Dialogues of the Dead

46

The chair she sat in like a burnished throne gleamed in the firelight.

Sensuously she let her fingers trace the serpentine grooves of the intricately carved arm rests till she came to the sudden hard swell of the lions’ heads.

She smiled down at Dick Dee who squatted before her on the three-legged stool. Between them lay a Paronomania board, which, fully open, looked like some exotic medieval map of the cosmos.

“Will you take it with you?” she asked. “The chair, I mean?”

“Strictly speaking, it isn’t mine,” he said.

“And are you always a strict speaker, Dick?”

“Strict,” he mused. “From strictus, past participle of stringere, to draw or bind tight. It’s a synantonym, of course …”

He paused and looked at her invitingly.

Taking her cue, she said, “A what?”

“A synantonym. One of those interesting words which can be their own opposite. Like overlook, impregnable, cleave.”

Rye considered, then said, “Those I can see, but strict?”

“There is a Scottish usage, meaning swift or rapid, particularly in relation to running water. So yes, I feel I can say I’m a strict speaker in one way or another.”

“But will you keep the chair?”

“In the sense of preserve it, yes. Indeed when I showed it to poor Geoffrey one day, he implied in his bumbling way that I might consider it a gift, though I doubt whether in law my unsupported recollection would be title enough. I fear you are in danger of being deflowered, my dear.”

Rye looked at the board. She had just laid, not without some complacency, azalea. Now Dee crossed it at the l with genitalia, then carefully removed the rest of her tiles.

“I did mention the rhyming rule, didn’t I?” he said. “Cross one of your opponent’s words with a rhyming word and you score both words and also win the right to remove your opponent’s tiles for your own use, if so desired.”

“But that means you could put my azalea back down on your next go,” she said with pretended indignation.

“Just so. It might be wise therefore to seek a way to block my genitalia.”

“Oh, I shall, never fear. If I’d known you invited me here to deflower me, I would never have come.”

In fact she almost hadn’t.

After Percy Follows’ funeral, when Dick Dee had told her he was going to clear out Stangcreek Cottage, she’d said, “You’re giving it up? Trouble with the new lord?”

“As they’re having difficulty establishing who it might be, no, not yet. Just trouble with my relationship with the place. I’ve only been back once since it happened and I got straight back in the car and returned to town. I no longer feel at ease there.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You seemed so much at home. Have you got a lot of stuff?”

“Enough. Even camping out, it tends to accumulate.” A pause, then, “Look, you wouldn’t care to come along and give me a hand? Two hands, in fact, and an extra car, would be very useful.”

She would have said no straight off if he hadn’t gone on in a rush, “And to tell the truth, I’m not very keen on going back there by myself.”

Now she hesitated, but still with the odds on refusal, till suddenly he said, “Oh hell! Rye, of course, you’ve got even more reason than I have for being reluctant to go out there again. My fears are all associative. You actually found the poor devil. It was crass of me to ask you. I’m sorry.”

Which worked better than any persuasion.

“And it’s craven of me to hesitate,” she said. “Of course I’ll come.”

He looked at her doubtfully.

“You’re sure? Please don’t feel you’ve got to.”

“Because you’re my boss?” She laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever done anything I didn’t want just because you were my boss.”

“I’m glad to hear it. What I meant was, because you’re my friend.”

She thought about this then smiled and said, “Yes, I am. And yes, I shall come. But first I’ll have to go home and get out of these sad rags. It’s the only outfit I’ve got fit to wear at funerals, and they seem to be the big social occasion this season.”

“That’s OK. I want to change too. Do we need to make our apologies for skipping the meats?”

“Who to? I think we just go, and them as miss us will miss us, and them as don’t, won’t.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

And now, an hour later, here they were at the cottage and so far Rye had felt none of the feared oppression, nor so far as she could see, had her companion.

They hadn’t made much progress with the packing up. It had felt damp and chill in the cottage and Dee had riddled the ashes in the grate, lit a whole packet of firelights and tossed on a couple of logs.

“I chopped ’em,” he said. “We might as well benefit from them.”

“Good idea.” She warmed her hands at the rapidly blazing fire and drew in the smell of the burning wood.

