Dalziel 17 On Beulah Height

by Reginald Hill

  'In the bell' referred to the top price area round the cathedral.

  'Very nice,' said Pascoe.

  'Keep doing the Lottery,' said Dalziel. 'Ivor, get on the phone to Wulfstan's firm at the Business Park, will you? See if he's there. If he is, I'll just pop round and have a word.'

  'There are other names on the list, sir,' said Pascoe.

  'Nay, it'll be his,' said Dalziel dismissively. 'What's up, lass? Tha does know how to work a phone?'

  Novello, who hadn't moved, said, 'What's the firm's name, sir?'

  'Oh aye. Summat weird. Helioponics, that's it. Helioponics. You need six O-levels to know what it means.'

  'Sounds to me like a nonce word, by analogy with hydroponics,' said Pascoe.

  'Nonce, eh? Well, them perverts do have a language of their own.'

  Wield came in before this could get silly and said, 'I think they started off making domestic solar panels, but now they're into all kinds of alternative energy sources and applications.'

  'My God, Wieldy, you got shares, or what?'

  Wield looked blank, which was easy. In fact it was Edwin who had Helioponic shares. Financial openness was part of their unwritten partnership agreement. 'If you know how poor I am,' Digweed had said, 'you will not be forever expecting me to pay half of all those expensive foreign holidays your crooked friends doubtless subsidize for you in their Bermudan villas.'

  'Sir,' said Novello from the phone. 'Mr Wulfstan was at the Park, but he's just headed back to town. Seems he's had to call an emergency committee meeting, something about the Music Festival needing a new location?'

  'Must be mellowing,' said Dalziel. 'In the old days he'd have come round here and given us all a rollocking. Right, that's me. I'm off to put myself on Any Other Business. Pete, what are you up to?'

  'I need to see Clark. He might have a line on the spray-can artist.'

  'Oh aye? Well, he's up the dale with Maggie Burroughs. I've just been up there. She's got the search well organized, so try not to give the impression you're double-checking her. I know how heavy-footed you can be. Wieldy, you keep things steady here till George Headingley shows his ugly face, then see if you can find something useful to do. That everything?'

  'Sir, shall I stick with these car sightings? I've got a couple of ideas,' said Novello.

  'Ideas? Nice young lass like you shouldn't be having ideas,' said Dalziel. 'Nay, they'll keep. That's why red herrings are red, to preserve them. Anyone talked to the kiddies in Lorraine's class yet?'

  'Not yet,' said Wield. 'Mrs Shimmings wanted to get the school routine going first.'

  'I doubt if there'll be owt there, but someone had better do it. That's the job for you, Ivor. Off you go, chop chop.'

  Novello turned swiftly and moved away through the door before her resentment could show.

  'She did well,' Pascoe observed neutrally.

  'She did her job,' growled Dalziel.

  Pascoe glanced at Wield, who rubbed his chin.

  'Jesus wept,' said the Fat Man.

  He went to an open window and bellowed, 'Ivor!'

  The woman turned.

  'You did well,' shouted Dalziel.

  Then, turning back to face the others, he said, 'There. Can't bear the thought of having you two looking at me all day like I'd drowned your kitten. Now can we all go off and do what we get paid to do, or would you like a big wet kiss from mother to help you on your way?'

  FIVE

  Rosie Pascoe was having a bad day at school.

  She'd looked for Zandra as soon as she got into the yard, but she was nowhere to be found, and Miss Turner, their class teacher, told her that Mrs Purlingstone had phoned to say that Zandra was poorly and wouldn't be coming in.

  At least that had meant she was able to hold the floor alone with her tales of treats and adventures at the seaside. But by playtime, as the heat of the day built up, she found her usual energy lacking and was content to stand aside from the intricate whirl of playground games.

  All the voices seemed distant, like the TV with the sound turned low, and the playing children moved before her like figures on that small screen. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, this distancing. Indeed it was the kind of mood in which she usually most easily made contact with her friend Nina. But there was no sign of her today, and then she remembered that Nina had been taken by the nix again and was probably still being held captive in his cave.

  Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a figure beyond the high wire mesh which bounded the playground. Her heart full of hope she went towards it. The bright sunlight dazzled her, in fact she'd been irritated by bright light all day, and she couldn't see clearly, but as she got close she knew it wasn't Nina, and when she blinked she found there was no one there at all, and she was left clinging to the mesh like a marmoset in a cage.

  Someone touched her shoulder and she turned quickly.

  It was Miss Turner. She was a small woman, a lot shorter than Mummy, but somehow today she seemed to loom very high.

  'Play's over, Rosie,' she said in a voice with the same distant, unreal quality. 'It's time to come inside.'

  Some miles to the north, Shirley Novello was having a bad time in school too. She didn't mind kids, but she wasn't mad about them. And she did mind the assumption that her gender automatically meant she was the best person to talk to Lorraine's classmates, particularly when she felt she was doing an OK job on the car enquiry. But she had more sense than to complain, not in the middle of a missing child case. Here, if you were told it would help to wrestle in mud, you wrestled in mud.

  Not that there was much chance of finding any mud to wrestle in. All the windows of the school were wide open, but a feather resting on a sill had as much chance of moving as on a dead man's lips.

  The children were lethargic, partly because of the heat, partly because the initial charge of excitement at the police presence had faded, leaving them increasingly aware of the reason for it. Mrs Shimmings and Miss Blake, the class teacher, did their best to divert and distract, but they too were weighed down by their more specific fears for their lost pupil and, despite their best efforts, some of this filtered through.

  Very little was forthcoming. Some of Lorraine's friends said that Lorraine had a 'secret place' up Ligg Beck, but when pressed as to its whereabouts, they looked at Novello like she was brain dead and said, 'We don't know. It was a secret!' Finally she pushed too hard and provoked a squall of sobbing from one girl which quickly spread to others, and the interview was over.

  'I'll keep talking to them,' promised Mrs Shimmings as they walked down the corridor together. 'It's no use pressing with children this age. You've got to let things come in their own good time.'

  Great, thought Novello. But you don't have to answer to a bunch of men who aren't all that impressed even when you've got something positive to report!

  By 'bunch of men' she meant, of course, Dalziel and Pascoe, and to a lesser extent, Wield. On joining CID she'd quickly sussed out that what mattered most to an ambitious officer was how you rated with the terrible trio.

  She'd observed with interest but without comment how her male colleagues reacted. Dalziel put the fear of God into them. His wrath was like being run over by a Centurion tank. On the other hand, going into battle, there's nothing an infantryman likes more than advancing behind a Centurion tank.

  Pascoe was rated OK. Lots of concern for the troops. He'd long outlived his early disadvantage of a degree. Indeed, most of them would never even think about it if it wasn't for the Fat Man's occasional weighty witticisms.

  And Wield was . . . Wield. Unreadable as a Chinese encyclopaedia, but containing everything a cop needed to know. There were stories about his private life which might have washed away another man's career. But against that unyielding crag, they broke and vanished back into the sea.

  Word was that when Dalziel spoke, you obeyed; when Pascoe spoke, you listened; when Wield spoke, you took notes.

  But Novello had come to see them rather diffe
rently.

  The rumours about Wield she ignored. It was so clear to her he was gay that she couldn't understand the need for whisperings. He was a good cop and she could learn a lot from him. But, she guessed, he was also a cop who'd made a conscious decision to stay at sergeant rather than risk the greater exposure of higher rank. This she could understand, but had no intention of taking as a role model.

  Pascoe. At first she'd liked him. He'd been welcoming, helpful, protective when she joined the squad. He still was. But when she'd talked about this with Maggie Burroughs who'd helped her a lot in her transfer to CID, the inspector had said, 'Watch out for the friendlies. They're sometimes the worst.' And when a few minutes after she started talking to the kids, Pascoe had stuck his head into the classroom and asked for a quick word with Mrs Shimmings, all his apologetic smile had said to her was that what he was doing was beyond debate far more important than what she was doing.

