On Beulah Height

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Coincidence? Maybe,’ he said. ‘I almost dropped it in your laps then, got as far as the cop shop, but thought, what the hell, with all this stuff in the paper about Benny Lightfoot fifteen years back, once you jokers get your hands on Benny’s brother, you’re going to be more interested in fucking him around - pardon my French, miss - than following up some half-baked gumshoe work I’d been doing. So I went off to Bixford and had a drink in the pub and got chatting to some of the locals. All the talk was about Turnbull, and I soon heard enough to make me wonder how come a ‘dozer driver like him had suddenly got enough put by to buy into his boss’s firm way back. It made me think it was worth having a quick talk with Geordie.’

  ‘Talk?’ said Dalziel. ‘If that’s what you do to any poor sod you have a quiet talk with, I shouldn’t like to see anyone you fancied having a quiet snog with!’

  ‘There was a misunderstanding,’ said Slater. ‘But we soon got on the same wavelength. I’ll give him his due. Once he saw the way the wind was blowing, he didn’t mess around but put his hand up straightaway. Said it had been bothering him for years, but he just hadn’t been able to resist the temptation when he pushed over the old cottage and saw this tin box lying in the rubble with tenners spilling out of it. Can’t say I blamed him. Would probably have done the same myself.’

  ‘I get the impression, Mr Slater, that you have done much the same yourself,’ said Wield.

  ‘The money, you mean? Listen, mate, I got that money fair and square. You ask Turnbull. Like I said, once he understood who I was, he co-operated of his own free will. Wanted to get it off his conscience. Also he’s done all right, our Geordie. Fifteen years ago, fifty thou was big money still. Now it’s a down payment on one of those earth movers of his. I told him, get me the dosh in readies today and I’ll forget the fifteen years interest I’d be entitled to. He agreed. If he says different, he’s a liar. Why the hell he wanted to get you people involved, I don’t know. He’s the only one committed a crime here, not me.’

  ‘Blackmail’s a crime,’ said Dalziel softly. ‘Extortion’s a crime. And don’t give me any of that kangaroo crap about this being your money. It was your gran got robbed, not you. It’s her sodding money if it’s anyone’s.’

  ‘Yeah, and that’s where I was heading, straight back down to Wark House to give it to her,’ said Slater.

  He gazed openly at them with what was either wide-eyed sincerity or you-prove-different complacency.

  Novello said quietly, ‘That’s good to hear, Mr Slater. The Social Service Department that’s been picking up your grandmother’s tab at Wark House for the past several years will be pleased to hear it too. You see, they’ve been dishing out taxpayers’ money on the understanding she was penniless, and now they’ll be able to get most of it back.’

  Slater looked shocked for a moment then smiled ruefully.

  ‘Hell, perhaps I should talk to Turnbull about interest after all!’

  Dalziel stood up so suddenly his chair rattled back and almost fell over.

  Slater shoved his chair back a few inches as though anticipating assault. But the Fat Man’s tone had more of resignation than aggression in it.

  ‘Interview terminated,’ he said, flicking off the tape switch. ‘And no, you won’t talk to Turnbull, Mr Slater. We’ll talk to him instead. We’ll need a written statement of all this, OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure thing,’ said Slater. ‘Then that’s it?’

  ‘Unless my sergeant here can thumb through the big book and find summat tasty to charge you with.’

  ‘Assault on Mr Tumbull?’ said Wield hopefully.

  ‘Not much hope of that if we’ve just been listening to the truth. I think we’re done here. Wieldy. Ivor?’

  Wield shook his head. Novello said, ‘What do you think happened to your brother, Mr Slater?’

  ‘Benny? I don’t recall much of him, miss, except that he was the nervous type, always scared of his own shadow. My bet would be, with his gran gone and the cottage wrecked, the poor bastard topped himself, God rest his soul.’

  It seemed a suitable note to finish on. The station didn’t run to two interview rooms, so Slater was returned to his cell with pen and paper to write his statement and Geordie Turnbull was brought out.

  He had had time to recover most of his old bounce. In fact, the feeling that emanated from him was of euphoria that at last things were out in the open.

