Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

'No,' said Pascoe coldly. 'That would explain very little. It would certainly not explain why I am about to lose a night's sleep, nor why you who usually threaten me with divorce or assault whenever my rest is disturbed to fight real crime should have arranged it.'

But arranged it had been and it was small comfort for Pascoe now to know that Ellie was missing him.

Dalziel seemed determined to enjoy himself, however.

'Let's get our bearings, shall we?' he said. Replenishing his glass, he set out on a tour of the house.

'Well wired up,' he said as his expert eye spotted the discreet evidence of the sophisticated alarm system. 'Must have cost a fortune.'

'It did. I put him in touch with our crime prevention squad and evidently he wanted nothing but the best,' said Pascoe.

'What's he got that's so precious?' wondered Dalziel.

'All this stuff's pretty valuable, I guess,' said Pascoe, making a gesture which took in the pictures and ornaments of the master bedroom in which they were standing. 'But it's really for Giselle's sake. This was her first time out in the sticks and it's a pretty lonely place. Not that it's done much good.'

'Aye,' said Dalziel, opening a drawer and pulling out a fine silk underslip. 'A good-looking woman could get nervous in a place like this.'

'You reckon that's what this is all about, sir?' said Pascoe. 'A slight case of hysteria?'

'Mebbe,' said Dalziel.

They went into the next room, which Eliot had turned into a study. Only the calculating machine on the desk reminded them of the man's profession. The glass-fronted bookcase contained rows of books relating to his hobby in all its aspects from architectural histories to do-it-yourself tracts on concrete mixing. An old grandmother clock stood in a corner, and hanging on the wall opposite the bookcase was a nearly lifesize painting of a pre-Raphaelite maiden being pensive in a grove. She was naked but her long hair and the dappled shadowings of the trees preserved her modesty.

For a fraction of a second it seemed to Pascoe as if the shadows on her flesh shifted as though a breeze had touched the branches above.

'Asking for it,' declared Dalziel.

'What?'

'Rheumatics or rape,' said Dalziel. 'Let's check the kitchen. My belly's empty as a football.'

Giselle, who had driven out during the day to light the fire and make ready for their arrival, had anticipated Dalziel's gut. On the kitchen table lay a pile of sandwiches covered by a sheet of kitchen paper on which she had scribbled an invitation for them to help themselves to whatever they fancied.

Underneath she had written in capitals BE CAREFUL and underlined it twice.

'Nice thought,' said Dalziel, grabbing a couple of the sandwiches. 'Bring the plate through to the living-room and we'll eat in comfort.'

Back in front of the fire with his glass filled once again, Dalziel relaxed in a deep armchair. Pascoe poured himself a drink and looked out of the window again.

'For God's sake, lad, sit down!' commanded Dalziel. 'You're worse than a bloody spook, creeping around like that.'

'Sorry,' said Pascoe.

'Sup your drink and eat a sandwich. It'll soon be midnight. That's zero hour, isn't it? Right, get your strength up. Keep your nerves down.'

'I'm not nervous!' protested Pascoe.

'No? Don't believe in ghosts, then?'

'Hardly at all,' said Pascoe.

'Quite right. Detective-inspectors with university degrees shouldn't believe in ghosts. But tired old superintendents with less schooling than a pit pony, there's a different matter.'

'Come off it!' said Pascoe. 'You're the biggest unbeliever I know!'

'That may be, that may be,' said Dalziel, sinking lower into his chair. 'But sometimes, lad, sometimes…'

His voice sank away. The room was lit only by a dark-shaded table lamp and the glow from the fire threw deep shadows across the large contours of Dalziel's face. It might have been some eighteenth-century Yorkshire farmer sitting there, thought Pascoe. Shrewd; brutish; in his day a solid ram of a man, but now rotting to ruin through his own excesses and too much rough weather.

In the fireplace a log fell. Pascoe started. The red glow ran up Dalziel's face like a flush of passion up an Easter Island statue.

'I knew a ghost saved a marriage once,' he said ruminatively. 'In a manner of speaking.'

Oh Jesus! thought Pascoe. It's ghost stories round the fire now, is it?

He remained obstinately silent.

'My first case, I suppose you'd call it. Start of a meteoric career.'

'Meteors fall. And burn out,' said Pascoe. 'Sir.'

'You're a sharp bugger, Peter,' said Dalziel admiringly. 'Always the quick answer. I bet you were just the same when you were eighteen. Still at school, eh? Not like me. I was a right Constable Plod I tell you. Untried. Untutored. Hardly knew one end of my truncheon from t'other. When I heard that shriek I just froze.'

'Which shriek?' asked Pascoe resignedly.

On cue there came a piercing wail from the dark outside, quickly cut off. He half rose, caught Dalziel's amused eye, and subsided, reaching for the whisky decanter.

'Easy on that stuff,' admonished Dalziel with all the righteousness of a temperance preacher. 'Enjoy your supper, like yon owl. Where was I? Oh aye. I was on night patrol. None of your Panda-cars in those days. You did it all on foot. And I was standing just inside this little alleyway. It was a dark narrow passage running between Shufflebotham's woolmill on the one side and a little terrace of back-to-backs on the other. It's all gone now, all gone. There's a car park there now. A bloody car park!

'Any road, the thing about this alley was, it were a dead end. There was a kind of buttress sticking out of the mill wall, might have been the chimneystack, I'm not sure, but the back-to-backs had been built flush up against it so there was no way through. No way at all.'

He took another long pull at his scotch to help his memory and began to scratch his armpit noisily.

'Listen!' said Pascoe suddenly.

'What?'

'I thought I heard a noise.'

'What kind of noise?'

'Like fingers scrabbling on rough stone,' said Pascoe.

Dalziel removed his hand slowly from his shirt front and regarded Pascoe malevolently.

'It's stopped now,' said Pascoe. 'What were you saying, sir?'

'I was saying about this shriek,' said Dalziel. 'I just froze to the spot. It came floating out of this dark passage. It was as black as the devil's arsehole up there. The mill wall was completely blank and there was just one small window in the gable end of the house. That, if anywhere, was where the shriek came from. Well, I don't know what I'd have done. I might have been standing there yet wondering what to do, only this big hand slapped hard on my shoulder. I nearly shit myself! Then this voice said, "What's to do, Constable Dalziel?" and when I looked round there was my sergeant, doing his rounds.

'I could hardly speak for a moment, he'd given me such a fright. But I didn't need to explain. For just then came another shriek and voices, a man's and a woman's, shouting at each other. "You hang on here," said the sergeant. "I'll see what this is all about." Off he went, leaving me still shaking. And as I looked down that gloomy passageway, I began to remember some local stories about this mill. I hadn't paid much heed to them before. Everywhere that's more than fifty years old had a ghost in them parts. They say Yorkshiremen are hardheaded, but I reckon they've got more superstition to the square inch than a tribe of pygmies. Well, this particular tale was about a mill-girl back in the 1870$. The owner's son had put her in the family way which I dare say was common enough. The owner acted decently enough by his lights. He packed his son off to the other end of the country, gave the girl and her family a bit of cash and said she could have her job back when the confinement was over."