Hill, Reginald - Dalziel and Pascoe 14 - Asking For The Moon (HTML)

by Reginald Hill

  The two women were easiest. The Dane, Marte Schierbeck, was pure Viking, long-bodied, long-faced, and grey-eyed, with hair so fair it was almost silver. By contrast the Spaniard, Silvia Rabal, was compact and curvaceous, with huge dark eyes, full pouting lips, and a rather prominent, slightly hooked nose. Her jet black hair was razored back above her ears and sculpted into a rose-tipped crest. The total effect was arrestingly beautiful, like some colourful exotic bird.

  Of the men, a rather spidery figure with a face crumpled like an old banknote and eyes blue as the lakes of Killarney had to be the Irishman, Kevin O'Meara, while a Rembrandt burgher, solid of frame and stolid of feature, was typecast as the Dutchman, Adriaan van der Heyde. Only the German and the Italian ran counter to type with the six-foot, blue-eyed blond turning out to be Marco Albertosi, which meant the black-haired, volatile-faced, lean-figured gondolier was Dieter Kaufmann.

  Pascoe introduced himself formally, explaining Dalziel simply as his assistant. He made heavy weather of insisting on the serious nature of the affair and the absoluteness of his own authority, and by the time he finished by saying, 'The investigation will be carried on in English since, perhaps

  regrettably, neither Mr Dalziel nor myself are fluent in any of your languages,' he had succeeded in relaxing the crew into a union of mocking anglophobia, which was precisely what he intended. In his own case the linguistic disclaimer was a downright lie. He was fluent in French, German and Italian, and could get by in the rest. In Dalziel's case . . . well, he'd learned a long time ago that it was dangerous to assume his ignorance about anything*.

  'We will start with individual interviews,' said Pascoe. 'Herr Kaufmann, would you come with me? Mr Dalziel. . .'

  Pascoe had already decreed the order of interview, but Dalziel let his eyes slowly traverse the group with the specu­lative gaze of a sailor in a brothel. Then, with a macho aggres­sion which should have sat ill on a man of his age, but didn't, he stabbed a huge forefinger at Silvia Rabal and said, 'I'll have furl'

  Space was short for special interview facilities so the interrogations took place in the newcomers' rooms. Rabal sat on the bed without being asked. Dalziel eased himself care­fully on to a frail-looking chair and began to open the second bottle of malt.

  'Drink?' he said.

  'No. Why have you picked me first?' she asked in a rather harsh voice.

  'Well, I said to myself, if she's the one who killed the Frog, mebbe she'll try to seduce me to keep me quiet.'

  The woman's huge eyes opened even wider as she ran this through her mental translator to make sure she'd got it right. Then she drew back her head and laughed, no avian screech but a full-throated Carmen laugh, sensual, husky, sending tremors down her body like the inviting ripples on a jungle pool.

  'Perhaps I will have that drink, Dalziel,' she said.

  'Thought you might,' he said, handing her a glass.

  She held it close to her breast so he had to lean over her to pour. She looked up at him and breathed, 'Enough.' Her breath was honeyed, or more precisely spiced as if she had

  been eating cinnamon and coriander. Such perfumes from a restaurant kitchen would have alarmed Dalziel, who liked his food plain dressed, but from the warm oven of this woman's mouth, they were disturbingly appetitive, setting juices run­ning he thought had long since dried to a trickle.

  He sat down heavily and the frail chair spread its legs, but held.

  'Cheers,' she said, lifting her glass to her lips.

  'Cheers,' he answered. It was time to grasp the initiative.

  'Look, love,' he said. 'Cards on the table, that's the way I work. That Pascoe, now, he's different, a right sly bugger, you'll need to keep an eye on him. Me, though, I'm not clever enough to be cunning. But God gave me a fair share of good Yorkshire common sense, and that tells me you're about the least likely suspect of the lot, and that's the real reason I picked you first. So I can get some answers I can be sure are honest.'

  She said, 'Thank you. I am nattered. But how do you work this out?'

  'For a start, you weren't on the module, were you? You stayed on Europa to look after the shop, you and the Eyetie. So while the module party all had plenty of reason to be mucking about with their TECs in the hold, you didn't.'

