Dialogues of the Dead

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.

‘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 full, 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 put-down.

But before 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 cross-checking.’

He smiled at Bowler, not a smart-ass grin but a pleasant all-friends-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 St John. In principio 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.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Rye taking the folder from Hat and staring hard from the ornate illumination to the black and white sketch. ‘But maybe it means something else. As well as the words.’

‘That struck me too. It’s clearly illustrative. That could be the humpback bridge with the unfortunate AA man in the water …’

‘And there’s a bird, though it doesn’t look much like a pheasant … and are those things with horns meant to be cows?’

Hat, feeling he was being sidelined, retrieved the folder from her hands and said, ‘Let’s wait till we see if there’s been a crime committed before we start looking for clues, shall we? And if there has been, don’t worry, we’ll soon have this word-lover banged up. Pity they’ve shut Alcatraz.’

‘Alcatraz?’ they said in simultaneous puzzlement.

‘Yes, then he could be the Wordman of Alcatraz.’

If it had fallen any flatter it would have been a map.

He said, ‘It was a movie … on telly the other night … there was this guy, Burt Lancaster, who killed somebody and got locked up …’

‘Yes, I recall the film,’ said Dee. ‘Well, well, the Wordman. Very droll, Mr Bowler.’

Again, it didn’t sound like a put-down, but Hat felt put down.