Dalziel 17 On Beulah Height

by Reginald Hill

  'Very much so. We have all three of hers. But none of them is in Lorraine's class.'

  'What age are they?'

  'The twins are six and Simon's eight. There they are now.'

  Novello turned. A harassed-looking woman with loose blonde hair bobbing around her shoulders with all the vigour but none of the gloss of a shampoo ad was shepherding a trio of children through the gate - twin girls who, contrary to the usual image of close love and special understanding, seemed each ambitious to achieve uniqueness by kicking shit out of the other, and an older boy, Simon, looking as bored and aloof as only an eight-year-old with twin sisters can.

  'I'd like to meet them. It'll only take a few seconds,' promised Novello.

  Unlike most police promises, this one was just about kept.

  After the introduction, Novello said, 'Mrs Kendrick, when you talked to the officer who called at your house yesterday, did he talk to the children?'

  'No. They weren't there, were they? I didn't pick them up till seven.'

  'Of course not. Simon, your mum says there was a white car parked by the common as you drove past yesterday morning. You didn't happen to notice it, did you?'

  'Yeah,' he said. It wasn't an uninterested or ill-mannered monosyllable. Children, Novello recalled, tended to answer questions asked them, unlike adults who were always reaching for your reasons for asking.

  'So what kind was it?'

  'Saab 900 cabriolet.'

  'Did you notice the number?'

  'No, but it was the latest model.'

  That was that. She thanked the boy and his mother, who had been holding the twins apart like a pair of over-psyched contenders in a title fight, and now she continued dragging them towards the school entrance.

  'Clever,' said Mrs Shimmings.

  'Lucky,' said Novello. 'I could have got a boy whose sole obsession was football. So why did Mrs K dump the kids on Gran all day yesterday, I wonder? Nothing to do with the case, just idle curiosity.'

  'Boyfriend,' said Mrs Shimmings laconically. 'Kendrick took off last year. Joy's got herself a man, but Simon hates him. And you can't have good sex with a protest meeting going on outside your bedroom door, can you?'

  'Never tried it,' said Novello with a grin.

  She went back to the Hall. Still no sign of Wield. No reply yet from Control to her query about the Discovery. She ought to give someone what she'd got, but she couldn't see anyone she altogether trusted to make sure the credit stayed with herself. Many of her male colleagues, even those not quite so chauvinist as to think a woman's place was in the kitchen, had no problem with thinking it was in the background. What man, complimented on his appearance, says, 'My wife chose the tie, ironed the suit, washed the shirt and starched the collar and cuffs?'

  Anyway, she was hot, she was on a roll. Two down, one to go.

  She went in search of Geoff Draycott of Wornock Farm who'd seen the blue estate speeding up the Highcross Moor road.

  FOUR

  There were two men scrubbing away at the BENNY’S BACK! graffito on the railway bridge as Pascoe drove beneath it.

  They didn't seem to be making much progress. Perhaps they would scrub and scrub till finalfy they wore out the solid stone-work and nothing remained but the red letters hanging in the air.

  An idle fancy, or a symptom? Reading the Dendale file earlier that morning, before his mind took refuge in sleep, he had found himself reluctant to engage with the facts as presented, or indeed any facts as presented, preferring to slip sideways into surreal imaginings. There had been a time when life seemed a smooth learning curve, a steady progress from childish frivolity through youthful impetuosity to mature certainty, which would occur somewhere in early middle age, whenever that was, but you'd recognize it by waking one morning and being aware that you'd stopped feeling nervous about making after-dinner speeches, you really believed the political opinions you aired at dinner parties, you no longer felt impelled to tie your left shoelace before your right to avoid bad luck, and you didn't have to read the instruction book every time you programmed the video.

  Well, that was out, that was a sunlit plateau he knew now he was never going to reach. This, for what it was worth, was it. Not a steady climb but an aimless wandering along the mazy paths of the wildwood. Sometimes the pleasure of a sunlit glade or a crystal stream; sometimes the terror of a falling tree or snarlings and crashings in the undergrowth; and sometimes the path winding you back to your starting place, except that it never looked the same.

