On Beulah Height

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Must have been pretty powerful if it was speeding,’ said Wield, looking at the contours.

  ‘He says it was a big estate, blue, but he couldn’t identify the make and was at the wrong angle to get any numbers. He did say he thought that it might have stopped up here.’

  She pointed to a high bend of the road marked on the map with the viewpoint symbol.

  ‘There’s a bit of hardstanding. It’s a popular place for picnics. He caught the flash of sun on a glass up there just a little later, but he can’t be sure it was the same car.’

  ‘Bit early for a picnic,’ said Wield. ‘Owt else?’

  ‘Not on any of these. But when I caught up with Draycott, he was driving a red Ford pick-up. Popular vehicle with farmers, I spotted another three as I drove around. And I got to wondering if some of the folk round here who got asked about car sightings mightn’t have bothered to mention these, or other farm vehicles, because they’re so familiar they’re almost invisible. Like the postman in the Chesterton story.’

  One for me? thought Pascoe, amused. He hoped she was bright enough not to have tried it out on Andy Dalziel, whose response would probably have been …

  ‘Postman? On a Sunday? Now that is odd.’

  They turned. There he was. Sometimes he came roaring in like a steam locomotive, sometimes he rolled up, soft as a hearse, which, today, clad in a suit black enough to please an undertaker and a shirt white enough to make a shroud, he might have been following.

  ‘No, sir, the Father Brown story…’ said Novello, flustered into the error of explanation.

  ‘Father Brown? I thought you were one of Father Kerrigan’s flock. Not been head-hunted, have you?’

  Time for a rescue act.

  Pascoe said, ‘Shirley was just trying out an idea on us, sir. And very interesting it was, too. But let’s make a start on what we’ve got first, shall we?’

  He gave Dalziel a digest of Novello’s findings. The Fat Man was dismissive.

  ‘A blue estate, speeding? Overtake their tractor, bloody farmers think you’re speeding. And if he wants to get away so quick, what’s he stop up the hill for? And this white Saab, right out in the open, weren’t it? At the edge of the common for all to see. Not what you’d call furtive, is it?’

  ‘The Discovery was quite well hidden,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Except for anyone walking their dog past it,’ said Dalziel. ‘Told you it ‘ud be a four-wheel drive last night, didn’t I?’

  ‘I think, to be strictly accurate, I told you that,’ said Pascoe, thinking, he doesn’t want to be bothered with any of this. His mind’s fixated on Benny bloody Lightfoot. ‘But we do have a list of names and we’re going to need to check them…’

  ‘Aye, aye, shove up the overtime bill,’ said Dalziel gloomily. ‘Desperate Dan’s going to love me.’

  This from one to whom police budgets and the affection of his Chief Constable were matters of equal indifference rang false as a politician’s indignation.

  ‘One in there might interest you, sir,’ said Wield.

  He jabbed his finger at the bottom of the sheet. Pascoe looked over the Fat Man’s shoulder.

  Walter Wulfstan.

  That name again. Pascoe’s eyes strayed to the poster still visible on one of the few parts of the notice board not yet covered up by constabulary paper.

  The opening concert of the Mid-Yorkshire Dales Music Festival, Elizabeth Wulfstan singing Kindertotenlieder. Songs for Dead Children. Not the most diplomatic of programmes for this place at this time.

  It occurred to him that this place was literally this place. Had anyone told the Festival people that their opening venue had been commandeered?

  Observing Dalziel for the second time in two days apparently rapt at the appearance of this name from the past, Pascoe voiced his concern to Wield.

  ‘The secretary of the Parish Council was round first thing this morning,’ the sergeant said. ‘I told him he could certainly cancel everything this week. Next week, we’d have to wait and see.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be pleased.’

  ‘Oddly enough, his words were, Mr Wulfstan wouldn’t be pleased. Seems he’s chair of the Music Festival committee.’

  ‘He’s back at that again, is he?’ said Dalziel, who never let rapture obstruct eavesdropping.

