“Tastes all right to me,” said Dalziel. “Try a nip.”
Miss Montague poured herself a glass, raised it, sipped it delicately.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “you could be right.”
“I usually am,” said Dalziel. “Cheers!”
At nine that night the telephone rang.
“This is a recording,” said Dalziel. “If you want to leave a message, stick it in a bottle.”
“You sound very jolly,” said Pascoe.
“Well, I’ve supped a lot of Lucozade,” said Dalziel, looking at the gently snoring figure of Nurse Montague on the sofa opposite. “What’s up?”
“Just a social call. Did you see me on the box?”
“I’ve got better things to do than listen to civil bloody servants being civil and servile,” growled Dalziel.
“Oh, you did see it, then. That’s what we call diplomatic language out here in the real world,” said Pascoe.
“Oh aye. Up here it’s called soft soap and it’s very good for enemas.”
Pascoe laughed and said, “All right, Andy. I never could fool you, could I? Yes, this whole thing has got a great crap potential. To start with, we reckon the Yanks deliberately leaked their suspicion of foul play to bounce us into letting them take full control of the investigation. Now, we’re not terribly keen on that idea.”
“Oh aye? Don’t they have jurisdiction anyway?”
“Certainly not. Space is international by UN treaty. But they’re established up there with all the facilities, so on the surface it’s a generous, neighbourly offer, only... Look, it’s a bit complicated...”
“Come on, lad, I’m not quite gaga and I do read the papers still,” snarled Dalziel. “It’s this Eurofed summit thing, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” murmured Pascoe. “Do expound.”
“All right, clevercuts. There’s a lot of Euros fed up with having to compete with the Yanks in their own backyard, so they’d like to build up import tariffs like the Great Wall of China. Plus the soldier boys would like to give NATO the elbow and concentrate on a pure Eurofed force buying nowt but made-in-Europe military hardware. As usual, if France and Germany get together on this, they’ll railroad the rest. So anything that gets the Krauts and Frogs at each other’s goolies will be good news in Washington just now.
“Conclusion. The Americans have elected the German crew member number one suspect, and you reckon any investigation they mount will make bloody sure that’s where the finger points. How’s that for a bit of close political analysis?”
“Marvellous,” breathed Pascoe admiringly. “Who speaks so well should never speak in vain.”
“I don’t know about in vain, but I do prefer in plain English. So what have they got on this German, then?”
There was a long pause.
“Come on, lad,” said Dalziel. “They must have a pretty good case against him, else you’d not be so worried.”
“Yes, they do. But it’s not... Look, Andy. I’m sorry, but the thing is, security. You’re not cleared for this. It’s a need-to-know classification and the only people who need to know outside of government are the investigating officers. So I really can’t tell you any more. Not unless I appointed you an investigating officer!”
He said this with a light dismissive laugh, but Dalziel had had many years’ experience of interpreting Pascoe’s light laughs.
“All right, lad,” he said softly. “What’s going off? Spit it out and make it quick, else this phone goes back down so hard it’ll need a jemmy to prise it back up.”
“There’s no fooling you, is there, Andy?” said Pascoe. “Okay. Straight it is. I’ve been asked to take charge of the case, not because I’m the best, but because I’m not French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, or Irish. Meaning none of the countries actually involved in the Europa’s mission will trust any of the others to give them a fair deal! They’ve given me a free hand. They’ve also given me four days to get a result.”
“Any result?”
“The truth, Andy,” said Pascoe heavily. “That’s the result I’m looking for.”
“Only asking,” said Dalziel. “So how come you’re wasting time talking to a clapped-out candidate for the boneyard?”
“Andy, I need eyes and I need a nose. All right, I know I could have any of the Yard’s top men for the asking. Only, nowadays they get to the top by being on top of the technology and that’s no use to me here. Technology’s a two-way ticket. If you live by it, you can be fooled by it. So what I need is a seat-of-the-pants copper with a bloodhound’s nose, who’s got nothing to lose or to gain, and who doesn’t give a tuppenny toss about any bugger. I fed this data into my computer and it let out a huge burp. So I picked up the phone and I rang you, Andy. What do you say?”
“You cheeky sod!” exclaimed Dalziel. “I say you must be off your trolley! My nose is so out of practice I can hardly tell Orkney from Islay. As for seat-of-the-pants, I’ve been stuck in bed with gout for nigh on a fortnight, and I don’t want no jokes either.”
“Who’s laughing? Andy, what you clearly need is a place where you won’t have to worry about putting pressure on your foot, and I can help you there.”
“Hold on,” said Dalziel. “I didn’t quite get that. This must be a bad line. You are talking about bringing the Europa’s crew back to Earth for investigation, aren’t you? Well, aren’t you?”
“Andy!” said Pascoe reprovingly. “First thing you taught me was, good investigation starts at the scene of the crime. And anyway, you always expected the moon from me. So how can you turn me down now that I’m finally offering it to you?”
2.
Perhaps space travel weren’t so bad after all, admitted Andy Dalziel as he lay on his back and watched the stars. But he’d taken some convincing, jumping up in alarm as Pascoe urged him into the soft yielding couch on the U.S. lunar shuttle which had been ferrying distinguished visitors to the moon for half a decade.
“What’s going off?” he demanded. “This thing’s trying to feel me up!”
“It’s all right,” assured Pascoe. “It’s just a wraparound fabric to hold you in place when we achieve weightlessness. Honestly, it’ll just be like riding in a limo, without any traffic jams.”
“If it’s so bloody easy, why’s the Federation making such a big thing about it?”
“It’s like going up Mont Blanc,” explained Pascoe patiently. “You can either book a table at the summit restaurant and take the scenic railway or you can pack your sarnies into your rucksack and climb. Thing is, with the moon, doing it on our own the hard way establishes our right to be there. Space is international just now, but there may come a time when the carving up starts, and we don’t want to be scavenging for crumbs under the Americans’ chair.”
“Bloody hell,” said Dalziel. “I’ll leave the politicking to you, lad. I’ll stick to nicking villains. If I survive the trip, that is.”
In fact, he was feeling better than he’d done for some time. The doctor had confirmed that his heart was in good order for a man of his age. He’d been more concerned about the high blood pressure related to Dalziel’s gout, but the drugs Dalziel was taking seemed to have this under control, and reluctantly he’d given the go-ahead. Now, as the shuttle came swooping in over the moon’s surface, the fat man was delighted to find that his gout symptoms had almost completely vanished.
“You were right, lad,” he admitted. “There’s nowt to this astronaut business.”
“Not this way,” agreed Pascoe. “Mind you, Europa’s not so luxurious.”