"Asking For The Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hill Reginald)

DALZIEL'S GHOST

'Well, this is very cosy,' said Detective-Superintendent Dalziel, scratching his buttocks sensuously before the huge log fire.

'It is for some,' said Pascoe, shivering still from the frosty November night.

But Dalziel was right, he thought as he looked round the room. It was cosy, probably as cosy as it had been in the three hundred years since it was built. It was doubtful if any previous owner, even the most recent, would have recognized the old living-room of Stanstone Rigg farmhouse. Eliot had done a good job, stripping the beams, opening up the mean little fireplace and replacing the splintered uneven floorboards with smooth dark oak; and Giselle had broken the plain white walls with richly coloured, voluminous curtaining and substituted everywhere the ornaments of art for the detritus of utility.

Outside, though, when night fell, and darkness dissolved the telephone poles, and the mist lay too thick to be pierced by the rare headlight on the distant road, then the former owners peering from their little cube of warmth and light would not have felt much difference,

Not the kind of thoughts a ghost-hunter should have! he told himself reprovingly. Cool calm scepticism was the right state of mind.

And his heart jumped violently as behind him the telephone rang.

Dalziel, now pouring himself a large scotch from the goodly array of bottles on the huge sideboard, made no move towards the phone though he was the nearer. Detective-superintendents save their strength for important things and leave their underlings to deal with trivia.

'Hello,' said Pascoe.

'Peter, you're there!'

'Ellie love,' he answered. 'Sometimes the sharpness of your mind makes me feel unworthy to be married to you.'

'What are you doing?'

'We've just arrived. I'm talking to you. The super's having a drink.'

'Oh God! You did warn the Eliots, didn't you?'

'Not really, dear. I felt the detailed case-history you doubtless gave to Giselle needed no embellishment.'

'I'm not sure this is such a good idea.'

'Me neither. On the contrary. In fact, you may recall that on several occasions in the past three days I've said as much to you, whose not such a good idea it was in the first place.'

'All you're worried about is your dignity!' said Ellie. 'I'm worried about that lovely house. What's he doing now?'

Pascoe looked across the room to where Dalziel had bent his massive bulk so that his balding close-cropped head was on a level with a small figurine of a shepherd chastely dallying with a milkmaid. His broad right hand was on the point of picking it up.

'He's not touching anything,' said Pascoe hastily. 'Was there any other reason you phoned?'

'Other than what?'

'Concern for the Eliots' booze and knick-knacks.'

'Oh, Peter, don't be so half-witted. It seemed a laugh at The Old Mill, but now I don't like you being there with him, and I don't like me being here by myself. Come home and we'll screw till someone cries Hold! Enough. ^1*

'You interest me strangely,' said Pascoe. 'What about Aim and the Eliots' house?'

'Oh, sod him and sod the Eliots! Decent people don't have ghosts!' exclaimed Ellie.

'Or if they do, they call in priests, not policemen,' said Pascoe. 'I quite agree. I said as much, remember…?'

'All right, all right. You please yourself, buster. I'm off to bed now with a hot-water bottle and a glass of milk. Clearly I must be in my dotage. Shall I ring you later?'

'Best not,' said Pascoe. 'I don't want to step out of my pentacle after midnight. See you in the morning.'

'Must have taken an electric drill to get through a skirt like that,' said Dalziel, replacing the figurine with a bang. "No wonder the buggers got stuck into the sheep. Your missus checking up, was she?'

'She just wanted to see how we were getting on,' said Pascoe.

'Probably thinks we've got a couple of milkmaids with us,' said Dalziel, peering out into the night. 'Some hope! I can't even see any sheep. It's like the grave out there.'

He was right, thought Pascoe. When Stanstone Rigg had been a working farm, there must have always been the comforting sense of animal presence, even at night. Horses in the stable, cows in the byre, chickens in the hutch, dogs before the fire. But the Eliots hadn't bought the place because of any deep-rooted love of nature. In fact Giselle Eliot disliked animals so much she wouldn't even have a guard dog, preferring to rely on expensive electronics. Pascoe couldn't understand how George had got her even to consider living out here. It was nearly an hour's run from town in good conditions and Giselle was in no way cut out for country life, either physically or mentally. Slim, vivacious, sexy, she was a star-rocket in Yorkshire's sluggish jet-set. How she and Ellie had become friends, Pascoe couldn't work out either.

But she must have a gift for leaping unbridgeable gaps for George was a pretty unlikely partner, too.

It was George who was responsible for Stanstone Rigg- By profession an accountant, and very much looking the part with his thin face, unblinking gaze, and a mouth that seemed constructed for the passage of bad news, his unlikely hobby was the renovation of old houses. In the past six years he had done two, first a Victorian terrace house in town, then an Edwardian villa in the suburbs. Both had quadrupled (at least) in value, but George claimed this was not the point and Pascoe believed him. Stanstone Rigg Farm was his most ambitious project to date, and it had been a marvellous success, except for its isolation, which was unchangeable.

And its ghost. Which perhaps wasn't.

It was just three days since Pascoe had first heard of it. Dalziel, who repaid hospitality in the proportion of three of Ellie's home-cooked dinners to one meal out had been entertaining the Pascoes at The Old Mill, a newly opened restaurant in town.

'Jesus!' said the fat man when they examined the menu. 'I wish they'd put them prices in French, too. They must give you Brigitte Bardot for afters!'

'Would you like to take us somewhere else?' enquired Ellie sweetly. 'A fish and chip shop, perhaps. Or a Chinese takeaway?'

'No, no,' said Dalziel. 'This is grand. Any road, I'll chalk what I can up to expenses. Keeping an eye on Fletcher.'

'Who?'

'The owner,' said Pascoe. 'I didn't know he was on our list, sir.'

'Well, he is and he isn't,' said Dalziel. 'I got a funny telephone call a couple of weeks back. Suggested I might take a look at him, that's all. He's got his finger in plenty of pies.'

