On Beulah Height

5

Danby, according to a recent Evening Post feature, was that rarest of things, a rural success story.

Bucking the usual trend to depopulation and decline, new development, led by the establishment of a Science and Business Park on its southern edge, had swollen the place from large village to small town.

It ain't pretty but it works, thought Pascoe as they drove past the entrance to the park on one side of the road and the entrance to a large supermarket backed by a new housing development on the other.

It takes more than the march of modernity to modify the English provincial sabbath, however, and the town's old center was as quiet as a pueblo during siesta. Even the folk sitting outside the three pubs they passed, with no more than a faint longing sigh from Dalziel, looked like figures engraved on an urn.

The main sign of activity they saw was a man scrubbing furiously at a shop window on which, despite his efforts, the words BENNY'S BACK! remained stubbornly visible, and another man obliterating the same words with black paint on a gable end.

Neither of the detectives said anything till open countryside, moorland now, not pastoral, began to open up ahead once more.

"This Liggside's right on the edge, is it?" asked Pascoe.

"Aye. Next to Ligg Common. Ligg Beck runs right down the valley. Yon's the Neb."

The sun laid it all out before them like a holiday slide. Danbydale rose ahead, due north to start with, then curving northeast. The Neb rose steeply to the west. The road they were on continued up the lower eastern arm of the dale, its white curves clear as bones on a beach.

"Next left, if I recall right," said Dalziel.

He did, of course. Lost in a Mid-Yorkshire mist with an Ordnance Survey cartographer, a champion orienteer, and Andy Dalziel, Pascoe knew which one he'd follow.

Liggside was a small terrace of gray cottages fronting the pavement. No problem spotting No. 7. There was a police car parked outside and a uniformed constable at the door, with two small groups of onlookers standing a decent distance (about ten feet in Mid-Yorkshire) on either side.

The constable moved forward as Dalziel double-parked, probably to remonstrate, but happily for his health, recognition dawned in time and he opened the car door for them with a commissionaire's flourish.

Pascoe got out, stretched, and took in the scene. The cottages were small and unprepossessing, but solid, not mean, and the builder had been proud enough of them to mark the completion by carving the date in the central lintel.

Eighteen sixty. Year Mahler was born. Dalziel's unexpected recognition of the Kindertotenlied brought the name to his mind. He doubted if the event made much of a stir in Danby. What great event did occupy the minds of the first inhabitants of Liggside? American Civil War… no, that was 1861. How about Garibaldi's Redshirts taking Sicily? Probably the Italian's name never meant much more to most native Danbians than a jacket or a biscuit. Or was he being patronizingly elitist? Who should know better than he that there was no way of knowing what your ancestors knew?

What he did know was that his mental ramblings were an attempt to distance himself from the depth of pain and fear he knew awaited them beyond the matte-brown door with its bright brass mail slot and its rudded step. Where a lost child was concerned, not even rage was strong enough to block that out.

The constable opened the house door and spoke softly. A moment later a uniformed sergeant Pascoe recognized as Clark, head of Danby substation, appeared. He didn't speak but just shook his head to confirm that nothing had changed. Dalziel pushed past him and Pascoe followed.

The small living room was crowded with people, all female, but there was no problem spotting the pale face of the missing child's mother. She was sitting curled up almost fetally at the end of a white vinyl sofa. She seemed to be leaning away from rather than into the attempted embrace of a large blond woman whose torso looked better suited to the lifting of weights than the offering of comfort.

Dalziel's entrance drew all eyes. They looked for hope and, getting none, acknowledged its absence by dropping their focus from his face to his shirt.

"Who the hell's this clown?" demanded the blonde in a smoke-roughened voice.

Clark said, "Detective Superintendent Dalziel, Head of CID."

"Is that right? And he comes out here at a time like this dressed like a frigging fairground tent?"

It was an image that made up in comprehensiveness what it lacked in detail.

Dalziel ignored her, and crouched with surprising suppleness before the pale-faced woman.

"Mrs. Dacre, Elsie," he said. "I came soon as I got word. I didn't waste time changing."

The eyes, mere glints in dark holes, rose to look at him.

"Who gives a toss what you're wearing. Can you find her?"

What do you say now, old miracle worker? wondered Pascoe.

"I'll do everything in my power," said Dalziel.

"And what's that, then?" demanded the blonde. "Just what are you doing, eh?"

Dalziel rose and said, "Sergeant Clark, let's have a bit of space here. Everyone out, please. Let's have some air."

The blonde's body language said quite clearly that she wasn't about to move, but Dalziel took the wind out of her sails by saying, "Not you, Mrs. Coe. You hold still, if Elsie wants you."

"How the hell do you know my name?" she demanded.

It was indeed a puzzling question but not beyond all conjecture. Coe was Elsie Dacre's maiden name, and an older woman who had assumed the office of chief comforter without either a family resemblance or the look of a bosom friend was likely to be an in-law.

Dalziel just looked at her blankly, not about to spoil that impression of omniscience which made people tell him the truth, or at least feel so nervous, it showed when they tried to hide it.

"Right, Sergeant," he said as Clark closed the door after the last of the departing women. "So what's going off?"

"I've got my lads up the dale-"

"Three. That's how many he's got," interposed Mrs. Coe scornfully.

"Tony, that's Mr. Dacre, naturally wanted to get back up there looking and a bunch of locals were keen to help, so I thought it best to make sure they had some supervision," Clark went on.

Dalziel nodded approvingly. The more disorganized and amateur an early search was, the harder it made any later fine-tooth combing whose object was to find clues to an abduction, or murder.

"Quite right," he said. "Little lass could easily have turned her ankle and be sitting up the dale waiting for someone to fetch her."

Such breezy optimism clearly got up Mrs. Coe's nose, but she kept her mouth shut. It was Elsie Dacre who responded violently, though so quietly to start with that at first the violence almost went unnoticed.

"No need for all this soft soap, Mr. Dalziel," she said. "We all know what this is about, don't we? We all know."

"Sorry, luv, I'm just trying to-"

"I know what you're trying to do, and I know what you'll be doing next. But it didn't do any good last time did it? So what's changed, mister? You tell me that. What's bloody changed!"

Now the woman's voice was at full throttle, her eyes blazing, her face contorted with anger and fear.

"Nay, lass, listen," said Dalziel intensely. "It's early doors, too early to be talking of last time. God knows, I understand how that'll be in your mind, it's in mine, too, but I'll keep it at the back of my mind long as I can. I won't rush to meet summat like that, and you shouldn't either."

"You remember me, then?" said Mrs. Dacre, peering at Dalziel closely, as if there was comfort to be fixed in the Fat Man's memory.

"Aye, do I. When I heard your maiden name I thought, That could be one of the Coes from over in Dendale. You were the youngest, weren't you?"

"I were eleven when it started. I remember those days, hot days like now, and all us kids going round in fear of our lives. I thought I'd never forget. But you do forget, don't you. Or at least like you say you put it so far at the back of your mind, it's like forgetting

… and you grow up and start feeling safe, and you have a kiddie of your own, and you never let yourself think… but that's where you're wrong, mister! If I hadn't kept it in the back of my mind, if I'd kept it at the front where it belongs… something like that's too important… too bloody terrible… to keep at the back of…"

She broke down in a flood of tears and her sister-in-law embraced her irresistibly. Then the door opened and an older woman came in. This time the family resemblance was unmistakable. She said, "Elsie, I was down at Sandra's… I've just heard…"

"Oh, Mam," cried Elsie Dacre.

Her sister-in-law was thrust aside and she embraced her mother as though she could crush hope and comfort out of her.

Dalziel said, "Mrs. Coe, why don't you make us all a cup of tea?"

The three policemen and the blond woman went into the kitchen. It was just as well. It was full of steam from a kettle hissing explosively on a high gas ring. Mrs. Coe grabbed a tea towel, used it as a mitt to remove the kettle.

"Should make a grand cuppa," said Dalziel. "Needs to be really hot. Mrs. Coe, what do you reckon to Tony Dacre?"

"What kind of question's that?" demanded the woman.

"Simple one. How do you feel about your brother-in-law?"

"Why're you asking is what I want to know."

"Don't act stupid. You know why I'm asking. If I can eliminate him from my inquiries, then I won't have to take this house to pieces."

Honesty is not only the best policy, it's also sometimes the best form of police brutality, thought Pascoe, watching as shock slackened the woman's solid features.

Dalziel went on, "Afore you start yelling at me, think on, missus. You want me to have to start asking that poor woman if her man works on a short fuse or has got any special interest in his own daughter? You're not daft, you know these things happen. So just tell me, is there owt I owt to know about Tony Dacre?"

The woman found her voice.

"No, there bloody isn't. I don't like him all that much, but that's personal. But as for Lorraine, he worships that little lass, I mean like a father should. In fact if you ask me, he spoils her rotten, and if she set fire to the house he'd not lose his temper with her. Jesus, I'd not have your job for a thousand pounds. Aren't things bad enough here without you looking for something even filthier in it?"

Her tone was vehement, but she managed to control the sound level to keep it in the kitchen.

"Grand," said Dalziel with a friendly smile. "Bring the tea through when it's mashed, eh?"

He went out, pulling the door shut behind him. Behind it, Pascoe noticed for the first time, was a dog basket. Lying in it was a small mongrel dog, somewhere between a spaniel and a terrier. Its eyes were open but it didn't move. Pascoe stooped over it and now its ears went back and it growled deep in its throat. Pascoe responded with soothing noises and though its eyes remained wary, it accepted a scratch between the ears. But when his hand strayed down to its shoulder, it snarled threateningly and he straightened up quickly.

"Anyone sent for the vet?" he inquired.

Mrs. Coe said, "For crying out loud, my niece is missing out there and all you're worried about is the sodding dog!"

The sergeant replied, "Not that I know of. I mean, with everything else…"

"Do it now, will you? I don't like to see an animal in pain, but just as important, I want to know how it got its injuries."

"Oh, aye. I didn't think, sir," said Clark guiltily. "I'll get onto it right away."

The woman, who'd busied herself mashing the tea, pushed past them angrily. Clark, following her, paused at the door and said, "Owt else I should have thought of, sir?"

"Unless Lorraine turns up okay in the next half hour or so, this thing's going to explode into a major inquiry. We'll need an incident room. Somewhere with plenty of space and not too far away. Any ideas?"

The sergeant's broad features contorted with thought then he said, "There's St. Michael's Hall. It's shared between the church and the primary school and it's just a step away…"

"Sounds fine. Now get that vet. Good job you thought of it before the super, eh?"

He smiled as he spoke and after a moment Clark smiled back, then left.

One thing about Dalziel, thought Pascoe. He provides solid ground to build a good working relationship with the troops.

He opened the back door of the kitchen, which led into a small, tidily kept yard with a patch of lawn and a wooden shed. He stepped out into the balmy air and opened the shed door. Some gardening tools, an old stroller, and a child's bike.

Carefully controlling his thoughts, he next went to the yard door and unlatched it. He found himself looking across an area of worn and parched grassland scattered with clumps of furze whose bright yellow flowers threw back defiance at the blazing sun. This had to be Ligg Common with, beyond it, the long sweep of Danbydale rising northward to Highcross Moor.

Sunlight eats up distance and the head of the valley looked barely a half hour's stroll away, while the long ridge of the Neb stood within range of an outfielder with a good arm. He let his gaze cross to the valley's opposite lower arm and here caught the glint of the sun on the glass of a descending car, and suddenly its tininess gave a proper perspective to the view.

There was a huge acreage of countryside out there, more than a few dozen men could search properly in a long day. And when you added to the outdoors all the buildings and barns and byres from the outskirts of the town to the farmed limits of the fell, then what lay in prospect was a massive operation.

