Asking for the Moon (22 page)

Ah! what demon has tempted me here? Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber -This misty mid-region of Weir -Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Thank Heaven! the crisis -The danger is past.

'It was like the last act of
Hamlet Meets Dracula,'
said Pascoe.

Some things were far too serious for anything but flippancy.

'And they're both dead?' repeated Inspector Dove at the other end of the line.

'He died instantly. Well, he would, his head was mostly missing.'

Pascoe remembered his promise that he would see that Lightfoot got what was coming to him.

'He doesn't sound much of a miss,' said Dove cynically.

'He was a blackmailer twice over,' agreed Pascoe. 'Though now he's dead, Davenport won't need to talk and Kingsley's backtracking like mad. There'll be more tight mouths around Wearton than at a lemon-suckers' convention. Not that it matters. My guess is that Stella Rawlinson played the ghost. She hated the Lightfoots, and Kingsley may or may not have been screwing her into the bargain.'

'Into what?"

'Oh, for God's sake!
¹

Pascoe found that he was sick of the jokes and the lightness. It was eight-thirty in the morning. He had got home at three but been unable to sleep. Dalziel had observed his arrival at the station with nothing more expressive than an upward roll of his eyes, then suggested that even southern pansies should be awake by this time and he might as well put Dove in the picture.

'I'm sorry,' said Dove.

'So am I,' said Pascoe. 'I'm a bit knackered. It's all turned out so badly. This Lightfoot, he seems to have been a nasty bit of work all round. But he loved his sister. God, even that sounds like the cue for a crack! — and it shouldn't have come to this. Not for anyone. He was the only one she asked for in the ambulance. Arthur, Arthur, all the time.'

'And she said nothing else before she died?'

'Not a thing. The only people she'd spoken to were Swithenbank's mother and Kingsley's housekeeper. She must have gone straight to Arthur's cottage when she arrived. We found her stuff there. Arthur was out, of course. She rang Swithenbank. His mother answered. She was flabbergasted naturally, told her about the party, asked where she'd been but got no answer. Kate went up to Wear End, learned from the housekeeper that everyone had taken off towards the church, so she set off after them along the old drive.'

'Where the hell had she been?' asked Dove in exasperation. 'You say you found some things of hers at Lightfoot's. Any clue there?'

'Nothing obvious,' said Pascoe wearily. 'At first glance it looks about the same as that list of things she took when she left Swithenbank last year. But it doesn't matter much now, does it?'

'I suppose not. Well, we were dead wrong about Swithenbank. Thank God I stopped this side of pulling his floorboards up! Still, you can't win 'em all.'

'No,' said Pascoe.

'Cheer up, Pete, for God's sake! You sound like it's all down to you. It was just an "assist", remember? You can't legislate for maniacs!'

'I know. I just feel that if I'd handled things differently . . .'

Dalziel had come into the room with a sheet of paper in his hand and when he heard Pascoe's remark, the eyes rolled again. It was like a lesson with the globes in an eighteenth-century schoolroom.

'Pete, it wasn't your job to find out where she'd gone. That

was our job, it's down to us. Like I say, OK, we missed out. I feel bad about it, but not too bad. I mean, Christ, she came back and we still don't know where the hell she's been! It's our fault. How could you be expected to work it out if we couldn't? Can't!'

'Too bloody true!' bellowed Dalziel, who had come close enough to eavesdrop on Dove's resonant voice.

'What's that, Pete? Someone there with you?'

'Mr Dalziel's just come in,' said Pascoe hastily. 'I'll keep in touch.'

'You do that, old son. I'm avid for the next instalment. I used to think it was just a joke about you lot north of Watford having bat-ears and little bushy tails, but now I'm not so sure. Love to Andy-Pandy! Cheerio now!'

Pascoe put down the phone.

'I don't know what he's got to be cheerful about,' said Dalziel malevolently. 'Or what you've got to be miserable about either.'

'Two people dead,' said Pascoe. 'That's what.'

'And that's your fault?'

'Not court-of-law my fault. Not even court-of-enquiry my fault,' said Pascoe. 'It's just that, I don't know, I suppose ... I was enjoying it! Secretly, deep inside, I was enjoying it. Big house, interviews in the library, chasing up to the churchyard, stopping the vicar from jumping, uncovering all kinds of guilty secrets - you know I was thinking, gleefully almost, wait till I get back and tell them about this! They'll never believe it!'

'I believe it,' said Dalziel. 'And I'd have done much the same in your shoes. You did it right. The only thing you couldn't know was that she was alive. That's what you call a paradox, you philosophers with degrees and O levels, isn't it? If you'd known she was alive, she'd be alive! But you didn't. You couldn't!'

'Someone should have done,' said Pascoe. 'They should have looked harder.'

'Too true,' said Dalziel with grim satisfaction. 'Cases like

these, you follow up every line. One line they didn't follow.'

'What?'

Dalziel scratched his backside on the corner of the desk, a frequent preliminary to one of his deductive
tours de force,
which one of his more scurrilous colleagues had categorized as the anal-lytical approach.

'What was Swithenbank doing on the day his missus disappeared?'

'The Friday, you mean?'

'Aye.'

Pascoe opened his notebook at the page on which he'd first started jotting down notes on the Swithenbank case.

'He was at a farewell party at lunch-time.'

'Who for?'

'One of his assistants.'

'Name?'

'I've no idea,' said Pascoe.

'Cunliffe. David Cunliffe,' said Dalziel triumphantly. 'Thought you'd have known that.'

'It wasn't in any of the papers Enfield sent me,' said Pascoe defensively.

'Bloody right it wasn't,' said Dalziel with relish. 'They've a lot to answer for. This fellow was heading for the good life, back to Mother Earth, do-it-yourself, all that crap, right?'

'Yes. Up in the Orkneys, I think.'

'That's right,' said Dalziel. 'One of the little islands. Him, a few natives, a lot of sheep; and his wife.'

'His wife?'

'Oh yes. Only, suppose she wasn't his wife! They don't take kindly to living in sin up there, so it'd be better for community relations to
call
her his wife. But suppose that on that Friday your Kate packed her few things, put on her new blonde wig and set off for the Orkneys!'

Pascoe shook his head to fight back the waves of fatigue, and something else, too.

'Why the wig?' he asked.

'She was meeting her boy-friend at King's Cross, on the train. She had the wit to guess there might be mutual acquaintance there to see him off and she didn't want to be spotted. As it happened, the whole bloody party came along, including hubby, so she was very wise. Imagine, there's Swithenbank shooting all that shit about how he wished he had the guts to up and leave everything, meaning his missus, for a better life, and there she is sitting only a few carriages away, doing just that!'

'Oh Christ,' said Pascoe. 'Is this just hypothesis, or have you checked it out?'

'What do you think I am, bloody Sherlock Holmes?' exploded Dalziel. 'No, there's no way any of us could have worked out any of that. It was up to Dove and his mates, as I'll make bloody clear! What we've got is this. Arrived this morning.'

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.

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.