Dalziel 11 Bones and Silence

by Reginald Hill

  'Let's go home,' she said.

  'Good thinking. But not empty-handed. This is the way to the props room, isn't it? Well, I've delivered Dalziel and I'm not leaving here without my reward. I don't mind Hedda Gabler blowing her brains out over my coffee table but I draw the line at Virginia bloody Woolf!'

  'I think you'll find she drowned herself,' laughed Ellie.

  'Then I thank God we don't have a goldfish pond. But let's grab the table anyway before Chung gets ideas about a rustic bridge!'

  They went out together arm in arm. Dalziel and Chung watched them go.

  'Nice people,' said Chung.

  'I'll drink to that,' said Dalziel.

  'Will they make it, do you think?'

  'It'll take a miracle,' said Dalziel.

  'Why do you say that?' she asked almost angrily.

  'Because young Peter there can make it all the way to the top. But she won't want him there because her let-out at the moment is she can still blame all the police fuck-ups on the scum-bags running things. So if he gets there, she won't stay. And if he doesn't get there, he'll know who to blame.'

  'That's pretty damn cynical,' she protested.

  'Realistic. And I did say it'd take a miracle. What's a nice lass like you doing with these Mysteries if you don't believe in the God of miracles?'

  'Now it's funny you should say that, Andy,' said Eileen Chung.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the Friday after Chung's party, Pascoe went to the police lab to collect a report on Dalziel's letters. The arrival of a third as forecast by the fat man had spurred him to action. The originals had come here and copies had gone to Dr Pottle at the Central Hospital Psychiatric Unit.

  The Head of the Forensic Examination Unit was called Gentry. A small parchment-faced man who looked as if he might have recently been excavated from the Valley of the Kings, he was nicknamed with constabulary subtlety Dr Death. But he ran a tight tomb, and though the report was short, Pascoe did not doubt that it was comprehensive.

  The letters had been typed on a Tippa portable, made in Holland by the Adler company. There was an alignment problem with the capital P. The typist was competent and probably trained, certainly not merely two-fingered. The paper used was Size A5, pale blue, of a brand available in any stationery shop. It had been rubbed clear of all fingerprints. The stamps had been moistened with water, not spittle, and the envelopes were self-sealing. The letters had all been posted in town but at different times of day.

  Next stop was the Central Hospital. Pascoe knocked at a door marked Dr Pottle, and a voice shouted, 'In!' like a short-tempered owner addressing a recalcitrant dog.

  Pascoe entered. A small man with an Einstein moustache and his head wreathed in tobacco smoke regarded him over an untidy desk.

  'It's you,' he said ungraciously. 'Are you always so prompt?'

  'That depends what it tells you about me,' said Pascoe, who had grown used to Pottle's little ways at the same time as he'd come to respect his insights on the occasions he acted as police consultant.

  Pottle pulled at his cigarette and said smokily, 'It tells me you've got nothing better to do or else you'd have no compunction about keeping me waiting. Let's see. Your letters are here somewhere if they haven't been stolen. I get some very strange people in this room and I don't mean patients. No. Here they are.'

  He unearthed the photocopies Pascoe had supplied him with, shook some ash off them and began to scan them as if for the first time. Pascoe was not deceived. Pottle offered a sense of disorder, a feeling that things around him were in such a constant state of flux that you could safely toss anything you liked into the maelstrom. 'A psychiatrist must be either God or the Devil, Lord of Hosts or King of Chaos. God doesn't need forty fags a day, so that limits my options,' he'd once confided. But even his confidences were lead-ons, as Pascoe had realized fifteen minutes later when he found himself talking about his ambivalent attitudes to the police.

  'You've got trouble here,’ Pottle said after a moment. 'What do you want - close reasoning or quick conclusions? Or need I ask?'

  'I look forward to following your close reasoning in your written report,’ said Pascoe. 'But to be going on with...’

  'Right.' He lit a cigarette from the one he was smoking and stubbed the butt out in a huge but overflowing ashtray. His raggedy moustache was dyed yellow with nicotine. Pascoe hoped he didn't drink a lot of soup.

