Dialogues of the Dead

45

On the day of Percy Follows’ funeral, the library was closed.

Officially this was to permit his colleagues to attend the ceremony.

“Wrong,” said Charley Penn to Dick Dee. “It’s to force his colleagues to attend the ceremony.”

“I think for once your cynicism misses the mark, Charley,” said Dee. “Percy had many good qualities, both as a man and a librarian. He’ll be genuinely missed.”

“Yeah?” said Penn. “Either way, it’s fucking inconvenient. I can’t work in my place with all those hairy workmen banging and shouting and competing whose ghetto-blaster is the loudest. Any road, with the funeral at one, I don’t see why the place needs to be shut all afternoon.”

“It was felt that as a mark of respect …” He saw he wasn’t impressing the writer so quickly added, “Also there will be some light refreshment on offer afterwards at the Lichen Hotel, a chance to talk about Percy and celebrate his life. By the time that’s over …”

“Everyone’ll be well pissed. But you’ll be coming back, I would have thought. A glutton for punishment but not for lunchtime booze. So why don’t I come round about three, say …”

“No,” said Dee firmly. “I’ve got things to do.”

“What?”

“If you must know, I thought I’d go out to Stangdale and clear my stuff out of the cottage.”

“Why? New landlord giving you grief?”

“Hardly, as they’re still looking for him, it seems. Some cousin who went out to America in the sixties looks the best bet. No, I just haven’t felt any desire to go back there since …since what happened happened. It might wear off, of course, but until it does, it’s silly to leave all my gear lying around for some passing rambler to nick. I wouldn’t mind some company. Fancy an outing?”

“You must be joking!” said Penn. “You know what I feel about the fucking countryside. Once was enough. No, it’ll have to be the Uni library, I suppose. All those gabby undergrads. I may run amuck.”

Dee sighed and said, “All right, Charley, you can use my flat. But you don’t touch my espresso machine, is that understood? Last time you left me with the choice of brown water or solids.”

“Cross my heart,” said Penn.

Percy Follows had been (and presumably, if all had gone according to plan, still was) a devout member of the Church of England at its apogee, a step beyond which could see a man tumbling into Rome. Not for him the simple worship of a day. If it didn’t involve incense, candles, hyssop, aspersions, processions, genuflections, soaring choirs and gilded vestments, it didn’t count. His parish priest being naturally of the same mind pulled out all the stops and did not miss the opportunity to deliver a meditation upon death and an encomium upon the deceased in what he fondly imagined was the style of Dr. Donne of St. Paul’s.

Pascoe, admiring but unable to follow the example of his Great Leader, whose head was bowed and whose lips from time to time emitted a susurration not unlike the sound of waves making towards a pebbled shore, thumbed desperately through his prayer book in search of distraction. The Psalms seemed the nearest thing to light relief he was likely to find there, full of nice turns of phrase and good advice. How pleasant it might have been if the priest, for instance, had taken the hint of the first of the two appointed to be read at the burial service (only one was necessary but they’d got them both), the second verse of which read, ‘I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle; while the ungodly is in my sight.’

With Andy Dalziel snoring away before him, he could hardly have any doubt about the presence of the ungodly!

Pascoe riffled through the pages, letting them open as they would, and found himself looking at words he’d read recently.

The Lord is my light, and my salvation; whom then shall I fear: the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?

Psalm 27 which the Wordman seemed so fond of, finding assurance therein (if Pottle had got it right) that his sense of acting on instruction from the Other World made him invulnerable.

Not quite the same words, his excellent (though unlike Wield’s, not quite eidetic) memory told him. There’d been no thens in the version he’d read in the Bible. And it had been headed by the legend A Psalm of David, while here in the Prayer Book you got the first couple of words of the Latin original Dominus illuminatio. No, not the original, of course. A Latin translation of the Hebrew, presumably in St. Jerome’s Vulgate. From vulgatus-made public.

Odd to think of an age when things were made public by translating them into Latin!

Did any of this have any bearing on the hunt for the Wordman? None whatsoever. It was like hunting the Snark. Who, as the Baker feared, would probably turn out to be a Boojum.

The Baker. Funny how these things came back. There’d been a guy at university, a slight inconsequential fellow who made so little impression that some wag doing Eng. Lit. (that natural home of waggery) had christened him Baker because-how did it go?-

In the end everyone called him Baker, even the tutors. Did he write Baker at the head of his exam papers and take his degree in the name of Baker? Was he happily settled down now as Mr. Baker, the civil engineer or actuary, with a Mrs. Baker and a whole trayful of little Bakers?

