Dialogues of the Dead

by Reginald Hill

  29 singing voice. It was a bazouki, he said in a broad Mid-Yorkshire accent. 'Oh, you aren't Greek then?' I said, sounding disappointed to conceal the surge of exultation 1 was feeling. He laughed and admitted quite freely he was local, born, bred and still living out at Corker. He was a music student at the university, finding it impossible like so many of them to exist on the pittance they call a grant these days and plumping it out a hit by -working in the Tavema most evenings. But while he wasn't Greek, his instrument he assured me certainly was, a genuine bazouki brought home from Crete by his grandfather who'd fought there during the Second World War, so its music had first been heard beneath real olive trees in a warm and richly perfumed Mediterranean night. I could detect in his voice a longing for that distant reality he described just as I'd seen in his face a disgust with this fakery he was involved in. Yorkshire born and bred he might be, but his soul yearned for something that he had persuaded himself could still be found under other less chilly skies. Poor boy. He had the open hopeful look of one born to be disappointed. I yearned to save him from the shattering of his illusions. The canned music was growing louder and the dancing waiters who 'd been urging more and more customers to join their line were getting close to my table, so I tucked some coins into the leather pouch dangling from the boy's tunic, paid my bill and left. It was after midnight when the restaurant closed but I didn 't mind sitting in my car, waiting. There is a pleasure in observing and not being observed, in standing in the shadows watching the creatures of the night going about their business. I saw several cats pad purposefully down the alleyway alongside the Tavema where they kept their rubbish bins. An owl floated between the chimneys, remote and silent as a satellite. And I glimpsed what I'm sure was the bushy tail of an urban fox frisking round the corner of a house. But it was the human creatures I was most interested in, the last diners striding, staggering, drifting, driving off into the night, little patches of Stimmungsbild - voices calling, footsteps echoing, car doors banging, engines revving - which played for a moment against the great symphony of the night, then faded away, leaving its dark music untouched. Then comes a long pause - not in time but of time -- how long I don't know for clocks are blank-faced now - till finally 1 hear a motorbike revving up in the alleyway and my boy appears at its mouth, a musician making his entry into the music of the night. I know it's him despite the shielding helmet - would have known without the evidence of the bazouki case strapped behind him. He pauses to check the road is empty. Then he pulls out and rides away. I follow. It's easy to keep in touch. He stays well this side of the speed limit, probably knowing from experience how ready the police are to hassle young bikers., especially late at night. Once it becomes clear he's heading straight home to Corker, I overtake and pull away. I have no plan but I know from the merriment bubbling up inside me that a plan exists, and when I pass the derestriction sign at the edge of town and find myself on the old Roman Way, that gently undulating road which runs arrow-straight down an avenue of beeches all the five miles south to Corker, I understand what I have to do. I leave the lights of town behind me and accelerate away. After a couple of miles, 1 do a U-turn on the empty road, pull on to the verge, and switch off my lights but not my engine. Darkness laps over me like black water. I don't mind. 1 am its denizen. This is my proper domain. Now 1 see him. First a glow, then an effulgence, hurtling towards me. What young man, even one conditioned to carefulness by police persecution, could resist the temptation of such a stretch of road so clearly empty of traffic? Ah, the rush of the wind in his face, the throb of the engine between his thighs, and in the corners of his vision the blur of trees lined up like an audience of old gods to applaud his passage! I feel his joy, share in his mirth. Indeed, I'm so full of it I almost miss my cue. But the old gods are talking to me also, and with no conscious command from my mind, my foot stamps down on the accelerator and my hand flicks on full headlights. For a fraction of a second we are heading straight for each other. Then his muscles like mine obey commands too quick for his m-ind, and he swerves, skids, wrestles for control. For a second I think he has it. I am disappointed and relieved.

  All right, I know, but I have to be honest. What a weight - and a wait - it would be off my soul if this turned out not to be my path after all.

