Dialogues of the Dead

“Yes, I guessed. I’m so very very sorry …”

He felt his voice break, to his surprise and his irritation too, fearful that it might sound deliberately contrived. But her face only showed understanding and she laid a hand on his arm and said, “Yeah, me too. Jax said you were nice.”

“She told you about me?” he said, flattered.

“Yes, we’d always been really close, and we stayed that way even when I started working over there, e-mails, letters, we told each other everything. I was talking to two other cops just now when they came to pay their respects to Mum, and I got them to point you out.”

Two other cops. Could only be Dalziel and Pascoe. His heart sank at the construction Dalziel was likely to have put on Angie’s knowledge of his name.

“I’ll miss her,” he said. “We were friends …at least, I felt like her friend, I don’t know if …I mean, what …”

She helped him out.

“That’s what she said. You started off as a possible contact and you became a friend. And you didn’t try to take advantage as a possible contact. And she wouldn’t have minded if you had as a friend. Hey, don’t blush. We tell …told each other everything. Have done since kids. Which is why I wanted to talk to you. Jax was very ambitious, well, you must have spotted that, and she liked to get the inside track on anything that might help her in her job, and she reckoned that glass ceilings didn’t need bother a career girl so long as they were mirrors she was looking at some useful man’s bottom in. You’re blushing again. I told you we were frank.”

“Sorry. I’m more used to people trying to hide things when they talk to me.”

“Some job, eh? Listen, I was away on holiday, touring round Mexico when the news came about Jax, so I didn’t get to know about it till I got back a couple of days ago. It was eerie. I checked my computer and found a lot of mail from Jax and right alongside them this message from my brother asking me to contact him straightaway, and I didn’t want to because somehow I knew he was going to tell me Jax was dead.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hat helplessly. “It’s truly terrible. I found her …I can’t tell you how it felt …look, we’ll get the bastard …I know that’s what cops always say, but this time I mean it. We’ll get the bastard.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” said Angie. “Listen, walk with me. You’re coming to the pub?”

“Well, no, I mean, I haven’t been invited. …”

“I’m inviting you. Come on. We stand much longer in this porch, people will think I’m propositioning you.”

She took his arm and gently urged him after the other mourners. He glanced back and saw Dalziel and Pascoe watching him. The Fat Man’s face was blank but Bowler needed no special art to read the construction he was putting on this new alliance.

“So what is it you want to tell me?” he said.

She said, “Look, I don’t want to sound like some crazy person with ambitions to be a gumshoe, but there was something in that last e-mail from Jax which I felt you guys ought to know, though it could be you know about it already.”

Hat didn’t try to puzzle this out but just waited.

“She sent it the same night she got killed. She told me she’d just broken this big news story about a possible serial killer, and she hoped like hell it would help her get this job she was after in London. Then she went on to say that, whatever happened, she’d better get out of Yorkshire soon as there was this guy who was going to be so pissed off that she’d broken the story, he’d probably feel like killing her. I think she meant it as a joke. I mean, cops in England don’t go around killing people, do they? But I knew I had to talk to someone. …”

“Hang on,” said Hat. “You said cops …you’re talking about a policeman?”

“Of course I am,” she said impatiently. “Aren’t you listening? I’m talking about her inside man, the one who fed her all the stuff on what you guys were up to, including this serial killer stuff. You didn’t think you were the only one she set her sights on? Difference was, this guy was really happy to play. And I got to thinking as I flew over, he must have been really pissed off that she’d gone public.”

“Not much of a motive for murdering someone,” said Hat. “Being pissed off, I mean.”

“It’s enough for some people. But suppose he got to thinking that now she’d let him down, it was only a matter of time before, either by accident or design, she named her inside source, and where would that leave his career? And if he was going to shut her up, this must have seemed a great time to do it, straight after she’d been on telly, sounding off about this madman. Where else were you guys going to look, especially as he’d be in a good position to help push things in that direction?”

“You’re saying you know who this man is?” demanded Hat.

“No,” said Angie. “At least I didn’t. She never gave his actual name, only said he was pretty high up.”