To Dalziel it sounded like a just rebuke. Pascoe had provided him with copies of all the astronauts’ files plus the American incident report. This contained statements from the Europa crew, setting out where they were and what they were doing at the time of the fatality, plus Druson’s own analysis and conclusions. He saw little reason to look further than Kaufmann as culprit, and offered two pieces of concrete evidence and a motive.

  The first pointer was an entry in Lemarque’s private journal. Several of the astronauts kept such journals with an eye to a literary future after their flying days were over. Lemarque’s consisted mainly of fluorescently purple prose about the beauties of space. Then at the end of a much polished speech in which he told the world of his sense of honour at being the first Euro, and more importantly, the first Frenchman, to step out onto the moon’s surface, he had scribbled almost indecipherably, Ka s’en fâche. Gardes-toi!

  Ka is getting angry. Watch out!

  Was Ka Kaufmann? Druson had asked. And the discovery of a microprobe in the German’s locker had deepened his suspicions. A gloss for the nontechnical pointed out that a microprobe was a kind of electronic screwdriver which would have been necessary in the readjustment of the TEC circuits.

  But there was still the question of motive. And why was Ka getting angry?

  “Blackmail,” Druson replied promptly. “You’ve read the file. It’s obvious.”

  It certainly appeared so. The major part of the American report was a digest of a CIA investigation which concluded that Captain Dieter Kaufmann of the Eurofed Air Corps had been selling NATO technology to the Arabs for the past decade.

  It was detailed and unanswerable. And it hadn’t been compiled overnight.

  “It would have been neighbourly to pass this information on a little earlier,” suggested Pascoe mildly. “Say three years earlier.”

  It was three years since Kaufmann had joined the Europa crew.

  “We like to be sure of our facts in such a serious matter,” said Druson.

  Also, thought Pascoe, Kaufmann’s full-time transfer into the Eurospace programme had removed him from access to NATO information and left him with nothing to pass on but European astrotechnology which in American terms was yesterday’s news. With no threat to themselves, the Americans had decided to keep their information under their hat till they could make maximum profit from it.

  Now that moment had come.

  “Can we look at the body?” said Pascoe. “Just for the record.”

  “Sure. But it ain’t very pretty.”

  Dalziel had seen a lot worse.

  “Not very big, is he?” said Pascoe.

  “Depends where you’re looking,” said Dalziel.

  He turned away from the body and picked up the Frenchman’s TEC, which was also on display.

  “I bet he fancied himself too,” he said. “These little fellows often do.”

  “Why do you say that, Andy?” asked Pascoe.

  “His name tag, for a start.”

  Instead of following a horizontal line, the adhesive name strip had been adjusted to a jaunty thirty-degree angle echoing the shoulder seam.

  “Used to get buggers in the Force who tried to tart up their uniforms like that,” said Dalziel, sniffing at the headpiece. “And they usually wore aftershave that’d kill mosquitoes too.”

  “Seems he did have a reputation for being a cocky little bastard,” said Druson, looking at Dalziel with a new respect.

  Pascoe said, “And the circuitry was definitely interfered with?”

  “Oh yeah. Clear as a fox among chickens. Rush job by the look of it. Well, it would have to be, in the Europa’s hold. No time for finesse.”

  “No,” agreed Pascoe. “Seen enough, Andy?”

  “More than enough,” said Dalziel. “Did someone say something about a room with a bed in it?”

  “Let’s go,” said Druson.

  He led them to their quarters, two small bedrooms with a shared living room. When the door had shut behind him, Dalziel said, “Okay, lad. What do you reckon? Still a fit-up by the Yanks?”

  “Open mind,” said Pascoe. “They’ve certainly put a reasonable case together. Maybe Kaufmann did do it.”

  “Mebbe. I’d trust ’em a lot more if yon black bugger hadn’t managed to forget that Glenmorangie he promised me!”

  Pascoe grinned and said, “A good night’s sleep will do you more good, Andy. Nothing more to be done till tomorrow. Then it’ll be straight down to the interrogations.”

