On Beulah Height dap-17

by Reginald Hill

  Without being actionable, the combined effect of the two pages was to suggest that the police were as out of their depth now as they'd been fifteen years ago.

  "Sounds like you need all the help you can get," said Jackie Tilney.

  "I'll not quarrel with that," said Dalziel. "So that's the first time you saw him. What about the second?"

  "Yesterday afternoon, he were back. He went through the papers again. And then he went through the book. He was noting things down. Then I noticed he'd left the table where he'd been sitting and I thought he'd gone. But I glimpsed him over there, behind that stack."

  "And what's kept over there?" asked Dalziel.

  "Business directories, mainly," said Tilney.

  "Oh, aye?"

  Dalziel strolled over and took a look. She was right. Why shouldn't she be? He returned to the desk.

  "And then?"

  "And then he left. He was going somewhere else in town, I think. I saw him looking at one of those town maps you get from the Tourist Center. And that was the last I saw of him till that constable of yours stuck that picture in front of me this morning. By the by, is he fit to be let out by himself? The bugger came after me with his stick!"

  "He's an impulsive young lad," said Dalziel. "But good hearted. I'll have a fatherly word with him."

  He gave her a savage smile suggesting the father he had in mind was Cronos.

  "Are we done?" she asked.

  He didn't answer. When you've caught a bright witness, don't let it go till you've squeezed it dry, was a good maxim. A uniformed constable approached and was not put off by Dalziel's Gorgon glare.

  "What?"

  "You're to ring Sergeant Wield at the van, sir."

  Meaning, use a land line, not your mobile phone, for extra security. Meaning…

  Jackie Tilney said, "There's a phone in the office. You can be private there."

  She'd caught the vibes of his reaction. Sharp lady.

  He went through and dialed. Half a ring and the phone was answered.

  "It's me," he said.

  "We've found her, sir."

  The tone told him, dead. His head had long since given up hope of any other outcome, but a tightening of the chest told him his heart had kept a secret vigil.

  He said, "Where?"

  "Up the valley."

  Where he himself had ordered the abandonment of the search the previous night. Shit.

  He said, "I'm on my way. You got things started?"

  Unnecessary question.

  "Yes, sir."

  "And quiet as you can, Wieldy."

  Unnecessary injunction. Born of his own sense of missing things.

  "Yes, sir."

  He put the phone down and went back to the desk.

  "That'll do for now, luv," he said. "Thanks for your help."

  Her eyes suggested his efforts to stay casual were failing.

  He picked up The Drowning of Dendale.

  "All right if I borrow this?"

  "Long as you pay the fine," she said. "Good luck."

  "Thanks," he said.

  He strode out of the library. Suddenly he felt full of energy. The pain at the confirmation of the child's death was still there, but alongside it was another feeling, less laudable and best kept hidden from others, but unhideable from himself.

  After fifteen years, he finally had a body. Bodies told you things. Bodies had been in contact with killers at their most desperate, hasty, and unthinking moments. Mere vanishings were the mothers of rumors, of false trails, of myths and imaginings. But a body…!

  He might hate himself for it, but he could not keep a spring out of his step as he headed for his car.

  Tuesday's bright dawn had brought little but the blackness of contrast to the Pascoes, but Wednesday's brought a glimpse of hope.

  Mrs. Curtis, the consultant, was still several watts short of optimism, but when she said, "For a while yesterday we seemed close to falling through, but now it seems more likely we were simply bottoming out," Ellie didn't even register the medically patronizing we but simply embraced the embarrassed woman.

  She knew there was no question yet of celebration. Rosie was still unconscious. But at least and at last the sunshine brought with it the hope of hope. And with hope came space for her mind to relax its relentless focus on a single object.

  Halfway through the morning Ellie was in the washroom regarding herself critically in the mirror. She looked a wreck, but that was nothing to the way Peter looked. He looked like a wreck that had had another couple of accidents. Which, she thought, was not all that far from the truth.

