Dialogues of the Dead

47 or a member of the tropical fish fancy, have travelled to Corfii on the same package holiday ... the possibilities if not endless were numerous enough to leave suspicion uselessly fluid. Facts were the only hardener that a good detective took any heed of. And he was a long way short of anything he'd like to hear himself explaining to a nit-picking coroner. Now he drove south, leaving the town behind, and speeding along Roman Way as young David Pitman had sped on his way home to Carker. The Pitman house was a spacious whitewashed cottage in a large garden, very different from the Ainstable semi, but the grief it contained was much the same. Bowler spent a heartrending hour being taken through a family photograph album by Mrs Pitman, David's mother. But he came away with confirmation that everything written in the Second Dialogue about the bazouki was accurate. On his way back into town along Roman Way he stopped at the accident site. It was easy to identify. The tree which the bike had hit bore a scorched scar like a roughly cauterized wound. The impact of the boy's body against the neighbouring tree had left damage less visible, but close up the bruising of the smooth beech bark was unmistakable. He didn't know why he'd stopped. Even Sherlock Homes would have been hard put to glean anything significant from the scene. Without the Dialogues, there was little suspicious in either of the deaths and in both cases it was easy to think of ways the Wordman could have got hold of the information they contained. So really he'd got nothing, which was precisely what George Headingley hoped he would get. But he hadn't joined CID to keep the likes of old George happy. He raised his eyes to take in the long straight road down which the Roman legions had marched for the last time seventeen hundred years ago when the order came to abandon this chilly corner of the empire to its troublesome natives. The town boundary was only a mile away but the brow of the hill completely hid any sign of its encroaching sprawl. Only one building was visible among the fields bordering the road and that was an old grey farmhouse which looked like it had been there long enough to be naturalized as part of the landscape. You'd have a perfect view of the road from its windows, thought Bowler. He started the MG and drove up the long potholed driveway to the house which had the initials I.A.L. and the date 1679 engraved over the door. A woman answered his ring. At first glance to Bowler's young eye she looked as old as the house. But the voice which demanded his business was strong, and now he saw that through a fringe of grey hairs he was being observed by a pair of bright blue eyes, and if her skin was beginning to wrinkle like an old apple's, she still had the flush of a sweet pippin in her cheeks. He introduced himself and learned he was speaking to Mrs Elizabeth Locksley. When he mentioned the accident, she said, 'How many times do you need told?' 'Someone's been round?' 'Yes. Next morning. Lad in uniform.' So they had been thorough. No mention of the visit in the report, which meant it was subsumed under the terse comment, No witnesses forthcoming or discovered. 'And you told him?' 'Nothing. Which was all there was to tell. We go to bed early here and sleep sound.' 'Speak for yourself,' called a man's voice from within. 'Nowt wrong with your lugs then,' she shouted back. 'Nor my eyes either. I told you what I saw.' Bowler looked at the woman enquiringly and she sighed and said, 'If you want to waste your time .. .' then turned and vanished into the house. He followed her into a long living room which, apart from the addition of a TV set on which Mad Max was playing, didn't look like much had been done to it since the seventeenth century. A man rose from a chair. He was a giant, at least six and a half feet, and there was very little clearance between his head and the exposed crossbeams. He shook Bowler's hand with a vigour that made him wince and said, 'You've come to ask about the lights. Didn't I tell you, Betty?' 'Not more than fifty times, you daft old sod,' she said, switching off the television. 'So tell him, you'll not be satisfied till you do.' There was some exasperation in her voice but it got nowhere