  31 But now the boy begins to feel it go. Yet still, even at this moment of ultimate danger, his heart must be singing with the thrill, the thrust, of it. Then the bike slides away from under him, they part company, and man and machine hurtle along the road in parallel, close but no longer touching. I come to a halt and turn my head to watch. In time it takes probably a few seconds. In my no-time I can register every detail. I see that it is the bike which hits a tree first, disintegrating in a burst of flame, not much - his tank must have been low - but enough to throw a brief lurid, light on his last moment. He hits a broad-boled beech tree, seems to embrace it with his whole body, wrapping himself around it as if he longs to penetrate its smooth bark and flow into its rising sap. Then he slides off it and lies across its roots, like a root himself, face up, completely still. I reverse back to him and get out of the car. The impact has shattered his visor but, wonderfully, done no damage to his gentle brown eyes. I notice that his bazouki case has been ripped off the pillion of the bike and lies quite close. The case itself has burst open but the instrument looks hardly damaged. I take it out and lay it close to his outstretched hand. Now the musician is part of the night's dark music and I am out of place here. I drive slowly away, leaving him there with the trees and the foxes and owls, his eyes wide open, and seeing very soon, I hope, not the cold stars of our English night but the rich warm blue of a Mediterranean sky. That's where he'd rather be. 1 know it. Ask him. I know it.

  I'm too exhausted to talk any more now. Soon. Chapter Five

  On Thursday morning with only one day to go before the short story competition closed, Rye Pomona was beginning to hope there might be life after deathless prose. This didn't stop her shovelling scripts into the reject bin with wild abandon, but halfway through the morning she went very still, sighed perplexedly, re-read the pages in front of her and said, 'Oh hell.' 'Yes?' said Dick Dee. 'We've got a Second Dialogue.' 'Let me see.' He read through it quickly then said, 'Oh dear. I wonder if this one too is related to a real incident.' 'It is. That's what hit me straight off. I noticed it in yesterday's Gazette. Here, take a look.' She went to the Journal Rack and picked up the Gazette. 'Here it is. "Police have released details of the fatal accident on Roman Way reported in our weekend edition. David Pitman, 19, a music student, of Pool Terrace, Carker, was returning home from his part-time job as an entertainer at the Taverna Restaurant in Cradle Street when he came off his motorbike in the early hours of Saturday morning. He sustained multiple injuries and was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. No other vehicle was involved." Poor sod.' Dee looked at the paragraph then read the Dialogue again. 'How very macabre,' he said. 'Still, it's not without some nice touches. If only our friend would attempt a more conventional story, he might do quite well.' 'That's all you think it is, then?' said Rye rather aggressively. 'Some plonker using news stories to fantasize upon?' Dee raised his eyebrows high and smiled at her.

  33 'We seem to have swapped lines,' he said. 'Last week it was me feeling uneasy and you pouring cold water. What's changed?' 'I could ask the same.' 'Well, let me see,' he said with that judicious solemnity she sometimes found irritating. 'It could be I set my fanciful suspicions alongside the cool rational response of my smart young assistant and realized I was making a real ass of myself.' Then his face split in a decade-dumping grin and he added, 'Or some such tosh. And you?' She responded to the grin, then said, 'There's something else I noticed in the Gazette. Hold on ... here it is. It says that AA man's inquest was adjourned to allow the police to make farther enquiries. That can only mean they're treating it as a suspicious death, can't it?' 'Yes, but there's suspicious and suspicious,' said Dee. 'Any sud den death has to be thoroughly investigated. If it's an accident, the causes have to be est
ablished to see whether there's any question of neglect. But even if there's a suspicion of criminality, for some thing like this to have any significance . ..' He held up the Dialogue and paused expectantly. A test, she thought. Dick Dee liked to give tests. At first when she came new to the job she'd felt herself patronized, then come to realize it was part of his teaching technique and much to be preferred to either being told something she already knew or not being told something she didn't. 'It doesn't really signify anything,' she said. 'Not if the guy's just feeding off news items. To be significant, or even to strain coincidence, he'd have to be writing before the event.' 'Before the reporting of the event,' corrected Dee. She nodded. It was a small distinction but not nit-picking. That was another of Dee's qualities. The details he was fussy about were usually important rather than just ego-exercising. 'What about all this stuff about the student's grandfather and the bazouki?' she asked. 'None of that's in the paper.' 'No. But if it's true, which we don't know, all it might mean is that the story-teller did have a chat with David Pitman at some time. I dare say it's a story the young man told any number of customers at the restaurant.' 'And if it turns out the AA man had been on holiday in Corfu?' 'I can devise possible explanations till the cows come home,' he said dismissively. 'But where's the point? The key question is, when did this last Dialogue actually turn up at the Gazetted I doubt if they're systematic enough to be able to pinpoint it, but someone might remember something. Why don't I have a word while you ...' '. .. get on with reading these sodding stories,' interrupted Rye. 'Well, you're the boss.' 'So I am. And what I was going to say was, while you might do worse than have a friendly word with your ornithological admirer.' He glanced towards the desk where a slim young man with an open boyish face and a sharp black suit was standing patiently. His name was Bowler, initial E. Rye knew this because he'd flashed his library card the first time he appeared at the desk to ask for assistance in operating the CD-ROM drive of one of the Reference PCs. Both she and Dee had been on duty, but Rye had discovered early on that in matters of IT, she was the department's designated expert. Not that her boss wasn't technologically competent in fact she suspected he was much more clued up than herself - but when she felt she knew him well enough to probe, he had smiled that sweetly sad smile of his and pointed to the computer, saying, 'That is the grey squirrel,' then to the booklined shelves: 'These are the red.' The disc Bowler E. wanted to use turned out to be an ornithological encyclopaedia, and when Rye had expressed a polite interest, he'd assumed she was a fellow enthusiast and nothing she'd been able to say during three or four subsequent visits had managed to disabuse him. 'Oh God,' she said now. 'Today I tell him the only way I want to see birds is nicely browned and covered with orange sauce.' 'You disappoint me, Rye,' said Dee. 'I wondered from the start why such a smart young fellow should make himself out to be a mere tyro in computer technology. It's clearly not just birds that obsess him but you. Express your lack of enthusiasm in the brutal terms you suggest and all he'll do is seek another topic of common interest. Which indeed you yourself may now be able to suggest.' 'Sorry?' 'Mr Bowler is in fact Detective Constable Bowler of the MidYorkshire CID, so well worth cultivating. It's not every day us

