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

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      He got out and approached smiling. Dalziel ignored him and tried the engine again. It roared impotently.

      He tapped on the driver’s window. Dalziel’s head turned. His leathery lips formed two inaudible words. If Pascoe had not known it to be impossible, he would have guessed the words to be ‘Fuck off’.

      He tapped again. The man with the polished head spoke. Dalziel slowly wound down the window. His gaze met Pascoe’s with a force that almost straightened him up. And the lips were moving again, still inaudibly but this time unmistakably.

      ‘Fuck off!’

      ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘Just thought you were having a spot of bother …’

      ‘He one of yours, Dalziel?’ growled the man in the passenger seat.

      The DCI’s expression seemed to suggest the idea gave great pain. Piqued by this response, and also encouraged by the passenger’s tone in his suspicion that he might be brass, Pascoe said brightly, ‘Detective Constable Pascoe, sir.’

      ‘Right. Out! Jildi! Move your fat arse!’

      Peter Pascoe had become aware very soon after joining the police that the rules of civilized social intercourse no longer applied. But did Chief Constables really speak to Chief Inspectors like this?

      Perhaps he’d made a mistake. In fact as the Fat Man slid out of the car and the bald man followed him via the same door, the pointers to error began to mount up.

      No reason perhaps why a Chief Constable should not be fluent in the patois. But surely no Chief Constable would wear khaki trousers, heavy black boots, and a sweat-stained green shirt whose rolled-up sleeves revealed the word MUM tattooed on a brawny forearm, the letters wreathed in roses and all enclosed in a ragged fillet of black?

      It occurred to him that he was concentrating so much on the specific gravity of the milk, he was ignoring the trout.

      One of the man’s outsize hands was gripping the back of Dalziel’s jacket while the other was forcing the sawn-off barrel of a shotgun against the Fat Man’s spine.

      ‘Try anything and his arse says goodbye to his belly,’ snarled the man. ‘Back in your car!’

      Pascoe looked helplessly at Dalziel and said, ‘Sir?’

      The Fat Man rolled his eyes and said, ‘You got yourself into this, lad. You’ll have to find your own way out.’

      This was new country for Pascoe, in every sense. Certainly he had no Significant Experience to call on. Lots of movies, but the cop in his situation had always had a bull-horn in his hand and a posse of armed policemen at his back. Hadn’t he once read a chapter in a textbook about hostage situations?

      He looked from the fat man to the bald. It occurred to him that, going by expression alone, their heads were interchangeable. It also occurred to him that it must have been a very boring textbook and he’d probably gone out for a pint and a curry halfway through that chapter.

      He got into the Riley and waited.

      The bald man pushed Dalziel into the rear seat and slid in beside him. It was a tight squeeze. The gun barrel must have ploughed a furrow in the Fat Man’s flesh as it was dragged round from his spine to his belly.

      ‘Go go go!’ commanded the bald man.

      Pascoe set the car in motion. Not a soul in sight. Where the hell was that blasted attendant when you wanted him? Or Sergeant Wield? Why hadn’t he come out of the courthouse? Probably sitting in there somewhere all comfortable with a pot of tea and a fag.

      At the exit he said, ‘Which way?’

      ‘Left. And drive steady. We pick up a cop car, they’ll be picking up little pieces.’

      Cop car? What cop car? thought Pascoe as he drove through the town. More chance of seeing a uniform on a nudist beach. And now Sod’s Law which had made his journey to the courts seem like a funeral procession was casually flicking every light to green as he approached and letting the light traffic flow with careless ease.

      Except for the occasional direction from the bald man, no one spoke. What had happened to all Dalziel’s little jokes? thought Pascoe sneeringly. All right for a courtroom where there was nothing but a woman’s reputation to worry over. Stick a shotgun in his gut and the case was altered.

      Behind him Andy Dalziel was thinking, why the fuck couldn’t it have been Wield who’d come out and heard him hammering his deliberately flooded engine? One glimpse of that shaven head and he’d have been off like a lintie to get the car park sown up tighter than a nun’s knickers. Outcome still uncertain, but at least Trotter would have had the alternative spelt out loud and clear. Now they were on their way God knows where to face God knows what, and it could be God knows when before anyone got on their trail, or even knew there was a trail to get on!

      He paused, fair minded as ever, to give God a chance to share some of His knowledge. All he got was an echo of his own words to Pascoe … you’ll have to find your own way out.

      So be it. He put all recriminations on the back burner and turned his mind to the problem in hand.

      First things first. Useless wanker this unweaned college kid might be, but he deserved to know the score.

      ‘So tell me, Tankie,’ he said conversationally. ‘What fettle? They treat you all right in the glasshouse?’

      ‘Belt up, Dalziel!’ said Trotter, digging the barrel so far into the belly flesh it almost covered the trigger guard.

      ‘Nay, lad. Tha’s got something better in mind for me than splattering my guts all over this nice upholstery. Any road, it’s only polite to introduce you properly to Constable Pascoe. He’s new round here and likely he’s not heard of one of our most famous sons. That right, Pascoe? You’ve not heard of Tommy Trotter?’

      ‘Sorry, sir. No, I haven’t.’

      ‘Thought not. You might have a certificate or whatever it is you get in them colleges, but your education’s been sadly neglected. Right, Tankie?’

      Trotter said unemotionally, ‘You think you can jerk my string, Dalziel, best think again. I’ve been needled by experts. I cut loose, it’s ’cos I want to cut loose.’

      ‘I believe it, Tankie. So, Constable Pascoe, what we have here is Thomas Trotter, known to all his friends as Tankie, mebbe because of the way he’s built, mebbe because of the way he drinks, I’m not sure. What I am sure of is, Tankie’s a real star. Unique. With a bit of luck, we’ll never see his like again. You see, lad, Tankie’s The Last National Service Man.’

      He voiced the phrase with a tremulous awe which gave it capital letters if not inverted commas.

      Trotter snarled, ‘Shitface, you trying to be cute? That was a derestriction sign. Speed it up to fifty. Left at the next roundabout.’

      Shocked to be thus addressed, and impressed by the speed with which the man had spotted his attempt to draw attention by slow driving on the open road, Pascoe obeyed.

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