Asking for the Moon (5 page)

on the toe of the boot. Occasionally he examined his progress and administered further salivary unction.

'Did Tankie try to stand up to his father, then?' asked Pascoe.

'Oh aye. But it were no contest. Might be different now he's broadened out and learnt a few dirty tricks. But back then, it took me all my strength to sort the bugger out.'

'You had a fight with him?' cried Pascoe.

'Aye, well, after the first couple of times Tankie bunked off from the barracks and headed home, I started getting some idea of the lie of the land. So I thought mebbe I could set the lad's mind at rest by having a quiet word with Thomas. By God. I'd not want many quiet words like that!'

'What happened?'

'I didn't want to talk in public - this were unofficial, fewer
folk who saw us the better. So I waited for him in the ginnel
that runs from back of their house to the main road. I spoke
him fair. I said, "Thomas, tha's got to stop beating thy wife.
If tha wants exercise, there's plenty nearer thy own weight
as'll be only too pleased to give it thee." And he said, "Name
one." And I hit him.' ^

Puzzled by this apparent
non sequitur,
or perhaps even
ignoratio
elenchi, Pascoe said, 'You hit him? Why?'

'I reckoned if I'd said, "Me for one," he'd have hit me. So it seemed daft to waste time on the courtesies. Big mistake I made was giving him a fair blow on the chin. It knocked him back but it was a long way off knocking him out. Well, after that, he kicked me to one end of the ginnel and I kicked him all the way back. In the end it settled nowt. Don't know if thumping ever does, but you certainly don't get a man to see things your way by fighting a draw with him.'

Pascoe thought, John Wayne did in
The Quiet Man,
but this is the real Wild West up here.

He said, 'If you were going to these extremes to try and help Tankie's family, how come he hates you so much he's threatening to kill you?'

'I never told Tankie owt o' this!' said Dalziel indignantly.

'I weren't doing it to make some doolally kid love me. I just wanted to stop the stupid sod giving me grief by heading back here every two minutes. Also Thomas were overdue a good kicking. Like I say, a lot of good it did. Thomas still ruled his house like Godzilla on a bad day. And Tankie kept on heading for home and walking right over any poor sod who got in his way. My fault for being polite.'

Oh God, thought Pascoe. What have I done coming to this dreadful place? And if I get out of here, can it be undone? All the lies he'd told when he applied for transfer, could they be untold? Or would he have to think of a whole new set in order to move onward? Carry on like this and he'd end up on Orkney!

Dalziel was putting his boots on. Finished, he started restoring all the kit which Trotter had strewn over the floor to the bed.

'Best get yourself ready,' advised the Fat Man. 'Tankie said thirty minutes and that's what it'll be.'

'But what do I do?' appealed Pascoe desperately,

'Let's see,' said Dalziel eyeing him speculatively. 'There's all kinds of officers. Brisk efficient adjutant . . . mebbe not . . . Grizzled old warhorse . . . definitely not! Languid . . . aye, that's it. Languid and a bit poncey . . . has trouble wi' his "r"s, calls other ranks other wanks, and probably means it. That's you, lad. Call him Mr Trotter like he was an RSM and treat me like I don't exist. Stand by, he's here.'

His ears were definitely sharper than Pascoe's who once again had to move smartly out of the way of the door.

'Prisoner, 'SHUN!' screamed Trotter.

Dalziel snapped to attention.

'You horrid idle man! You paraplegic or what? Stan' atease! 'SHUN! Stan' atease! 'SHUN!'

Trotter enjoyed himself making Dalziel move from one position to another till the sweat beaded his huge brow. Pascoe didn't much mind the sight till it occurred to him that Dalziel dead of a heart attack might not bode well for his own future. He had a vision of himself digging a grave under

the close supervision of the Trotter twins, and when he'd finally excavated a hole large enough for that gross body, hearing the instruction, 'Keep digging.'

He said as languidly as he could manage, 'Ready when you are, Mr Trotter.'

Trotter's head came round and those mad grey eyes focused on this intruder. For a second Pascoe thought the game was over and the man had decided he was after all merely surplus to requirements rather than a genuine buckshee, whatever that was.