'If I have the salmon to start with,' said Ellie, 'it won't be removed as material evidence before I'm finished, will it?'

Pascoe aimed a kick at her under the table but she had been expecting it and drawn her legs aside.

Four courses later they had all eaten and drunk enough for a kind of mellow truce to have been established between Ellie and the fat man.

'Look who's over there,' said Ellie suddenly.

Pascoe looked. It was the Eliots, George dark-suited and still, Giselle ablaze in clinging orange silk. Another man, middle-aged but still athletically elegant in a military sort of way, was standing by their table. Giselle returned Ellie's wave and spoke to the man, who came across the room and addressed Pascoe.

'Mr and Mrs Eliot wonder if you would care to join them for liqueurs,' he said.

Pascoe looked at Dalziel enquiringly.

'I'm in favour of owt that means some other bugger putting his hand in his pocket,' he said cheerfully.

Giselle greeted them with delight and even George raised a welcoming smile.

'Who was that dishy thing you sent after us?' asked Ellie after Dalziel had been introduced.

'Dishy? Oh, you mean Giles. He will be pleased. Giles Fletcher. He owns this place."

'Oh my! We send the owner on errands, do we?' said Ellie. "It's great to see you, Giselle. It's been ages. When am I getting the estate agent's tour of the new house? You've promised us first refusal when George finds a new ruin, remember?'

'I couldn't afford the ruin,' objected Pascoe. 'Not even with George doing our income tax.'

'Does a bit of the old tax fiddling, your firm?' enquired Dalziel genially.

'I do a bit of work privately for friends,' said Eliot coldly. 'But in my own time and at home.'

'You'll need to work bloody hard to make a copper rich,' said Dalziel.

'Just keep taking the bribes, dear,' said Ellie sweetly. 'Now when can we move into Stanstone Farm, Giselle?'

Giselle glanced at her husband, whose expression remained a blank.

'Any time you like, darling,' she said. 'To tell you the truth, it can't be soon enough. In fact, we're back in town.'

'Good God!' said Ellie. 'You haven't found another place already, George? That's pretty rapid even for you.'

A waiter appeared with a tray on which were glasses and a selection of liqueur bottles.

'Compliments of Mr Fletcher,' he said.

Dalziel examined the tray with distaste and beckoned the waiter close. For an incredulous moment Pascoe thought he was going to refuse the drinks on the grounds that police officers must be seen to be above all favour.

'From Mr Fletcher, eh?' said Dalziel. 'Well, listen, lad, he wouldn't be best pleased if he knew you'd forgotten the single malt whisky, would he? Run along and fetch it. I'll look after pouring this lot.'

Giselle looked at Dalziel with the round-eyed delight of a child seeing a walrus for the first time.

'Cointreau for me please, Mr Daziel,' she said.

He filled a glass to the brim and passed it to her with a hand steady as a rock.

'Sup up, love,' he said, looking with open admiration down her cleavage. 'Lots more where that comes from.'

Pascoe, sensing that Ellie might be about to ram a pepper-mill up her host's nostrils, said hastily, 'Nothing wrong with the building, I hope, George? Not the beetle or anything like that? ^1

'I sorted all that out before we moved,' said Eliot. 'No, nothing wrong at all.'

His tone was neutral but Giselle responded as though to an attack.

'It's all right, darling,' she said. 'Everyone's guessed it's me. But it's not really. It's just that I think we've got a ghost.'

According to Giselle, there were strange scratchings, shadows moving where there should be none, and sometimes as she walked from one room to another 'a sense of emptiness as though for a moment you'd stepped into the space between two stars'.

This poetic turn of phrase silenced everyone except Dalziel, who interrupted his attempts to scratch the sole of his foot with a bent coffee spoon and let out a raucous laugh.

'What's that mean?' demanded Ellie.

'Nowt,' said Dalziel. 'I shouldn't worry, Mrs Eliot. It's likely some randy yokel roaming about trying to get a peep at you. And who's to blame him?'

He underlined his compliment with a leer straight out of the old melodrama. Giselle patted his knee in acknowledgement.

'What do you think, George?' asked Ellie.

George admitted the scratchings but denied personal experience of the rest.

'See how long he stays there by himself,' challenged Giselle.

'I didn't buy it to stay there by myself,' said Eliot. 'But I've spent the last couple of nights alone without damage.'

'And you saw or heard nothing?' said Ellie.

'There may have been some scratching. A rat perhaps. It's an old house. But it's only a house. I have to go down to London for a few days tomorrow. When I get back we'll start looking for somewhere else. Sooner or later I'd get the urge anyway.'

'But it's such a shame! After all your work, you deserve to relax for a while,' said Ellie. 'Isn't there anything you can do?'

'Exorcism,' said Pascoe. 'Bell, book and candle.'

'In my experience,' said Dalziel, who had been consuming the malt whisky at a rate which had caused the waiter to summon his workmates to view the spectacle, 'there's three main causes of ghosts.'

He paused for effect and more alcohol.

'Can't you arrest him, or something?' Ellie hissed at Pascoe.

'One: bad cooking,' the fat man continued. 'Two: bad ventilation. Three: bad conscience.'

'George installed air-conditioning himself,' said Pascoe.

'And Giselle's a super cook,' said Ellie.

'Well then,' said Dalziel. 'I'm sure your conscience is as quiet as mine, love. So that leaves your randy yokel. Tell you what. Bugger your priests. What you need is a professional eye checking on things.'

'You mean a psychic investigator?' said Giselle.

'Like hell!' laughed Ellie. 'He means get the village bobby to stroll around the place with his truncheon at the ready.'

'A policeman? But I don't really see what he could do,' said Giselle, leaning towards Dalziel and looking earnestly into his lowered eyes.

'No, hold on a minute,' cried Ellie with bright malice. 'The Superintendent could be right. A formal investigation. But the village flatfoot's no use. You've got the best police brains in the county rubbing your thighs, Giselle. Why not send for them?'