He stood and felt the sun probe beneath his mop of light brown hair and beneath the surface of his fair skin. A few more minutes of this and he'd turn pink and peel like a new potato, while another hour or so would beat his brain into that state of sun-drunk insensibility he usually experienced on Mediterranean beach holidays while Ellie by his side only grew browner and browner and fitter and fitter.

Sometimes insensibility was the more desirable fate.

"You taken root or wha'?"

He turned and saw Dalziel in the yard doorway.

"Just thinking, sir. Anything happened?"

"No. She's quieter now. Much better with her mam than yon sister-in-law. Where's Clark? I want to ask him about Dennis Coe, the brother."

"Mrs. Coe's husband?"

"We'll make a detective of you yet. Six or seven years older than Elsie, if I recall. We'll need to take a close look at him."

"Why? Was he in the frame fifteen years back?" asked Pascoe, thinking that Dalziel's coup with Mrs. Coe's name was looking a pretty simple conjuring trick now.

"Missing kids, every sod old enough to have a stiff cock ends up in the frame. He'd be eighteen or thereab. Bad age. And all the kids who went missing were blond and he wed himself a blonde…"

"Come on!" said Pascoe. "You reach any further and you'll be in the X-files. In any case, I'd say Mrs. Coe's color comes straight out of a bottle."

"So he married dark but let her know he preferred blondes. Okay, stop flaring your nostrils, else you'll get house martins building. One thing you can't argue with, he's Lorraine's uncle, and uncles rate high in the statistics for this kind of thing."

Pascoe shook his head and said dully, "Mrs. Coe said she'd not have our job for a thousand pounds. She's way out. Sometimes a million's not enough for the way we have to look at things."

"Talking of looking, what's yon?"

The Fat Man was staring north. Over the distant horizon the heat haze had coalesced into something thicker.

"Never a cloud, is it?" said Dalziel.

"Not of rain," said Pascoe. "I'd say smoke. Slightest spark starts a grass fire this weather."

"Best make sure some other bugger's noticed," said Dalziel.

He pulled out his mobile, dialed, spoke, and listened.

"Aye," he said, switching off. "They know. It's a big one. And not the only one either. Brigades on full alert and they're using our uniformed, too, which isn't good news for us if we have to hit the red button."

"When?" said Pascoe. "You don't think that there's-"

He was interrupted by Sergeant Clark from the doorway.

"Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Douglas, the vet, is here. We got him on his mobile coming back from a farm call."

"Vet?" said Dalziel to Pascoe. "What's up? Feeling badly?"

In the kitchen they found a broad-built gray-bearded man kneeling down by the dog basket. His examination of the mongrel produced the odd rumbling growl but nothing as menacing as the snarl provoked by Pascoe's inexpert probe.

Finally he stood up and turned his attention to the humans.

"Peter Pascoe, DCI," said Pascoe, offering his hand. "And this is Superintendent Dalziel."

"We've met," said Douglas shortly. His voice had a Scots burr.

"Aye, what fettle, Dixie?" said Dalziel. "So, what's the damage?"

"Shoulder and rib cage badly bruised. I don't think there's a fracture, but he needs an X-ray to be sure. Possibility of internal injury. I think it's best in all the circumstances if I take him back to the clinic with me. Any news of the wee lassie?"

"Not yet," said Pascoe. "These injuries, what do you think caused them?"

"No accident, that's for sure," said the vet flatly. "If I had to guess, I'd say someone had given the poor beast a good kicking. Good day to you."

Gently he lifted the dog out of the basket and went out of the kitchen.

"Good man, that," said Sergeant Clark approvingly. "Really worries about sick animals."

"Aye, well, he supports Raith Rovers," said Dalziel. "So someone gave the dog a kicking. That's enough to get the show on the road. Good thinking to have the beast checked out."

Pascoe said, "Yes. Well done, Sergeant Clark. So what do you want me to do, sir? Call in the troops and set up an incident room?"

"Aye, best go by the book," said Dalziel without enthusiasm. "Any suggestions, Sergeant? As far as I recall, your section office isn't big enough to swing a punch in."

"St. Michael's Hall, sir," said Clark with brisk efficiency. "Doubles as assembly hall and gym for the primary school and as a community center. I've spoken on the phone with Mrs. Shimmings, the school head. You'll likely remember her, sir. She were in Dendale, like me. Miss Lavery, she was then. She's really upset. Says she'll go to the school now to be on hand in case we needed her help, talking about the little girl and such."

Dalziel looked at him reflectively and said, "Well done, Sergeant. You're thinking so far ahead, you'll end up telling fortunes. Okay, Peter, off you go. Tell 'em I want someone from uniformed who knows left from right to head up the search team. Maggie Burroughs'll do nicely. And we'll need a canteen van. It'll be thirsty work tramping round them fells. And an information van for the common. I'll be here to see they get themselves sorted. Any questions?"

"No, sir," said Pascoe. "Lead on, Sergeant."

Clark went out. As Pascoe followed, Dalziel's voice brought him to a halt.

"Word of advice, lad," he said.

"Always welcome," said Pascoe.

"Glad to hear it. So listen in. You do Nobby Clark a favor, don't let him pay you back in beer. Make sure you work the bugger's arse off. All right?"

Not just a conjuring trick, thought Pascoe. He really does know everything.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Right off its haunches."

St. Michael's Primary, like Danby itself, had grown.

The original stone building, apparently modeled on the old church from which it took its name, had sprouted several unbecoming modern extensions which compensated in airiness for what they lacked in beauty. The Hall, standing between the church and the school, was clearly designed by the same hand and even had a belfry and stained glass windows, through which filtered a dim religious light to illumine a spacious, lofty interior with a stage at one end and a small gallery at the other.

Pascoe wrinkled his nose as the musty smell set up resonances both of lessons in the gym and of amateur dramatics in drafty village halls. Not that the entertainments on offer here were totally amateur. Among the notice board's Forthcoming Attractions he saw a poster for the opening concert of the eighteenth Mid-Yorkshire Dales Music Festival, due to take place the following Wednesday and consisting of a song recital by Elizabeth Wulfstan, mezzo-soprano, and Arne Krog, baritone.

That name again. He recalled the strong young voice singing mournfully And now the sun will rise as bright ar as though no horror had touched the night…

The heat wave looked set for many more days, perhaps weeks, but he doubted if there'd be any more bright dawning for the Dacres.

For Christ's sake! he admonished himself. Don't rush to embrace the worst.

"This will do nicely," he said to Clark, and got on his mobile. He'd already set the operation in motion back at Liggside, and this was merely to confirm the location. ETA of the first reinforcements was given as thirty minutes.

"I'll go and have a word with Mrs. Shimmings," he said. "You okay, Sergeant?"

The man was pale and drawn as if he'd been exposed to biting winds on a winter's day.

"Yes, fine. Sorry. It's just being here at the school, the incident room… suddenly it's really happening. I think up till now I've been trying to pretend it were different from last time, over in Dendale, I mean. Not that it wasn't the same then to start with, telling ourselves that at worst there'd been an accident and little Jenny Hardcastle 'ud be found or manage to get back herself-"

"Then you'll know how these things work," said Pascoe harshly. "One thing we'll need to get sorted quickly is this Benny business. Someone's responsible for these graffiti. We need to find out who, then we can start asking why. Any ideas?"

"I'm working on it," said Clark. "Has to be a stupid joke and a lousy coincidence, hasn't it, sir? I mean, it were done last night and Lorraine didn't vanish till this morning. And the perp wouldn't do it in advance, would he?"

"Less chance of being caught," said Pascoe.

"But that 'ud mean the whole thing were planned!"

"And that's worse than impulse? Well, you're right. Worse for us, I mean. Impulse leaves traces, plans cover them up. Either way, we need the spray artist."

"Yes, sir," said Clark. "Sir…"

"Yes?" prompted Pascoe.

"Benny. Benny Lightfoot. Anything you know that I don't? I mean, there could be information that reached HQ but you felt best not to pass on down here, for fear of opening old wounds…"

"You mean, could Benny really be back?" said Pascoe grimly. "From what I've heard, I doubt it. But the very fact that you can ask shows how important it is to finger this joker's collar. Get to it."

He walked across the playground to the school. He could see the figure of the head teacher at the window of a classroom he guessed would be Lorraine's. She'd been standing at the main entrance when they arrived but after a brief exchange, he'd cut the conversation short and headed into the hall.

Now he joined her in the classroom and said, "Sorry about that, Mrs. Shimmings, but I had to get things rolling."

"That's okay," she said. "I know how these things work."

He recalled that like Clark, she, too, had been here before. Looking at her closely he detected the same symptoms of reentry to a nightmare she thought she'd left behind.

She was a slimly built woman with graying chestnut hair and candid brown eyes. Late forties. Thirty plus when Dendale died.

She said, "So you think the worst?"

"We prepare for the worst," said Pascoe gently. "Tell me about Lorraine."

"She was… is a bright intelligent child, a little what they used to call old fashioned in some ways. It doesn't surprise me to hear that she got up early and decided to take her dog for a walk all by herself. It's not that she's a solitary child. On the contrary, she's extremely sociable and has many friends. But she never has any difficulty performing tasks by herself and on occasion, if given a choice, she will opt for the solitary rather than the communal activity."

After the initial slip, she had kept determinedly, almost pedantically, to the present tense. As she talked, Pascoe let his gaze wander round the classroom. Bringing up Rosie had honed his professional eye to the school environment. Now he found himself assessing the quality of wall displays, the evidence of thought and order, the use of material that was stimulating aesthetically, intellectually, mathematically. In this classroom everything looked good. This teacher hadn't shot away on Friday afternoon but had stayed behind after the children had gone, to refine their efforts at tidying up and make sure the room was perfectly prepared for Monday morning. This teacher, he guessed, was going to be devastated when she discovered what had happened to one of her pupils.

He said, "Would she go off with a stranger?"

"Someone offering her sweets in the street, asking her to get into a car, no way," said Mrs. Shimmings. "But you say she'd gone up the dale for a walk? Things are different up there, Mr. Pascoe. Do you do any walking yourself?"

"A little," said Pascoe thinking of Ellie cajoling her rebellious husband and daughter into completing the Three Peaks Walk last spring.

"Then you'll know that, in the street if a complete stranger says hello to you, you think there's something wrong with him, but up there on the hills if you meet anyone, you automatically exchange greetings, sometimes even stop and have a chat. Not to say something would be the odd thing. Yes, I think that nowadays we've all got our children trained to regard strangers with the utmost suspicion, but they learn by example more than precept, and out in the country the example they get is of strangers being greeted almost like old acquaintances."

"So she might stop and talk."

"She wouldn't be surprised if someone spoke to her and she wouldn't run. Indeed up there, what would be the point? Didn't she have her dog with her, though?"

"Dogs are an overrated form of protection," said Pascoe. "Unless they're so big and fierce, you wouldn't let a little girl take it out alone anyway. This one may have tried. It got badly kicked about for its pains. Any of these Lorraine's?"

He was looking at a display of paintings with the general heading "My Family."

Even as he asked he saw the neatly printed label LORRAINE'S FAMILY under a picture of a man and a woman and a dog. The human figures were of roughly equal size, both with broad slice-of-melon smiles. The dog was, relatively, the size of a Shetland pony. Psychologist would probably say this meant she had no hang-ups with either parent, but was really crazy about Tig. Just what you'd hope to find in a seven-year-old girl. He recalled his own sinking feeling a little while back when, without comment, Ellie had shown him a painting of Rosie's which had her standing there like the fifty-foot woman and himself a mere black blob in a car moving away fast.