  'And this is when this interference was done, you think?'

  'Has to be, hasn't it?'

  'I suppose. This fault in Emile's suit, could it not be just a fault? That American tells us nothing, just makes hints.'

  'No. It were deliberate interference, no doubt,' said Dalziel with the technological certainty of a man who used to repair police radios with his truncheon. 'Must've been done in a hurry. I mean, given time, I expect you lot are all clued up enough to have covered your tracks.'

  'Oh yes, I think so.' She regarded him thoughtfully. 'So I am in the clear because I stay on the ship? Then Marco who stayed with me must be clear too?'

  'That depends if his legs are as pretty as yours,' leered

  Dalziel. 'But why do you ask? Would it surprise you if Marco was innocent?'

  'No. I do not say that.'

  'But he didn't get on with Lemarque, is that it?'

  'They were not good friends, no. But not so bad that he would kill!'

  'How bad does that have to be for an Italian?' wondered Dalziel. 'Why'd they not like each other? Rivals, were they? Or maybe they had a lovers' tiff?'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'You know. If they had something going between 'em, and they fell out. . .'

  He made a limp-wristed rocking gesture.

  'What do you say?' she cried indignantly. 'That is not possible!'

  'No? Well, there's things in these files as'd amaze you,' he said, patting the pile of folders on the floor next to him. 'Do you not have fairy tales in Spain, then? Kiss a frog and you get yourself a princess, that sort of thing?'

  Puzzlement, irritation, and something else besides were chasing each other across that expressive face.

  'You are mistaken, I think,' she said, recovering her poise. 'They were rivals, yes. Each wanting to be the most macho, that is all.'

  'You reckon? Mebbe they didn't bother you much. I'll be

  interested to hear what that Danish lass made of them. She's

  a lot more boyish than you, might have turned them on a bit

  more ..." •

  She looked ready to explode, recovered again and said, 'Yes, if you are interested in low-temperature physics, go to her.'

  'No, thanks. Me, I prefer the high-temperature Latin type,' he said lecherously.

  She gave him a thin smile and said, 'You talk a lot, Dalziel. Can you, I wonder - what is the phrase? - put your money where your mouth is?'

  'Depends where you want me to put my mouth,' said

  Dalziel negligently. 'Thanks for the offer, but. Mebbe later when I've' a minute to spare, eh?' Or a week, he thought ruefully. Though there had been a time ... At least his diver­sionary tactics had worked.

  'Offer? What offer? You do not think. . .' Suddenly she broke into indignant Spanish.

  Dalziel yawned and said, 'Stick to English, luv. If a man's worth swearing at, he's worth swearing at in his own lan­guage. Now, I've read all the statements but I'm not much good at technical stuff, so mebbe you can give us a hand. First, these TECs, once they were activated in the module, you could monitor their circuits on Europa, is that right?'

  'Yes.'

  'And from Europa this info would go back to Earth Control?'

  'Yes. There is non-stop transmission of pictures and techni­cal data from Europa to Earth.'

  'Aye,' scowled Dalziel. 'Made me miss Star Trek. But weren't there a transmission blackout from Europa as the mod­ule went down?'

  'That is right. There was an electrical storm.'

  He whistled and said, 'That must have been scary.'

  'No,' she said with professional indifference. 'It happens often. Fortunately it did not last long and we got pictures back in time for the big event. Emile stepping on to the moon
, I mean, not. . .'

  She shuddered. A sympathetic smile lit Dalziel's face like a wrecker's lantern and he said, 'Don't take on, lass. Now, let's see. It were just Europa's Earth transmissions that were affected? You still kept your contact with the module?'

  'There was a little interference but we still got pictures.'

  'And technical data on the TEC circuits?'

  'Yes,' she snapped with the growing exasperation of the expert at being made to repeat the obvious. Dalziel scratched his nose. To him, such exasperation was the reddening skin above a boxer's eye. You pounded at it till it split.

  'And there was no sign of owt wrong with Lemarque's suit? No hint that his circuits had been mucked around?'

