Hill, Reginald - Dalziel and Pascoe 17 - On Beulah Height

by Reginald Hill

  They had returned to the living room as he talked and he gave Novello a waggle of the eyebrows as she sat down again, which said clear as speech that he rated her high among the aforementioned blessings.

  "Didn't know you were a religious man," said Wield.

  "Comes with age, I expect, Mr. Wield. Well, it's a good across-the-board bet, isn't it. Maybe that's why I employ the vicar's mother."

  "So with all this religious feeling, you'd be at church on Sunday morning?" said Wield.

  "As a matter of fact, I was," said Turnbull. "Why're you asking, Mr. Wield?"

  You know why we're asking, thought Novello. It's been on the news. In the paper. In the Daily Mirror. Or perhaps you knew before that. ...

  It was an afterthought. A professional coda. She must fight against this submission to charm which got employers leaving businesses to him and vicars passing over their mothers to work for him, and God knows what else. ...

  "Which service?" asked Wield.

  "Matins."

  "That's eleven o'clock, right?"

  "Right."

  "And before that?"

  "Before? Let me see. ..."

  He screwed up his brow in a parody of remembrance.

  "I got up about nine. I remember Alistair Cook's Letter from America was on the radio as I shaved. Then I made myself some coffee and toast and sat with it outside round the back because it was getting hot already, and I read the Sunday paper. That would take me up till about nine forty-five, I expect. That enough for you, Mr. Wield, or do you want more?"

  There was an undertone of anger there now which he couldn't disguise. Or perhaps he could have disguised it perfectly well but just wasn't bothering. Or perhaps he wasn't angry at all.

  "You were by yourself? You didn't see anyone? No one saw you?"

  "Not till I went out to church," said Turnbull.

  "How far's the church?"

  "The other side of the village, about a mile."

  "So you walk there?"

  "Sometimes. Depends on the weather and what I'm doing afterward."

  "And yesterday?"

  "I drove there. I was picking up a friend, heading out for a day on the coast after the service."

  "You always leave your car out front where it is now?"

  "Not always. Sometimes I put it in the garage."

  "And Saturday night?"

  A hesitation. Would it be so hard to remember? Perhaps, like Novello, he was working out where Wield was going with this. And like her, getting there.

  "In the garage," he said.

  Which meant that if, say, the newspaper boy recalled that when he delivered the paper sometime before nine o'clock the car hadn't been visible, it signified nothing.

  She looked at Wield. She knew, indeed had firsthand experience of, his reputation for thoroughness. He wasn't going to let this go till he had checked out everyone in the area who might have noticed Turnbull driving away from his house early on Sunday morning. Correction, she thought. Till I have checked them all out! Great.

  Turnbull was on his feet. He went out of the room and they heard him dialing a number on the phone in the narrow hallway.

  "Dickie," he said. "Geordie Turnbull. Yeah, not bad considering. Considering I've got company. The police. No, no trouble, but I think I'd like you down here to hold me hand. Soon as you can. Thanks, bonnie lad."

  He came back in and said, "Dick Hoddle, my solicitor, is going to join us, Mr. Wield. Hope you don't mind?"

  "It's your house," said Wield indifferently.

  "Yes, and I'm staying in it," said Turnbull. "That's why I want Dickie here. One thing we should get straight, Mr. Wield. I've no intention of letting you take me over to Danby to help you with your inquiries. Not without I'm under arrest."

  "You asked me before what this was about," said Wield. "Seems like you knew all the time."

  "Oh, I knew all right, bonnie lad. Only I couldna believe it. You lot have done this to me once before, remember? I couldn't really believe you were going to do it again. But you are, aren't you?"

  "We're going to pursue all possible lines of inquiry into the disappearance of Lorraine Dacre, yes," said Wield.

  "You do that. And I hope you find the bastard responsible. But you people track your muddy boots through people's lives and never think about the mess you leave behind. I'm not going anywhere there'll be cameras and reporters. Anything you want from me you'll get here, else you'll not get it at all."