"Happy family?" he said.

"Very happy. I've known the mother since she was a girl."

"Of course. You used to teach in Dendale back before they built the reservoir, I gather."

"That's right. Like everyone else, I had to move out. Part of the price of progress."

"But in the end, some people were probably glad to go, even to see the valley underwater?" he probed.

"You think Lorraine's disappearance may have something to do with what happened back then?"

"You tell me, Mrs. Shimmings," said Pascoe. "I wasn't around then. You've heard about these painted signs? BENNY'S BACK!?"

She nodded.

"So, could he be back? And if so, where's he been? I heard he was a bit simple."

"He could have been living with people who don't ask questions or make judgments," she offered. "Like these New Age travelers. Anyway, Benny wasn't simple. In fact he was very bright."

"I'm sorry. I was told he'd had an accident… something about a plate in his head…"

"Oh, that," she said dismissively. "I taught Benny both before and after that accident, Mr. Pascoe. And he was just as sharp after it as before. But he was always different, and folk in Yorkshire confuse different with daft just as readily as anywhere else. No, he wasn't simple, but he was… fey, I think that's the word. I taught him till he was old enough to go to the secondary. That meant taking the bus out of the dale, and he wasn't keen. But his father told him to go and do his best, and Benny paid a lot of heed to Saul, his dad. Then when Benny was twelve, Saul Lightfoot died."

"How?" asked Pascoe. The policeman's question.

"He drowned. He was a fine athletic man," said Mrs. Shimmings with what a romantic observer might have called a faraway look in her eyes. "He used to go swimming in the mere. He was a good strong swimmer but they think he got tangled up with a submerged tree branch. It devastated poor Benny. The family all lived with old Mrs. Lightfoot, Benny's gran, in Neb Cottage. It must have been a tight squeeze; there were three kids, Benny and his younger brother and sister, Barnabas and Deborah. But it worked all right as long as Saul was around. He was that sort of man. Charismatic, I suppose they'd say nowadays. Or what the young girls would call a hunk."

Pascoe smiled and glanced surreptitiously at his watch. Local history was fine, but he had responsibilities in the here and now which wouldn't wait.

"I'm sorry, I'm holding you back," said Mrs. Shimmings.

He'd forgotten she was a head teacher with an eye long trained for the telltale minutiae of behavior.

"Nothing I can do till my men arrive," he assured her. "Please, carry on."

"Well, Marion, that's Benny's mother, and old Mrs. Lightfoot never really got on. She wasn't a country lass, Saul had met her at a dance in town, and now with him gone, there was nothing to keep her in Dendale. It was no surprise when she got a job in town and took the children off. Benny came back from time to time to see his gran. I gathered he wasn't happy. Not that he spoke much to anyone, he was becoming more and more withdrawn. Then it seems his mother met up with a new man. He moved in. I think that ultimately they got married, but only because they'd decided to emigrate, Australia, I think it was, and being married made things easier. Benny didn't want to go. The night before they were due to leave, he took off and came to his gran's. Marion came looking for him. He refused point blank to go back with her and old Mrs. Lightfoot said he could stay with her. So that's what happened. I daresay there were a great number of other things said that shouldn't have been said. Net result was the family left and Benny settled in at Neb Cottage. As far as I can make out, he dropped right out of school. The truancy officer came round several times, and the Social Services, but at the first sight of anyone vaguely official, indeed anyone he didn't recognize, Benny would take off up the Neb, and in the end they more or less gave up, though I'm sure they found some face-saving formula to regularize the situation."

"How do you regularize truancy?" wondered Pascoe.

"You don't. Time does that," said Mrs. Shimmings. "I think they must have heaved a mighty sigh of relief in the Education Office when Benny passed his sixteenth birthday. But the psychological damage was done. Benny was wary, elusive, introverted, solitary, devoid of social skills-in other words, in the eyes of most people, plain simple."

"And could he have been responsible for the disappearances?" he asked.

"Sex is a strong mover in young men," she said. "But before the attack on Betsy Allgood, I had serious reservations. After that, however…"

She shook her head. "You were quite right what you said before. In the end I think a lot of folk were glad to get out of Dendale, glad to see it go underwater. The more biblically inclined saw it as a repeat of the Genesis flood, aimed at drowning out wickedness."

"Nice thought," said Pascoe. "But wickedness is a strong swimmer. And how did you feel, Mrs. Shimmings?"

It seemed an innocent enough question, but to his distress he saw her eyes fill with tears, even though she turned away quickly to hide them and went to the teacher's desk.

"Funny," she said, "while I was waiting for you I went into our little library, and this was the book I picked out."

She took a book from the desktop and held it up so he could see the title.

It was The Drowning of Dendale.

"I know it," said Pascoe. "My wife has a copy."

It was, as he recalled, a coffee-table book, square shaped and consisting mainly of photos with very little text. It was in two parts, the first entitled "The Dale," the second "The Drowning." The first photograph was a panorama of the whole dale, bathed in evening light. And the epigraph under the subtitle was A happy rural seat of various view.

"Paradise Lost," said Mrs. Shimmings. "That's how I felt, Mr. Pascoe. It may have been spoiled, but it was still like leaving Paradise."

A horn blew outside. Glad of a diversion from this highly charged and, he hoped, totally irrelevant display of emotion, Pascoe went to the window.

They were arriving, all kinds of vehicles bearing everything necessary for the center. Furniture, telephones, radios, computers, catering equipment, and of course, personnel. Must be like this in a war, he thought. Before a Big Push. Like Passchendaele. So much hustle and bustle, so many men and machines, failure must have seemed inconceivable. But they had failed, many many thousands of them needlessly killed, one of them his namesake, his great-grandfather, not drowning in mud or shattered by shell fire, but tied to a post and shot by British bullets…

He said, "We'll talk again later, Mrs. Shimmings," and went out to take control.

"I often think they've only gone out walking, And soon they'll come homewards all laughing and talking. The weather's bright! Don't look so pale. They've only gone for a hike updale."

"So what's this? Narcissism, or the artist's response to just criticism?"

Elizabeth Wulfstan pressed the pause button on her zapper and turned her head to look at the man who'd just come in.

The years had been good to Arne Krog. Into his forties now, his unlined open face, framed in a shock of golden hair and a fringe of matching beard, kept him looking more like Hollywood's idea of a sexy young ski instructor than anyone's idea of a middle-aged baritone. And if, in terms of reputation and reward, the years had not been quite so generous, he made sure it didn't show.

She said, "Most of what you said was right. Makes you happy, does it?"

She spoke with a strong Yorkshire inflection which came as surprise to those who knew her by her singing voice alone.

"It makes me happy that you have seen your error. Never mind. It will be a collector's disc when you are old and famous. Perhaps then, to be contrary, you will make your last recording of songs best suited to a young, fresh voice. But preferably in the language in which they were written."

"I wanted folk to understand them," she said.

"Then give them a translation to read, not yourself one to sing. Language is important. I should have thought someone so devoted to her own native woodnotes wild would have understood that."

"Don't see why I should have to speak like you just to please some posh wankers," she said.

She smiled briefly as she spoke. Her face, with its regular features, dark unblinking eyes, and heavy patina of pale makeup, all framed in shoulder-length ash-blond hair, had a slightly menacing masklike quality till she smiled, when it lit to a remote beauty, like an Arctic landscape touched by a fitful sun. She was five nine or ten, and looked even taller in the black top and Lycra slacks which clung to her slim figure.

Krog's eyes took this in appreciatively, but his mind was still on the music.

"So you will change your program for the opening concert?" he said. "Good. Inger will be pleased too. The transcription for piano has never been one she liked."

"She talks to you, does she?" said Elizabeth. "That must be nice. But chuffed as I'd be to please our Inger, it's too late to change."

"Three days," he said impatiently. "You have the repertoire, and I will help all I can."

"Thanks," she said sincerely. "And I'd really like your help to get them right. But as for changing, I mean it's too late in here."

She touched her breastbone.

He looked exasperated and said, "Why are you so obsessed with singing these songs?"

"Why're you so bothered that I'm singing them?"

He said, "I do not feel that, in the circumstances, they are appropriate."

"Circumstances?" She looked around in mock bewilderment. They were in the elegant high-ceilinged lounge of the Wulfstans' town house. French windows opened onto a long sunlit garden. Faintly audible were the rumbles of organ music under the soaring line of young voices in choir. If they'd stepped outside they could have seen a very little distance to the east the massive towers of the cathedral, whose gargoyled rainspouts seemed to be growing ever longer tongues in this unending drought.

"Didn't think you got circumstances in places like this," said Elizabeth.

"You know what I mean. Walter and Chloe-"

"If Walter wanted to complain, he's had the chance and he's got the voice," she interrupted.

"And Chloe?"

"Oh, aye. Chloe. You still fucking her?"

For a moment shock time-warped him to his early forties.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded, keeping his voice low.

"Come on, Arne. That's one English word no one needs translating. Been going on a long time, hasn't it? Or should I say, off and on? All that traveling around you do. Must be great comfort to her you don't let yourself get out of practice, but. Like singing. You need to keep at your scales."

He had recovered now and said with a reasonable effort at lightness, "You shouldn't believe all the chorus-line gossip you hear, my dear."

"Chorus line? Oh, aye, I could give Chloe enough names to sing The Messiah."

He said softly, "What's the point of this, Elizabeth? What do you want?"

"Want? Can't think of owt I want. But what I don't want is Walter getting hurt. Or Chloe."

"That is very… filial of you. But you work very hard at that role, don't you? The loving, and beloved, daughter. Though in the end, alas, as with all our roles, the paint and wigs must come off, and we have to face ourselves again."

He spoke with venom but she only grinned and said, "You sound like you got out the wrong side of bed. And you were up bloody early too. Man of your age needs his sleep, Arne."

"How do you know how early I got up? Am I under twenty-four-hour surveillance, then?"

"Woke with the light myself, being a country lass," she said. "Heard your car."

"It could have been someone else's."

"No. You're the only bugger who shifts gears three times between here and the end of the street."

He shrugged and said, "I was restless, the light woke me also. I wanted to go for a walk, but not where I'd be surrounded by houses."

"Oh, aye? See anyone you know?"

He fingered the soft hair of his beard into a point beneath the chin and said, "So early in the day I hardly saw anyone."

She said, "Give us a knock next time, mebbe I'll come with you. Listen, now you're here, couple of things in the Mahler you can help with."

He shook his head wonderingly and said, "You are incredible. I tell you I think you made a mistake to sing these songs on your first recording and that you will be making another to sing them at the concert. You ignore my advice. You make outrageous accusations. And now you want me to help you to do what I do not think you should be doing anyway!"

"This isn't personal, Arne. This is about technique," she said, sounding puzzled he couldn't make the distinction. "I might think you're a bit of a prick, but I've always rated you a good tutor. Mebbe that's what you should have gone in for instead of performing. Now listen, I'm a bit worried about my phrasing here."

She pressed her zapper and the song resumed.

"Oh, yes, they've only gone out walking, Returning now, all laughing and talking. Don't look so pale! The weather's bright. They've only gone to climb up Beulah

Height."

"You hear the problem?" she said, pressing pause again.

"Why did you say up Beulah Height?" he demanded. "That is not a proper translation. The German says auf jenen Hoh'n."

"All right, keep your hair on. Let's say on yonder height, that keeps the scansion," she said impatiently. "Now listen, will you?"

She started to play the song again. This time Krog concentrated all his attention on her voice, so much so that he didn't realize the door had opened till Elizabeth said, "Chloe, what's the matter? What's happened?"