  ‘Back?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘He dropped out of Yorkshire after Dendale. Seemed to uproot himself completely. Sold up his house in town, handed over the on-site running of the business to his partners, and set himself up down south as their international sales manager, running across Europe, oiling the wheels, that sort of thing. Speaks good Frog and Kraut, they say. Must have done all right. Seven, eight years back, the company needs more space and builds on a greenfield site outside Danby. That was the start of yon Science and Business Park thing. Lots of Euro-lolly, they say, most of it down to Wulfstan. And eventually he moves back to town. Bought a house “in the bell”. Holyclerk Street.’

  ‘In the bell’ referred to the top price area round the cathedral.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Keep doing the Lottery,’ said Dalziel. ‘Ivor, get on the phone to Wulfstan’s firm at the Business Park, will you? See if he’s there. If he is, I’ll just pop round and have a word.’

  ‘There are other names on the list, sir,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Nay, it’ll be his,’ said Dalziel dismissively. ‘What’s up, lass? Tha does know how to work a phone?’

  Novello, who hadn’t moved, said, ‘What’s the firm’s name, sir?’

  ‘Oh aye. Summat weird. Helioponics, that’s it. Helioponics. You need six O-levels to know what it means.’

  ‘Sounds to me like a nonce word, by analogy with hydroponics,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Nonce, eh? Well, them perverts do have a language of their own.’

  Wield came in before this could get silly and said, ‘I think they started off making domestic solar panels, but now they’re into all kinds of alternative energy sources and applications.’

  ‘My God, Wieldy, you got shares, or what?’

  Wield looked blank, which was easy. In fact it was Edwin who had Helioponic shares. Financial openness was part of their unwritten partnership agreement. ‘If you know how poor I am,’ Digweed had said, ‘you will not be forever expecting me to pay half of all those expensive foreign holidays your crooked friends doubtless subsidize for you in their Bermudan villas.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Novello from the phone. ‘Mr Wulfstan was at the Park, but he’s just headed back to town. Seems he’s had to call an emergency committee meeting, something about the Music Festival needing a new location?’

  ‘Must be mellowing,’ said Dalziel. ‘In the old days he’d have come round here and given us all a rollocking. Right, that’s me. I’m off to put myself on Any Other Business. Pete, what are you up to?’

  ‘I need to see Clark. He might have a line on the spray-can artist.’

  ‘Oh aye? Well, he’s up the dale with Maggie Burroughs. I’ve just been up there. She’s got the search well organized, so try not to give the impression you’re double-checking her. I know how heavy-footed you can be. Wieldy, you keep things steady here till George Headingley shows his ugly face, then see if you can find something useful to do. That everything?’

  ‘Sir, shall I stick with these car sightings? I’ve got a couple of ideas,’ said Novello.

  ‘Ideas? Nice young lass like you shouldn’t be having ideas,’ said Dalziel. ‘Nay, they’ll keep. That’s why red herrings are red, to preserve them. Anyone talked to the kiddies in Lorraine’s class yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Wield. ‘Mrs Shimmings wanted to get the school routine going first.’

  ‘I doubt if there’ll be owt there, but someone had better do it. That’s the job for you, Ivor. Off you go, chop chop.’

  Novello turned swiftly and moved away through the door before her resentment could show.

  ‘She did well,’ Pascoe observed neutrally.

  �
�She did her job,’ growled Dalziel.

  Pascoe glanced at Wield, who rubbed his chin.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ said the Fat Man.

  He went to an open window and bellowed, ‘Ivor!’

  The woman turned.

  ‘You did well,’ shouted Dalziel.

  Then, turning back to face the others, he said, ‘There. Can’t bear the thought of having you two looking at me all day like I’d drowned your kitten. Now can we all go off and do what we get paid to do, or would you like a big wet kiss from mother to help you on your way?’

  FIVE

  Rosie Pascoe was having a bad day at school.

