Dialogues of the Dead

3

“What the fuck are you playing at, Roote?” snarled Peter Pascoe.

Snarling wasn’t a form of communication that came easily to him, and attempting to keep his upper teeth bared while emitting the plosive P produced a sound effect which was melodramatically Oriental with little of the concomitant sinisterity. He must pay more attention next time his daughter’s pet dog, which didn’t much like men, snarled at him.

Roote pushed the notebook he’d been scribbling in beneath a copy of the Gazette and regarded him with an expression of amiable bewilderment.

“Sorry, Mr. Pascoe? You’ve lost me. I’m not playing at anything and I don’t think I know the rules of the game you’re playing. Do I need a racket too?”

He smiled towards Pascoe’s sports bag from which protruded the shaft of a squash racket.

Cue for another snarl on the line, Don’t get clever with me, Roote!

This was getting like a bad TV script.

As well as snarling he’d been trying to loom menacingly. He had no way of knowing how menacing his looming looked to the casual observer, but it was playing hell with the strained shoulder muscle which had brought his first game of squash in five years to a premature conclusion. Premature? Thirty seconds into foreplay isn’t premature, it is humiliatingly pre-penetrative.

His opponent had been all concern, administering embrocation in the changing room and lubrication in the University Staff Club bar, with no sign whatsoever of snigger. Nevertheless, Pascoe had felt himself sniggered at and when he made his way through the pleasant formal gardens towards the car park and saw Franny Roote smiling at him from a bench, his carefully suppressed irritation had broken through and before he had time to think rationally he was deep into loom and snarl.

Time to rethink his role.

He made himself relax, sat down on the bench, leaned back, winced, and said, “OK, Mr. Roote. Let’s start again. Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“Lunch break,” said Roote. He held up a brown paper bag and emptied its contents on to the newspaper. “Baguette, salad with mayo, low fat. Apple, Granny Smith. Bottle of water, tap.”

That figured. He didn’t look like a man on a high-energy diet. He was thin just this side of emaciation, a condition exacerbated by his black slacks and T-shirt. His face was white as a piece of honed driftwood and his blond hair was cut so short he might as well have been bald.

“Mr. Roote,” said Pascoe carefully, “you live and work in Sheffield which means that even with a very generous lunch break and a very fast car, this would seem an eccentric choice of luncheon venue. Also this is the third, no I think it’s the fourth time I have spotted you in my vicinity over the past week.”

The first time had been a glimpse in the street as he drove home from Mid-Yorkshire Police HQ early one evening. Then a couple of nights later as he and Ellie rose to leave a cinema, he’d noticed Roote sitting half a dozen rows further back. And the previous Sunday as he took his daughter, Rosie, for a stroll in Charter Park to feed the swans, he was sure he’d spotted the black-clad figure standing on the edge of the unused bandstand.

That’s when he’d made a note to ring Sheffield, but he’d been too busy to do it on Monday and by Tuesday it had seemed too trivial to make a fuss over. But now on Wednesday like a black bird of ill omen, here was the man once more, this time too close for mere coincidence.

“Oh gosh, yes, I see. In fact I’ve noticed you a couple of times too, and when I saw you coming out of the Staff Club just now, I thought, Good job you’re not paranoiac, Franny boy, else you might think Chief Inspector Pascoe is stalking you.”

This was a reversal to take the breath away.

Also a warning to proceed with great care.

He said, “So, coincidence for both of us. Difference is, of course, I live and work here.”

“Me too,” said Roote. “Don’t mind if I start, do you? Only get an hour.”

He bit deep into the baguette. His teeth were perfectly, almost artistically, regular and had the kind of brilliant whiteness which you expected to see reflecting the flashbulbs at a Hollywood opening. Prison service dentistry must have come on apace in the past few years.

“You live and work here?” said Pascoe. “Since when?”

Roote chewed and swallowed.

“Couple of weeks,” he said.

“And why?”

Roote smiled. The teeth again. He’d been a very beautiful boy.

“Well, I suppose it’s really down to you, Mr. Pascoe. Yes, you could say you’re the reason I came back.”

An admission? Even a confession? No, not with Franny Roote, the great controller. Even when you changed the script in mid-scene, you still felt he was still in charge of direction.

“What’s that mean?” asked Pascoe.

“Well, you know, after that little misunderstanding in Sheffield, I lost my job at the hospital. No, please, don’t think I’m blaming you, Mr. Pascoe. You were only doing your job, and it was my own choice to slit my wrists. But the hospital people seemed to think it showed I was sick, and of course, sick people are the last people you want in a hospital. Unless they’re on their backs, of course. So soon as I was discharged, I was …discharged.”

