On Beulah Height

Reginald Hill

DAY 1 A Happy Rural Seat of Various View

Betsy Allgood [PA/WWSTBLED-FROM-HH]

Transcript 1 No. 2 of 2 Copies

The day they drowned Dendale I were seven years old.

I'd been three when government said they could do it, and four when Inquiry came out in favor of Water Board, so I remember nowt of that.

I do remember something that can't have been long after, but. I remember climbing up ladder to our barn loft and my dad catching me there.

"What're you doing up here?" he said. "Tha knows it's no place for thee."

I said I were looking for Bonnie, which were a mistake. Dad had no time for animals that didn't earn their keep. Cat's job was keeping rats and mice down, and all that Bonnie ever caught was a few spiders.

"Yon useless object should've been drowned with rest," he said. "You come up here again after it and I'll get shut of it, nine lives or not."

Before I could start mizzling, sound of a machine starting up came through the morning air, not a farm machine but something a lot bigger down at Dale End. I knew there were men working down there, but I didn't understand yet what they were doing.

Dad went to the open hay door and looked out. Low Beulah, our farm, were built on far side of Dender Mere from the village, and from up in our loft you got a good view right over our fields to Dale End. All on a sudden Dad picked me up and swung me onto his shoulders.

"Tek a good look at that land, Betsy," he said. "Don't matter a toss now that tha's only a lass. Soon there'll be nowt here for any bugger to work at, save only the fishes."

I'd no idea what he meant, but it were grand for him to be taking notice of me for a change, and I recall how his bony shoulder dug into my bare legs, and how his coarse, springy hair felt in my little fists and how he smelled of sheep and earth and hay.

I think he forgot I were up there till I got a bit uncomfortable and moved. Then he gave a little start and said, "Things to do still. Nowt stops till all stops." And he dropped me to the floor with a thump and slid down the ladder. That were typical. Telling me off for being up there one minute, then forgetting my existence the next.

I stayed up a long while till Mam started shouting for me. She caught me clambering down the ladder and gave me a clout on my leg and yelled at me for being up there. But I said nowt about Dad, 'cos it wouldn't have eased my pain and it would just have got him in bother too.

Time went on. A year maybe. Hard to say. That age a month can seem a minute and a minute a month if you're in trouble. I know I got started at the village school. That's where most of my definite memories start too. But funny enough, I still didn't have any real idea what them men were doing down at Dale End. I think I just got used to them. It seemed like they'd been there almost as long as I had. Then sometime in my second year at school, I heard some of the older kids talking about us all moving to Danby Primary. We hated Danby Primary. We just had two teachers, Mrs. Winter and Miss Lavery, but they had six or seven and one of them was a man with a black eye-patch and a split cane that he used to beat the children with if they got their sums wrong. At least that's what we'd heard.

I piped up and asked why we had to move there.

"Dost know nowt, Betsy Allgood?" asked Elsie Coe, who was nearly eleven and liked the boys. "What do you think they're building down the dale? A shopping center?"

"Nay fair do's," said one of her kinder friends. "She's nobbut a babbie still. They're going to flood all of Dendale, Betsy, so as the smelly townies can have a bath!"

Then Miss Lavery called us in from play. But I went to the drinking fountain first and watched the spurt of water turn rainbow in the sun.

After that I started having nightmares. I'd dream I were woken by Bonnie sitting on my pillow and howling, and all the blankets would be wet, and the bed would be almost floating on the water which were pouring through the window. I'd know it were just a dream but it didn't stop me being frightened. Dad told me not to be so mardy and Mam said if I knew a dream were just a dream I should try and wake myself up, and sometimes I would, only I wouldn't really have woken up at all and the water would still be there, lapping over my face now, and then I really would wake up screaming.

When Mam realized what were troubling me, she tried to explain it all. She were good at explaining things when she wasn't having one of her bad turns. Nerves, I heard Mrs. Telford call it one day when I was playing under the window of the joiner's shop at Stang with Madge. It was Mrs. Telford I heard say, too, that it were a pity Jack Allgood (that's my dad) hadn't got a son, but it didn't help anyone Lizzie (that's my mam) cutting the girl's hair short like a boy's and dressing her in trousers. That was me. I looked in the mirror after that and wondered if mebbe I couldn't grow up to be a boy.

I was saying about my mam explaining things. She told me about the reservoir and how we were all going to be moved over to Danby, and it wouldn't make all that much difference 'cos Dad were such a good tenant, Mr. Pontifex had promised him the first farm to come vacant on the rest of his estate over there.

Now the nightmares faded a bit. The idea of moving were more exciting than frightening, except for the thought of that one-eyed teacher with the split cane. Also the weather had turned out far too good for young kids to worry about something in the future. Especially about too much water!

That summer were long and hot, I mean really long and hot, not just a few kids remembering a few sunny days like they lasted forever.

Winter were dry, and spring, too, apart from a few showers. After that, nothing. Each day hotter than last. Even up on Beulah Height you couldn't catch a draft, and down in the dale we kept all the windows in the house and school wide open but nowt came in save for the distant durdum of the contractors' machines at Dale End.

Fridays at school was the vicar's morning, when Reverend Disjohn would come and tell us about the Bible and things. One Friday he read us the story about Noah's Flood and told us that bad as it seemed for the folks at the time, it all turned out for the best. "Even for them as got drowned?" cried out Joss Puddle, whose dad were landlord at the Holly Bush. Miss Lavery told him not to be cheeky, but Reverend Disjohn said it was a good question and we had to remember that God sent the Flood to punish people for being bad. What he wanted to say was that God had a reason for everything, and mebbe all this fuss about the reservoir was God's way of reminding us how important water really was and that we shouldn't take any of His gifts for granted.

When you're seven you don't know that vicars can talk crap. When you get to be fourteen, you know, but.

Slowly day by day the mere's level went down. Even White Mare's Tail shrank till it were more like a white mouse's. White Mare's Tail, in case you don't know, is the force that comes out of the fell near top of Lang Neb. That's the steep fell between us and Danby. It's marked "Long Denderside" on maps, but no one local ever calls it owt but Lang Neb, that's because if you look at it with your head on one side, it looks like a nose, gradually rising till it drops down sudden to Black Moss col on the edge of Highcross Moor. On the other side it rises up again, but more gradual, to Beulah Height above our farm. There's two little tops up there and because they look a bit like a mouth, some folk call it the Gob, to match the Neb opposite. But Mrs. Winter said we shouldn't call it owt so common when its real name was so lovely, and she read us a bit from this book that Beulah comes into. Joss Puddle said it were dead boring and he thought the Gob were a much better name. But I liked Beulah 'cos it were the same as our farm and besides it sort of belonged to us, seeing as my dad had the fell rights for his sheep up there and he kept the fold between the tops in good repair, which Miss Lavery said was probably older than our farmhouse even.