  "Fine," said Wield. "Here's where we want to be. To start with I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Turnbull. We'll need to search your premises. And examine your car. Is that agreeable to you?"

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "Oh, yes. Between sooner or later," said Wield.

  "Go ahead," said Turnbull tossing his car keys onto the floor in front of Novello. "Do what you bloody well like. You always did."

  He spoke with a good deal of bitterness, but it was diluted by something else, thought Novello as she picked up the keys. Something which had been there almost from the start. Something very like ... relief?

  But relief at what? That finally his crimes were catching up with him? Or perhaps simply relief that something he'd feared was actually under way?

  She went out to the car.

  Wield walked round the room whistling, not very tunefully "A Wandering Minstrel I." Music for him began with Gilbert and ended with Sullivan.

  "Nice room, Mr. Turnbull," he said when he completed the circuit and rejoined the other in front of the fireplace.

  "Like I say, I've been lucky. And people have been good to me. Tommy Tiplake. And all the folk round here. They'll speak for me, Mr. Wield."

  It was almost an appeal, and Wield was almost affected.

  "Nice to have friends," he said. "Grand old fireplace, that."

  "Yes."

  "Bit big for here, mebbe. And it looks, don't know how, familiar."

  "Grand memory you've got there," complimented Turnbull. "It came out of the Holly Bush in Dendale. The snug bar, remember? Don't worry. It was paid for. Tommy and the other demolition men did a deal with the Water Board for any bits and pieces they fancied. It'll be in their records."

  "I'm sure it will," said Wield. "Better for something like that to find a good home than end up in pieces at the bottom of the mere, eh?"

  There was a moment of shared nostalgia for a past through which progress had plowed its six-lane highway.

  Then from the doorway, Novello said, "Sarge."

  He went out. She showed him a pair of evidence bags. In one was a child's pink-and-white sneaker. In the other a blue silk ribbon tied in a bow.

  "The ribbon was down the backseat," she said. "The sneaker was buried beneath a whole pile of stuff in the trunk."

  Wield stood in silent thought. Novello guessed what the thought was. Confront Turnbull with their discovery now or wait till they'd tried to get an identification from the Dacres?

  Problem was solved by the appearance of the man in the doorway.

  "What's that you've got there, bonnie lass?" he asked.

  He sounded unconcerned. Perhaps in the circumstances too unconcerned, thought Novello. Wield ignored him.

  "Get on the radio ... no, make that the phone," he said. "Tell them what's going off and say I'd like a search team and forensic down here ASAP."

  Then finally he turned his attention to the man and began to intone, "George Robert Turnbull, I must caution you ..."

  Andy Dalziel and Cap Marvell sat facing each other in the snug of The Book and Candle. The snug lived up to its name, having room for no more than half a dozen chairs and two narrow tables, under one of which their knees met, indeed more than met, had to interlock, but Dalziel's apologetic grunt having provoked nothing more than an ironic smile, he relaxed and enjoyed the contact.

  The pub wasn't one he used often, its location "in the bell" and its ultrarespectable ambience, marked by the absence of game machines, pool tables, and Muzak, making it unsuitable for most of a CID man's
professional encounters. But, as it was a pub and as it was on his patch, he knew it, and was known in it, and the landlord had shown no surprise either at Dalziel's order of three pints of best and a spritzer, or his request that the snug should be regarded as closed for the next half hour.

  The first pint hadn't touched the sides and the second was in sad decline before he opened the conversation.

  "Missed you," he said abruptly.

  Cap Marvell laughed out loud.

  "Would you like to try that again, Andy, and this time see if you can make it sound a bit less like some errant schoolboy's reluctant confession to self-abuse?"

  He took another long pull at his pint, then growled, "Mebbe I didn't miss you all that much."

  She squeezed his leg between her knees and said, "Well I've missed you more than I would have believed possible."

  The admission provoked a feeling in him which he didn't altogether recognize.

