On Beulah Height dap-17

by Reginald Hill

  "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."

  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 analyze 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 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 toward 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 fallout 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 favor. Get onto 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 dialed 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 okay 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. "Okay, 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 underwater search 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 rib cage. 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 meter 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? Okay, 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 cl
imbed 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 partake of it must be deliberate denial, at once willful 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 toward 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 dialed the hospital and got them to fetch Ellie to a phone.

  "Everything okay?" 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 okay. Plenty to occupy myself with here."

  "Oh, yes? 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 okay, 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?"

  "Oh, yes," 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.

  He stood there a long while, feeling all about him the ghosts of the dead, and of the living, too, whose departure from this place had been a rehearsal for death. Then he heard a car engine and saw a police Range Rover bumping down the water's edge where the divers were. Out of it climbed Dalziel, followed by Wield and Novello.

  By the time he joined them, they'd heard Perriman's account of things, but their first inquiries were after Rosie.

  "Spoke to Ellie on my mobile not long back," he said. "She's still sleeping sound, I mean really sleeping. It looks good."

  "Great," said Dalziel. "And t'other lass, the one with the funny name?"

  "Zandra?" said Pascoe. "She died."

  "Oh, shit."

  There was a long silence, the sort which seems unbreakable. Finally Dalziel cleared his throat and said brusquely, "Right, lad. So what's going off here? How come, with all you've had on your plate, you know more than I do?"

  "I had help," said Pascoe. "From unexpected quarters."

  He led them to his car and took a large envelope from the front seat.

  "How much do you know about Elizabeth Wulfstan?" he said.

  "Know that she's Betsy Allgood who got orphaned, then adopted, way back," said Dalziel. "Needed a shrink to get her straight in her early teens."

  "Right," said Pascoe, unsurprised at Dalziel's knowledge, though he might have raised an eyebrow if he'd realized how recently, and how, he'd acquired it. "The shrink, incidentally, seems to have been Paula Appleby."

  "Her on the telly? Thinks cops should be injected with estrogen? Jesus!" said Dalziel. "So what's this got to do with anything?"

  Pascoe extracted several sheets from the envelope.

  "These are transcripts of Betsy's memories of Dendale and after, recalled and taped during the course of her treatment."

  "You wha'?" said Dalziel taking the sheets.

  He ran his eye over them quickly. He might not have Wield's almost total recall after a single reading, but when it came to sheer speed, he was county class.

  "So?" he said when he'd finished. "Lass seems to be saying, bit more grown-up like, what she told us fifteen years back in Dendale."

  "Indeed," said Pascoe. "I also have a copy of Dr. Appleby's final assessment as prepared for the Wulfstans. She concluded that the girl's condition was the result of her desperate need to feel secure in her new home after the trauma of losing both her parents at a time when she still hadn't recovered from what happened in Dendale, as well, of course, as her family's forcible removal thence."

  "Thence," said Dalziel. "I've been missing words like that. But what bothers me most is not thence, but whence did you get all this stuff? You've not been at Wulfstan's desk with a bent hairclip, I hope?"

  "It's all right, sir, I wiped my fingerprints," said Pascoe. Then he grinned and said, "Relax. Nothing illegal. Not by me anyway. I was given them, by Arne Krog."

  "Thank God for that," said Dalziel, relieved not so much that no crime had been committed, but that it hadn't been committed by Pascoe, whom he didn't trust not to get caught. "But why did the Turnip give you them? And what the hell have they got to do with them bones down there?"

  "There's more," said Pascoe. "A revised version. Or perhaps the authorized version. You decide."

  He took from the envelope three sheets of blue-lined paper covered with round, flowing handwriting in black ink.

  Dalziel took them, laid them on the roof of the car, and began to read.

  There was no heading.

  I've been thinking about what I said to Dr. Appleby and I'm not sure I got it right. I'm alright up to where I got down to the mere and started shouting, "Bonnie! Bonnie!" Then I think I heard someone shouting back and I know it's daft, but I never thought it were anything but Bonnie. I were wet and frightened and only seven, so I never asked myself how come my cat could talk, and when I shouted again and heard the words, "Here, here!" I just went toward the sound.

  It were coming from right near the water's edge, where the ruins of Heck were. I climbed over the fallen walls, still shouting, and again I heard the reply, and it were coming from a gap half blocked by a big stone and a lot of rubble but I managed to push some of this aside and there were space enough for me to get through. Only, it looked dark and wet down there, and I knew where it was, it was the cellar where Mr. Wulfstan kept his fancy wine. I'd been down there with Mary and it was really eery, even with the electric light on. Now it looked like the hole in our yard, I mean the yard at Low Beulah where Dad used to hose all the muck down when Mam started complaining it were like living on a midden. I used to watch muck and watter bubbling down into it and imagine what it 'ud be like to be down there with the rats and all. So I didn't fancy going into the Heck cellar one little bit, only suddenly I heard not a voice but a long meow that I'd have known from a thousand others. I didn't hesitate now. Bonnie were down there and he needed my help.

  So I climbed through the gap. There were bits of rubble lying around to make a sort of staircase, and when I'd got down a bit I found I were stepping into water. It w
asn't all that deep yet, just above my knees, and the good thing about it was that the bit of light coming through the hole reflected off the surface and after a while I began to see what there was to see.

  I said, "Bonnie, are you there?" and a voice said back, "Here I be," and it was then I made out this shape in a corner of the cellar and realized there was a man there, and I strained my eyes and I saw that it were Benny Lightfoot and he had Bonnie in his arms.

  After that it happened more or less like I told Dr. Appleby.

  Except that when Bonnie scratched his face and he had to let him go and I ran off with the cat, I recall Benny tried to come after me. And he got quite close and I thought he were going to catch hold of me again. I turned to try and fight him off, but suddenly he pulled up short and I could see something stretched out taut behind him, and I saw it was a chain, one end wrapped around his waist, t'other fixed to the wall.

  He strained toward me with his hands outstretched, and his eyes were big as saucers 'cos his face were so hungered and waste. And he didn't look frightening anymore. No, he looked more frightened than frightening. He looked real sad and lost. And all he said was "Help me, please help me."

  Then I turned and scrambled out, and I recall I pushed a lot of stone and stuff back into the gap, and I ran off up the fell hard as I could, I didn't know where, till I had to stop and rest. And it was then that Dad came and found me.

  I think this is the truth 'cos Dr. Appleby said I'd feel a lot better when I recalled the truth of what happened and told someone, and I do feel better now I've told someone even though it's not Dr. Appleby. I don't want to tell anyone else, but, not now, not ever. All I want is to live quietly in London with Aunt Chloe and go to school and do my lessons and be a good daughter like a daughter owt to be.

  When Dalziel finished reading, he turned and looked toward the sunlit remains of Heck on the edge of the bright and placid mere. He wasn't a man at the mercy of imagination, but like a movie director, he could let it loose when he chose. Now he chose to turn off the sun and bring the rain lashing down and the mist swirling in. And he chose to see a man chained to a wall under the ground with rising water lapping round his thighs. And he chose to be the man and hear someone calling what he thought was his name and feel hope rise faster than the water that rescue was close…