  'I have said so in my statement!' she cried. 'There was nothing till the moment when he made water. Then pouf! it is finished. No one can say it was my fault! There were two of us watching. It was a systems malfunction I think, no one to blame. Who has been blaming me. . .?'

  'Calm down, woman!' bellowed Dalziel. 'You'll be gab­bling away in Spanish again just now, and then where will we be? Have another drink. That's it, straight down. If you buggers drank more of this stuff and less of that gangria, you'd mebbe not need to run around screaming like banshees and slaughtering bulls. Now, get it into your noddle, nobody's blaming you, least of all me. So, just a couple more questions . . .'

  Pascoe and Dalziel had agreed to confer between interviews.

  'Anything?' asked Pascoe.

  'She's been bonking either the Italian or the Frog or mebbe both, and she doesn't much care for the Dane, so mebbe she got in on the act too. And she says that Albertosi and Lem­arque didn't much hit it off.'

  'She volunteered all this?'

  'I prodded a bit. Told her I suspected they were a couple of poofters.'

  'Oh Andy. Any more disinformation I should know about?'

  'I told her you were a right bastard, and I said she weren't on my list of suspects.'

  'And isn't she?'

  'You know me, lad. You're on my list till I get the evidence to cross you off. She certainly had less chance than the others of fiddling with Lemarque's suit. Mind you, she got very agitated when she thought I was hinting she were to blame for not monitoring the TEC transmissions properly. That electrical storm checked out, did it?'

  'Happens all the time, evidently. And there were two of them doing the monitoring.'

  'Aye. I take it, from what you're saying, you haven't clamped the Kraut in irons? Not even for spying? He is a spy, I take it?'

  'Oh yes, no question. He doesn't deny it.'

  Dalziel considered, then said gently, 'Now that should be a great big plus for the Yanks' theory that he knocked the Frog off. So why do I get the feeling it's nowt of the sort?"

  Pascoe regarded him blankly. Time was when Dalziel reckoned he could have followed most of his old colleague's thought-processes along a broad spoor of telltale signs, but not any more. Perhaps time had dulled his perception. Or perhaps it had honed Pascoe's control.

  Then the younger man smiled and was his old self again.

  'I'm glad to see the nose is getting back into shape, Andy,' he said. 'The truth is, I knew all about Kaufmann's relations with the Arabs long before Druson told me. As usual, the CIA have only managed to get half a story. The more impor­tant half is that Kaufmann's a double, always has been. Oddly enough, that's partly the reason he got into the Fed's space programme in the first place. He's a high flier in every sense and was due a promotion. The Arabs were licking their lips as the logical career step would have taken him into a very sensitive area of missile guidance. His own people recognized how hard it would be to keep up his act with duff info at this level, so someone came up with the bright idea of nominating him for the moon shot. That way, he kept his cred with the Arabs by passing them what is in their terms a lot of relatively antiquated space technology. The Yanks were right about that at least!'

  He laughed, inviting Dalziel to join in his amusement. But the fat man was not to be manipulated so easily.

  'Fuck me rigid!' he said angrily. 'Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?'

  ''Need-to-know, remember, Andy? Look, for all I knew, the Americans had got it right, Kaufmann was the killer, and I

  was into damage-limitation. I didn't see a need to load you down with classified stuff that wasn't necessary.'

  Dalziel swallowed his irritation with difficulty and said, 'Meaning, now you've talked, he's definitely off your list?'

  'Ninety per cent, I'd say. But I'd still like your opinion, Andy, and it'll be a better opinion now you know this spy business didn't really figure as motive.'

  'Because if Lemarque had threatened to tell the Fed that Kaufmann was an agent, it wouldn't be much of a threat, as they know already?'

  'Right.'

  'But suppose he was threatening to tell the Arabs that Kaufmann was a double?'

  'In that case,' said Pascoe quietly, 'Kaufmann would have told us and Lemarque would have been taken care of much more discreetly.'

  Dalziel digested this, then shook his head unhappily and said, 'Oh, Pete, Pete. Listen,.lad, I'm far too old a dog to be learning new tricks. If this is a good old-fashioned killing because some bugger's been dipping his hand or his wick where he shouldn't, that's fine. But if it's spies and politics and that kind of crap, better beam me down to the twilight zone.'

