On Beulah Height dap-17

by Reginald Hill

  "Your mother write back?" asked Wield.

  "How would I know?" said Slater. "Could be, but like I say, she wasn't much in control for a helluva lot of the time. Talked about Granny Lightfoot sometimes, hated her guts as far as I could make out, and I gathered the feeling was mutual. But one thing Ma always did say about her was she was a tidy old bird with her head screwed on, and if anyone in our family could hang on to a bit of dosh, Agnes was the girl."

  "Wasn't she concerned about Benny?" Novello heard herself asking.

  Slater shrugged and said, "Who knows? Didn't talk about him much and when she did, it was usually to say he'd made his bed and could lie on it. I think she was really pissed when he chose to stay with his gran rather than take off with her."

  "But he was her son, her firstborn," Novello persisted.

  "So? That just made getting the old heave-ho from him worse. Sometimes when the booze had got her to the weepy stage, she'd say she'd like to see Benny before she died. Then she'd get past it and say he'd probably got the old girl's dosh by now and was living high on the hog, so why the hell should she worry about him when he didn't worry about her?"

  Wield was looking over his shoulder at Novello to see if she had anything else to say. She gave a small shake of her head.

  "So after your mother died, you thought you'd come back to England and check whether in fact the old lady was seriously rich and see if you could squeeze some of it your way?" said the sergeant.

  "Not so," said Slater, unperturbed by the provocative question. "Ma died, and suddenly I was footloose and fancy free, no one to please but myself, no one to spend my money on but me, and I thought, the only relatives I got in the whole wide world are back there in Pommerania, so why not take a trip and see what there was to see."

  "But you made a beeline for Wark House, right?" said Wield accusingly.

  "No way, mate. Touched down on Monday. Dossed down with this mate of a mate in London. He had this old camper he let me borrow for a few quid. Lot cheaper than hotels, and I'm a real open-air boy. I drifted north, taking in the sights. Hit Yorkshire Friday morning and thought, no harm in checking Gran Lightfoot out. It was good to find her still alive. Mind you, she was pretty crook. And confused. Thought I was Benny. I tried to put her straight, then she said something which really made my ears prick and I stopped trying. Something about she knew I'd have found the money and used it to get away safe."

  "Thought you weren't interested in money," said Wield.

  "Didn't say that, mate. What I said was, that wasn't why I came back. But I wasn't going to look the other way if it looked like some dosh might be due to me. Especially when she let on in her ramblings it was fifty thou in cash, and she'd put it in a tin chest up under the eaves where Benny knew she always hid her valuables, so that's where he'd have looked after she went into hospital."

  "And she believed Benny had got the money?" said Wield.

  "Yeah, that's clearly what she reckoned when he vanished from sight. And now that she knew for certain he'd got it-because she'd seen me, thinking I was Benny-she said she could die happy. Now I did try telling her again, no need for her to die just yet, happy or not, as I was Barney not Benny, but she was pretty flaked out by now and I could tell she wasn't taking it in. So I left. Look, no need to sit there looking all po faced. I want her to know who I really am. I'm going to call in again on my way back south and hope I get her when she's a bit more with it."

  He stared defiantly at Wield and the others, then it came to him that it wasn't just disapproval he was seeing on their faces.

  "What?" he said.

  "Bad news," said Dalziel. "Or mebbe good, depending how you look at it. After your visit, she died happy. Last night."

  "Ah, shit, you're jossing me? No, you're not, are you? Shit. I really hoped…"

  He appeared genuinely distressed.

  Novello waited for someone to suggest a break in the interview but all Dalziel said was "Never fret, lad. Tha's still in good time for the funeral. And now there's the money to make it a good 'un. Sooner we get this sorted, sooner you can start seeing to all that. So let's get on, shall we? Just take it from when you leave Wark House."

  The implication that soon as Slater had told them this, he would be free to go, came close to being an inducement, thought Novello. Not that it mattered. She reckoned she could have told most of the man's story for him anyway.

  "I headed on north 'cos that was the way I was pointing," he began. "But all the time I was thinking, like you do when you're driving. And what I thought was if Benny had picked up the dosh and taken off, why'd he never tried to contact Gran? I mean, he loved her more than anyone else in the world, right? So what had happened to him? And the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, had it happened to him before or after he got his hands on the money?"

  "So you got to wondering if mebbe the box were still where Agnes put it, up in the attic of Neb Cottage," said Dalziel.

  "That's right. Seemed a long shot, but what the hell, I had nowhere else in particular I wanted to be. Only, when I got to Dendale I discovered there was no Neb Cottage anymore. I had a wander round but it was so long since I'd been there, I couldn't even be sure I was looking at the right heap of stones! But by now I was getting to feel stubborn. If that money was still around and Benny wasn't, then I had as good a claim as anyone, right? So I headed into town and tried the library. Lady there was truly helpful. I was able to read all about what happened back there in the old papers. Also she showed me this book which had before-and-after maps in it, which I got photocopied."

  "Hold on," said Wield, ever the stickler for detail. "Let's get the timing sorted. You arrived in Dendale when?"