Which was how it started. Dalziel, to Pascoe's amazement, had greeted the suggestion with ponderous enthusiasm. Giselle had reacted with a mixture of high spirits and high seriousness, apparently regarding the project as both an opportunity for vindication and a lark. George had sat like Switzerland, neutral and dull. Ellie had been smilingly baffled to see her bluff so swiftly called. And Pascoe had kicked her ankle savagely when he heard plans being made for himself and Dalziel to spend the following Friday night waiting for ghosts at Stanstone Farm.

As he told her the next day, had he realized that Dalziel's enthusiasm was going to survive the sober light of morning, he'd have followed up his kick with a karate chop.

Ellie had tried to appear unrepentant., 'You know why it's called Stanstone, do you?' she asked. 'Standing stone. Get it? There must have been a stone circle there at some time. Primitive worship, human sacrifice, that sort of thing. Probably the original stones were used in the building of the house. That'd explain a lot, wouldn't it?'

'No,' said Pascoe coldly. 'That would explain very little. It would certainly not explain why I am about to lose a night's sleep, nor why you who usually threaten me with divorce or assault whenever my rest is disturbed to fight real crime should have arranged it.'

But arranged it had been and it was small comfort for Pascoe now to know that Ellie was missing him.

Dalziel seemed determined to enjoy himself, however.

'Let's get our bearings, shall we?' he said. Replenishing his glass, he set out on a tour of the house.

'Well wired up,' he said as his expert eye spotted the discreet evidence of the sophisticated alarm system. 'Must have cost a fortune.'

'It did. I put him in touch with our crime prevention squad and evidently he wanted nothing but the best,' said Pascoe.

'What's he got that's so precious?' wondered Dalziel.

'All this stuff's pretty valuable, I guess,' said Pascoe, making a gesture which took in the pictures and ornaments of the master bedroom in which they were standing. 'But it's really for Giselle's sake. This was her first time out in the sticks and it's a pretty lonely place. Not that it's done much good.'

'Aye,' said Dalziel, opening a drawer and pulling out a fine silk underslip. 'A good-looking woman could get nervous in a place like this.'

'You reckon that's what this is all about, sir?' said Pascoe. 'A slight case of hysteria?'

'Mebbe,' said Dalziel.

They went into the next room, which Eliot had turned into a study. Only the calculating machine on the desk reminded them of the man's profession. The glass-fronted bookcase contained rows of books relating to his hobby in all its aspects from architectural histories to do-it-yourself tracts on concrete mixing. An old grandmother clock stood in a corner, and hanging on the wall opposite the bookcase was a nearly lifesize painting of a pre-Raphaelite maiden being pensive in a grove. She was naked but her long hair and the dappled shadowings of the trees preserved her modesty.

For a fraction of a second it seemed to Pascoe as if the shadows on her flesh shifted as though a breeze had touched the branches above.

'Asking for it,' declared Dalziel.

'What?'

'Rheumatics or rape,' said Dalziel. 'Let's check the kitchen. My belly's empty as a football.'

Giselle, who had driven out during the day to light the fire and make ready for their arrival, had anticipated Dalziel's gut. On the kitchen table lay a pile of sandwiches covered by a sheet of kitchen paper on which she had scribbled an invitation for them to help themselves to whatever they fancied.

Underneath she had written in capitals BE CAREFUL and underlined it twice.

'Nice thought,' said Dalziel, grabbing a couple of the sandwiches. 'Bring the plate through to the living-room and we'll eat in comfort.'

Back in front of the fire with his glass filled once again, Dalziel relaxed in a deep armchair. Pascoe poured himself a drink and looked out of the window again.

'For God's sake, lad, sit down!' commanded Dalziel. 'You're worse than a bloody spook, creeping around like that.'

'Sorry,' said Pascoe.

'Sup your drink and eat a sandwich. It'll soon be midnight. That's zero hour, isn't it? Right, get your strength up. Keep your nerves down.'

'I'm not nervous!' protested Pascoe.

'No? Don't believe in ghosts, then?'

'Hardly at all,' said Pascoe.

'Quite right. Detective-inspectors with university degrees shouldn't believe in ghosts. But tired old superintendents with less schooling than a pit pony, there's a different matter.'

'Come off it!' said Pascoe. 'You're the biggest unbeliever I know!'

'That may be, that may be,' said Dalziel, sinking lower into his chair. 'But sometimes, lad, sometimes…'

His voice sank away. The room was lit only by a dark-shaded table lamp and the glow from the fire threw deep shadows across the large contours of Dalziel's face. It might have been some eighteenth-century Yorkshire farmer sitting there, thought Pascoe. Shrewd; brutish; in his day a solid ram of a man, but now rotting to ruin through his own excesses and too much rough weather.

In the fireplace a log fell. Pascoe started. The red glow ran up Dalziel's face like a flush of passion up an Easter Island statue.

'I knew a ghost saved a marriage once,' he said ruminatively. 'In a manner of speaking.'

Oh Jesus! thought Pascoe. It's ghost stories round the fire now, is it?

He remained obstinately silent.

'My first case, I suppose you'd call it. Start of a meteoric career.'

'Meteors fall. And burn out,' said Pascoe. 'Sir.'

'You're a sharp bugger, Peter,' said Dalziel admiringly. 'Always the quick answer. I bet you were just the same when you were eighteen. Still at school, eh? Not like me. I was a right Constable Plod I tell you. Untried. Untutored. Hardly knew one end of my truncheon from t'other. When I heard that shriek I just froze.'

'Which shriek?' asked Pascoe resignedly.

On cue there came a piercing wail from the dark outside, quickly cut off. He half rose, caught Dalziel's amused eye, and subsided, reaching for the whisky decanter.

'Easy on that stuff,' admonished Dalziel with all the righteousness of a temperance preacher. 'Enjoy your supper, like yon owl. Where was I? Oh aye. I was on night patrol. None of your Panda-cars in those days. You did it all on foot. And I was standing just inside this little alleyway. It was a dark narrow passage running between Shufflebotham's woolmill on the one side and a little terrace of back-to-backs on the other. It's all gone now, all gone. There's a car park there now. A bloody car park!

