Dialogues of the Dead

22

Ripeness is all, as every spin doctor knows, and what the seer beholds is usually what the beholder is ready to see.

In fact Peter Pascoe’s gaze was relieved not accusing, and his summons was imperative rather than angry.

He’d been on his way to the Heritage, Arts and Library Centre when the phone rang and it had been the voice he heard that had stopped him in his tracks.

“Roote? How the hell did you get this number?”

“I don’t really recall, Chief Inspector. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I didn’t know who else to try. I mean, I could have rung 999 but by the time I explained, especially as I’m not sure what I’m explaining …but I thought you would know what to do for the best.”

He sounded uncharacteristically agitated. In all their acquaintance, even at moments of great crisis, Pascoe could never recall the man being anything but controlled.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“It’s Sam. Dr. Johnson. I went round to his room in the Uni yesterday after the funeral to pick up a book he’d promised to lend me, but he wasn’t there. I thought he’d just forgotten. I tried again later, but still no sign. So I rang his flat last night but didn’t get any reply. I’ve just been up to his room again during my morning break and it’s still locked and there were some students hanging around, waiting for a seminar, and they said he had missed a lecture yesterday too, so I tried ringing his flat again, but still no reply. So now I was really worried and thought I ought to tell someone in authority, and I thought you would be best as you’re a friend, of his I mean, and would know what to do.”

“Where are you now?” asked Pascoe.

“At the university. English Department.”

Pascoe’s mind was racing. He knew it was stupid, but around Roote, he never felt fully in control. He tried to see the angle here but couldn’t.

But it was at this point he saw Bowler.

“Stay there. I’ll come round,” he ordered as he waved at the DC.

Hat hurried down, rehearsing his explanation for being discovered lounging on the balcony at Hal’s like a gentleman of leisure taking his ease in the middle of the morning.

“You got your car here?” said Pascoe.

“Yes, in the multi.”

“Good. You can give me a lift. I walked from the station.”

“And you want a lift back?” said Hat.

“No. To the university. It will save me a bit of time.”

It was a weak excuse, but he didn’t feel like explaining he preferred to have a witness in any encounter arranged by Roote.

They didn’t talk as they strode to the car park.

“Oh God,” said Pascoe. “I’d forgotten the MG.”

Bowler’s ancient two-seater lay between a Discovery and a Jeep like a whippet between a pair of St. Bernards.

“Takes you back, does it, sir?” said Bowler proudly.

“Back is not so far that I need to be taken there,” said Pascoe acidly, slipping with what he hoped was athletic ease into the passenger seat. “Don’t give many lifts to the super, I presume.”

“No, sir. Don’t have the insurance,” laughed Bowler. “Any particular reason we’re going to the Uni?”

Pascoe explained, making light of Johnson’s alleged disappearance with the anticipatable result that the DC was even more puzzled than he might have been.

“So why the rush, sir? Most likely this Johnson guy’s taken a long weekend. I mean, when I was a student, it sometimes seemed like you had more chance of getting hold of Madonna than getting hold of your tutor. Is it Roote ringing you that makes the difference?”

Smart ass, thought Pascoe. He reminds me of me.

He said, “What the devil were you doing in that gallery anyway?”

The form of the question might have puzzled Bowler a little if the content hadn’t disconcerted him a lot.

“I was having a coffee, sir.” It occurred to Hat that he’d no idea at what point Pascoe had first observed him and he went on, “In fact, I’d been having a coffee with Miss Pomona. There was something I wanted to ask her and she suggested we met outside the library.”

“Oh?” said Pascoe, smiling. “Discretion in this case being the better part of amour, eh?”

Hat’s French was up to this and he shook his head vigorously.

“No, sir. Strictly business.”

“In that case, presumably it’s my business too. So do tell.”

For a second Hat thought of coming clean about George Headingley, but off-loading his problem felt pretty naff and certainly wasn’t going to win him any Brownie points, so instead he told the DI about his unease in re Charley Penn.

“You seem to have it in for Charley,” said Pascoe. “First Jax Ripley, now Cyril Steel. Nothing personal, I hope?”

“No, sir. Just that he keeps popping up.” Then, batting the ball firmly back he added, “Like Roote.”

Pascoe glanced at him sharply but detected nothing but proper subordinate deference.

Oh you do remind me of me, you cocky sod, he thought.

The rest of the journey passed in silence.

The plate-glass windows of the Ivory Tower which housed the English Department were flashing what might have been an SOS as the scudding clouds intermittently masked the autumn sun. They found Roote in the foyer talking to a maintenance man who was protesting that he couldn’t open up a member of staff’s room just because a student asked him.

“Now I’m asking,” said Pascoe, showing his warrant card.

Ascent was via a paternoster lift, so called in Pascoe’s opinion because even a practising atheist (and especially a practising atheist with claustrophobic tendencies) was ill-advised to use such a contraption without resort to prayer.

The maintenance man stepped in and was translated. The next platform rose and Pascoe motioned Bowler in while he summoned up all his aplomb. Two more platforms passed and there was still no sign that his aplomb had heard the summons. He took a deep breath, felt a gentle pressure on his elbow, then he and Franny Roote stepped forward in perfect unison. The pressure vanished instantly. He glanced sharply at the young man in search of signs of amusement or, worse, sympathy. But Roote’s eyes were blank, his expression introspective, and Pascoe began to wonder if he’d imagined the helping hand. Bowler’s legs suddenly came into view.