Weird thing, names. Take Charley Penn. Christened Karl Penck. Karl the Kraut. How hurtful it must be to have your own name hurled at you in derision. Like his poetic hero, Heine. Named Harry. Mocked with donkey cries. Till he changed it and his religion, both. But you can’t change the scars inside.

Or Dee. Another one with problems. Orson Eric. Not names to be ignored by the little savages at their play. But at least they gave him the initials which ultimately provided an escape route. OED. Dick the Dictionary. But what baggage did he take with him along that escape route?

Escape route. Escape Roote. He wished he could. No change of name there, except the familiarization of Francis to Franny. But he still recalled that poem read out at Johnson’s funeral, “… there is some maddening secret hid in your words …’mongst stones and roots …” and how the reader’s eyes had sought him out, mockingly, as he put a subtle stress on the word roots.

Or had he just imagined that? And was his attempt to read something significant into these name changes merely a symptom of his own personal paronomania? After all, a conscious shift from an unwelcome given name was common enough. He didn’t need to look further than the young man at his side who seemed to have a touching belief that attendance at murder victims’ funerals was de rigueur for an ambitious detective. Normally it was probably a source of some irritation for anyone called Bowler to be addressed as Hat, but when your real name was Ethelbert, you embraced the sobriquet with much relief! And then there were the more private and intimate forms of name change, like Jax (another!) Ripley calling Headingley “Georgie Porgie.” None of which meant that either Bowler or the DI got on to the suspect list!

Though, come to think of it, the way George Headingley had kept his involvement with Ripley under wraps demonstrated what to a CID man should need no demonstration-that human beings were of all animals the most unreadable and unpredictable.

The vicar’s sonorous seventeenth-century periods finally rolled to an end. According to him, if ever a man deserved to sit on the right hand of God, it was Percy Follows.

Though, from the sound of it, he’d probably much prefer sitting on either hand of Ambrose Bird.

It was one of those thoughts you suddenly feel you’ve spoken out loud and he glanced guiltily around, but no one was looking indignant. Dick Dee was sitting on the other side of the aisle, his eyes fixed on the pulpit, his expression either rapt or traumatized. Beside him was his assistant, Rye Pomona. Whose presence was probably the true reason for young Bowler’s keenness to attend the funeral! He’d got a hint that things hadn’t been moving too well on that front since their ill-fated expedition to Stang Tarn. If asked, he could have spoken some wise words to the DC. Police work can fascinate some civilians, especially a case like this involving mysterious communications and puzzles and all kinds of twists and turns. He’d no doubt that Bowler had, consciously or subconsciously, used this God-given turn-on, sharing more information with the girl than a young cop should, especially one who worked for Fat Andy whose attitude to sharing info with civilians was, tell ’em only what they need to know, and the buggers don’t need to know much! But when you’re young and in love, even the mountainous Dalziel could shrink to a molehill.

There was, however, another obstacle much harder to overcome because unforeseen. That sense of being special which came from being privy to the inner life of an investigation was a very intimate thing. But it was a narrow line to tread, and if something happened to bring your confidante face to face with the brutal realities of the case, her fascination could rapidly turn to revulsion.

Rye Pomona had been dragged over that line twice in rapid succession, the first time most brutally when she had been present at the discovery of Pyke-Strengler’s corpse, followed very soon after by the murder of Percy Follows and Ambrose Bird, which, though her involvement was not so direct, must have strongly reinforced the effect of that day out in Stangdale.

So now, guessed Pascoe, poor Hat was finding that the confidences which had hitherto seemed the key to her heart were merely unwelcome reminders of his essential otherness from which she wanted to retreat.

If asked, he would have said something like, if she really likes you, Hat, she’ll get over it, and though she may not like what you have to do, she’ll respect you for doing it.

But this, like most wisdom, was banal in expression and retrospective in effect, so he kept it to himself, though noting how, after the service, as the mourners filed past the grave, Hat’s eyes never left Rye who was some way ahead of them in the queue, talking quietly to Dee. At least they were free from the close attention of the media which had so infuriated Linda Lupin at her step-brother’s funeral that she’d put in an official complaint about “insensitive behaviour bordering on the depraved.” Result, a combination of editorial diktat and police street closures which had kept the hordes of Gideon at a distant prowl.