  ‘Daft to say, but when I saw your face, bonny lad,’ he said to Wield, ‘I thought it had somehow come out then and I was almost relieved when you started asking about the poor little girl instead. Makes you think, doesn’t it. Fancy preferring to be suspected of something like that! No, I’m glad it’s out.’

  Probably the first time in his life Wield had been addressed as bonny lad, thought Novello. Or was that just mental queer-bashing? Could be this boyfriend out in the sticks everyone gossiped about thought he was lovely.

  The story he told confirmed in every significant respect that offered by Slater.

  He should have had his lawyer, thought Novello. The hideous Hoddle would have made him keep his mouth shut. With old Mrs Lightfoot dead and only Slater’s hearsay to set against him, there was no way the CPS would have entertained a charge.

  But this had less to do with legality than guilt. It soon emerged that simple down-to-earth happy-go-lucky Geordie had a strong streak of religious fatalism. If he hadn’t kept the money, Tommy Tiplake’s business would have failed and he, Geordie, would have been long gone and well out of the way of this second round of child molestation enquiries. This was his punishment. Anything the CPS could throw at him would merely be almost welcome public evidence of his lack of culpability in the larger case.

  Novello found herself totally in sympathy with him by the time the interview was finished. If his innate and unselfconscious charm hadn’t done the trick (which, she assured herself firmly, it wouldn’t have done), his final words would have won her over.

  ‘What really bothers me now I know the whole story is the thought of yon poor lad, Benny, coming back in the rain and searching through the rubble of Neb Cottage for the money his gran had promised him. Poor sod.’

  ‘Poor sod?’ said Dalziel incredulously. ‘Yon poor sod might be responsible for kidnapping and killing three young girls, and afore you say that’s not proved, there’s no doubt he attacked Betsy Allgood that same night you’re talking about.’

  ‘You think so? Well, that’s the way you’re trained to look at things, Mr Dalziel,’ said Turnbull with some dignity. ‘Me, I knew the lad and I could never see any harm in him. I never believed he had anything to do with those lasses disappearing any more than I did. As for attacking the Allgood girl, I’m sure he gave her a nasty fright. Little kid lost on the fell in a storm at night suddenly sees the man everyone’s been telling her is the bogeyman, naturally she’s going to be scared out of her wits, isn’t she? I daresay if you’d been the one she met on the fellside that night, she’d have been just as frightened, poor little lass.’

  ‘Interview terminated,’ said Dalziel. ‘Nowt turns my stomach more than listening to a Newcastle United supporter who’s got religion.’

  ‘Is that right, bonny lad? Well, one thing’s for sure, despite all them signs you told me about, Benny’s not back, is he? And I had nothing to do with little Lorraine, and nor did Barney Lightfoot from the sound of it. So I’ll get back to my cell, shall I? And let you lot get back to your work. From the sound of it, you’ve still got a hell of a lot to do.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The three detectives sat in silence after Turnbull was removed from the interview room.

  Finally, Novello said, ‘Could he be right, sir? Could Betsy Allgood have got it wrong? She was so frightened at seeing Lightfoot, she panicked, and when he tried to reassure her, she thought he was attacking her.’

  ‘For a lass her age she were one of the best witnesses I ever came across,’ said the sergeant approvingly. ‘We’d talked with her several times afore this, and
this time she were just the same, nice and calm and precise. All that stuff about her cat, you’re not saying she just imagined that? Rang true to me then, rings true to me now. You’ve read the file? Then you’ll know what I mean.’

  Yes, thought Novello. I know what you mean. But I’m not sure I know what I mean, which is maybe something more than you know. Or can know. Something about the way little girls think. About the way they can be frightened into the most fanciful inventions … the way they rearrange reality to suit their own needs and desires… the way they observe and analyse the adult world …

  Her mind ran back over the Dendale file, highlighting it not as a record of an investigation but as a sort of patterned tapestry, with its intricate design based on the thrice-repeated motif of a vanished child. Suddenly looked at like this, she saw something she had only been dimly conscious of before.

