Dialogues of the Dead

Z7p German women are supposed to occupy themselves with, don't they learn you owt these days?' Hat digested this. 'But Mr Penn's local, isn't he? He sounds real Yorkshire.' 'Sounds it, aye. Bred, but not born. Mam and dad got out of East Berlin a couple of steps ahead of the Stasi when the Wall went up. You remember the Wall, do you, lad?' 'I remember it coming down. There was a lot of fuss.' 'Aye, there always is,' said the Fat Man. 'Number of times in my life I've joined in singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" .. . but they never are, mebbe because they never were . . .' He looked into his glass with what might have been melancholia or was perhaps just a hint that it was almost empty. 'So his parents came to Yorkshire to settle, did they?' 'Got brought to Yorkshire. Lord Partridge, big Tory politician way back, he sponsored them. Bit of a gesture to show he was doing his bit to fight the red peril, I expect. Fair do's but, he took care of 'em. She worked around the house, he helped with the horses. And Charley got a good education. Unthank College. Better'n me. Mebbe I should have been a refugee.' 'Unthank College? But isn't that a public, I mean a private school? Boarders and all that?' 'So what? You're not one of them trendy Trots, are you?' 'No. What I meant was, he doesn't sound like he went to one of those places. He sounds more like .. .' He tailed off, fearful of giving offence, but Dalziel said complacently, 'More like me, you mean? Aye, you're right, whatever else they did to Charley there, they didn't get him speaking like he'd got a silver spoon up his arse. Interesting, that.' Encouraged, Hat said, 'Are both his parents still alive?' 'Don't know much about 'em apart from what I've told you. In fact, come to think of it, I'd not heard Charley mention either of them till he started on about rushing off to see his mam just now.' 'She must be a good age. Penn's no spring-chicken,' said Hat. 'Nay, Charley's not as old as he looks,' said Dalziel. 'Continental skin tone, you see. Doesn't age half as well as us homegrown stock. Likes to think he passes for a native, but you can always tell. But that's no reason to be racially prejudiced, lad. He might look like an old-time axe-murderer, but I can't see anything here that looks like a motive, not even in the dusk with the light behind it. You heard what he said about Ripley. They'd kissed and made out.' 'Yes, sir. But, well, even if, or especially if he'd killed her, he would say that, wouldn't he?' Dalziel laughed and said, 'Now you're thinking like a cop, lad. No, even if he were lying about that, he'd still need a better reason than her badmouthing his books five years back. Not that I think that were his real reason for assaulting her. Like I told him, I think what really pissed him off were her suggesting he'd never finish this thing he's writing about Heinz.' 'Heine,' said Bowler. 'Both on 'em,' said Dalziel. 'Any road, he tells me now it's coming on nicely, so bang goes that motive if it ever was one.' 'Don't quite follow ...' 'Someone takes the piss saying you're not up to finishing something you've started, you sock it to 'em by finishing it, not by killing 'em. It's only if you think they may be right that you turn violent, which was why Charley reached for the pudding trolley in the first place. But now he reckons he's cracked it, and in any case a peace treaty's been sealed with a loving bang, where's the point?' 'But surely the thing about the Wordman is he doesn't need a motive, not in the strict sense. He's got some other agenda,' argued Hat, reluctant to give up on Penn. 'Oh aye? I should never have let you listen to yon pair of academic mutton-tuggers,' said Dalziel. 'You'll be talking profiles next. How do you think Charley Penn fits in here, then?' The Fat Man's tone was sceptical and mocking, yet Bowler felt that there was a real and testing purpose in his question. He recalled what Rye had told him about Penn and said, 'He's a man who feels he's been diverted for the last twenty years or so from his real purpose by having to make a living out of some historical fantasy world.' 'And that makes him doolally? That would mean all novelists are a bit dippy, wouldn't it? You could have something there.' 'Yes, sir. But the real purpose Penn has been diverted from isn't getting to grips with the real world but writing about what