“Not a bad send-off,” said Dalziel. “Good turn-out. What is it they say? Give the punters what they want and they’ll turn up in their thousands. Why are you screwing up that skinny face of thine? Bad taste? At least I listened to the sermon while you were leafing through the prayer book, looking for the mucky bits.”

Dalziel asleep missed less than many men awake.

“I was meditating on the psalms,” said Pascoe. “Psalm 27 to be precise. ‘The Lord is my light, and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?’ The Wordman’s favourite.”

And it was still with him, still working away in his mind …

“You OK?” demanded Dalziel.

“Yes, sorry.” He came back to here and now, aware that the Fat Man had said something that he’d missed.

“I were saying, it seems to work for him.”

“What?”

“The Twenty-seventh psalm,” said Dalziel longsufferingly. “‘For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his tabernacle: yea, in the secret place of his dwelling shall he hide me, and set me upon a rock of stone.’ Bugger’s certainly well hidden. Mebbe even when we’re looking right at him. See our friend Dee’s here. No sign of Penn or Roote, but.”

“I hardly think that’s significant,” said Pascoe. “Follows was Dee’s boss.”

“Never said it was significant, did I? Well, there you go, Percy. Let’s hope that angel’s haircut of thine is standing thee in good stead. See you around!”

They’d reached the grave and Dalziel stopped to seize enough earth in his great fist to plant an aspidistra and hurled it on to the coffin-lid with a loud crash.

It was a good job, thought Pascoe, that Follows hadn’t left instructions for an ecologically correct cardboard coffin or they might have seen him sooner than expected.

As they headed out of the graveyard towards the line of parked cars, he saw Dee and his assistant get into their vehicles, then drive off in convoy. When they reached the main road junction, neither turned left towards the Lichen Hotel where funeral meats awaited, but both went straight over towards the city centre. Paid Prancing Percy their respects then straight back to work. The queen is dead, long live the queen. Or king. No doubt the battle for succession in the library was already on.

Dalziel watched them too, then as if taking this as a hint, he said, “Think I’ll give the wake a miss. I’ve seen the grub at the Lichen. Makes you understand how it got its name. But funerals always make a man thirsty. There’s The Last Gasp round the corner. Weird sense of humour some of these breweries have. You can buy me a pint and a pie there. Both of you.”

Reluctantly Pascoe and Bowler, both of whom had other things on their mind, followed their Great Master.

Dalziel’s stated purpose was only half fulfilled. After his first pint (Bowler’s treat) he postponed the pie, and halfway through the second (Pascoe’s) he opined loudly, “This ale’s almost as flat as the company. I’ll not risk the grub here. Let’s move on to the Black Bull. At least Jolly Jack knows how to keep beer.”

But now, having obeyed the dictates of duty and self-preservation, Pascoe was ready to be obstinate.

“No thanks. Lots to do,” he said firmly. Which was true but not the truth. What he really wanted was to be somewhere by himself and think.

“Jesus wept,” said Dalziel, amazed. “How about you, young Bowler?”

“No,” said Hat shortly, taking courage from Pascoe’s example. “I’m busy too.”

He too had noticed Dee and Rye driving off in convoy and wanted to brood on this and other matters.

“Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs,” said Dalziel, recognizing finality. “I’ll mebbe have to change me aftershave. But think on, I’ll be looking forward to seeing the outcome of all this busy-ness.”

Back at the station Pascoe got a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar from the machine and slumped in his office chair, while the steam died from the liquid and the confection stayed unwrapped.

Out in the CID room, Hat sat in a posture so like the DCI’s that anyone seeing both of them simultaneously might have started wondering about doppelgängers.

There was no one else on the CID floor. Elsewhere in the building, normal busy life was going on but here its attendant noises touched the ear with that sense of remoteness and distance you get when standing on a misty beach on a windless day, or in a snow-filled wood in winter.

Pascoe wanted to think about the strategy of the Wordman investigation and why it had failed. Hat wanted to think about Rye Pomona and whether she was still with Dee. But these troublesome thoughts seemed to lose their pace and energy as they ran up against the invisible barrier of this zone of calm elsewhereness.

