Asking for the Moon: A Collection of Dalziel and Pascoe Stories
‘Hill is an instinctive and complete novelist who is blessed with a spontaneous storytelling gift’ Frances Fyfield, Mail on SundayIf you’ve already met Dalziel and Pascoe, you’re in for a treat. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, you’re in for a revelation! Here in four stories we track their partnership from curtain-up to last act; from the mean streets of Mid-Yorkshire to the mountains of the moon.The Last National Service Man reveals the truth, hitherto buried in police files, of their momentous first encounter, while Pascoe’s Ghost is a chilling tale taking us deep into Poe country. Dalziel’s Ghost, meanwhile, finds the man who normally wouldn’t be seen dead in a graveyard expressing a surprising interest in the ‘other side’. And finally, One Small Step takes a giant leap forward to the first murder on the moon.
Читать Asking for the Moon: A Collection of Dalziel and Pascoe Stories онлайн беплатно
REGINALD HILL
ASKING FOR THE MOON
A Dalziel and Pascoe Collection
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entiely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
The Last National Service Man © 1994
Pascoe’s Ghost © 1979
Dalziel’s Ghost © 1979
One Small Step © 1990
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN 9780006479345
Ebook Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN 9780007373994
Version 2015-06-24
TO YOU
DEAR READERS
without whom the writing would be in vain
and
TO YOU
STILL DEARER PURCHASERS
without whom the eating would be infrequent
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
in
appreciation
of
your loyalty
in
anticipation
of
your longevity
in admiration
of
your taste
NON SCRIBIT, CUIUS CARMINA NEMO
LEGIT
CONTENTS
1 The Last National Service Man
Foreword to the Foreword to One Small Step
‘I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,’ sang Detective Constable Peter Pascoe.
In moments of stress his mind still trawled through the movies in search of a proper reaction.
‘It’s an immature tic you may grow out of when you’ve had enough Significant Experience of your own,’ an irritated girlfriend had once forecast. ‘Ring me when it happens.’
He hadn’t rung yet. Surely his move to Mid Yorkshire where they sold Significant Experience by the bucketful would work the cure? But a fortnight into his new job, when he woke to discover he’d slept through his alarm, the section house boiler had failed, and there were three buttons missing from his only clean shirt, he’d immediately dropped into a Kenneth Williams panic routine straight out of Carry on Constable.
Sod’s Law was confirmed when he got to the station. No time to grab a bite in the canteen, of course; hardly time to grab the essential file from the CID room: then the phone had rung just as he was passing through the door. Not another soul in sight, so like a fool, he’d answered it.
It had been some snout urgently requiring the DCI and not about to push something useful towards a mere DC. Five minutes getting that sorted. Then the Riley reluctant to start; every light at red: traffic crawling at sub-perambulator speeds (did they have different limits up here?); one side of every road dug up (water, or burial of the dead – which had finally arrived?).
And now, in the courts’ car park, not a space in sight except one marked RECORDER.
Sod it, thought Pascoe. Little high-pitched instrument played by some geezer in a ruff couldn’t need all that much room.
He gunned the Riley in, and was out and running up the steps before the Cerberic attendant could bark more than the first syllable of ‘Hey-up!’
Why did the natives need this ritual exordium before they communicated? he wondered. Not properly a greeting, a command or even an exclamation, it was entirely redundant in the vocabulary of a civilized man.
He burst through the swing doors, and thought, ‘Hey-up!’ as he spotted a familiar face. Well, not really familiar. He’d known it for only two weeks and not even a lifetime could make it familiar. But unforgettable certainly. Straight out of Hammer Films make-up. They’d broken the mould before they made this one, ho ho.
‘Sergeant Wield,’ he gasped.
‘Constable Pascoe,’ said Wield. ‘Now we’ve got that out of the way, you’re lost.’
‘You mean I’m late,’ said Pascoe. ‘Sorry but—’
‘Nay lad. Mr Jorrocks, the magistrate is late, which means you’ll not be called for another half-hour. What you are is lost. Magistrates’ court is in the other wing. This is where the big boys play.’
With that face it was impossible to tell whether you were being bollocked or invited to share a joke. And what was Wield doing here anyway? Checking up? If so he was in the wrong place too …