  They were both in the wrong jobs, she'd often thought it. He should have been basking on the fringes of the life academic, trying his hand at the novel introspective, running Rosie back and forth to school, keeping the house ticking over… no, more than ticking over; on the odd occasion when he'd taken over the ironing, she'd found him pressing underpants, for God's sake! With Peter in charge, they'd have crisp new sheets every night.

  And herself? She should have been out there on the mean streets, riding the punches and taking the bumps, moving on from one case to the next with nothing to show but the odd bit of scar tissue, none of these deep bruises which keep on hemorrhaging around the bone long after the surface flesh has apparently recovered.

  Trouble was, though they shared great areas of social conscience in common, the spin that nature and/or nurture had put on hers made her regard the police force as a cure almost as bad as the disease. Peter, on the other hand, though not blind to its flaws, felt himself duty driven to work from within. A right pious little Aeneas, Italiam non sponte sequor and all that crap. Which made her… Odysseus? Fat, earthy, cunning old Odysseus? Hardly! That was much more Andy Dalziel. Then Dido? Come on! See her chucking herself on a pyre 'cos she'd been jilted. Helen? Ellie looked at herself in the mirror. Not today. So who?

  "Me, myself," she mouthed in the mirror. "God help me."

  As she returned to the ward, a nurse came toward her, saying, "Mrs. Pascoe, we've got someone on the phone for your husband. She says she's a colleague and it's important."

  "She does, does she?" said Ellie. "I'll be the judge of that."

  She went to the phone and picked it up.

  "Hello," she said.

  There was silence, then a woman's voice said, "I was trying to get hold of DCI Pascoe…"

  "This is Mrs. Pascoe."

  "DC Novello, Shirley Novello. Hi. Mrs. Pascoe, I was so sorry to hear… how is she, the little girl?"

  "Hanging on," said Ellie not about to share her hope of hope with a woman she'd only met once briefly. "So tell me, DC Novello, what's so important?"

  Another silence, then, "I just wanted a quick word… look, I'm sorry, this is a terrible time, I know. It's just that there's this line of inquiry he started really, and it would be useful, the way he looks at things… I'm sorry… it's really insensitive, especially

  … it really doesn't matter, Mrs. Pascoe. I do hope your little girl gets better soon."

  She meant, especially because it's about the child who'd gone missing from Danby, thought Ellie. This was the woman who'd rung yesterday. Peter had mentioned her, provoking an outburst of indignation at such crassness. What had Peter replied? She lit a candle for Rosie.

  Ellie had no time for religion, but no harm in hedging your bets with a bit of good old-fashioned magic.

  "That candle still burning?" she said.

  "Sorry?"

  "Never mind. What precisely do you want, Miss Novello? No way you get to tell Peter without telling me first."

  Five minutes later she reentered the ward.

  Pascoe looked up and said, "Still nice and peaceful. Hey, you going somewhere?"

  Ellie had brushed her hair and used her minimalist makeup to maximum effect.

  "No. You are. I want you to go home, have a bath, get a couple of hours' sleep in a real bed. No, don't argue. Come here."

  She led him to the window and swung the panel so tha
t it acted as a mirror.

  "See that antique wreck standing next to that gorgeous woman? That's you. If Rosie opens her eyes and sees you first, she'll think she's done a Rip van Winkle and slept for fifty years. So go home. Sleep with your mobile under your pillow. Slightest change and I'll ring till you waken, I promise."

  "Ellie, no-"

  "Yes. And now. I've fixed a lift for you, that nice young girl from your office called, Shirley Novello is it? She said she'd be delighted to run you home. She's down in the parking lot waiting."

  "Shirley? Again? Jesus…"

  "She's in touch with him, too, I gather. Listen, she wants help and she must think you're the only one if she's willing to come after you here. Perhaps she's delusional, but I think in this case, if you can help, you ought to."

  He shook his head, not in denial but in wonderment.

  "You are… ineffable," he said.

  "Oh, I don't know. I'm looking forward to being effed quite a lot when this is over," she said lightly. "Now go."

