Dialogues of the Dead

His reward for this friendly gesture when Johnson finally left, late, in a taxi, had been for Ellie to say, ‘This game of squash, Peter, you will be careful.’

Indignantly Pascoe said, ‘I’m not quite decrepit, you know.’

‘I’m not talking about you. I meant, with Sam. He’s got a heart problem.’

‘As well as a drink problem? Jesus!’

In the event it had turned out that Johnson suffered from a mild drug-controllable tachycardia, but Pascoe wasn’t looking forward to describing to his wife the rapid and undignified conclusion of his game with someone he’d categorized as an alcoholic invalid.

‘Mate of Elbe’s, eh?’ said Dalziel with a slight intake of breath and a sharp shake of the VCR which, with greater economy than a Special Branch file, consigned Johnson to the category of radical, subversive, Trotskyite troublemaker.

‘Acquaintance,’ said Pascoe. ‘Do you want a hand with that, sir?’

‘No. I reckon I can throw it out of the window myself. You’re very quiet, mastermind. What do you reckon?’

Sergeant Edgar Wield was standing before the deep sash-window. Silhouetted against the golden autumn sunlight, his face deep shadowed, he had the grace and proportions to model for the statue of a Greek athlete, thought Pascoe. Then he moved forward and his features took on detail, and you remembered that if this were a statue, it was one whose face someone had taken a hammer to.

‘I reckon you need to look at the whole picture,’ he said. ‘Way back when Roote were a student at Holm Coultram College before it became part of the university, he got sent down as an accessory to two murders, mainly on your evidence. From the dock he says he looks forward to the chance of meeting you somewhere quiet one day and carrying on your interrupted conversation. As the last time you saw him alone he was trying to stove your head in with a rock, you take this as a threat. But we all get threatened at least once a week. It’s part of the job.’

Dalziel, studying the machine like a Sumo wrestler working out a new strategy, growled, ‘Get a move on, Frankenstein, else I’ll start to wish I hadn’t plugged you in.’

Undeterred, Wield proceeded at a measured pace.

‘Model prisoner, Open University degree, Roote gets maximum remission, comes out, gets job as a hospital porter, starts writing an academic thesis, obeys all the rules. Then you get upset by them threats to Ellie and naturally Roote’s one of the folk you need to take a closer look at. Only when you go to see him, you find he’s slashed his wrists.’

‘He knew I was coming,’ said Pascoe. ‘It was a set-up. No real danger to him. Just a perverted joke.’

‘Maybe. Not the way it looked when it turned out Roote had absolutely nothing to do with the threats to Ellie,’ said Wield. ‘He recovers, and a few months later he moves here because (a) his supervisor has moved here and (b) he can get work here. You say you checked with the probation service?’

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe. ‘All done by the book. They wanted to know if there was a problem.’

‘What did you tell the buggers?’ said Dalziel, who classed probation officers with Scottish midges, vegetarians and modern technology as Jobian tests of a virtuous man’s patience.

‘I said no, just routine.’

‘Wise move,’ approved Wield. ‘See how it looks. Man serves his time, puts his life back together, gets harassed without cause by insensitive police officer, flips, tries to harm himself, recovers, gets back on track, finds work again, minds his own business, then this same officer starts accusing him of being some sort of stalker. It’s you who comes out looking like either a neurotic headcase or a vengeful bastard. While Roote … just a guy who’s paid his debt and wants nothing except to live a quiet life. I mean, he didn’t even want the hassle of bringing a harassment case against you, or a wrongful dismissal case against the Sheffield hospital.’

He moved from the window to the desk.

‘Aye,’ said Dalziel thoughtfully. ‘That’s the most worrying thing, him not wanting to kick up a fuss. Well, lad, it’s up to you. But me, I know what I’d do.’

‘And what’s that, sir?’ enquired Pascoe.

‘Break both his legs and run him out of town.’

‘I think perhaps the other way round might be better,’ said Pascoe judiciously.

‘You reckon? Either way, you can stick this useless thing up his arse first.’

He glowered at the VCR which, as if in response to that fearsome gaze, clicked into life and a picture blossomed on the TV screen.

‘There,’ said the Fat Man triumphantly. ‘Told you no lump of tin and wires could get the better of me.’

Pascoe glanced at Wield who was quietly replacing the remote control unit on the desk, and grinned.

An announcer was saying, ‘And now Out and About, your regional magazine programme from BBC Mid-Yorkshire, presented by Jax Ripley.’

Titles over an aerial panorama of town and countryside accompanied by the first few bars of ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht ’at’ played by a brass band, all fading to the slight, almost childish figure of a young blonde with bright blue eyes and a wide mouth stretched in a smile through which white teeth gleamed like a scimitar blade.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Lots of goodies tonight, but first, are we getting the policing we deserve, the policing we pay for? Here’s how it looks from the dirty end of the stick.’

