^3 statement was here, of course, and he read through it with as much detachment as he could muster. It was a good policeman's statement, precise and detailed. It said nothing of that feeling he'd had when he entered the toilet of stepping into a new dimension in which nothing existed but himself and the body on the floor, curled in a foetal question mark. How long he'd simply stood and looked at it he did not know. In fact, How long? did not seem a question that applied, not when it seemed possible to step back into the corridor, wait a second, then re-open the door and find that the image had been erased. Of course he'd done no such thing. Of course the training had snapped in and he'd gone into the sequence of checking pulse, calling help, attempting resuscitation, making the scene secure, and by the time he went to bed that night, the sense of disassociation had faded to a memory of natural shock at such a grisly discovery. But when he read the copy of the Fourth Dialogue Wield handed him that morning and realized he had been only a few heartbeats behind the Wordman, it all came back to him so strongly that he found himself grasping at the hardness of a table and staring fixedly at the second hand on his watch to assure himself of the continuance of corporeality. Now he reconsidered his statement in view of the new information that this wasn't merely a one-off killing but part of the Wordman's sequence. Perhaps his feelings were now relevant... But how? And his heart sank at the thought of trying to explain them to Dalziel. He might be able to retrieve his reputation from the false accusation of being Deep-throat, but Air-brain was probably beyond recovery. He put his statement aside and went on with the others. It would of course be nice to be able to go to the meeting and perform a piece of mental gymnastics which took him leaping from one small overlooked item to another, ending with a triple somersault before landing firmly on the Wordman's back. In his mind's eye he saw the Trinity looking on with wonder and admiration before holding up their score-cards awarding maximum points for both style and content. But such flights of inspiration, though the commonplace of fiction, were very rarely spotted in the world of a humble detective constable. Close attention to detail, no matter how dull and repetitive, was what solved cases. And as he read, Hat crosschecked with Wield's graph, not in expectation of finding an omission but in the not very strong hope of spotting a discrepancy. The closest he came was in Rye's statement (direct and detailed enough to be a policeman's) in which she said that when she collected her coat from the reference library she saw a few members of the public working, but no one she knew. Yet according to the graph, two people who'd been at the preview should have been there - Dick Dee and Charley Penn. He started shuffling through the statements. 'You got something?' said Wield, who'd come up behind him soft-footed. 'Not really .. . maybe . ..' He found Dee's statement. He'd left the preview a couple of minutes before Hat and Rye and gone straight to the library. On his arrival, the woman on duty had taken the opportunity to head off to the toilet. Dee had been at the far end of the library, checking a reference in some tome, when he glimpsed Rye collecting her coat from the office. So he saw her, she didn't see him. Penn in his statement said he'd gone straight to the library and taken his place in his usual cubicle. Facing the wall, he'd written, you tend not to see many people. But later when he'd gone to the lavatory (not the locus in quo but the staff loo adjacent to the reference library, access to which I enjoy as a kind of ^ favoured nation' privilege), he had noticed Dee. So, a general cancelling out. 'No, sorry. Nothing. Look, I'm not trying to second-guess you, Sarge ...' 'Aren't you? That's a pity. DC who's not trying to second-guess his sergeant is no use to anyone. But don't get so absorbed you miss the time. Ten more minutes. Be late for Mr Dalziel and you could be late forever.' Hat abandoned the statements and spent the remaining rime processing a selection of people through the computer. It was like panning for gold in a worked-out claim. Dross, dross, nothing but dross. Then at last, like a buttercup growing through a cow-pat, he glimpsed one tiny nugget of gold. He drew it out, weighed it, recognized it wasn't going to make
W him rich. But properly worked, it might make an elegant link i] a chain. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes to go. Probably more. Academics were notoriously bad timekeepers He reached for the telephone. Chapter Eighteen