“I love that smell,” she said.

“Me too. Ash, I think. The best. Ashes to ashes makes more sense if you view it as a process rather than rubbish disposal. To burn and die, giving off warmth and sweet odour, is not a bad image of life, don’t you agree?”

“Does that still include sure and certain hope of resurrection?” asked Rye, smiling.

“You’re asking whether I’m comfortable with the notion that poor Percy might return to us?” he said, returning her smile.

“We shall be changed, remember?”

“In that case …But enough of metalinguistics. To work. I’ve got plenty of bin liners and some cardboard boxes. Just shove the stuff in. Nothing to worry about, except the paintings, and they’re not exactly Old Masters.”

“The young master’s maybe?” said Rye.

“Thank ’ee kindly, miss,” he said.

They’d started the packing but had been at it only a few minutes when Rye had happened on the game board. Even folded it was an object of exquisite design, with ornate brass hinges gleaming gold against polished rosewood.

“May I open it?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Oh, but it’s lovely,” she exclaimed as she saw the intricate zodiacal designs winding their way among the letter squares. “I’ve seen the one you and Charley play on in the office, but this is even more ornate.”

“Yes, they’re all different,” he said. “But this I regard as the masterboard. The star signs on it mean that certain words can gain added value if they’re entered in certain significant locations. For instance-I’m sure I know it, but it is best always to be sure with a lady-remind me of your date of birth.”

“The first of May 1976.”

“May the first, seventy-six. Mayday, Mayday. Yes, now I recall. That’s Taurus, of course. So if you had the tiles to lay your own name in your own star-sign, then you would gain extra points. If first, however, you were able to place significant planets in the sign according to their conjunction on the date, and better still, at the time of your birth, then your point score would be, if you will excuse the trope, astronomical. But forgive me. I am intoxicated with the distillations of my own fermented fancy. Nothing more boring than the ramblings of a drunk!”

“Not boring,” she assured him. “But maybe a touch baffling. I’ve looked at that copy of the rules you gave me, but to be honest they just left me more confused than when I started.”

“Always the case,” he said. “The best games are like the best lives-you only learn by living them. But let me try to elucidate …”

It was a simple progression from elucidation via demonstration to play.

When he set up the third tile rack with the letters spelling Johnny on it, she looked a question at him.

“A young schoolfriend who died,” he said.

“The boy in the photo?”

“That’s him. Little Johnny Oakeshott. He had the sweetest nature of any creature I ever knew. Charley Penn and I were a good working team but Johnny somehow made us complete. Before, we were a very effective combination of intellect and imagination. To which Johnny added a human soul. Does that sound mawkish?”

“No,” she said. “No, it doesn’t.”

He smiled at her and said, “I always thought you would understand. We played the game three-handed in those days. Johnny was never any good at it, but he loved to feel he was taking part.”

“Then he died?”

“Yes,” he said sombrely. “Stolen by some envious god. Since then we’ve always kept a rack for him. And there’s a rule which never got written down which permits a player to use the letters in Johnny’s rack if by adding them to his own letters he can form a whole word in any language.”

“Then what? He wins outright?”

Dee shrugged and said, “Who knows? It hasn’t happened yet. I sometimes fantasize that if it did, we would find Johnny sitting there in his place, ready to play. A real spell, in every sense, you see. But this is morbid. Let me initiate you into my mystery.”

And so the game began. Dee clearly enjoyed the role of patient teacher, though it did seem to Rye that every time she thought she was getting the hang of it, he introduced a new and still more complex element. Not that she felt this as competitive. Indeed she soon began to get a sense that the mature experience of the game would have more of the partnership of dancing in it than the clash of competition. The rich designs glowed on the board and the letter tiles, made of smooth ivory, slipped through the fingers like silken fish when you dipped your hand into their container to replenish your store. This container itself was a thing of beauty, no plain tin or battered cardboard box, but a heavy gold-hinged casket carved from rubeous crystal.

“My mother’s sole heirloom,” he said when she asked about it. “How her mother got hold of it I don’t know, nor indeed, considering the circumstances of the family, how she held on to it when everything else of value must have gone to the saleroom or the pawnshop. It held what little jewellery she possessed, gimcrack stuff, mainly. Now it holds something far more precious. The seed of words waiting for their creator. All language is here, which means life itself, for nothing exists till these seeds are sown.”