  While trying to identify it he said surlily, "Your choice."

  "No," she said calmly. "There was no choice. Not then."

  "So why're you here now?"

  "Because now there may be."

  "And?"

  "And if there is, I'll choose."

  "Mebbe you should wait till you're asked," he said. He had identified the feeling as embarrassed delight. It bothered him somewhat. He'd be blushing next!

  "Oh, no. That's a cop-out. All the important choices are made in advance of their occasion."

  He sat looking at her, recognizing now it wasn't just the handsome face, the sturdy body, and the big knockers he'd missed, but her humor, her independence, and the no-crap way she put things, a quality sometimes obscured, sometimes underlined, by her posh accent. That was all that obviously remained of her previous life in which, barely out of finishing school, she had married into the lower reaches of the peerage, given birth to a son, and watched him (as closely as nannies and boarding school permitted) grow up into a young army officer who was reported missing, believed dead, in the Falklands War.

  This had been her epiphanic experience, forcing her to a review of her life, which not even the news that her son was in fact heroically alive could reverse. There had followed, in not-too-rapid succession, disaffection from high society, divorce, deconstruction of all previous moral certainties, dissipation, dedication to a series of radical causes; and finally, Dalziel.

  They had met when an animal rights group she was leader of had been involved in a murder investigation. Separated by a few years, several class-strat, and a moon river of attitudes, they had nevertheless felt a mutual attraction strong enough to bridge all gaps until her demand for trust and his need for professional certainties had required a bridge too far.

  Now this chance encounter seemed to offer the possibility that this missing bridge could be put in place after all.

  She said, "So while we're choosing, let's chat. What brought you to Walter's house? Didn't I read that you're in charge of this missing-child case?"

  So she took note of his name in the papers. He was pleased but hid it.

  "That's right. His car were spotted parked near where she lived--lives. The Turnip's too."

  "Sorry?"

  "Krog. The Swede."

  "Norwegian, I think. But hardly polite anyway."

  "Polite? Mebbe it were some other bugger you missed."

  "Could be. So you wanted to see them. Walter and the ... and Krog?"

  "Aye. For elimination."

  "Thought you sent sergeants to do that."

  This was a reference to his use of Wield to interview her when things got hot.

  "Not when it's someone like Wulfstan," he said.

  "Andy, you're not suggesting the rich and powerful get treated better than poor plebs?" she mocked.

  His brow creased like a field furrowed by a drunken plowboy. She'd not have said that if she knew the Wulfstans' history.

  "How well do you know them, the Wulfstans?" he asked.

  "Not well. The wife hardly at all. Walter only as chair of the festival committee. When I settled down here a few years back, I started going to concerts locally and made a few friends in musical circles, not people who overlapped with my other activities, I hasten to add, before you start asking for names. A particular friend was on the committee. When her job required her to leave the district, she recommended me to take her place, and that was how I got to know Walter."

  "Oh, aye? And he was impressed by your experience of organizing pickets and demos and illegal raids on private premises, was he?"

  "I keep my life pretty well compartmentalized, Andy," she said. "Poke holes in dykes and trouble comes pouring through, as you and I found out. This is my first year on the committee, so I'm still feeling my way."

  "Thought you'd have been in charge by now."

  "Not much chance of that." She smiled. "It's so well organized, there's very little to do. This change of venue is our first real crisis, and Walter seems to have got that well under control."

  "So I gather. You'll be off to Danby to shift furniture, then?"

  "Not today. But I've offered my services tomorrow if needed. Walter runs a tight ship, no evaders need apply. But that's really all I know about him. No use trying to pump me for more, Superintendent."

  "I'm not," said Dalziel. "I reckon I know all I need. Probably best you know it, too, in case you feel like letting on you're a friend of mine."

  She started to make a joke of this, saw his face, and stopped. Her expression turned dark as his as he told her about the Dendale disappearances.

  "Those poor people ... I remember how I felt when they told me Piers was missing. ..."