Chloe Wulfstan, heavier now than she'd been fifteen years before, but little changed in feature apart from a not unbecoming pouchiness under the chin, had come into the room and was leaning against the back of a sofa and swaying gently. "I've been listening to the local news," she said. "It's happening again."

Krog went to her and put his arm round her shoulders. At his touch she let go of the sofa and leaned all her weight into his body so that he had to support her with both arms. His eyes met Elizabeth's neutral gaze and he gave a small shrug as if to say, So what am I supposed to do?

"What's happening again?" asked the younger woman in a flat, calm voice. "What have you heard?"

"There's a child gone missing," said Chloe. "A little girl. Up the dale above Danby."

Now the man's gaze met Elizabeth's once more. This time it conveyed as little message as hers.

And around them the rich young voice wound its plaintive line:

"Ahead of us they've gone out walking-But shan't be returning all laughing and talking."

Ellie Pascoe was ready for fame. She had long rehearsed her responses to the media seagulls who come flocking after the trawlers of talent. For the literary journalist doing in-depth articles for the posh papers she had prepared many wise and wonderful observations about life and art and the price of fish and flesh, all couched in periods so elegant, improvement would be impossible and abbreviation a crime.

For the smart-asses of radio and television she had sharpened a quiverful of witty put-downs that would make them sorry they'd ever tried to fuck with Ellie Pascoe!

And for her friends she had woven a robe of ironic modesty which would make them all marvel that someone revealed as so very much different could contrive to remain so very much the same.

She'd even mapped out a History of Eng. Lit. account of her creative development.

"Her first novel, which she steadfastly refused to allow to be published, but whose discovery in her posthumous papers was the literary event of 2040 -no, make that 2060-is the typical autobiographical, egocentric, picaresque work by which genius so often announces its arrival on the world stage. Much of it is ingenuous, even jejune, but already the discerning eye can pick out that insight, observation, and eloquence which are the marks of her maturity.

"Her second novel, which, after much pressure and considerable revision, she allowed to appear at the height of her fame, is the story of a young woman of academic bent who marries a soldier and finds herself trying to survive in a world of action, authority, and male attitudes which is completely foreign to her. The autobiographical elements here are much more under control. She has not merely regurgitated her experience, but first digested it, then used it to produce a fine piece of… art."

(that metaphor needed a bit of work, she told herself, grinning.)

"But it is in her third novel, which exploded her name to the top of the best-seller lists, that the voice of the mature artist-assured, amused, amusing, passionate, compassionate, compelling, and melismatic-is heard for the first time in all its glory…"

After Peter had left that Sunday morning, she lay in the sun for a while, playing the fame game in her mind, but found it quickly palled. If it ever did happen, she guessed it would be very unlike this. Reviewers, interviewers, and program makers might be the poor relatives at the great Banquet of Literature, but one tidbit they were always guaranteed was the Last Word.

So finally her thoughts turned to where she had been trying to avoid turning them-to Peter.

She knew-had known for some time-that something was going on inside him that he wasn't talking about. He wasn't a reticent man. They shared most things. She knew all the facts of the case which had thrown up the devastating truth about his family history. They had talked about them at great length, and the talk had lulled her into a belief that the wounds she knew he had suffered would heal, were already healing, and only needed time for the process to complete. She was sure he had thought so too. But he'd been wrong, and for some reason was not yet able to admit to her the nature of his wrongness.

So far she hadn't pressed. But she would. As wife, as lover, as friend, she was entitled to know. Or, failing those, she could always claim the inalienable right of the Great Novelist to stick her nose into other people's minds.

The thought made her pick up her notebook and pen and start considering the jottings she'd made for her next opus. But looked at with these personal concerns running around inside her head, and this sun beating down on its outside, the jottings seemed a load of crap.

Dissatisfied, she got up and went into the house in search of something that would really stretch her mind, and all that she could come up with was a pile of long-neglected ironing. She switched the radio on and set to work.

It was, she discovered (though she would not have dreamed of admitting it outside the cool depths of the confessional, which, as a devout atheist, she was unlikely ever to plumb anyway), a not unpleasant way of passing a mindless hour or so. From time to time she went outside again to give herself another shot of ultraviolet, followed by another schlurp of iced apple juice, while the local radio station burbled amiably and aimlessly on. She even ironed some bedsheets with great care. Normally her attitude to sheets was that, as one night's use creased them like W. H. Auden's face, what was the point in doing much more than show them a hot iron threateningly? But Rosie, she guessed, would have been sleeping on Jill Purlingstone's smooth and crisp sheets last night, and while the Pascoe house might not be able to compete by way of swimming pools and ponies, in this one respect, on this one occasion, her daughter would not feel deprived.

The radio kept her up to date with reports of the marvelous weather and how the incredible British public were finding intelligent ways of enjoying it. Like starting fires on the moors or sitting in crawling traffic jams on the roads to and from the coast.

Finally, with the ironing finished and the apple juice replaced by a long gin-and-tonic, she sat down with calm of mind, all passion spent, about six o'clock, just in time to hear a report of a major traffic accident on the main coast road.

There was an information number for anxious listeners. She tried it, found it busy, tried the Purlingstones' number, got an answering machine, tried the emergency number again, still busy, slammed down the phone in irritation, and as if in reaction it snarled back at her.

She snatched it up and snapped, "Yes?"

"Hi. It's me," said Pascoe. "You heard about the accident?"

"Yes. Oh, God, what's happened? Is it serious? Where-"

"Hold it!" said Pascoe. "It's okay. I'm just ringing to say I got onto the coordinator soon as I heard the news. No Purlingstones involved, no kids of Rosie's age. So no need to worry."

"Thank God," said Ellie. "Thank God. But there were people hurt.

…"

"Four fatalities, several serious injuries. But don't start feeling guilty about feeling relieved. Keeping things simple is the one way to survive."

"That what you're doing, love?" she asked. "How's it going? No mention of developments on the news."

"That's because there are none. We've got a couple of dog teams out on the fell now and as many men as we've been able to drum up with all this other stuff. You've heard about the fires? God, people. I'm going to join the Lord's Day Observance Society and vote for making it an offense to travel farther than half a mile from home on a Sunday."

Beneath his jocularity she easily detected the depression.

She said, "Those poor people. How're they taking it?"

His memory played a picture of Elsie Dacre's wafery face, of Tony Dacre, who'd finally come down off the hillside, his legs rubbery with grief and hunger and fatigue. He said, "Like something's been switched off. Like the air they breathe is tinged with chlorine. Like they're dead and are just looking for a spot to drop in."

"So what happens now?"

"Keep looking till dark. Start again in the morning. A few other things ongoing."

Nothing he had much hope in or wanted to talk about. She tried to think of something comforting to say and was admitting failure when the doorbell rang and she heard the mail slot rattle and Rosie's voice crying impatiently, "Mummy! Mummy! It's me. We're home again. Mummy!"

"Peter, Rosie's back," she said.

"Thought I could hear those dulcet tones," he said.

"I'd better go before she breaks the door down."

"Give her my love. Take me when you see me."

When she opened the door, Rosie burst in crying, "Mummy, look at me, I'm going to be brown as you. We had five ice creams and three picnics and Uncle Derek's car blows really cold air and I can beat Zandra at backstroke."

Ellie caught her, hugged her, and swung her high. I remember when I was like that, she thought. So much to tell, that vocal cords seemed inadequate and what you really need is some form of optical fiber communication able to carry thousands of messages at once.

Derek Purlingstone was smiling at her on the doorstep. He was a tall, Italianately handsome man in his mid-thirties but looking six or seven years younger. His origins were humble-his father had been a Yorkshire coal miner-but he wore the badges of wealth-the Armani shirt, the Gucci watch-as if they'd been tossed into his cradle.

She smiled back and said, "Three picnics. That sounds a bit excessive."

"No, we had a breakfast picnic and a lunch picnic and a tea picnic and we drove through a fire-"

"A fire? You were near the accident?" she said to Purlingstone, alarmed.

He said, "You mean the pile-up on the main road? I heard it on the news. No, we used the back road, bit longer, damn sight quicker. The fire was up on Highcross Moor as we came back. Lot of smoke, no danger, though there seemed to be a lot of police activity round Danby."

"Yes. Peter's there. There's a child gone missing, a little girl."

He made a concerned face, then smiled again.

"Well, lovely to see you, Ellie, especially so much of you."

His tone was theatrically lecherous and his gaze ran over her bikinied body in a parody of bold lust. Ellie recalled a sentence from some psycho-pop book she'd read recently-To conceal the unconcealable, we pretend that we're pretending it. Purlingstone was what her mother would have called "a terrible flirt." Ellie had no problem dealing with it, but sometimes wondered how close it came to sexual harassment when aimed at younger women in subordinate positions at his office.

Despite this, and despite his fat-cat job in a privatized industry, she quite liked the guy and was very fond of his wife, Jill, who dressed at Marks and Sparks and had insisted that little Zandra go to Edengrove Junior rather than, as she put it, "some Dothegirls Hall where you pay through the nose for monogrammed knickers."

"No time for a drink?" she said.

"Sorry, but better get back. Zandra's feeling a bit under par. Too much sun, I expect. She's got her mum's fair skin, not like us Latin types who can pour on the olive oil and let it sizzle, eh?"

The hot gaze again, then his hand snaked out and for a second she thought he was reaching for her breast, but all he did was ruffle Rosie's short black hair before moving off to the Mercedes station wagon, whose color, coincidentally, matched the shade of his jeans. Coincidentally? thought Ellie. Bastard's probably got a color-coordinated car for all his fancy outfits. Meow. Envy wasn't her usual bag, and really she was quite fond of Derek. It was just that in this weather it would be rather nice to have some form of in-car air-conditioning a touch more sophisticated than the draft through the rust holes in her own mobile oven.

Rosie's voice broke through her thoughts, crying, "Mummy, you're not listening!"

"Yes, I am, dear. Well, I am now. Come and sit down and tell me all about it. I'm sorry Zandra's not well."

"Oh, she'll be all right," said the girl dismissively. "I want to tell Daddy all about it too."

"And he'll want to hear," said Ellie. "So I'm afraid you'll have to tell it all again when he comes home."

The prospect of having a second captive audience was clearly not displeasing. Rosie's day now spilled out in a stream-of-consciousness spate in which sensations and emotions drowned out details of time and place. The only downbeats were that Zandra had started feeling poorly on the way home and that Rosie had lost her cross. The Purlingstones were Catholic and Zandra wore a tiny crucifix round her neck on a fine silver chain. Rosie had indicated that her life would not be complete without one. Ellie, on more grounds than she cared to enumerate, had told her no way! But when her daughter, with considerable ingenuity, had "borrowed" a dagger-shaped earring from Ellie's jewel box, threaded a piece of blue ribbon through it, and hung it round her neck as a cross, neither of her parents had felt able to take it away.

Ellie made a note to hide the other one of the pair, then felt guilty. Was she thinking like this because of her genuine opposition to all forms of revealed religion? Or did it have anything to do with her mixed feelings of great delight that her daughter had apparently had the best time of her life, and small resentment that she could have had it despite her own absence?

Someone else was absent, too, she noted. It had been interesting to observe over the past couple of weeks how reality in the shape of Zandra had edged out fiction in the form of Nina.

She said casually, "Nina wasn't there, then?"

"No," said Rosie dismissively. "The nix got her again. Can I have a cold drink? I'm a bit hot."

So much for imaginary friendship, thought Ellie. Now you're here, now you're back in the storybook!

She said, "No wonder you're hot after a day like that. Let's see what we've got in the fridge, then I'll rub some of my after-sun lotion on just to make sure you don't start peeling like an old onion. Okay?"