A rapid montage of burgled houses and householders all expressing, some angrily, some tearfully, their sense of being abandoned by the police. Back to the blonde, who recited a list of statistics which she then précis’d: ‘So four out of ten cases don’t get looked at by CID in the first twenty-four hours, six out of ten cases get only one visit and the rest is silence, and eight out of ten cases remain permanently unsolved. In fact, as of last month there were more than two hundred unsolved current cases on Mid-Yorkshire CID’s books. Inefficiency? Underfunding? Understaffing? Certainly we are told that the decision not to replace a senior CID officer who comes up to retirement shortly is causing much soul searching, or, to put it another way, a bloody great row. But when we invited Mid-Yorkshire Constabulary to send someone along to discuss these matters, a spokesman said they were unable to comment at this time. Maybe that means they are all too busy dealing with the crime wave. I would like to think so. But we do have Councillor Cyril Steel, who has long been interested in police matters. Councillor Steel, I gather you feel we are not getting the service we pay for?’

A bald-headed man with mad eyes opened his mouth to show brown and battlemented teeth, but before he could let fly his arrows of criticism, the screen went dark as Dalziel ripped the plug out of the wall socket.

‘Too early in the day to put up with Stuffer,’ he said with a shudder.

‘We must be able to take honest criticism, sir,’ said Pascoe solemnly. ‘Even from Councillor Steel.’

He was being deliberately provocative. Steel, once a Labour councillor but now an Independent after the Party ejected him in face of his increasingly violent attacks on the leadership, hurling charges which ranged from cronyism to corruption, was the self-appointed leader of a crusade against the misuse of public money. His targets included everything from the building of the Heritage, Arts and Library Centre to the provision of digestive biscuits at council committee meetings, so it was hardly surprising that he should have rushed forward to lend his weight to Jax Ripley’s investigation into the way police resources were managed in Mid-Yorkshire.

‘Not his criticism that bothers me,’ growled Dalziel. ‘Have you ever got near him? Teeth you could grow moss on and breath like a vegan’s fart. I can smell it through the telly. Only time Stuffer’s not talking is when he’s eating, and not always then. No one listens any more. No, it’s Jax the bloody Ripper who bothers me. She’s got last month’s statistics, she knows about the decision not to replace George Headingley and, looking at the state of some of them burgled houses, she must have been round there with her little camera afore we were!’

‘So you still reckon someone’s talking?’ said Pascoe.

‘It’s obvious. How many times in the last few months has she been one jump ahead of us? Past six months, to be precise. I checked back.’

‘Six months? And you think that might be significant? Apart from the fact, of course, that Miss Ripley started doing the programme only seven months ago?’

‘Aye, it could be significant,’ said Dalziel grimly.

‘Maybe she’s just good at her job,’ said Pascoe. ‘And surely it’s no bad thing for the world to know we’re not getting a replacement DI for George? Perhaps we should use her instead of getting our knickers in a twist.’

‘You don’t use a rat,’ said Dalziel. ‘You block up the hole it’s feeding through. And I’ve got a bloody good idea where to find this hole.’

Pascoe and Wield exchanged glances. They knew where the Fat Man’s suspicions lay, knew the significance he put on the period of six months. This was just about the length of time Mid-Yorkshire CID’s newest recruit, Detective Constable Bowler, had been on the team. Bowler – known to his friends as Hat and to his arch-foe as Boiler, Boghead, Bowels or any other pejorative variation which occurred to him – had started with the heavy handicap of being a fast-track graduate, on transfer from the Midlands without Dalziel’s opinion being sought or his approval solicited. The Fat Man was Argos-eyed in Mid-Yorkshire and a report that the new DC had been spotted having a drink with Jacqueline Ripley not long after his arrival had been filed away till the first of the items which had seen her re-christened Jax the Ripper had appeared. Since then Bowler had been given the status of man-most-likely, but nothing had yet been proved, which, to Pascoe at least, knowing how close a surveillance was being kept, suggested he was innocent.

But he knew better than to oppose a Dalzielesque obsession. Also, the Fat Man had a habit of being right.

He said brightly, ‘Well, I suppose we’d better go and solve some crimes in case there’s a hidden camera watching us. Thank you both for your input on my little problem.’

‘What? Oh, that,’ said Dalziel dismissively. ‘Seems to me the only problem you’ve got is knowing whether you’ve really got a problem.’

‘Oh yes, I’m certain of that. I think I’ve got the same problem Hector was faced with last year.’

‘Eh?’ said Dalziel, puzzled by this reference to Mid-Yorkshire’s most famously incompetent constable. ‘Remind me.’

‘Don’t you remember? He went into that warehouse to investigate a possible intruder. There was a guard dog, big Ridgeback I think, lying down just inside the doorway.’