Asking for the Moon

by Reginald Hill

  He handed Pascoe the sheet of paper he had been carrying.

  It was a request for assistance from Orkney Police HQ in Kirkwall. They were holding one David Cunliffe on suspicion of murdering his 'wife', whom he now claimed was not his wife but Katherine Swithenbank, formerly of Wearton in the county of Yorkshire, where, he suggested, it was most likely she would return after leaving him.

  It was clear the Orkney constabulary had no great faith in his claim. No one had seen her leave the small island on which their croft was situated. No one had spotted her on the ferry from Stromness or on a plane from Kirkwall Airport. Pascoe got a distinct impression that the croft which Cunliffe had so lovingly repaired was now being taken down again, stone by stone, and the land which he had tilled was now being dug over again, spadeful after hard-turned spadeful.

  'She was a right little expert at the disappearing trick,' said Dalziel admiringly. 'When she gets fed up she just packs her bag and goes. And no one ever notices!'

  'Someone noticed this time,' said Pascoe.

  'Belt up! Think on - there's going to be some red faces this morning! Which do you want to do - Enfield or Orkney?

  Best you do Orkney; Dove'll try to shrug it off, well, the bugger won't shrug me off in a hurry!'

  He sounded really delighted, as though the whole of the Wearton business had been arranged just so that he could crow over the inefficiency of the effete south.

  But before he left the room, he made one more effort to cheer up his dull and defeated-looking inspector, who was sitting with his head bowed over his open notebook.

  Til say it one last time, Peter,' he said. 'It wasn't your fault. You reckoned she was dead, everyone reckoned she was dead, her brother, her husband, that Enfield lot. You had to go ahead as you did. You'd have needed second sight to know where she was hiding herself. I mean, inspired guesses are one thing, but to work out she was in the Orkneys on the basis of what you knew, you'd have needed a miracle. Right?'

  'Right,' said Pascoe.

  'Good,' said Dalziel. 'Come twelve, you can buy me a pint for being right. Again.'

  He went out.

  Pascoe closed his eyes and saw again the white-clad woman floating up the path from the lych-gate.

  Why had she come back? What had she hoped for?

  He shook his head and opened his eyes.

  He would never know and he had no intention of trying an inspired guess. Dalziel was right. A detective should have no truck with feelings and intuitions.

  He looked at his notebook, which still lay open at the first page of his scribblings on the Swithenbank case, made as he talked to Dove on the telephone two days before.

  On the left-hand page there were two words only. One was HAIRDRESSER?

  The other lightly scored through was ORKNEY?

  He took his pen now and scratched at the word till it was totally obliterated.

  Then he closed the book.

  DALZIEL'S GHOST

  'Well, this is very cosy,' said Detective-Superintendent Dalziel, scratching his buttocks sensuously before the huge log fire.

  'It is for some,' said Pascoe, shivering still from the frosty November night.

  But Dalziel was right, he thought as he looked round the room. It was cosy, probably as cosy as it had been in the three hundred years since it was built. It was doubtful if any previous owner, even the most recent, would have recognized the old living-room of Stanstone Rigg farmhouse. Eliot had done a good job, stripping the beams, opening up the mean little fireplace and replacing the splintered uneven floorboards with smooth dark oak; and Giselle had broken the plain white walls with richly coloured, voluminous curtaining and substituted everywhere the ornaments of art for the detritus of utility.

  Outside, though, when night fell, and darkness dissolved the telephone poles, and the mist lay too thick to be pierced by the rare headlight on the distant road, then the former owners peering from their little cube of warmth and light would not have felt much difference,

  Not the kind of thoughts a ghost-hunter should have! he told himself reprovingly. Cool calm scepticism was the right state of mind.

  And his heart jumped violently as behind him the telephone rang.

  Dalziel, now pouring himself a large scotch from the goodly

  array of bottles on the huge sideboard, made no move towards the phone though he was the nearer. Detective-superintendents save their strength for important things and leave their underlings to deal with trivia.

  'Hello,' said Pascoe.

  'Peter, you're there!'

  'Ellie love,' he answered. 'Sometimes the sharpness of your mind makes me feel unworthy to be married to you.'

  'What are you doing?'