  "Only if you'll promise to do the same when I get back."

  "Drive around with a WOULDC? You must be joking. Yes, yes, I promise."

  They kissed. It was, she realized, the first intimate noncomforting contact they'd had since this began.

  She watched him go, hoping her homeopathic theory would work, if that was the right way to describe putting him in the way of other parents' woe at the loss of a child. No, it wasn't the right way, she told herself, turning now to look down at Rosie. They weren't going to lose their child. There was a candle burning for her. And, like Dido after all, her mother would make a candle of herself if that's what it took.

  "Hello, sir."

  "And hello to you, too, Shirley," said Pascoe, getting into the car. "Kind of you to drive me home. You've got between here and there to tell me what you want to tell me."

  Novello thought, If you want to know what a man will look like when he's old, put him by his child's sickbed for a couple of nights.

  But she responded to his crisp speech, not his wrecked appearance, and ran off the resume she had prepared with a Wieldian conciseness and lucidity.

  He offered no compliment. Indeed he seemed to offer little attention, apparently more interested in the crackling air traffic of her car radio, which she'd left switched on.

  She reached down to turn it off but he grasped her hand and said, "No, leave it."

  It was the first time they'd made physical contact, and in other circumstances with other officers she'd have suspected it was the preliminary to a pass and prepared for defensive action.

  He held the hand for a second, then she had to change gear and he released it.

  "So," he said. "Benny's been seen in Dendale and in the Central Library by a reliable witness. Agnes drew the money out of the bank. And Geordie Turnbull's been attacked."

  Novello, who'd included the latter piece of information only in the interests of comprehensiveness, said, "Yes, but that'll probably be some local nutter, someone like this Jed Hardcastle perhaps-"

  "Geordie Turnbull's been living in Bixford for years and making no secret about it, not unless you think having your name printed in big red letters over a fleet of bulldozers is being secretive. Why wait so long?"

  "Because of the Dacre girl going missing," said Novello, stating the obvious, and wondering whether this had been such a good idea. "That started it all up again."

  To her surprise, he laughed. Or made a sound which had a familiar resemblance to laughter.

  "Shirley, you should get it out of your mind that what happened to those families who lost their daughters is something that needs starting up again. It's a permanent condition, no matter how long they survive. Like losing an arm. You might learn to live without it, but you never learn to live as if you've still got it."

  He spoke with a vehemence she found disturbing and when he saw the effect he was having on her, he took a breath and made himself relax.

  "Sorry," he said. "It's just that in a case like this you share in the woes of others only insofar as they relate to, or underline, your own. When I heard Rosie was ill, the fact that the Dacres' child was missing, probably abducted, possibly already murdered, may not have gone out of my mind altogether, but it certainly dropped right out of my consciousness. Understandable initial reaction, you think? Perhaps so. And the perspective will return. But never the same. I know now that if I was within an arm's length of fingering the collar of Benny or any other serial killer, and someone said, "Rosie needs you," I'd let him go."

  He realized that his laid-back confidentiality was troubling her as much as his previous vehemence. He recalled a long time ago in his early days with Dalziel, the Fat Man in his cups had come close to talking about his broken marriage, and he'd shied away from the confidence, unwilling to know what his superior might regret telling.

  "In other words, I think we need to look beyond the Dendale families for Turnbull's attacker. And you say he didn't want to report it? That's interesting."

  "Yes, sir," she said, aware that the distance between the hospital and Pascoe's house was growing shorter. "But I'm not really concerned with that bit of the investigation anymore."

  But you've not forgotten it was you who got the lead in the first place, thought Pascoe, detecting resentment.

  He said gently, "I know that being mucked around can be a real pain sometimes. But you've got to keep the whole investigation in view. That's what the people you think are mucking you around are doing. Don't get mad, get promoted. Mr. Dalziel has thought from the start that Lorraine Dacre's disappearance was connected with Dendale fifteen years back. I didn't agree, but the more I see the way things are working out, the more I think he may be right. So, don't create connections, but don't overlook them either."

