Asking for the Moon (6 page)

He turned a coldly speculative gaze on the young DC ike a man looking for the watermark in a suspect pound note.

Memo to self, thought Pascoe. This is not a man the details of whose domestic life you want to know.

He said, 'You mentioned another reason Trotter has for bating you.'

'Did I? Not important.'

'Shouldn't I be the judge of that?' insisted Pascoe. 'You keep telling me it's my balls on the block too.'

This sudden descent into the demotic clearly impressed the Fat Man more than any amount of epagogic argument.

He said, 'Mebbe you're right. It's to do with Thomas, Tankie's dad. He died just at the time his mum took ill. I reckon he gave her a punch too many, bust something in her gut. She'd never blow the whistle on him, but he got his comeuppance all the same. Fell into the canal one night coming home pissed. Drowned. Tankie got compassionate for the funeral. Manacled to an MP, naturally. I weren't there, but I heard he spat into the grave.'

'He wasn't on the loose when his father drowned then?'

'Good thinking. No, safely banged up. Inquest brought in accidental death.'

There was an absence of finality in his tone.

Pascoe said, 'You don't think it might have been . . . Judith?'

'You're not just a pretty face then?' said Dalziel. 'Aye, it did cross my mind. But I said, what the hell? No way I could prove it, no way I wanted to prove it!'

'So why should this bother Trotter?'

"Cos I told him I
could
prove it,' said Dalziel gloomily. 'I got to thinking, I didn't much fancy having to look over my shoulder for evermore in case Tankie were coming after me. So before they took him back to the glasshouse, I told him if he ever pulled a stunt like that again, I'd make sure -his everloving sister got banged up even longer than he did. I thought, that'll do the trick.'

'Instead of which it just gave him another reason for wanting to sort you out.'

'Worse. I reckon he told Jude. I don't think she'd be risking everything she's got just for love of Tankie. No, she's got her own agenda here, protecting her own interests, her own life.'

'While actually you don't have anything on her at all! Great move, sir. Really clever thinking!'

'Nobody's perfect,' said Dalziel without conviction.

'Joe E. Lewis.
Some Like It Hot,'
said Pascoe.

'What the fuck are you on about?' said Dalziel. 'Stand by! Here we go again.'

Once more he was a second ahead in detecting the key in the door.

This time Trotter didn't enter the room but stood in the doorway. Pascoe saw his eyes take in the name scratched on the wall above the bed. Then he was screaming,
'Prisoner*.
Double mark time!'

Dalziel began running on the spot.

'Higher! Get them knees up higher!' yelled Trotter. 'You great bag of lard. We shouldn't be feeding you, we should be fasting you till you start looking like a human being instead* of a blubber fucking whale! At the double, forward march. Left wheel! Keep them knees up, d'you hear me? Lef'ri'lef'ri'lef'ri' . . .'

Dalziel went out of the dairy with Trotter in close attendance. Pascoe took a tentative step towards the door, but Judith was there, the gun in her hands as steady as the grey eyes fixed on his face.

He forced himself to take another small step forward.

'Next one takes you off the edge of the world,' she said.

She had a low-pitched voice with a not displeasing huskiness. If she could hold a note, he could imagine her coming over like Bacall in
To Have and Have Not.
(Did Andy Williams
really
dub that?) He put on his Bogart lisp and said, 'Somewhere this has got to stop, you must see that. So it makes sense, the sooner the better.'

The gun barrel moved forward as slightly but as certainly

as a Socratic question exposing a flaw in his argument. He gave way before it, retreating both steps he'd advanced and another besides. Bogie wasn't too proud to be scared. Remember
Key Largol

'If you kill me . . .' He meant to urge on her the inevitable consequences to herself, her brother, the moral health of the Nation, and the Rule of Law. Instead he heard pathos slipping into bathos as he concluded limply, '. . . I'll be dead.'