  Which left Dalziel. A tank was just a machine, but a machine needs someone to run it. A mechanic. Or God. Jokes were made about the Holy Trinity, usually with Pascoe as Son and Wield as Holy Ghost. Novello as a sort of good Catholic favoured Pascoe as Holy Ghost. But big Andy Dalziel was beyond all dispute the Almighty. Get up his nose, and the best you could hope was a big sneeze might carry you a long way away. It was a small comfort to know no one was immune. Even that Spiritus Sanctus, Peter Pascoe, came in for a fair share of crap. So, I believe in Andy Dalziel was the first and last clause of the CID creed. But faith without works didn't get you into heaven and even though the fat prophet had forecast that talking to kids was a waste of time, he'd probably still expect some form of result.

  It was therefore with relief that she found only Wield in the incident centre. He was poring over a thick file. In his hand was a can of mineral water.

  He said, 'The fridge has turned up. Help yourself.'

  Gratefully she took a can of lemonade. She would have liked to put it under her T-shirt and roll it around but she instinctively avoided anything which would draw her male colleagues' attention to her sex. Even Wield's.

  Perhaps, she thought, we have a lot in common.

  'Any luck?' he asked without looking up.

  'Not much. Some talk of Lorraine having a secret place up Ligg Beck, but none of them knows where.'

  'Well, they wouldn't, being a secret,' said Wield with a childlike logic she recognized. He closed the file. Upside down she read

  DENDALE.

  She said, 'Nothing from the search team, Sarge?'

  'Not a sign.'

  'So it could be she's long gone.'

  'Super seems to reckon they're still around here.'

  She noticed the they. He noticed her noticing but didn't correct it.

  'What do you think, Sarge?' she asked.

  He stared at her reflectively. His eyes, she noticed for the first time, were rather beautiful, circles of Mediterranean blue round a dark grey centre set on a field of pristine white with not a red vein to be seen. It was like finding jewels in a ruin.

  He said, 'I think you've got a notion you'd like to let out. Something to do with yon blue estate is my guess.'

  This was opening enough. She went across to the wall map and said, 'The Highcross Moor road's got no turn-offs except a few farm tracks for four and a half miles till it swings east and joins the main road here. There's a pub, the Highcross Inn, at the junction. What I'd like to do is check out all the farms along the road and the pub too, to see if anyone else noticed the blue estate.'

  It sounded pretty feeble now it was out. She was glad it wasn't the Fat Man she was talking to.

  Wield said, 'We've had men out at all those farms.'

  'Yes, Sarge. But they'll have been searching barns, outbuildings, stables and such. I'd be asking a specific question about a specific car.'

  'You've got a feeling about this blue estate, haven't you?'

  'Sort of,' she admitted reluctantly.

  'You won anything on the National Lottery?' he enquired.

  'Ten pound.'

  'Not enough to retire on if Mr Dalziel catches you running around following hunches,' said Wield. 'But as I can't think of anything else for you to do, off you go. Keep in close contact though. And you get buzzed to come back here, no mucking about saying reception's bad because of the hills, that sort of crap. You come running. OK?'

  'OK, Sarge. Thanks.'

  And turning quickly before he could change his mind, she hurried out into the sweaty embrace of the panting sun.

  As she got into her car she saw DI George Headingley's gleaming Lada turn into the car park. She sent her beat-up Golf roaring past him with a casual wave. George had always had a reputation as a careful man, but as retirement loomed closer, carefulness became an obsession. Privately, not a penny was spent unnecessarily and it was rumoured he'd worked out to the hour if not the minute the best time to take his pension. Professionally, he did everything by the book, and if the book didn't tell him what to do, he did what he thought would please the Chief Constable and Andy Dalziel, not necessarily in that order.

  No way if he'd arrived ten minutes earlier would she have been heading out on a hunch. 'Make us a cup of tea, Shirl,' he would have said. 'Then you can take care of answering the phone till the Super gets back.'

  But now, with one mighty bound, she was free. She gunned the car up the rising road, wound down the window and pulled up her T-shirt to let the cooling draught play upon her burning skin.