  She’d looked for Zandra as soon as she got into the yard, but she was nowhere to be found, and Miss Turner, their class teacher, told her that Mrs Purlingstone had phoned to say that Zandra was poorly and wouldn’t be coming in.

  At least that had meant she was able to hold the floor alone with her tales of treats and adventures at the seaside. But by playtime, as the heat of the day built up, she found her usual energy lacking and was content to stand aside from the intricate whirl of playground games.

  All the voices seemed distant, like the TV with the sound turned low, and the playing children moved before her like figures on that small screen. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, this distancing. Indeed it was the kind of mood in which she usually most easily made contact with her friend Nina. But there was no sign of her today, and then she remembered that Nina had been taken by the nix again and was probably still being held captive in his cave.

  Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a figure beyond the high wire mesh which bounded the playground. Her heart full of hope she went towards it. The bright sunlight dazzled her, in fact she’d been irritated by bright light all day, and she couldn’t see clearly, but as she got close she knew it wasn’t Nina, and when she blinked she found there was no one there at all, and she was left clinging to the mesh like a marmoset in a cage.

  Someone touched her shoulder and she turned quickly.

  It was Miss Turner. She was a small woman, a lot shorter than Mummy, but somehow today she seemed to loom very high.

  ‘Play’s over, Rosie,’ she said in a voice with the same distant, unreal quality. ‘It’s time to come inside.’

  Some miles to the north, Shirley Novello was having a bad time in school too. She didn’t mind kids, but she wasn’t mad about them. And she did mind the assumption that her gender automatically meant she was the best person to talk to Lorraine’s classmates, particularly when she felt she was doing an OK job on the car enquiry. But she had more sense than to complain, not in the middle of a missing child case. Here, if you were told it would help to wrestle in mud, you wrestled in mud.

  Not that there was much chance of finding any mud to wrestle in. All the windows of the school were wide open, but a feather resting on a sill had as much chance of moving as on a dead man’s lips.

  The children were lethargic, partly because of the heat, partly because the initial charge of excitement at the police presence had faded, leaving them increasingly aware of the reason for it. Mrs Shimmings and Miss Blake, the class teacher, did their best to divert and distract, but they too were weighed down by their more specific fears for their lost pupil and, despite their best efforts, some of this filtered through.

  Very little was forthcoming. Some of Lorraine’s friends said that Lorraine had a ‘secret place’ up Ligg Beck, but when pressed as to its whereabouts, they looked at Novello like she was brain dead and said, ‘We don’t know. It was a secret!’ Finally she pushed too hard and provoked a squall of sobbing from one girl which quickly spread to others, and the interview was over.

  ‘I’ll keep talking to them,’ promised Mrs Shimmings as they walked down the corridor together. ‘It’s no use pressing with children this age. You’ve got to let things come in their own good time.’

  Great, thought Novello. But you don’t have to answer to a bunch of men who aren’t all that impressed even when you’ve got something positive to report!

  By ‘bunch of men’ she meant, of course, Dalziel and Pascoe, and to a lesser extent, Wield. On joining CID she’d quickly sussed out that what mattered most to an ambitious officer was how you rated with the terrible trio.

  She’d observed with interest but without comment how her male colleagues reacted. Dalziel put the fear of God into them. His wrath was like being run over by a Centurion tank. On the other hand, going into battle, there’s nothing an infantryman likes more than advancing behind a Centurion tank.

  Pascoe was rated OK. Lots of concern for the troops. He’d long outlived his early disadvantage of a degree. Indeed, most of them would never even think about it if it wasn’t for the Fat Man’s occasional weighty witticisms.

  And Wield was … Wield. Unreadable as a Chinese encyclopaedia, but containing everything a cop needed to know. There were stories about his private life which might have washed away another man’s career. But against that unyielding crag, they broke and vanished back into the sea.

  Word was that when Dalziel spoke, you obeyed; when Pascoe spoke, you listened; when Wield spoke, you took notes.

  But Novello had come to see them rather differently.