  35 amateur detectives get a chance of planting a snout in the local constabulary. I'll leave him to your tender care, shall I?' He headed for the office. Clever old Dick, thought Rye, watch ing him go. While I'm being a smart-ass, he's busy being smart. Bowler was coming towards her. She looked at him with new interest. She knew it was one of her failings to make snap judg ments from which she was hard to budge. Even now, she was thinking that him being a cop and possibly motivated in his visits to the library by pure lust didn't stop him being a bird nerd. The suit and tie-less shirt were hopeful. Not Armani but pretty good clones. And the shy little-boy-lost smile seemed to her newly skinned eye to have something just a tad calculating in it which she approved too. The way to her heart wasn't through her motherly instincts, but it was nice to see a guy trying. 'Hello,' he said hesitantly. 'Sorry to bother you ... if you're too busy ...' It would have been entertaining to play along for a while but she really was up to her eyes in work even without this short story crap. She said briskly, 'Yes, I'm pretty well snowed under. But if it's just a quickie you're after, Constable . ..' The shy smile remained fixed but he blinked twice, the second one removing all traces of shyness from his eyes (which were a rather nice dove-grey) and replacing it with something very def initely like calculation. He's wondering whether I've just invited him to swing straight from boy-next-door into saloon-bar-innuendo mode. If he does, he's on his way. Bird nerd was bad, coarse cop was worse. He said, 'No, look, I'm sorry, I just wanted to ask, this Sunday I was thinking about driving out to Stangdale - it's great country for birds even this time of year, you know, the moor, the crags and of course the tarn . ..' He could see he wasn't gripping her and he changed tack with an ease she approved. '. .. and afterwards I thought maybe we could stop off for a meal.. .' 'This Sunday . .. I'm not sure what I've got on.. .' she said screwing up her face as if trying to work out what she was doing seventy-two weeks rather than seventy-two hours ahead. 'And a meal, you said . .. ?' 'Yeah, there's the Dun Fox this end of the moor road. Not bad nosh. And now the law's changed, they've starting having discos on Sunday nights as well as Saturdays ...' She knew it. An old-fashioned road-house on the edge of town, it had recently decided to target the local twenty-somethings who wanted to swing without being ankle-deep in teenies. It wasn't Stringfellows but it was certainly a lot better than a twitchers' barn dance. Question was, did she want a date with DC Bowler, E? She studied his hopeful face. Why not? she thought. Then distantly behind him she glimpsed Charley Penn, who'd twisted round in his usual kiosk and was observing the scene with that smarl which suggested he could overhear not only their dialogue but their thoughts. She said abruptly, 'I'll think about it. Look, sit down if you can spare a moment from keeping the world safe from crime.' 'Thought it was you who was up to your eyes in it,' he said, sitting. Touch of satire there. 'I am. And this is work, Your work, maybe.' She explained briefly as she could, which wasn't all that brief as awareness of how weird it all sounded made her veer towards longwindedness. To do him credit, he didn't fall about laughing but asked if he could see the Dialogues. She showed him the Second which he read while she retrieved the First from the drawer where Dee had stored it. He read this as well then said, 'I'll hang on to these. Got a plastic folder or something?' 'For fingerprints?' she said, half mocking. 'For appearances,' he said. 'Don't think there's going to be much in the way of prints with you and your boss crawling all over them.' She got him a folder and said, 'So you think there could be something in this?' 'Didn't say that, but we'll check.' Not a trace of shy smile here, just professional brusqueness.