Then Trotter stiffened, threw up a salute and said, 'Sir! Prisoner ready for inspection, sir!'

Slowly Pascoe advanced and with an expression of distaste not difficult to simulate he ran his eyes over the Fat Man's frame. Now what was it officers said as they went round the cookhouse? Oh yes.

'Any complaints, my man?'

Who was it who, asked the same question shortly after
call-up in 1940, replied, 'Not one in the world, darling. Every
thing's perfectly ducky'? He couldn't recall. He doubted if
the Fat Man was about to make the same answer. ^

'Nosir!' bellowed Dalziel.

Pascoe found that, despite the underlying menace of the situation, he quite enjoyed this new relationship. He said, 'Good. Mr Trotter, has this man been shown the right way to lay out his kit or have regulations changed to permit a certain amount of idiosyncratic choice?'

Trotter said, 'No, sir. Regulations same as always. You hear what the officer says, you horrible little man?'

He stooped, picked up the mattress and shook the kit to the floor again.

'Next time get it right or you'll wish you had never been born!'

He wheeled towards Pascoe and said, 'Next inspection in twenty minutes, sir?'

The intervals were getting shorter. Must be something he could do to slow the trend. What would happen if he simply

used his putative authority to say, no, make it an hour?

He looked into the mad grey eyes and thought, to hell with that! He'd probably cashier me. With his shotgun!

He looked away and saw the Fat Man's lips forming a word. F . . . something. He wasn't swearing at him again surely! No. It was
food.

He said, 'Carry on, Mr Trotter.'

It was almost a pleasure to see the expression of fury which passed over Dalziel's face like the shadow of a storm cloud over a fell.

He got the thunderous 'SIR!' and the big salute from Trotter, then just as the man reached the door, Pascoe said, 'Oh, by the way. Has the prisoner had any refreshment?'

Trotter came to a halt at the door and turned. It wasn't a military turn and the look he was giving Pascoe wasn't a military look.

Oh hell, I've bounced him out of character, thought Pascoe.

Trying not to let his languid drawl accelerate into a terrified babble, he said, 'Regulations, Mr Trotter. Everything must proceed strictly according to regulations, or where are we, eh?'

Dead, he thought. That's where. Maybe this was the time for the last despairing leap. Hope that one or both of the shotguns jammed. Did shotguns jam? Probably not. All right, hope that the first wound wasn't totally incapacitating. The adrenalin of fury, or hate, or love, could keep a man going even when full of lead. Like Bill Holden in
The Wild Bunch.
Or Gary Cooper at the end of
For Wham the Bell Tolls.
No. Cancel those. They both snuffed it. Think of Shane riding off into the mountains after the big shoot-out, despite having taken one in whatever part of his apparently anaesthetized anatomy he took it in!

He tensed his muscles. All his life should be passing before him now . . . wouldn't take long . . . barely enough of it for a loony 'toon, let alone a full seven reeler.

Trotter too was stiffening up, slowly resuming his military erectness.

He said, 'Yes, sir. You're right, sir. I'll see to it at once. Sir.'

Then he was gone and the door was locked behind him.

Pascoe sat abruptly on the bed. He realized his legs were gently trembling.

Dalziel said, 'Not bad, lad. Do a bit of acting at this college of thine?'

'No,' said Pascoe. 'I was always more interested in films than the theatre. I once auditioned for a part in
An Inspector Calls but that was only because there was this girl helping
with the production . . .'

Relief was making him garrulous. Dalziel was grinning.

'They didn't put bromide in your tea then?' he said.
'An
Inspector Calls, tha says? Good play that. It were written by a Yorkshireman, did you know that?'

'Yes, surprisingly, I did know that,' said Pascoe.

'I'm glad to hear it. And there's a bit of Yorkshire in you too, is there, with this great-granddad of yours in the Wyfies? That why you transferred up here?'

