Dialogues of the Dead

by Reginald Hill

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 piece
s.' 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

  W political contacts might get a lot of scrambled egg on your shoul ders, but it was far removed from that other world of practical investigation which got a lot of honest dirt under your fingernails. Like St Augustine and sex, he knew he'd have to give it up one day, but preferably not yet. 'Mr Trimble wants an update, does he?' he asked. 'Update?' said Dalziel. 'Nay, the bugger wants a result and he wants it yesterday. Someone up there's giving him a hard time.' He spoke with the grim satisfaction of one who knows what a hard time is. Pascoe observed him with a sympathy he was careful not to show. Dalziel drove his troops mercilessly when the occasion demanded, but he took his own bumps and rarely passed them on to his underlings. Going up or coming down, the buck stopped with Andy Dalziel, and Pascoe could only guess at the strain the Wordman case was putting the Fat Man under. Hat came back into the room. His reaction to the discovery of the body had won grudging praise from Dalziel, though he had advised for future consideration that on the whole it was best not to let your bit of fluff play netball with the victim's severed head. In particular, Hat's immediate return to Stangcreek Cottage where he'd promptly secured the axe and taken a pr
eliminary statement from Dick Dee had been approved, not because of anything it produced but because it kept the librarian in situ as a witness. That he must also be classed as a suspect, Bowler had known from the minute he saw the body, and if Dee hadn't been in the cottage when he and Rye got back to it, the DC would have put out a call to pick him up. Similarly if he'd tried to leave before the troops arrived, he would have arrested him which would have started the custodial clock ticking. Not that it was just professional satisfaction at not wasting any precious senior officer interrogation time that he felt. The way that Rye had accepted Dee's comforting on their return to the cottage had made him very aware that if she got a sniff he was treating her boss as a serious suspect, the smooth course of their relationship might have hit a rock. She'd probably got the message by now, but at a sufficient remove for the blame to be heaped on Pascoe or the Fat Man rather than his lowly self. The good news (if the removal of a possible perp from the frame could be called good news) was that they'd found nothing positive to link Dee with the Hon.'s death. It was true that his prints were all over the axe which Forensic had confirmed was the instrument used to sever the Hon.'s head, but as he'd been using it to split logs in Hat's presence, this was hardly surprising. He did have a small cut on one of his fingers, but when his claim that his blood type was 0 was confirmed by a check of his medical records (written permission to see which 'for elimination purposes' he readily gave), hope of tying him in to the AB blood spots on the fish hook faded. Dalziel, who felt that anyone found using a bloodstained axe near a headless body was at the very least guilty of wasting police time, seemed inclined to blame the messenger, but Pascoe's slim shoulders had grown professionally broad over the years and he was able to ignore the accusatory grunts and snorts and carry on with his meticulous summation of the lack of evidence against Dee. 'The path. report suggests the Hon. had been dead between two and four days. Dee's alibi'd at work for most of the relevant daylight hours. After work with the evenings drawing in, seems less of a possibility. The time it would have taken to get out there means it would have been dusk when they arrived .. .' 'They?' interrupted Wield. 'The killer must have driven the Hon.'s Land Rover back from the tarn, ergo he must have gone out there in it,' said Pascoe. 'However, we do know that the Hon. often spent time out there fishing at night. In fact, interestingly, it was Dee himself who told us that. He has been most helpful and co-operative throughout.' 'That's a mark agin him,' said Dalziel hopefully. 'Member of the public trying to help the police has got summat on his conscience, that's my experience.' 'Perhaps you should widen your social circles, sir,' murmured Pascoe. 'But it makes little difference as Dee is alibi'd for the nights too.' 'Oh aye? Shagging someone, is he?' said the Fat Man. 'He didn't volunteer any details of his emotional life,' said Pascoe. 'But he spent one of the evenings in question at a county librarians' meeting in Sheffield to which he drove with Percy Follows, getting back here after midnight. The other he spent at