On Beulah Height dap-17

by Reginald Hill

  "Well, he hasn't, stupid," I said. "That's what I've just been telling you. He hasn't come home."

  "I don't mean Danby home, I mean his old home, his real home, so who's stupid now?" he retorted. "And I'll tell you summat else. If he's gone back to Low Beulah, he'll likely get drowned, 'cos they're letting loose Black Moss today."

  I thought about this all through the morning till break. The more I thought, the more I reckoned Joss were right. Bonnie had been fretting ever since the move. Where else would he run after Dad had kicked him but back to Dendale? At morning break I told Joss to tell teacher I'd gone off home with a bellyache.

  Looking back, I know what I set out to do were daft. Chances of finding Bonnie, even if he had set out back to Low Beulah, was rotten. Chances of me slipping and breaking a leg were a lot better. But I had this picture of Bonnie sitting down by the mere all forlorn and this big wall of water rushing down from Black Moss and sweeping him away.

  So I set off up the Corpse Road to Dendale.

  It were a steep climb out of Danby, but I were strong for my age and the path were so well worn, I had no problem following it even when the mist swirled close. Rain never let up, and soon I was sodden through, but it weren't a cold rain with the wind coming from the south, and I was moving fast as I could, so that kept me warm inside.

  As I came over the ridge of the Neb I could hear White Mare's Tail thundering, but there were another noise I didn't recognize. It wasn't till I got halfway down into the dale, and suddenly the mist opened up like it does, that I saw where it came from.

  Down from Black Moss what had used to be a whole lot of becklets streaking the hillside like silver threads had knit together into a great tumbling force. It rushed straight down fellside into the valley bottom, where it joined with White Mare's Beck and went roaring down to the mere.

  The mere itself were fuller than I'd ever seen it, even in the old spring floods. Mebbe this were 'cos of the dam wall holding it back from running off down dale, mebbe 'cos of all the rain we'd had, and the new force from Black Moss. But already its old shape were gone and it were covering fields and walls which ran along its edges and lapping about ruins of houses, like Heck, which had stood close.

  I stood there and felt… I don't know what I felt. I were looking at place I'd spent most of my little life and not recognizing it. It were like looking in mirror and seeing someone else there.

  Through the mist I could just make out on far side of the mere the round hillock close by where Low Beulah had stood. Then it vanished, and in no time at all I could hardly see more than a couple of steps in front of me again. But it were easy enough to follow Corpse Road down to Shelter Crag. Now I was scrambling around on blocks of stone from buildings that had been knocked down and it were hard to tell just where I was. I were trying to get to the little humpback bridge over White Mare Beck, which would take me onto the road round mere and so up to Low Beulah, but when I reached edge of the beck, or river as it were now, I realized how daft I'd been. Bridge would have gone, if it hadn't been knocked down it would be underwater now. I were so wet, I thought of wading over, but I could see it were too deep. And any road, it moved so fast, I'd have been knocked off my feet.

  I stood there shouting, "Bonnie! Bonnie!" over the water for a while. Then it struck me. If I couldn't get over, neither could a cat. One thing Bonnie hated was getting wet. He'd been really miserable just being out in the rain, no way he'd try to swim across a river.

  So what would he do? Try and find shelter, I told myself.

  I felt a bit happier now. Water was rising fast but not so fast it could catch a cat, and though the new river were running strong, it were a long way short of the huge wave rushing down the dale I'd seen in my fancy.

  So I started calling, "Bonnie! Bonnie!" and went wandering off up what were left of the village. The rain was harder now and it seemed to stot up from ground to join the mist so that you could really feel it like stroking your face and arms and legs as you moved along. It were a funny feeling but I were so wet now that I didn't mind it, in fact I think I might have quite enjoyed it if I hadn't been so worried about Bonnie. I couldn't see a thing, but I thought as long as I were going uphill I couldn't come to much harm, and all the time I kept on shouting his name.

  And then I heard him meowing back.

  I knew right off there were summat wrong. I know all the sounds Bonnie makes, and the kind of yell he gives when he's hungry and wants his supper, or when you've left him shut up for a long time and he's narked with you, is a lot different from the noise he makes when he's scared.

