Asking For The Moon

'Is that a compliment?' wondered Dalziel. 'It's about time you buggers learnt to speak plain English. Cheers anyway, Ed. And thanks for the Scotch.'

Dalziel raised himself on his couch. O'Meara was lying to his left, his. eyes closed, his breath shallow, a childlike relaxation smoothing the crinkled face.

'Looks as innocent as a newborn baby, doesn't he?' said Pascoe, who occupied the couch to Dalziel's right.

'Aye, he does,' said Dalziel. 'Mebbe that's because he is.'

'I'm sorry?'

Dalziel turned to face the younger man and said in an exaggerated whisper, 'Safe to talk now, is it?'

Pascoe thought of looking puzzled, changed his mind, grinned and said, 'Quite safe. Clever of you to spot it.'

'They brought me Glenmorangie,' said Dalziel. 'I'd not mentioned any brand till we got to our rooms and I com plained that Druson had forgotten. I checked it out again at lunch. Druson was listening all right. And you knew, but decided not to warn me.'

Pascoe didn't deny it.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Didn't see any point. We weren't going to be saying anything we cared about them hearing, were we?'

Dalziel considered, then said, 'No, lad. We weren't. You because you're a clever bugger and knew they were listening. And me because. ..'

'Because what, Andy?' prompted Pascoe with lively interest.

'Because, not knowing, I'd just come across as a simple old copper doing his job the way he'd always done it.'

'I don't think I'm quite with you,' said Pascoe.

'Oh yes you are. You're only hoping you're not,' said Dalziel. 'Let me spell it out for you, lad. Here's what I think really happened back there. When the Frog snuffed it, the Yanks checked out his TEC. They found a malfunction but no definite sign of outside interference, so it looked like a bug had got into that particular circuit. Tragic accident. Trouble was, the suit was an American design and they don't like looking silly. So mebbe the first idea was to muck the circuits up a bit to make it look like a maintenance fault, not a design fault. Then someone, Ed Druson most likely, had a better idea. How about setting the French and the Germans at each other's throats by pinning this on Kaufmann? They'd known for some time he'd been spying for the Arabs and had been watching for the best chance to use this info to maximum advantage. A dead Frog blackmailer, a murdering Kraut spy; all they needed was a bit of evidence. So they mucked about with the suit to make the fault look deliberate, planted yon microprobe thing in Kaufmann's locker, leaked the news to the Press, and sat back.'

'And the entry in Lemarque's journal? They forged that too, I suppose?'

'Probably not. Too dangerous. That was just a stroke of luck. God knows what it really means.'

Pascoe leaned back on his couch, shaking his head in a parody of wonder.

'Andy, this is fascinating! Have you been doing a lot of reading in your retirement? Fantasy fiction perhaps?'

'Don't get comic with me, lad,' snarled Dalziel. 'And don't think you can pull that rank crap you got away with on Druson either. You may be a Federal bloody Commissioner, but me, I'm a private citizen, and I can recollect you telling me more than once in that preachy tone of thine that in England at least being a private citizen outranks any level of public service you care to mention. Or have you changed your mind about that too?'

'No,' said Pascoe quietly. 'I'm sorry. Go on.'

'I was going to, with or without your permission,' observed Dalziel. 'Now your lot, being clever college-educated buggers like yourself, soon sussed out what had really happened, only there was no way to prove it. So someone really clever came up with the solution – let's accept what the Yanks say about Lemarque's death being deliberate, but let's fit somebody else up instead!'

'And how were we going to manage that, Andy?'

'Well, you had a head start, knowing that Kaufmann had been a double agent, which cut the ground from under the

Yanks when it came to motive. But there was still a question of concrete evidence.'

'Concrete? Ah, I see. Like the good old days of slipping half a brick into a suspect's pocket?'

'Oh, you've come a long way from that, Peter,' said Dalziel. 'Anyone can plant a half-brick. Or a New Testament for that matter. But you needed more evidence. You needed an admission, and that requires a long, strong lever,'

'Which I just happened to have about my person?'

'That's where it would have to be, wouldn't it?' said Dalziel. 'I mean, if the Yanks had got us bugged, they'd not be shy about searching our luggage, would they? Though what they'd have made of a harmless list of names and addresses, I'm not sure.'

Pascoe's hand went involuntarily to his breast pocket and Dalziel laughed.

'It's all right, lad. I put it back after I'd taken a shufti while you were in the shower. I knew there had to be something, and it had to be in writing so you could slip it over to O'Meara while you were interrogating him. Then, after giving him time to take this list in, there'd likely be another piece of paper with his instructions on, like, You're going to confess to killing Emile Lemarque, or else?

'Or else what, Andy?' inquired Pascoe. 'You're losing me.'

'Oh, I think I may have done that already,' said Dalziel coldly. 'I can make a stab at guessing what that list meant, but why should I bother when I can get it from the horse's mouth. So how about it, Paddy? I've never known an Irishman keep quiet for so long!'

He poked O'Meara savagely in the ribs and he opened his bright blue eyes and abandoned his pretence of sleep.

'Now there you are, Andy, me old love,' he said brightly. 'I should have known a man with a face like an old potato couldn't be as thick as he looks! No, no, that's enough of the punching. One thing I learned as a young boxer was not to fight outside me weight. And I got right out of my weight when I was a boy, believe me. Oh, the company I kept, you'd not believe it. Wild men, terrible men, men who drank Brit blood for breakfast and ate Proddy flesh for tea. I was just a messenger, a look-out, a tea-boy, nothing heavy, and I thought I'd put it all behind me when I joined up, and I was glad to be getting away from it all, believe me. But those boys don't forget so easily, and the top and the bottom of it is they came after me to do me old mates a few favours, like giving details of the guard routine at my training depot and looking the other way when I was on sentry so they could get into the arms store.

'Now I was young, but not so young I didn't know that once I started that road, I'd be on it for ever. So, I told our security officer. He was a real gem. He did a deal with the Brits, passing on all information on condition they did the cleaning-up job on their side of the border and pointed the finger a long way from me. A couple of days later, I don't know if it was a cock-up or policy, but the Brits laid an ambush and when the shooting stopped, all the wild men were dead, and me, I was both very guilt-ridden and very relieved, for this meant I was completely in the clear. Or so I thought. Only what I didn't reckon on was that full details of the affair would be carefully recorded in some great computer file where it would lie sleeping for all these years till Prince Charming here came along and woke it with a kiss!'

'He's good at that,' said Dalziel. 'And these names and addresses? They'd be relatives of the men who got killed? And members of your own family?'

'That's right. And if the first lot ever found out who bubbled their menfolk… they've got long memories back in Ireland, and they don't forgive. So now you know all about me, Mr Dalziel. And now you know too what nice company you've been keeping.'

Dalziel turned to Pascoe and said, 'Oh Peter, Peter, what have they done to you?'