Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

He sounded really delighted, as though the whole of the Wearton business had been arranged just so that he could crow over the inefficiency of the effete south.

But before he left the room, he made one more effort to cheer up his dull and defeated-looking inspector, who was sitting with his head bowed over his open notebook.

Til say it one last time, Peter,' he said. 'It wasn't your fault. You reckoned she was dead, everyone reckoned she was dead, her brother, her husband, that Enfield lot. You had to go ahead as you did. You'd have needed second sight to know where she was hiding herself. I mean, inspired guesses are one thing, but to work out she was in the Orkneys on the basis of what you knew, you'd have needed a miracle. Right?'

'Right,' said Pascoe.

'Good,' said Dalziel. 'Come twelve, you can buy me a pint for being right. Again.'

He went out.

Pascoe closed his eyes and saw again the white-clad woman floating up the path from the lych-gate.

Why had she come back? What had she hoped for?

He shook his head and opened his eyes.

He would never know and he had no intention of trying an inspired guess. Dalziel was right. A detective should have no truck with feelings and intuitions.

He looked at his notebook, which still lay open at the first page of his scribblings on the Swithenbank case, made as he talked to Dove on the telephone two days before.

On the left-hand page there were two words only. One was hairdresser?

The other lightly scored through was Orkney?

He took his pen now and scratched at the word till it was totally obliterated.

Then he closed the book.

'Well, this is very cosy,' said Detective-Superintendent Dalziel, scratching his buttocks sensuously before the huge log fire.

'It is for some,' said Pascoe, shivering still from the frosty November night.

But Dalziel was right, he thought as he looked round the room. It was cosy, probably as cosy as it had been in the three hundred years since it was built. It was doubtful if any previous owner, even the most recent, would have recognized the old living-room of Stanstone Rigg farmhouse. Eliot had done a good job, stripping the beams, opening up the mean little fireplace and replacing the splintered uneven floorboards with smooth dark oak; and Giselle had broken the plain white walls with richly coloured, voluminous curtaining and substituted everywhere the ornaments of art for the detritus of utility.

Outside, though, when night fell, and darkness dissolved the telephone poles, and the mist lay too thick to be pierced by the rare headlight on the distant road, then the former owners peering from their little cube of warmth and light would not have felt much difference,

Not the kind of thoughts a ghost-hunter should have! he told himself reprovingly. Cool calm scepticism was the right state of mind.

And his heart jumped violently as behind him the telephone rang.

Dalziel, now pouring himself a large scotch from the goodly array of bottles on the huge sideboard, made no move towards the phone though he was the nearer. Detective-superintendents save their strength for important things and leave their underlings to deal with trivia.

'Hello,' said Pascoe.

'Peter, you're there!'

'Ellie love,' he answered. 'Sometimes the sharpness of your mind makes me feel unworthy to be married to you.'

'What are you doing?'

'We've just arrived. I'm talking to you. The super's having a drink.'

'Oh God! You did warn the Eliots, didn't you?'

'Not really, dear. I felt the detailed case-history you doubtless gave to Giselle needed no embellishment.'

'I'm not sure this is such a good idea.'

'Me neither. On the contrary. In fact, you may recall that on several occasions in the past three days I've said as much to you, whose not such a good idea it was in the first place.'

'All you're worried about is your dignity!' said Ellie. 'I'm worried about that lovely house. What's he doing now?'

Pascoe looked across the room to where Dalziel had bent his massive bulk so that his balding close-cropped head was on a level with a small figurine of a shepherd chastely dallying with a milkmaid. His broad right hand was on the point of picking it up.

'He's not touching anything,' said Pascoe hastily. 'Was there any other reason you phoned?'

'Other than what?'

'Concern for the Eliots' booze and knick-knacks.'

'Oh, Peter, don't be so half-witted. It seemed a laugh at The Old Mill, but now I don't like you being there with him, and I don't like me being here by myself. Come home and we'll screw till someone cries Hold! Enough. ^1*

'You interest me strangely,' said Pascoe. 'What about Aim and the Eliots' house?'

'Oh, sod him and sod the Eliots! Decent people don't have ghosts!' exclaimed Ellie.

'Or if they do, they call in priests, not policemen,' said Pascoe. 'I quite agree. I said as much, remember…?'

'All right, all right. You please yourself, buster. I'm off to bed now with a hot-water bottle and a glass of milk. Clearly I must be in my dotage. Shall I ring you later?'

'Best not,' said Pascoe. 'I don't want to step out of my pentacle after midnight. See you in the morning.'

'Must have taken an electric drill to get through a skirt like that,' said Dalziel, replacing the figurine with a bang. "No wonder the buggers got stuck into the sheep. Your missus checking up, was she?'

'She just wanted to see how we were getting on,' said Pascoe.

'Probably thinks we've got a couple of milkmaids with us,' said Dalziel, peering out into the night. 'Some hope! I can't even see any sheep. It's like the grave out there.'

He was right, thought Pascoe. When Stanstone Rigg had been a working farm, there must have always been the comforting sense of animal presence, even at night. Horses in the stable, cows in the byre, chickens in the hutch, dogs before the fire. But the Eliots hadn't bought the place because of any deep-rooted love of nature. In fact Giselle Eliot disliked animals so much she wouldn't even have a guard dog, preferring to rely on expensive electronics. Pascoe couldn't understand how George had got her even to consider living out here. It was nearly an hour's run from town in good conditions and Giselle was in no way cut out for country life, either physically or mentally. Slim, vivacious, sexy, she was a star-rocket in Yorkshire's sluggish jet-set. How she and Ellie had become friends, Pascoe couldn't work out either.

But she must have a gift for leaping unbridgeable gaps for George was a pretty unlikely partner, too.

It was George who was responsible for Stanstone Rigg- By profession an accountant, and very much looking the part with his thin face, unblinking gaze, and a mouth that seemed constructed for the passage of bad news, his unlikely hobby was the renovation of old houses. In the past six years he had done two, first a Victorian terrace house in town, then an Edwardian villa in the suburbs. Both had quadrupled (at least) in value, but George claimed this was not the point and Pascoe believed him. Stanstone Rigg Farm was his most ambitious project to date, and it had been a marvellous success, except for its isolation, which was unchangeable.

And its ghost. Which perhaps wasn't.

It was just three days since Pascoe had first heard of it. Dalziel, who repaid hospitality in the proportion of three of Ellie's home-cooked dinners to one meal out had been entertaining the Pascoes at The Old Mill, a newly opened restaurant in town.

'Jesus!' said the fat man when they examined the menu. 'I wish they'd put them prices in French, too. They must give you Brigitte Bardot for afters!'

'Would you like to take us somewhere else?' enquired Ellie sweetly. 'A fish and chip shop, perhaps. Or a Chinese takeaway?'