"Okay. Will Daddy be home before I go to sleep?"

She yawned as she spoke. The effort of telling her tale seemed to have drained all the energy from her.

"I doubt it," said Ellie. "From the look of you, I think we'll be lucky to get you into bed before you go to sleep."

"But he will be coming home soon as he finds the little girl?"

Oh, shit. Something else to remember from her own childhood, how sharp her ears had been to pick up and note down scraps of adult conversation.

She recalled Peter's description of the missing child's parents-like something's been switched off-and another line came into her mind -So deep in my heart a small flame died.

She put her arms round Rosie and hugged her so hard, the child gasped.

"Sorry," said Ellie. "Let's go find that cold drink."

They are long, the days of midsummer, and usually their beauty lies in their length, with sunlight and warmth apparently unending and giving those able to relax a taste of that eternal bliss which was ours before the Great Banker in the Sky repossessed our first home and garden.

It was not so for the police working in Danby. There was not even that sense of growing urgency which the approach of night usually brings to a search team, that resentment at having the operation interrupted by several hours of darkness. From somewhere a dullness had stolen upon them, a feeling of futility. It sprang, Pascoe guessed, from the community's close links with Dendale, from a common memory of what had happened there fifteen years ago, and from the link made in so many minds between the three Dendale children who had vanished without trace and Lorraine Dacre.

On the surface, Andy Dalziel fought against it, but in some ways it seemed to Pascoe he was a major contributor to it. It wasn't that he gave the impression of a lack of urgency and involvement. On the contrary, he seemed to be more personally involved in this case than in any other Pascoe could recall. It was just that somehow he seemed to feel the whole physical and bureaucratic structure of the investigation-the search parties, the incident room, the house-to-house-was some kind of going-through-the-motions gesture, serving only as a sop to public morale.

For Pascoe, the machine was a comfort. It collected scraps of information, some negative, such as, this patch of ground or that outhouse had been searched and nothing had been found; some positive. You put these scraps in place, and joined them together carefully like the numbered dots in a child's drawing book, and eventually with luck a recognizable shape emerged.

He wished Wieldy was here. When it came to making sense out of joined-up dots, there was no one came close to Sergeant Wield. But he and his partner were away for the weekend on a book-buying expedition in the Borders. At least that was what the partner, Edwin Digweed, antiquarian bookseller, was doing. Wield's interest in books began and stopped with the works of H. Rider Haggard. He, as Andy Dalziel, with instinctive salaciousness, had put it when told of the sergeant's nonavailability, was just along for the ride.

About eight o'clock, Dalziel appeared in the incident room and told Pascoe he'd given instructions for the search to be wound down for the night.

"Still a couple of hours of daylight," said Pascoe, slightly surprised.

"We're shorthanded," said Dalziel. "And knackered. They'll miss things in the dusk, start thinking of home, stop for a quiet drag, next thing we've got another grass fire down here and everyone's up all night. I've called in on the Dacres, let them know."

"How'd they take it?"

"How do you think?" snarled the Fat Man. Then relenting, he added, "I pushed the no-news-good-news line. Never say die till you've got a body that has."

"But you don't feel like that, sir?" probed Pascoe. "From the start you've been sure she's gone for good."

"Have I? Aye. Happen I have. Show me I'm wrong, lad, and I'll give you a big wet kiss."

Nobly in face of such a threat, Pascoe persisted. "It could be abduction. There's still some car sightings unaccounted for."

This was straw-grasping stuff. All early-morning vehicle sightings had been eliminated except for three. A local farmer had seen a blue car heading up the Highcross Moor road at what he termed a dangerous speed; several people had noticed a white sedan parked on the edge of Ligg Common; and Mrs. Martin, a shortsighted lady who'd gone early into St. Michael's Church to carry out her flower arranging duties, thought she'd heard a vehicle going up the Corpse Road.

"The Corpse Road?" Dalziel echoed.

"That's right. It's what they call the old track-"

"-t runs over the Neb into Dendale, the one they used for bringing their dead 'uns across to St. Mick's for burying before they got their own church," completed Dalziel. "Don't come the local historian with me, lad, I'm a sodding expert."

He scratched his chin thoughtfully then said, "Tell you what, fancy a walk? It'll do you good, you're looking a bit peaky."

"A walk…? But where…?"

"You'll see. Come on."

Outside, the Fat Man plunged briefly into the trunk of his car, from which he emerged with a small knapsack which he tossed to Pascoe.

"You carry it up. I'll carry it down."

"Up?" said Pascoe uneasily.

"Aye. Up."

He led the way through a small gateway into the churchyard, through the green-and-gray lichened tombstones, past the church, and out of the lych-gate on the far side. A pleasant green track stretched ahead, running between old elms and yews. At least it was pleasant for the first thirty yards or so, then it began to grow more rocky and steep.

"Anything that came up here would need four-wheel drive. Or a tractor maybe," panted Pascoe. "Ground's too hard to leave any traces."

"Well, thank you, Natty Bumppo," said Dalziel. "What's been here, then? Herd of cows in gum boots?"

In a small clearing just off the track, where the trees had thinned out considerably, he pointed to the crushed grass and powdered earth, in parts of which tire tracks were clearly visible.

"Yes, well, okay," said Pascoe. "There's been something up here. Well spotted, sir."

He turned away and took a couple of steps back down the track.

"Hey, sunshine, what's your hurry? We've not got there yet."

He looked back to see that Dalziel was still heading uphill where the track emerged from the trees and began to wind across the open fellside.

"But why…? I thought you were just… Oh, sod it!" said Pascoe, and followed.

In fact the track meandered fairly gently up the fellside, worn there over centuries by the heavy feet of all those sad processions-and also, he reassured himself as the melancholy vision threatened to overwhelm him, by their presumably much lighter feet, tripping merrily back to Dendale after the wake.

At least, being the eastern flank of the Neb, it was out of reach of the declining sun, though he managed to produce sweat enough by the time he labored up to the sunlit ridge.

"Forty-five minutes," said Dalziel, sitting at his ease against a boulder. "I'd have thought a fit young shag like you 'ud have done it in half an hour."

Pascoe sagged to the ground beside him, trying not to pant too audibly.

"Gi's the sack, then," said the Fat Man.

Pascoe wriggled it off his shoulders and handed it over.

Then he turned his attention to Dendale.

It was only now, looking down, that he realized how much of a real frontier the Neb must have seemed to the old dalesmen. The fell on this side was much steeper and the sinuous curves of the Corpse Road on the Danby side turned into sharp zigzags beneath him. Also, while Danby had one foot and half its soul in the great fertile agricultural plain of Mid-Yorkshire, the narrow glaciated valley of Dendale belonged completely to the county's wild moorlands.

It was, he supposed, this wildness and steep enclosure which had made the dale so attractive to the gray suits in search of a reservoir site. He knew nothing of their search and final selection but guessed it contained much that was unedifying, with references to the greater good of the greater number and the difficulties of making omelettes without breaking eggs flowing like hot lava, destroying all lives and homes that lay in its path.

Doubtless there'd been an Inquiry. There always was. Some linguistic archaeologist of the next age, putting together a lexicon of late-twentieth-century usage, would probably conclude that the space between choosing a site and starting work on it was for some arcane reason called "The Public Inquiry."

So the inevitable had happened and the valley had changed. Beyond recognition? Possibly. Beyond redemption? Probably. In one sense it was wilder now than before, because human beings no longer lived and worked here.

But the stamp of man's presence was visible beyond disguise in the shape of the long curve of the dam wall.

Nature, though, is a tough cookie. Through his art man tried to perfect her, and through his science to control her. But always she will shrug her shoulders and be herself again.

So here it was, the famous reservoir, built out of public money for the public weal in the days when privatization of public utilities was still a lurid gleam in a pair of demon eyes. Now, of course, it was a key feature in the master plan by which Mid-Yorkshire Water, PLC, hoped to keep its consumers (sorry; customers) wet and its shareholders wealthy for the next hundred years.

And Nature, simply by opening her great red eye in the sky for a couple of months, had set all the plans at nowt.

Around the dark waters of the reservoir ran a broad pale fillet of washed rock and baked mud, across which ran the lines of ancient walls and on which stood piles of shaped and faced stone showing where bits of the drowned village had come gasping up for air again.

"You want this beer or not?" said Dalziel.

Pascoe turned to find the Fat Man was proffering a can of bitter.

"Well, I carried it up," said Pascoe. "I might as well carry it down."

He took a long, satisfying pull. Dalziel meanwhile had put down his own can and extracted from the knapsack a pair of binoculars with which he was scanning the valley.

What else did I lug up here? wondered Pascoe. A kitchen sink?

"This is where it all started, lad," said Dalziel. "This is what I wanted you to see."

"Thank you for the thought, sir," said Pascoe. "Is there anything in particular I should be looking at or is it just the general aesthetic I should be drinking in?"

"Is that what they call irony?" wondered Dalziel. "That's sarcasm for intellectuals, isn't it? Lost me. I just want you to have some idea what it used to be like down there, what it must have felt like fifteen years back when they were told they had to get out. I reckon it pushed one of the buggers over the edge. Now, I know you think I've been brushing my teeth in home brew or something, but if I'm going to be tret like a half-wit, I'd like to be tret like a half-wit by some half-wit who's got half an idea what I'm talking about. You with me, lad?"

"Trying to be, sir."

"That the best you can do?"

"I've always felt that if Satan took me up to a high place, I'd be inclined to go along with most anything he said till I got down safe," said Pascoe. "So fire away. Give me a guided tour."

"No need," said Dalziel. "I've got a map. It was in the file. I've got the rest of the file down in the car. You can take it home tonight and have a good read. Here."

He passed over a sheet of cartridge paper. Pascoe looked at it and smiled.

"I recognize this fair hand, surely? Yes, there they are, the magic initials E. W."

"Aye, it's one of Wieldy's. Thing you've got to remember is that what he's marked as houses are nowt but piles of rubble down there."

"Was that the action of the water?" wondered Pascoe.

"No. The Water Board bulldozed them. They reckon if they left buildings standing underwater, there'd be paying off subaqua freaks' widows forevermore. Even the houses that weren't going to be submerged they knocked down. Didn't want anyone trying to sneak back and take possession."

Pascoe studied the map. Dalziel passed him the glasses.

"Start at the main body of the village," said Dalziel. "If you follow the Corpse Road down, you'll see it ends at a bloody great rock. Shelter Crag, that is. So called 'cos that's where they used to lay their dead 'uns, all wrapped up nice and cold for their trip over the hill to St. Mick's. When they got their own church, that seemed obvious place to build it, and that's what that big pile of stones was."

Slowly Dalziel guided Pascoe round the ruined valley with the care and precision of a courier who'd made the trip too often ever to forget. The main body of the village was easy enough to sort out once he'd got the church located. In any case its relicts were substantial enough to be immediately obvious. Buildings which had stood apart weren't so easily identified. Hobholme, the farm where the first girl had lived, wasn't too difficult, but The Stang, site of the dale joinery, seemed to have been scattered far and wide. Heck, the Wulfstans' house, had reemerged as a substantial promontory of stones running out from the new shore to the edge of the shrinking mere, and on the far side it was easy to spot the long rounded hillock alongside which had stood Low Beulah, the home of the girl who had survived.

But Neb Cottage, home of prime suspect Benny Lightfoot, and scene of that last attack, perhaps because it was high enough up the fell not to have spent the last fifteen years underwater, was very hard to spot. Perhaps like the man himself, it had reentered the earth from which its stones had been prized.

He didn't share this fancy with the Fat Man but swung the glasses to bring the dam wall into view.