'Any road, the thing about this alley was, it were a dead end. There was a kind of buttress sticking out of the mill wall, might have been the chimneystack, I'm not sure, but the back-to-backs had been built flush up against it so there was no way through. No way at all.'

He took another long pull at his scotch to help his memory and began to scratch his armpit noisily.

'Listen!' said Pascoe suddenly.

'What?'

'I thought I heard a noise.'

'What kind of noise?'

'Like fingers scrabbling on rough stone,' said Pascoe.

Dalziel removed his hand slowly from his shirt front and regarded Pascoe malevolently.

'It's stopped now,' said Pascoe. 'What were you saying, sir?'

'I was saying about this shriek,' said Dalziel. 'I just froze to the spot. It came floating out of this dark passage. It was as black as the devil's arsehole up there. The mill wall was completely blank and there was just one small window in the gable end of the house. That, if anywhere, was where the shriek came from. Well, I don't know what I'd have done. I might have been standing there yet wondering what to do, only this big hand slapped hard on my shoulder. I nearly shit myself! Then this voice said, "What's to do, Constable Dalziel?" and when I looked round there was my sergeant, doing his rounds.

'I could hardly speak for a moment, he'd given me such a fright. But I didn't need to explain. For just then came another shriek and voices, a man's and a woman's, shouting at each other. "You hang on here," said the sergeant. "I'll see what this is all about." Off he went, leaving me still shaking. And as I looked down that gloomy passageway, I began to remember some local stories about this mill. I hadn't paid much heed to them before. Everywhere that's more than fifty years old had a ghost in them parts. They say Yorkshiremen are hardheaded, but I reckon they've got more superstition to the square inch than a tribe of pygmies. Well, this particular tale was about a mill-girl back in the 1870$. The owner's son had put her in the family way which I dare say was common enough. The owner acted decently enough by his lights. He packed his son off to the other end of the country, gave the girl and her family a bit of cash and said she could have her job back when the confinement was over."

'Almost a social reformer,' said Pascoe, growing interested despite himself.

'Better than a lot of buggers still in business round here,' said Dalziel sourly. 'To cut a long story short, this lass had her kid premature and it soon died. As soon as she was fit enough to get out of bed, she came back to the mill, climbed through a skylight on to the roof and jumped off. Now all that I could believe. Probably happened all the time.'

'Yes,' said Pascoe. 'I've no doubt that a hundred years ago the air round here was full of falling girls. While in America they were fighting a war to stop the plantation owners screwing their slaves!'

'You'll have to watch that indignation, Peter,' said Dalziel. 'It can give you wind. And no one pays much heed to a preacher when you can't hear his sermons for farts. Where was I, now? Oh yes. This lass. Since that day there'd been a lot of stories about people seeing a girl falling from the roof of this old mill. Tumbling over and over in the air right slowly, most of 'em said. Her clothes filling with air, her hair streaming behind her like a comet's tail. Oh aye, lovely descriptions some of them were. Like the ones we get whenever there's an accident. One for every pair of eyes, and all of 'em perfecdy detailed and perfectly different.'

'So you didn't reckon much to these tales?' said Pascoe.

'Not by daylight,' said Dalziel. 'But standing there in the mouth of that dark passageway at midnight, that was different.'

Pascoe glanced at his watch.

'It's nearly midnight now,' he said in a sepulchral tone.

Dalziel ignored him.

'I was glad when the sergeant stuck his head through that little window and bellowed my name. Though even that gave me a hell of a scare. "Dalziel!" he said. "Take a look up this alleyway. If you can't see anything, come in here." So I had a look. There wasn't anything, just sheer brick walls on three sides with only this one little window. I didn't hang about but got myself round to the front of the house pretty sharply and went in. There were two people there besides the sergeant. Albert Pocklington, whose house it was, and his missus, Jenny. In those days a good bobby knew everyone on his beat. I said hello, but they didn't do much more than grunt. Mrs Pocklington was about forty. She must have been a bonny lass in her time and she still didn't look too bad. She'd got her blouse off, just draped around her shoulders, and I had a good squint at her big round tits. Well, I was only a lad! I didn't really look at her face till I'd had an eyeful lower down and then I noticed that one side was all splotchy red as though someone had given her a clout. There were no prizes for guessing who. Bert Pocklington was a big solid fellow. He looked like a chimpanzee, only he had a lot less gumption.'

'Hold on," said Pascoe.

'What is it now?' said Dalziel, annoyed that his story had been interrupted.

'I thought I heard something. No, I mean really heard something this time.'

They listened together. The only sound Pascoe could hear was the noise of his own breathing mixed with the pulsing of his own blood, like the distant sough of a receding tide.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I really did think…'

'That's all right, lad,' said Dalziel with surprising sympathy, 'I know the feeling. Where'd I got to? Albert Pocklington. My sergeant took me aside and put me in the picture. It seems that Pocklington had got a notion in his mind that someone was banging his missus while he was on the night shift. So he'd slipped away from his work at midnight and come home, ready to do a bit of banging on his own account. He wasn't a man to move quietly, so he'd tried for speed instead, flinging open the front door and rushing up the stairs. When he opened the bedroom door, his wife had been standing by the open window naked to the waist, shrieking. Naturally he thought the worst. Who wouldn't? Her story was that she was getting ready for bed when she had this feeling of the room suddenly becoming very hot and airless and pressing in on her. She'd gone to the window and opened it, and it was like taking a cork out of a bottle, she said. She felt as if she was being sucked out of the window, she said. (With tits like you and a window that small, there wasn't much likelihood of that! I thought.) And at the same time she had seen a shape like a human figure tumbling slowly by the window. Naturally she shrieked. Pocklington came in. She threw herself into his arms. All the welcome she got was a thump on the ear, and that brought on the second bout of shrieking. She was hysterical, trying to tell him what she'd seen, while he just raged around, yelling about what he was going to do to her fancy man.'