  “Hold on,” said Dalziel. “Scene of the crime, remember? Shouldn’t we fix up to visit the Europa before we do owt else?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Pascoe. “I’ll be arranging a trip as soon as possible. But time’s too short to waste, so in the morning let’s get on with talking to the crew, shall we? Now I thought we’d work individually. I’ll take three and you take three, then we’ll swap over...”

  “Swap away!” said Dalziel obstinately. “Until we’ve seen Europa what they say won’t make bloody sense, will it?”

  There was a tap at the door. Pascoe didn’t move. Dalziel scowled at him and went to answer it.

  A smiling young man handed him two litre-sized bottles, saying, “There you go, pops.”

  “Pops!” said Pascoe as Dalziel closed the door. “You must be mellowing, Andy. Time was when you’d have nutted anyone who spoke to you like that.”

  “That was when I was young and daft,” said Dalziel, removing the seal from one of the bottles. “At my age, anyone who gives me two litres of Glenmorangie can call me Mavis if he likes. You want a splash?”

  “Only water,” said Pascoe. “I’ll have a shower. Then I’ll work out a schedule for the interrogations before I go to bed. Okay?”

  He spoke defiantly. Dalziel stared at him for a moment, then shrugged.

  “Fine,” he said. “You’re the boss now.”

  “So I am,” smiled Pascoe as he left. “So I am.”

  “And I’m to be Queen of the May, Mother,” murmured Dalziel raising the bottle to his lips. “I’m to be Queen of the May!”

  3.

  Dalziel had a bad night. He dreamt he challenged Nurse Montague to the best of three falls and lost by a straight submission. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the dream had been erotic but it was merely humiliating and he woke up dry and droopy as a camel’s tail. Whisky only washed his black thoughts blacker and when finally there came a tap on the door and Pascoe’s voice invited him to go to breakfast, he snarled, “Sod off!”

  Only the younger man’s offer to call the Village medics and have someone check him out got Dalziel out of bed. He was still running his portable electric razor over the shadowy planet of his face as they made their way to the Europa crew’s dome, and this at last provoked an honestly irritated response from Pascoe.

  “For heaven’s sake, Andy, put that thing away. We are representing the Federal Justice Department, after all!”

  With his first twinge of pleasure of the day, Dalziel slipped the slim plastic razor case into his breast pocket and followed Pascoe into the dome.

  The six survivors of the Europa crew were an interesting assortment. It was almost possible to identify them by racial characteristics alone.

  The two women were easiest. The Dane, Marte Schierbeck, was pure Viking, long-bodied, long-faced, and grey-eyed, with hair so fair it was almost silver. By contrast the Spaniard, Silvia Rabal, was compact and curvaceous, with huge dark eyes, full pouting lips, and a rather prominent, slightly hooked nose. Her jet-black hair was razored back above her ears and sculpted into a rose-tipped crest. The total effect was arrestingly beautiful, like some colourful exotic bird.

  Of the men, a rather spidery figure with a face crumpled like an old banknote and eyes blue as the lakes of Killarney had to be the Irishman, Kevin O’Meara, while a Rembrandt burgher, solid of frame and stolid of feature, was typecast as the Dutchman, Adriaan van der Heyde. Only the German and the Italian ran counter to type, with the six-foot, blue-eyed blond turning out to be Marco Albertosi, which meant the black-haired, volatile-faced, lean-figured gondolier was Dieter Kaufmann.

  Pascoe introduced himself formally, explaining Dalziel simply as his assistant. He made heavy weather of insisting on the serious nature of the affair and the absoluteness of his own authority, and by the time he finished, he had succeeded in relaxing the crew into a union of mocking anglophobia, which was precisely what he intended.

  “We will start with individual interviews,” said Pascoe. “Herr Kaufmann, would you come with me? Mr. Dalziel...”

  Pascoe had already decreed the order of interview, but Dalziel let his eyes slowly traverse the group with the speculative gaze of a sailor in a brothel. Then, with a macho aggression which should have sat ill on a man of his age, but didn’t, he stabbed a huge forefinger at Silvia Rabal and said, “I’ll have her!”

