Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

'Hang on. Just one to go.'

It was Lemarque's and it was completely empty. Presumably it had contained nothing except the journal and that had been removed as evidence.

He gave a gentle push and floated backwards out of the hold into the deck area.

'So. One New Testament. Not quite the kind of testament I was hoping for,' said Pascoe glumly.

Dalziel undid the catch and opened the book. On the fly leaf, a book-plate had been stuck headed Holy Cross Youth Club: Award for service. Under this was a handwritten inscription To Kevin (K. 0.) O'Meara. Western District featherweight champion, 1993, 1994- Well done! It was signed, Father Powell (i Tim vi, 12).

'All his success since, and this is what still matters to him!' said Pascoe reflectively.

'You reckon?' said Dalziel, turning to the First Epistle to Timothy.

The page containing Chapter 6 verse 12 was folded in half and when he straightened it out he saw that either deliberately or by chance some flakes of white powder had been trapped there. Some, of them floated free. Dalziel licked his finger and stabbed at them, then cautiously put it to his mouth.

'What are you after, Andy? Coke? Forget it. Druggies don't make it on to the space programme, believe me!'

'Why not? They let in spies and killers,' said Dalziel. 'It's not coke anyroad. But I know that taste…'

'Probably dandruff. Sorry. All right, pass it here and I'll take it back for analysis just to keep you quiet.'

Dalziel, who didn't think he'd been making any unusually loud fuss, folded the page back to retain the rest of the powder. As he did so he glanced at Verse 12. Fight the good fight of faith. No wonder young K. O. O'Meara had won his titles; he'd had the referee in his pocket. His eye strayed a few verses up the column. For we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Now there's where Paul had got it wrong. He hadn't given God credit for space travel. Unless, as seemed not improbable, it wasn't a work of God after all.

He fastened the catch and gave Pascoe the book. The taste was still in his mouth, its source both figuratively and literally on the tip of his tongue.

Druson, who was reclining or hanging on the deck, depending how you looked at it, said, 'You guys gonna be much longer?'

'As long as it takes,' said Pascoe with an authoritative snap which made Dalziel smile and Druson look sour.

'What's in here?' asked Dalziel, examining a couple of doors in the bulkheads.

'Galley and the heads,' said Pascoe.

'Heads?'

'Loos.'

'Oh, the karzies. That's right. You said they just went normal here.'

'Not exactly normal,' said Pascoe, opening a door. 'With no gravity, you need a suction system, otherwise you could be in deep trouble.'

Dalziel examined the apparatus.

'Do yourself a nasty injury with that,' he opined.

He floated above the open door in silence for a while.

'Penny for them,' said Pascoe.

'Still charge a penny, do they,' said Dalziel. 'No, I was just thinking. The Frenchie was so chuffed at being the first to land, and he'd got his little speech ready and all; and he'd not been too long gone from Europa where he had summat like a proper bog…'

'So?'

'So how come he got so desperate he had to take a leak on the ladder with the eyes of the universe on him?'

'No one would know,' pointed out Pascoe.

'He'd know,' said Dalziel grimly. 'And the data would register on the monitors up here, so they'd know. And then it would be transmitted back to Control on Earth so everyone there'd know. And you can bet your bottom dollar someone would leak the leak to the tabloids, so every bugger in the universe would know! So why'd he do it?'

'Stage fright? Or perhaps he drank something. Didn't someone mention something about coffee?'

'Aye. The Dane said he'd been moaning on about how bloody awful it was.'

'There you are, then,' said Pascoe dismissively. 'Coffee's supposed to be pretty diuretic, isn't it?'

And the word switched on a light in Dalziel's lingual memory.

'Bugger me!' he said.

'Why?' said Pascoe with unusual facetiousness.

'That powder in the Testament, I know what it is. It's ground-down Thiabon tablets!'

'You what?'

'Thiabon. Trade name for the latest thiazide drug. Quack put me on 'em last year for me blood pressure. They work by releasing sodium from the tissues and stimulating the kidneys to wash it out. In other words, they make you pee!'

'A lot?'

'Worse than draught lager,' said Dalziel. 'In coffee, I reckon they'd have most men going in half an hour. And the build-up's constant. No use crossing your legs. You've got to go!'

'What are you saying, Andy?' asked Pascoe with a frown of concentration.

'No use fixing Lemarque's suit unless you can be sure he's going to trigger the short circuit, is there? So you feed him a diuretic which you know about because you've been prescribed it yourself!'

'Hey,' interposed Druson. 'You're not confessing, are you, Andy? It'll take more than that to get Kaufmann off the hook.'

'No,' said Dalziel. 'But I know someone else who suffered from mild hypertension a while back and could have been put on these pills. Hey, lass. Got a minute?'

Silvia Rabal came down from the bridge. Hair piled up in its comb and wearing a silkily thin leotard in yellow and green, she hovered before them like some tropical bird.

Dalziel said, 'Before word came through that Lemarque was to be first out, who'd won when you drew lots?'

She thought, then said, 'Kevin. But I do not think anyone really believed they would let us decide ourselves…"

'Believing the impossible's never bothered the Irish,' said Dalziel. 'So in O'Meara's mind, he should have had the honour of being first out. And beside getting the Freedom of Dublin city and draught Guinness for life, it'd mean money in the bank when it came to writing his memoirs!'

Pascoe was shaking his head, unimpressed.

'It's a pretty feeble motive for killing a man,' he said. 'Now if you were saying it was a daft Irish joke…'

'Why not?' exclaimed Dalziel v now in full flow. 'Why not that too? There's nothing he can do about stopping Lemarque, but he can ruin his big moment. If the timing's right, there he'll be, standing on the ladder with all eyes on him, just about to launch into his big speech when suddenly he's got to pee. All right, he may have the nerve to carry that off, but not if his suit's been fixed to give him a short sharp shock along the dong? Man'd need to be Christian martyr material not to register that! In fact with a bit of luck, he might even fall off the ladder! Great gag, eh? Only without realizing, O'Meara had fixed it so that all the electronics in the TEC would jam, and the joke goes sour, and the poor bloody Frog is lying dead.'

Pascoe regarded him doubtfully, hopefully, longingly, like a pagan on the brink of conversion, and Dalziel's brain started working overtime, drawing fragile threads together in an effort to plait a cord that would bear the other's soul up to heaven.

'Someone, Kaufmann I think it was, said something about Lemarque twitting O'Meara about being a boxer. Suppose he knew that his nickname as a lad had been KO? Mebbe he'd taken a peek in yon Testament. And suppose what he scribbled in his journal wasn't Ka is getting angry, but Ko is getting angry. And if he was on the alert, mebbe when he felt his bladder filling up at a suspicious rate, he recalled the awful coffee he'd drunk and knew where to lay the blame. What he said just before he died, Oh mer… what he was trying to say was O'Meara!'

It wasn't much, but a man in search of salvation will make do with a candle if he doesn't get offered a blinding light.

Pascoe said with fervent gratitude, 'Andy, how have I managed without you all this time? I felt there was something about O'Meara when I talked to him. I mentioned it to you, didn't I? Like he was playing a game with me, almost like there was something he wanted me to know… Mr Druson, I need to get back to the Village straightaway.'