Any road, no one could deny our side of the valley were much nicer than Lang Neb side, which was really steep with rocks and boulders everywhere. And in the rainy season, while there'd be becks and falls streaking all of the hillsides, on the Neb they just came bursting straight out of fell, like rain from a blocked gutter. Old Tory Simkin used to say there were so many caves running through the Neb, there was more water than rock in it. And he used to tell stories about children falling asleep in the sunshine on the Neb, and being taken into the hill by nixes and such, and never seen again.

But he stopped telling the stories when it really started happening. Children disappearing, I mean.

Jenny Hardcastle were the first. Holidays had just started and we were all splashing around in Wintle Pool where White Mare's Tail hits fell bottom. Usually little ones got told off about playing up there, but now the big pool were so shallow, even the smallest could play there safe.

They asked us later what time Jenny left, but kids playing on a summer's day take no heed of time. And they asked if we'd seen anyone around, watching us or owt like that. No one had. I'd seen Benny Lightfoot up the fell a way, but I didn't mention him any more than I'd have mentioned a sheep. Benny were like a sheep, he belonged on the fell, and if you went near him he'd likely run off. So I didn't mention him, not till later, when they asked about him particular.

My friend Madge Telford said that Jenny had told her she was fed up of splashing around in the water all day like a lot of babbies and she were going to Wintle Wood to pick some flowers for her mam. But Madge thought she were really in a huff because she liked to be center of attention, and when Mary Wulfstan turned up we all made a fuss of her.

You couldn't help but like Mary. It weren't just that she were pretty, which she was, with her long blond hair and lovely smile. But she were no prettier than Jenny, or even Madge, whose hair was the fairest of them all, like the water in the mere when the sun's flat on it. But Mary were just so nice, you couldn't help liking her, even though we only saw her in the holidays and at weekends sometimes.

She were my cousin, sort of, and that helped, her mam belonging to the dale and not an off-comer, though they did only use Heck as a holiday house now. Mary's granddad had been my granddad's cousin, Arthur Allgood, who farmed Heck Farm, which stood, the house I mean, right at mere's edge just out of bottom end of the village. Mary's mam was Arthur's only child and I daresay were reckoned "only a girl" like me. But at least she could make herself useful to the farm by getting wed. Next best thing after a farmer son is a farmer son-in-law, if you own the farm, that is. Arthur Allgood owned Heck, but our side of the family were just tenants at Low Beulah, and while a son could inherit a tenancy, a daughter's got no rights.

Not that Mary's mam, Aunt Chloe (she weren't really my aunt, but that's what I called her), married a farmer. She married Mr. Wulfstan, who's got his own business, and they sold off most of the Heck land and buildings to Mr. Pontifex, but they kept the house for holidays.

Mr. Wulfstan were looked up to rather than liked in the dale. He weren't standoffish, my mam said, just hard to get to know. But when he had Heck done up to make it more comfortable, and got the cellar properly damp-proofed and had racks set up there to keep his fine wines, he gave as much work locally as he could, and people like Madge's dad, who ran the dale joinery business at Stang with his brother, said he were grand chap.

But I'm forgetting Jenny. Maybe she did go off in a huff because of Mary or maybe that was just Madge making it up, and she really did go off to pick some flowers for her mam. That's where they found the only trace of her, in Wintle Wood. Her blue sun top. She could have been carrying it and just dropped it. We took everything but our pants off when we played in the water in them hot days, and we were in no hurry to get dressed again till we got scolded. We ran around the village like little pagans, my mam said.

But that all stopped once police were called in. It was questions, questions, then and we all got frightened and excited, but mebbe more excited to start with. When sun's shining and everything looks the same as it always did, it's hard for kids to stay frightened for long. Also, Jenny were known for a headstrong girl and she'd run off before to her gran's at Danby after falling out with her mam. So mebbe it would turn out she'd run off again. And even when days passed and there were no word of her, most folk thought she could have gone up the Neb and fallen down one of the holes or something. The police had dogs out, sniffing at the sun top, but they never found a trail that led anywhere. That didn't stop Mr. Hardcastle going out every day with his collies, yelling and calling. They had two other kids, Jed and June, both older, but the way he went on, you'd have thought he'd lost everything in the world. My dad said he never were much of a farmer, but now he just didn't bother with Hobholme-that's their farm, but as he were one of Mr. Pontifex's tenants, like Dad, and the place would soon be drowned, I don't suppose it mattered.

As for Mrs. Hardcastle, you'd meet her wandering around Wintle Wood, picking great armfuls of flopdocken, which was said to be a good plant for bringing lost children back. She had them all over Hobholme and when it were her turn to take care of flowers in the church, she filled that with flopdocken, too, which didn't please the vicar, who said it was pagan, but he left them there till it were someone else's turn the following week.

The rest of the dale folk soon settled back to where they were before. Not that folk didn't care, but for us kids with the weather so fine, it were hard for grief to stretch beyond a few days, and the grown-ups were all much busier than we ever knew with making arrangements for the big move out.

It were only a matter of weeks away, but that seemed a lifetime to me. I'd picked things up, more than I realized, and a lot more than I really understood. And the older girls like Elsie Coe were always happy to show off how much they knew. She it was who told me that there were big arguments going on about compensation, but it didn't affect me 'cos my dad were only a tenant, and Mr. Pontifex had sold Low Beulah and Hobholme along with all the rest of his land in Dendale and up on High Cross Moor long since. Some of the others who owned their own places were fighting hard against the Water Board. Bloody fools, my dad called them. He said once Mr. Pontifex sold, there were no hope for the rest and they might as well go along with the miserable old sod. Mam told him not to talk like that about Mr. Pontifex, especially as he'd been promised the first vacant farm on the Danby side of the Pontifex estate, and she'd heard that Stirps End were likely to be available soon. And Dad said he'd believe it when it happened, the old bugger had sold us out once, what was to stop him doing it again?

He talked really wild sometimes, my dad, especially when he'd been down at the Holly Bush. And Mam would either cry or go really quiet, I mean quiet so you could have burst a balloon against her ear and she'd not have heard. But at least when she were like this I could run around all day in my pants or in nothing at all and she'd not have bothered. Or Dad either.

Then Madge, my best friend, got taken. And suddenly things looked very different.

I'd gone round to play with her. Mam took me. She were having one of her good days and even though most folk reckoned that Jenny had just fallen into one of the holes in the Neb, our mams were still a bit careful about letting us wander too far on our own.

The Stang, where Mr. Telford had his joiner's shop, were right at the edge of the village. Even though it were a red-hot day, smoke was pouring from the workshop chimney as usual, though I didn't see anyone in there working. We went up the house and Mrs. Telford said to my mam, "You'll come in and have a cup of tea, Lizzie? Betsy, Madge is down the garden, looking for strawberries, but I reckon the slugs have finished them off."

I went out through the dairy into the long, narrow garden running up to the fellside. I thought I saw someone up there but only for a moment, and it probably weren't anyone but Benny Lightfoot. I couldn't see Madge in the garden but there were some big currant bushes halfway down, and I reckoned she must be behind them. I called her name, then walked down past the bushes.

She wasn't there. On the grass by the beds was one strawberry with a bite out of it. Nothing else.