  I thought, Mebbe he's hurt himself, and I shouted again, and he shouted back, and I went toward the noise.

  First thing I saw was this big pile of stones. Then I heard Bonnie again and I saw his eyes, two slivers of green glistening in the dark. But they were quite high up and I thought he must be standing on this pile of stones. Then above his eyes I saw something else, a paleness in the air, and another pair of eyes, and I took a step closer and saw that someone was holding Bonnie tight against his chest.

  And at the same time I realized the pile of stones was all that was left of Neb Cottage and the man holding Bonnie was Benny Lightfoot.

  He said, "Is that you, Betsy Allgood?"

  His voice were low and unearthly, and his face so thin and his eyes so staring, he looked just like one of the nixes I recall seeing in an old picture book. I'd never been so scared before, nor since. But he had Bonnie and I knew that nixes ate any beasts they took, lambs or dogs, or cats.

  So I said, "Yes, it is."

  He said, "And you've come calling for me," sort of wonderingly.

  I said, "No, I were calling for my cat." Then seeing how he'd made his mistake, I went on, "He's Bonnie. That's what I were calling. Bonnie, not Benny."

  "Bonnie not Benny," he echoed. Then he sort of smiled, and he said, "Never mind, you're here now, Betsy Allgood. Come here."

  "No, I don't want to," I said.

  "You mean, you don't want your cat?"

  He held Bonnie up in both hands and he must have squeezed or something, because Bonnie let out a squawk of pain. I didn't decide to do anything, I just found myself walking toward him.

  He were standing higher than I was, being up the fell and also on one of the stones from the cottage, and he held Bonnie out toward me. I reached up to take him, but just as my fingers were almost touching his fur, Benny pulled him back with one hand andwiththe other he grabbed me by the arm.

  I started screaming, and he pulled me closer to him, his fingers so tight around my flesh, I thought he were going to snap the bone. His face came down close to mine and I could feel his breath on my face, his cold wet lips against my neck, as he spoke in a horrible, breathless whisper, "Listen, listen, little Betsy. I don't want to hurt you, all I want you to do is-"

  Then, because I were twisting so hard to get away, he must have slackened his grip on Bonnie, and Bonnie shot up into the air and caught with his claws at Benny's face to stop himself falling.

  Now it were Benny's turn to scream. He let go of me to grab at the cat, but Bonnie was already dropping to the ground, and I stooped down and scooped him up. Benny made another grab for me, I felt his fingers touch my hair, but it were so short and so wet, he couldn't get any grip, and then I was running away fast as I could with Bonnie in my arms.

  How far I ran I don't know. Not all that far. The ground was damp and skiddy and covered with rocks and I soon tripped and fell. I could feel my ankle hurting, so I didn't try to get up but rolled over under a big boulder and lay there, panting so hard, I thought I must be heard half a mile away. But slowly my breathing eased, and Bonnie, tight against my chest, seemed to know that it wasn't a good idea to make a lot of noise, and eventually I could hear the hiss of the rain once more, and the thunder of White Mare's Tail, and the roar of the new force tumbling down from Black Moss.

  There were other sounds, too, movings, shiftings, breathings, which could have been Benny looking for me, s
o I closed my eyes and lay there quiet as I could and tried to say my prayers like the Reverend Disjohn had taught me. But I couldn't say them in my mind and I didn't dare say them out loud for fear of sharp ears out there listening for me. In the end I think I fell asleep. Or mebbe I started to die. Mebbe it's the same. One moment you're here, next you're nowhere.

  Then suddenly I were plucked from that peaceful darkness by arms seizing me close and a voice crying in my ear. For a second I struggled wildly, thinking that Benny had got me again. Then the smell of the body I was pressed against and the sound of the voice in my ears told me it was my dad who'd got ahold of me, and I pressed close as I could, and I knew everything was going to be all right now. I thought everything was going to be all right forever.

  On the third day of the Lorraine Dacre inquiry, Shirley Novello woke up feeling pissed off.