Somewhere there was a valley-the Lake District, was it?-whose naive inhabitants, according to legend, built a wall to keep the cuckoo in and so enjoy spring forever. Here the purpose had been scientifically sounder but not all that much more successful. With two thirds of its footing in dried-up clay and the middle third lapped by sun-flecked wavelets that wouldn't have swamped a matchbox, the dam wall looked as awkward as a rugger forward at a ballet school.

He ran his gaze up the gentle concavity of its front to the balustraded parapet. There was someone there, a man, strolling along, very much at his ease. From this distance and angle it was hard to get much impression of his face, but he was tall with long black hair brushed straight back.

"Someone down there," said Pascoe.

"Oh, aye? Bit earlier and likely you'd have seen dozens. Local historians, bird-watchers, nebby hikers. No way the Water Board can keep them away without mounting an armed guard," said Dalziel. "Let's have a shufti."

He took the glasses, scanned the dam, then lowered them.

"Gone, else you're having visions. Someone up on Beulah Height, though."

He'd raised his glasses to the saddled crest of the opposite fell.

"Beulah Height. And Low Beulah. Someone must have been pretty optimistic," mused Pascoe.

"Am I supposed to ask why?" demanded Dalziel. "Well, no need, clever-clogs. "Thou shalt be called Hephzibah and thy land Beulah." Isaiah sixty-two, four. And Pilgrim's Progress, last stop afore heaven, the Land of Beulah "where the sun shineth night and day." Got that just about right. Mind you, there's some as say it comes originally from Anglo-Saxon. Beorh-loca or some such. Means "hill enclosure." There's the remains of some old hill fort up there, dating from Stone Age times, they reckon. Sometime later on farmers used the stones to make a sheepfold under the saddle, so they could be right."

"You haven't been going to evening classes, have you, sir?" asked Pascoe, amazed.

"You ain't heard nothing yet. Could be it's the fold itself gives the name. Bought or bucht is a fold and law's a hill."

"That makes Height a touch tautologous, doesn't it?" said Pascoe. "And it all sounds a bit Scottish anyway."

"Do you not think we sent missionaries down to civilize you buggers?" said Dalziel, referring to his own paternal heritage. "Any road, there's others still who say it's really Baler Height, bale meaning fire, 'cos this is where they lit the beacon to warn of the Armada. Fifteen eighty-eight. You likely got taught that at college, or were they not allowed to learn you about times when we used to whup the dagos and such?"

Ducking the provocation, and slightly miffed at having their usual cultural roles reversed, Pascoe said, "And Low Beulah? They lit a beacon to warn the ducks, perhaps?"

"Don't be daft. A low's one of them burial mounds. Yon little hillock next to where the farm was is likely one of them."

Pascoe knew when he was beaten.

"I'm impressed," he said. "You really did your homework fifteen years back."

"Aye. Whatever there were to know about Dendale, I learned by heart," said Dalziel heavily. "And you know what? Like all them dates and such I learned at school, it did me no fucking good whatsoever."

He pushed himself to his feet and stood there, glowering into Dendale, looking to Pascoe's imagination like some Roman general sent to tame a rebellious province, who'd discovered that in terrain like this against foes like these, classical infantry tactics were no sodding good.

But he'd find a way. They-Roman generals and Andy Dalziels-always did.

Except, of course, in this case he was looking into the wrong valley.

As if in response to this critical thought, Dalziel said, "I know what's down there is old stuff, lad. And what's down in Danby is a new case. But there's one thing I learned fifteen year back that chimes useful to me now."

"What's that, sir?" asked Pascoe dutifully.

"I learned that in this place in this kind of weather, the bastard who took that first lass didn't stop, mebbe couldn't stop, till he'd taken two more and had a go at taking another. That's why I brought you up here, to try to get it into your noddle. Some things you can't learn out of books. But take the Dendale file home with you for homework anyway. I'll test you on it tomorrow."

"Will I be kept in if I fail?" asked Pascoe.

"With this one, I think we'll all be kept in long after the bell goes," said Dalziel. "Now let's be getting back down while it's still light enough to see how far we've got to fall."

He strode ahead down the Corpse Road.

Pascoe took a last look across the dale. The setting sun filled the fold bowl between the two tops of Beulah Height with a pool of gold. Last stop afore heaven. On a night like this you could believe it.

"Oy!"

"Coming," he called.

And he followed his great leader into the darkness.

DAY 2 Nina and the Nix

Editor's Foreword

We came from water, and if the greenhouse theorists are right, to water we shall probably return.

It accounts for seventy-two percent of the earth's surface and sixty percent of a man's body.

In places under permanent threat of drought, like Arabia Deserta and Mid-Yorkshire, it brings riches to some and death to others.

And over the centuries man has peopled it with a whole range of elemental creatures-mermaids, undines, naiads, Nereids, krakens, kelpies, and many more, all suited to the particular age and culture which spawned them.

Here in Mid-Yorkshire the most common hydromythic entity is the nix.

The nix stands midway between the English pixie and the Scandinavian nicor.

In some tales it figures as a sort of brownie, generally benevolent in its relation with humanity. In others it is much closer to its Norse cousin, which emerges from its watery lair by night to devour human prey. The Grendel monsters in the Beowulf saga are a form of nicor.

The present tale I heard many years ago from the lips of old Tory Simkin of Dendale, now sadly taken from us, both man and valley. It troubles me to think how much of the past we have lost while modern technology preserves in electronic perpetuity the idiocies of our own age (of all that have ever been, perhaps the most deserving of oblivion). I thank God there are a few superannuated fools like myself who think it worthwhile to record the old stories before they are lost forever.

If this be vanity or blasphemy, then behold a vain blasphemer from whom you may obtain further copies of this book and information about other publications of The Eendale Press at Enscombe, Eendale, Mid-Yorkshire. Edwin Digweed

Nina and the Nix

Once there were a nix lived by a pool in a cave under a hill.

For food he et whatever swam in his pool or crawled in the mud around it.

Only friend he had were a bat that hung upside down high in the roof of his cave, though often when it spoke to him its little squeaky voice seemed to come from somewhere high in the roof of his own head.

If nix wanted to go out, he usually waited till night. But sometimes he'd hear voices of kiddies playing in village far below and he'd sneak out in the daytime and find a shady place in the hillside where he could watch them.

Best of all were when they played in the pond on the village green and splashed each other, and ran around shouting, their shining faces and white limbs all dripping with water.

The one he liked watching most were called Nina. Her hair was as blond as his was black and her skin as smooth as his was scaly.

Came a summer when sun shone so warm and sky stayed so cloudless that not even thought of seeing Nina could tice nix out into that heat and that brightness. He sat tight in his dark dank cave waiting for weather to change. But it didn't change and after a week or so he noticed when he knelt to take a drink that the water in his pool were further away than it used to be.

Day followed dry day. Sun burnt so hot, nix could feel its stuffy heat even down here in his cave. And without a drop of rain to slip through the cracks in the hillside and fill up his pool, the level got lower and lower. Soon the creatures that lived in it, and them as lived in the muddy edge which was getting bigger and bigger and drier and drier, began to die. And soon the nix began to feel very hungry.

"You going to sit there moping till you fade away?" said bat.

"Don't see what else I can do," said nix.

"You can find some food," said bat.

"I've looked and I've looked and there's nowt left to feed me," said nix.

"I weren't thinking of feeding thee," said bat. "I were thinking of feeding the pool."

"Eh?" said nix.

"Have you not noticed? Yon pond in the village hasn't got much smaller. And you know why that is?"

"No," said nix.

"It's because of them juicy young lasses always splashing about in it," said bat. "Get yourself one of them, and you'd soon see pool filling up again."

So nix went up to the surface to take a look for himself. It were so bright and hot, he could only stay up there for half a minute, but it were long enough to see that bat was right. The village pond were still full of water, and the little kids were still splashing around in it.

Back down he came to his cave and he said, "So you're right, but it's not much help. How am I going to get one of them to come down here? They're all shut up in their homes at night, and if I go out during the day, I'll shrivel up and die."

"Then she'll have to come to you," said bat. "Go out tonight and gather all the prettiest flowers you can find, and plant them all around the entrance to the cave. Then just sit and wait."

So that night the nix stole out and went far and wide over hill and dale, uprooting all the flowers he could find, moon daisies and stepmothers, aaron's rod and bedstraw, but no flopdocken, for that's a flower nixes and their kind cannot abide. And he planted them all around the mouth of his cave.

Next morning Nina went for a walk up the hill afore the sun got too hot. She wanted to pick some flowers for her mam, but there weren't very many because the heat had dried up all the ground and baked it so hard that even the grass was brown. Then suddenly she spotted this hollow in the hillside so full of flowers, it looked like a garden. She made haste to get there and started picking the brightest blooms when a voice said, "What do you think you're up to, little girl? Do you always steal flowers from other folks's gardens?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry," cried Nina. "I didn't realize this was anybody's garden."

"Well, you realize now," said the voice.

She couldn't see who was speaking but the voice seemed to be coming out of this hole in the hillside. So she went to it and said timidly, "I really am sorry. I'll put them down here, shall I?"

"Nay, now they're picked, you might as well keep them," said the voice.

"That's right kind of you," said Nina. "But won't you come out into your garden where I can see you?"

"Nay, lass. I can't bear this heat," said the voice. "In fact I were just making myself a jug of iced lemonade. Would you like to try a glass?"

Now, Nina was very hot and thirsty indeed and she said eagerly, "Yes, please."

"Right, I'll pour you one. Just step inside and help yourself."

So she pushed past the flowers which fringed the entrance to the tunnel leading down to the cave and stepped inside.

Next moment she felt herself seized by her long blond hair, which she was wearing in two pigtails, and before she could scream she was dragged right down into the bowels of the earth.

There she lay in the foul-smelling dark, sobbing her heart out.

Finally she ran out of tears and rubbed her eyes and sat up to take a look around.

Outside, sun were so bright, a little bit of light filtered down the entrance tunnel. By its dim glow she saw she were in a cave. The ground were strewn with rocks and stuff. In the middle of the cave was a small, foul-smelling pool, and on its edge sat this thing.

Its body was long and scaly, its fingers and toes were webbed with long, curved nails, its face was gaunt and hollow, its nose hooked, its chin pointed and fringed with sharp spikes of beard, its eyes deep set and staring, and its mouth twisted in a mockery of a smile, showing sharp white teeth as it spoke.

"How do, Nina," it said.

"How do, nix," she answered in a very low voice.

"You know who I am, then?" said nix.

"Aye. My mam's told me about you," said Nina.

What her mam had told her was never go up the fell on her lone, else the wicked nix that lived beneath it might steal her.

Now she wished with all her might that she'd taken heed!

"Then it's nice of you to come visiting, Nina," said nix.

"It's nice of you to have me," said Nina politely like she'd been taught. "But please, I'd like to go home now, it's nearly time for my dinner."

"It's long past time for mine," snapped nix. Then, smiling his terrible smile again, he went on. "Tell you what, Nina. It's so hot, why don't you have a little swim afore you go?"

Nina looked at the dreadful pool and shook her head.

"No, thank you," she said. "My dad says I'm never to go swimming by myself, only when there's someone bigger around to take care of me."

"Never fear," said nix, standing up. "I'm bigger and I'll take care of thee."

He came round the pool toward her. At that moment a voice came drifting down the tunnel from far above.

"Nina! Nina!" it cried.

"It's Dad!" cried Nina. "I'm coming. I'm coming."

And she set off to run up the tunnel, but she'd only gone a little way when those terrible hands caught at her ankles and dragged her screaming back down.

Far above she could still hear her dad's voice but now it was fading and soon it was far away, then she couldn't hear it at all.