“Here we are,” said Roote, and Pascoe, determined not to be assisted again, exited with an unnecessarily athletic leap.

It took only a few seconds to establish that Johnson’s room was empty and, from the evidence of a series of notes pushed under the door in which students recorded their vain attempts to keep appointments, had been empty since the weekend.

“You say you’ve been round to his flat?” said Pascoe.

“Yes,” said Roote. “I rang the bell. No reply. And no reply on the phone, either. His answering machine’s not on. He always left his answering machine on when he went out.”

“Always?” said Hat. “That’s a bit precise.”

“In my experience,” emended Roote, frowning.

“So let’s go and see,” said Pascoe.

Back at the paternoster, he hurled himself on to the first platform. That way at least he was able to make his flustered exit unobserved.

Outside a problem arose because there was no way they could get three into Bowler’s MG without breaking the law.

Roote said, “I’ll go in my own car. Care to join me, Mr. Pascoe? Could be more comfortable.”

Pascoe hesitated then said, “Why not?”

The car turned out to be a Cortina of some antiquity. But it was certainly easier to get into than the MG and the engine sounded sweet enough.

“Thought you said it was an old banger?” said Pascoe.

Roote glanced at him and smiled his secret smile.

“I had the engine tuned,” he said.

He drove with the exaggerated care of a man undergoing a driving test. Pascoe could almost feel Bowler’s exasperation as he trailed behind them. But he also felt that there was more than just mockery in Roote’s mode of driving. He was going slow because he was reluctant to arrive.

The flat was on the top floor of a converted townhouse in a Victorian terrace which had gone down and was now on its way up again. They gained entry by ringing all the bells till a man responded. Pascoe identified himself and they went in. There was no lift and the stairs were steep enough to make him almost nostalgic for the paternoster. At Johnson’s door, he rang the bell and could hear it echoing inside. Then he tried knocking, registering that the door was pretty solid and didn’t feel like it would yield easily to even a young man’s shoulder.

He called down to the elderly man who had let them in and was lurking curiously a little way down the stairway, and asked who the flat agents were. It was a well-known firm with their office only a mile or so away. He dialled the number on his mobile, got a girl who seemed disinclined to be helpful, advised her then to call a carpenter and a locksmith to make good the damage that usually resulted from opening a door with a sledgehammer and rapidly found himself talking to the firm’s general manager who assured him he’d be there within ten minutes.

He made it in five.

Pascoe took the key from him and turned it in the lock.

He opened the door a fraction, sniffed the air, and closed it again.

“I’m going to go in now,” he said. “Bowler, you make sure nobody else comes in.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bowler.

He opened the door just enough to let his slim frame slip through, then closed it behind him.

There was death here, he’d known that as soon as he first opened the door. The blast of warm air that hit him carried its odour, not yet unbearably pungent but still unmistakable to anyone who’d had cause to be around corpses as often as Peter Pascoe.

If it hadn’t been for this, he might have thought Sam Johnson was simply asleep. He sat in an old wing chair, his feet stretched out on to the fender of a fireplace tiled in the high Victorian style, like a scholar made drowsy by draughts from the whisky bottle standing by his arm and the lulling rhythms of the volume which lay open on his lap.

Pascoe paused to take in the room. First impressions were important. The old grate had been replaced by a modern gas fire which was the source of the heat. On the mantelshelf an ormolu clock had stopped at twelve. Beside the clock lay what for an unpleasant moment Pascoe thought was a turd but on closer examination proved to be some blocks of melted chocolate. Alongside the whisky bottle and empty glass on the low table next to the chair stood a cafetière and a coffee mug. On the other side of the fireplace was a small sofa with a broken leg “repaired” by a hefty tome and another low table with an empty tumbler on it.

He turned his attention to the body and confirmed by touch what he knew already.

There was nothing to show how Johnson had died. Perhaps after all it would turn out to be a simple heart attack.

He looked at the open book without touching it.

It was open at a poem called “Dream-Pedlary.” He read the first verse.

Dreams to sell. His eyes prickled. Detectives don’t cry, he told himself. They do their jobs.

He retreated to the door as carefully as he’d advanced. There was a lot of noise outside on the landing, Roote’s voice raised angrily, Bowler’s at first reassuring, then stern. Better to get the machine rolling before he went out there to restore order. He took out his mobile and dialled.

He was halfway through issuing his precise instructions when the voices outside suddenly reached a climax of screaming and the door burst open, catching him in the back and throwing him forward into the room.

“Sam! Sam!” screamed Franny Roote. “Oh, Jesus. Sam!”

He rushed forward and would have flung himself on top of the corpse if Pascoe hadn’t grappled one of his legs, then Hat Bowler arrived in a flying tackle which ended with all three sprawling on the carpet in a heaving, swearing tangle of bodies.

It took another couple of minutes for the two of them to drag the distraught man out of the room, but once the door was closed, all strength of muscle and emotion seemed to drain out of Roote and he slid down the wall and sat there with his head bowed between his legs, still as an imp carved on a cathedral tower.

“Sorry about that, sir,” whispered Bowler to Pascoe. “He just exploded. And he’s a damn sight stronger than he looks.”

“I know it,” said Pascoe.

He stared unblinkingly at Roote’s bowed head.

The man’s eyes were invisible; if open they could only see the landing floor.

So why do I feel the bastard’s watching me? thought Pascoe.