“My mother’s sole heirloom,” he said when she asked about it. “How her mother got hold of it I don’t know, nor indeed, considering the circumstances of the family, how she held on to it when everything else of value must have gone to the saleroom or the pawnshop. It held what little jewellery she possessed, gimcrack stuff, mainly. Now it holds something far more precious. The seed of words waiting for their creator. All language is here, which means life itself, for nothing exists till these seeds are sown.”
And he had shaken the crystal casket so that the pieces of ivory slid and rustled and seemed to syllable her name.
Gradually, irresistibly, an erotic subtext had entered their game, a sort of sexy flirtation with sly innuendoes, hot-eyed side-glances, verbal caresses, entirely free from menace. She always felt that any time she wanted to step back, she need send only the slightest signal and, without fuss or recrimination, the normal friendly decorum of their working relationship would be restored. But she sent no such signal. Bathed in the shifting chiaroscuro of the fire, her body felt warm and relaxed. Where this game was leading, she did not know, nor yet how far she wanted it to go. At some point Dee had produced a bottle of dark red wine and a pair of tumblers, and the peppery liquid slipping down her throat was like the early throes of love-making, at the same time satisfying and increasing the drinker’s appetite. The world of rock and water and vegetation outside the small weather-darkened windows seemed a long way away, and more distant still seemed that other world of people and buildings and engines and technology. If their memory seemed dark and comfortless it was because all their warmth and light and comfort and pleasure seemed concentrated in this narrow room. As for the airy infinities of the great mysterious universe in which all worlds exist, what need to go out and stare at the skies when all its beauty and wisdom was contained here on this magic game board which lay at her feet like the cosmos under the gaze of God?
And far away, still in that furthermost world, Hat Bowler was driving his car through the afternoon traffic like a mad thing while some way behind and falling further back, Peter Pascoe was heading in the same direction with rather more concern for his own life and limb as well as those of other road users.
The logs on the fire burnt swiftly, domed, then collapsed into a tumbled bed of glowing ashes whose red heart pulsated with consuming heat.
“A great fire for toast,” murmured Rye. “When I was a kid, I remember sitting before a fire like this, and we toasted thick slices of white bread till they were almost black and spread butter over them till it melted through the airholes in the dough. I thought of it last time I was here …”
“Toast,” echoed Dick. “Yes, toast would be nice. Later, perhaps. When the game is done.”
And he threw more logs on the fire and soon the seeds of heat in the ashes blossomed once more into flames which embraced these new limbs of wood so that they shifted and sighed and moaned as the fire within them grew hotter and hotter till the room turned unbearably warm.
Dee reached down and pulled off the old tracksuit top he was wearing, revealing a short-sleeved vest which strained against an unexpectedly muscular and athletic body. Rye followed suit, pulling the chunky woollen sweater she was wearing against the anticipated rural chill over her head. It was only as the heavy fibres rubbed across her face that she recalled she didn’t have a top on underneath, only the flimsy silk bra she’d worn with her funeral outfit. Or was she perhaps pretending that it was only now that she remembered this? Certainly there was no perceptible pause as she drew the sweater off completely and let it fall alongside the chair, then leaned forward to make the word joy.
Dee neither averted his eyes nor ogled her bosom, but nodded as if in approval and said, “And now, if we were playing the poets’ convention whereby crossing a word with another which either follows or precedes it in a poem which must of course be accurately quoted, I could score well here by crossing joy with crimson.”
“Blake,” she said. “So I could do the same by crossing your secret here with my love?”
“Still Blake. Excellent.”
“Actually I was thinking of Doris Day,” she said.
He threw his head back and laughed, and she laughed too, but somehow, instead of easing the sexual tension between them as she had intended, this shared laughter sent another line of contact snaking out which drew them even closer, affirming their mutual fondness and pleasure in each other’s company without one wit diminishing their newly discovered physical attraction.
Why not? she thought. I’m a free agent, no commitments existing and as far as Dick goes, none intended. So why not gather a few rosebuds while I may?
But at the same time, her future working alongside Dee came into her mind. Would things be changed? She felt she could rely on him to keep things the same, if that’s what she wanted. Yes, she was certain of his discretion, yet could even the greatest discretion resist the probing gaze of Charley Penn? The thought of those knowing eyes, that insinuating smarl, the ambiguous remarks implying a vicarious intimacy, was not pleasant to her.
And also into her mind, despite her genuine confidence of being a free agent with no commitments, came an image of Hat Bowler.
Who was now free of traffic on the quiet country roads and moving so fast that his passage hardly allowed time for the sheep grazing in the fields to raise their heads before he was out of sight, leaving only a wisp of exhaust smoke as evidence they hadn’t been dreaming. Still some way behind him but, now that he was out of the city, keeping pace, came Pascoe with, a little way further back, the siren and lights of the patrol car which had picked up Andy Dalziel from the Black Bull.
The Fat Man came on his mobile now.
“Where are you at, Pete?”
Pascoe told him.
“And Bowler?”
“Not in sight yet.”
“Well, stop driving along like an old woman! Get up there with him. Owt happens to the lad, I’ll hod thee responsible.”
“It’s more what’s likely to happen to Dee when Hat catches up with him that I’m worried about.”
“Him? Turns out he’s the Wordman, who’s going to care?” said Dalziel dismissively. “No, it’s young Bowler we’ve got to look out for. Another couple of years shaking that college education out of him, he could make a good cop. What the fuck are you doing with this thing? Pedalling it?”
The last two sentences, Pascoe assumed, were addressed to the driver of the patrol car, but he felt their power too and pushed his foot even harder on to the accelerator so that the same sheep which a little earlier had been disturbed by the passage of the MG twitched their ears again, but, being, contrary to their image, quick learners, this time did not bother to raise their heads.
So, thought Rye, will I, won’t I?
She was aware that while her mind vacillated, her body was independently sending out much more positive signals.
She had stretched herself out in the chair, waiting for Dee, in every sense, to make his move. Her left bra-strap had slipped down over her shoulder and her breast had almost escaped from its silken cup, but she made no effort to recapture it. Indeed sensing, and perhaps slightly piqued by, a degree of hesitation in Dee himself, she relaxed her shoulders so that the nipple of the errant orb came fully into view.
Now she had his attention. But it wasn’t on her swelling nipple that his eyes were fixed.
He was looking at her head.
She said, “What?”
He reached across the board and touched the silver blaze in her hair.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said.