She lay on the edge of the pool with the nix towering over her.

"Just wait till my dad gets ahold of you," she sobbed. "He'll pull your neck like a chicken's for the pot."

"He'll have to catch me first," laughed nix. "Now let's go for this swim."

Nina looked up at him and saw he were strong enough to make her do whatever he wanted her to do. No use fighting, then. What was it her mam used to say? God made men strong but he made us clever. Why use fists when you can use your noddle? And her dad were always boasting she were bright as a button.

Well, now was time to see just how bright a button she really was.

"All right," said Nina. "But I'll need to tidy up first."

She stood up and began brushing down her dress, which had got all dusty when the nix dragged her down the tunnel. Then she took the ribbons out of her pigtails and unplaited her hair and combed it with her fingers so that it tumbled over her shoulders like a fall of bright water.

And all the while nix watched her with eyes like hot coals.

"There," said Nina. "I'm ready. But you'll need to jump in with me to help me to swim."

"Take care, nix," squeaked bat. "They're sly as spiders, these lasses."

But nix wasn't listening. His eyes and his thoughts were fixed entirely on Nina.

She took his hand in hers and made him stand alongside her on a big rock at the edge of the pool.

And she said, "I'll count up to three and then we'll jump together. All right?"

"All right," said nix.

"One," said Nina.

"And two," said Nina.

"And three," said Nina.

And they jumped.

Only, as nix jumped forward into the pool, Nina let go his hand and jumped backward onto the ground.

Then she turned and ran as fast as she'd ever run in her life up the tunnel.

It only took nix a second to realize her trick.

Then, screaming with rage and dripping foul-smelling mud and water, he dragged himself from the pool and set out after her.

Oh, she were fast, but he were faster.

She didn't dare waste time looking back, but she could hear him behind her, his sharp nails screeling against the rock like hard chalk on a shiny slate, his stinking breath panting like Bert the blacksmith's bellows.

Her long hair streamed behind her and she felt it touched by his outstretched hand. Faster then she ran, and faster, till she felt it no more. But still he was close and her strength was failing. Now she felt the hand again, this time close enough to get ahold of a tress.

She felt the grip tighten, she felt her hair being twisted to make the grip firmer, above her she could see the ring of bright light that marked the end of the tunnel.

But it was too late. He had her hair fast now. He was pulling her to a stop. It was too late.

She stretched out her arms to the light and screamed, "Daddy! Daddy!"

And just as she gave up hope and knew she were about to be dragged back down to the depths, she felt her hands seized.

For a moment she was stretched taut as a rope in the tug-o'-war at the village sports. Then, just as in the tug-o'-war when it seems the two teams are so evenly matched they must hold each other there forever, suddenly one side will find the strength for one last pull and the other will go sprawling helpless on the ground, so Nina felt the pull above increase, the pull behind slacken.

And next moment she was out on the hillside in the bright golden sunlight, lying on the grass at her father's feet.

Oh, how they hugged and kissed, and nothing was said to scold her or remind her she'd disobeyed.

When they were done hugging and kissing, her dad rolled a huge boulder across the entrance to the cave.

"There," he said. "That'll keep yon nix where he belongs. Now let's be getting you home to your mam. Let's take her some flowers to brighten the house."

So they set to, and picked moon daisies and stepmothers, aaron's rod and bedstraw, and on their way home they found a bank covered with flopdocken, which the nixes hate, and them they picked also.

And very soon after, when Nina's mam went to the back of her cottage and looked anxiously up the hillside, her heart jumped with joy as she saw her man and her little lass coming downhill toward her with their eyes bright as starshine, their voices raised in a merry catch, and their arms full of flowers.

Monday dawned, the sun rising into the inevitable blue sky with the radiant serenity of Alexander entering a conquered province.

Its soundless reveille against the leaded light of Corpse Cottage in Enscombe did not disturb the deep slumber of Edwin Digweed, antiquarian bookseller and founder of the Eendale Press, but not for nothing had Edgar Wield been nicknamed by a previous lover Macumazahn, He Who Sleeps with His Eyes Open.

He answered the summons immediately, taking care to make as little noise as possible. Edwin was not at his best if woken too early, one of the many adjustment-necessitating discoveries made during their first year together.

Downstairs Wield brewed his morning coffee (two spoons of instant and three of white sugar in boiling milk, not the cafetiere of freshly ground Colombian Edwin insisted on at all times of day), then went on his morning visit.

This took him via the churchyard into the grounds of Old Hall, home of the Guillemard family, by permission squires of Enscombe for nearly a thousand years. Falling on hard times, the family had been preserved by the acumen of its present commercial head, Gertrude (known, misleadingly, as Girlie), who had lured visitors to the estate by all manner of attraction, including a children's animal park. Here, in pens or roaming free as their nature required, could be found calves, lambs, kids, piglets, fowl (domestic and game), dormice, harvest mice, field mice, and a rat called Guy. But it was not on any of these that Wield was making his morning call.

He made for a lofty oak which held the remains of a tree house in its fork and whistled gently.

Instantly a small figure appeared and dropped with scarcely more than a token touch to trunk or branch the thirty feet into his arms.

"Morning, Monte," said Wield. "What fettle?"

Monte was a monkey-a marmoset, the local vet had informed him when he'd taken the animal for a comprehensive check, a necessary precaution in view of its origins. For Monte was an escapee from a pharmaceutical research lab who'd taken refuge in Wield's car. The sergeant had smuggled it out, assuring himself this was a decision postponed, not a decision made.

It had been the first real test of his new relationship. Edwin Digweed, though fond enough of animals, made it clear that he had no intention of sharing his home with a free-roaming primate. "A menage a trois may have its attractions," he said. "A menagerie a trois has none."

There had been a moment, as Wield's unblinking eyes in that unreadable face regarded him calculatingly, that Digweed had recalled an anecdote told of John Huston. Required by his current mistress to choose between herself and a pet monkey of peculiarly disgusting habits, the film director had thought for thirty seconds, then said, "The chimp stays."

Digweed held his breath, suddenly fearful that his world might be about to dissolve beneath his feet.

But what Wield had said was "He's not going back there. He escaped."

Hiding his relief, Digweed exclaimed, "He-it-is a monkey, not the Count of bloody Monte Cristo. All right, we can't send him-it-back to that place, but the proper place for him-it-is a zoo."

"Monte. That's what we'll call him," said Wield. "As for the zoo, I know just the spot."

He'd taken Monte to see Girlie Guillemard. Much impressed by the little animal, and having established he was marginally less inclined to bite, scratch, or otherwise assault ill-behaved children than herself, she'd offered him refuge in the animal park.

The move had worked surprisingly well. Wield visited every morning he could, bearing gifts of peanuts and fruit. There'd been an early crisis when duty had prevented his visit for nearly a week. Finally Monte had gone looking for him at Corpse Cottage. Finding only Edwin there, asleep in bed, Monte had awoken him, presumably to make inquiries, by pushing up his eyelids.

"Naturally my first thought was, I'm being raped by an ape," said the bookseller. "So I lay back and thought of Africa."

Now Wield gently removed the beast from his head, where it was searching diligently for nits. He regarded the little animal with great affection. He'd tried to explain to Edwin that it wasn't just sentimentality. In fact of all the decisions he'd made as a gay man, of all the small steps he'd taken toward his present state of "outness," none-not even his acceptance of Digweed's suggestion that they set up house together -seemed more significant than his rescue of Monte.

It had been theft, no matter how you looked at it. It had put his career on the line. Would he have done it before he took up with Edwin? He doubted it. It was as if his own pool of contentment had filled to such an unanticipated level, there was a constant overspill which could no more let him ignore the monkey's plight last November than his sense of duty could have permitted him to steal it a year earlier.

Edwin who, as he listened to his partner's untypically hesitant self-analysis, had been preparing huevos a la flamenca, remarked acidly, "Do let me know when you go soft on unborn chickens." Thereafter, however, whenever Monte came searching for the absent Wield, he was greeted with great kindness and given a lift back to Old Hall.

Dalziel did not know, at least not officially, about Monte. "Keep it that way," advised Pascoe, who'd got the full story, "else someday when you think you're out of reach, he'll use the beast to track you down."

The previous day, the Fat Man had had to rely on the telephone. When Wield and Digweed got back from their book-buying foray into the Borders, the former had found what the latter called an HMV message on the answering machine. After a terse outline of the situation, Wield had been invited with satirical courtesy to put in an appearance at the incident room in Danby first thing the following morning, weather and social calendar permitting.

It was not a prospect that pleased. Wield, too, remembered Dendale. Like the Fat Man said, it wasn't your collars kept you awake, it was the ones that got away, and Dendale rated high on that insomniac list. Okay, Danby was different, thriving, pushing up from village to township, nowhere near as enclosed, and certainly not doomed the way Dendale had been. But the drowned valley was just a couple of miles west, just a short walk over the Corpse Road…

"But a man's gotta do… something," said Wield. "Don't crap on too many kids, kid. See you."

He threw the monkey up into the lower branches of the oak and walked away.

Half an hour later, as he freewheeled his old Thunderbird down the track from Corpse Cottage in order not to disturb Edwin, he was still thinking how pleasant it would be to be still lying abed on such a morning as this. But Danby called. And Dalziel.

He switched on the ignition and kicked the starter and as the engine roared into life, he cried to a surprised cat on the hunt for early birds, "Hi-yo Silver. Away!"

In the Pascoe household, too, there was reluctance at all levels.

Pascoe himself, after rising early and settling down to read the Dendale file, had fallen asleep in his chair, and wasn't aroused till Ellie started the morning bustle of getting Rosie ready for school.

His first instinct, as he bestirred himself ere well awake, was to rush off unshaven and unfed, but Ellie's cooler counsel had brought him to his senses and when he rang St. Michael's Hall at Danby and was assured by the duty officer that the only thing disturbing the peace was the approaching roar of Sergeant Wield's motorbike, he had relaxed in the certainty that on-the-ground organization was in the best possible hands.

So he had sat down to the relatively rare pleasure of taking breakfast with his daughter.

It did not seem to be a pleasure shared. Rosie blinked her eyes irritably against the sun streaming in through the kitchen window and announced, "I'm feeling badly."

Her parents exchanged glances. Peter, left in sole charge some weeks earlier, had been targeted by his daughter at breakfast with little sighs and sobs as she bravely forced her bran flakes down, till, always a soft target, he had caved in and said, "Are you feeling badly or something?"

"Yes," she'd replied. "I'm feeling very badly."

"Then perhaps you'd better not go to school," he'd replied, secretly glad of an excuse to keep her at home all day with him.

In the event, by halfway through the morning she'd recollected that her class was going out on a bird-spotting expedition that afternoon, so made a rapid recovery and nobly insisted it would be wrong of her to remain at home under false pretenses.

But the phrase I'm feeling badly, was thereafter used as a formula to unlock her father's heart when necessary.

Ellie Pascoe, however, was made of sterner stuff.

"I told you to keep your sun hat on yesterday," she said indifferently.

"I did," retorted Rosie. "All the time."

"Of course you did," said Pascoe. "Even when you were swimming underwater."

"Don't be silly," she snapped. "It would float away. Do I have to go to school?"

"Oh, I think so," he said. "I think I saw Nina waiting at the gate for you just now."

"No, you didn't. I told you. She got taken again. By the nix. I saw her get taken."

Pascoe looked at Ellie, who made an I-forgot-to-mention-it face.

"Perhaps her dad's rescued her again," he said.

"Not yet he won't have. It was only yesterday. You'll be sorry if I get taken too."

Not so much a conversation stopper as a heart stopper.