  'Gender,’ he began. 'Six to four on it's a woman so I'll refer to she but without prejudice. As with Shakespeare's Dark Lady, ours may turn out to be a fellow, though I doubt it. Age is equally indefinite. Upper cut-off, fiftyish; lower cut-off, fifteenish. OK so far, Mr Pascoe?'

  'Er, yes, thank you,' said Pascoe.

  'Why do you say yes, thanks when you're looking yes, but? I bet you'd got this one pegged as a middle-aged woman straight off, am I right?'

  Pascoe grinned sheepishly and nodded.

  'Stereotyping may help catch petty criminals,' said Pottle, 'but it's no use here. Assuming our Dark Lady is a lady, I can find no evidence of a menopausal syndrome, nor any of a mind which thinks itself old. The lower age limit is merely that of potential maturation. Now can I go on?'

  'Please do,' said Pascoe, trying to set his face into a Wield-like mask.

  'OK. Our Dark Lady is intelligent and literate, these things are self-evident. But you should rid yourself of any prejudice that this means she is highly educated and middle-class. This may well be true but it does not follow from anything I can see in these letters. Nor does her evident acquaintance with hagiology necessarily predicate religiosity, though I would guess there might be a Catholic or High Anglican background. Or even a reaction against a hard-line Nonconformist upbringing. I can't go much further forward as far as what we might call the external profile is concerned. Nothing on job, marital status, politics, preferred soap powder, et cetera. Not much help for an identification parade, is it?'

  'It'd stretch a long way,' agreed Pascoe. 'But the internal profile . . . ?'

  'Have you had much to do with suicides, Mr Pascoe?' asked Pottle.

  'As a young cop, I picked up the pieces a couple of times, once almost literally. A chap stepped in front of a train . . . And a lot of car accidents seemed to me inexplicable without some degree of intent. Since I've been in CID, there've been at least two suicides I can think of in connection with cases I've been working on.'

  'So you've had more practical experience than most. What about the theory? You did social studies at university, didn't you?'

  'I had a nodding acquaintance with Durkheim, but more in terms of methodology than subject.'

  'Durkheim,’ said Pottle dismissively. 'I thought even sociologists found him pretty irrelevant other than historically nowadays.'

  'I did read some more modern stuff,’ said Pascoe defensively.

  'Since you joined the police?' asked Pottle. 'No? Too busy picking up the pieces to be bothered with the theories, I suppose.'

  'The reason I'm here is that in this case I don't want there to be any pieces to pick up,' declared Pascoe angrily. And then he grew angrier with himself for letting Pottle get under his skin.

  'So you want me to tell you if our not impossible she is serious about killing herself? And if I say she is, what then? As she herself says, it's not a crime. Hardly a police problem.'

  Pascoe was well aware of how Dalziel would probably react if he found out the hours and resources that were being spent on the letters. Yet it had been Dalziel who drew his attention to the problem in the first place, Dalziel who'd been so certain the third letter would come.

  He said, 'It would be a crime not to do anything, I think.'

  Pottle suddenly grinned.

  'You're quite right. So let us proceed. My reading is that yes, she's undoubtedly serious. It's a commonplace of prospective suicides that they send out strong hints of their intention. Partly these are simply the spontaneous overflow of naturally strong emotion as the moment of this most final of acts approaches. Partly th
ey are a warning, an appeal for interference. And partly they are a solacing game, or even a responsibility-shifting gamble. From her own admission, our Dark Lady is bright enough to understand much of this and to have chosen a single channel for all these urges to self-betrayal.'

  'But why pick Mr Dalziel as that channel?'

  'Several reasons. She states some of them. Your beloved leader has a reputation as a hard man. She doesn't want to pick on a bleeding heart, she doesn't want to give pain. Above all, she wishes to be in control of her situation, and I'm sure she believes that she's writing to Dalziel to maintain this control.'

  'You say she believes,' said Pascoe, frowning. 'You mean there's something else?'