  She said, ‘Sir …’

  The door opened and Sergeant’s Clark’s head appeared.

  He said, ‘Sorry, sir, but compliments of Mr Pascoe, and would you care to join him at Dender Mere, which is to say, the Dendale Reservoir?’

  ‘Pascoe?’ said Dalziel, looking towards Wield with astonishment. ‘What’s yon bugger doing back on the job? You know owt of this, Wieldy?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What about you, Ivor? You were the last to see him.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, like I told you, his daughter was doing much much better, they thought she was out of danger. And he seemed to be quite excited about something, I don’t know what, something about an earring…’

  ‘So what’s he say to you, Nobby?’ demanded Dalziel.

  ‘Nothing more than I’ve told you, sir. Compliments to Mr Dalziel and would you care…’

  ‘Aye aye, I can hear them prissy tones without the club impressionist act,’ he said testily. ‘Well, I don’t think there’s owt else to do round here this night except go to yon bloody concert, so let’s go and see what our resident intellectual has got laid on for us. But it had better be good!’

  It was.

  Peter Pascoe, on his way to Danby, had rung the incident room at St Michael’s Hall. Here he got George Headingley sitting in solitary state. He had given a detailed account of everything that had been happening that afternoon. The DI’s demob-happiness had rendered him something of a liability when it came to active policing, but he was an excellent man to leave in charge of the shop, if only because, though reluctant to initiate action in case something went wrong in a manner which might adversely affect his pension, this same preoccupation made him an assiduous collator of the minutiae of other people’s activities, to avoid the fall-out if any of them went wobbly.

  ‘So His Fatship and Wieldy are down the local nick with wet towels at the ready?’ said Pascoe, knowing how even jokes about police impropriety made old George tremble.

  ‘They are interrogating the suspects, yes,’ said Headingley.

  ‘But this fellow Lightfoot they’ve caught says he’s Barney, not Benny?’

  ‘That’s what Nobby Clark says. And he agrees. He knew Benny well and says that this fellow might have a family resemblance, but no way is he the real thing.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Pascoe. ‘Tell me, George, the frog team at the mere, they still there?’

  ‘Just had them on asking if Mr Dalziel had left authority for overtime. I said no, so they’re packing up for the night.’

  Pascoe thought, then said, ‘Do me a favour. Get on to them and say… no, on second thoughts, give me their number.’

  George was quite capable of staging a breakdown of all communication equipment rather than risk getting involved in an unauthorized overtime scandal.

  Pascoe dialled the diving team’s mobile and was pleased to hear Tom Perriman’s voice answer. They were old acquaintances and got on well.

  ‘Pete, how are you? I heard about your trouble. How’re things going?’

  ‘Fine,’ Pascoe assured him. ‘Hairy while it lasted, but I think everything’s going to be OK now. Listen Tom, I’m on my way to join you, so don’t rush off.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ protested Perriman. ‘We’ve just got all the gear packed.’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s not diving I want you for. Listen, you can get started while I’m on my way.’

  He explained what he wanted. When he finished, Perriman said, ‘And it’s your signature on the overtime authority?’

  ‘It’s more than my signature. It’s my neck,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘I’ll come to the execution,’ said Perriman. ‘OK, see you soon.’

  ‘Great,’ said Pascoe. He turned off the Danby road and, using the sun as navigational aid, wove a path along quiet country lanes until he found himself on the road running into the mouth of Dendale.

  The reservoir gate was still open and he drove all the way to where the USU van was parked. He could see the men down at the water’s edge, wielding picks and shovels. Tom Perriman detached himself from the group and came to meet him.

  ‘Who’s a clever boy, then?’ he said. ‘I poked around with a grapple and came up with half a ribcage. I’d say it’s pretty definite the rest of our guy’s down there. It must have been a cellar, and when the house was ‘dozed the slabs on the floor above cracked open to leave a space you could get down through. Somehow this poor sod got himself trapped. Probably got up far enough to get an arm through the gap, then his efforts brought the slab down on him. Water rose. He died, then decomposed till eventually his arm bones broke free and washed out a metre or so into the mere.’