“I’m sorry,” said Pascoe.

“No, please, like I say, not your responsibility. In any case, I could have fought it, the staff association were ready to take up the cudgels and all my friends were very supportive. Yes, I’m sure a tribunal would have found in my favour. But it felt like time to move on. I didn’t get religion inside, Mr. Pascoe, not in the formal sense, but I certainly came to see that there is a time for all things under the sun and a man is foolish to ignore the signs. So don’t worry yourself.”

He’s offering me absolution! thought Pascoe. One moment I’m snarling and looming, next I’m on my knees being absolved!

He said, “That still doesn’t explain …”

“Why I’m here?” Roote took another bite, chewed, swallowed. “I’m working for the university gardens department. Bit of a change, I know. Very welcome, though. Hospital portering’s a worthwhile job, but you’re inside most of the time, and working with dead people a lot of the time. Now I’m outdoors, and everything’s alive! Even with autumn coming on, there’s still so much of life and growth around. OK, there’s winter to look forward to, but that’s not the end of things, is it? Just a lying dormant, conserving energy, waiting for the signal to reemerge and blossom again. Bit like prison, if that’s not too fanciful.”

I’m being jerked around here, thought Pascoe. Time to crack the whip.

“The world’s full of gardens,” he said coldly. “Why this one? Why have you come back to Mid-Yorkshire?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I should have said. That’s my other job, my real work-my thesis. You know about my thesis? Revenge and Retribution in English Drama? Of course you do. It was that which helped set you off in the wrong direction, wasn’t it? I can see how it would, with Mrs. Pascoe being threatened and all. You got that sorted, did you? I never read anything in the papers.”

He paused and looked enquiringly at Pascoe who said, “Yes, we got it sorted. No, there wasn’t much in the papers.”

Because there’d been a security cover-up, but Pascoe wasn’t about to go into that. Irritated though he was by Roote, and deeply suspicious of his motives, he still felt guilty at the memory of what had happened. With Ellie being threatened from an unknown source, he’d cast around for likely suspects. Discovering that Roote, whom he’d put away as an accessory to murder some years ago, was now out and writing a thesis on revenge in Sheffield where he was working as a hospital porter, he’d got South Yorkshire to shake him up a bit then gone down himself to have a friendly word. On arrival, he’d found Roote in the bath with his wrists slashed, and when later he’d had to admit that Roote had no involvement whatsoever in the case he was investigating, the probation service had not been slow to cry harassment.

Well, he’d been able to show he’d gone by the book. Just. But he’d felt then the same mixture of guilt and anger he was feeling now.

Roote was talking again.

“Anyway, my supervisor at Sheffield got a new post at the university here, just started this term. He’s the one who helped me get fixed up with the gardening job, in fact, so you see how it all slotted in. I could have got a new supervisor, I suppose, but I’ve just got to the most interesting part of my thesis. I mean, the Elizabethans and Jacobeans have been fascinating, of course, but they’ve been so much pawed over by the scholars, it’s difficult to come up with much that’s really new. But now I’m on to the Romantics: Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, even Wordsworth, they all tried their hands at drama you know. But it’s Beddoes that really fascinates me. Do you know his play Death’s Jest-Book?”

“No,” said Pascoe. “Should I?”

In fact, it came to him as he spoke that he had heard the name Beddoes recently.

“Depends what you mean by should. Deserves to be better known. It’s fantastic. And as my supervisor’s writing a book on Beddoes and probably knows more about him than any man living, I just had to stick with him. But it’s a long way to travel from Sheffield even with a decent car, and the only thing I’ve been able to afford has more breakdowns than an inner-city teaching staff! It really made sense for me to move too. So everything’s turned out for the best in the best of all possible worlds!”

“This supervisor,” said Pascoe, “what’s his name?”

He didn’t need to ask. He’d recalled where he’d heard Beddoes’ name mentioned, and he knew the answer already.

“He’s got the perfect name for an Eng. Lit. teacher,” said Roote, laughing. “Johnson. Dr. Sam Johnson. Do you know him?”

“That’s when I made an excuse and left,” said Pascoe.

“Oh aye? Why was that?” said Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel. “Fucking useless thing!”

It was, Pascoe hoped, the VCR squeaking under the assault of his pistonlike finger that Dalziel was addressing, not himself.