I felt to blame somehow, as if she would have been there if I hadn't gone out to look for her. I didn't go straight back in and tell Mam and Mrs. Telford. I sat down on the grass and pretended I was waiting for her coming back, even though I knew she never was. I don't know how I knew it, but I did. And she didn't.

Mebbe if I'd run straight back in, they'd have rushed out and caught up with him. Probably not, and no use crying. There was a him now, no one had any doubt of that.

Now there were policemen everywhere and all the time. We had our own bobby living in the village. His name was Clark and everyone called him Nobby the Bobby. He was a big, fierce-looking man and we all thought he was really important till we saw the way the new lot tret him, specially this great glorrfat one who were in charge of them without uniforms.

They set up shop in the village hall. Mr. Wulfstan made a right fuss when he found out. Some folk said he had the wrong of it, seeing what had happened; others said he were quite right, we all wanted this lunatic caught, but that didn't mean letting the police walk all over us.

The reason Mr. Wulfstan made a fuss was because of the concert. His firm sponsored the Mid-Yorkshire Dales Summer Music Festival, and he were head of the committee. The festival's centered on Danby. I think that's how he met Aunt Chloe. She liked that sort of music and used to go over to Danby a lot. After they got wed and she inherited Heck, he got this idea of holding one of the concerts in Dendale. They held them all over, but there'd never been one here because there were so few people living in the dale and the road in and out wasn't all that good. The Parish Council had held a public meeting to discuss it the previous year. Some folk, like my dad, said they cared nowt for this sort of music and what were the point of attracting people up the valley when in a year or so there'd be nowt for them to see but a lot of water? This made a lot of folk angry (so I were told), 'cos things hadn't been finally settled and they were still hopeful Mr. Pontifex would refuse to sell. Not that that would have made any difference except to drag things out a little longer. But the vote was to accept the concert, specially when Mr. Wulfstan said he'd like the school choir to do a turn too.

So the previous year we'd had our first concert. The main singer were from Norway, though he spoke such good English, you'd not have known it till you heard his name, which were Arne Krog. He was a friend of Mr. Wulfstan's and he stayed at Heck along with the lady who played the piano for him. Inger Sandel she was called. Arne (everyone called him Arne) was really popular, especially with the girls, being so tall and fair and good looking. Stuff he sang were mainly foreign, which didn't please everyone. He'd come back again this year and he were right disappointed when it looked like there wouldn't be a concert. I was too. I were in the school choir and this year I'd been going to sing a solo.

And most folk in the dale were disappointed as well. The concert were due to take place not long before the big move, and next year there'd be no hall, and no dale, to stage it in.

Then we heard that Mr. Wulfstan had persuaded Reverend Disjohn to let us use St. Luke's instead, and you'd have thought we'd won a battle.

But none of this took our minds off Madge's vanishing. Every time you saw police, and we saw them every day, it all came back. All the kids who knew Madge got asked questions by this lady policeman, and me most of all, 'cos we were best friends. She were very nice and I didn't mind talking to her. It were a lot better than answering questions Mr. Telford kept on asking. I liked Mrs. Telford a lot, and Madge's uncle George, her dad's brother who worked at the joinery with him, he were all right too. But Mr. Telford were a bit frightening, mebbe because it was him made the coffins for the dale and wore a black suit at a burying. Madge were like me, an only daughter, with the difference that as far as my dad were concerned, I might as well not have existed, while Madge were like a goddess or a princess or something to Mr. Telford. Not that he didn't get angry with her, but that was only because he got so worried about her. Like if she came home late, even if it were just ten minutes after school, he'd tell her he was going to lock her up with the coffins till she learnt obedience. I don't think it would have bothered Madge. Sometimes we used to sneak into the old barn where he stored the coffins, and we'd play around them, even climbing inside sometimes. I'm not saying I'd have liked to be in there by myself, but it would have been better than the belt. Any road, he never did it. When he got his rag back, he usually blamed someone else, like me, for keeping her late. Now he were on at me all the time, looking for someone or something to blame, I suppose. But I think mebbe it was himself he blamed most. "It ud be different if only she'd come back," he'd say. "I'd never let her out of my sight."

But I think, like me, he knew she were never coming back.

The lady policeman asked me all sorts of questions, like, had Madge ever said anything about any man bothering her? and how did she get on with her dad and her uncle George? I said no she hadn't, and grand. Then she asked about the afternoon she went missing and had I noticed anyone anywhere near the Telfords' house when I were looking for Madge in the back garden? And I said no. And she said, not even Benny Lightfoot? And I said, oh, aye, I think I saw Benny up the fell a way, but nobody paid any heed to Benny. And that was when she asked me about the time we were playing in the water and Jenny went off, had I seen Benny that day too. And I said, yes, I thought I had. And she asked why I hadn't mentioned it then, and I explained that I didn't think that seeing Benny counted.

Now, no one in the dale believed any harm of Benny Lightfoot, and it were thought a right shame when police car went bumping up the track to Neb Cottage, right up under the Neb, where he lived with his gran. Nobby Clark explained that the glorrfat one without a uniform had kept on bothering him to know if there were anyone a bit odd lived local. "I telt him I didn't know many that wasn't a bit odd," he said. (this were reckoned a good joke and spread round the dale right quick.) But he'd had to tell him about Benny.

Benny were about nineteen, and I'd heard say he had an accident when young and had a bit of metal in his head, and mebbe this helped make him so shy, especially of lasses. You'd see his long, lean figure hanging around village hall when there were a social on, or up by Wintle Wood where the big lads and lasses used to lark around on a fine evening. But once he saw he'd been seen, he'd vanish so quick, you wondered if you'd ever really seen him in the first place. "Never knew a bugger better named," folk used to say, and everyone had a right good laugh when they heard that as the police car pulled up at the front of Neb Cottage, Benny went out of the back and took off up the hillside.

One of the bobbies tried to chase him, but there was no point. Once Benny had been persuaded to enter the Danby Tops, which is the big fell race out of Danby Show in August. They got him to the start all right and when the gun went, he were off like a whippet and when they turned for home half an hour later at top of the Danby side of Lang Neb, he were half a mile ahead. He came down like a loose boulder, just bouncing from rock to rock, with never another runner in sight. Then he heard crowd cheering and he stopped a couple of hundred feet above the showground on Ligg Common and looked down at all them people.

Next thing he'd turned round and were running back up the fell almost as fast as he came down, and I doubt if he paused till he were over the ridge and back in his gran's cottage in Dendale.

So like I say, most folk just laughed when they heard this, 'cos they reckoned it was a waste of time, especially as they were certain it weren't anyone local the police should be looking for, it were some off-comer, and most likely one of the contractors working on the dam.

They'd been round a long time. They'd started work soon as Mr. Pontifex had sold them his Dendale estate. They couldn't start on the dam proper until the result of the Inquiry, but this made no difference, I heard my dad say later. Then Water Board knew they were going to get the result that they wanted, and by the time it came through, they'd laid new drains up on Black Moss between Neb and Beulah Height on Highcross Moor, so that what had just been a great bog were now a wide tarn waiting to be spilled down into valley. And at Dale End, they'd cleared the land and put down hard-core tracks for heavy machinery and built cabins for their contractors.