Pascoe thought, shall I tell him that I have no interest whatsoever in my great-grandfather and that my sole reason for applying for, transfer was to get away from a fascist superior whose methods and morality I equally deplored (but whom I am now starting to recall with nostalgic fondness) and whose halitosic daughter fancied me rotten?

He said, 'A man likes to be near his roots, sir.'

Their gazes locked, the younger man's warm with sincerity, the older man's steadfast with understanding.

Then Dalziel said, 'Bollocks. It'll either be trouble with a tart or your boss. Now give us a hand picking up this lot. What the hell were you playing at? All that idiosyncratic crap, encouraging him to fire it on the floor again?'

'I thought, sir,' said Pascoe stooping to pick up the scattered kit, 'that as he was certainly going to do it anyway, I might as well use the certainty to authenticate my own role.'

'By God, lad, if tha thinks as long-winded as tha speaks, I'm surprised you ever got out of nappies. Glad you picked me up on the food, but. I bet the bugger has me doubling to the cookhouse to collect it.'

'Is that why you suggested it, sir? To get a look around, perhaps suss out a way to escape?' asked Pascoe, impressed.

'Don't be bloody daft,' said Dalziel. 'I suggested it 'cos I'm bloody starving!'

I believe he means it! thought Pascoe helplessly. He's just like all of his type and generation. Not without a certain animal cunning and sharpness, but like an animal, incapable of dealing with more than the immediate moment, the short-term crisis. Either something will turn up or it will go away, that's his philosophy. If we're going to get out of this, it's going to need me to take the initiative.

He said, 'I was thinking, sir. The woman, Judith, how far do you think she'll go with her brother's schemes? I wondered if I should try to work on her . . .'

'Show her your dick, you mean, and tell her you love her? She'd shoot it off without a second thought. Very moral lass, Jude. Very faithful. A one man woman and she'll go all the way to protect them as she's given her loyalty to. Man who gets a lass like Jude can count himself lucky.'

Pascoe had finished collecting the kit, and now he watched as Dalziel once more neatly folded it and arranged it on the bed.

He said, 'Do you really think playing this crazy game is going to get us anywhere?'

'Game? Aye, that's what it is, I suppose. That's what the army is, in peacetime any road, and especially in the glasshouse. None of this daft rehabilitation stuff there. They don't want to make good citizens out of you. They want to make good soldiers, and a good soldier is one who does what he's told, no questions asked.'

'So why's Trotter doing this to you?'

'Because it's the worst thing he can think of. Also because he went through it for years and the poor sod reckons he

came out on top. And he thinks a few days of what he suffered for years will break me like a pencil point. Which reminds me.'

He stepped onto the bed which groaned under his weight, removed his belt and with the buckle scratched on the damp granite wall the name trotter.

'There,' he said stepping down. 'My name kept Tankie going. Let's see if his can do the same for me.'

'He must have been really fixated on his mother to hate you so much,' said Pascoe.

'Oh aye. There were another reason, but his mum would've been enough. Worshipped her like she was the Virgin Mary. Mebbe that's why he's so bent on getting himself crucified. You'll have noticed the tattoo on Tankie's arm? Got that done when he were a lad. But the black border round it he did himself after she snuffed it. Used boot blacking and a sharpened bed spring while he were in the glasshouse. They thought they might have to cut off the arm, but he survived. Then while he were convalescing, he hit his guard with his drip, stole his clothes, jumped out of a third-storey window and headed home. Only this time it were my home he headed for. My missus opened the door and Tankie just walked* in.'

'My God, that must have been a terrible shock for your wife!'

'Aye, might have killed a weaker woman,' said Dalziel with a faint note of regret. 'But once she realized it were me he'd come to kill, they got on like a house on fire. They were sitting having a cup of tea when I walked in. Luckily I'd had some bother with the car and took the bus home, so he had no warning. He jumped up and spilt his tea over his lap. Must've been hot 'cos he didn't half yell! Then I hit him with the teapot and he stopped yelling.'

'And your wife . . . ?'

'She started yelling. It were her Crown Derby pot. I said, serve you right for getting the best china out for a nutter like Tankie, but she didn't see it like that. Why the hell am I telling you all this, Pascoe?'