Asking for the Moon (29 page)

'More than enough. I'd got to thinking the next dead 'un I saw would be me.'

'Good Lord,' said Pascoe. 'When did you start believing in an afterlife?'

'Man who lets himself be talked into flying to the moon to stare at a dead Frog's got no right to disbelieve
anything,'
said Dalziel. 'Did someone say something about a room with a bed in it?'

'Let's go,' said Druson.

He led them to their quarters, two small bedrooms with a shared living-room. When the door had shut behind him, Dalziel said, 'OK, lad. What do you reckon? Still a fit-up by the Yanks?'

'Open mind,' said Pascoe. 'They've certainly put a reasonable case together. Maybe Kaufmann did do it.'

'Mebbe. I'd trust 'em a lot more if yon black bugger hadn't managed to forget that Glenmorangie he promised me!'

Pascoe grinned and said, 'A good night's sleep will do you more good, Andy. Nothing more to be done till the morning or whatever they call it up here. Then it'll be straight down to the interrogations.'

'Hold on,' said Dalziel. 'Scene of the crime, remember? That's why you said we had to come here, and you were dead right. Only this isn't the scene, is it? The Frog dropped dead somewhere out there. And the actual scene of the real crime is floating around somewhere up there. Shouldn't we fix up to visit the
Europa
before we do owt else?'

'Don't worry,' said Pascoe. 'I'll be arranging a trip as soon as possible. But time's too short to waste, so in the morning let's get on with talking to the crew, shall we? Now I thought we'd work individually. I'll take three and you take three, then we'll swap over like a sort of reverse singles . . .'

'It's not bloody tennis!' said Dalziel obstinately. 'I'll need to ask what these sods got up to on
Europa
and unless I've seen
Europa,
what they say won't make bloody sense, will it?'

There was a tap at the door. Pascoe didn't move. Dalziel scowled at him and went to answer it.

A smiling young man handed him two litre-sized bottles saying, 'There you go, pops.'

'Pops!' said Pascoe as Dalziel closed the door. 'You must be mellowing, Andy. Time was when you'd have nutted anyone who spoke to you like that.'

'That was when I was young and daft,' said Dalziel, removing the seal from one of the bottles. 'At my age, anyone who gives me two litres of Glenmorangie can call me Mavis if he likes. You want a splash?'

'Only water,' said Pascoe. 'I'll have a shower. Then I'll work out a schedule for the interrogations before I go to bed. OK?'

He spoke defiantly. Dalziel stared at him for a moment, then shrugged.

'Fine,' he said. 'You're the boss now.'

'So I am,' smiled Pascoe as he left. 'So I am.'

'And I'm to be Queen of the May, Mother,' murmured Dalziel raising the bottle to his lips. 'I'm to be Queen of the May!'

Dalziel had a bad night. He dreamt he challenged Nurse Montague to the best of three falls and lost by a straight submission. It wouldn't have been so bad if the dream had been erotic but it was merely humiliating and he woke up dry and droopy as a camel's tail. Whisky only washed his black thoughts blacker and when finally there came a tap on the door and Pascoe's voice invited him to go to breakfast, he snarled, 'Sod off!' He was still not washed or dressed half an hour later when Pascoe returned with a cup of coffee and a chocolate doughnut, and, even worse, the kind of sympathetic smile usually reserved for tedious old relatives in twilight homes. Only the younger man's offer to call the Village medics

and have someone check him out got Dalziel out of bed. He was still running his portable electric razor over the shadowy planet of his face as they made their way to the
Europa
crew's dome, and this at last provoked an honestly irritated response from Pascoe.

'For heaven's sake, Andy, put that thing away. We
are
representing the Federal Justice Department, after all!'

With his first twinge of pleasure of the day, Dalziel slipped the slim plastic razor case into his breast pocket and followed Pascoe into the dome.

The six survivors of the
Europa
crew were an interesting assortment. It was almost possible to identify them by racial characteristics alone.

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?'