Dialogues of the Dead

33 'We seem to have swapped lines,' he said. 'Last week it was me feeling uneasy and you pouring cold water. What's changed?' 'I could ask the same.' 'Well, let me see,' he said with that judicious solemnity she sometimes found irritating. 'It could be I set my fanciful suspicions alongside the cool rational response of my smart young assistant and realized I was making a real ass of myself.' Then his face split in a decade-dumping grin and he added, 'Or some such tosh. And you?' She responded to the grin, then said, 'There's something else I noticed in the Gazette. Hold on ... here it is. It says that AA man's inquest was adjourned to allow the police to make farther enquiries. That can only mean they're treating it as a suspicious death, can't it?' 'Yes, but there's suspicious and suspicious,' said Dee. 'Any sud den death has to be thoroughly investigated. If it's an accident, the causes have to be established to see whether there's any question of neglect. But even if there's a suspicion of criminality, for some thing like this to have any significance . ..' He held up the Dialogue and paused expectantly. A test, she thought. Dick Dee liked to give tests. At first when she came new to the job she'd felt herself patronized, then come to realize it was part of his teaching technique and much to be preferred to either being told something she already knew or not being told something she didn't. 'It doesn't really signify anything,' she said. 'Not if the guy's just feeding off news items. To be significant, or even to strain coincidence, he'd have to be writing before the event.' 'Before the reporting of the event,' corrected Dee. She nodded. It was a small distinction but not nit-picking. That was another of Dee's qualities. The details he was fussy about were usually important rather than just ego-exercising. 'What about all this stuff about the student's grandfather and the bazouki?' she asked. 'None of that's in the paper.' 'No. But if it's true, which we don't know, all it might mean is that the story-teller did have a chat with David Pitman at some time. I dare say it's a story the young man told any number of customers at the restaurant.' 'And if it turns out the AA man had been on holiday in Corfu?' 'I can devise possible explanations till the cows come home,' he said dismissively. 'But where's the point? The key question is, when did this last Dialogue actually turn up at the Gazetted I doubt if they're systematic enough to be able to pinpoint it, but someone might remember something. Why don't I have a word while you ...' '. .. get on with reading these sodding stories,' interrupted Rye. 'Well, you're the boss.' 'So I am. And what I was going to say was, while you might do worse than have a friendly word with your ornithological admirer.' He glanced towards the desk where a slim young man with an open boyish face and a sharp black suit was standing patiently. His name was Bowler, initial E. Rye knew this because he'd flashed his library card the first time he appeared at the desk to ask for assistance in operating the CD-ROM drive of one of the Reference PCs. Both she and Dee had been on duty, but Rye had discovered early on that in matters of IT, she was the department's designated expert. Not that her boss wasn't technologically competent in fact she suspected he was much more clued up than herself - but when she felt she knew him well enough to probe, he had smiled that sweetly sad smile of his and pointed to the computer, saying, 'That is the grey squirrel,' then to the booklined shelves: 'These are the red.' The disc Bowler E. wanted to use turned out to be an ornithological encyclopaedia, and when Rye had expressed a polite interest, he'd assumed she was a fellow enthusiast and nothing she'd been able to say during three or four subsequent visits had managed to disabuse him. 'Oh God,' she said now. 'Today I tell him the only way I want to see birds is nicely browned and covered with orange sauce.' 'You disappoint me, Rye,' said Dee. 'I wondered from the start why such a smart young fellow should make himself out to be a mere tyro in computer technology. It's clearly not just birds that obsess him but you. Express your lack of enthusiasm in the brutal terms you suggest and all he'll do is seek another topic of common interest. Which indeed you yourself may now be able to suggest.' 'Sorry?' 'Mr Bowler is in fact Detective Constable Bowler of the MidYorkshire CID, so well worth cultivating. It's not every day us