  'We've just arrived. I'm talking to you. The super's having a drink.'

  'Oh God! You did warn the Eliots, didn't you?'

  'Not really, dear. I felt the detailed case-history you doubtless gave to Giselle needed no embellishment.'

  'I'm not sure this is such a good idea.'

  'Me neither. On the contrary. In fact, you may recall that on several occasions in the past three days I've said as much to you, whose not such a good idea it was in the first place.'

  'All you're worried about is your dignity!' said Ellie. 'I'm worried about that lovely house. What's he doing now?'

  Pascoe looked across the room to where Dalziel had bent his massive bulk so that his balding close-cropped head was on a level with a small figurine of a shepherd chastely dallying with a milkmaid. His broad right hand was on the point of picking it up.

  'He's not touching anything,' said Pascoe hastily. 'Was there any other reason you phoned?'

  'Other than what?'

  'Concern for the Eliots' booze and knick-knacks.'

  'Oh, Peter, don't be so half-witted. It seemed a laugh at The Old Mill, but now I don't like you being there with him, and I don't like me being here by myself. Come home and we'll screw till someone cries Hold! Enough.1*

  'You interest me strangely,' said Pascoe. 'What about Aim and the Eliots' house?'

  'Oh, sod him and sod the Eliots! Decent people don't have ghosts!' exclaimed Ellie.

  'Or if they do, they call in priests, not policemen,' said Pascoe. 'I quite agree. I said as much, remember. . . ?'

  'All right, all right. You please yourself, buster. I'm off to bed now with a hot-water bottle and a glass of milk. Clearly I must be in my dotage. Shall I ring you later?'

  'Best not,' said Pascoe. 'I don't want to step out of my pentacle after midnight. See you in the morning.'

  'Must have taken an electric drill to get through a skirt like that,' said Dalziel, replacing the figurine with a bang. "No wonder the buggers got stuck into the sheep. Your missus checking up, was she?'

  'She just wanted to see how we were getting on,' said Pascoe.

  'Probably thinks we've got a couple of milkmaids with us,' said Dalziel, peering out into the night. 'Some hope! I can't even see any sheep. It's like the grave out there.'

  He was right, thought Pascoe. When Stanstone Rigg had been a working farm, there must have always been the comforting sense of animal presence, even at night. Horses in the stable, cows in the byre, chickens in the hutch, dogs before the fire. But the Eliots hadn't bought the place because of any deep-rooted love of nature. In fact Giselle Eliot disliked animals so much she wouldn't even have a guard dog, preferring to rely on expensive electronics. Pascoe couldn't understand how George had got her even to consider living out here. It was nearly an hour's run from town in good conditions and Giselle was in no way cut out for country life, either physically or mentally. Slim, vivacious, sexy, she was a star-rocket in Yorkshire's sluggish jet-set. How she and Ellie had become friends, Pascoe couldn't work out either.

  But she must have a gift for leaping unbridgeable gaps for George was a pretty unlikely partner, too.

  It was George who was responsible for Stanstone Rigg- By profession an accountant, and very much looking the part with his thin face, unblinking gaze, and a mouth
that seemed constructed for the passage of bad news, his unlikely hobby was the renovation of old houses. In the past six years he

  had done two, first a Victorian terrace house in town, then an Edwardian villa in the suburbs. Both had quadrupled (at least) in value, but George claimed this was not the point and Pascoe believed him. Stanstone Rigg Farm was his most ambitious project to date, and it had been a marvellous success, except for its isolation, which was unchangeable.

  And its ghost. Which perhaps wasn't.

  It was just three days since Pascoe had first heard of it. Dalziel, who repaid hospitality in the proportion of three of Ellie's home-cooked dinners to one meal out had been entertaining the Pascoes at The Old Mill, a newly opened restaurant in town.

  'Jesus!' said the fat man when they examined the menu. 'I wish they'd put them prices in French, too. They must give you Brigitte Bardot for afters!'

  'Would you like to take us somewhere else?' enquired Ellie sweetly. 'A fish and chip shop, perhaps. Or a Chinese takeaway?'

  'No, no,' said Dalziel. 'This is grand. Any road, I'll chalk what I can up to expenses. Keeping an eye on Fletcher.'