And he had shaken the crystal casket so that the pieces of ivory slid and rustled and seemed to syllable her name.

Gradually, irresistibly, an erotic subtext had entered their game, a sort of sexy flirtation with sly innuendoes, hot-eyed side-glances, verbal caresses, entirely free from menace. She always felt that any time she wanted to step back, she need send only the slightest signal and, without fuss or recrimination, the normal friendly decorum of their working relationship would be restored. But she sent no such signal. Bathed in the shifting chiaroscuro of the fire, her body felt warm and relaxed. Where this game was leading, she did not know, nor yet how far she wanted it to go. At some point Dee had produced a bottle of dark red wine and a pair of tumblers, and the peppery liquid slipping down her throat was like the early throes of love-making, at the same time satisfying and increasing the drinker’s appetite. The world of rock and water and vegetation outside the small weather-darkened windows seemed a long way away, and more distant still seemed that other world of people and buildings and engines and technology. If their memory seemed dark and comfortless it was because all their warmth and light and comfort and pleasure seemed concentrated in this narrow room. As for the airy infinities of the great mysterious universe in which all worlds exist, what need to go out and stare at the skies when all its beauty and wisdom was contained here on this magic game board which lay at her feet like the cosmos under the gaze of God?

And far away, still in that furthermost world, Hat Bowler was driving his car through the afternoon traffic like a mad thing while some way behind and falling further back, Peter Pascoe was heading in the same direction with rather more concern for his own life and limb as well as those of other road users.

The logs on the fire burnt swiftly, domed, then collapsed into a tumbled bed of glowing ashes whose red heart pulsated with consuming heat.

“A great fire for toast,” murmured Rye. “When I was a kid, I remember sitting before a fire like this, and we toasted thick slices of white bread till they were almost black and spread butter over them till it melted through the airholes in the dough. I thought of it last time I was here …”

“Toast,” echoed Dick. “Yes, toast would be nice. Later, perhaps. When the game is done.”

And he threw more logs on the fire and soon the seeds of heat in the ashes blossomed once more into flames which embraced these new limbs of wood so that they shifted and sighed and moaned as the fire within them grew hotter and hotter till the room turned unbearably warm.

Dee reached down and pulled off the old tracksuit top he was wearing, revealing a short-sleeved vest which strained against an unexpectedly muscular and athletic body. Rye followed suit, pulling the chunky woollen sweater she was wearing against the anticipated rural chill over her head. It was only as the heavy fibres rubbed across her face that she recalled she didn’t have a top on underneath, only the flimsy silk bra she’d worn with her funeral outfit. Or was she perhaps pretending that it was only now that she remembered this? Certainly there was no perceptible pause as she drew the sweater off completely and let it fall alongside the chair, then leaned forward to make the word joy.

Dee neither averted his eyes nor ogled her bosom, but nodded as if in approval and said, “And now, if we were playing the poets’ convention whereby crossing a word with another which either follows or precedes it in a poem which must of course be accurately quoted, I could score well here by crossing joy with crimson.”

“Blake,” she said. “So I could do the same by crossing your secret here with my love?”

“Still Blake. Excellent.”

“Actually I was thinking of Doris Day,” she said.

He threw his head back and laughed, and she laughed too, but somehow, instead of easing the sexual tension between them as she had intended, this shared laughter sent another line of contact snaking out which drew them even closer, affirming their mutual fondness and pleasure in each other’s company without one wit diminishing their newly discovered physical attraction.

Why not? she thought. I’m a free agent, no commitments existing and as far as Dick goes, none intended. So why not gather a few rosebuds while I may?

But at the same time, her future working alongside Dee came into her mind. Would things be changed? She felt she could rely on him to keep things the same, if that’s what she wanted. Yes, she was certain of his discretion, yet could even the greatest discretion resist the probing gaze of Charley Penn? The thought of those knowing eyes, that insinuating smarl, the ambiguous remarks implying a vicarious intimacy, was not pleasant to her.

