Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

'Please. No! Don't say such things!'

'All right,' said Pascoe indifferently. 'What about you? What were you doing that night?'

'I've no idea. I didn't hear about it till next day, so I wasn't directly involved. Probably sitting in front of the television at home.'

'Alone?'

'If that was what I was doing, yes. Surely people who have the alternative of human conversation never watch television, do they, Inspector? It's a kind of mental masturbation, essentially a solitary pursuit.'

He had stopped spluttering. Pascoe yawned widely.

'Where do you think Kate Swithenbank is now?' he asked through the yawn.

Boris rolled his eyes upward and slapped the arm of his chair.

'I do wish you'd stop trying to confuse me with these changes of direction,' he said. 'They're irritating without being effective. Unless, of course, your aim is merely to irritate.'

'Do you think she's dead?'

'I've no idea. How should I know?'

'I didn't say know. I said think. Only one person could really know. Except her brother, of course.'

'Why him?' said Kingsley sharply.

'Hadn't you heard? He's seen her ghost.'

Kingsley laughed merrily.

'What a cretin!'

'Why do you dislike him, Mr Kingsley?'

'Who says I dislike him?'

'He says. It hardly seems worth denying. I mean, is there anyone who can really be said to like him? I'm just interested in reasons. Irrational Dr Fell prejudice? Aesthetic repugnance? Or perhaps, like Mrs Rawlinson, you think he cheated your father?'

The reaction was astonishing.

'What the hell do you mean?' demanded Kingsley, his face suddenly twisting in porcine ferocity. 'What've they been saying to you? Come on, Inspector, spit it out. You'd do well to remember this is my house and you'd be wise to watch what you say!'

There seemed to be something contradictory in this simultaneous demand for frankness and caution but Pascoe, who had been completely innocent of subtle intent, was not long in finding a hypothesis to resolve the contradiction.

'Come on, Mr Kingsley,' he said with the weary certainty of one who knows exactly what he is doing. 'I'm a policeman, remember? That means I've a job to do. It also means that I know all about discretion. In any case, there can't be any question of charges, not now. Not either way.'

He held his breath and hoped he was making sense. Kings-ley's features gradually resumed a more normal colour and expression.

'You're right,' he said. 'I'm sorry. It's just that it makes me angry, even thinking about it.'

'How long have you known?' enquired Pascoe, still feeling his way.

'I never liked the man,' said Kingsley, 'but it wasn't till after Father died. I was going through his papers. The figures told the story. Then there was a diary… well, God, he was wrong, of course. But to suffer like that all those years!'

'This was how Lightfoot bought his smallholding?' pursued Pascoe.

'That's it. And how he's compensated for its inefficient running ever since! You wouldn't think he needs money to look at the man! But he's got expensive habits – drinking, women, too. God, he'd need to pay well to get any half decent woman near him!'

Ignoring the curious scale of values this suggested, Pascoe went the whole hog and said, 'So Arthur Lightfoot steadily blackmailed your father ever since he discovered he'd been interfering with an under-age girl, to wit, his sister Kate.'

Kingsley nodded. It seemed to be some relief to the man to hear someone else say it openly.

'I went to see him, of course, when I realized. I didn't know what I was going to do, but it was going to be bloody extreme!'

'And.'

'And he said nothing. Admitted nothing. Denied nothing.

He just sat there cleaning that blasted shotgun of his. I ran out of words! There was nothing to do. I couldn't get him through the law – there was some evidence, but nothing certain enough, and besides even though he was dead, my father had paid for peace and quiet and a good name.'

'So what did you do?'

'Do, Inspector? Do? I did nothing.'

Kingsley was now back in full control.

'I hope one night I may catch him poaching on the bit of land that remains to me. Or that he might catch food poisoning from his own disgusting cooking. Yes, I can only sit and pray for some happy accident.'

'Like his cottage burning down, for instance?'

'Yes, that was a real tonic when I heard about it. A pity our fire service is so efficient.'

'He didn't come to see you afterwards?'

Kingsley regarded him shrewdly.

'Now why on earth should he do that? You're not suggesting I had anything to do with the fire, Inspector?'

'Of course not,' smiled Pascoe. 'But he'd need money for repairs. He doesn't sound as if he'd carry much insurance.'

'You may be right,' said Kingsley indifferently. 'He certainly wouldn't get it here. I only wish he'd had the cheek to try!'

'And now we come to the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,' said Pascoe.

'And what's that?'

'Did Kate Swithenbank have any idea what her brother was up to all those years?'

There was a long silence.

'And if she did, what then, Inspector?'

'What indeed, Mr Kingsley? Something perhaps that some people might call a motive.'

There was a knock on the door.

Jesus! thought Pascoe. They time their interruptions here better than a French farce!

'Come in,' called Kingsley.

A wizened old head with eyes like a blackbird's thrust itself round the door.

'Can ah see thee about t'supper?' it demanded.

'Just coming, Mrs Warnock,' said Kingsley.

The blackbird's eyes regarded Pascoe unblinkingly for twenty seconds, then the head withdrew.

'Mostly duty calls,' said Kingsley, rising. 'Motive, you say? Hardly for me, though. I mean, I didn't find out about Lightfoot's bit of nastiness till six months after Kate disappeared, did I?'

'So you say, Mr Kingsley,' agreed Pascoe.

'But as for the others, well, I'll leave you to find your own motives there, you're clearly so good at it. Must fly now. Work up an appetite, dear boy. I'll send Ursula in, shall I? That should start the juices running!'

"Boris seemed very pleased to get away from you,' said Ursula, rippling into the red leather armchair. 'What were you talking about?'

'I'm not sure,' said Pascoe. 'He was on occasion a trifle obscure. Though he seemed to find no difficulty in accepting that someone in your little group might have been capable of murdering Kate Swithenbank. But he wouldn't say who he had in mind.'

'Me,' said Ursula promptly.

'Really? Why should he think that?'

'He likes playing Noel Coward, does Boris, but in fact he's terribly straightforward and conventional. His wisdom is proverbial in the strict sense. I mean his mind works in maxims. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned has all the ring of eternal truth to Boris.'

'Meaning you have been scorned by…?'

'John Swithenbank, of course. And it's true. I was furious. But only for a time.'

'How long a time?'

'Till the wedding. John so clearly regarded the whole business as farcical and whatever Kate regarded it as just as clearly had nothing to do with all those loving vows they made at the altar. Resentment has to have an object. I seemed to have lost mine on that day.'

'So you don't think the marriage was happy?' said Pascoe.

'What's happy?'

'I don't know what, but I know where. It's somewhere this side of either running off or committing murder,' said Pascoe.

She didn't seem to feel this required any answer. She was probably right, he thought. He was beginning to see possibilities but the problem was like one of those trick drawings beloved of psychologists – sometimes he saw a rabbit and sometimes he saw a goose. A frightened rabbit that had nothing to do with the missing woman, or a Christmas goose being led to an early slaughter.