  37 'Like at the Gazette, you mean?' she said, slightly irritated. 'I think you'll find Dick Dee, my boss, is taking care of that.' 'Yeah? Fancies himself as a private dick, does he?' he said, smiling now. 'Ask him yourself,' said Rye. Dee had come back into the library and was approaching them. His gaze took in the transparent folder and he said, 'I see Rye has brought you up to speed, Mr Bowler. I've just been talking to the Gazette. No joy, I'm afraid. No record of time or even date of receipt kept. Stuff marked Story Competition gets dumped straight into a bag for dispatch round here when it's fall, plus anything else looking like fiction.' 'Would have thought that covered half the stuff they print,' said Bowler. 'An observation I resisted,' said Dee. 'Probably right. They can be sensitive souls, these journalists. OK, I'll take these with me and check them out when I've got a spare moment.' His offhand manner got to Rye and she said, 'Check them out? How? You said you doubted if there'd be any prints. So what are you going to do with them? Call in the police clairvoyant?' 'That's been tried too, but I don't think we'll be getting out the ouija board for this one,' grinned Bowler. He's enjoying this, thought Rye. Thinks he's making a better impression on me as cocky cop than shy ornithologist. Time to disabuse him with a withering putdown. But befo
re the withering could commence, Dick Dee spoke. 'I think DC Bowler plans to check whether any information given in the Dialogues is (a) true and (b) not obtainable from newspaper reports,' he said. 'As for example the AA man's holiday habits or the origins of the bazouki.' 'Right. Sharp thinking, Mr Dee,' said Bowler. Meaning, you've thought along the same lines as me therefore maybe you're brighter than you look, parsed Rye. 'Thank you,' said Dee. 'I took the liberty of enquiring about that also when I talked to the Gazette. No, the reports which we have drawn your attention to were the only items touching on the two deaths. And, in case you're worried, I was careful not to alert them to a possible police interest. We have a local interest computer reference programme and they're used to such crosschecking.'

  He smiled at Bowler, not a smart-ass grin but a pleasant allfriends-together smile at which it was impossible to take offence, but offence was what the young DC felt like taking, except that he guessed it wouldn't be a smart move in his campaign to impress Rye Pomona. In addition, a good cop didn't spurn help from any source, especially when that source was likely to be more clued up about something than the good cop's self. 'This funny drawing at the start of the First Dialogue. Any thoughts on that?' he asked. 'Yes, I have been wondering about that,' said Dee. 'And something did come to mind. I was going to tell you, Rye. Take a look at this.' He went to the office and returned with a large folio which he set on the table. He began turning the pages, revealing a series of, to Bowler's eyes, weird and wonderful designs, often in rich and vibrant colours. 'I need to be able to read Celtic scripts for some research I'm doing,' he explained. 'And that's made me aware of the huge range of illuminated initials their scribes used. This is what the Dialogue illustration reminded me of. Oh, here, look at this one. The Dialogue version has no colour of course and is greatly simplified, but basically they have much in common.' 'You're right,' said Rye. 'It's obvious now you've pointed it out.' 'Yeah,' said Hat. 'Obvious. What is it, then?' 'It's the letters I N P. This particular illumination is taken from an Irish manuscript of the eighth century and it's the opening of the Gospel according to Stjohn. Inprincipio erat verbum et verbum erat apud deum et deus erat verbum. All the letters of which seem to have tumbled into that little pile under the P.' 'And what do they mean, exactly?' said Hat, adding the last word to suggest, falsely, that it was merely detail he wanted adding to his own rough translation. 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word, or the Word was God, as the Authorized Version has it. An interesting way for our dialogist to introduce himself, don't you think? Words, words, words, much in love with words.'