  Did he think he was unique? Dr Pottle his tame shrink, had asked him. Or did he believe that everyone felt like this?

  'Neither,' he replied. 'I'm sure many people don't feel like this, but I'm equally sure I'm not unique.'

  'Bang goes religion and politics,' said Pottle. 'It could be you're in the right job, after all.'

  But it didn't feel like it. Curious how, as Ellie seemed (outwardly at least) increasingly resigned to the ambiguities of his work, he himself (inwardly at least) was finding them more and more troublesome.

  A lost child. A dead child, that was how Dalziel saw it, he could tell. He felt the agony of her parents. And through his climb to the rim of the Neb, and his reading of the Dendale file, he felt the agony of all those other parents who'd seen their children go out and never saw them return.

  But his empathy didn't make him want to toil tirelessly at the task of catching this man, this monster, who was responsible for these disappearings. No, all he wanted was to go home and stay home and hold eternal vigil over his own child. The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Cultivate your own garden. There is no such thing as society.

  Which, he told himself sternly, was like rubbing away the solid stonework and leaving the red letters dancing in the empty air.

  His introspective musings had got him through Danby on auto- pilot and he found he was outside St Michael's Hall. Near the main door was an empty parking space marked DCI. He smiled. As anticipated, Wield had things under control.

  Inside he found a scene of well-ordered activity. The detective sergeant, regimental in front of the troops, stood up and said, 'Good morning, sir.'

  'Morning,' said Pascoe, thinking that probably even machines in a factory ran more smoothly when Wieldy showed his face. Not that his face was smooth. In fact it was possible to theorize that his penchant for organization was a reaction to having features that looked like creation a parsec after the Big Bang.

  'Nice to see a hive of industry,' he went on. 'Got everything we need?'

  'Except the fridge, and that's coming,' said Wield.

  'Fridge? You expecting samples?'

  'For cold drinks,' said the sergeant. 'I can do you a coffee, but. And there's a note for you from Nobby Clark. I saw him when I arrived. He were very insistent I gave it to you direct. Think you've made a conquest there.'

  This was said with a straight face, or in Wield's case a crooked one, which in terms of inscrutability came to the same thing. But it also came as close to a bit of gay badinage as Pascoe had ever detected in the sergeant.

  He opened the envelope. It contained a piece of paper bearing the name JED HARDCASTLE.

  'That it?' said Pascoe. 'No message?'

  'He said something about paint,' said Wield, handing over a mug of coffee. 'I got the feeling he wanted to give you something you could pull out of your hat.'

  'God save me from the gratitude of the simple-hearted,' said Pascoe. 'What am I expected to do? Tell Andy I've worked out the graffiti artist is called Jed Hardcastle, only I don't know who he is or where he lives or anything about him?'

  'Son of Cedric and Molly Hardcastle,' said Wield. 'Brother of Jenny, first lass to go missing in Dendale. Present address, Stirps End Farm, Danby.'

  'Oh, that Jed Hardcastle,’ said Pascoe with slight irritation, mainly at himself for not having made the link even though he'd just read the Dendale file a couple of hours earlier. God, his mind was really refusing to engage with the facts.

  He sipped his coffee and
said, 'So, another link with last time.'

  'Last time?'

  'Dendale.'

  'Oh aye. That's official is it? Dendale was last time?'

  'The Fat Man seems to think so. He's had me reading the file. He even marched me up to the top of the Corpse Road last night.'

  'Did he now? That sounds pretty official.'

  'You don't sound like it makes you happy.'

  'I think it's a bit soon to be talking of this time and last time, that's all.'

  'What about this fellow Lightfoot?' insisted Pascoe. 'You must have met him. What did you reckon? I gather some folk thought he was the village idiot, but I've heard that in fact he was pretty bright.'

  'Oh, he was bright enough,' said Wield. 'But there was something about him. Like he came from another world.'

  This was untypically imprecise for the sergeant.

  Pascoe said, 'What do you mean, other world? Heaven? Hell? Jupiter? Wales?'

  'Not as far removed as that,' said Wield. 'No, his other world was . . . Dendale.'

