Dialogues of the Dead

^ And Johnson had confirmed every word. It turned out the lecturer knew his student's background with out 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 belly-ached 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 Perm 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 Perm, 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 Perm 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 Gottingen 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 someone 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