  ‘Great. So you’ve got the rest of the skeleton up?’

  ‘Give us a chance,’ said Perriman. ‘It’s still full of water down there and badly silted up. Also, I’m not too happy sending someone down into gunge a body’s been decaying in.’

  ‘Thought this was the same gunge we’re drinking and cooking with?’

  ‘Not quite in this concentration. But I see you’re in too much of a hurry to wait till we get a pump set up. Is it something identifiable you’re after? Like a jawbone? OK, I’ll give it a whirl, but it’ll cost you several large disinfectant scotches.’

  Pascoe stood and watched the operation. The slab they’d moved had left a space just wide enough for a diver to drop through. The water was dark and murky. Not even the warmth of the evening air could make the prospect of dipping into those depths attractive. Perriman had to work by touch. He sank out of sight and groped about the bottom till his fingers felt something. A femur emerged, then a scapula. Then a skull.

  Pascoe took it and washed it in the cleaner waters of the mere. When he saw the gleam of a metal plate, he said. ‘This’ll do nicely. You can get out now before you catch your death of something.’

  ‘Gee, thanks for your concern,’ said Perriman. ‘But I like it down there. Besides, there’s something else…’

  He vanished again. Thirty seconds passed, then he erupted to the surface, both hands raised high, not in triumph but to display his trophy.

  No length of white bone this time, but a coil of rusting chain.

  Pascoe took it from him and laid its heavy length on the sun-baked ground. One end had been formed into a narrow noose by a padlock, the other had several large staples rammed into its links.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Perriman who’d climbed out. ‘Looks like the poor bastard could’ve been chained up down there. And I think there’s a bit more of the stuff lying around.’

  ‘Leave it till you’ve got the place pumped out,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘I was going to. Pete, you don’t look too surprised.’

  Pascoe looked down at the chain, then raised his gaze to take in the placid waters of the mere, the valley slopes, the long sweep of the fell ridge with the Neb and Beulah Height serenely mysterious against the deepening blue of the evening sky.

  It seemed to him there was perfection out there which it would only take an outstretched hand to touch and absorb like an electric current into the very core of human life. It seemed so close that not to partak
e of it must be deliberate denial, at once wilful and wicked.

  Then he thought of his despair in the past forty-eight hours, of the Purlingstones’ despair for the next God knows how many years, and finally as his gaze came full circle and took in the chain and the bones once more, of this man’s despair as the waters floated him up towards light and freedom, and then drowned him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not too surprised.’

  He rang Danby Station, got Clark and left his message for Dalziel. Then he strolled away along the margin of the lake and dialled the hospital and got them to fetch Ellie to a phone.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he said.

  ‘Fine. Looking better by the minute. And you?’

  ‘Making progress,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be done, though.’

  ‘That’s OK. Plenty to occupy myself with here.’

  ‘Really? You found a handsome doctor, or what?’

  She laughed. It was a good sound to hear.

  ‘No such luck. But I’ve got my pen. Got a few ideas I’d like to play with.’

  ‘Oh yes’ He was thinking, she can’t really be thinking of using what we’ve been through … not yet … But how to say this?

  He didn’t need to. She laughed again and said, ‘It’s OK, Peter. It’ll be a long time before I’ll feel able to lay what we’ve been through on anyone else’s plate. But it’s not the same old stuff either. If no one will pay the piper, it’s time to play a new tune. I think we’ll all be ready for some new tunes after this, won’t we?’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ he said fervently. ‘Talking of old tunes, but, would you care to whistle me through Mahler’s Second Symphony?’

  ‘You what?’

  He explained. They talked a little longer. Finally he rang off and looked around. His walk had brought him to the ruins of the old village which the sun had rescued from the deep. He still had the copy of Wield’s map that Dalziel had given him. From it he tried to locate individual buildings but couldn’t be positive about anything but the church. From what he’d read in The Drowning of Dendale it had been built close by the crag under whose shelter the departed of Dendale had lain prior to their journey over the Corpse Road to St Michael’s. The rest of the village was just a jumble of stones, needing more local knowledge or archaeological expertise than he had to interpret.