  "Can't understand how you didn't read about it," he said, half accusing.

  "Maybe I did. But, Andy, fifteen years back I had other things on my mind. Now I see why you're giving Walter the softly, softly treatment. Poor man. But that explains why they adopted."

  "Elizabeth? Aye, you're right, she's not theirs. You managed to winkle that out even though you say you hardly know the Wulfstans, did you? Well, like they say, once a snout, always a snout."

  This ungallant comment was in fact a further reminder of their old intimacy, referring to a time when she'd been the source of some useful information.

  "No, I did not winkle it out," she said firmly. "It was volunteered to me, and certainly not by the Wulfstans or anyone up here. By one of those coincidences which can hardly be part of a divine plan, as they keep on throwing us together, I have a friend in London, Beryl Blakiston, who happens to be head of school that Elizabeth attended for a while."

  "Bugger me," he said admiringly. "With you upper-class lot, who needs the Internet?"

  She regarded him narrowly, suspecting that his acquaintance with the Internet was as vague as hers with the arcana of tactics in the front row of a rugby scrum. But she'd learned it was dangerous to challenge without certainties and went on. "I lunched with Beryl in the spring. Exchanging notes, I mentioned my new responsibilities as a member of the festival committee--it comforts her to hear I keep a couple of toes on the strait and narrow--and she said, was this Wulfstan I mentioned the father of the singer? And I said, yes, because I knew that Elizabeth was penciled in for this year's festival. End of story."

  He took a long swallow which brought the end of the second pint a lot closer.

  "Bollocks," he said.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "First off, you've already let on that your mate Beryl told you the lass were adopted. And second with a couple of go.-and-that.'s in your belly and a bottle of burgundy on the table, there's no way a pair of likely lasses like you two were going to let go of any interesting subject until well chewed."

  "Why do you designate someone you haven't met a likely lass?"

  "'Cos you'd not keep on meeting her for lunch else. So what did she say?"

  Cap Marvell fixed him with a cool, assessing gaze and said, "Andy, this isn't official, I hope? A drink with an old friend is one thing, but if this is turning into an inter
rogation, I want my solicitor playing gooseberry."

  He looked hurt.

  "Nay, lass, I've told you, only reason I came round to see Wulfstan myself was because of what happened way back. Routine inquiry. He's not in the frame. All I'm doing here is making polite conversation till I see which side up the toast is going to fall. If you like, we can talk about the England cricket team. Or the government. Makes you weep, doesn't it?"

  "The government?"

  "Don't be daft. I don't waste tears on yon prancers."

  She laughed and said, "Okay. I believe you, Andy. So, what Beryl told me was that Elizabeth was an adopted child and that there'd been some trouble with her early on, but she'd settled down--"

  "Trouble?" interrupted Dalziel. "I like trouble. Tell me about it."

  "Beryl didn't go into detail. There is such a thing as professional discretion even after a bottle of burgundy. But I got the impression that it was a question of expectations unsatisfied; the girl's of her adoptive parents, theirs of their adopted child. It was serious enough to require the services of a psychologist, or psychiatrist, I'm not sure which. But in the end it all worked out, mainly, Beryl surmised, because of the girl's burgeoning musical talent. Which, of course, was the main occasion and topic of our discussion."

  "Burgeoning," said Dalziel dreamily. "I love it when you talk fancy. Even when I don't understand half you're saying."

  "I'm saying that through her singing, Elizabeth discovered a sense of her own value, and also a belief that her adoptive parents valued her. After that, it was possible for her to get back to normal development."

  "Normal? Like the way she talks?"

  "The accent, you mean? I'm surprised you think there's anything abnormal about that, Andy," she said with wide-eyed innocence.

  "Ha ha. It's all right for an ignorant tyke like me, but a lass brought up by the Wulfstans, going to fancy schools and colleges down south, she talks like that out of choice. You've only got to hear her sing to know that."

  "You've heard her sing?"

  "Aye. On the wireless. Yon dreary stuff you used to play."