Dialogues of the Dead

Pascoe, feeling himself harried, switched tactics abruptly, said, “No,” then directed his gaze towards a Scotsman reporter whose accent he knew to be thick enough to baffle at least half of those assembled and said, “Mr. Murray?”

Afterwards he wondered, as he’d often done before, what would happen if he’d opted for sharing rather than evasion. Let them have all the disparate bits and pieces which were cluttering up his mind and his desk, and perhaps there was someone out there, someone with special knowledge or maybe just some enthusiastic reader of detective novels to whom such exegetics were but a pre-dormitory snack, who’d look at them and say, “Hey, I know what this means! It’s obvious!”

One day perhaps …

The right to make such a choice could be one of the compensations of that rise to place which he sometimes feared-and sometimes feared would never come!

“Peter, hi. Am I about to be offered a scoop or am I just double-parked?”

John Wingate was coming towards him escorted by Bowler, whom Pascoe had told to extract the TV producer from the departing media mob with maximum discretion.

“Definitely not the first. As for the second, that’s between you and your conscience,” said Pascoe, shaking the man’s hand. They knew each other, not well, but well enough to be comfortable with each other. Being a cop meant many relationships which in other professions might have matured into friendships stuck here. Pascoe recognized the main hesitation was usually on his side. Other people soon forgot you were a cop, and that was the danger of intimacy. What did you do when you were offered a joint in a friend’s house, or found yourself invited to admire his acumen in having picked up a crate of export Scotch, duty-free, from a contact in the shipping trade? He’d seen the expression of shocked disbelief in friends’ faces when he’d enquired if these were wise things to be sharing with a senior CID officer, and that had often been the last totally open expression he’d seen in those particular faces.

Now he contemplated an oblique approach to the question of Dee and Penn but quickly discounted it. Wingate was too bright not to realize he was being pumped. The direct route was probably the best, not directness as Andy Dalziel (who happily had not yet appeared) understood it, but something much more casual and low-key.

“Something you could help us with maybe,” he said. “You went to Unthank College, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Were Charley Penn and Dick Dee there at the same time?”

“Yes, they were, as a matter of fact.”

“Good friends, were they?”

“Not of mine. I was a year ahead. A year in school’s even longer than a week in politics.”

“But of each other?”

Wingate didn’t reply straightaway and Pascoe felt the just-a-friendly-chat smile on his face begin to freeze into a rictus.

“John?” he prompted.

“Sorry. What was the question?”

Good technique that, thought Pascoe. By forcing me to repeat the question in a much more positive form, he’s upped the atmosphere from chat toward interrogation.

“Were Dee and Penn close friends?” he said.

“Don’t see how I’m qualified to answer that, Peter. Not sure why you’d want to ask me that either.”

“It’s OK, John, nothing sinister. Just part of the usual business of collecting and collating mile after mile of tedious information, most of which proves totally irrelevant. I certainly don’t want you to feel used.”

This was offered with a rueful you-know-all-about-this-too twist of the lips.

“Oh, I don’t, because so far I haven’t been. And I don’t think I will be, not unless you can give me some better reason, or indeed any reason at all, for interrogating me about my merry schooldays.”

“It’s not an interrogation, John,” said Pascoe patiently. “Just a couple of friendly questions. Can’t see why someone in your job should have any problem with that.”

“My job? Let’s examine that. Basically I’m still what I started out as, a journalist, and in that game you don’t get Brownie points for jumping into bed with the police.”

“Didn’t do Jax Ripley any harm.”

Dalziel had done one of his Red Shadow entrances; you don’t know he’s there till he bursts into song.

“What?” said Wingate, turning and looking alarmed. Then, recovering, he smiled and said, “Superintendent, I didn’t see you. Yes, well, Jax, God bless her, had her own techniques.”

“Certainly did,” said Dalziel. “Don’t want to interrupt, Pete, but just wanted to check with Mr. Wingate if his missus was going to be at home this afternoon. Thought I might pop round and have a chat.”

This produced a shared moment of bewilderment with Pascoe which might be to the good.

“Moira? But why should you want to talk to Moira about Dee and Penn?” asked Wingate.

“No reason, ’cos I don’t. No, it’s just a general chat I had in mind.”

“Yes, but why?” insisted Wingate, still more puzzled than aggressive.

“I’m conducting a murder investigation, Mr. Wingate,” said Dalziel heavily. “Several murder investigations.”

“So what’s that got to do with her? She had no special connection with any of the victims.”