'Well, look who's here,' said Andy Dalziel. 'Come in, lad. Find a chair. Make yourself comfortable. Good of you to spare the time.' The academics, unreliable as ever, must have been punctual. Spouting apologies, Hat concentrated on the guests, to blot out Dalziel's threatening glower and Pascoe's reproachful pout. Even Wield's blankness spelt out well-Ididwarn-you. Dr Pottle, the psychiatrist, was a small man in late middle age who had deliberately cultivated a natural resemblance to Einstein. 'Patients find it very reassuring,' he'd once told Peter Pascoe who was, unofficially and intermittently, one of those patients. 'Also I like to tell the really dotty ones that I've built a time machine and travelled into the future and everything's going to be all right for them.' 'And how does it look for me, Professor?' Pascoe had replied. Pottle's other idiosyncrasy was that despite all the social, medical and political pressure, he still chain-smoked. Dalziel, who was an off-on smoker currently going through a pretty extensive off patch, bowed to the inevitable, helped himself to a handful of Pottle's fags, and was drawing on the first like a drowning sailor come up for the third time. The other expert was introduced as Dr Drew Urquhart. Not very old, as far as Bowler could make out through a wilderness of beard. Fortunately he kept his upper lip bare. Had he worn the kind of Einsteinian moustache Pottle favoured, his features would have been beyond even a mother's recognition. Dressed in non-matching trainers, threadbare jeans and a T-shirt which had rotted under the armpits to provide what seemed like very necessary ventilation holes, he looked more like a resident of cardboardbox country in the shopping centre than the Groves of Academe. 'Fuck this,' he growled in a Scots accent, unidentifiable to
^7 Bowler except that it wasn't Glaswegian. 'If I'm going to be choked dead then I might as well do it on my own weed.' He produced a cigarette paper and began to fill it with some thing he took from a small leather pouch. Dalziel said, 'You light that, sunshine, and I'll kick you all the way back to the Kingdom of Fife.' 'You check up on all your visitors, do you, Superintendent?' sneered Urquhart. 'Don't need to check. Should have thought being a linguist you'd know you give yourself away every time you open your gob.' 'I'm impressed. Deeply offended but impressed,' said Urquhart. He put away the pouch with the offending substance and said, 'Can we start? I've got places to be.' 'Oh aye? Going ratting, are you?' asked Dalziel, letting his gaze run up and down the linguist's dress. Pottle said, 'Now that we have got these necessary peckingorder rituals out of the way, I too should like to put in an appeal for expedition.' 'I'll not argue with that. Quicker the better, in my view,' said Dalziel. 'Pete, this is your circus, so you'd better crack the whip.' 'Thank you,' said Pascoe. 'May I say first of all how gratefal we are to Dr Pottle and Dr Urquhart for coming along this morning at such short notice. It seemed to me that as we must now admit without any prevarication that we have a serial killer on our hands, the wider we cast our net in search of expert assistance, and the sooner we set about casting it, the better. I realize you have had what is in analytical terms a ludicrously short time in which to study the Wordman documents, but what first impressions may lack in depth they can make up in freshness. Dr Pottle.' 'Let me first apologize to my esteemed colleague, Dr Urquhart, in case anything I say should seem to trespass on his mystery, for of course my only route to understanding the writer of these pieces is via the words the writer uses.' 'Dinna fash yersel', Pozzo,' said the Scot. 'I'll not be backward in dishing out the psychobabble.' 'Thank you. First Dialogue. The very use of the word Dialogue is significant. A dialogue is an exchange of ideas and information between two or more people. For these to be true dialogues our Wordman - I use the term for convenience - must be listening as well as speaking. And I think we can see that he is doing this in two ways. Firstly there are gaps in the text, blank lines, and it is not difficult to fill these in with unrecord
ed replies to the Wordman's comments or questions. For the most part these would be conversational trivia rather than matter of deep import such as you might expect to find in a dialogue proper. For example, in this first one, between How're you doing? and Me, I'm fine, I think, we might interpolate OK. How about yourself'? Then between Me, Pm fine I think and It's hard to tell sometimes, we might put What do you mean, 'think'? It should be noted that the tone here, as throughout the Dialogues in these small exchanges, is friendly and familiar, as between people who are very close and on a fairly equal footing.' 'I think we just about got there by ourselves,' said Pascoe apologetically, aware of steatopygous squeakings from Dalziel's chair. 'You said there were two forms of dialogue .. .' 'Indeed. The other is the more formal and mysterious one in which the Wordman believes he is receiving advice, aid, and instruction from some otherworldly power who may or may not be or may be in part only the familiar communicant of the first form. Finally of course the Wordman is indulging in a dialogue with us. That is, with you the investigators of these crimes, with Mr Urquhart and myself as your associates, and with the world at large who form as it were his wider audience.' 'Can I say something here?' said Urquhart. 'You may have missed it, Pozzo, and me I only picked it up through a reference in a dictionary, but then I got a friend to check it out...' 'Friend?' said Pascoe. again pre-empting the Fat Man. 'You haven't been showing the Dialogues to anyone unauthorized, I hope.' 'Don't get your Y-fronts in a tangle,' said Urquhart. 'It was just a wee hairie in the Eng. Lit. Department that I bang from time to time and she disna ken any more than she needs to ken. What she told me was that there's this thing in literature called a "Dialogue of the Dead". Started way back with Lucian .'..' 'That'd be Lord Lucian?' said Dalziel. 'Ha ha. Second-century Syrian rhetorician who wrote in Greek.
