Now it was his voice that died away.
When Pascoe finally spoke, his voice was tight with restraint.
“Andy, I’m sorry. More sorry than ever I’ve been about anything. I’ve let you down and I know it. God knows if I can hope to put things right with you, but I’ll try, I promise I’ll try. But there’s a more pressing problem even than that. I’ve got to ask you something, not as a friend or even an ex-friend, but as a Federal Justice Commissioner. Andy, you’ve got knowledge, possibly dangerous knowledge, about O’Meara, about Kaufmann, about the fit-up, about everything.
“Andy, what are you going to do about it?”
What are you going to do about it?
Dalziel rubbed a hand like an eclipse across his face.
This was the second time that day he’d been asked this question.
Then as now he had not given an immediate answer, though he doubted if the delay would have the same result now as then.
His doubts had started long before their arrival on the moon; as soon as Pascoe had telephoned him, in fact. He was no Holmes or Poirot to be hauled out of retirement to solve one last all-baffling case. He was a pensioned-off bobby, suffering from gout, flatulence, distiller’s droop, and the monstrous regiment of visiting nurses.
So what the hell was the lad playing at?
He hadn’t worked it out straightaway but he’d soon worked out the role Pascoe wanted him to play. The old steam-age detective puffing his way to the preordained terminus! And to start with, he’d really enjoyed playing it. Of course in the old days he’d have done things his way. They’d have visited Europa to get the feel of the ship before interrogating the suspects. But his resistance to Pascoe had been token. It was the lad’s game, so play to his rules. And the lad had been right. It was pointless planting his clues till he was sure the victim of the fit-up was going to play ball. Mind you, it had been rather offensive the way he’d shovelled them at Dalziel thereafter, as if he really did think his old taskmaster was past it! Best thing that could be said for him was he was working to a timetable. If they hadn’t caught this shuttle, they’d have had to wait forty-eight hours for the next, and that would have given the Yanks time to regroup and counterattack O’Meara with a better offer.
Once Pascoe had got the famous stubby finger to point at the Irishman, all he had to do was get back to the Village as quickly as possible and go through the prearranged charade of accusation and confession, with the Yanks listening in helplessly. And preferably without a fat old steam-age cop sitting in the comer, nebbing in with awkward questions.
So the cunning bastard had left him on Europa, with the alleged task of making sure Silvia Rabal didn’t broadcast anything of what had taken place, this from a ship which was pumping out sound and pictures twenty-four hours of the day!
At this stage he still wasn’t sure what was going off. Mebbe Pascoe genuinely believed O’Meara was the perpetrator and had at last learned a lesson Dalziel had once despaired of teaching him, that like faith without works, belief without evidence got you nowhere, so where was the harm in giving God a helping hand?
But it rankled not to be admitted to the plan, if that was the plan.
And also, like a stuffed owl, the case against O’Meara looked right, but it didn’t fly.
With these thoughts in his mind he had watched the pod depart, then turned to look at Silvia Rabal, no stuffed owl this but a living and exotic creature of the air, and matters forensic were flushed from his mind.
“Right, luv,” he said. “Now what can an old vulture like me and a bright little cockatoo like you do to pass the time? With a bit of luck, mebbe we’ll get an electrical storm, eh?”
Even though his tone was nostalgically playful rather than lewdly insinuating, it was not the most gallant of things to say, and had her reaction been scornful abuse, mocking indifference, or even righteous indignation, he would have accepted it as his due. But what rounded those huge dark eyes was surprise; more than surprise, shock; in fact, more than shock — fear!
And suddenly, in a flash — but not at all sudden in truth, for this was where the subtle independent microcircuits of his mind had been directing him while Pascoe was busy with spanner and wrench at the pistons and cogs of his consciousness — he saw the stuffed owl topple off its perch to be replaced by warm, living, tremulous...
“Tell me, luv,” he said. “What’s French for cockatoo?”
She went floating away up into the bridge, fluttering her supple hands over the bank of control lights, and for a moment both terrifying and exhilarating he thought she might be going to send them blasting off into the depths of space.
But then she turned and floated back to face him.
She said, “Kakatoès. He called me Ka when we were... in private. But you know this, and more. From the start I saw you were the dangerous one.”
She spoke almost flatteringly. She was also speaking unnecessarily freely considering all those TV cameras.
He said warningly, “Mebbe we should...” What? There was nowhere private to go! But she took his meaning and laughed, making a flapping gesture with her hands.
“It is all right. No witnesses. These electrical storms are sometimes convenient, hey?”
“You mean you’ve fixed it?” A light dawned. “Of course, it was you who fixed it last time, not Marco. It was your idea.”
“Of course. I guessed Marco might boast, but he’s too macho to tell it was not his initiative!”
“Why’d you need the blackout?”
“If Control had spotted a fault in Emile’s TEC circuits during the module descent, they might have aborted the landing and spoilt my plan.”
She was bloody cool, thought Dalziel. Another thought occurred to him and he said, “But weren’t the suits tested earlier in the voyage out?”
“Of those involved in the landing, yes.”
She regarded him expectantly. It was as if she wanted him to justify her decision to black out the cameras and confront him directly. Though what she hoped to gain by that..
As often happens with sight, taking his eye off a sought-after object brought it into view.
He said, “I saw the files. You and Lemarque are the same height, so your suits would be much the same. You fixed your suit at your leisure, didn’t you? You had time to do a real job on it, not this botched-up job the Yanks claimed. Then all you had to do was swap the suits. And the name strips. That’s why his was out of line. You had to do that in a hurry down in the hold. I should have remembered the smell.”
“Smell?”
“In Lemarque’s suit. That spicy smell. I thought it were a funny kind of aftershave...”
And now the memory of her spiced breath and the contents of the leather pouch in her locker came together and he said, “What was it you put in his coffee to make him pee? Dandelion juice? Used to call them piss-the-beds when I were a lad.”
“Dandelion, pansy, burdock, black briony — just a very little of the briony, it is very poisonous, very dangerous to those who do not know how to use it. When I hear he is dead, at first I thought: My God, I have used too much and killed him!”
Her face paled with the memory of shock. Dalziel scratched his nose reflectively and said, “Aye, but you did kill him, lass.”