So they'd been around for a long long time by that long hot summer when the dam were getting close to being finished and the dale had got used to them. There were odd bits of trouble, but not much. When some chickens got stolen at Christmas and when someone started nicking undies from washing lines, everyone said it must be the contractors, and Nobby Clark went and had a word, but apart from that they weren't any bother. They'd get in the Holly Bush an odd time, but they had their own bar and canteen and game room down at Dale End and seemed to prefer sticking together. But there was one of them who were different. This was a man called Geordie Turnbull.

Geordie wasn't anyone important, he drove one of the big machines that dug up the earth, but he liked to come into the village, drink in the pub, shop in the post office. Everyone liked him, except mebbe for a few of the men who didn't like the way he got on so well with the women.

Even Mrs. Winter, our old headteacher, thought he were grand, and Miss Lavery seemed fair stricken. Few months earlier, Water Board had put on some lectures in the village hall to explain all about the dam, dead boring, I heard my dad say. He stood up and asked questions and it got into a row and he wanted to hit the lecturer but some of the others stopped him even though most agreed with him. Anyway, the Board asked Mrs. Winter if they could send a lecturer into the school, and she said no, it would likely just worry the children, but if they sent someone we all knew like Geordie Turnbull to explain about the dam, that would be okay.

So Geordie came.

He had a funny way of talking which Miss Lavery said was because he came from Newcastle. He didn't lecture us but just sort of chatted and answered questions. I recall him saying, "Which of you kiddies ever tried to dam a stream?" And when all the hands went up, he said, "All right, so tell me, bonnie lads and lasses, what's the best stuff to work with when you're building your dam?" And some said earth, and some said stones, and some said branches. Geordie nodded and said, "Good answer," to all of those. Then he said, "Now, here's a hard one, what's the worst stuff of all for your dam?" And while everyone was thinking, Madge yelled out, "It's the watter!" And Geordie laughed out loud, and we all laughed with him, 'cos you had to laugh when he did, and he picked her up and swung her on his shoulders and said, "Yes it's the watter"-taking her off-"the very stuff you're trying to save that fights against you saving it. So when it's hot and dry like now, building a dam's a lot easier than when it's cold and wet. In fact you might say it's a dam sight easier." We all laughed again, and even Mrs. Winter had to smile.

Then he swung Madge down and gave her a kiss and said if ever she wanted a job moving earth, she just had to come and see Geordie Turnbull.

So it were a great success. And Geordie were even more popular after that. And everyone used to say that it were the well-off folk in their big offices in the city who were responsible for drowning the dale, no use blaming the contractors, who were just ordinary working lads trying to earn a living.

But when Madge got took, everything changed. Suddenly we were told not to go anywhere near the site, not to speak to anyone working on the dam, and anyone tried to talk to us, to run off fast and tell Constable Clark.

And above all we were warned not to talk to Geordie Turnbull. At the talk he gave in the school, no one had been bothered by him putting Madge on his shoulders or giving her a kiss or telling her to come and see him if she wanted a job. Now everyone was talking about it and they wouldn't serve him in the Holly Bush anymore, and there was nearly a fight when he wouldn't leave. Then one day we saw him took off in a police car, and everyone was saying they'd got him and he owt to be lynched. Two days later, but, he were back at work, though he never came into village again. But it didn't matter because now there was something new to occupy people's minds.

The bobbies had had no luck getting hold of Benny Lightfoot, but in the end they got a piece of paper saying they could search his room. Old Mrs. Lightfoot said that it'd take more than paper to get in her house and she set the dogs on them, but in the end they did get in, and up in Benny's room they found books with mucky pictures and some of the knickers that had gone missing off clotheslines. I don't think they wanted anyone to know owt of this straight off, but it were all round village in an hour.

Now they were really hot to catch Benny. They put two men to hide in the old byre alongside Neb Cottage. Everyone said they must be daft to imagine Benny wouldn't be watching them from up the Neb, and after couple of days a car bumped up the track and took the men hiding away. What no one knew was they dropped another man from out the back of the car, and he hid in the byre, and that night when Benny came down to his gran's, he jumped on him. Then he shut both himself and Benny up in the byre and radioed for help, which were just as well. When the others got there, old Mrs. Lightfoot were outside byre with her dogs and a shotgun, trying to break down door.

They took Benny away into town, and while everyone were sorry for the old lady, they all hoped this were the end of it. But four or five days later, Benny were back. According to what Nobby Clark said, they'd questioned him and questioned him, but he just kept on saying he'd done no harm, and they had to give him a lawyer, and though they kept hold of him long as they could, in the end they had to let him go.

No one in the dale knew what to think, but all the mams told their kids the same thing, if you see Benny Lightfoot, run like heck. And some of the dads after a few pints in the Holly Bush were all for going up to Neb Cottage and getting things sorted, though my dad said they were a load of idiots who'd pissed their brains out up against the wall. There might have been a fight, but Mr. Wulfstan were in the bar with Arne Krog and someone asked what he thought. Folk had a lot of respect for Mr. Wulfstan, even though he were an off-comer. He'd married local, he didn't object to hunting and shooting, and he spent his brass in the dale. Above all, he'd fought the Water Board every inch. So they listened when he said they'd got to trust the law. Best thing they could do was keep the kids in plain view till time came for us all to move out of the dale, which weren't too far away.

It were funny. The more worried folk got about their kids, the less they worried about the dam. In fact some of the mams were saying it would be a blessing to move and get this behind them and start off new somewhere, a long way away from Benny Lightfoot, just as if him and his gran weren't going to have to move too.

Hot weather went on. Mere went down, dam went up. Folk said that with no water to hold in, it weren't really a dam at all, just a big wall, like Hadrian's up north, to keep foreigners out.

Except it hadn't worked. There were two in already. Arne Krog and Inger Sandel.

I knew then quite well 'cos Aunt Chloe often invited me to Heck to play with Mary. Also Arne remembered me from singing in the school choir last year, and when he heard I were singing the "Ash Grove" solo this year, he asked me to sing it to him one day. I were so pleased, I just started right off without waiting for him to start playing the music on the piano. He listened till I finished, then sat down at the piano. It were one of them baby grands, Mr. Wulfstan played a bit himself, but he'd really bought it for Mary to practice on during the holidays. Mary didn't like playing very much, she told me. I'd have liked to learn, but we didn't have a piano and no hope of getting one. Anyway, Arne played a note and asked me to sing it, then a few more, then he played half a dozen and asked me which was the one that came at the end of the second line of the "Ash Grove."

When I told him, he turned to Inger and said, "You hear that? I think little Betsy could have perfect pitch."

She just looked at him, blank like, which meant nowt 'cos that was how she usually looked. She could talk English as good as him, only she never bothered unless she had to. As for me, I had no idea what he were talking about but I felt really chuffed that I'd got something that pleased Arne.