  'Very sharp,' applauded Pottle. 'Look at it this way: even the most random human choice usually has its reasons that reason does not perceive; in this case the obvious reason for writing to Mr Dalziel is the obvious reason! He is a detective, a chief of detectives. His job is to find things out, to track down fugitives, to rip the mask off those who would remain hidden and unidentified. See how frequently she refers to his function, his expertise. She is at the same time appealing for discovery and offering him a challenge, inviting him to play her game. Or perhaps take part in her gamble. You see, by invoking the law of chance she distances the act of personal decision.'

  He paused. Pascoe said, 'So how do we take up this challenge?'

  Pottle replied. 'That's your business, I'm afraid. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude. All I mean is that, while I hope I've been of some help, I suspect that in the end because of their addressee, any clues these letters contain will be such as your own professional expertise can best decipher.'

  'Thanks for telling me to do my job,' smiled Pascoe.

  'And now perhaps you'll leave me to do mine, unless there's anything else?'

  'Now you mention it,' said Pascoe. 'And while we're talking about suicide . . .'

  As succinctly as he could, he gave the facts of the Gail Swain case. Pottle listened without interrupting for the space of two cigarettes.

  'Right,' he said when Pascoe finished. 'Let's start at the heart of the matter. Question: could Gail Swain have chosen to kill herself in this way on this occasion? Answer: why not? She would, of course, have had to be contemplating suicide for some time. You say she had no close friends in whom she might have confided. But rich Californians are conditioned to turn to poor psychiatrists in times of trouble, are they not? Cherchez le shrink. She vanished for a few days before turning up at Hambleton Road, you say. Perhaps she spent them on some Harley Street couch and then decided if she was going to be lying on her back she might as well get some pleasure out of it. But she likes to have with her at all times the means of opting out. With some people this means a bottle of pills. With her, a gun freak, it would naturally mean guns. But why that gun when she had other, less cumbersome weapons? I'd have been surprised if in these circumstances she hadn't gone for the biggest, the heaviest, the deadliest. For self-defence, you go for speed and ease of use. For self-destruction you want to be sure. As for the particular occasion, if in her depressed condition she believed the men in her life were the root of all evil, then the sudden appearance of both of them side by side could have provided an irresistible audience. Or it could even be that she herself contrived that audience. You say that the husband turned up as the result of an anonymous call from a woman? For some people disguising the voice is not difficult, especially with British Telecom's special distorting devices.'

  Pascoe, who had been jotting down notes, smiled and said, 'What about the drug element?'

  'An effect as much as a cause from the sound of it,' said Pottle. 'It can only lend strength to the suicide scenario. But from what you say, you have difficulty in that the Witch-Finder General Dalziel sees things very differently. I could easily supply you with a sketch of the paranoid personality which would explain all, but I don't want to upset your sense of loyalty. So let's ask, could he be right? In which case Swain and Waterson would have to be in cahoots, or one of them have such a grip over the other that he was forced to obey. You ask me why Waterson should vanish. I can think of so many reasons, from amnesia to insolvency, that speculation without more information is useless. More interesting is why Swain should choose to kill his wife in this way. A conspiracy removes mere sexual jealousy as a motive. It also suggests he knew in advance that she wasn't going straight to America. But it's all too complicated. If he wants rid of her merely to inherit her money, say, there are any number of domestic accidents which are relatively easy to contrive. Why take the risk of involving a third party at all? No, all the evidence suggests, particularly in the light of your own interesting little experiment, that Mr Dalziel is absolutely and comprehensively wrong. But I don't envy you the task of so persuading him!'

  Pascoe laughed and said, 'Me neither. Thanks a lot.'

  He stood up and winced. His leg tended to stiffen up if he forgot to keep it moving.

  Pottle said, 'How is it, being back in harness?'

  Pascoe had been treated at the Central and Pottle had visited his sick-bed on a couple of occasions.

  'I'm not sure yet. Sometimes it's like I've never been away. Then the leg creaks. Or the mind.'

  'You came close to death,' said Pottle. 'You shouldn't forget it.'

  'I doubt if I'll do that,' said Pascoe wryly.

  'I mean, don't try to forget it. For your own sake. Also, it could help you helping others. This Dark Lady of yours, for instance. You may know more about her kind of darkness than you imagine.'