Even as he thought, 'Oh God! I didn't really say that, did I?' he saw a reaction. First she smiled . . . that was at the bathos. And then the smile faded and for the first time she blinked as if something other than blank watchfulness was trying to show itself in her eyes. Perhaps that was the pathos getting to her. Perhaps for the first time she was seeing him not just as an adjunct of the gross Dalziel but as a young man with a life still to live, wine still to drink, movies still to see, girls still to ...

He found he was blinking tears back from his eyes. Well, it had been a hard day so far and he'd had no breakfast. Even as he fought against this weakness which he suspected unfitted him to be a policeman he found himself wondering how his complete breakdown would affect the woman, which perhaps meant he was cut out to be a cop after all.

Before he could test just how meltable she was, he heard the sound of Dalziel's footsteps with their high-pitched
lef'ri'lef'ri'lef
accompaniment. The Fat Man appeared in the cell with a pint mug in one hand and a plate piled with some kind of stew in the other. At Trotter's command he marked time at the foot of the bed. Despite all his efforts at steadiness tea slopped out of the mug at every step and gravy dripped off the edge of the plate.

'Look what you're doing to the officer's meal!' screamed Trotter. 'I've a good mind to make you lick it up, you horrible man. HALT. LEFT TURN. Give the officer his meal and apologize for the mess you've made.'

'SIR!' shouted Dalziel breathlessly. 'Here's your meal, SIR! Sorry about the mess, SIR!'

He didn't look well, thought Pascoe. Or perhaps that grey-ness round the mouth was his natural colouring. The eyes were lively enough, full of promissory vengeance which came across as all embracing rather than targeted.

Even if I get out of this lot, thought Pascoe, I don't get the feeling I've much of a future in Mid Yorkshire!

He dug deep for his Alec Guinness voice. Because of the thickness in his throat it came out more
Tunes of Glory
than
Bridge on the River Kwai.

'Carry on, Mr Trotter.'

And the poor fat sod was off again, doubling back down to the kitchen presumably to get his own grub this time.

Pascoe looked speculatively at the woman. The old blank-ness was back. Impervious she might be to hot tears, but how would she react to hot stew in her face?

Badly, he answered himself. And in these confined quarters there wasn't much chance of ducking out of the spread of two shotgun barrels.

He took a careful sip of his tea, then set it on the floor and examined the stew. There was a spoon half submerged in its rich brownness which gave off a good appetizing smell reminding him he'd missed breakfast. While there was life, there was hunger. He began to eat. It tasted as good as it smelt and he'd almost finished by the time Dalziel returned, clutching another mug and plate.

Trotter noticed his progress and said, 'Sir! Like another helping, sir?'

He almost said yes, then he looked at Dalziel still double marking time, and thought it would mean another trip to the kitchen for the poor sod.

'No, thank you, Mr Trotter,' he said.

'Right, sir. Thank you, sir. Prisoner, HALT! Stan' atease. Next inspection in thirty minutes.'

Then he was gone. Dalziel waited till they heard the key turn in the lock before subsiding slowly onto the bed.

'You OK, sir?' said Pascoe.

The great grey head turned slowly towards him.

'What's up, lad? Worried in case I snuff it and there's nowt between you and Tankie but your fancy degree? Rest quiet. There's nothing wrong with me that a good woman and a bottle of Highland Park wouldn't put right.'

'Glad to hear it, sir. Talking of a good woman, was Mrs Dalziel expecting you to drop in at home before you went back to Wales? If so . . .'

'Forget it, lad. There is no Mrs Dalziel now.'

'I'm sorry,' said Pascoe. 'Dead?'

'No such sodding luck,' grunted the Fat Man. 'Just divorced. You married?'

'No sir.'

'Good. First thing I've heard in your favour so far. Not engaged or owt like that? Girlfriend filling her bottom drawer?'

'No sir. There was a girl at university . . .'

'Oh aye. The one got you auditioning for
An Inspector Calls?
She still hanging around?'

'No sir. Not the type who hangs around. Not the type who likes her boyfriends joining the police force either.'

'One of them? Then you're well rid of her,' growled Dalziel. 'Ee, that weren't half bad. Wouldn't like to fetch me another helping, would you?'