^9 There was a big revival of interest in England in the eighteenth century, the Augustans and what followed, all that classical crap. Biggest success was Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead in 1760. Twenty-eight dialogues including three by some bluestocking called Mrs Montagu - the best three my wee friend assures me, but she may be partial. There were a few more written right through the nineteenth century but the form had pretty well died the death before Queen Vicky snuffed it.' 'And what did this form consist of?' enquired Pascoe. 'Debates in the Nether Regions between the shades of real historical characters and imagined characters, sometimes with supernatural beings from mythology holding the ring. I checked a few out. There's one with Mercury and an English Duellist and a North-American Savage, another with Sir Thomas More and the Vicar of Bray. Purpose usually, though not always, satirical. Written out like drama, name of character then what he or she says, but no stage directions or settings described. Meant to be read, not performed.' 'But we don't get names given here,' said Pascoe, looking down at his copy of the Dialogues. 'You wouldn't expect them, would you? That would give the game away from the start. May be a blind alley, but seems to me the Wordman's dialogue is with someone dead and he's certainly bent on increasing the population of the underworld. Seemed worth a mention. Anyway, in your business, leave no stone unturned if you want to see the wriggly wee insects run, eh?' 'We're much obliged, Doctor,' murmured Pascoe, who'd been making notes. 'Oh God,' groaned Dalziel. 'Not past the first word yet, and already me brain's hurting.' 'Perhaps if we could move on,' said Pascoe, glancing at his watch. 'I know your time is precious, gentlemen.' 'Very well,' said Pottle, lighting another cigarette from the butt-end in his hand. 'After the title, the illustration - or should I say illumination? I gather that you have already received expert advice about the stylistic source .. .' 'In a manner of speaking,' said Pascoe carefully. 'DC Bowler, perhaps you would like to fill us in?' Taken by surprise, Hat swallowed nervously before replying, 'Well, Mr Dee at the library said he thought it was based on some medieval Celtic script. He showed me something that was a bit like it in, I think it was some eighth-century Irish gospel...' He was aware that the Fat Man's eyes had closed and his mouth opened in a hippopotamic yawn, and he cursed Pascoe for making his first contribution to the Great Consult something which was almost bound to get up those huge nostrils. But now the DCI, perhaps feeling guilty, took up the running and went on, '. .. and it would seem that the design represents the In P of the opening line of St John's Gospel: In principle erat verbum . ..' 'In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God,' intoned Dalziel, opening his eyes. 'Yeah yeah, we all did Bible Studies, except maybe young Bowler here who probably had to learn the Kama Sutra or something. Doctor Pottle, can we mebbe just cut to a few conclusions and save all the fancy stuff for an article?' 'The first thing that struck me about the drawing was the way all the continuation letters were piled up together. I was reminded of a virus which once got into the hospital computer system and sent all the letters you typed tumbling to the foot of the screen. I wondered if perhaps this meant our Wordman felt of himself that he had some kind of virus affecting his brain.' 'You mean he knows he's off his chump?' said Dalziel. 'Great!' 'It fits in with other indications that he is not yet completely at ease with the idea of killing people,' continued Pottle serenely. 'The drawing is only one of many attempts to fit his behaviour into a quasi-religious context which has two main functions. The first is, of course, justification. It is God, or his agent in the Other World, who points the finger in some sequential way still to be fathomed. The Wordman is to some extent an instrument of divine purpose, or of divine requirement if the Wordman is to achieve some purpose of his own, which is not altogether clear. Yet despite this pretence to supernatural necessity, the Wordman's unease shows in the need he feels to suggest that the victims are better off dead, either for their own sakes or for the sake of society at large, or sometimes both. You have probably noticed that the drowned man in the water under the bridge also resembles a figure crucified, like St Andrew, on an X-shaped cross.
