Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

'No, no,' said Dalziel. 'This is grand. Any road, I'll chalk what I can up to expenses. Keeping an eye on Fletcher.'

'Who?'

'The owner,' said Pascoe. 'I didn't know he was on our list, sir.'

'Well, he is and he isn't,' said Dalziel. 'I got a funny telephone call a couple of weeks back. Suggested I might take a look at him, that's all. He's got his finger in plenty of pies.'

'If I have the salmon to start with,' said Ellie, 'it won't be removed as material evidence before I'm finished, will it?'

Pascoe aimed a kick at her under the table but she had been expecting it and drawn her legs aside.

Four courses later they had all eaten and drunk enough for a kind of mellow truce to have been established between Ellie and the fat man.

'Look who's over there,' said Ellie suddenly.

Pascoe looked. It was the Eliots, George dark-suited and still, Giselle ablaze in clinging orange silk. Another man, middle-aged but still athletically elegant in a military sort of way, was standing by their table. Giselle returned Ellie's wave and spoke to the man, who came across the room and addressed Pascoe.

'Mr and Mrs Eliot wonder if you would care to join them for liqueurs,' he said.

Pascoe looked at Dalziel enquiringly.

'I'm in favour of owt that means some other bugger putting his hand in his pocket,' he said cheerfully.

Giselle greeted them with delight and even George raised a welcoming smile.

'Who was that dishy thing you sent after us?' asked Ellie after Dalziel had been introduced.

'Dishy? Oh, you mean Giles. He will be pleased. Giles Fletcher. He owns this place."

'Oh my! We send the owner on errands, do we?' said Ellie. "It's great to see you, Giselle. It's been ages. When am I getting the estate agent's tour of the new house? You've promised us first refusal when George finds a new ruin, remember?'

'I couldn't afford the ruin,' objected Pascoe. 'Not even with George doing our income tax.'

'Does a bit of the old tax fiddling, your firm?' enquired Dalziel genially.

'I do a bit of work privately for friends,' said Eliot coldly. 'But in my own time and at home.'

'You'll need to work bloody hard to make a copper rich,' said Dalziel.

'Just keep taking the bribes, dear,' said Ellie sweetly. 'Now when can we move into Stanstone Farm, Giselle?'

Giselle glanced at her husband, whose expression remained a blank.

'Any time you like, darling,' she said. 'To tell you the truth, it can't be soon enough. In fact, we're back in town.'

'Good God!' said Ellie. 'You haven't found another place already, George? That's pretty rapid even for you.'

A waiter appeared with a tray on which were glasses and a selection of liqueur bottles.

'Compliments of Mr Fletcher,' he said.

Dalziel examined the tray with distaste and beckoned the waiter close. For an incredulous moment Pascoe thought he was going to refuse the drinks on the grounds that police officers must be seen to be above all favour.

'From Mr Fletcher, eh?' said Dalziel. 'Well, listen, lad, he wouldn't be best pleased if he knew you'd forgotten the single malt whisky, would he? Run along and fetch it. I'll look after pouring this lot.'

Giselle looked at Dalziel with the round-eyed delight of a child seeing a walrus for the first time.

'Cointreau for me please, Mr Daziel,' she said.

He filled a glass to the brim and passed it to her with a hand steady as a rock.

'Sup up, love,' he said, looking with open admiration down her cleavage. 'Lots more where that comes from.'

Pascoe, sensing that Ellie might be about to ram a pepper-mill up her host's nostrils, said hastily, 'Nothing wrong with the building, I hope, George? Not the beetle or anything like that? ^1

'I sorted all that out before we moved,' said Eliot. 'No, nothing wrong at all.'

His tone was neutral but Giselle responded as though to an attack.

'It's all right, darling,' she said. 'Everyone's guessed it's me. But it's not really. It's just that I think we've got a ghost.'

According to Giselle, there were strange scratchings, shadows moving where there should be none, and sometimes as she walked from one room to another 'a sense of emptiness as though for a moment you'd stepped into the space between two stars'.

This poetic turn of phrase silenced everyone except Dalziel, who interrupted his attempts to scratch the sole of his foot with a bent coffee spoon and let out a raucous laugh.

'What's that mean?' demanded Ellie.

'Nowt,' said Dalziel. 'I shouldn't worry, Mrs Eliot. It's likely some randy yokel roaming about trying to get a peep at you. And who's to blame him?'

He underlined his compliment with a leer straight out of the old melodrama. Giselle patted his knee in acknowledgement.

'What do you think, George?' asked Ellie.

George admitted the scratchings but denied personal experience of the rest.

'See how long he stays there by himself,' challenged Giselle.

'I didn't buy it to stay there by myself,' said Eliot. 'But I've spent the last couple of nights alone without damage.'

'And you saw or heard nothing?' said Ellie.

'There may have been some scratching. A rat perhaps. It's an old house. But it's only a house. I have to go down to London for a few days tomorrow. When I get back we'll start looking for somewhere else. Sooner or later I'd get the urge anyway.'

'But it's such a shame! After all your work, you deserve to relax for a while,' said Ellie. 'Isn't there anything you can do?'

'Exorcism,' said Pascoe. 'Bell, book and candle.'

'In my experience,' said Dalziel, who had been consuming the malt whisky at a rate which had caused the waiter to summon his workmates to view the spectacle, 'there's three main causes of ghosts.'

He paused for effect and more alcohol.

'Can't you arrest him, or something?' Ellie hissed at Pascoe.

'One: bad cooking,' the fat man continued. 'Two: bad ventilation. Three: bad conscience.'

'George installed air-conditioning himself,' said Pascoe.

'And Giselle's a super cook,' said Ellie.

'Well then,' said Dalziel. 'I'm sure your conscience is as quiet as mine, love. So that leaves your randy yokel. Tell you what. Bugger your priests. What you need is a professional eye checking on things.'

'You mean a psychic investigator?' said Giselle.

'Like hell!' laughed Ellie. 'He means get the village bobby to stroll around the place with his truncheon at the ready.'

'A policeman? But I don't really see what he could do,' said Giselle, leaning towards Dalziel and looking earnestly into his lowered eyes.

'No, hold on a minute,' cried Ellie with bright malice. 'The Superintendent could be right. A formal investigation. But the village flatfoot's no use. You've got the best police brains in the county rubbing your thighs, Giselle. Why not send for them?'

Which was how it started. Dalziel, to Pascoe's amazement, had greeted the suggestion with ponderous enthusiasm. Giselle had reacted with a mixture of high spirits and high seriousness, apparently regarding the project as both an opportunity for vindication and a lark. George had sat like Switzerland, neutral and dull. Ellie had been smilingly baffled to see her bluff so swiftly called. And Pascoe had kicked her ankle savagely when he heard plans being made for himself and Dalziel to spend the following Friday night waiting for ghosts at Stanstone Farm.

As he told her the next day, had he realized that Dalziel's enthusiasm was going to survive the sober light of morning, he'd have followed up his kick with a karate chop.

Ellie had tried to appear unrepentant., 'You know why it's called Stanstone, do you?' she asked. 'Standing stone. Get it? There must have been a stone circle there at some time. Primitive worship, human sacrifice, that sort of thing. Probably the original stones were used in the building of the house. That'd explain a lot, wouldn't it?'