It’s like, thought Pascoe (and even this thought did not set his pulses racing), it’s like those moments described in the Dialogues when time slows towards a halt …it’s as if the Wordman has trailed his aura and I am on the edge of his dimension, that passive world in which he is the only active element.

This is where I should be looking for him, not out there in the busy world of routines, and elimination, and forensics. This is the secret place of his dwelling.

He let his body relax even more.

Psalm 27. He is back in church reading Psalm 27. The Lord is my light. He tries to move elsewhere, that part of his mind which is still a Detective Chief Inspector wanting to use this weird feeling to range over the whole of the case but not finding any response to the controls. This is what the Wordman must feel, he thinks. Whatever I do in this timeless time is what I have to do, not what I want to do.

Still in the church reading the Psalm, but also in his office at the station, he reaches out to pull the Wordman file across his desk towards him. He intends to open it and look at the psalm references that have been isolated. But instead he opens it at the very beginning, at the strange drawing, the In Principio. His fingers have no strength to turn further. What am I looking for? he asks himself. The twin oxen. The two alephs. The AA man. This I know already. What else?

In principio erat verbum.

The opening of the gospel according to St. John.

Dee was at St. John’s College.

Roote is in the St. John Ambulance Brigade.

Johnny Oakeshott’s real name was St. John.

St. John, the “son of thunder,” St. John, symbolized by the eagle, St. John who bored his followers by his too often repeated exhortation to them to “love one another” because if you do that “you do enough;” who came close to being dumped into a cauldron of boiling oil under the persecution of the Emperor Domitian but escaped to die a natural death of ripe old age at Ephesus where he’d had a run in with a high priest of the goddess Diana, whose worship also brought a lot of trouble Paul’s way …

Very interesting but not relevant, not at the moment anyway-or rather not at the non-moment, not in this segment of non-time. Something else, he knows there is something else.

And outside his door, in the CID room, less self-consciously perhaps, Hat Bowler too sits on this shore of time and feels its mighty turbulent ocean recede. Rye, Rye, he wants to think of Rye but all he can conjure up is that date in the Dialogue: 1576. Fifteen seventy-six. It means something to him …Once more he rehearses all that he has been able to discover about it but nothing cries out to him …or rather nothing stops crying, for that’s what it feels like …like hearing a baby crying in a big empty house and rushing from room to room but finding them all empty …and still the baby cries …

One more door remains …behind this last door must lie the truth …

The door bursts open …

“Sorry, did I wake you, lad?” says Sergeant Wield. “Mr. Pascoe in?”

And without waiting for an answer he crashes just as unceremoniously into Pascoe’s office and with him comes surging back the relentless tide of time.

“Wieldy,” said Pascoe, reaching for his cold coffee. “No need to knock. Just come right in. Make yourself at home.”

With a confidence of welcome that put him beyond the reach of irony, Wield said, “Something you ought to see. First off, that partial on Ripley’s mule, we’ve got a match.”

“A match? I don’t follow. They reported no match on record.”

“Aye, but that was before the matching print was part of the record,” said Wield. “You recall we took Dee’s prints to match them with the prints on the axe that topped the Hon. …”

“Dee. You’re saying we’ve got a match with Dee?”

“Not a complete, but ten points, which, considering what little there was to work with, is a big step,” said Wield, laying a couple of sheets of paper in front of Pascoe.

“Ten’s a long way from sixteen,” said Pascoe disappointedly. “And how the hell did this come up anyway? Officially, Dee was never anything but a witness and his prints were taken purely for elimination, because he’d been using the axe.”

The rules were very clear. All fingerprints provided voluntarily for purposes of elimination had to be destroyed the minute the elimination process was complete.

“Don’t know what happened,” said Wield. “Must somehow have got put in the system for cross-checking against the record and by the time they reached the top of the queue, that partial from Ripley’s mule was part of the record. Something like that, I expect.”

When a master of precise detail starts being vague, it is best to look the other way, especially when the possible illegalities have a smell of Dalziel about them.

Pascoe looked the other way and said, “OK, but I can’t get excited, Wieldy. It’s not usable in court and even if we had a full sixteen-point match, with the bad press prints have had recently, we’d need a hell of a lot more.”

Wield said with just a hint of reproof, “Worked that out for myself. I thought, what else? And I remembered the bite.”

“The bite? Ah, yes. We had forgot the bite. And …?”

