Asking For The Moon dap-16

by Reginald Hill

  And then it was he heard that question for the first time.

  'So, tell me, Dalziel,' she said. 'What are you going to do about it?' '

  They were facing each other across the desk, resting against the bulkheads. If there was an up and a down on the Europa, this configuration came closest to what Dalziel thought of as 'standing up'. Perhaps that's what made him take the step.

  One small step.

  Indeed, hardly that. On Earth it would have been a mere shuffling of the feet, a rather nervous adjustment of a man's weight as he wondered what the hell to do next.

  Only here there was no weight to adjust, and the small forward movement of the left foot provoked a counterbalancing backward movement of the right; and as this was against the bulkhead, it caused an equal and opposite reaction, thus doubling his forward movement; and now his arms swung back to grab for support, but, finding nothing to get hold of, merely struck hard against the surface, and this energy too was translated into forward momentum.

  And so it was that one small step for Dalziel became in a split second a mighty leap.

  She came to meet him. In her eyes a deal had been offered and enthusiastically accepted, and she was no niggard in a bargain. There was perhaps a moment when she became aware that the thin black plastic device spinning in the asteroid belt of clothing that soon surrounded them was not a recorder but an electric razor, but by then it was far too late to abort the blast-off. Far too late… far, far too late

  …

  'Andy? Andy! Are you OK?'

  'What? Oh aye. Sorry. What was it you said?' 'I thought we'd lost you there,' said Pascoe. 'I asked you: What are you going to do about it?'

  Dalziel regarded Pascoe with the exasperated affection he had bestowed on him ever since their first almost disastrous encounter. He'd thought then that mebbe the bugger was too clever for his own good, and now he'd got the firm evidence. The lad had sat down and worked out everything, method, motive, the lot. Jealous resentment, a jape that went wrong, the use of a diuretic in the coffee, everything had been there in his theoretical model. Only, that was all it had been to Pascoe. A model theatre into which he could dangle his puppets and watch them dance as he pulled their strings. He hadn't been able to take the next small step and see that if a model works, then mebbe the reality works too, and perhaps there was no need of puppets, because there was a real culprit out there, waiting to be caught.

  And because he was so obsessed by clever trickery, he had thought to authenticate it all by dropping fat old Andy Dalziel into the play, a figure so obviously real that not even the suspicious and distrustful Druson could believe he was anyone's puppet.

  So what was he going to do? In a way, the ultimate disappointment was that the lad needed to ask. Dalziel didn't believe in practising everything he preached, but the golden rule he'd recently reproached Pascoe with was twenty-two carat. You don't drop your mates in it.

  And anyway, whether he'd intended it or not, a deal had been struck back there on Europa.

  'Do?' he growled. 'What can I do? You're in with the dirty tricks mob now, lad, and I don't want to end my days with a poisoned umbrella up my gunga!'

  'Andy, you don't really believe that?' protested Pascoe. 'No threats. It's what you think right that matters.'

  'I think it right to go on living as long as I can,' said Dalziel. 'All right, all right. For Christ's sake, take that hang-dog look off your face before the RSPCA puts you down. I'll keep stumm. And I'll forgive you. It's my own fault, I suppose. Teach a fledgling to fly and you've got to expect he'll crap on you some day. But I'm not going to kiss and make up, if that's what you're after!'

  Pascoe's face split in a smile of undisguised, uncontrived relief.

  'I should have known better than to mess around with you, Andy,' he said. 'I thought… well, to tell the truth, I thought you'd be so rusty, I wouldn't have any bother. And I wanted to see you again, and to work with you. Honestly, that was part of it. But I underestimated that nose of yours. It must be the weightlessness that got it back working at full power.'

  'Not just the nose,' muttered Dalziel.

  'Sorry?'

  'Nowt. Summat I meant to ask. Europe, it doesn't just mean Europe, does it?'

  'No. It's the name of a Phoenician princess who got ravished by Zeus in the form of a bull.'

  'Oh aye. I thought I recollected something like that,' said Dalziel with a certain complacency.

  Pascoe turned his head to look back to the moon. They were far too distant now to see the orbiting spaceship, and the moon itself had declined from a world to a silver apple hanging in space.

  'I can't believe I've really been there,' he said dreamily. 'I used to look up at it when I was a kid and have these fantasies. Now I'll be able to look up and remember… but I doubt if I'll believe what I remember. What about you, Andy?'

  'Oh, I'll believe right enough,' said Dalziel, who was lying back with his eyes shut, thinking of Nurse Montague and a nice little surprise he might be bringing home for her. 'Like yon Yank said, one small step for a man, one mighty jump for an old copper.'

  'Leap.'

  'Eh?'

  'Leap,' ^1 repeated Pascoe with that stern pedantry which neither age nor advancement had been able to rid him of. 'I think you'll find it was one giant leap, not one mighty jump.'

  'You speak for yourself, lad,' said Andrew Dalziel.

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