Dialogues of the Dead

“Yuck. Don’t know what the opposite of a sweet tooth is, but that’s what I’ve got. Too much force-feeding with sugary goo when I were a kid. Which reminds me, Andy. I’d love to stay, but Sunday’s family visiting day, at least for us who’ve got families to visit, it is.”

That sounded like a dig, thought Hat.

“Oh aye. Your mam well, is she?” said Dalziel. “Still taking care of the three K’s out in the sticks?”

And that, though incomprehensible, sounded like a riposte.

Penn for a moment looked like he’d have enjoyed tipping the rest of his ale over the Fat Man’s huge head, but he reduced his reaction to a snarling smile and said, “Yes, Andy, my old mam’s still alive and kicking, and it’s me she’ll be kicking if I don’t turn up to see her on a Sunday. So I’ll have to postpone that drink you’ve so kindly if vicariously offered me, Constable. Cheers. See you both tomorrow, I expect.”

“Tomorrow?” said Dalziel.

“You’ve not forgotten? What is it? Alzheimer’s or just so many bodies in your business, you lose track? Let me remind you. Now the inquest’s over, and the ghouls have done chopping her up, they’re going to let poor Jax be buried. Don’t the books tell us murderers always like to attend their victims funerals? See you.”

He downed his drink, swept up his change which Bowler had put on the table, stood up and strode towards the door.

“Sir?” said Hat, looking after him. “Do we just let him go?”

“What do you want to do?” said Dalziel. “Rugby tackle him then slap the cuffs on?”

“I suppose not. Sir, what was that about the three K’s?”

“Kinder, Küche, Kirche. Children, kitchen and church. What German women are supposed to occupy themselves with, don’t they learn you owt these days?”

Hat digested this.

“But Mr. Penn’s local, isn’t he? He sounds real Yorkshire.”

“Sounds it, aye. Bred, but not born. Mam and dad got out of East Berlin a couple of steps ahead of the Stasi when the Wall went up. You remember the Wall, do you, lad?”

“I remember it coming down. There was a lot of fuss.”

“Aye, there always is,” said the Fat Man. “Number of times in my life I’ve joined in singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ …but they never are, mebbe because they never were …”

He looked into his glass with what might have been melancholia or was perhaps just a hint that it was almost empty.

“So his parents came to Yorkshire to settle, did they?”

“Got brought to Yorkshire. Lord Partridge, big Tory politician way back, he sponsored them. Bit of a gesture to show he was doing his bit to fight the red peril, I expect. Fair do’s but, he took care of ’em. She worked around the house, he helped with the horses. And Charley got a good education. Unthank College. Better’n me. Mebbe I should have been a refugee.”

“Unthank College? But isn’t that a public, I mean a private school? Boarders and all that?”

“So what? You’re not one of them trendy Trots, are you?”

“No. What I meant was, he doesn’t sound like he went to one of those places. He sounds more like …”

He tailed off, fearful of giving offence, but Dalziel said complacently, “More like me, you mean? Aye, you’re right, whatever else they did to Charley there, they didn’t get him speaking like he’d got a silver spoon up his arse. Interesting, that.”

Encouraged, Hat said, “Are both his parents still alive?”

“Don’t know much about ’em apart from what I’ve told you. In fact, come to think of it, I’d not heard Charley mention either of them till he started on about rushing off to see his mam just now.”

“She must be a good age. Penn’s no spring chicken,” said Hat.

“Nay, Charley’s not as old as he looks,” said Dalziel. “Continental skin tone, you see. Doesn’t age half as well as us home-grown stock. Likes to think he passes for a native, but you can always tell. But that’s no reason to be racially prejudiced, lad. He might look like an old-time axe-murderer, but I can’t see anything here that looks like a motive, not even in the dusk with the light behind it. You heard what he said about Ripley. They’d kissed and made out.”

“Yes, sir. But, well, even if, or especially if he’d killed her, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Dalziel laughed and said, “Now you’re thinking like a cop, lad. No, even if he were lying about that, he’d still need a better reason than her badmouthing his books five years back. Not that I think that were his real reason for assaulting her. Like I told him, I think what really pissed him off were her suggesting he’d never finish this thing he’s writing about Heinz.”

“Heine,” said Bowler.

“Both on ’em,” said Dalziel. “Any road, he tells me now it’s coming on nicely, so bang goes that motive if it ever was one.”

“Don’t quite follow …”