  "No, sir," said Novello. "They do keep on jumping up, don't they? I read the old files. You recall that girl, Betsy Allgood, the one who got away from Benny? Well, seems she's back too!"

  She reached into the backseat, picked up the Post, and dropped it in Pascoe's lap.

  Not such a clever idea, she thought as he spent the next couple of minutes studying both pages, the one on the case and the one on the concert.

  "Betsy Allgood," he murmured. "There was a photo in the file. She didn't look much like that."

  "We grow up, sir," she said. "We start looking the way we want, not our parents, as you'll likely find out."

  He glanced at her sharply, then smiled his thanks for this oblique reassurance.

  "Well, it's certainly an improvement," he said. "She was, if I recall, a rather unprepossessing child."

  It was her turn to give him the sharp glance. He thought, That was pretty crass, Pascoe, in your situation, being snooty about other people's kids.

  But the photo continued to bother him. Or rather the photos, because while Betsy/elizabeth, who he'd seen before, looked totally unfamiliar, Walter Wulfstan, whom he'd never seen, rang some kind of bell. But why not? Local dignitary, the kind of man you were likely to see on the top table at some of the civic occasions he'd been delegated to attend as what Dalziel called the "smart-arse face of policing."

  And something else was bothering him too…

  He said, "Pull in here, will you? By that phone box."

  She obeyed, puzzled, but had the wit to sit in silence while Pascoe listened, frowning, to the air traffic on her radio.

  "Something's happening," he said.

  She said, "I didn't hear anything, sir…"

  "No, it's not what anyone's saying, just now and then a pause, an inflection… maybe I'm way off beam, but do me a favor, Shirley. Check with the incident room at Danby."

  "Okay," she said, pulling out her mobile.

  "No," he said, pointing to the phone box. "If I'm right, you won't get anything unless you're on a land line."

  She flushed at her slowness, and got out of the car.

  Pascoe studied the paper again, then twisted round to place it on the rear seat. Novello had the same attitude as
Ellie toward her car, he observed. You kept the driver's seat free and used the rest as a mobile litter bin. He frowned as he saw a couple of plastic evidence bags amid the debris. Things like that you kept locked in your trunk till you could hand them in for examination or storage as soon as possible.

  He picked the bags up and set them on his lap. They both had tags indicating their contents had been examined by the lab. The larger bag contained a cigarette pack, two Sunday papers, and a stained tissue, the smaller one a camera battery and a silver earring in the shape of a dagger.

  He was still looking at this bag when Novello got back into the car, but her words put any questions he had to the back of his mind.

  "They've found her," she said in a flat, controlled voice. "I spoke to Mr. Headingley. Not formally identified yet, but it seems Sergeant Wield's sure. He took her dog up the valley…"

  "Clever old Wieldy," said Pascoe. "Doesn't explain how everyone else missed her. Dogs, thermal imaging…"

  "There was a dead sheep. In this weather…"

  "Clever old killer," said Pascoe, trying to keep the image of the dead girl at arm's length. "Anything on cause yet?"

  "No sir. The scene-of-crime team's up there with the doctor now. This knocks my notion about abduction on the head."

  She, too, was trying to cope with it by losing the child's body in a heap of detective abstractions.

  Pascoe said, "I bet the super's pleased."

  "Sir?" Her indignation couldn't be hidden.

  "Because he's got a body," said Pascoe. "He'd given her up long since. From the very first moment he heard she'd gone missing, I think. But to get after the killer he needs something concrete. Otherwise you're just punching air. So, anything else?"

  "Yes, the super briefed the DI before he went off up the valley."

  She passed on the results of Dalziel's interview with Jackie Tilney, with an amount of detail that surprised Pascoe.

  "You must have a lot of influence with George Headingley," he said.

  The DI belonged to an old school who believed that telling DC'S too much only confused them and telling WOULDC'S anything other than how many sugars you took was a complete waste of breath.

  "Told him I was under instructions from you, sir, and you wanted a blow-by-blow. He sends his best wishes, by the way, for… you know.