Asking For The Moon

While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

The night had grown wilder during the hours since their arrival. There were flurries of rain in the gusty wind which tore at the clouds and sent bunches of stars scurrying across the sky. The ancient beeches rustled and groaned and swayed like an old Disney forest, and underfoot the long grass laid ankle-twisting traps over the forgotten coach ruts.

Here once through an alley Titanic Of cypress I roamed with my Soul -

Pascoe found himself jogging to the contrived but controlled rhythm of Poe's poem. Behind him, impeded by the woman's dress and shoes, ran Swithenbank and Jean Starkey.

Far ahead in the tunnelled darkness he caught an occasional glimpse of a swaying light as though someone were holding a torch.

At the end of our path a liquescent And nebulous lustre was bom.

And there it was, not the pin-prick of a torch but a distinct glow hazed through the fine mist of rain. Pascoe paused and the pursuing couple came up with him.

'Someone's switched the Christmas floodlights on,' said Swithenbank. 'God, they'll have half the village at the church!'

As though this were a congregation devoutly to be missed, he abandoned the hard-panting woman to Pascoe's care and sprinted ahead. Hard panting became Jean Starkey, Pascoe suspected, and normally he would have accepted the charge gladly, but he wanted to be at the church on time before the voices of reason and discretion had a chance to prevail.

'You OK?' he asked.

A change of note in the heavy breathing and a vague movement of the shadowy head seemed affirmative, so abandoning chivalry and the woman together, he pressed on.

In the darkness of the great outdoors a very few yards can make the difference between good vision and total obscurity. Suddenly what lay ahead swam into close focus – a gateway, a pair of looming evergreens immediately beyond, and fifty yards further on the bulk of the church, its grey stone silvery in the light which flooded its tower.

The wrought metal gate hung open between its two stone posts. Pascoe leapt lightly through on to a neglected weed-snagged gravel path which curved among a forest of mossy and sometimes drunkenly angled tombstones. Leaning against one of these was a figure which might have been taken for an exuberant mason's impression of Grief had it not moved and said, 'Pascoe!'

His recognition of Rawlinson was almost instantaneous but that 'almost' had his skin crawling chillily.

'Give us a hand,' said Rawlinson, groaning as he pushed himself up from the headstone. 'I came out in such a hurry, 1 forgot my stick and the leg's gone.'

'Look,' said Pascoe. 'Shouldn't you hang on here till I can rustle up a stretcher?'

'For Christ's sake, man! Peter's up that fucking tower! I've got to get there!'

Dalziel would not have let such an opportunity pass, but Pascoe knew he was of more tender and humane stuff than his gross superior.

It was this knowledge that made him regard himself with some surprise and distress as he took half a step backwards from Rawlinson's grasping hand and said coldly, 'Why? Why have you got to get there?'

'Why? Because it's my fault,' the man cried in anguish. 'I was as much to blame. And I said I forgave him, but he knew I didn't. Knowing that, where could he turn for help?'

Pascoe nodded. He felt rather disappointed. The picture was going to show a frightened rabbit after all.

'He didn't find you by accident,' he said. 'He was up on the tower with you. He pushed you.'

'No, no, that was an accident,' insisted the distraught man. 'Please help me while there's still time.'

'Come on,' said Pascoe, suddenly full of self-disgust, an emotion which won the wholehearted support of Jean Starkey, who had arrived soon enough to catch the drift of the exchange and who now said to him as she lent her strength to getting Rawlinson upright, 'That was a shitty thing to do.'

'Don't you preach at me, lady,' he snapped back. 'Not you.'

In silence, supporting Rawlinson between them, they made their way to the church.

Here Kingsley came to meet them.

'Thank God you're here,' he said to Pascoe with what sounded like genuine relief. 'He's on top of the tower. He's locked the stair door behind him and he won't speak to anyone.'

'Who put that floodlight on?' demanded Pascoe.

'I did,' said Kingsley rather proudly. 'It's just used at Christmas really but I thought…'

'Switch the bloody thing off!' commanded Pascoe, easing Rawlinson against an old rugged cross. 'Leave the outer porch light on. Then see if you can break the tower door open.'

'It's five hundred years old,' said Kingsley, shocked.

'Then with a bit of luck it'll have woodworm,' said Pascoe. 'Hurry!'

A moment later the bright light faded, leaving the tower as a black monolith while those below stood in the gentler glow which spilled out of the church porch.

'Why've you switched it off?' demanded Ursula. She looked wild and distraught, her gown sodden, her make-up smeared like an action painting by the driven rain. All her sexuality had gone, whereas even in the stress of the moment Pascoe had noted under the floodlight the amazing things dampness was doing to Jean Starkey's scarlet dress.

'If he looked down, all he'd be able to see was the glare,' said Pascoe. 'Like being on a stage. We don't want him to feel he's on a stage. I want him to be able to see us – and what he's likely to hit. And I don't want a crowd here either. Now tell me, has he said anything?'

'No, not a word.'

'But he's definitely up there?'

'Yes. We nearly caught up with him. He had to unlock the outer door of the church.'

'Where was the key to the tower?'

'Hanging up in the porch with all the other keys.'

'Is the outer door always locked?'

'It has been since last year, since Geoff's accident. But what's all this got to do with getting Peter down from there?' Ursula demanded angrily.

She was right, thought Pascoe guiltily. He must keep his eye on the rabbit for the moment and forget the goose.

He took the woman by the arm and led her unresisting to where Rawlinson was standing by the cross peering helplessly upwards.

'Listen,' he said. 'I think I know why he's up there, but I'm not sure what'll bring him down. You'd better tell me. Is it just the drink talking? I mean, when the rain and the cold sobers him up, will he come down of his own accord?'

Brother and sister exchanged glances.

'No,' said Ursula. 'Drinking's an escape. The soberer he gets, the worse it'll be.'

'I guessed so,' said Pascoe. 'Then you two had better talk to each other fast. Whatever you know, you've both got to know it, because he's got to know you both know it.'

Ursula managed to raise a wan smile.

'That's a lot of knowing.'

Pascoe regarded her seriously.

'Too much for you?'

She shook her head, then to her brother she said gently, 'Geoff, I'm a good guesser. And I'm Peter's wife.'

Rawlinson rubbed the rain off his face or it may have been tears. Then he began to talk rapidly, in a confessional manner.

'When he used to come and stay with us, we always shared a bed. Some time, it must have been in our early teens, I don't remember, but one summer when he came, well, we'd always played and wrestled before like boys do, only now puberty was well under way and we started exciting ourselves and each other with talk and pictures. For me, I believe for most adolescents if it happens, it was just a sort of marking time. I'd have been terrified to go near a real girl but that was always the image I had in my mind. Later, as I got older and started making dates with girls, I wanted to stop. It would have been earlier but for Peter; but in the end we did stop. We did our college training, settled down to our careers. I got married, John and Kate got married and finally Ursula and Peter married. I was delighted. I liked him, we were close friends, our childhood was far behind us, then last year…'