  She didn't stop till she reached the high bend where Geoff Draycott thought the blue estate might have halted. Recognizing that a lot of people would be tempted to stop here for the view, the Council when they improved the road in response to Danby's growing prosperity had put down some hardstanding to make a small informal car park complete with rubbish bin.

  Are we the only race in the world, she wondered, who if they visit a place of great natural beauty where there isn't a rubbish bin, would just dump their litter all over the ground?

  She got out of the car and viewed the view. It was worth looking at in every direction. She had a pair of binoculars with her and through them she scanned the peaceful roofs of Danby, grey and blue slated, red, yellow, brown and ochre tiled, basking and baking far below. Then she followed the winding line of Ligg Beck up the valley. She began to feel her good feeling drain out of her as she reached a police Range Rover and remembered why she was here.

  She picked out Maggie Burroughs wearing a very unofficial straw sun bonnet as she pored over a map on the open tailgate and talked into a radio. And standing a little apart in deep conversation with Sergeant Clark was Peter Pascoe, shirt-sleeved, his fair skin pinking, looking very like a twenties young gent out on a walking tour.

  She continued her sweep up the valley, moving over the double line of searchers advancing slowly a half mile ahead of the Range Rover, till the slight eastwards twist put the valley head out of her vision.

  And finally she came full circle and looked at the closest section, that which fell away immediately beneath her feet.

  Now this was interesting. The valley narrowed the further up it you went, and this plus the location of the viewpoint on a spur of ground meant that the deep gash which marked the beck's course in the upper reaches was relatively close here. Of course the tucks and folds of the terrain meant a lot remained hidden. But a man standing up here and glimpsing a child walking along the path beside the ghyll, say at that point there, would have no problem moving down the valley flank, far less steep on this side than on the Neb, and cutting her off, say there.

  She lowered the glasses and studied the scene without them. Now it all looked a lot further off. Well, it would, wouldn't it? But no reason someone stopping here shouldn't have a pair of binoculars. And with them it would be all too easy to establish that what you were looking at was one small girl, alone, except for one equally small dog . ..

  All theory, of course. Not to be paraded naked before the sceptical gaze of the Holy Trinity. But clothe it with a couple of releva
nt facts . . .

  She scanned the ground at the edge of the hardstanding in hope of seeing something to show that someone had headed down the slope. Rapidly she realized it was not a very profitable way of spending her time. She was no Chingachgook to read in bent and heather who had passed this way and when. Also probably every kid in every family who'd ever stopped here had run a little way down the fellside.

  She went to the car, found a pair of plastic gloves, and removed the inner liner of the rubbish bin. It was packed full. This would have been a popular stopping place yesterday as the day wore on, and the presence of a Sunday tabloid on the top indicated it hadn't been emptied since. She tipped the contents on to the ground and began to sift through the lower strata. From her convent school Latin lessons the word haruspex popped into her mind; a soothsayer who based his prognostications on the entrails of animals. Good name for those FBI investigators she'd read about who specialized in the interpretation of trash. Could be Scotland Yard or MI 5 had a few too, but it didn't rate high in the Mid-Yorkshire training programme. Possibly an expert could have made much of the food containers and wrappings which made up the greater part of the rubbish, but Novello concentrated on the rest and after a few minutes she had isolated a lithium 3V battery of the type used in some cameras, an empty Marlboro Lights cigarette packet, two Sunday papers (one broadsheet, one tabloid), a broken earring, and a tissue with a brown stain that might be blood.

  These she bagged separately. The rest she replaced in the plastic liner, which she sealed with tape and placed in the boot of her car. She had no real hope that any of it would have anything to do with the case, but if it did, she didn't want to have to tell Dalziel that the rest of the potential evidence was in some municipal tip.

  Now she scanned her map. There were four farms worth visiting. Her hopes were high. She felt things were going well.

  A couple of hours later, things were grinding to a halt. Finding the farms was easy. Finding all the folk who might have been around on Sunday morning was less so. Soon, as she tramped across tussocky heather and grazed her knees and elbows clambering over drystone walls, all that was left of the famous 'feeling' was aching muscles and the beginnings of a heat rash under her arms.