eating, and not always then. No one listens any more. No, it’s Jax the bloody Ripper who bothers me. She’s got last month’s statistics, she knows about the decision not to replace George Headingley and, looking at the state of some of them burgled houses, she must have been round there with her little camera afore we were!”
“So you still reckon someone’s talking?” said Pascoe.
“It’s obvious. How many times in the last few months has she been one jump ahead of us? Past six months, to be precise. I checked back.”
“Six months? And you think that might be significant? Apart from the fact, of course, that Miss Ripley started doing the programme only seven months ago?”
“Aye, it could be significant,” said Dalziel grimly.
“Maybe she’s just good at her job,” said Pascoe. “And surely it’s no bad thing for the world to know we’re not getting a replacement DI for George? Perhaps we should use her instead of getting our knickers in a twist.”
“You don’t use a rat,” said Dalziel. “You block up the hole it’s feeding through. And I’ve got a bloody good idea where to find this hole.”
Pascoe and Wield exchanged glances. They knew where the Fat Man’s suspicions lay, knew the significance he put on the period of six months. This was just about the length of time Mid-Yorkshire CID’s newest recruit, Detective Constable Bowler, had been on the team. Bowler-known to his friends as Hat and to his arch-foe as Boiler, Boghead, Bowels or any other pejorative variation which occurred to him-had started with the heavy handicap of being a fast-track graduate, on transfer from the Midlands without Dalziel’s opinion being sought or his approval solicited. The Fat Man was Argos-eyed in Mid-Yorkshire and a report that the new DC had been spotted having a drink with Jacqueline Ripley not long after his arrival had been filed away till the first of the items which had seen her re-christened Jax the Ripper had appeared. Since then Bowler had been given the status of man- most-likely, but nothing had yet been proved, which, to Pascoe at least, knowing how close a surveillance was being kept, suggested he was innocent.
But he knew better than to oppose a Dalzielesque obsession. Also, the Fat Man had a habit of being right.
He said brightly, “Well, I suppose we’d better go and solve some crimes in case there’s a hidden camera watching us. Thank you both for your input on my little problem.”
“What? Oh, that,” said Dalziel dismissively. “Seems to me the only problem you’ve got is knowing whether you’ve really got a problem.”
“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.
The food wasn’t bad and the wine was OK, though I abandoned my experiment with retsina after a single glass. It was just a little chilly at first, sitting outside in the courtyard under the artificial olive trees, but the food soon warmed me up, and with the table candles lit, the setting looked really picturesque. Inside the restaurant a young man was singing to his own accompaniment. I couldn’t see the instrument but it gave a very authentic Greek sound and his playing was rather better than his voice. Eventually he came out into the courtyard and started a tour of the tables, serenading the diners. Some people made requests, most of them for British or at best Italian songs, but he tried to oblige everyone. As he reached my table, the PA system suddenly burst into life and a voice said, “It’s Zorba time!” and two of the waiters started doing that awful Greek dancing. I saw the young musician wince, then he caught my eye and grinned sheepishly.
I smiled back and pointed to his instrument, and asked him what its name was, interested to hear if his speaking voice was as “Greek” as his singing voice. It was a bazouki, he said in a broad Mid-Yorkshire accent. “Oh, you aren’t Greek then?” I said, sounding disappointed to conceal the surge of exultation I was feeling. He laughed and admitted quite freely he was local, born, bred and still living out at Carker. He was a music student at the university, finding it impossible like so many of them to exist on the pittance they call a grant these days and plumping it out a bit by working in the Taverna most evenings. But while he wasn’t Greek, his instrument he assured me certainly was, a genuine bazouki brought home from Crete by his grandfather who’d fought there during the Second World War, so its music had first been heard beneath real olive trees in a warm and richly perfumed Mediterranean night.
I could detect in his voice a longing for that distant reality he described just as I’d seen in his face a disgust with this fakery he was involved in. Yorkshire born and bred he might be, but his soul yearned for something that he had persuaded himself could still be found under other less chilly skies. Poor boy. He had the open hopeful look of one born to be disappointed. I yearned to save him from the shattering of his illusions.
The canned music was growing louder and the dancing waiters who’d been urging more and more customers to join their line were getting close to my table, so I tucked some coins into the leather pouch dangling from the