  'Who?'

  'The owner,' said Pascoe. 'I didn't know he was on our list, sir.'

  'Well, he is and he isn't,' said Dalziel. 'I got a funny telephone call a couple of weeks back. Suggested I might take a look at him, that's all. He's got his finger in plenty of pies.'

  'If I have the salmon to start with,' said Ellie, 'it won't be removed as material evidence before I'm finished, will it?'

  Pascoe aimed a kick at her under the table but she had been expecting it and drawn her legs aside.

  Four courses later they had all eaten and drunk enough for a kind of mellow truce to have been established between Ellie and the fat man.

  'Look who's over there,' said Ellie suddenly.

  Pascoe looked. It was the Eliots, George dark-suited and still, Giselle ablaze in clinging orange silk. Another man, middle-aged but still athletically elegant in a military sort of

  way, was standing by their table. Giselle returned Ellie's wave and spoke to the man, who came across the room and addressed Pascoe.

  'Mr and Mrs Eliot wonder if you would care to join them for liqueurs,' he said.

  Pascoe looked at Dalziel enquiringly.

  'I'm in favour of owt that means some other bugger putting his hand in his pocket,' he said cheerfully.

  Giselle greeted them with delight and even George raised a welcoming smile.

  'Who was that dishy thing you sent after us?' asked Ellie after Dalziel had been introduced.

  'Dishy? Oh, you mean Giles. He will be pleased. Giles Fletcher. He owns this place."

  'Oh my! We send the owner on errands, do we?' said Ellie. "It's great to see you, Giselle. It's been ages. When am I getting the estate agent's tour of the new house? You've promised us first refusal when George finds a new ruin, remember?'

  'I couldn't afford the ruin,' objected Pascoe. 'Not even with George doing our income tax.'

  'Does a bit of the old tax fiddling, your firm?' enquired Dalziel genially.

  'I do a bit of work privately for friends,' said Eliot coldly. 'But in my own time and at home.'

  'You'll need to work bloody hard to make a copper rich,' said Dalziel.

  'Just keep taking the bribes, dear,' said Ellie sweetly. 'Now when can we move into Stanstone Farm, Giselle?'

  Giselle glanced at her husband, whose expression remained a blank.

  'Any time you like, darling,' she said. 'To tell you the truth, it can't be soon enough. In fact, we're back in town.'

  'Good God!' said Ellie. 'You haven't found another place already, George? That's pretty rapid even for you.'

  A waiter appeared with a tray on which were glasses and a selection of liqueur bottles.

  'Compliments of Mr Fletcher,' he said.

  Dalziel examined the tray with distaste and beckoned the waiter close. For an incredulous moment Pascoe thought he was going to refuse the drinks on the grounds that police officers must be seen to be above all favour.

  'From Mr Fletcher, eh?' said Dalziel. 'Well, listen, lad, he wouldn't be best pleased if he knew you'd forgotten the single malt whisky, would he? Run along and fetch it. I'll look after pouring this lot.'

  Giselle looked at Dalziel with the round-eyed delight of a child seeing a walrus for the first time.

  'Cointreau for me please, Mr Daziel,' she said.

  He filled a glass to the brim and passed it to her with a hand steady as a rock.

  'Sup up, love,' he said, looking with open admiration down her cleavage. 'Lots more where that comes from.'

  Pascoe, sensing that Ellie might be about to ram a pepper-mill up her host's nostrils, said hastily, 'Nothing wrong with the building, I hope, George? Not the beetle or anything like that?1

  'I sorted all that out before we moved,' said Eliot. 'No, nothing wrong at all.'

  His tone was neutral but Giselle responded as though to an attack.

  'It's all right, darling,' she said. 'Everyone's guessed it's me. But it's not really. It's just that I think we've got a ghost.'

  According to Giselle, there were strange scratchings, shadows moving where there should be none, and sometimes as she walked from one room to another 'a sense of emptiness as though for a moment you'd stepped into the space between two stars'.

  This poetic turn of phrase silenced everyone except Dalziel, who interrupted his attempts to scratch the sole of his foot with a bent coffee spoon and let out a raucous laugh.

  'What's that mean?' demanded Ellie.

