Dialogues of the Dead

“Oh yes, I’m certain of that. I think I’ve got the same problem Hector was faced with last year.”

“Eh?” said Dalziel, puzzled by this reference to Mid-Yorkshire’s most famously incompetent constable. “Remind me.”

“Don’t you remember? He went into that warehouse to investigate a possible intruder. There was a guard dog, big Ridgeback I think, lying down just inside the doorway.”

“Oh yes, I recall. Hector had to pass it. And he didn’t know if it was dead, drugged, sleeping or just playing doggo, waiting to pounce, that was his problem, right?”

“No,” said Pascoe. “He gave it a kick to find out. And it opened its eyes. That was his problem.”

4

the second dialogue

Hi.

It’s me again. How’s it going?

Remember our riddles? Here’s a new one.

One for the living, one for the dead,

Out on the moor I wind about

Nor rhyme nor reason in my head

Yet reasons I have without a doubt.

Deep printed on the yielding land

Each zig and zag makes perfect sense

To those who recognize the hand

Of nature’s clerk experience.

This tracks a chasm deep and wide,

That skirts a bog, this finds a ford,

And men have suffered, men have died,

To learn this wisdom of my Word-

— That seeming right is sometimes wrong

And even on the clearest days

The shortest way may still be long,

The straightest line may form a maze.

What am I?

Got it yet?

You were always a smart dog at a riddle!

I’ve been thinking a lot about paths lately, the paths of the living, the paths of the dead, how maybe there’s only one path, and I have set my foot upon it.

I was pretty busy for a few days after my Great Adventure began, so I had little chance to mark its beginning by any kind of celebration. But as the weekend approached, I felt an urge to do something different, a little special. And I recalled my cheerful AA man telling me how chuffed he’d been on his return from Corfu to discover that a new Greek restaurant had just opened in town.

“In Cradle Street, the Taverna,” he said. “Good nosh and there’s a courtyard out back where they’ve got tables and parasols. Of course, it’s not like sitting outside in Corfu, but on a fine evening with the sun shining and the waiters running around in costume, and this chap twanging away on one of them Greek banjos, you can close your eyes and imagine you’re back in the Med.”

It was really nice to hear someone being so enthusiastic about foreign travel and food and everything. Most Brits tend to go abroad just for the sake of confirming their superiority to everyone else in the world.

Down there too?

There’s no changing human nature.

Anyway, I thought I’d give the Taverna a try.