"Well, try to hang around as long as you can," he said lightly. "It's the same for me, too, you know. I'd rather stay at home."

"Not the same," she said sullenly. "You haven't got a stiff neck."

"And you have? Like the people of Israel." He laughed. "We should have called you Rose of Sharon."

Being a curious child, she usually insisted on explanations of jokes she didn't understand, but this morning all she did was repeat with great irritation, "Don't be silly."

"I'll try not to," said Pascoe rising. "See you tonight."

Her skin was warm to his kiss.

At the front door he said, "She does look a bit flushed."

"You would, too, if you'd been running around in the sun all day," said Ellie.

"I was," he said. "And no doubt will be again."

"Well, keep your sun hat on," said Ellie, determinedly cheerful. She had listened to his weary account of the day's frustrations when he got home the previous night, held him close for a while, then poured him a large whiskey and talked brightly about Rosie's trip to the seaside. At first he thought her motive was purely distraction, but after a while he became aware that it was her own mind she was distracting, too, from her unbearable empathy with Elsie Dacre. So he had switched on the TV, allegedly in search of the news, and instead had got a late-night discussion on the growing problem of juvenile runaways. A psychiatrist called Paula Appleby, whose strong opinions, linguistic fluency, and photogenic features had got her elected "the thinking man's thinking woman," was saying, "When a child disappears, rather than simply looking for the child, we should be looking at first the parents, who are often the cause, then the police, who are more likely to be part of the problem than its solution."

"Time for bed," Pascoe had said, switching off.

Now he looked up at the perfectly laid blue wash of the sky and guessed that hours earlier the Dacres' dark-rimmed sleepless eyes had watched it pale from black to gray and then to pink and gold, and sought in the returning light and the rising birdsong some hint of that freshness and hope that had always been there before, but was now nowhere to be found.

And then his mind's eye ran up the Corpse Road and over the sun-rimmed Neb and looked down into Dendale, still filling with pearly light.

It seemed to him that he saw far below a shadowy figure who peered up toward the fell's gilded rim, then threw up its arms in welcome or derision, before slipping silent and naked into the still, dark waters of the mere.

Daylight visions now, he thought. were they better or worse than waking in the dark and still smelling the mud of Passchendaele?

"Peter!" said Ellie in a tone that told him she'd spoken his name already.

"Sorry," he said. "Miles away."

"Yes, I've noticed. Peter, don't you think…"

But the moment wasn't ripe. A voice said, "Lovely morning again, sod it!" and they saw the postman coming up the drive. He handed Pascoe two packages, one small, one large. Both were addressed to Ellie, but when he proffered them, she took the small one and ignored the other.

"Oh, good," she said, tearing it open. "That Mahler disc."

"Songs for Dead Children. Just the stuff for a summer's day," he said, taking it from her hand and replacing it with the other package, which bore a well-known publisher's logo. "What about this?"

"If I want cheering up, I'll listen to Mahler," she said.

"Perhaps they've just sent your manuscript back to ask you to make a few minor revisions?" he offered.

"Bollocks," said Ellie. "I've got these Braille-sensitive fingers. They can read Get stuffed through six layers of wrapping. Weird design."

She was determined not to talk about the novel. He looked down at the disc, which bore a silhouette drawing of a girl's or cherub's profile, spouting a line of music. He found himself thinking of Dendale, though the connection seemed slight. Then he spotted what it was. In the bottom right corner, as on the map from the Dendale file, were the initials E. W. Not, of course, Edgar Wield this time, but, as was confirmed when he turned the disc over and read the small print on the back, Elizabeth Wulfstan.

"Does the translation, sings the songs, designs the cover, I wonder if she plays the instruments in the orchestra?" he said.

"Very likely. Some people get all the talent, which is why there's so little left over for the rest," said Ellie dispiritedly.

"It'll happen, love. Really. You've got more writing talent in your little finger than any of those London creeps licking each other's bums in the Sunday reviews," he said loyally, putting his arms around her.

They clung together as if he were going back to the Front after all too short a leave.

Then he got into his car and drove away.

"How many times?" said Father Kerrigan.

"Five."

"Jesus! With the same fellow, was it?"

"Yes, Father," said Detective Constable Shirley Novello indignantly.

"And on the Sabbath too."

"Does that make it worse?"

"It doesn't make it any better. Five times. It's this hot weather I blame. Is he one of mine? Don't tell me. I'll recognize him by the weary way he walks. And this is why I didn't see you in church yesterday? You were too busy fornicating."

"No, Father. I told you. We went off to the seaside for the day, and it just sort of happened."

"No, my girl. Once it just sort of happens, five times takes enthusiasm."

It wasn't easy, thought Novella as she left the church a little later, being a modern woman, a Roman Catholic, and a detective constable all at the same time. They got in each other's way. To the soul sisters, a good screw was "exuberating in your own sexuality"; to the holy father it was the sin of fornication. As for her job, there were times when it required her to behave in ways equally offensive to both the sisterhood and the Fatherhood.

She arrived at the Danby incident room five minutes late. No sign of Dalziel (thank you for that at least, God); or Pascoe. But Wield was there.

"Sorry, Sarge," she said. "Went to confession."

Somehow telling a lie in these circumstances didn't seem on.

"Hope you got it on tape," said Wield.

A joke? She made a guess and smiled.

"You weren't here yesterday? Me neither. Get up to speed, then I'd like you to take a closer look at these three car sightings."

"Super around?"

"Up the dale with DI Burroughs and the search team."

"And Mr. Pascoe?"

"Along shortly. He's checking the shop."

An excuse for lateness? They covered each other's backs, these two.

The thought must have shown. Wield said, "Or mebbe he's at confession too. Takes longer as you get older, they say."

Another joke? He was in an odd mood today. She found herself a computer screen and went to work.

Three cars. In the early stages of a case like this when you went in mob handed, with rough-terrain search teams, house-to-house inquiries, media appeals, et cetera, et cetera, what you rapidly got was a vast amount of clutter. Which is why the better part of investigation was elimination. (pascoe.) Not easy. Probably by the time she sorted out these three, there'd be several others reported. Sunday was a bad day for witnesses. People went off for the day, didn't get back till late. There'd be huge gaps in yesterday's house-to-house. Not her problem. Yet.

She plotted her car sightings on the map. The closest, not a sighting but a hearing, was on the Corpse Road. Someone had added a note, Evidence of parking two hundred yards up track. 4wd? Not much point pursuing the deaf flower arranger. On the other hand… she looked at her watch, then rose and headed out, whistling a hymn tune which caused Sergeant Wield to wonder if too much religion might be getting in the way of her work.

The hymn was in fact "In Life's Earnest Morning," but its present occasion was secular. Novello had once lodged with a dog-owning family. The dog, a well-trained poodle, had signaled its need to go out every morning by a loud yapping to which her landlord, equally well trained, had responded by singing, "In life's earnest morning, ar When our hope is high, ar Comes thy voice in summons, ar Not to be put by," as he got the lead and headed for the door.

She headed past the church and sat on a stone at the foot of the Corpse Road. After only five minutes her faith was rewarded. A springer spaniel came running down the track, stopped dead when it saw her, then approached cautiously. She reached out her hand and spoke to it softly and finally it allowed her to scratch its head.

It was followed a few moments later by a breathless thickset woman in loose cotton slacks and a pink sun top.

"There you are, Zebedee," she said. "It's all right. He won't bite."

"Me neither," said Novello.

She stood up and introduced herself. The woman gave her name as Janet Dickens, Mrs., and said she lived about ten minutes' walk away.

"Is this about that little girl?" she asked. "That's really dreadful. We were away all day yesterday across at my sister's near Harrogate, we go alternate Sundays and they come here, but I heard it on the news when we got back."

"Did you take Zebedee for his walk before you went?" asked Novello.

"Oh, yes. No way he'll let me get away without his morning stroll."

"And you always come here."

"That's right. He gets quite uppity if I try to take him anywhere else."

"Good. I wonder if you noticed a vehicle up this track yesterday morning," said Novello.

"A vehicle? Oh, you mean the Discovery? Yes, it was there again. Why? You don't think…?"

"No, we don't think anything," said Novello firmly. "This is just one of several vehicles we need to check out for elimination purposes. This vehicle was a Land-Rover Discovery, you say?"

"That's right. Green. Local, it had the Mid-Yorkshire letters, and this year's registration, and one of the numbers was a six, I think, but I'm sorry, I can't recall the others."

"You've done very well," said Novello, making notes. "But you said again. It was there again. What did you mean?"

"Oh, I've seen it four or five times in the past couple of weeks. That's how I remember as much as I do about the number, I suppose. I'm so scatterbrained, if I'd just seen it once, I'd likely have told you it was a yellow Porsche with an 007 license plate. What will you do now? Put out some kind of alert?"

"Nothing as dramatic as that, Mrs. Dickens," said Novello.

It took a couple of minutes to persuade Mrs. Dickens that she wasn't about to conjure up the Flying Squad and a pack of bloodhounds. Finally, assurances that, as they'd missed her yesterday, the house-to-house team would probably be on her doorstep this very moment, got her on her way.

Novello returned to the Hall. Wield was nowhere to be seen, so she passed her information to Control and asked for a list of possibilities. Then, with one down, and feeling hot for hunches, she went in pursuit of another.

The two people reporting the white car at the edge of Ligg Common had been vague and contradictory. One described it as small, another as quite big. The first opined it might have been a Ford Escort, the second was certain it was some sort of Vauxhall but couldn't say which.

But there'd been a third sighting even vaguer, picked up during house-to-house: Mrs. Joy Kendrick, who'd been driving by the common early and thought she'd noticed a car and it could've been white, but she wasn't absolutely sure as the kids were being fractious in the back as they didn't like being left with their gran for the day, which was the purpose of the journey.

Novello had noticed children beginning to arrive for school as she went out to the Corpse Road. On her return, the numbers had grown considerably. Because of the constant coming and going of police vehicles from the incident center next door, a line of crowd-control barriers had been set up to reinforce the low wall which divided the playground from the Hall forecourt, and the naturally curious kids were pressing thick against them. There were a lot of adults there too. After yesterday's news, parents who'd normally just drop their kids off, or even let them walk there under their own steam, were taking extra precautions.

As Novello reemerged from the center, a couple of teachers were going along the barrier urging the children to go into the school. Novello entered the playground and approached one of them, showing her warrant card.

"I'm Dora Shimmings, head teacher," said the woman. "Look, I arranged with Mr. Pascoe yesterday that any general questioning of the children in Lorraine's class wouldn't be done until we'd got the school day under way in as normal a fashion as possible."

She spoke with a quiet authority that made Novello glad she wasn't about to contradict her.

"It's not that," she said reassuringly. "I just wanted to know if Joy Kendrick was one of your parents."

"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 blond hair bobbing around her shoulders with all the vigor 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 convertible."

"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 overpsyched contenders in a title fight, and now she continued dragging them toward 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 station wagon speeding away up the Highcross Moor road.

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

They didn't seem to be making much progress. Perhaps they would scrub and scrub till finally they wore out the solid stonework 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 automatic 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. "Okay, 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. "Okay, 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 centered.

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 the WOULDC 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 got the information, then went on to the Saab convertible, 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 eight-thirty, 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 at least every year because of speeding cars and trucks."

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

"He says it was a big station wagon, 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 pickup. 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 the WOULDC'S findings. The Fat Man was dismissive.

"A blue station wagon, 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 programs 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."

In the bell referred to the top-price area around 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 zero 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?"

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 toward 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 okay job on the car inquiry. 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 okay. 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 encyclopedia, 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 differently.

The rumors 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, favored 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 center. 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