  'Nowt,' said Dalziel. 'I shouldn't worry, Mrs Eliot. It's

  likely some randy yokel roaming about trying to get a peep at you. And who's to blame him?'

  He underlined his compliment with a leer straight out of the old melodrama. Giselle patted his knee in acknowledgement.

  'What do you think, George?' asked Ellie.

  George admitted the scratchings but denied personal experience of the rest.

  'See how long he stays there by himself,' challenged Giselle.

  'I didn't buy it to stay there by myself,' said Eliot. 'But I've spent the last couple of nights alone without damage.'

  'And you saw or heard nothing?' said Ellie.

  'There may have been some scratching. A rat perhaps. It's an old house. But it's only a house. I have to go down to London for a few days tomorrow. When I get back we'll start looking for somewhere else. Sooner or later I'd get the urge anyway.'

  'But it's such a shame! After all your work, you deserve to relax for a while,' said Ellie. 'Isn't there anything you can do?'

  'Exorcism,' said Pascoe. 'Bell, book and candle.'

  'In my experience,' said Dalziel, who had been consuming the malt whisky at a rate which had caused the waiter to summon his workmates to view the spectacle, 'there's three main causes of ghosts.'

  He paused for effect and more alcohol.

  'Can't you arrest him, or something?' Ellie hissed at Pascoe.

  'One: bad cooking,' the fat man continued. 'Two: bad ventilation. Three: bad conscience.'

  'George installed air-conditioning himself,' said Pascoe.

  'And Giselle's a super cook,' said Ellie.

  'Well then,' said Dalziel. 'I'm sure your conscience is as quiet as mine, love. So that leaves your randy yokel. Tell you what. Bugger your priests. What you need is a professional eye checking on things.'

  'You mean a psychic investigator?' said Giselle.

  'Like hell!' laughed Ellie. 'He means get the village bobby to stroll around the place with his truncheon at the ready.'

  'A policeman? But I don't really see what he could do,' said Giselle, leaning towards Dalziel and looking earnestly into his lowered eyes.

  'No, hold on a minute,' cried Ellie with bright malice. 'The Superintendent could be right. A formal investigation. But the village flatfoot's no use. You've got the best police brains in the county rubbing your thighs, Giselle. Why not send for them?'

 
Which was how it started. Dalziel, to Pascoe's amazement, had greeted the suggestion with ponderous enthusiasm. Giselle had reacted with a mixture of high spirits and high seriousness, apparently regarding the project as both an opportunity for vindication and a lark. George had sat like Switzerland, neutral and dull. Ellie had been smilingly baffled to see her bluff so swiftly called. And Pascoe had kicked her ankle savagely when he heard plans being made for himself and Dalziel to spend the following Friday night waiting for ghosts at Stanstone Farm.

  As he told her the next day, had he realized that Dalziel's enthusiasm was going to survive the sober light of morning, he'd have followed up his kick with a karate chop.

  Ellie had tried to appear unrepentant. , 'You know why it's called Stanstone, do you?' she asked. 'Standing stone. Get it? There must have been a stone circle there at some time. Primitive worship, human sacrifice, that sort of thing. Probably the original stones were used in the building of the house. That'd explain a lot, wouldn't it?'

  'No,' said Pascoe coldly. 'That would explain very little. It would certainly not explain why I am about to lose a night's sleep, nor why you who usually threaten me with divorce or assault whenever my rest is disturbed to fight real crime should have arranged it.'

  But arranged it had been and it was small comfort for Pascoe now to know that Ellie was missing him.

  Dalziel seemed determined to enjoy himself, however.

  'Let's get our bearings, shall we?' he said. Replenishing his glass, he set out on a tour of the house.

  'Well wired up,' he said as his expert eye spotted the discreet evidence of the sophisticated alarm system. 'Must have cost a fortune.'

  'It did. I put him in touch with our crime prevention squad and evidently he wanted nothing but the best,' said Pascoe.

  'What's he got that's so precious?' wondered Dalziel.

  'All this stuff's pretty valuable, I guess,' said Pascoe, making a gesture which took in the pictures and ornaments of the master bedroom in which they were standing. 'But it's really for Giselle's sake. This was her first time out in the sticks and it's a pretty lonely place. Not that it's done much good.'