And also into her mind, despite her genuine confidence of being a free agent with no commitments, came an image of Hat Bowler.

Who was now free of traffic on the quiet country roads and moving so fast that his passage hardly allowed time for the sheep grazing in the fields to raise their heads before he was out of sight, leaving only a wisp of exhaust smoke as evidence they hadn’t been dreaming. Still some way behind him but, now that he was out of the city, keeping pace, came Pascoe with, a little way further back, the siren and lights of the patrol car which had picked up Andy Dalziel from the Black Bull.

The Fat Man came on his mobile now.

“Where are you at, Pete?”

Pascoe told him.

“And Bowler?”

“Not in sight yet.”

“Well, stop driving along like an old woman! Get up there with him. Owt happens to the lad, I’ll hod thee responsible.”

“It’s more what’s likely to happen to Dee when Hat catches up with him that I’m worried about.”

“Him? Turns out he’s the Wordman, who’s going to care?” said Dalziel dismissively. “No, it’s young Bowler we’ve got to look out for. Another couple of years shaking that college education out of him, he could make a good cop. What the fuck are you doing with this thing? Pedalling it?”

The last two sentences, Pascoe assumed, were addressed to the driver of the patrol car, but he felt their power too and pushed his foot even harder on to the accelerator so that the same sheep which a little earlier had been disturbed by the passage of the MG twitched their ears again, but, being, contrary to their image, quick learners, this time did not bother to raise their heads.

So, thought Rye, will I, won’t I?

She was aware that while her mind vacillated, her body was independently sending out much more positive signals.

She had stretched herself out in the chair, waiting for Dee, in every sense, to make his move. Her left bra-strap had slipped down over her shoulder and her breast had almost escaped from its silken cup, but she made no effort to recapture it. Indeed sensing, and perhaps slightly piqued by, a degree of hesitation in Dee himself, she relaxed her shoulders so that the nipple of the errant orb came fully into view.

Now she had his attention. But it wasn’t on her swelling nipple that his eyes were fixed.

He was looking at her head.

She said, “What?”

He reached across the board and touched the silver blaze in her hair.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said.

“To check it doesn’t come off on your fingers?” she mocked. “’Tis in grain, sir. ’Twill endure wind and weather.”

“I never doubted it,” he said. And now he let his gaze slip down to her bosom.

He said, “Rye …”

She said, “Yes?”

He said, “Rye?”

She said, “Yes.”

It was that easy.

He stood up so suddenly, one of his feet jolted the Paronomania board, shuffling the letters from the places so that now they made no sense.

He said, “I’ll just get …I’ve got …excuse me …”

He turned and went out of the room.

Smiling, she now rose and undid her bra, letting it fall to the floor as she slipped out of her jeans and pants.

She went to the window. It took an effort of focus to get her gaze beyond the patina of rain stains and lichen which darkened the glass, but finally the grey mysterious surface of the tarn trembled into view.

Nothing moved. No wind crimpled the water. Not a bird in sight.

Birds made her think of Hat again. Dear sweet Hat, so knowingly innocent so innocently knowing. He need never know about Dick. Except, of course, that some men had an instinct for such things as sensitive as some women’s. And in any case, she suspected Charley Penn, if he found out, would make sure Hat did so too.

Was it still too late to say no to Dick? Depended on your point of view. A woman has the right to say no at any time, at any stage; that was right, that was how it should be. But to be standing here, naked, when Dick came back into the room was to shout a YES! at him which she guessed for many men might drown out a simple spoken no.

For God’s sake, if you’re going to say no, put your clothes back on, woman, she urged herself.

Too late. She heard the door open behind her.

So be it, she thought, with hardly a pang of regret. Enjoy!

As if in affirmation of her decision she now saw a faint effulgence lighten the murky air which obscured the furthermost bank of the tarn. The setting sun breaking through to bless this union, she told herself only half-mockingly.

Except, of course, it was still mid-afternoon and she was looking east not west.

Also the sun sank, it didn’t come rushing towards you!

So much for free will and independent decision. Just when you made up your mind to one course, fate coughed in your ear and set you on another.