“I’ve been round to see Mr. Molar. Had to get him out of a lecture, he weren’t best pleased. But it was worth it. He compared Dee’s dental record with the bite and he says that it’s a definite maybe verging on a possible definitely that those teeth made that bite.”

“Dee’s dental records …?” Pascoe’s mind was spinning. “How the hell did you get hold of Dee’s dental records?”

“All above board,” said Wield briskly. “He gave us written permission to see his medical records when we were talking to him about the Hon.’s death, remember? Almost fell over himself to do it. Well, dental comes under medical, and as the permission was still on the file …”

There were more potential illegalities floating around here than in a Marbella swimming pool, thought Pascoe.

Sod them!

He shook them out of his head, opened his mouth to shout for Hat, then saw it wasn’t necessary.

The DC was standing in the doorway, his face aglow at the thought of getting Dick Dee into the middle of the frame.

Pascoe said, “Right. Let’s talk to Mr. Dee again, but softly, softly. No point in putting the boot in till we know what we’re kicking. All this could mean owt or it could mean nowt.”

The use of Dalzielesque phraseology emphasized the point he was making. There’d been too many instances recently of policemen going in hard with too little evidence and either warning off the guilty or provoking official complaints from the innocent.

“We’ll need someone to stay here and co-ordinate matters. And try to raise the super at the Black Bull.”

He looked at Hat, saw the disappointment and the pleading in his eyes, and said, “Better be you, Wieldy. There’s a trail here which could need some tidying up if it leads anywhere, and you’re best equipped to do it.”

No doubt about that. At the moment what little they had could be dispersed instantly by one indignant snort from a smart lawyer’s nostrils.

“Hat, you come with me to the library.”

“But it’s closed today. Mark of respect.”

“Hell, I’d forgotten. But that doesn’t mean the staff won’t be there. Dee and Rye Pomona drove straight off after the funeral. Clearly they weren’t going to the Lichen.”

“No, sir,” said Hat unhappily.

Pascoe thought a moment then said, “Tell you what, you try Dee’s flat, see if he’s there. I’ll do the library, which still seems the best bet. OK?”

“Fine,” said Hat.

They got into their respective cars simultaneously but the little sports car was burning rubber out of the car park before Pascoe had fastened his seat belt.

He still felt pretty sure of finding Dee at the library and when he reached the Centre and saw the main doors were open, his confidence seemed justified. A security man stopped him to tell him the Centre was closed to the public that day. Pascoe showed him his ID and discovered that, as he’d suspected, a lot of staff were taking the chance to catch up on jobs that under normal workaday pressures got pushed to the back burner.

He made his way to the reference library, rehearsing the sweet words which were going to lure Dee down to the station. But he found the place empty except for a young female library assistant he didn’t know who was painstakingly checking the shelves to make sure that all the reference books had been returned to their rightful positions and order.

He showed his ID again and asked if Dee had been in. She said she hadn’t seen him, but she’d just arrived herself. Pascoe went behind the enquiry desk and tried the office door on the remote chance that the man was working inside, too rapt to hear conversation without.

The door opened and suddenly Pascoe had a vision of discovering Dee sitting there with his throat cut.

The office was empty. Pascoe went in and sat behind the desk to collect his thoughts.

He must be getting hard. He felt relief that his absurd imagining had turned out to be just that, but it wasn’t relief that a human being wasn’t dead, but rather relief that a promising line of enquiry hadn’t been nipped in the bud-or nicked in the jugular!

Just how promising was this line anyway?

Dee was a good fit for the profile Pottle and Urquhart had produced between them. There was the obsession with word games, the delight in his own cleverness, and if he wanted the other world focus which the Dialogues seemed to illustrate, then perhaps he didn’t need to look further than this photograph on the desk. The three boys, two of them bright and sharp and fighting their way out of adolescent adversity into premature adult control, the third still childish, innocent, in need of love and protection.

He recalled that poem again, the one on the page opened in the book in Sam Johnson’s dead hands.

But these were not the kind of ideas the CPS liked to be presented with. They wanted something with much more shape and substance, hard physical evidence, preferably accompanied by a water-tight confession.

And he had …a thumbprint and a bite mark. Neither definite. Both of doubtful admissibility. He closed his eyes and tried to ease his way back into that state of timelessness in which the answer had seemed almost within his grasp …the Twenty-seventh psalm: “God is my light …” Dominus illuminatio mea …

Then he opened his eyes and he saw everything.