This piano at Heck had to be shifted to St. George's for the concert. There were an old piano in the village hall but it were useless for proper singing, and the one at school weren't much better. If a cat ran up and down keyboard, he'd have made it sound as musical as Miss Lavery when she tried to play it. So it had to be Mr. Wulfstan's baby grand.

My dad came to Heck with a trailer pulled by his tractor. He'd brushed most of muck off the trailer and put a bit of fresh straw on the boards, so it didn't look too bad. It took Dad and two lads from the village to get the piano out of the house while Aunt Chloe and Arne gave advice. I tried to help, but Dad told me to get out of the bloody way before I tripped someone up. I went and stood by Mary, and she held my hand. Her dad never spoke to her like that. If he hadn't seen her for half a day, he made more fuss when he got home than my dad had made of me when I came back from hospital after I spent a couple of nights there when I broke my leg.

Mr. Wulfstan wasn't there that day. Most days he drove into town to see to his business, and this was one of them. We went through the village in a sort of procession, Dad driving the tractor, the lads standing on trailer making sure piano didn't slip, Arne, Inger, Aunt Chloe, Mary, and me walking behind. Folk came to their doors to see what was going off and there was a lot of laughing, which hadn't been heard for a bit. No one had forgot about Jenny and Madge, but grieving doesn't pay the rent, as my mam said. Even the policemen who were in the hall looked out and smiled.

Reverend Disjohn were waiting at the church. Getting it through the door weren't easy. St. Luke's isn't a big, fancy building like you see some places. We learned all about it at school. Couple of hundred years back there were no church in Dendale and folk had a long trek over the fell to Danby for services. Worst was when someone died and you had to take the coffin with you. So in the end they built their own church by Shelter Crag at the foot of the fell, where they took the bodies out of the coffins and strapped them to ponies that carried them over to Danby. And when they built it they applied same rule as they did to their houses, which was, the bigger the door, the bigger the draft.

At last they got it in and set it up. Dad and the farm lads went off with the trailer. Inger sat down at the piano and tried it out. It had had a right jangling, getting it on and off trailer and through that narrow door, and she settled down to retune it. Aunt Chloe said she had some things to do in the village and she'd see us back home. Mary and I asked if we could stay and come back with Arne and Inger and she said all right, so long as we didn't go outside of the church. Arne said he'd keep an eye on us, and off Aunt Chloe went. Arne wandered round the church, looking at the wood carvings and such. Reverend Disjohn sat in a pew watching Inger at work. I often noticed when she were around he never took his eyes off her. She were too busy to pay any heed to him, playing notes, then fiddling inside the piano. It was dead boring, so Mary and I slipped outside to play in the churchyard. You can have a good game of hide-and-seek there around the gravestones. It's a bit frightening but nice-frightening, so long as the sun's shining and you know that there's grown-ups close by. Not all grown-ups, but. You can still see the old Corpse Road winding up the fellside from Shelter Crag. I were hiding behind a big stone at the bottom end of the churchyard and I could see right up the trail through the lych-gate and I glimpsed a figure up there. Like I told the police after, I thought it were Benny Lightfoot but I couldn't be absolutely sure. Then Mary suddenly came round the headstone and grabbed me, frightening me half to death, and I forgot all about it.

Now it were her turn to hide, mine to seek. She were good at hiding because she could keep still as a mouse and not start giggling like most of us did.

I went right round the church without spotting her. As I passed the door, I heard Arne start singing. Inger must have finished tuning and they were trying it out. I stepped inside to listen.

The words were foreign, but I'd heard him sing it before and he told me what it meant. It's about this man riding in the dark with his young son and the boy sees this sort of elf called the Erlking who calls him away. The father tries to ride faster but it's no use, the Erlking has got his child and when he reaches home the boy is dead. I didn't like it much, it were really frightening, but I had to listen.

Arne saw me in the doorway and all of a sudden he stopped and said, "No, it's not right. Something's wrong with this place, perhaps it's the acoustics, perhaps you haven't got the piano quite right. I have to go back to the house now. Why don't you play your scales to little Betsy here? She has a better ear than either of us, I think. Let her say what is wrong."

I recall the words exactly. He were looking straight at me as he spoke and sort of smiling. He had these bright blue eyes, like the sky on one of them sharp winter's days when the sun is shining but the frost never leaves the air.

He picked me up and set me on his shoulder and carried me up the aisle. I remember how cold it felt inside after the hot sun. And I recalled the time Dad put me on his shoulder in the hayloft.

Arne set me down in a pew next to the vicar and ruffled my hair, what there was of it. Then he said, "See you later," and smiled at Inger but she didn't smile back, just gave him a funny look and started playing scales as he went out. Every now and then she'd pause and look at me. Sometimes I'd nod, sometimes shake my head. Don't know how I know if something's right or not, I just do.

We must have been there another half hour or more. Finally she were satisfied and we said good-bye to the vicar. He wanted to talk but I could tell Inger weren't interested in him, and we went out of the door. It were like stepping into a hot bath after the cold church, and the bright light made my eyes dazzle.

Then I remembered Mary.

I called her name. Nothing. It were like being at the bottom of Madge's garden again.

Inger called, too, and Reverend Disjohn came out of the church and asked what were up.

"It's nothing," said Inger. "I think Mary must have gone back to the house with Arne."

She said it dead casual, but I saw the way she and the vicar looked at each other that they were worried sick.

I were sick, too, but not with worry. Worry's for what you don't know. And I knew Mary were gone.

We hurried back to Heck. Arne were there and Aunt Chloe. I thought she were going to die in front of us when we asked if Mary had come home. I'd heard folk say that someone had gone white as a sheet often enough, but now for the first time I knew what it meant.

Vicar had stopped off at the hall on the way through the village and the police were close behind us.

I told all I could. "Are you sure it was Lightfoot?" they kept on asking, and I kept on saying, "I think it was." Then Arne said, "I think that this young lady has had enough, don't you?" And he put his arm around me and led me out of the house and took me home.

They went searching up the Neb again, with the dogs and everything, just like last time. And just like last time, they came back with nothing.

And they went looking for Benny again, and he weren't to be found either.

His gran said he'd been with her all afternoon till he saw the police cars turning up the track. Then he'd taken off because he couldn't stand any more questioning. No one believed her, at least not about being with her all afternoon.

Then Mr. Wulfstan came home. He were like a mad thing. He came round to our house and started asking me what had happened. At first he tried to be nice and friendly but after a bit his voice got louder and he started sounding so fierce that I began to cry. "What do you mean, don't know where she was hiding? What do you mean, you think you saw Lightfoot? What do you mean, you stopped playing and went inside to listen to the music?"

