never leave the house, but of course she didn't. Truth was she didn't feel too clever but admitting it in this company wasn't an option. 'There was something,' she said. 'The coin in Bird's mouth. But there wasn't one in Follows. Maybe the Wordman didn't mind Bird getting over the Styx to heaven, but disliked Follows so much, he wanted to keep on hurting him beyond the grave.' Pascoe nodded approvingly. The smart bastard's been there already, thought Novello, but doesn't reckon there's much in it. The smart bastard said, 'It's a thought, though of course we should be careful not to confuse the classical underworld with a Christian heaven. And it still leaves us with the problem of the dollar sign.' 'The almighty dollar, maybe?' suggested Novello. 'Could be the Wordman thinks that hell is something like America.' Pascoe grinned, showing real amusement. Made a nice change from the patronizing encouragement of his smile, thought Novello. Though, paradoxically, she felt encouraged enough to add, 'I've got this feeling that while the coin might somehow represent the middle step he refers to, the dollar sign has got a significance to do with the choice of victim. I read through all the Dialogues and there was that other instance of scratching something on the head, Councillor Steel, wasn't it? Only one step there, so far as we can make out, so what did the scratching mean?' 'RIP in Cyrillic script, wasn't it?' said Pascoe. 'A joke, it looked like, given he was called Cyril. The Wordman likes a joke, particularly if it's to do with words.' 'Yes, sir. That's something we shouldn't forget, isn't it? We should never lose sight of the words, any words, when we're dealing with the Wordman. I mean, words aren't just useful labels. Like in religion, when you speak certain words, things happen or are supposed to happen. Magic too. Or in some cultures, you don't tell people your special name because names are more than labels, they are actually you in a special way. I'm sorry, I'm not putting this very well. What I'm saying is that words, maybe a special arrangement of words, seem to have a special significance to the Wordman, each word marks a step forward, and sometimes he can link separate words to individuals and then they get killed, but maybe sometimes he links more than one word to an individual and then we get only one corpse but a trinity of steps, like he says in the Dialogue where he describes killing Lord PykeStrengler.'

She paused, wondering, Am I babbling? Dalziel was certainly looking at her as if he reckoned she was delirious. She got help from an unexpected source. Wield said, 'You mean his reason for chopping the Hon.'s head off could be something to do with words, with these steps you're talking about, rather than with the Wordman's state of mind. External, not internal?'

389 a 'That's right,' she said. 'Like he thought, all right, I've got a body, that's a step. Now if I do this and this with it, that would be another two steps. He's eager to be moving forward along this path he keeps talking about and when something like this occurs, whatever it was, of course he puts it down to divine intervention or something.' 'So what are you suggesting?' asked Pascoe. 'Maybe instead of concentrating on clues in the conventional sense, we should start collecting words. Listing them in every way, we can until one of the lists makes some kind of sense.' , 'Examples, please,' said Pascoe encouragingly. | Dalziel would have growled, 'Money where your mouth is, luv; | else keep it zipped.' She felt that she would have preferred that, then glanced at him, saw his expression, and changed her mind; 'Well, Pyke-Strengler's body was found in the stream, right,; and his head in a fishing basket in his boat. So words like stream, '"i water, beck, brook, river, and boat, basket .. . wickerwork ..., creel. ..' She was starting to feel very tired and these swirling ideas which i had seemed on the verge of coalescing into something solid were j beginning to dissipate like morning mist, but she pressed on. ,' 'And this latest, Bird and ... whatsisname . . . words like coin i .. . and dollar .. . and money ...' / She felt something like a sob gathering in her throat and tailed i off into silence because it seemed a better alternative. ' Dalziel and Pascoe exchanged glances then the Fat Man said, i 'Ivor, that's grand. You keep working on that, eh? I really appreci ate you coming in like this, and the Chief'11 have noted it too. Now I reckon it's time you headed off home for a bit of a rest.' Cue to say, No, I feel fine, but speech felt even more treacherous in face of this lumbering sympathy, so instead she stood up, nodded curtly, and made it out of the door without a wobble. Dalziel said, 'Wieldy, see she's all right. Don't know what you were thinking of, Pete, pressing her like that when she's still convalescing.' ' 'Hang about,' said Pascoe indignantly. 'It wasn't my idea having her here.' 'Wasn't it? All right. Back to the case. What other ideas are ;j| you not having?' 'Keep banging away at Penn, Roote and Dee, I suppose.' 'Sound like a firm of dodgy solicitors. That it?' 'Yup. Sorry. How about you, sir?' The?' Dalziel yawned widely and scratched his crotch like it had offended him. 'Think I'll go home and read a good book.' And I can guess which one it's likely to be, Hamish, thought Pascoe. But being a sensitive man, with a wife, child, child's dog, and mortgage to support, he didn't say it.

