Dialogues of the Dead

105 the DCI had used Roote's visit to the Taverna to make the job official. Dalziel hadn't looked happy, however, and Wield's report plus the negative fingerprint evidence gave Hat hope the job wouldn't last forever. 'And you're sure he didn't clock you?' asked Pascoe, still seeking a reason for Roote's innocent behaviour. 'Stake my life on it, sir,' said Hat confidently. 'If I'd been any discreeter, I'd have lost sight of myself in my shaving mirror.' This had made Pascoe smile. Then he said resignedly, 'OK. I think we'd better call it a day. Thanks for all your hard work. You did well.' Which Hat took to mean the Fat Man had finally sat heavily on the surveillance job. But he was careful not to let his interpretation show, especially as, emboldened by the praise, he seized the chance to ask, with explanation, if he could have time off to attend the preview. 'Why not?' said the DCI. 'Everyone else seems to be going. And who am I to stand in the way of true love?' 'Thank you, sir,' said Hat. And not wanting to appear too young and frivolous, he'd added, 'Sir, it did strike me, with the Wordman using the library to get his Dialogues noticed, and this preview taking place in the Centre, do you think there's any chance he could turn up there?' And Pascoe had laughed and said, 'You mean, if the two of us keep our eyes skinned and stay ready to pounce on anyone who looks like they're about to commit murder, we might pull off a real coup! Seriously, Hat, you don't get much free time in our job. My advice is, forget work, relax. No reason why our Wordman should be there, and, even if he is, he's not going to be doing anything different from the rest of us, which is to say, looking at what's on display and enjoying it. Right?' 'Absolutely right, sir,' said Hat. 'I'm sorry. It was a daft thing to say.' 'Not daft, just above and beyond the call of duty. Forget the Wordman. Like I say, just relax and enjoy the preview.'

106 Chapter Thirteen

THE FOURTH DIALOGUE

Preview. Now there's a word to make a ghost laugh!

It amused me too. First thing I noticed as I wandered round the gallery was that' nobody actually seemed to be viewing anything other than the wine glasses in their hands and the people they were talking to over them. And as the crowded gathering seemed to comprise all the great and the good of Mid-Yorkshire who presumably had viewed each other many times before, it was hard to see where the actual previewing came in. The only exhibit which attracted instant attention was a sort ofpriapic totem pole, six foot high, carved in oak with a chainsaw. But even that, after an initial lewd comment or two, was generally ignored except by those who wed its rough-hewed ledges to rest their glasses on, though I did hear as 1 passed the art critic from the Gazette saying to his epicene companion, 'Yes, it does have a certain, how shall I put it? a certain aura.' Aura. Now there's another word. >From the Greek avpa meaning breath or breeze. But in medicine it is used to describe the symptoms which presage the onset of an epileptic fit. Remember old Aggie who suffered from epilepsy?

That's the one. Her aura consisted not of the usual facial twitchings or muscular spasms, but a sudden euphoria. Knowing what it presaged,

107 she would cry, 'Oh God, I feel so happy!' in a tone of such despair that strangers would be thrown into greater confusion by the oxymoronic clash of manner and meaning than by the subsequent fit. Later when my burgeoning interest in the arcana of our existence made me aware that the old medicines interpreted fits as the reaction of weak human flesh to the invasion of divine energy when used as a channel for prophetic utterance, I thought of Aggie but I couldn't bring to mind anything of significance in the sounds she made during her attacks. Might be worth asking her if you see her.

Please yourself. Anyway, now I've got personal experience to confirm what the old priest-doctors diagnosed. For I too experience an aura, a divine breath blowing through me, though my aura might as easily be cognate with Latin aurum, meaning gold, as with the Greek. For the beginning of a new Dialogue is like a summer day's dawning in me. I feel my whole being suffused in an aureole of joy and certainty which spreads further and further, stilling time for all who are included in its golden limits. I felt its onset as 1 moved around the gallery but I confess to my shame that at first I tried to deny it. For though I knew that in the light of that aura, 1 had no one to fear, yet my Thomas of a mind kept asking, how could such a thing be, here, among all these people? How could it be?