Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

'Income tax!' snorted Pascoe. 'Does that make me a crook? Or him either?'

'No. It was just a thought, that's all. And after I'd talked to Crime Prevention, well, it seemed worth a peek. So come down off your high horse. No harm done. Your mate's not in trouble, OK? And I saw nowt in his safe to take action on. So relax, enjoy your drink. I poured you brandy, the scotch is getting a bit low. That all right?'

Pascoe didn't answer but sat down in the deep old armchair and sipped his drink reflectively. Spur of the moment, Dalziel had said. Bloody long moment, he thought. And what spur? There was still something here that hadn't been said.

'It won't do,' he said suddenly.

'What's that?'

'There's got to be something else,' insisted Pascoe. 'I mean, I know you, sir. You're not going to do all this just on the off-chance of finding something to incriminate Fletcher in George's safe. There has to be something else. What did you expect to find, anyway? A signed confession? Come to that, what did you find?'

Dalziel looked at him, his eyes moist with sincerity.

'Nowt, lad. Nowt. I've told you. There'll be no action taken as a result of anything I saw tonight. None. There's my reassurance. It was an error of judgement on my part. I admit it. Now does that satisfy you?'

'No, sir, to be quite frank it doesn't. Look, I've got to know. These people are my friends. You say that they're not mixed up in anything criminal, but I still need to know exactly what is going on. Or else I'll start asking for myself.'

He banged his glass down on the arm of his chair so vehemently that the liquor slopped out.

'It'll burn a hole, yon stuff,' said Dalziel, slandering the five-star cognac which Pascoe was drinking.

'I mean it, sir,' said Pascoe quietly. 'You'd better understand that.'

'All right, lad,' said Dalziel. 'I believe you. You might not like it though. You'd better understand that.'

'I'll chance it,' replied Pascoe.

Dalziel regarded him closely, then relaxed with a sigh.

'Here it is then. The woman Giselle is having a bit on the side with Fletcher.'

Pascoe managed an indifferent shrug.

'It happens,' he said, trying to appear unsurprised. In fact, why was he surprised? Lively, sociable, physical Giselle and staid, self-contained, inward-looking George. It was always on the cards.

'So what?' he added in his best man-of-the-world voice.

'So if by any chance, Eliot did have anything which might point us in the right direction about Fletcher…'

Pascoe sat very still for a moment.

'Well, you old bastard!' he said. 'You mean you'd give him good reason to do the pointing! You'd let him know about Giselle… Jesus wept! How low can you get?'

'I could have just let him know in any case without checking first to see if it was worthwhile,' suggested Dalziel, unabashed.

'So you could!' said Pascoe in mock astonishment. 'But you held back, waiting for a chance to check it out! Big of you! You get invited to spend the night alone in complete strangers' houses all the time! And now you've looked and found nothing, what are you going to do? Tell him just on the off-chance?'

'I didn't say I'd found nothing,' said Dalziel.

Pascoe stared at him.

'But you said there'd be no action!' he said.

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'I mean it. I think we've just got to sit back and wait for Fletcher, to fall into our laps. Or be pushed. What I did find was a little anonymous letter telling Eliot what his wife was up to. Your mate knows, Peter. From the postmark he's known for a few weeks. He's a careful man, accountants usually are. And I'm sure he'd do a bit of checking first before taking action. It was just a week later that my telephone rang and that awful disguised voice told me to check on Fletcher. Asked for me personally. I dare say you've mentioned my name to Eliot, haven't you, Peter?'

He looked at the carpet modestly.

'Everyone's heard of you, sir,' said Pascoe. 'So what happens now?'

'Like I say. Nothing. We sit and wait for the next call. It should be a bit more detailed this time, I reckon. I mean, Eliot must have realized that his first tip-off isn't getting results and now his wife's moved back into town to be on Fletcher's doorstep again, he's got every incentive.'

Pascoe looked at him in surprise.

'You mean the ghosts…'

'Nice imaginative girl, that Giselle! Not only does she invent a haunting to save herself a two hours' drive for her kicks, but she cons a pair of thick bobbies into losing their sleep over it. I bet Fletcher fell about laughing! Well I'm losing no more! It'll take all the hounds of hell to keep me awake.'

He yawned and stretched. In mid-stretch there came a terrible scratching noise and the fat man froze like a woodcut of Lethargy on an allegorical frieze.

Then he laughed and opened the door.

The black cat looked up at him warily but her kittens had no such inhibitions and tumbled in, heading towards the fire with cries of delight.

'I think your mates have got more trouble than they know,' said Dalziel.

Next morning Pascoe rose early and stiffly after a night spent on a sofa before the fire. Dalziel had disappeared upstairs to find himself a bed and Pascoe assumed he would still be stretched out on it. But when he looked out of the living-room window he saw he was wrong.

The sun was just beginning to rise behind the orchard and the fat man was standing in front of the house watching the dawn.

A romantic at heart, thought Pascoe sourly.

A glint of light flickered between the trunks of the orchard trees, flamed into a ray and began to move across the frosty lawn towards the waiting man. He watched its progress, striking sparks off the ice-hard grass. And when it reached his feet he stepped aside.

Pascoe joined him a few minutes later.

'Morning, sir,' he said. 'I've made some coffee. You're up bright and early.'

'Yes,' said Dalziel, scratching his gut vigorously. 'I think I've picked up a flea from those bloody cats.'

'Oh,' said Pascoe. 'I thought you'd come to check on the human sacrifice at dawn. I saw you getting out of the way of the sun's first ray.'

'Bollocks!' said Dalziel, looking towards the house, which the sun was now staining the gentle pink of blood in a basin of water.

'Why bollocks?' wondered Pascoe. 'You've seen one ghost. Why not another?'

'One ghost?'

'Yes. The mill-girl. That story you told me last night. Your first case.'

Dalziel looked at him closely.

'I told you that, did I? I must have been supping well.'

Pascoe, who knew that drink had never made Dalziel forget a thing in his life, nodded vigorously.

'Yes, sir. You told me that. You and your ghost.'

Dalziel shook his head as though at a memory of ancient foolishness and began to laugh.

'Aye, lad. My ghost! It really is my ghost in a way. The ghost of what I am now, any road! That Jenny Pocklington, she were a right grand lass! She had an imagination like your Giselle!'

'I don't follow,' said Pascoe. But he was beginning to.

'Believe it or not, lad,' said Dalziel. 'In them days I was pretty slim. Slim and supple. Even then I had to be like a ghost to get through that bloody window! But if Bert Pocklington had caught me, I really would have been one! Aye, that's right. When I heard that scream, I was coming out of the alley, not going into it!'

And shaking with laughter the fat man headed across the lacy grass towards the old stone farmhouse where the hungry kittens were crying imperiously for their breakfast.

to the original edition, published in 1990

We've been together now for twenty years. That's a lot of blood under the bridge. Sometimes 1970 seems like last weekend, sometimes it seems like ancient history. Famous men died – Forster who we thought already had, and de Gaulle who we imagined never would; Heath toppled Wilson, Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Tony Jacklin won the US Open, and in September, Collins published A Clubbable Woman.