He paused for a drink. Pascoe stirred the fire with his foot. Then froze. There it was again! A distant scratching. He had no sense of direction.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled in the traditional fashion. Clearly Dalziel heard nothing and Pascoe was not yet certain enough to interrupt the fat man again.

'The sergeant was a good copper. He didn't want a man beating up his wife for no reason and he didn't want a hysterical woman starting a ghost scare. They can cause a lot of bother, ghost scares,' added Dalziel, filling his glass once more with the long-suffering expression of a man who is being caused a lot of bother.

'He sorted out Pocklington's suspicions about his wife having a lover first of all. He pushed his shoulders through the window till they got stuck to show how small it was. Then he asked me if anyone could have come out of that passageway without me spotting them. Out of the question, I told him.

'Next he chatted to the wife and got her to admit she'd been feeling a bit under the weather that day, like the 'flu was coming on, and she'd taken a cup of tea heavily spiked with gin as a nightcap. Ten minutes later we left them more or less happy. But as we stood on the pavement outside, the sergeant asked me the question I'd hoped he wouldn't. Why had I stepped into that alley in the first place? I suppose I could have told him I wanted a pee or a smoke, something like that. But he was a hard man to lie to, that sergeant. Not like the wet-nurses we get nowadays. So after a bit of humming and hawing, I told him I'd seen something, just out of the corner of my eye, as I was walking past. "What sort of thing?" he asked. Like something falling, I said. Something fluttering and falling through the air between the mill wall and the house end.

'He gave me a queer look, that sergeant did. "I tell you what, Dalziel," he said. "When you make out your report, I shouldn't say anything of that. No, I should keep quiet about that. Leave ghosts to them that understands them. You stick to crime." And that's advice I've followed ever since, till this very night, that is!'

He yawned and stretched. There was a distant rather cracked chime. It was, Pascoe realized, the clock in Eliot's study striking midnight.

But it wasn't the only sound.

'There! Listen,' urged Pascoe, rising slowly to his feet. 'I can hear it. A scratching. Do you hear it, sir?'

Dalziel cupped one cauliflower ear in his hand.

'By Christ, I think you're right, lad!' he said as if this were the most remote possibility in the world. 'Come on! Let's take a look.'

Pascoe led the way. Once out of the living-room they could hear the noise quite clearly and it took only a moment to locate it in the kitchen.

'Rats?' wondered Pascoe.

Dalziel shook his head.

'Rats gnaw,' he whispered. 'That sounds like something bigger. It's at the back door. It sounds a bit keen to get in."

Indeed it did, thought Pascoe. There was a desperate insistency about the sound. Sometimes it rose to a crescendo, then tailed away as though from exhaustion, only to renew itself with greater fury.

It was as though someone or something was caught in a trap too fast for hope, too horrible for resignation. Pascoe had renewed his acquaintance with Poe after the strange business at Wear End and now he recalled the story in which the coffin was opened to reveal a contorted skeleton and the lid scarred on the inside by the desperate scraping of fingernails.

'Shall I open it?' he whispered to Dalziel.

'No,' said the fat man. 'Best one of us goes out the front door and comes round behind. I'll open when you shout. OK?'

'OK,' said Pascoe with less enthusiasm than he had ever OK'd even Dalziel before.

Picking up one of the heavy rubber-encased torches they had brought with them, he retreated to the front door and slipped out into the dark night.

The frost had come down fiercely since their arrival and the cold caught at his throat like an invisible predator. He thought of returning for his coat, but decided this would be just an excuse for postponing whatever confrontation awaited him. Instead, making a mental note that when he was a superintendent he, too, would make sure he got the inside jobs, he set off round the house.

When he reached the second corner, he could hear the scratching quite clearly. It cut through the still and freezing air like the sound of a steel blade against a grinding-stone.

Pascoe paused, took a deep breath, let out a yell of warning and leapt out from the angle of the house with his torch flashing.

The scratching ceased instantly, there was nothing to be seen by the rear door of the house, but a terrible shriek died away across the lawn as though an exorcized spirit was wailing its way to Hades.

At the same time the kitchen door was flung open and Dalziel strode majestically forward; then his foot skidded on the frosty ground and, swearing horribly, he crashed down on his huge behind.

'Are you all right, sir?' asked Pascoe breathlessly.

'There's only one part of my body that feels any sensitivity still,' said ^1 Dalziel. 'Give us a hand up.'

He dusted himself down, saying, 'Well, that's ghost number one laid.'

'Sir?'

'Look.'

His stubby finger pointed to a line of paw prints across the powder frost of the lawn.

'Cat,' he said. 'This was a farmhouse, remember? Every farm has its cats. They live in the barn, keep the rats down. Where's the barn?'

'Gone,' said Pascoe. 'George had it pulled down and used some of the stones for an extension to the house.'

'There you are then,' said Dalziel. 'Poor bloody animal wakes up one morning with no roof, no rats. It's all right living rough in the summer, but comes the cold weather and it starts fancying getting inside again. Perhaps the fanner's wife used to give it scraps at the kitchen door.'

'It'll get precious little encouragement from Giselle,' said Pascoe.

'It's better than Count Dracula anyway,' said Dalziel.

Pascoe, who was now very cold indeed, began to move towards the kitchen, but to his surprise Dalziel stopped him.

'It's a hell of a night even for a cat,' he said. 'Just have a look, Peter, see if you can spot the poor beast. In case it's hurt.'

Rather surprised by his boss's manifestation of kindness to animals (though not in the least at his display of cruelty to junior officers), Pascoe shivered along the line of paw prints across the grass. They disappeared into a small orchard, whose trees seemed to crowd together to repel intruders, or perhaps just for warmth. Pascoe peered between the italic trunks and made cat-attracting noises but nothing stirred.

'All right,' he said. 'I know you're in there. We've got the place surrounded. Better come quietly. I'll leave the door open, so just come in and give a yell when you want to give yourself up.'