By now he'd got ahold of me and I was sobbing my heart out. Then Mam, who'd gone out to make some tea, came rushing back in and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. I'd never heard her swear before. Mr. Wulfstan calmed down and said he were sorry but not sounding like he meant it, then he rushed off without having any tea. We heard later he went up to Neb Cottage and had a big row with old Mrs. Lightfoot, and the police had to make him come away, and he told them it were all their fault for letting Lightfoot loose when they had him in their cells, and if anything had happened to Mary he was going to make sure everyone of them suffered.

I asked my mam why he were so mad with me. She said, he's not mad with you, he's mad with himself for not taking better care of the thing he loves most in the world. I said, but it's not his fault that Mary got took, and she said, aye but he thinks it is, and that's why he's running round looking for someone else to blame. And I wondered if my dad would run around like that if I got took. Weeks passed. They didn't find Mary. And they didn't find Benny. The concert was canceled. Arne and Inger went away. And the day came when we all had to move out of our homes.

I were glad to go. Everyone else had long faces and there were some who were wailing and moaning. Dad went around like he were looking for someone to hit and Mam, who were having one of her bad turns again, could hardly drag herself out of the house. But I sat in the backseat of the car with Bonnie held tight in my arms and bit my cheeks to stop myself smiling. Remember, I were only seven and I thought that grief and guilt and fear were things you could drive away from like houses and barns and fields, leaving them behind you to be drowned.

And when, as we drove down the village street for the last time, the first drops of rain we'd seen in nigh on four months burst on the windscreen, I recalled Reverend Disjohn's Friday talk and felt sure that God was once again sending His blessed floods to cleanse a world turned foul by all our sins.

"And now the sun will rise as bright As though no horror had touched the night. The horror affected me alone. The sunlight illumines everyone."

"Nice voice," said Peter Pascoe, his mouth full of quiche. "Pity about the tuba fanfare."

"That was a car horn, or can't your tin ear tell the difference? But no doubt it is Tubby the Tuba leaning on it."

"Why do you think I'm bolting my food?" said Pascoe.

"I noticed. Peter, it's Sunday, it's your day off. You don't have to go."

He gave her an oddly grave smile and said gently, "No, I don't. But I think I will. Give you a chance for a bit of productive Sabbath-breaking."

This was a reference to Ellie's writing ambitions, marked by the presence of a pad and three pens on the patio by her sun bed.

"Can't concentrate in this heat," she said. "Christ, the fat bastard's going to rouse the whole street!"

The horn was playing variations on the opening motif of Beethoven's Fifth.

Pascoe, ignoring it, said, "Never mind. You're probably famous already, only they haven't told you."

Ellie had written three novels, all unpublished. The third script had been with a publisher for three months. A phone call had brought the assurance that it was being seriously considered, and with it a hope that was more creatively enervating than any heat.

The doorbell rang. The fat bastard had got out of his car. Pascoe washed the quiche down with a mouthful of wine and stooped to kiss his wife. With Ellie any kiss was a proper kiss. She'd once told him she didn't mind a peck on the cheek but only if she wasn't sitting on it. Now she arched her bikinied body off the sun lounger and gave him her strenuous tongue.

The doorbell went into the carillon at the end of the "1812" Overture, accompanied by cannonlike blows of the fist against the woodwork.

Reluctantly Pascoe pulled clear and went into the house. As he passed through the hallway, he grabbed a light cagoule. It hadn't rained for weeks, but Andy Dalziel brought out the Boy Scout in him.

He opened the door and said, "Jesus."

Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel, ever full of surprises, was wearing a Hawaiian shirt bright enough to make an eagle blink.

"Always the cockeyed optimist," he said, looking at the cagoule. "Hello, what's yon? I know that tune."

This beat even the shirt. Like a child catching the strains of the Pied Piper, the Fat Man pushed past Pascoe and headed through the house to the patio, where the radio was playing.

"You must not dam up that dark infernal," sang the strong young mezzo voice. "But drown it deep in dark eternal."

"Andy," said Ellie, looking up in surprise. "Thought you were in a hurry. Time for a drink? Or a slice of quiche?" She reached for the radio switch.

"Nay, leave it. Mahler, isn't it?"

With difficulty Ellie prevented her gaze meeting her husband's.

"Right," she said. "You're a fan?"

"Wouldn't say that. Usually in Kraut, but?"

"True. This is the first time I've heard it in English."

"So deep in my heart a small flame died. Hail to the joyous morningtide!"

The voice faded. The music wound plangently for another half minute, then it died too.

"Elizabeth Wulfstan singing the first of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, the songs for dead children," said the announcer. "A new voice to me, Charmian. Lots of promise, but what an odd choice for a first disc. And in her own translation, too, I believe."

"That's right. And I agree, not many twenty-two-year-olds would want to tackle something like this, but perhaps not many twenty-two-year-olds have a voice with this kind of maturity."

"Maybe so, but I still think it was a poor choice. There's a straining after effect, as if she doesn't trust the music and the words to do their share of the work. More after the break. This is Coming Out, your weekend review of the new releases."

Ellie switched off.

"Andy, you okay?"

The Fat Man was standing rapt, no longer Hamelin child lured away by the piper, but Scottish thane after a chat with the witches.

"Nay, I'm fine. Just feel like someone had walked over my grave, that's all."

This time the Pascoes' gazes did meet and shared the message, It'd be a bloody long walk!

He went on. "Yon lass, he said her name was Wulfstan?"

"That's right. She's going to be singing in the Dales Festival. I saw the disc advertised in The Gramophone, special mail-order price, so I've got it coming, but I might not have bothered if I'd heard that review first. What do you think, Andy, being an expert? And are you sure you won't have a drink?"

The gentle irony, or the repeated offer, brought Dalziel out of his reverie and for the first time his gaze acknowledged that Ellie was wearing a bikini whose cloth wouldn't have made a collar for his shirt.

"Nay, lass. I know nowt about music. And there's no time for a drink. Sorry to be dragging him off on a Sunday, but."

He made dragging off sound like a physical act.

Ellie was puzzled. Three things which passeth understanding: Dalziel recognizing Mahler; Dalziel refusing a drink; Dalziel not clocking her tits straight off.

"It sounds urgent," she said.

"Aye, kiddie goes missing, it's always urgent," he said. "Where's young Rosie?"

The juxtaposition of ideas was abrupt enough to be disturbing.

Pascoe said quickly, "She's spending the weekend with a school-friend. Zandra with a Zed, would you believe? Zandra Purlingstone?"

There was a teasing interrogative in his tone which Dalziel was onto in a flash.

"Purlingstone? Not Dry-Dock Purlingstone's daughter?" he exclaimed.

Derek Purlingstone, general manager of Mid-Yorks Water, PLC, the privatized version of the old Water Board, had played down the threat of shortages when this year's drought started by gently mocking the English preoccupation with bathing, adding, "After all, when you want to clean a boat, you don't put it in a bath, do you? You put it in a dry dock!"

He had learned the hard way that only the sufferers are allowed to make jokes about their pain. Dalziel's surprise rose from the fact that Dry-Dock's position and politics made him the kind of man whose company Ellie would normally have avoided like head lice.

"The same," said Pascoe. "Zandra's in Rosie's class at Edengrove and they've elected each other best friend."