Hat’s heart leapt up as he dragged the MG round the corner of the street in which Dee’s apartment was situated. He had been frightened he would find Rye’s car parked outside, lending weight to a fantasy he fought against but could not resist of Dee’s door opening in response to his frenzied knocking to reveal over the man’s bare shoulder a bedroom, and a bed, and Rye’s tousled chestnut hair with its distinctive blaze of grey spread out across the pillow. …

But of course there was no sign of the car. No, she’d be safe at home. He thought of ringing her number, then decided that contact was better delayed till Dee was safely down the nick and he could see which way things were going. With luck she need never know that he himself had done the arresting.

Not the arresting, he corrected himself. Pascoe wanted this played cool. A smiling invitation to have a friendly chat.

No frenzied knocking then. None needed at the front entrance, which was open. He went sedately up the stairs and tapped gently on the door.

It opened almost at once.

“What’s this? A raid?” said Charley Penn. “Don’t tell me. Andy Dalziel’s lying out there with a Kalashnikov, right?”

“Mr. Penn. I was looking for Mr. Dee …”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place, but not at the right time,” said Penn. “Step inside before someone shoots me.”

Hat went in.

“Mr. Bowler, how nice.”

Franny Roote was smiling up at him from a chair placed before a table on which lay an open Paronomania board.

There was no one else in the room.

Unhappily, Hat let his gaze turn towards the bedroom door.

“Is Mr. Dee …”

Penn went and threw the door open.

“No, not in here. Unless he’s under the bed. Nor in the kitchen or the bog either, take a look. Sorry.”

Hat pulled himself together and said, “Mr. Penn, what are you doing here?”

“Teaching my young chum, Roote, the rudiments of Paronomania. I’d ask you to join in, but only two can play.”

Hat’s gaze flickered to the third rack on which he could see the name Johnny, then returned to Penn’s mocking mask.

“I meant, why are you here, in Mr. Dee’s flat?”

“Because at present my pad is, as you’ll recall, uninhabitable. The workmen from hell are still creating pandemonium. The library is closed to celebrate its release from the dead hand and limp wrist of poor Percy. So Dick kindly allowed me the use of his humble property to pursue my studies. But I ran into young Roote on my way here and let him inveigle me into initiating him into the rites of the second greatest game known to man.”

Hat listened with growing impatience.

“So where is Mr. Dee?” he demanded.

“Ah, that’s what you want to know? Why didn’t you ask?” said Penn. “Mr. Dee is, to the best of my knowledge, out at that rustic slum which for some reason he so enjoys. Or used to. Recent events have changed his perception, I gather. Et in Arcadia ego. Since his landlord’s unfortunate death, Dick no longer feels at ease out there and he has gone to retrieve his gear.”

“You’re saying he’s gone out to Stangcreek Cottage?”

“I’m glad you agree that’s what I’m saying because that is certainly what I was attempting to convey,” said Penn.

The man’s face was twisted into that cross between a smile and a snarl Rye called his smarl. He’s got something else to say, something, Hat guessed, he thinks I won’t be pleased to hear.

His heart jolted as his thoughts outdistanced Penn’s words. But he still had to hear them.

“Yes,” said the writer. “Really bugs him, that place now. Didn’t even fancy going out there by himself. Also the stuff he’s got there would overflow that jalopy of his. So he dropped a hint or two I might like to give him a hand. But I had to say no. Bad back, my car’s on the blink, and I hate the fucking countryside anyway. Still, it all worked out for the best. He came back from Percy’s funeral full of the joys of spring.”

“Why was that?” asked Hat unnecessarily. There was a singing in his ears, the air seemed dark with foreboding, and through the murk he could see Franny Roote regarding him with an expression of grave concern.

“Seems he asked young Rye if she’d hold his hand and she jumped at the chance. Yes, old Dick dragged off the funeral blacks, got into his tracksuit and trainers, and headed off to rendezvous with young Ms. Pomona. Who knows? Perhaps in such pleasant company he’ll get back his feel for nature. Hadn’t you better answer that? It might be Andy Dalziel wanting to know if it’s time to throw the stun grenades.”

And Hat realized that part at least of the singing in his ears was the sound of his mobile ringing.

From his place in the library office, through the open door, out across the enquiry desk, Pascoe could see them, twenty dark blue volumes, standing as straight and smart as guardsmen on parade. And he knew beyond doubt the meaning of that mysterious shape in the bowl of the P of the In Principio at the head of the First Dialogue.