  Space was short for special interview facilities so the interrogations took place in the newcomers’ rooms. Rabal sat on the bed without being asked. Dalziel eased himself carefully onto a frail-looking chair and began to open the second bottle of malt.

  “Drink?” he said.

  “No. Why have you picked me first?” she asked in a rather harsh voice.

  “Well, I said to myself, if she’s the one who killed the Frog, mebbe she’ll try to seduce me to keep me quiet.”

  The woman’s huge eyes opened even wider as she ran this through her mental translator to make sure she’d got it right. Then she threw back her head and laughed, no avian screech but a full-throated Carmen laugh, sensual, husky, sending tremors down her body like the inviting ripples on a jungle pool.

  “Perhaps I will have that drink, Dalziel,” she said.

  “Thought you might,” he said, handing her a glass.

  She held it close to her breast so he had to lean over her to pour. She looked up at him and breathed, “Enough.” Her breath was honeyed, or more precisely spiced, as if she had been eating cinnamon and coriander. Such perfumes from a restaurant kitchen would have alarmed Dalziel, who liked his food plain dressed, but from the warm oven of this woman’s mouth, they were disturbingly appetitive, setting juices running he thought had long since dried to a trickle.

  He sat down heavily and the frail chair spread its legs, but held.

  “Cheers,” she said, lifting her glass to her lips.

  “Cheers,” he answered. It was time to grasp the initiative.

  “Look, love,” he said. “Cards on the table, that’s the way I work. God gave me a fair share of good Yorkshire common sense, and that tells me you’re about the least likely suspect of the lot, and that’s the real reason I picked you first. So I can get some answers I can be sure are honest.”

  She said, “Thank you. I am flattered. But how do you work this out?”

  “For a start, you weren’t on the module, were you? You stayed on Europa to look after the shop, you and the Eyetie. So while the module party all had plenty of reason to be mucking about with their TECs in the hold, you didn’t.”

  “And this is when this interference was done, you think?”

  “Has to be, hasn’t it?”

  “I suppose. This fault in Emile’s suit, could it not be just a fault? That American tells us nothing, just makes hints.”

  “No. It were deliberate interference, no doubt,” said Dalziel with the technological certainty of a man who used to repair police radios with his truncheon. “Must’ve been done in a hurry. I mean, given time, I expect you lot are all clued up enough to have covered your tracks.”

  “Oh yes, I think so.” She regarded him thoughtfully. “So I am in the clear because I stay on the ship? Then Marco, who stayed with me, must be clear too?”

  “That depends if his legs are as pretty as yours,” leered Dalziel. “But why do you ask? Would it surprise you if Marco was innocent?”

  “No. I do not say that.”

  “But he didn’t get on with Lemarque, is that it?”

  “They were not good friends, no. But not so bad that he would kill!”

  “How bad does that have to be for an Italian?” wondered Dalziel. “Why’d they not like each other? Rivals, were they? Or maybe they had a lovers’ tiff?”

  He made a limp-wristed rocking gesture.

  “What do you say?” she cried indignantly. “That is not possible!”

  “No? Well, there’s things in these files as’d amaze you,” he said, patting the pile of folders on the floor next to him.

  Puzzlement, irritation, and something else besides were chasing each other across that expressive face.

  “You are mistaken, I think,” she said, recovering her poise. “They were rivals, yes. Each wanting to be the most macho, that is all.”

  “You reckon? Mebbe they didn’t bother you much. I’ll be interested to hear what that Danish lass made of them. She’s a lot more boyish than you, might have turned them on a bit more...”

  She looked ready to explode, recovered again and said, “Yes, if you are interested in low-temperature physics, go to her.”

  “No, thanks. Me, I prefer the high-temperature Latin type,” he said lecherously.

  She gave him a thin smile and said, “You talk a lot, Dalziel. Can you, I wonder — what is the phrase? — put your money where your mouth is?”