"Oh, aye? With all his brass, I'd have thought he'd have gone private. Still, it's reckoned a good school and I suppose it's nice and handy, being right on his doorstep."

Dalziel spoke without malice, but Pascoe could see that Ellie was feeling provoked. Edengrove Primary, with its excellent reputation and its famous head, Miss Martindale, might lie right on Purlingstone's doorstep, but it was a good four miles north of the Pascoes', while Bullgate Primary was less than a mile south. Ellie had made inquiries. "Bullgate has many original and unique features," a friend in the inspectorate told her. "For instance, during break, they play tiggie with hammers." After that, she made representations, with the upshot that Rosie went to Edengrove. Even with the shining example of New Labour leadership before her, Ellie felt a little exposed, and as always was ready to counterpunch before the seconds had left the ring.

"If Derek is democratic enough to send his girl to a state school, I don't see why we should try to prove him wrong by refusing to let Rosie make friends with Zandra, do you?" she said challengingly.

Normally Dalziel would have enjoyed nothing more than winding Ellie Pascoe up. But this morning, standing here on this pleasant patio in the warm sunshine, he felt such a longing to subside into a lounger, accept a cold beer, and while away the remains of the day in the company of these people he cared for more than he'd ever acknowledge, that he found he had no stomach for even a mock fight.

"Nay, you're right, lass," he said. "Being friendly with your little lass would do anyone the power of good. But I thought her best mate was called Nina or something, not Zandra. T'other night when I rang and Rosie answered, I asked her what she were doing, and she said she were playing at hospitals with her best friend Nina. They fallen out, or what?"

Pascoe laughed and said, "Nina has many attractions, but she doesn't have a pony and a swimming pool. At least not a real pony and a real swimming pool. Nina's Rosie's imaginary best friend. Ever since Wieldy gave her this last Christmas, they've been inseparable."

He went into the living room and emerged with a slim, shiny volume which he handed to the Fat Man.

The cover had the title Nina and the Nix above a picture of a pool of water in a high vaulted cave with a scaly humanoid figure, sharp toothed andwitha fringe of beard, reaching over the pool to a small girl with her hands pressed against her ears, and her mouth and eyes rounded in terror. At the bottom it said, Printed at the Eendale Press.

"Hey," said Dalziel. "Isn't that the outfit run by yon sarky sod our Wieldy took up with?"

"Edwin Digweed. Indeed," said Pascoe.

"Ten guineas it says here. I hope the bugger got trade discount! You sure this is meant for kiddies? Picture like that could give the little lass bad dreams."

He sounds like a disapproving granddad, thought Pascoe.

He said, "It's Caddy Scudamore who did the illustrations. You remember her?"

"That artist lass?" Dalziel smacked his lips salaciously. "Like a hot jam doughnut just out of the pan and into the sugar. Lovely."

It was an image for an Oxford professor of poetry to lecture on, thought Ellie as she said primly, "I tend to agree with you about the illustration, Andy."

"Come on," said Pascoe. "She sees worse in Disney cartoons. It's Nina that bothers me. I had to buy an ice cream for her the other day."

"That's because you never had an imaginary friend," laughed Ellie. "I did, till I was ten. Only children often do."

"Adults too," agreed Dalziel. "The chief constable's got several. I'm one of them. What's the story about, anyway?"

"About a little girl who gets kidnapped by a nix-that's a kind of water goblin."

A breeze sprang up from somewhere, hardly strong enough to stir the petals on the roses, but sufficient to run a chilly finger over sun-warmed skin.

"Could have had that drink," said Dalziel accusingly to Pascoe. "Too late now. Come on, lad. We've wasted enough time."

He thrust the book into Ellie's hands and set off through the house.

Pascoe looked down at his wife. She got the impression he was seeking the right words to say something important. But what finally emerged was only "See you then. Expect me… whenever."

"I always do," she said. "Take care."

He turned away, paused uncertainly as if in a strange house, then went through the patio door.

She looked after him, troubled. She knew something was wrong and she knew where it had started. The end of last year. A case which had turned personal in a devastating way and which had only just finished progressing through the courts. But when, if ever, it would finish progressing through her husband's psyche, she did not know. Nor how deeply she ought to probe.

She heard the front door close. She was still holding Rosie's book. She looked down at the cover illustration, then placed the slim volume facedown on the floor beside her and switched the radio back on.

The strong young voice of Elizabeth Wulfstan was singing again.

"Look on us now, for soon we must go from you. These eyes that open brightly every morning In nights to come as stars will shine upon you."

Pascoe sat in the passenger seat of the car with the window wound fully down. The air hit his face like a bomb blast, giving him an excuse to close his eyes while the noise inhibited conversation.

That had been a strange moment back there, when his feet refused to move him through the doorway and his tongue tried to form the words I shan't go.

But its strangeness was short lived. Now he knew it had been a defining moment, such as comes when a man stops pretending his chest pains are dyspepsia.

If he'd opted not to go then, he doubted if he would ever have gone again.

He'd known this when Dalziel rang him. He'd known it every morning when he got up and went on duty for the past many weeks.

He was like a priest who'd lost his faith. His sense of responsibility still made him take the services and administer the sacraments, but it was mere automatism maintained in the hope that the loss was temporary.

After all, even though it was faith, not good works, that got you into the Kingdom, lack of the former was no excuse for giving up the latter, was it?

He smiled to himself. He could still smile. The blacker the comedy, the bigger the laugh, eh? And he had found himself involved in the classic detective black comedy when the impartial investigator of a crime discovers it is his own family, his own history, he is investigating, and ends up arresting himself. Or at least something in himself is arrested. Or rather…

No. Metaphors, analogies, parallels, were all ultimately evasive.

The truth was that what he had discovered about his family's past, and present, had filled him with a rage which at first he had scarcely acknowledged to himself. After all, what had rage to do with the liberal, laid-back, logical, caring, and controlled Pascoe everyone knew and loved? But it had grown and grown, a poison tree with its roots spreading through every acre of his being, till eventually controlling it and concealing it took up so much of his moral energy, he had no strength for anything else.

He was back with metaphors, and mixing them this time too.

Simply, then, he had come close from time to time to physical violence, to hitting people, and not just the lippy lowlifes his job brought him in contact with who would test a saint's patience, but those close around him-not, thank God, his wife and his daughter-but certainly this gross grotesquerie, this tun of lard, sitting next to him.

"You turned Trappist or are you just sulking?" the tun bellowed.

Carefully Pascoe wound up the window.

"Just waiting for you to fill me in, sir," he said.

"Thought I'd done that," said Dalziel.

"No, sir. You rang and said that a child had gone missing in Danby and as that meant you'd be driving out of town past my house, you'd pick me up in twenty minutes."

"Well, there's nowt else. Lorraine Dacre, aged seven, went out for a walk with her dog before her parents got up. Dog's back but she isn't."

Pascoe pondered this as they crossed the bypass and its caterpillar of traffic crawling eastward to the sea, then said mildly, "Not a lot to go at, then."