  The rumours about Wield she ignored. It was so clear to her he was gay that she couldn’t understand the need for whisperings. He was a good cop and she could learn a lot from him. But, she guessed, he was also a cop who’d made a conscious decision to stay at sergeant rather than risk the greater exposure of higher rank. This she could understand, but had no intention of taking as a role model.

  Pascoe. At first she’d liked him. He’d been welcoming, helpful, protective when she joined the squad. He still was. But when she’d talked about this with Maggie Burroughs who’d helped her a lot in her transfer to CID, the inspector had said, ‘Watch out for the friendlies. They’re sometimes the worst.’ And when a few minutes after she started talking to the kids, Pascoe had stuck his head into the classroom and asked for a quick word with Mrs Shimmings, all his apologetic smile had said to her was that what he was doing was beyond debate far more important than what she was doing.

  Which left Dalziel. A tank was just a machine, but a machine needs someone to run it. A mechanic. Or God. Jokes were made about the Holy Trinity, usually with Pascoe as Son and Wield as Holy Ghost. Novello as a sort of good Catholic favoured Pascoe as Holy Ghost. But big Andy Dalziel was beyond all dispute the Almighty. Get up his nose, and the best you could hope was a big sneeze might carry you a long way away. It was a small comfort to know no one was immune. Even that Spiritus Sanctus, Peter Pascoe, came in for a fair share of crap. So, I believe in Andy Dalziel was the first and last clause of the CID creed. But faith without works didn’t get you into heaven and even though the fat prophet had forecast that talking to kids was a waste of time, he’d probably still expect some form of result.

  It was therefore with relief that she found only Wield in the incident centre. He was poring over a thick file. In his hand was a can of mineral water.

  He said, ‘The fridge has turned up. Help yourself.’

  Gratefully she took a can of lemonade. She would have liked to put it under her T-shirt and roll it around but she instinctively avoided anything which would draw her male colleagues’ attention to her sex. Even Wield’s.

  Perhaps, she thought, we have a lot in common.

  ‘Any luck?’ he asked without looking up.

  ‘Not much. Some talk of Lorraine having a secret place up Ligg Beck, but none of them knows where.’

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t, being a secret,’ said Wield with a childlike logic she recognized. He closed the file. Upside down she read

  DENDALE.

  She said, ‘Nothing from the search team, Sarge?’

  ‘Not a sign.’

  ‘So it could be she’s long gone.’

  ‘Super seems to reckon they’re still around here.’

  She noticed the they. He noticed her noticing but didn’t correct it.


  ‘What do you think, Sarge?’ she asked.

  He stared at her reflectively. His eyes, she noticed for the first time, were rather beautiful, circles of Mediterranean blue round a dark grey centre set on a field of pristine white with not a red vein to be seen. It was like finding jewels in a ruin.

  He said, ‘I think you’ve got a notion you’d like to let out. Something to do with yon blue estate is my guess.’

  This was opening enough. She went across to the wall map and said, ‘The Highcross Moor road’s got no turn-offs except a few farm tracks for four and a half miles till it swings east and joins the main road here. There’s a pub, the Highcross Inn, at the junction. What I’d like to do is check out all the farms along the road and the pub too, to see if anyone else noticed the blue estate.’

  It sounded pretty feeble now it was out. She was glad it wasn’t the Fat Man she was talking to.

  Wield said, ‘We’ve had men out at all those farms.’

  ‘Yes, Sarge. But they’ll have been searching barns, outbuildings, stables and such. I’d be asking a specific question about a specific car.’

  ‘You’ve got a feeling about this blue estate, haven’t you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she admitted reluctantly.

  ‘You won anything on the National Lottery?’ he enquired.

  ‘Ten pound.’

  ‘Not enough to retire on if Mr Dalziel catches you running around following hunches,’ said Wield. ‘But as I can’t think of anything else for you to do, off you go. Keep in close contact though. And you get buzzed to come back here, no mucking about saying reception’s bad because of the hills, that sort of crap. You come running. OK?’