Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

You want to find yourself a bit of woodland round a pond and go over it with a couple of dogs and a frogman. What's the country like round there?'

'Like country,' said Pascoe dubiously. 'Wearton's a cluster of houses, pub and a*church in a bit of a valley, so I suppose there are plenty of woods and ponds thereabouts. But if it's that specific, Swithenbank would hardly have mentioned it to me, would he?'

'Mebbe not. Or mebbe he'd get a kick. Playing with a thick copper.'

'I didn't get that impression,' said Pascoe carefully.

Dalziel laughed, a Force Eight blast.

'More likely with me, eh? But he'd soon spot you're a clever bugger, the way you get your apostrophes in the right place. So if he has killed his missus and if this Ulalume poem does point in the right direction, he'd keep his mouth shut. Right? Unless he was bright enough to think we might have got a few calls ourselves.'

'Which we didn't,' said Pascoe. 'Just the letter.'

'And the ear-ring,' said Dalziel. 'Remind me again, lad. How'd we first get mixed up in this business?'

Pascoe opened the thin file he was carrying and glanced at the first sheet of paper in it.

'October twenty-fourth last year,' he said. 'Request for assistance from Enfield – that's where Swithenbank lives. Says he'd reported his wife missing on the fifteenth. They hadn't been able to get any kind of line on her movements after the last time Swithenbank claimed to have seen her. Like him, she comes from Wearton, so would we mind checking in case she'd done the classic thing and bolted for home. We checked. Parents both dead, but her brother Arthur still lives in the village. He's got a bit of a smallholding. He hadn't seen her since her last visit with Swithenbank, two months earlier. Nor had anyone else.'

'Or they weren't saying,' said Dalziel.

'Perhaps. There was no reason to be suspicious at the time. Routine enquiry. That was it as far as we were concerned. A month later Enfield came back at us. Were we quite sure there was no trace? They wrapped it up, of course, but that's what it came to. They hadn't been able to get a single line on Mrs Swithenbank and when someone disappears as completely as that, you start to get really suspicious. But if you're wise, you double check before you let your suspicions show too clearly.'

'Who'd done the checking in Wearton?' asked Dalziel.

'We just left it to the local lad first time round,' said Pascoe. 'This time I sent Sergeant Wield down. Same result. All quiet after that till this week when the ear-ring turned up.'

'How've they been earning their pay in Enfield this past year?' asked Dalziel.

'Saving the sum of things from the sound of it,' said Pascoe. 'But in between the bullion robberies and the international dope rings, they managed to lean heavily enough on Swithenbank for him to drum up a tame solicitor to lean back.'

'Any motive?'

Pascoe shrugged.

'The marriage wasn't idyllic, so the gossip went, but no worse than a thousand others. She might have been having a bit on the side, her girl-friends guessed, but couldn't or wouldn't point the finger. He wasn't averse to the odd close encounter at a party, but again no one was naming names.'

'That's marriage Enfield-style, is it?' said Dalziel, shaking his head. He made Enfold sound like Gomorrah.

'Give us his tale again,' continued Dalziel.

'Friday, fourteenth October, Swithenbank arrives at his office at the usual time. Nothing out of the ordinary during the morning except that his secretary told Willie Dove, Inspector Dove that is, who was doing the questioning, that he seemed a bit moody that morning.'

'How moody? / shouldn't have cut off her head like that – that moody?'

'The secretary just put it down to the fact that his favourite assistant was leaving that day.'

'Favourite? Woman?' said Dalziel eagerly.

'Fellow. No, it wasn't the fact that he was leaving, more why he was leaving that had got to Swithenbank, it seems. This chap was putting it all behind him, going off to somewhere primitive like the Orkneys to live off the earth and be a free man. There's a lot of it about among the monied middle classes.'

'He's not bent, is he, this Swithenbank?' asked Dalziel, reluctant to leave this scent.

'No,' said Pascoe, exasperated. 'It just made him think, that's all. Doesn't it make you think a bit, sir, when you hear someone's had the guts to opt out? It's a normal sociological reaction.'

'Is it, lad? You ever find yourself fancying somewhere primitive, I'll send you to Barnsley. What's all this got to do with anything?'

'I'm trying to tell you. Sir. They had a party for the dear departing at lunch-time. It started in the office and finished on platform five at King's Cross when they put their colleague on his train. Swithenbank was in quite a state by this time.'

'Pissed, you mean?'

'That and telling all who would listen that he was wasting his life, that materialism was going to be the death of Western society, that any man who was brave enough could sever his chains with a single blow…'

'What kind of chains did he have in mind?' wondered Dalziel.

'I don't know,' said Pascoe. 'Though I should say from the way he dresses that he's decided to hang on to the chains and go down with the rest of Western society. Anyway, those sober enough to remember anything remembered this outburst because it was so uncharacteristic of him. An intellectual smoothie was how his secretary rated him.'

'A loyal girl, that,' said Dalziel.

'Willie Dove has his ways,' said Pascoe. 'Where was I? Oh yes. From King's Cross they, that is the survivors, walked back to the office, hoping to benefit from the fresh air. It's near Woburn Place, so not too far, and they got back about two-thirty. But Swithenbank didn't go in. Despite all attempts to dissuade him, he headed for his car.'

'His mates didn't think he was fit to drive?' said Dalziel. 'He must have been bad, considering most of these southern sods drive home half pissed every night!'

'Possibly,' said Pascoe, as if accepting a serious academic argument. 'The thing was, it wasn't home that Swithenbank was making for, but Nottingham.'

'Nottingham? He really must've been drunk!'

'I'm sorry,' said Pascoe. 'Didn't I say? He was due up in Nottingham that evening for a conference with one of his authors. He'd taken an overnight bag to the office with him and planned a gentle drive north at his leisure that afternoon. But as we've seen, events had overtaken him. So far, his story's been confirmable. After this, there's only Swithen bank's word for what happened, and most of that he claims to have forgotten! He says he'd only driven about half a mile when he came to the conclusion he must be out of his mind! He says he didn't really make a conscious decision, but somehow instead of heading for the M i, he found himself on the way home to Enfield. He can't recollect much about the drive, or getting into the flat, but he's pretty certain his wife wasn't there.'

'If she was, he'd be the last person she'd be expecting to see,' said Dalziel. 'Think about that!'

'I believe Inspector Dove has thought about it,' said Pascoe patiently. 'All Swithenbank does remember positively is waking up some time after five, lying on his bed and feeling rough. He had a shower and a coffee, felt better, tried to ring Nottingham to apologize for his lateness but couldn't get through, wrote his wife a note saying he'd been home, and set off up the Mi like the clappers. Like I say, there's no support for any of this. But one of the neighbours definitely saw him arrive back the following afternoon about five p.m. His wife isn't in and Swithenbank gets worried.'

'Why? She never misses Dr Who, or what?'

'His note was still there,' said Pascoe reprovingly. 'Untouched. He does nothing for an hour or two, then rings around some likely friends. Nothing. Finally late on Saturday night when she still hasn't returned, he contacts the police. And the wheels go into motion. Routine at first. There's a suitcase and some of his wife's clothes missing. So they check the possibilities. Friends, relatives, etc. – that's where we first came in. Her passport's still at home. A month later she's made no drawing upon her bank account. So now Willie Dove moves in hard.'