"You mean, not enough to cock up your cocktails on the patio? Or mebbe you were planning to pop round to Dry-Dock's for a dip in his pool."

"Not much point," said Pascoe. "We'll be passing the Chateau Purlingstone shortly and if you peer over his security fence, you'll observe that he's practicing what he preaches. The pool is empty. Which is why they've taken the girls to the seaside today. We were asked to join them but I didn't fancy wall-to-wall traffic. A mistake, I now realize."

"Don't think I wouldn't have airlifted you out," growled Dalziel.

"I believe you. But why? Okay, a missing child's always serious, but this is still watching-brief time. Chances are she's slipped and crocked her ankle up the dale somewhere, or worse, banged her head. So the local station organizes a search and keeps us posted. Nothing turns up, then we get involved on the ground."

"Aye, normally you're right. But this time the ground's Danby."

"Meaning?"

"Danbydale's next valley over from Dendale."

He paused significantly.

Pascoe dredged his mind for a connection and, because they'd just been talking about Dry-Dock Purlingstone, came up with water.

"Dendale reservoir," he said. "That was going to solve all our water problem to the millennium. There was an inquiry, wasn't there? Environmentalists versus the public weal. I wasn't around myself but we've got a book about it, or rather Ellie has. She's into local history and environmental issues. The Drowning of Dendale, that's it. More a coffee-table job than a sociological analysis, I recall… sorry, sir. Am I missing the point?"

"You're warm, but not very," growled the Fat Man, who'd been showing increasing signs of impatience. "That summer, just afore they flooded Dendale, three little lasses went missing there. We never found their bodies and we never got a result. I know you weren't around, but you must have heard summat of it."

Meaning, My failures are more famous than other people's triumphs, thought Pascoe.

"I think I heard something," he said diplomatically. "But I can't remember much."

"I remember," said the Fat Man. "And the parents, I bet they remember. One of the girls was called Wulfstan. That's what fetched me up short back there when I heard the name."

"The singer, you mean? Any connection? It can't be a common name."

"Mebbe. Not a daughter, but. They just had the one. Mary. It nigh on pushed the father over the edge, losing her. He chucked all kinds of shit at us, threatened he'd sue for incompetence and such."

"Did he have a case?" inquired Pascoe.

Dalziel gave him a cold stare but Pascoe met it unblinking. Hidden rage had its compensations, one of them being an indifference to threat.

"There were this local in the frame," said the Fat Man abruptly. "I never really fancied him, two sheets short of a bog roll I reckoned, but we pulled him in after the second lassie. Nothing doing, we had to let him go. Then Mary Wulfstan vanished and her old man went bananas."

"And the local?"

"Benny Lightfoot. He vanished too. Except for one more sighting. Another girl, Betsy Allgood, she got attacked, but that was later, weeks later. Said it were definitely Lightfoot. That did it for most people, especially bloody media. In their eyes we'd had him and we'd let him go."

"You didn't agree?"

"Or didn't want to. Never easy to say which."

This admission of weakness was disturbing, like a cough from a coffin.

"So you went looking for him?"

"There were more sightings than Elvis. Someone even spotted him running in the London Marathon on telly. That figured. Lived up to his name, did Benny. Light of head, light of foot. He could fair fly up that fellside. Might as well have flown off it for all we ever found of him. Or into it, the locals reckoned."

"Sorry?"

"Into the Neb. That's what they call the fell between Dendale and Danby. It's Long Denderside on the map. Full of bloody holes, specially on the Dendale flank. Different kind of rock on the Danby side, don't ask me how. So there's lots of caves and tunnels, most on 'em full of water, save in the drought."

"Did you search them?"

"Cave rescue team went in after the first girl vanished. And again after the other two. Not a sign. Aye, but they're not Benny Lightfoot, said the locals. Could squeeze through a crack in the pavement, our Benny."

"And that's where he's been hiding for fifteen years?" mocked Pascoe.

"Doubt it," said Dalziel, with worrying seriousness. "But he could have holed up there for a week or so, scavenging at nights for food. Betsy Allgood-that's the one who got away -she said he looked half starved. And sodden. The drought had broken then. The caves in the Neb would be flooding. I always hoped he'd have gone to sleep down there somewhere and woke up drowned."

The radio crackled before Pascoe could examine this interesting speculation in detail and Central Control spilled out an update on the case.

Lorraine Dacre, aged seven, was the only child of Tony Dacre, thirty, Post Office driver, no criminal record, and Elsie Dacre, nee Coe, also no record. Married eight years, residence, No. 7 Liggside, Danby. Lorraine did not appear on any Social Service or Care Agency list. Sergeant Clark, Danby Section Office, had called in his staff of four constables. Three were up the dale supervizing a preliminary search. Backup services had been alerted and would be mobilized on DS Dalziel's say-so. Sergeant Clark would rendezvous with DS Dalziel at Liggside.

The Fat Man was really reacting strongly to this, thought Pascoe. Old guilt feelings eating that great gut? Or was there something more?

He brooded on this as they ate up the twenty or so miles to Danby. It was a pleasant road, winding through the pieced and plotted agricultural landscape of the Mid-York plain. As summer's height approached, the fields on either side were green and gold with the promise of rich harvest, but on unirrigated set-aside land blotches of umber and ochre showed how far the battle with drought was already engaged. And up ahead, where arms of rising ground embraced the dales, and no pipes or channels, sprayers or sprinklers, watered the parching earth, the green of bracken and the glory of heather had been sucked up by the thirsty sun, turning temperate moor to tropical savannah.

"It was like this fifteen years ago," said Dalziel, breaking in on his thought as though he had spoken it aloud.

"You're thinking heat could be a trigger?" said Pascoe skeptically. "We've had some good summers since. In fact if you listen to Derek Purlingstone, the Sahara's had more rain than Mid-Yorkshire in the past ten years."

"Not like this one. Not for so long," said Dalziel obstinately.

"And just because there's a drought and Danby is the next valley over from Dendale…"

"And the place where most of the Dendale folk were resettled," added Dalziel. "And there's one thing more. A sign…"

"A sign!" mocked Pascoe. "Let me guess. Hearing the name Wulfstan on the radio? Is that it? My God, sir, you'll be hearing voices in the bells next!"

"Any more of your cheek, I'll thump you so hard you'll be hearing bells in the voices," said Dalziel grimly. "When I say a sign, I mean a sign. Several of them. Clark rang me direct. He knew I'd be interested. Hold on now. There's the first on 'em."

He slammed on the brake with such violence, Pascoe would have been into the windshield if it hadn't been for his seat belt.

"Jesus," he gasped.

He couldn't see any reason for the sudden stop. The road stretched emptily ahead under a disused railway bridge. He glanced sideways at the Fat Man and saw his gaze was inclined upward at an angle suggestive of pious thanksgiving. But his expression held little of piety and it wasn't the heavens his eyes were fixed on but the parapet of the bridge.

Along it someone had sprayed in bright red paint the words BENNY'S