Back in the kitchen, he left the door ajar and put a bowl of milk on the floor. His teeth were chattering and he headed to the living-room, keen to do full justice to both the log fire and the whisky decanter. The telephone rang as he entered. For once Dalziel picked it up and Pascoe poured himself a stiff drink.

From the half conversation he could hear, he gathered it was the duty sergeant at the station who was ringing. Suddenly, irrationally, he felt very worried in case Dalziel was going to announce he had to go out on a case, leaving Pascoe alone.

The reality turned out almost as bad.

'Go easy on that stuff,' said Dalziel. 'You don't want to be done for driving under the influence.'

'What?'

Dalziel passed him the phone.

The sergeant told him someone had just rung the station asking urgently for Pascoe and refusing to speak to anyone else. He'd claimed what he had to say was important. 'It's big and it's tonight' were his words. And he'd rung off saying he'd ring back in an hour's time. After that it'd be too late.

'Oh shit,' said Pascoe. 'It sounds like Benny.'

Benny was one of his snouts, erratic and melodramatic, but often bringing really hot information.

'I suppose I'll have to go in,' said Pascoe reluctantly. 'Or I could get the Sarge to pass this number on.'

'If it's urgent, you'll need to be on the spot,' said Dalziel. 'Let me know what's happening, won't you? Best get your skates on.'

'Skates is right,' muttered Pascoe. 'It's like the Arctic out there.'

He downed his whisky defiantly, then went to put his overcoat on.

'You'll be all right by yourself, will you, sir?' he said maliciously. 'Able to cope with ghosts, ghouls, werewolves and falling mill-girls?'

'Never you mind about me, lad,' said Dalziel jovially. 'Any road, if it's visitors from an old stone circle we've got to worry about, dawn's the time, isn't it? When the first rays of the sun touch the victim's breast. And with luck you'll be back by then. Keep me posted.'

Pascoe opened the front door and groaned as the icy air attacked his face once more.

'I am just going outside,' he said. 'And I may be some time.'

To which Dalziel replied, as perhaps Captain Scott and his companions had, 'Shut that bloody door!'

It took several attempts before he could persuade the frozen engine to start and he knew from experience that it would be a good twenty minutes before the heater began to pump even lukewarm air into the car. Swearing softly to himself, he set the vehicle bumping gently over the frozen contours of the long driveway up to the road.

The drive curved round the orchard and the comforting silhouette of the house soon disappeared from his mirror. The frost-laced trees seemed to lean menacingly across his path and he told himself that if any apparition suddenly rose before the car, he'd test its substance by driving straight through it.

But when the headlights reflected a pair of bright eyes directly ahead, he slammed on the brake instantly.

The cat looked as "if it had been waiting for him. It was a skinny black creature with a mangled ear and a wary expression. Its response to Pascoe's soothing noises was to turn and plunge into the orchard once more.

'Oh no!' groaned Pascoe. And he yelled after it, 'You stupid bloody animal! I'm not going to chase you through the trees all bloody night. Not if you were a naked naiad, I'm not!'

As though recognizing the authentic tone of a Yorkshire farmer, the cat howled in reply and Pascoe glimpsed its shadowy shape only a few yards ahead. He followed, hurling abuse to which the beast responded with indignant miaows. Finally it disappeared under a bramble bush.

'That does it,' said Pascoe. 'Not a step further.'

Leaning down he flashed his torch beneath the bush to take his farewell of the stupid animal.

Not one pair of eyes but three stared unblinkingly back at him, and a chorus of howls split the frosty air.

The newcomers were young kittens who met him with delight that made up for their mother's wariness. They were distressingly thin and nearby Pascoe's torch picked out the stiff bodies of another two, rather smaller, who hadn't survived.

'Oh shit,' said Pascoe, more touched than his anti-sentimental attitudes would have permitted him to admit.

When he scooped up the kittens, their mother snarled in protest and tried to sink her teeth into his gloved hand. But he was in no mood for argument and after he'd bellowed, 'Shut up!' she allowed herself to be lifted and settled down comfortably in the crook of his arm with her offspring.

It was quicker to continue through the orchard than to return to the car. As he walked across the lawn towards the kitchen door he smiled to himself at the prospect of leaving Dalziel in charge of this little family. That would really test the fat man's love of animals.

The thought of ghosts and hauntings was completely removed from his mind.

And that made the sight of the face at the upstairs window even more terrifying.

For a moment his throat constricted so much that he could hardly breathe. It was a pale face, a woman's he thought, shadowy, insubstantial behind the leaded panes of the old casement. And as he looked the room behind seemed to be touched by a dim unearthly glow through which shadows moved like weed on a slow stream's bed. In his arms the kittens squeaked in protest and he realized that he had involuntarily tightened his grip.

'Sorry,' he said, and the momentary distraction unlocked the paralysing fear and replaced it by an equally instinctive resolve to confront its source. There's nothing makes a man angrier than the awareness of having been made afraid.

He went through the open kitchen door and dropped the cats by the bowl of milk which they assaulted with silent delight. The wise thing would have been to summon Dalziel from his warmth and whisky, but Pascoe had no mind to be wise. He went up the stairs as swiftly and as quietly as he could.

He had calculated that the window from which the 'phantom' peered belonged to the study and when he saw the door was open he didn't know whether he was pleased or not. Ghosts didn't need doors. On the other hand it meant that something was in there. But the glow had gone.

Holding his torch like a truncheon, he stepped inside. As his free hand groped for the light switch he was aware of something silhouetted against the paler darkness of the window and at the same time of movement elsewhere in the room. His left hand couldn't find the switch, his right thumb couldn't find the button on the torch, it was as if the darkness of the room was liquid, slowing down all movement and washing over his mouth and nose and eyes in wave after stifling wave.

Then a single cone of light grew above Eliot's desk and Dalziel's voice said, 'Why're you waving your arms like that, lad? Semaphore, is it?'

At which moment his fingers found the main light switch.

