Asking for the Moon: A Collection of Dalziel and Pascoe Stories. Reginald Hill

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      ‘Well, you bloody well should be. Officer present, prisoner ready for inspection, and the RSM absent from parade? It’s not bloody on! Excuse me, SIR!’

      And Pascoe, who was getting used to finding himself tumbling in zero gravity every time he began to feel something like firm ground beneath his feet, was hardly surprised to be pushed aside as the Fat Man began to beat a thunderous rhythm on the door accompanied by a raucous bellow of, ‘Come on, Tankie, let’s be having you. Plenty of time to sit around playing with yourself when this lot’s over. Charley, Charley, get out of bed! Charley, Charley …’

      Pascoe got well clear of the door but this time instead of being flung violently against the wall, it swung slowly open. Trotter stood there, the sawn-off shotgun at the high port. His face was so impassive, it just needed a cheroot to get him auditioned for a spaghetti western.

      He didn’t look like he’d come to play at inspections.

      ‘This do you then?’ said Dalziel cheerfully, picking up the bucket. ‘The floor’s so clean you could eat your dinner off it. Shan’t be needing this any more.’

      And in an act too suicidal for Pascoe to find an appropriate reaction, the Fat Man hurled the water in Trotter’s face.

      It wasn’t the preliminary to an escape attempt. Dalziel just stood there roaring with laughter. Nor did Trotter react with any explosive show of anger. Instead, the water dripping down his face, he slowly and deliberately brought the gun barrel to bear on Dalziel’s chest.

      ‘Nay, Tankie, fair do’s,’ protested the Fat Man. ‘When you chucked your bucket in yon colour sergeant’s face, he didn’t shoot you, did he? And there were a lot worse than water in it! Mind you, I’m not saying he didn’t feel like it, but he kept control.’

      ‘I’m not a bloody colour sergeant,’ grated Trotter.

      ‘That’s right. And I’m not a squaddy and this ain’t the glasshouse. So where does that get us? You want to prove that if I had to put up with what you had to put up with, I’d crack like a Boxing Day wishbone. Well, wish away, lad, but it’s not going to come true. Tha’s not got the time and tha’s not got the talent. So where do we go from here?’

      Only one place! Pascoe’s fears told him. But fear left just sufficient space for another voice which asked, why is Dalziel doing this? Why the change of tactics? And if there is a game, why the hell couldn’t the big, fat, arrogant bastard let me in on it? Because he thinks I’m useless? Because he thinks he’s God?

      Because, came a tiny voice from somewhere deeper than reason, because he knew from the start that everything we said was overheard by Trotter.

      Could it really be that this Quasimodo, this Incredible Hulk, this Creature From The Black Lagoon had been carefully orchestrating everything he said? Oh, that would be a trick worth knowing, even if it took a lifetime to learn. Did he have a lifetime? He was beginning to hope again. But perhaps it was all just a clutching at straws. His mind was racing through the Fat Man’s inconsequential ramblings … his bad jokes … desperately seeking the small man in the booth who was working the Great Oz’s lips …

      ‘Tell you what, Tankie,’ said Dalziel. ‘Why don’t you chuck it in? Leave us locked up and take off. I’ll not chase you, believe me. Less I see of you in future the better. You can settle down somewhere, forget the past. Jude too. Past’s dead and buried. Like your dad. Finished and forgotten, all debts paid. No names, no pack drill. You can both have a future. You wherever you go. And Jude back home with her man and her kiddie …’

      And at last Pascoe saw it, clear as the hair in Dalziel’s nose. All those casual references to Judith’s settled life … Tankie had known nothing of this! The poor bastard really had believed that during all his time behind bars, his twin had been shut away too in some empathic fastness of the heart and mind, living only for his release, their reunion.

      Dalziel had worked this out, guessed that Jude’s co-operation wasn’t just based on geminate love, or even fear that the Fat Man could tie her in to her father’s death, but the much greater fear that if Tankie knew the truth, he might divert some or all of these pent-up energies from destruction of Dalziel to destruction of her precious new life.

      So why hadn’t the Fat Man just spilled the beans straight off?

      Because Tankie would probably have killed the messenger! This way, by letting him work it out for himself …

      It was all a question of timing, of working out when the hints had finally worked. And they had worked. The evidence was there in the woman’s face, floating in the shadows over her brother’s shoulder. One cheek pale as a winter sky, the other flushed like a summer dawn.

      The bastard had hit her. And then Dalziel had summoned him. Why?

      So he could learn about the child, of course!

      This revelation the Fat Man had kept for now, for face to face, guessing that Jude would keep hidden to the end what she valued most, even in face of – especially in face of! – Tankie’s rage. For here was the clincher. A social life, a job, even a fellow, after the first explosion, these could be rationalized away. But a child …

      Even Tankie would know this meant he was relegated to at least second place forever.

      He was looking at her now, seeking confirmation in those eyes which so weirdly mirrored his own.

      Pascoe glanced at Dalziel hoping for some sign of how he wanted to play this. Was the idea to take the chance offered by this moment of distraction and jump the Trotters? Or was he relying on the revelation having some softening effect on Tankie, making him realize that any further development of his crazy vengeance plan would not only destroy himself and his sister, but her child too?

      He’d have betted on violence, but once again he saw he was wrong. The Fat Man was putting his money on psychology, turning now to the locker and taking his suit out.

      ‘I’ll be glad to get back into this,’ he said. ‘Wearing that stuff’s like wiping your bum with sandpaper. Like to avert your eyes, Jude? Or do you reckon, seen one, you’ve seen ’em all?’

      He pushed his fatigue trousers down as he spoke. And Pascoe, watching Trotter’s face in profile, saw that for all his jungle cunning, the Fat Man had miscalculated.

      Perhaps it was Dalziel’s coarseness. Or perhaps it was the confirmation in his sister’s expression of all that she’d kept from him, and why she’d kept it, and the difference it must make to their relationship for evermore.

      Or perhaps it was simply that if fear of your reputation as a wild beast is the nearest you’ve had to respect in a waste of years, then a wild beast’s response is the only option you ever have.

      Reasons didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that he was swinging the gun round to blow the Fat Man away.

      As in the climactic shoot-out in The Wild Bunch, everything slowed down. Dalziel like a Carry-On farceur was immobilized with his trousers round his ankles. Pascoe didn’t have time to pick a role. His body was launching itself through the air towards the Last National Service Man leaving his mind some way back, wondering why the hell he should give a damn about saving the Fat Man for posterity.

      Probably posterity would still have been spared this Grecian gift if Judith hadn’t got in on the act.

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