Not a Bible or a missal as Urquhart had suggested, but a volume of the great Oxford English Dictionary.

No lettering on the drawing, of course-that would have made things too easy-but the narrow band across the top of the dust jacket spine was there while the white disc at the bottom represented the university coat of arms. From this distance he couldn’t make out the letters of the motto it contained, but he’d seen it often enough on his own OUP books to know what they spelled.

Dominus illuminatio mea.

The contents of the volumes were indicated by the first and last words each contained.

These he could read from here, but nevertheless he rose and went out to the shelf.

The first volume was easy.

A-Bazouki

The AA man, Andrew Ainstable. The boy who played the bazouki.

Next:

BBC–Chalypsography

Jax Ripley. And the other?

He took the volume down to check.

Steel engraving.

Oh, dreadful pun! Councillor Steel killed with a burin. And the Cyrillic letters engraved upon his head just to underline the joke.

The third volume.

Cham-Creeky

Cham. Illustrative quotation from 1759:

“… that great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson.”

Then creeky …?

Stang Creek? Skip to the next volume.

Creel-Duzepere

Creel. Body in the creek, head in the creel. And duzepere?

A singular variant of douzepers meaning illustrious nobles, knights, or grandees.

Poor Pyke-Strengler. Perhaps if your father had not died …

The fifth volume.

Dvandva-Follis

Dvandva. A compound word in which the elements are related to each other as if joined by a copula. Actor-manager.

Follis. A small Roman coin, like that found in Ambrose Bird’s mouth.

And the first word in the next volume.

Follow

The $ hadn’t been a dollar sign, but merely the removal of the letter S.

Bird and Follows. Who died, to make the whole thing even more complete, joined in a copula.

He went back into the office for privacy, closed the door, and pulled out his mobile.

The case was altered. Before, he hadn’t really been able to get his head round the idea of the gentle quiet librarian being in the frame for all these killings. Now all he could think was that he’d sent a solitary young constable out looking for a man who had leapt to the terrifying eminence of being prime suspect.

“Answer, sod you, answer!” he yelled at the phone.

“Hello?”

“Bowler, where are you?”

“At Dee’s flat, but …”

“OK, don’t go in …”

“I’m in.”

“Shit. OK. Smile sweetly and say you’ve got to fetch something from the car. Then get out. No buts. Do it!”

He waited. Then to his relief he heard the youngster’s voice saying, “Sir, what’s going in?”

Quickly he ran through what he’d seen, what he was guessing, adding, “It may be quite wrong or nothing to do with Dee but I want you to wait till …”

But Hat was screaming at him.

“Sir, what’s the next word? Tell me the next fucking word!”

Pascoe frowned, decided this was no time for a lecture on chain of command, went out of the office into the library and read, “Follows-Haswed,” pronouncing it as spelt, voicing the w. “Has wed … that’s it! A wedding was in the last Dialogue. Though in fact it might be pronounced Hasued …”

“I don’t give a fuck how it’s pronounced, what’s it mean?”

Once more Pascoe reacted to the urgency not the insubordination and checked.

“Marked with grey or brown,” he said. “The Dialogue poem said ‘but wasn’t white,’ remember? Now if only …Hat? You still there? Are you all right? Hat!”

But Hat wasn’t hearing. He was seeing a head of rich chestnut hair marked by a flash of silvery grey. And something else he saw too, trembling on his retina like the filaments of light presaging a migraine.

1576

Not a year. A date.

I have a date, the poem had said.

1.5.76.

The first of May, 1976.

Rye’s birthday.

The bastard had told them she was next and he’d been too blind to see it!

“Hat? What the hell’s going on? Is Dee there? Hat!”

“No, he’s not,” yelled Hat, going down the stairs five at a time. “He’s out at Stangcreek Cottage. And he’s got Rye with him. She’s haswed, her hair’s haswed, and she was born May the first, seventy-six-1576, remember?”

“Hat, wait there, I’m on my way. Wait there, that’s an order.”

“Fuck you,” screamed Hat into his phone.

He flung it on to the passenger seat of his car without switching it off and Pascoe, now moving down the Centre stairs at a speed almost equal to that of his young colleague, heard the crash of gears, squeal of tyres, and roar of an engine as the MG took off.