For now it was clear the effulgence was in fact caused by the headlights of a car bowling merrily along the track which ran round the tarn towards the cottage. And there was sound too, a horn blaring as if the newcomer were desperate to announce his coming. And finally even at this distance she recognized the vehicle as Hat’s sports car and smiled at the aptness of thinking of it as bowling along. Except now it was no longer bowling, it was bouncing and bumping over the potholed and rock-strewn track without diminution of speed. What desperate errand did Hat imagine he was on so to abuse his beloved MG?

Whatever it was it meant the end or at least the postponement of promised joy.

Preparing a rueful grimace, she turned to retrieve her clothes and get dressed.

But what she saw froze her in place.

Dee was standing there. He’d come forward so that his feet were on the game board. He too was stark naked, his arms held wide, with something in his left hand, she didn’t work out what, for in his right hand he held a long thin knife. And she felt her gaze drawn down across his belly towards his crotch where his cock steepled out of a tangle of blond hair.

The car horn was blaring more loudly now, the headlights must be visible through the dirty glass behind her, Hat was almost here, but he was going to be too late. As she stared fixedly at the rampant figure before her, she knew beyond all doubt that he was going to be too late.

The MG got within fifty yards of the cottage before it hit a pothole too deep for even its sturdy suspension to bounce out of. The engine gave one last gasp and died. But it didn’t give way to silence.

Hat heard the screams as he vaulted out of his seat.

Shouting something, he had no idea what, he sprinted towards the cottage whose windows glowed with a dull flickering red like Hellmouth in a Miracle play.

Behind him, approaching the tarn, there were other lights and the screech owl wail of a siren. Help was on its way, but to Hat it was help as meaningless as prayers for the dead and the comforts of religion. Keep screaming! he thought. Keep on screaming. The screams were the most dreadful sounds he’d ever heard, but as long as he could hear them he knew that Rye was alive.

Through the grubby window he glimpsed two figures grappling, a hand held high, in it a long thin knife, glistening red …

He ran down the side of the cottage, smashed through the door as if it were plywood, and plunged into Hellmouth.

Lurid in the shifting light of a high-leaping fire, the two naked figures wrestled in the middle of the room, close locked above the Paronomania board as if this defined the area of their struggle like a wrestling mat. The lion chair had been knocked over into the grate and already its back was beginning to char. But Hat had no eyes for this. All he saw was the knife raised high …the knife already dripping with blood …

He hurled himself forward and seized Dick Dee from behind, one arm round his neck, the other grappling the knife arm, and tried to drag him away from Rye. He came with such ease that Hat was taken by surprise and fell backwards. But he didn’t release his grip and without the use of his arms to break his fall, he crashed heavily to the ground, his head whiplashing against the crystal tile dish. The flames of the fire seemed to dance into his mind, filling it with smoke and shifting shadow. He felt a gush of liquid over his already misting eyes, blood, tears, he didn’t know what except that it stung and blinded. The weight of Dee was pressing down upon him. He threw it off and as he tried to sit up, he felt something run like a soldering iron along his left ribcage. Rye was screaming again. Not for herself this time, because he could still feel Dee’s body close by his side. It must be for him, and the thought gave him strength. He tried to rise again. Something smashed against the side of his head. He flailed out blindly, his fingers touched metal-grasped-straightened as a blade cut into flesh-adjusted.

And now they tightened around a bone handle.

He had the knife.

But his assailant had something almost as lethal in its place which came crashing once more against the side of the detective’s head.

Minimum force. For some reason this phrase came into Hat’s mind from his not so distant training days. Force may be used to effect an arrest, but it must always be the minimum force commensurate with the lawful restraint of a suspect.

When you were on your back, and blind, and wounded, and losing consciousness, and grappling with a homicidal maniac, minimum was hard to define.

He swung his arm up high then drove the knife down hard. That felt like minimum. And again. Still felt like minimum. And again …yes, still well within the limits …and again …if this were minimum, what in this case would be maximum…?

The question danced in and out of the flickering flames and shifting shadows in his mind, pursuing an elusive answer among broken definitions and the shards of words. Then the rising ululation of what he knew was a siren but still sounded to him like that ill-omened bird of night rose to a climax.

Then stopped.

And darkness fell.