  "Saturday morning. Got myself a pitch at this farm, then walked up the dale and started looking. When I realized I was getting nowhere, that's when I drove into town. Was in the library till closing, which was also close to opening, so I had a few beers and a spot of grub, then back to the dale. Sunday I was up with the lark. This time I boxed clever and first off I climbed up to the ridge of the Neb and wandered along there awhile, getting a bird's-eye view. Best way to get your bearings, made more sense of the maps than working out mileage and such on the ground. Once I was sure I'd located the right heap of rubble I went down there and started digging."

  "Let's hold it there," said Dalziel. "You're up on the ridge. Just looked down one side, did you? Into Dendale? Never looked down the Danby side?"

  "What? Hey, you're not still trying to tie me in to that missing kiddie, are you? Come on! It's clear from what the papers said that you're running around like headless chickens, pointing the finger at poor Benny, who no one's seen for fifteen years. You try to keep it in the family and you'll look a real load of assholes!"

  Pascoe at this point would probably have said something about headless chickens not having fingers, thought Novello.

  Dalziel just looked longingly at the tape machine as if trying to switch it off by force of will so he could have a real heart-to-heart.

  Then he said gently, "Not missing kiddie. Dead kiddie, Mr. Slater. Just tell us. Please."

  "Yeah. Sure. Sorry. You've got a job to do. I hope to hell you get the bastard," said Slater. "No, I don't believe I did look down the Danby side. I was concentrating on locating what I hoped might be the site of fifty thousand quid, remember. Soon as I was sure I'd located the cottage ruins, I headed on down there."

  "You mean you returned to the col and went back down the Corpse Road?" said Wield.

  "Nah. Headed straight down. Crazy really, it's bloody steep. I went arse over tip and nearly did my ankle. In the end I dropped into this ghyll, White Mare's Tail they call it. The going was a bit easier there, though I'd not have liked to try it if the fell hadn't been all dried up with the heat."

  "And did you see anyone else?"

  "In the valley? Not a soul for a long time. Oh, yeah, there was someone on the ridge, I think. I glanced back and think I saw some guy on the col where the Corpse Road crosses. But he was a
long way off and the ridge took a dip just then and I didn't see him again."

  "But there were people in the valley later?" said Wield.

  "Yeah, sure. Hikers, families having picnics, all kinds of folk wandering around the bits of the old village that the drought's brought back up. I didn't want an audience to what I was doing, natch, but by then anyway I was pig sick of the business. I'd done all I could with my hands and found nothing. There were blocks of stone there I'd need a crow or pickax to shift. So I gave myself the rest of the day off, went off to get a wet and see if I could find any action."

  "Any luck?" asked Dalziel.

  "Not sure. All I know is I woke in my tent next morning with my Jockey shorts back to front and a mouth like a pigman's bucket. All I could think was When I finally stop shaking, I'm out of here. But by midday, when I'd got a few pints of tea inside me and could think of taking solids without spewing my ring, I got a little more upbeat. So I drove off to get some tucker, and afterward, I found one of these big DIY superstores and bought myself a pick and a crow. I waited till late evening, when I had the valley to myself, before I started work. It was almost pitch black by the time I gave up. By then I knew for certain that wherever the money was, it wasn't there."

  "But you still didn't accept the obvious conclusion that Benny had got it?" said Wield.

  "Did at first," said the man. "Then I got to thinking, you jokers were after him, right? So one place you'd be watching day and night till it was 'dozed would be Neb Cottage, 'cos that's where he'd most likely make for. So if he'd shown, you'd have spotted him. And as you didn't, maybe he had never come back for the money."

  "Maybe he did come back," said Novello. "Maybe that's what he was doing by the ruins when he attacked Betsy Allgood. Looking for the box."

  "Could be," said Dalziel. "Had a bad night, didn't he? So you started wondering who else might have got the money?"

  "Right," said Slater. "First off, I thought it might be one of you lot. Well, you were on the spot, right? And fifty thou in used notes is a helluva temptation even for virtuous gents like yourselves."

  He smiled at Novello as if to exclude her from the slur. She didn't smile back.

  "But once you'd put such a daft notion out of your head," said Dalziel genially, "you still didn't give up. Once a Yorkie, always a Yorkie, eh? So it was back to yon bonnie lass in the library, eh?"

  "Right," grinned Slater. "I just didn't want to leave before I'd made damn sure I'd not missed anything. And this time I found myself staring at the pic of the 'dozer demolishing the cottage."

  They were all as far ahead of him now as Novello had been from the start, but it was necessary for him to spell it out for the tape.

  He'd made out the name painted on the bulldozer, checked it in the local business directories, and discovered that for the last several years Tommy Tiplake had been trading as Geordie Turnbull out of the same address. And he recalled reading in the local paper the day before that this same Turnbull had been helping the police with their inquiries just as he'd done fifteen years ago in Dendale.

  "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 kiss 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 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 cooperated 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 earthmovers 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, okay?"

  "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. Turnbull?" 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 inquiries. 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."