  Pascoe smiled and said in a kindly tone, 'I think you're mixing your programmes, Andy. And if you're going to try for pathos, better lose a bit of weight. Look, why do you think I brought you along? I've learnt enough new tricks to deal with the politics, but some of the old tricks may have gone a bit rusty. If it is just a good old-fashioned killing, and it could be, I'm relying on you to sort it out. You're my fail-safe, Andy. OK? Now let's get on. I've got the Irishman and you've got the Dane. And try to hold back on the Hamlet jokes, won't you?'

  Marte Schierbeck was a very different proposition from Silvia Rabal. The atmosphere had changed from Mediterranean heat to Nordic coldness, but a native Yorkshireman knows

  better than to trust in mere weather. A fragment of hymn from his distant Sunday School days drifted through Dalziel's mind as he met the woman's cool grey eyes.

  A man who looks on glass

  On it may stay his eye,

  Or if he pleases through it pass . . ,

  He said, 'Was Emile more jealous of Marco than the other way round, do you think?'

  She expressed no surprise but simply asked, 'What has Silvia said?'

  'Does it matter?'

  'The truth matters. We must tell the truth, mustn't we? Especially to policemen.' She spoke with no apparent irony.

  'That's how it works in Denmark, is it? Do you do lecture tours?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Just my little joke. So what about Marco, then? Was he very jealous of Emile?'

  'All men are jealous of their successors. That is why they hate their sons.'

  'Jesus,' said Dalziel.

  'There too,' said the woman.

  A man who looks on glass . . . Dalziel made a determined effort to refocus.

  'Was it you who broke off the affair, then?' he asked.

  'Affair,' she echoed.

  Not even his gout had made Dalziel feel older than the delicate way in which she savoured the old-worldliness of the word.

  'Yes,' she went on. 'I broke it off. That is perhaps why Marco was jealous, not because he cared about having me, but because I let him see I did not care about having him. But I think what you are really asking is, "Was he jealous enough to kill?" Perhaps. He is Italian, and their self-image permits crimes of passion.'

  'Not much passion in fixing a man's space suit so that first time he passes water he drops down dead,' sneered Dalziel, suddenly keen to pierce this icy carapace.

  It was like spitting on a glacier.

  She said, 'To the Latin mind, it might seem . . . apt.'

  Dalziel didn't reply at once and the woman, mistaking his silence, tried to help him
over his repression.

  'Because the electrical connection which killed him would be through his sex organ,' she explained.

  'Aye, lass,' he said irritably. 'First thing they taught me at Oxford was to know when a tart's talking dirty. What I'm trying to work out is, how come you're so keen to fit this randy Eyetie up for murder?'

  'Please?'

  'Forget it. You're not about to tell me, are you? I see from your file that you were the module pilot?'

  'Yes. That surprises you?'

  'I stopped being surprised by lady drivers a long time back,' he said. 'And you landed safely? No bumps?'

  'No bumps.' She almost smiled.

  'Then what?'

  'I extended the outside arm to set up the external camera to record this historic moment for posterity. Then Emile acti­vated his TEC and entered the airlock. I opened the exit door and he began to descend. The rest you have seen.'

  'Why was he the first out?' asked Dalziel. 'Did you draw lots, or what?'

  Now she definitely smiled.

  'Certainly we drew lots,' she said. 'Being first is important. Everyone remembers Armstrong, but who can remember the others? Can you, Mr Dalziel?'

  'Nowadays I can't remember to zip me flies till I feel a draught,' said Dalziel. 'Lemarque won when you drew lots, then?'

  'Oh no. He did not even bother to take part. He knew it was pointless. Next day the decision came from above. He was chosen. No arguments.'

  'Oh aye? How'd they work that out, then?'

  She said, 'Who knows? But perhaps you remember from your schooldays, in the playground there was always one little boy or girl who had to have first turn at everything. In Europe that child is France.'

  'Was anything said in the module before he left?'

  'Only trivial things, I think.'

  'My favourites,' said Dalziel.

  'Emile said something like, I hope the Yankees have built a McDonald's. Even American coffee must be better than the dishwater we have to drink. Something like that.'