  'I don't get you,' said Pascoe. 'OK, that's where he lived, and I know that he was so upset when his mother decided to emigrate that he ran off to his gran's. But lots of people like where they are so much it would take dynamite to shift them.'

  'It did take dynamite to shift them out of Dendale, remember?' said Wield. 'OK, for most of them, it was an uprooting, but the roots would take again in similar soil. The majority of them resettled over here around Danby and from all accounts they've settled in very well. But the odd one . . . well, since I've been living in Enscombe, I've got a different perspective on how folk relate to the place they call home. There's none of us there would want to leave. I feel like that and I've not been living there long enough to shit my own weight, as they say. But I've met some people, like the Tokes - you recall the Tokes? - that I reckon you couldn't uproot, only break off at ground level.'

  The Tokes were a mother and son living in Enscombe who'd figured in the case which brought Wield and Edwin Digweed together.

  'Yes, I remember the Tokes,' said Pascoe. 'Lightfoot was like that?'

  'To some extent. You know how folk say, "I belong to such a place." Just a figure of speech usually, but with Lightfoot, like with Toke, it really means what it says. The place owns them. For better or worse. For good or evil.'

  'Hold on, Wieldy,’ said Pascoe. 'You're stealing my lines. I'm the one who goes all metaphysical, right? You're Mr Microchip, the man with the pointy ears.'

  Wield scratched one of the organs which, though certainly irregular, were hardly pointed.

  'Just goes to show what country life can do to you, doesn't it?' he said.

  Like Shirley Novello earlier, Pascoe found it hard to tell if the sergeant was altogether joking, but he laughed anyway. There were enough uncertainties in life without admitting the possibility that your Rock of Ages might after all turn out to be soft-centred.

  He said, 'But I agree with you about sticking to this time. Let's work with what we've got. There were some car sightings unaccounted for . . .'

  'I've got Novello working on them,' said Wield. 'In fact, this came through for her a couple of minutes ago. Presumably it's to do with the sightings, but she's not around to tell me what.'

  'Yes, she is,' said Pascoe, who'd just seen Novello come through the door. He glanced at the sheet of paper Wield had handed him as she approached. It was a list of green Land Rover Discoverys registered locally in the past year.

  'Morning, Shirley,' he said.

  Dalziel called her Ivor. Pascoe had made sure no one else did. Eccentric leaders were for following not imitating, else the Victory would have been full of one-eyed sailors.

  'Morning, sir,' she said, looking a touch anxiously at the list in his hand. Pascoe guessed she'd have liked to get to it before Wield so she could have presented it with her interpretation all ready. Like Clark, she was still at the stage where she thought rabbits plucked from hats impressed the brass. Unlike Clark, she'd probably grow out of it. Her face, while not conventionally good-looking, was full of character and intelligence. She'd settled down well since joining the department a few months back, but she was still on guard. Perhaps that was a permanent condition of service for women in the police force, thought Pascoe. Or was that too easy? Was there something more he could be doing to assure her that here in Mid-Yorkshire at least there wasn't anyone lurking in the shadows, waiting for the chance to chop her off at the knees?

  'So you're making progress,' he said, handing her the list.

  Glancing at it as she spoke, she explained how she had got the information, then went on to the Saab cabriolet, and finally to the moving car on the Highcross Moor road.

  She led them to the wall map to illustrate her findings here.

  'Geoff Draycott, thirty-two, married, tenant at Wornock Farm, that's here. He was out in this field, here, about half eight, quarter to nine, when he saw this car heading up the road away from town. It was moving very fast, which was what drew his attention. Mind you, he seems to think everything that uses that road moves too fast. It seems it's been improved considerably in the last ten years as the Science and Business Park developed and a lot of the people there began to use it as a quick way of heading north to join up with the arterial here, instead of heading south and east. But improvement hasn't extended to fencing, and Draycott reckons he loses a couple of sheep a year because of speeding cars and lorries.'

  'Must have been pretty powerful if it was speeding,' said Wield, looking at the contours.

  'He says it was a big estate, blue, but he couldn't identify the make and was at the wrong angle to get any numbers. He did say he thought that it might have stopped up here.'

  She pointed to a high bend of the road marked on the map with the viewpoint symbol.