Dalziel was standing by the desk. Against the window leaned the long painting of the pre-Raphaelite girl, face to the glass. Where it had hung on the wall was a safe, wide open and empty. On the desk under the sharply focused rays of the desk lamp lay what Pascoe took to be its contents.

'What the hell's going on?' demanded Pascoe, half relieved, half bewildered.

'Tell you in a minute,' said Dalziel, resuming his examination of the papers.

'No, sir,' said Pascoe with growing anger. 'You'll tell me now. You'll tell me exactly what you're doing going through private papers without a warrant! And how the hell did you get into that safe?'

'I've got you to thank for that, Peter,' said Dalziel without looking up.

'What?

'It was you who put Eliot in touch with our crime prevention officer, wasn't it? I did an efficiency check the other morning, went through all the files. There it was. Eliot, George. He really wanted the works, didn't he? What's he got out there? I thought. The family jewels? I checked with the firm who did the fitting. I know the manager, as it happens. He's a good lad; bit of a ladies' man, but clever with it.'

'Oh God!' groaned Pascoe. 'You mean you got details of the alarm system and a spare set of keys!'

'No, I didn't!' said Dalziel indignantly. 'I had to work it out for myself mainly.'

He had put on his wire-rimmed National Health spectacles to read the documents from the safe and now he glared owlishly at Pascoe over them.

'Do you understand figures?' he asked. 'It's all bloody Welsh to me.'

Pascoe consciously resisted the conspiratorial invitation.

'I've heard nothing so far to explain why you're breaking: he law, sir,' he said coldly. 'What's George Eliot supposed •o have done?'

'What? Oh, I see. It's the laws of hospitality and friendship you're worried about! Nothing, nothing. Set your mind at rest, lad. It's nowt to do with your mate. Only indirectly. Look, this wasn't planned, you know. I mean, how could I plan all that daft ghost business? No, it was just that the Fletcher business was getting nowhere…'

'Fletcher?'

'Hey, here's your income tax file. Christ! Is that what your missus gets just for chatting to students? It's more than you!'

Pascoe angrily snatched the file from Dalziel's hands. The fat man put on his sympathetic, sincere look.

'Never fret, lad. I won't spread it around. Where was I? Oh yes, Fletcher. I've got a feeling about that fellow. The tip-off sounded good. Not really my line, though. I got Inspector Marwood on the Fraud Squad interested, though. All he could come up with was that a lot of Fletcher's business interests had a faint smell about them, but that was all. Oh yes, and Fletcher's accountants were the firm your mate Eliot's a partner in.'

'That's hardly a startling revelation,' sneered Pascoe.

'Did you know?'

'No. Why should I?'

'Fair point,' said Dalziel. 'Hello, hello.'

He had found an envelope among the files. It contained a single sheet of paper which he examined with growing interest. Then he carefully refolded it, replaced it in the envelope and began to put all the documents read or unread back into the safe.

'Marwood told me as well, though, that Fletcher and Eliot seemed to be pretty thick at a personal level. And he also said the Fraud Squad would love to go over Fletcher's accounts with a fine-tooth comb.'

'Why doesn't he get himself a warrant then?'

'Useless, unless he knows what he's looking for. My tipster was too vague. Often happens with first-timers. They want it to be quick and they overestimate our abilities.'

'Is that possible?' marvelled Pascoe.

'Oh aye. Just. Are you going to take that file home?'

Reluctantly, Pascoe handed his tax file back to Dalziel, who thrust it in with the others, slammed the safe, then did some complicated fiddling with a bunch of keys.

'There,' he said triumphantly, 'all locked up and the alarm set once more. No harm to anyone. Peter, do me a favour. Put that tart's picture back up on the wall. I nearly did my back getting it down. I'll go and mend the fire and pour us a drink.'

'I am not involved in this!' proclaimed Pascoe. But the fat man had gone.

When Pascoe came downstairs after replacing the picture, Dalziel was not to be found in the living-room. Pascoe tracked him to the kitchen, where he found him on his hands and knees, feeding pressed calves-tongue to the kittens.

'So you found 'em,' said Dalziel. 'That's what brought you back. Soft bugger.'

'Yes. And I take it I needn't go out again. There's no snout'll be ringing at one o'clock. That was you while I was freezing outside, wasn't it?'

'I'm afraid so. I thought it best to get you out of the way. Sorry, lad, but I mean, this fellow Eliot is a mate of yours and I didn't want you getting upset.'

'I am upset,' said Pascoe. 'Bloody upset.'

'There!' said Dalziel triumphantly. 'I was right, wasn't I? Let's get that drink. These buggers can look after themselves.'

He dumped the rest of the tongue on to the kitchen floor and rose to his feet with much wheezing.

'There it is then, Peter,' said Dalziel as they returned to '. he living-room. 'It was all on the spur of the moment. When Mrs Eliot suggested we spend. a night here to look for her ghosts, I just went along to be sociable. I mean, you can't 3e rude to a woman like that, can you? A sudden shock, and: hat dress might have fallen off her nipples. I'd no more. mention of really coming out here than of going teetotal! But next morning I got to thinking. If we could just get a bit of i pointer where to look at Fletcher… And I remembered you saying about Eliot doing your accounts at home.'

'Income tax!' snorted Pascoe. 'Does that make me a crook? Or him either?'

'No. It was just a thought, that's all. And after I'd talked to Crime Prevention, well, it seemed worth a peek. So come down off your high horse. No harm done. Your mate's not in trouble, OK? And I saw nowt in his safe to take action on. So relax, enjoy your drink. I poured you brandy, the scotch is getting a bit low. That all right?'

Pascoe didn't answer but sat down in the deep old armchair and sipped his drink reflectively. Spur of the moment, Dalziel had said. Bloody long moment, he thought. And what spur? There was still something here that hadn't been said.

'It won't do,' he said suddenly.

'What's that?'

'There's got to be something else,' insisted Pascoe. 'I mean, I know you, sir. You're not going to do all this just on the off-chance of finding something to incriminate Fletcher in George's safe. There has to be something else. What did you expect to find, anyway? A signed confession? Come to that, what did you find?'