  The feeling hit her a good minute before she'd struggled far enough out of the clutches of sleep to identify its source. Feelings were like that. Sometimes she woke up happy and lay there luxuriating in mindless joy till finally her waking brain reminded her what she was happy about.

  Now she opened her eyes, saw the inevitable bright sunlight spilling in through the thin cotton curtains, yawned, and remembered.

  Andy Dalziel, the Pol Pot of Mid-Yorkshire, the thinking woman's Kong, had told her to keep Peter Pascoe's appointment with Ms. Jeannie fucking Plowright, head of Social Services, this morning.

  She tried to tell herself she should be flattered to be handed the DCI'S assignment, but all she could feel was pissed. Like yesterday. She'd done all the hard work on the cars, then she'd been shoved off into the school to talk to the kiddywinks. She'd dragged herself back from that by persuading Wield that it was worth asking questions about the blue station wagon the whole length of the Highcross Moor road. He'd gone along with it more, she guessed, because he couldn't think of anything better for her to do than in expectation it would be worth doing. Well, she'd proved him wrong. Result, they had a suspect. Okay, no one seemed very hopeful, but no one had come up with anyone better. Turnbull was for the time being the focal point of the inquiry. The clock was ticking. He would have to be released later today if nothing concrete emerged. But that gave them several more hours to hammer away. She ought to be there, helping with the hammering. Instead of which she was pushed out to the periphery again, all because these pathetic men were scared something from a fifteen-year-old cock-up might come back to haunt them.

  Unfair, she told herself. She'd spent a good part of last night studying the Dendale file. The photos of those three little blond-haired girls had gripped her throat like a cold hand and she'd had to pour herself a drink. There'd been a photo of the fourth girl, too, Betsy Allgood, the one who got away, a strange little chubby-faced creature, with cropped black hair, more like a boy than a girl, except for those wide watchful eyes which seemed to belong to some creature of the night. What had become of her? Had the experience of being attacked by Lightfoot left its mark on her soul forever? Or had the resilience of childhood been powerful enough to shrug it off, leaving her free to go forward unscathed?

  Whatever, yes, if she'd been engaged in such a case and not brought it to a satisfactory conclusion, then she, too, might find it haunting her dreams for the rest of her life. In fact, if they didn't get a result in the Lorraine Dacre inquiry, perhaps fifteen years from now…

  She pushed the thought away. They were going to get a result. And if the memory of Dendale made the Fat Man even more determined to get his man, that was all to the good.

  But this concern with old Mrs. Lightfoot was surely clutching at straws. She was old and sick fifteen years ago. She was almost certainly long dead. God rest her soul, she added, crossing herself. Police work meant you had to become hardened to death in the physical sense, able to look at all sorts and conditions of corpse without spewing your guts. She was becoming better at that. But she was determined to avoid that parallel and irreversible hardening of the emotional and spiritual response.

  Now the reason why the DCI couldn't keep his own appointment rose to the surface of her mind and with it a surge of guilt at her own resentment.

  She slipped out of bed, dropped on her knees before the ghastly picture of the Blessed Virgin her mother had bought at Lourdes and made her promise to hang on her bedroom wall, presumably as the only form of prophylactic a good Catholic girl owt to use, and said a quick prayer of intercession for the Pascoe girl. Then she rose and looked at herself in the mirror.

  A wreck, she judged herself. So fucking what? Even a wrecked policewoman would shine among the tatty-bag-smock-and-no-makeup freaks who haunted the offices of Social Services!

  It came as a shock at nine o'clock to find herself facing a tall, slender woman in a Gucci-clone suit.

  And she clearly came as a disappointment to the head of Social Services.

  "I was expecting DCI Pascoe," said Plowright.

  And looking forward to him, thought Novello. The sexy face of policing!

  "He couldn't make it," she said, and explained why.

  "Oh, God, that's terrible," said Plowright, concern shining through with a force which must have reassured many clients ready to be alienated by her appearance. She made a note on a pad, then became briskly professional.