“Because it was Sam Johnson I’d just been playing squash with,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “It seemed like Roote was taking the piss and I felt like taking a swing, so I went straight back inside and caught Sam.”

“And?”

And Johnson had confirmed every word.

It turned out the lecturer knew his student’s background without knowing the details. Pascoe’s involvement in the case had come as a surprise to him but, once filled in, he’d cut right to the chase and said, “If you think that Fran’s got any ulterior motive in coming back here, forget it. Unless he’s got so much influence he arranged for me to get a job here, it’s all happenstance. I moved, he didn’t fancy travelling for supervision and the job he had in Sheffield came to an end, so it made sense for him to make a change too. I’m glad he did. He’s a really bright student.”

Johnson had been out of the country during the long vacation and so missed the saga of Roote’s apparent suicide attempt, and the young man clearly hadn’t bellyached to him about police harassment in general and Pascoe harassment in particular, which ought to have been a point in his favour.

The lecturer concluded by saying, “So I got him the gardening job, which is why he’s out there in the garden, and he lives in town, which is why you see him around town. It’s coincidence that makes the world go round, Peter. Ask Shakespeare.”

“This Johnson,” said Dalziel, “how come you’re so chummy you take showers together? He fag for you at Eton or summat?”

Dalziel affected to believe that the academic world which had given Pascoe his degree occupied a single site somewhere in the south where Oxford and Cambridge and all the major public schools huddled together under one roof.

In fact it wasn’t Pascoe’s but his wife’s links with the academic and literary worlds which had brought Johnson into their lives. Part of Johnson’s job brief at MYU was to help establish an embryonic creative writing course. His qualification was that he’d published a couple of slim volumes of poetry and helped run such a course at Sheffield. Charley Penn, who made occasional contributions to both German and English Department courses, had been miffed to find his own expression of interest ignored. He ran a local authority literary group in danger of being axed and clearly felt that the creative writing post at MYU would have been an acceptable palliative for the loss of his LEA honorarium. Colleagues belonging to that breed not uncommon in academia, the greater green-eyed pot-stirrer, had advised Johnson to watch his back as Penn made a bad enemy, at a physical as well as a verbal level. A few years earlier, according to university legend, a brash young female journalist had done a piss-taking review of the Penn oeuvre in Yorkshire Life, the county’s glossiest mag. The piece had concluded, “They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but if you have a sweet tooth and a strong stomach, the best implement to deal with our Mr. Penn’s frothy confections might be a pudding spoon.” The following day Penn, lunching liquidly in a Leeds restaurant, had spotted the journalist across a crowded dessert trolley. Selecting a large portion of strawberry gateau liberally coated with whipped cream, he had approached her table, said, “This, madam, is a frothy confection,” and squashed the pudding on to her head. In court he had said, “It wasn’t personal. I did it not because of what she said about my books but because of her appalling style. English must be kept up,” before being fined fifty pounds and bound over to keep the peace.

Sam Johnson had immediately sought out Penn and said, “I believe you know more about Heine than anyone else in Yorkshire.”

“That wouldn’t be hard. They say you know more about Beddoes than anyone in The Dog and Duck at closing time.”

“I know he went to Göttingen University to study medicine in 1824 and Heine was there studying law.”

“Oh aye? And Hitler and Wittgenstein were in the same class at school. So what?”

“So why don’t we flaunt our knowledge in The Dog and Duck one night?”

“Well, it’s quiz night tonight. You never know. It might come up.”

Thus had armistice been signed before hostilities proper began. When talk finally turned to the writing course, Penn, after token haggling, accepted terms for making the occasional “old pro” appearance, and went on to suggest that if Johnson was interested in a contribution from some-one at the other end of the ladder, he might do worse than soon-to-be-published novelist Ellie Pascoe, an old acquaintance from her days on the university staff and a member of the threatened literary group.

This version of that first encounter was cobbled together from the slightly different accounts Ellie received from both participants. She and Johnson had hit it off straightaway. When she invited him home for a meal, the conversation had naturally centred on matters literary, and Pascoe, feeling rather sidelined, had leapt into the breach when Johnson had casually mentioned his difficulty in finding a squash partner among his generally unathletic colleagues.

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 Ellie’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 trouble-maker.

“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 setup. 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.”

“Oh yes, I recall. Hector had to pass it. And he didn’t know if it was dead, drugged, sleeping or just playing doggo, waiting to pounce, that was his problem, right?”

“No,” said Pascoe. “He gave it a kick to find out. And it opened its eyes. That was his problem.”