Dialogues of the Dead

“Frazer describes the ritual thus. Barley and wheat were laid on the altar and oxen driven close by. The animal that went up to the altar and started eating was sacrificed by men using axe and knife, which weapons they immediately threw away from them and fled. Ultimately everyone concerned in the animal’s death stood trial, each passed on the blame till it came to be laid completely at the door of the knife and the axe which were judged guilty, condemned and hurled into the sea.”

Pascoe, who had been listening closely-unlike his master who had cupped his great hands round his great face and was groaning softly into the resultant funnel with a sound like a rising westerly echoing through Fingal’s Cave-asked, “So you think this is why the Wordman threw the gun away but not the axe? The Hon. was dead when his head got chopped off so the axe wasn’t guilty.”

“That’s right. You’ll have noticed how he talks about the weapon more or less firing itself, just as he talks about the victim selecting itself, like the Athenian ox. By the by, did the PM find any sign he’d been eating anything?”

Pascoe glanced at Dalziel who was the arbiter of how much information they gave non-officials, but before he could get eye contact, Dr. Pottle (back to full smoking strength after his recent illness) said, “More significant than all these word games he clearly likes playing could be the strong sexual imagery he uses here. It’s what’s happening in his psyche that will give us the clue to track him down, not his warped rationality. That is an area over which, by its very nature, he still has some control. It’s the emotions, the passions, running out of control which will betray him in the end. At the very least, they may result in the deposit of significant physical traces. You’ve checked the ground thoroughly for signs of semen, I presume? It reads to me as if ejaculation almost certainly took place either during or immediately after the event.”

Dalziel’s head emerged from its cavern and he said coldly, “I’m not right sure what your job is, Dr. Pottle, but one thing I’m sure it’s not is telling me mine. By a stroke of luck which was long overdue it were one of my own officers who was first on the scene, so as far as possible it’s been kept uncontaminated. Yes, we’ve gone over every inch of that terrain for half a mile in all directions. Yes, everything there was to be recorded, removed, examined and analysed has been taken care of. We’ve dragged the tarn and found the gun and a deal of rubbish beside, none of which looks like it might be relevant. We’ve got the axe from the cottage and found traces of blood on it which show it was the same as was used on the Hon. Geoffrey. And, yes, Mr. Urquhart, the post mortem found traces of cucumber sandwich in his mouth and on the bank by the boat we found a sandwich, wholewheat bread, by the bye, with a single bite out of it. All this is confidential police information which I’m telling you just to show how far I’m willing to go to catch this lunatic. If any of it helps either of you two jokers to tell us owt useful, speak now or forever hold your pieces.”

He regarded the visiting experts with the open expression of a man who had laid all his cards on the table. Except of course, thought Pascoe, he hadn’t mentioned that Bowler had confessed to allowing his bit of skirt to seriously contaminate the scene, he hadn’t mentioned that they’d turned Stangcreek Cottage upside down and questioned Dick Dee for five hours straight off (during which time he hadn’t asked for his solicitor and at the end of which time he’d looked a lot fresher than his interrogators) before releasing him, and he hadn’t mentioned that a very alert forensic examiner had noticed faint traces of blood on the fish hook on one of the rods in the boat, which on examination had proved to be human and AB, unlike the Hon.’s which was A. And he certainly hadn’t mentioned that the Hon.’s Land-Rover, which they’d alerted police forces nationally to look out for, had just been discovered in the police car-pound to which it had been removed for illegal parking behind the railway station.

The Dialogue hadn’t turned up till Monday morning when it was discovered among the library mail, but from the moment Bowler had rung in on Sunday with news of his grisly discovery, they’d treated it as a Wordman killing.

Not, as Wield had observed, that this made them feel like they were one step ahead of the game, only that the bugger now had them all playing it according to his rules.

Now, on Tuesday morning, Pascoe had persuaded a reluctant Dalziel that it was time to hear what the “experts” had to say.

“Well?” growled Dalziel.

Urquhart scratched his stubbly chin with a noise which sounded like a challenge to the heavyweight champion of carnal frication who sat before him and said, “Trinal, trinity, in three parts. Find out what he’s on about there and you might be in sniffing distance of what makes the bugger tick.”