  "So how can I help? The message said something about Mrs. Lightfoot from Dendale."

  Novello explained. She thought she'd been equally briskly professional but when she'd finished, the social worker said, "And you think it's a waste of time?"

  Shit, thought Novello. Memo to self: Plowright's job, like her own, required sensitivity to subtexts, and she'd been a lot longer at it.

  She tried for a misunderstanding. "Sorry, I know how busy you are.

  …"

  "Not my time. Yours," smiled Plowright, pulling out a gold cigarette case and proffering it. Novello shook her head. Smoking was one form of male CID camouflage she had steadfastly resisted. Plowright lit up without any of the now almost compulsory do-you-mind? gestures. Well, it was her office.

  "But Peter, DCI Pascoe, presumably didn't think it a waste of his time," the woman continued.

  "Mr. Pascoe's a very thorough man," said Novello, determined to retake the high ground. "He likes to eliminate the possible, no matter how improbable. So, can you help, Mrs. Plowright?"

  "Call me Jeannie," said the woman. "Yes, I think I can. It's a long time ago, but fortunately we tend to hoard our records. I became involved with Agnes, that's old Mrs. Lightfoot, after she'd recovered from her stroke sufficiently to be moved out of hospital. Things weren't quite so bad in the NHS back then, but already there was a growing shortage of beds, and hospital managers were particularly keen to avoid becoming long-term minders of the elderly infirm."

  "So Agnes was no longer in need of treatment?"

  "She was in need of care," said Plowright. "No way could she go back to looking after herself. Mentally she was back to full strength, but she couldn't walk unaided and had limited use of her left hand and arm. No further physical improvement was expected, so the hospital turned to us. Our job-my job-was either to get her a nursing-home place or find some member of her family able and willing to look after her. The latter didn't seem a possibility."

  "Why?"

  "Because her son was dead, her daughter-in-law had remarried and gone to Australia, and her designated next of kin was her grandson, Benny, and nobody knew where he was, but I daresay you know all about that."

  "So what happened?" asked Novello, ignoring the dig.

  "I set about finding her a place in one of our approved nursing homes. Agnes didn't cooperate. There were forms to be filled in, details to check, all the usual bureaucracy. She just refused to answer questions or write her signature. And then her niece turned up."

  "How did that come about?"

  "I'd come across her name and address in Agnes's papers, such as they were. One of her old acquaintances from Dendale who came to see her told me that this Winifred Fleck was Agnes's ni
ece. They exchanged Christmas cards because that was what relatives did, but there was no love lost between them. I'd gone through the motions of writing to her anyway, because, like Peter Pascoe, I believe in eliminating the possible no matter how apparently improbable."

  She smiled as she said this, presumably to show it was a joke, not a crack. Novello gave a token smile back to show she didn't much care which, and said, "But in this case the improbable possible came good, right?"

  "That's right. Mrs. Winifred Fleck turned up at the hospital one day, had a chat with Agnes, then informed the authorities that she would be taking her aunt home to live with her."

  "Nice caring lady," said Novello approvingly.

  "She looked to have the qualifications. She'd worked as a care assistant in a nursing home, so she knew the kind of thing that was involved."

  "But you didn't like her?" said Novello, not displeased to show Jeannie Plowright that she wasn't the only one able to pick up a nuance.

  "Not a lot. But that means nothing. I can't say I was exactly in love with old Agnes either. You had to admire her will and her independence, but in her eyes I was an authority figure, and she didn't go out of her way to show her best side to authority figures. Anyway, she was compos mentis, so even if the niece had just served time for beating up patients in the geriatric ward, there was nothing I could have done to prevent Agnes moving in with her once she indicated this was what she wanted."

  "Which it was?"

  "She said so, signed all the hospital discharge papers, didn't bother to thank anyone, was helped into a car by Winifred, and that was that."

  "And you heard nothing more?"

  "I passed on the papers to the appropriate Social Services office down in Sheffield and checked with them a couple of weeks later. They said everything was fine, Mrs. Fleck was taking her new responsibility seriously, and she'd applied for all the grants and allowances and so on."