Dalziel looked at him, his eyes moist with sincerity.

'Nowt, lad. Nowt. I've told you. There'll be no action taken as a result of anything I saw tonight. None. There's my reassurance. It was an error of judgement on my part. I admit it. Now does that satisfy you?'

'No, sir, to be quite frank it doesn't. Look, I've got to know. These people are my friends. You say that they're not mixed up in anything criminal, but I still need to know exactly what is going on. Or else I'll start asking for myself.'

He banged his glass down on the arm of his chair so vehemently that the liquor slopped out.

'It'll burn a hole, yon stuff,' said Dalziel, slandering the five-star cognac which Pascoe was drinking.

'I mean it, sir,' said Pascoe quietly. 'You'd better understand that.'

'All right, lad,' said Dalziel. 'I believe you. You might not like it though. You'd better understand that.'

'I'll chance it,' replied Pascoe.

Dalziel regarded him closely, then relaxed with a sigh.

'Here it is then. The woman Giselle is having a bit on the side with Fletcher.'

Pascoe managed an indifferent shrug.

'It happens,' he said, trying to appear unsurprised. In fact, why was he surprised? Lively, sociable, physical Giselle and staid, self-contained, inward-looking George. It was always on the cards.

'So what?' he added in his best man-of-the-world voice.

'So if by any chance, Eliot did have anything which might point us in the right direction about Fletcher…'

Pascoe sat very still for a moment.

'Well, you old bastard!' he said. 'You mean you'd give him good reason to do the pointing! You'd let him know about Giselle… Jesus wept! How low can you get?'

'I could have just let him know in any case without checking first to see if it was worthwhile,' suggested Dalziel, unabashed.

'So you could!' said Pascoe in mock astonishment. 'But you held back, waiting for a chance to check it out! Big of you! You get invited to spend the night alone in complete strangers' houses all the time! And now you've looked and found nothing, what are you going to do? Tell him just on the off-chance?'

'I didn't say I'd found nothing,' said Dalziel.

Pascoe stared at him.

'But you said there'd be no action!' he said.

'Right,' said Dalziel. 'I mean it. I think we've just got to sit back and wait for Fletcher, to fall into our laps. Or be pushed. What I did find was a little anonymous letter telling Eliot what his wife was up to. Your mate knows, Peter. From the postmark he's known for a few weeks. He's a careful man, accountants usually are. And I'm sure he'd do a bit of checking first before taking action. It was just a week later that my telephone rang and that awful disguised voice told me to check on Fletcher. Asked for me personally. I dare say you've mentioned my name to Eliot, haven't you, Peter?'

He looked at the carpet modestly.

'Everyone's heard of you, sir,' said Pascoe. 'So what happens now?'

'Like I say. Nothing. We sit and wait for the next call. It should be a bit more detailed this time, I reckon. I mean, Eliot must have realized that his first tip-off isn't getting results and now his wife's moved back into town to be on Fletcher's doorstep again, he's got every incentive.'

Pascoe looked at him in surprise.

'You mean the ghosts…'

'Nice imaginative girl, that Giselle! Not only does she invent a haunting to save herself a two hours' drive for her kicks, but she cons a pair of thick bobbies into losing their sleep over it. I bet Fletcher fell about laughing! Well I'm losing no more! It'll take all the hounds of hell to keep me awake.'

He yawned and stretched. In mid-stretch there came a terrible scratching noise and the fat man froze like a woodcut of Lethargy on an allegorical frieze.

Then he laughed and opened the door.

The black cat looked up at him warily but her kittens had no such inhibitions and tumbled in, heading towards the fire with cries of delight.

'I think your mates have got more trouble than they know,' said Dalziel.

Next morning Pascoe rose early and stiffly after a night spent on a sofa before the fire. Dalziel had disappeared upstairs to find himself a bed and Pascoe assumed he would still be stretched out on it. But when he looked out of the living-room window he saw he was wrong.

The sun was just beginning to rise behind the orchard and the fat man was standing in front of the house watching the dawn.

A romantic at heart, thought Pascoe sourly.

A glint of light flickered between the trunks of the orchard trees, flamed into a ray and began to move across the frosty lawn towards the waiting man. He watched its progress, striking sparks off the ice-hard grass. And when it reached his feet he stepped aside.

Pascoe joined him a few minutes later.

'Morning, sir,' he said. 'I've made some coffee. You're up bright and early.'

'Yes,' said Dalziel, scratching his gut vigorously. 'I think I've picked up a flea from those bloody cats.'

'Oh,' said Pascoe. 'I thought you'd come to check on the human sacrifice at dawn. I saw you getting out of the way of the sun's first ray.'

'Bollocks!' said Dalziel, looking towards the house, which the sun was now staining the gentle pink of blood in a basin of water.

'Why bollocks?' wondered Pascoe. 'You've seen one ghost. Why not another?'

'One ghost?'

'Yes. The mill-girl. That story you told me last night. Your first case.'

Dalziel looked at him closely.

'I told you that, did I? I must have been supping well.'

Pascoe, who knew that drink had never made Dalziel forget a thing in his life, nodded vigorously.

'Yes, sir. You told me that. You and your ghost.'

Dalziel shook his head as though at a memory of ancient foolishness and began to laugh.

'Aye, lad. My ghost! It really is my ghost in a way. The ghost of what I am now, any road! That Jenny Pocklington, she were a right grand lass! She had an imagination like your Giselle!'

'I don't follow,' said Pascoe. But he was beginning to.

'Believe it or not, lad,' said Dalziel. 'In them days I was pretty slim. Slim and supple. Even then I had to be like a ghost to get through that bloody window! But if Bert Pocklington had caught me, I really would have been one! Aye, that's right. When I heard that scream, I was coming out of the alley, not going into it!'

And shaking with laughter the fat man headed across the lacy grass towards the old stone farmhouse where the hungry kittens were crying imperiously for their breakfast.