Dialogues of the Dead

She certainly couldn’t imagine Dick Dee being indiscreet unless he wanted to be. On the other hand, he would probably be scrupulous in a deal, even if the terms were unspoken. And just because he’d never used the opportunities offered by their working proximity to make even the most casual of physical contacts, let alone cop a feel, why should she be surprised, and even a little jealous, to find that Jax Ripley with her blue eyes, blonde hair and wide mouth had proved the type to ring his bell? As for the journalist herself, she thought with less generosity, her burning passion for a good story would probably have made her very willing to waggle Dee’s clapper.

She almost laughed aloud at the way her metaphor had developed, and close by heard an answering chuckle. Penn had left his seat and come to the desk.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘I’m so glad I got here early. Ah, there it is. I should hate it to get mixed up with these … effusions.’

He stooped and picked up the poem from the floor.

‘I stopped at the desk with a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk over with Dick, but the fun was just starting and I didn’t want to interrupt. This must have slipped out. A version of ‘Du bist wie eine Blume’. I quite like it. What did you think?’

‘Me? Didn’t really take it in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy. Unless you’d like to help me sort out your fellow writers?’

He grinned at the attempted gibe and moved away, saying, ‘I fear not. How could my little light bear the glare of all that talent?’

But she wasn’t paying attention. As was her usual practice, she’d been dividing the stories into handwritten and typewritten, following which she would dump all those in the former group which didn’t reach her increasingly exacting standards of legibility. But it was a typewritten sheet she had in her hands and was studying with growing agitation.

‘Oh shit,’ she said.

‘In any case,’ Dick Dee was saying, ‘I dare say that despite Miss Ripley’s efforts to stir it up, this will after all turn out to be nothing more than a storm in a tea-cup, leaving her (to re-direct the image) with egg on her face, and your good self without so much as a breadcrumb on the snow-white lace doyley of your reputation.’

It was, Rye had come to know, a habit of Dee’s to coat his more acerbic ironies with garishly colourful layers of language, but the assurance seemed enough to mollify Percy Follows, a process signified physically as he came out of the office by an attempted smoothing down of his mane of golden hair which at times of stress exploded electrically like the tail feathers of a randy bird of paradise.

I shouldn’t bother, Perce, thought Rye.

Dee followed, smiled at Rye and said, ‘Good morning.’

‘Morning. Sorry I was late,’ she said, watching Follows and hoping he would leave the Reference.

‘Were you? I’m not in a position to notice. I seem to have mislaid my watch again. You haven’t seen it?’

Dee’s watch was a running joke. He didn’t like working at a keyboard with it on, claiming it unbalanced his prose, but once removed it seemed to have what Penn called Fernweh, a longing to be somewhere distant.

‘Try the middle shelf. It seems very fond of there.’

He ducked down behind the reception desk, came up smiling.

‘How clever of you. I’m back in time’s ever rolling stream which means I suppose we should get down to some work. Percy, are we finished?’

Follows said, ‘I hope so, Dick. I hope we’ve heard the last of this silly business, but if there are any further developments, I want to be the first to know. I hope you and your staff understand that.’

He looked accusingly at Rye who smiled at him, thought, OK, Perce, if that’s what you want, let me make your day, and said to Dee, ‘Dick, I’m afraid we’ve got another one.’

She held up the sheets of paper carefully by one corner.

She could see Dee understood her instantly but Follows was a little slower to catch on.

‘Another …? Oh God, you don’t mean another of these Dialogue things? Let me see.’

He attempted to snatch it from her fingers but she moved away.

‘I don’t think it would be too clever for anyone else to handle it,’ she said. ‘I think we ought to get it round to the police straightaway.’

‘That’s what you think, is it?’ said Follows, his hair sun-bursting once again.

She thought for a moment he was going to try ordering her to hand the Dialogue over. The library staff, he liked to claim, were one big happy family, but, as Dick Dee had once remarked, democracy was not a form of organization much practised in family life.

But on this occasion Follows had enough sense not to push things to confrontation.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘And perhaps we should make a copy for Miss sodding Ripley while we’re at it. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t have one already.’

‘No,’ said Rye. ‘I don’t think so. Though she may be privy to the gist.’

She shook the sheets of paper gently.

‘I hope it’s all a sick fantasy, but if I read this aright, I think the Wordman is telling us that he’s just murdered Jax Ripley.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_2c7471af-4b67-5c64-8706-5061f379e058)

Hat Bowler stared down at Jax Ripley’s body and felt a pang of grief which for a second almost took the strength out of his legs.

He had seen bodies before during his short service and had learned some of the tricks of dealing with the sight – the controlled breathing, the mental distancing, the deliberate defocusing. But this was the first time he’d seen the corpse of someone he knew. Someone he liked. Someone as young as he was.

It’s yourself you’re grieving for, he told himself savagely, hoping to regain control via cynicism. But it didn’t work and he turned away unsteadily, though careful not to grasp at anything in an effort to control his unsteadiness.

George Headingley was moved too, he could see that. In fact the portly DI had turned away and left the bedroom before Bowler and was now sitting in an armchair in the living room of the flat, looking distinctly unwell. He hadn’t looked too good when he arrived at work that morning. Indeed he’d been five minutes late, inconsequential in the routine of most CID officers over the rank of constable, but a seismic disturbance of the Headingley behaviour pattern.

When Bowler had burst into his office with the news that Rye had just given him over the telephone, he seemed to have difficulty taking it in. Finally, after Bowler had tried to contact the TV presenter at the studios, then by phone at home, Headingley had allowed himself to be persuaded that they ought to go round to Ripley’s flat.

Now, sitting in the armchair, staring into space, instead of a healthy fifty-year-old sailing serenely into a chosen retirement, he looked more like a superannuated senior citizen who’d hung on till decrepitude forced him out.

‘Sir, I’ll get things under way, shall I?’ said Bowler.

He took silence for an answer and rang back to the station to get a scene-of-crime team organized, adding, sotto voce, ‘And make sure the DCI knows, will you? I don’t think Mr Headingley’s up to it this morning.’

He’d managed to persuade the DI that an armchair in a murder victim’s flat was not the cleverest place to let a senior officer find you in and got him outside into the damp morning air before Peter Pascoe appeared.

‘George, you OK?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. Well, no, not really. Touch of flu coming on. Could hardly get out of bed this morning,’ said Headingley in a shaky voice.

‘Then if I were you I’d go and get back into it,’ said Pascoe crisply.

‘No, I’ll be OK. Got to get back inside and take a look round while the trail’s still hot …’

‘George, you know no one’s going inside there till everything’s been done that needs to be done. Go home. That’s an order.’

And to take the sting out of pulling rank on an old colleague who’d been a DI ever since Pascoe first arrived in the Mid-Yorkshire force as a DC, Pascoe said in a low voice as he ushered Headingley to his car, ‘George, with days to do, you don’t want this, do you? I mean, who knows, it could roll on forever. Grab the money and run for the sun, eh? And don’t worry, I’ll see you get credit for what you’ve done so far. Love to Beryl.’

He watched the DI’s car drive slowly away then with a shake of the head he turned back to the apartment building.