391 Chapter Forty-four

Hat Bowler's unproductive schoolboy flirtation with History had left him with a vague notion that the sixteenth century was a period which most of the English nation spent at the theatre. It was at first a comfort when Rye Pomona pointed out that there'd been quite a lot of real-life action too. Henry VIII had told the Pope to take a hike while he carved his way through six wives, though, disappointingly, it emerged he'd only executed two of them. Next Bloody Mary had disfigured, dismembered, disembowelled, and in sundry other ways disposed of large numbers of her subjects on the very reasonable ground^ that she didn't like the colour of their religion. Marginally less extreme on the religious front, Elizabeth had not spared to use the axe as a political statement even when it involved removing the heads of her Scots cousin and her Essex lover. And of coursd there'd been wars on land and sea, mainly against the Spanish whose great Armada was repulsed and scattered by a combination of English seamanship and English weather. With such a record of bloody violence throughout the century, Hat had high hopes of finding something pertinent to the Wordman's plans in the year 1576. Alas, even when Rye had moved out of her own memory into that of the computer, it soon became apparent that of all years, this had been one of the least eventful. He tried to work th& information that James Burbage had built the first playhouse in Shoreditch and that the explorer Martin Frobisher had made th? first of his three voyages up the North American coast in search of the Northwest Passage into some kind of significant metaphor of the Wordman's intentions, but it was beyond his ingenuity. : Appeal to Rye's greater imaginative powers had no effect. He had, as usual, told her everything on the grounds that half knowledge is more dangerous than complete ignorance but for once she had shown little interest in his indiscretion. She seemed as thrown down in spirits as the rest of the library staff, among whom the huge buzz initially generated by the news, manner, and circumstances of Percy Follows' death had rapidly faded to a pall-like silence under which individuals brooded on the meaning of these things. Even the chatty students in the reference library seemed subdued by it and took little advantage of the absence from his customary cubicle of Charley Penn whose snarling remonstrances usually kept them in order. Nor was Dick Dee to be seen, so the second of Dalziel's stated objectives - letting two of the prime suspects know that one of the Dialogue's puzzles had been penetrated - had failed as completely as the first. 'How about something more local?' suggested Hat. 'Was anything special happening in Mid-Yorkshire in 1576?' 'I've no idea,' she said. 'Look, there's the computer. You want to play around with the history archives, be my guest. With Dick not here, I've got plenty to be getting on with.' 'So where is he?' asked Hat. 'Senior staff crisis meeting with the chair of the Centre Committee,' said Rye. 'So you're the bossman,' he said. 'Congrats. Why don't you use your authority to give yourself an extended coffee break.' He smiled at her, he hoped winningly. Vain hope. She said, 'For God's sake, can't you get it into your head that I've got a job to do too? And it strikes me you might be better employed doing yours somewhere else instead of wasting time hanging around here, asking about a stupid date. There are people dead, Hat, don't you understand that? You seem to be treating it like it was some sort of game.' Oh but it is! the retort formed in his mind. But now his eyes were telling him what his heart ought to have spotted much sooner, that here was a young woman who, only a few days after finding a severed head in a basket, had once again been brought in close contact with the monster, death. He said, 'Rye, I'm sorry ... I thought, telling you everything like I do, well, I think I was beginning to think of you as another