  'There's a bit of hardstanding. It's a popular place for picnics. He caught the flash of sun on a glass up there just a little later, but he can't be sure it was the same car.'

  'Bit early for a picnic,' said Wield. 'Owt else?'

  'Not on any of these. But when I caught up with Draycott, he was driving a red Ford pick-up. Popular vehicle with farmers, I spotted another three as I drove around. And I got to wondering if some of the folk round here who got asked about car sightings mightn't have bothered to mention these, or other farm vehicles, because they're so familiar they're almost invisible. Like the postman in the Chesterton story.'

  One for me? thought Pascoe, amused. He hoped she was bright enough not to have tried it out on Andy Dalziel, whose response would probably have been ...

  'Postman? On a Sunday? Now that is odd.'

  They turned. There he was. Sometimes he came roaring in like a steam locomotive, sometimes he rolled up, soft as a hearse, which, today, clad in a suit black enough to please an undertaker and a shirt white enough to make a shroud, he might have been following.

  'No, sir, the Father Brown story . ..' said Novello, flustered into the error of explanation.

  'Father Brown? I thought you were one of Father Kerrigan's flock. Not been head-hunted, have you?'

  Time for a rescue act.

  Pascoe said, 'Shirley was just trying out an idea on us, sir. And very interesting it was, too. But let's make a start on what we've got first, shall we?'

  He gave Dalziel a digest of Novello's findings. The Fat Man was dismissive.

  'A blue estate, speeding? Overtake their tractor, bloody farmers think you're speeding. And if he wants to get away so quick, what's he stop up the hill for? And this white Saab, right out in the open, weren't it? At the edge of the common for all to see. Not what you'd call furtive, is it?'

  'The Discovery was quite well hidden,' said Pascoe.

  'Except for anyone walking their dog past it,' said Dalziel. 'Told you it 'ud be a four-wheel drive last night, didn't I?'

  'I think, to be strictly accurate, I told you that,' said Pascoe, thinking, he doesn't want to be bothered with any of this. His mind's fixated on Benny bloody Lightfoot. 'But we do have a
list of names and we're going to need to check them . ..'

  'Aye, aye, shove up the overtime bill,' said Dalziel gloomily. 'Desperate Dan's going to love me.'

  This from one to whom police budgets and the affection of his Chief Constable were matters of equal indifference rang false as a politician's indignation.

  'One in there might interest you, sir,' said Wield.

  He jabbed his finger at the bottom of the sheet. Pascoe looked over the Fat Man's shoulder.

  Walter Wulfstan.

  That name again. Pascoe's eyes strayed to the poster still visible on one of the few parts of the notice board not yet covered up by constabulary paper.

  The opening concert of the Mid-Yorkshire Dales Music Festival, Elizabeth Wulfstan singing Kindertotenlieder. Songs for Dead Children. Not the most diplomatic of programmes for this place at this time.

  It occurred to him that this place was literally this place. Had anyone told the Festival people that their opening venue had been commandeered?

  Observing Dalziel for the second time in two days apparently rapt at the appearance of this name from the past, Pascoe voiced his concern to Wield.

  'The secretary of the Parish Council was round first thing this morning,' the sergeant said. 'I told him he could certainly cancel everything this week. Next week, we'd have to wait and see.'

  'He wouldn't be pleased.'

  'Oddly enough, his words were, Mr Wulfstan wouldn't be pleased. Seems he's chair of the Music Festival committee.'

  'He's back at that again, is he?' said Dalziel, who never let rapture obstruct eavesdropping.

  'Back?' said Pascoe.

  'He dropped out of Yorkshire after Dendale. Seemed to uproot himself completely. Sold up his house in town, handed over the on-site running of the business to his partners, and set himself up down south as their international sales manager, running across Europe, oiling the wheels, that sort of thing. Speaks good Frog and Kraut, they say. Must have done all right. Seven, eight years back, the company needs more space and builds on a greenfield site outside Danby. That was the start of yon Science and Business Park thing. Lots of Euro-lolly, they say, most of it down to Wulfstan. And eventually he moves back to town. Bought a house "in the bell". Holyclerk Street.'