  Pascoe frowned at this uncomfortable thought.

  He said, 'I do wonder, have we got a right to interfere?'

  'Perhaps not,' said Pottle. 'But when someone challenges you to a game, you've got a right to play. And if you've got a right to play, you've got a right to win!'

  CHAPTER THREE

  There is a pleasure in keeping a secret, and an equal if opposite pleasure in passing one on. But there are few things more annoying than to find that the secret you have nursed in your bosom beyond reach of nudge or wink is common currency.

  As Pascoe left the station that evening, George Broomfield fell into step beside him and said, 'Is it right then he's going to do it?'

  He rolled his eyes expressively upwards. The mime was ambiguous but there was a quality or perhaps quantity of he which identified the man beyond reasonable doubt.

  'A desk job, you mean? They'd have to nail him to it!' laughed Pascoe.

  'No. I mean God. Haven't you heard the rumour? They say he's to be God in these Mysteries!'

  Broomfield spoke with the hopeful incredulity of a curate who's just heard his bishop's been nicked in a brothel.

  'Where'd you hear that?' asked Pascoe in amazement. It was only the previous Sunday that he'd lured Dalziel within Lorelei distance of Chung.

  'It's all over. I got it from this lass who works in Mr Trimble's office. I was sure you'd have heard, being so close.'

  'Sorry, George. Can't help you. Excuse me, there's someone over there I want a word with.'

  He walked away, annoyed at what he'd heard and annoyed also that his abruptness might have fuelled the rumour. There was no real reason why he should speak with the young woman who'd just come out of the road leading to the still unusable official car park, but he had to go through the motions in case Broomfield was watching.

  'Hello, Mrs Appleyard,' he said. 'How did Jane Eyre end up?'

  'Like a guide dog, fetching and carrying for master. I thought you said it had a happy ending!'

  'It's been a long time since I read it,' evaded Pascoe. 'I saw you at the Kemble the other night.'

  'You were there? That figures. What do they say? Where there's booze there's bobbies.'

  This slur provoked Pascoe to an untypical discourtesy.

  'I hadn't got you down as a Bible-puncher,' he said.

  'No? You know a lot about me, do you?'

  'Only what you've volunteered. And I understood you to hint that you weren't in sympathy
with your father's fundamentalism.'

  'Is that what I said?' She paused as if examining the justice of his claim, then nodded and went on, 'Well, likely I did, cos I'm not.'

  'Then why . . . ?'

  'Because I couldn't let Mam go along alone. She believes the same as him. Leastways, she's long since given up trying to think any other way. But she's not built to go shouting the odds in public, she'd much rather sit quiet at home and be a bother to no one. I can't stop her going when he gives the command, but I can go along with her to make sure he doesn't push her too far.'

  'I see. And the banner?'

  'Oh, that. Mam was right, I were always good at that sort of thing. Could have gone to art school if . . . well, anyroad, I knew if I didn't do something half decent, Dad would likely turn up with a raggedy bit of hardboard with STUFF THE POPE scrawled on it in whitewash!'

  Pascoe laughed, then asked, 'Did your father accept Chung's invitation?'

  'Yes, he did. I went too. He'd have dragged Mam along else.'

  This time her claim to the protection motive didn't ring quite true.

  'And what happened?'

  'She were great,' said the girl with simple admiration. 'She sat him down and just talked about these Mysteries, how there was nothing papish about them, how in fact they were the way ordinary folk took religion away from the priests and put it in their own language. She talked really straight, she didn't try to make him look ignorant or owt like that, and when he spoke, she really listened like what he said was important. She were really great.'

  Pascoe smiled inwardly. No need to tell him what tunes the enchantress played.

  'And did she have anything to say to you?' he asked.

  'A bit. Dad had to get back here, and we chatted on a while longer. She asked if I'd like to do a poster for the Mysteries. I said I might.'

  'Would your father approve?' he asked provocatively.

  'What's that got to do with it? Anyroad, he went off happy enough,' she said with the scorn one convert often feels for another. 'And I'd best be off now. I just came to deliver the lads' wages and I've got a lot of shopping to do while Dad dishes them out.'