  “Depends where you want me to put my mouth,” said Dalziel negligently. “Thanks for the offer, but. Mebbe later when I’ve a minute to spare, eh?” Or a week, he thought ruefully. Though there had been a time... At least his diversionary tactics had worked.

  “Offer? What offer? You do not think...” Suddenly she broke into indignant Spanish.

  Dalziel yawned and said, “Stick to English, luv. If a man’s worth swearing at, he’s worth swearing at in his own language. Now, I’ve read all the statements but I’m not much good at technical stuff, so mebbe you can give us a hand. First, these TECs, once they were activated in the module, you could monitor their circuits on Europa, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And from Europa this info would go back to Earth Control?”

  “Yes. There is nonstop transmission of pictures and technical data from Europa to Earth.”

  “Aye,” scowled Dalziel. “Made me miss Star Trek. But weren’t there a transmission blackout from Europa as the module went down?”

  “That is right. There was an electrical storm.”

  He whistled and said, “That must have been scary.”

  “No,” she said with professional indifference. “It happens often. Fortunately it did not last long and we got pictures back in time for the big event. Emile stepping onto the moon, I mean, not...”

  She shuddered. A sympathetic smile lit Dalziel’s face like a wrecker’s lantern and he said, “Don’t take on, lass. Now, let’s see. It were just Europa’s Earth transmissions that were affected? You still kept your contact with the module?”

  “There was a little interference but we still got pictures.”

  “And technical data on the TEC circuits?”

  “Yes,” she snapped with the growing exasperation of the expert at being made to repeat the obvious. Dalziel scratched his nose. To him, such exasperation was the reddening skin above a boxer’s eye. You pounded at it till it split.

  “And there was no sign of owt wrong with Lemarque’s suit? No hint that his circuits had been mucked around?”

  “I have said so in my statement!” she cried. “There was nothing till the moment when he made water. Then pouf! it is finished. No one can say it was my fault! There were two of us watching. It was a systems malfunction I think, no one to blame. Who has been blaming me...?”

  “Calm down, woman!” bellowed Dalziel. “You’ll be gabbling away in Spanish again just now, and then where will we be? Have another drink. That’s it, straight down. Now, get it into your noddle, nobody’s blaming you, least of all me. So, just a couple more questions...”

  4.

  Pascoe and Dalziel had agreed to confer between interviews.

  “Anything?” asked Pascoe.

  “She’s been bonking either the Italian or the Frog or mebbe both, and she doesn’t much care for the Dane, so mebbe she got in on that act too. And she says that Albertosi and Lemarque didn’t much hit it off.”

  “She volunteered all this?”

  “I prodded a bit. And I said she weren’t on my list of suspects.”

  “And isn’t she?”

  “You know me, lad. You’re on my list till I get the evidence to cross you off. She certainly had less chance than the others of fiddling with Lemarque’s suit. Mind you, she got very agitated when she thought I was hinting she were to blame for not monitoring the TEC transmissions properly. That electrical storm checked out, did it?”

  “Happens all the time, evidently. And there were two of them doing the monitoring.”

  “Aye. I take it, from what you’re saying, you haven’t clamped the Kraut in irons? Not even for flogging secrets? He did do that, I take it?”

  “Oh yes, no question. He doesn’t deny it.”

  Dalziel considered, then said gently, “Now that should be a great big plus for the Yanks’ theory that he knocked the Frog off. So why do I get the feeling it’s nowt of the sort?”

  Pascoe regarded him blankly. Time was when Dalziel reckoned he could have followed most of his old colleague’s thought processes along a broad spoor of telltale signs, but not anymore. Perhaps time had dulled his perception. Or perhaps it had honed Pascoe’s control.

  Then the younger man smiled and was his old self again.

  “I’m glad to see the nose is getting back into shape, Andy,” he said. “The truth is, I knew all about Kaufmann’s relations with the East long before Druson told me. As usual, the CIA have only managed to get half a story. The more important half is that Kaufmann’s been working under orders from EuroSec. He never sold anything very important, and his contacts with the Arabs plus their shopping lists gave us a great picture of what they were up to. We even got a lot of stuff about the Yanks through the back door!”

 

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