161 'Know how he felt,' muttered Andy Dalziel. Pascoe gave him a glower and urged, 'You said the religious context had two functions, Doctor. Justification and . .. ?' 'Yes. And invulnerability. This suspension of time thing. It seems to be literal, not a metaphor. God or his agent is masterminding events and, being all-powerful, he is not about to let his instrument get caught. Herein perhaps lies your best hope of catching the writer. The risks taken in respect of Councillor Steel's murder were enormous and could only be countenanced by someone who felt completely invulnerable. The longer this goes on, the greater the risks taken are likely to be.' 'You're saying that with a bit of luck, and if he goes on long enough, we'll catch him in the act?' said the Fat Man incredulously. 'If that's the best you can do, don't it make all this palaver a bit pointless, Doctor?' The degree of scorn Dalziel could infuse into a form of address could probably provide a linguist with material for a thesis, thought Pascoe. 'Maybe I can give a wee bit of practical help here,' said Urquhart. 'See this bit of the illumination here ...' He pointed to the bottom of the twin stems of the I. 'Aye, the cows,' said Dalziel. Urquhart laughed and said, 'They'd need to be Highland cattle with homs like these. No, not cows. Oxen, I think.' 'Oxen. Great. Now we're really getting somewhere. Make a note of that, Chief Inspector.' 'What are you getting at?' asked Pascoe. 'Aleph,' said Urquhart significantly. 'Is that Aleph in Wonderland or Aleph Through the Looking Glass?' enquired Dalziel. 'Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet,' said Urquhart. 'It is also the Old Hebrew and Phoenician word meaning ox, and it seems likely that the form the letter takes is based on a hieroglyph of an ox's head. Greek alpha is derived from this, and ultimately Roman and our own a which, in some versions of its capital form can still be seen to contain those original hieroglyphic elements. As thus in the Book ofKells.. .' _ He took out a pen and drew a letter: 3W} Dalziel looked at it in silence for a moment then said, 'If they
162 served me that as an ox's head, I'd send it back. Is there any point to all this, lad?' 'A of course is also a word, the first word as it is the first letter of our alphabet. In the beginning was the word.. . And note the reference
s in the Dialogue to the indefinite beginnings of the path. A is the indefinite article. You will be wondering perhaps why there are two oxen, two alephs ...' 'The AA man,' said Pascoe. 'Whose initials are also AA. Which the Wordman took for a sign. So what are you saying, Dr Urquhart? That there could be some alphabetical sequence here?' 'No, sorry. I can see how that might be useful, but there's nothing obvious in the others. You might get a b from boy or even bazouki in the Pitman case, but that would be stretching, and all the c's in the Ripley case and the d's in the Steel case seem completely out of reach. So I doubt if what you've got here is a straightforward alphabetical progression. Your Wordman might, of course, be simply spelling a word. In which case let us hope it's a short one, but it's just as likely it could be several words which form a message.' 'Am having a good. time, wish you were here,' suggested Dalziel, scratching his crotch like a man refuting Bishop Berkeley. 'Look, gents, as the actress said to the bishop, can you make this a quickie as I've got work to do? Any long-term stuff, or general theorizing, mebbe you could set it down in writing when you've had more chance to study the Dialogues, and I'll hang it up in the CID bog so we all get a chance to use it.' Bowler, who'd been puzzled by the academics' apparent indifference to the Fat Man's sceptical rudeness, caught a glance passing between Pascoe and Pottle, and it came to him that the DCI had forewarned them of Dalziel's likely reaction, which previous acquaintance had probably prepared them for anyway. Urquhart said, 'I'd certainly like more time to check out this illumination. It wouldn't surprise me to find a lot more stuff hidden there. But for the time being I think I can say that what you've got here is someone obsessed with language, not just at a linguistic level, but at a philosophical level, maybe even a magical level. Words originally were simply the names of things and human transactions, both practical and abstract, couldn't have functioned without them. I mean, if you don't know the names,
Dialogues of the Dead Page 16