He'd been demolishing his stew as he talked and now he thrust the plate towards Pascoe who took it and half rose before he remembered.

'Nice to see that being an officer for five minutes hasn't spoilt your manners,' grinned Dalziel.

Angrily Pascoe threw the plate onto the bed. It skidded off the mattress, hit the stone-flagged floor and shattered.

'Clever,' said Dalziel. Tha knows who'll get the blame for that?'

'Why the hell aren't we talking about how to get out of here instead of exchanging dull details of our domestic lives?' demanded Pascoe. 'Everyone seems to think you're so bloody marvellous, why don't you do something to prove it?'

'Got a temper, have you?' said Dalziel not disapprovingly. All right. Here. Take hold of that.'

He reached down and picked up two long sharp shards of china, one of which he handed to Pascoe.

He went on. 'First chance we get, we jump 'em. You grab the lass, get a hold of her hair, stick that into her throat or her eye, any bit of her you can get at that'll do a lot of damage. Think you can manage that, lad?'

Pascoe looked at the fragment of plate and imagined sinking it into one of those pale grey eyes . . .

'I'm not sure, sir . . .' he said.

'Oh aye? So while I'm doing the business on Tankie, Jude's turning my spine into bonemeal? No thanks. We need another plan. Your turn.'

He tossed the plate shard back onto the floor and looked expectantly at the younger man.

'I don't know,' cried Pascoe. 'I meant something more like escaping . . . this isn't a prison, I mean it wasn't built to keep people in. Surely we can find a way to get out. . . ?'

'Like the Count of Monte Cristo, you mean? Now that were a good movie. Robert Doughnut, weren't it? Only they had to dig for about twenty years, didn't they? About the same amount of time you spent in school, learning fuck all. Tell you what, why don't you take the first shift, lad?'

It wasn't so much the words as the Fat Man's more-in-pain-than-in-anger expression that got to Pascoe.

He said, 'You're forgetting something. It wasn't the tunnel that got him out, it was the old sod dying and being dumped in the sea in a sack. Our only problem is going to be, where will we find a sack big enough?'

He'd gone too far. If Dalziel looked big before, now he seemed to swell monstrously like the genie let out of the bottle in
The Thief of Baghdad.

He tried to recall how Sabu had got him back in again. By persuading him he
couldn't
get back in again!

He forced a smile and said, 'You got a temper too, sir? Maybe we're a matching pair.'

For a moment, the Fat Man trembled on the brink of nuclear fission. Then, slowly subsiding, he snarled, 'Man who can believe that should stick to directing traffic.'

His anger must have dulled his hearing for he was still on the bed when the door flew open and Trotter erupted, yelling, 'What the hell's going on here? Who broke that plate? Prisoner giving you trouble, sir?'

Dalziel was back at rigid attention, the genie well back inside.

Pascoe said, 'Accident, Mr Trotter. Prisoner rather emotional. Private interview with officer i.e. As per regulations.'

He was gabbling. He tried to change it to the sternness of reproof, decided that perhaps it wasn't such a good idea and stuck with his gabble.

Happily Trotter wasn't paying him much attention. He stepped back to the doorway, picked up a bucket of hot water his sister had set down there and said, 'Throwing food around the place, are you, Dalziel? You may look like a pig and eat like a pig but you're not going to turn this place into a sty. I want every inch of this tip scrubbed out by the time I get back, understood?'

'SIR!'

Without a glance at Pascoe, Trotter about turned and marched out.

Oh dear, thought Pascoe. Perhaps I'm being written out of the script.

Dalziel was on his knees carefully gathering up the broken pieces of plate tunelessly whistling what might have been a bosh shot at 'Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kitbag' or possibly the scherzo from Beethoven's Fifth. Pascoe looked at the bucket. There was a toothbrush floating in it.

He took it out and said, 'What's this for?'

'Scrubbing the floor,' said Dalziel.

'You're joking!'

'Well, you know what they say. If you can't take a laugh you shouldn't have joined. What's up, lad? You've got that gormless college look on thy face again.'