On Beulah Height

DENDALE.

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

"Not a sign."

"So it could be she's long gone."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You've got a feeling about this blue station wagon, haven't you?"

"Sort of," she admitted reluctantly.

"You won anything on the National Lottery?" he inquired.

"Ten pound."

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

"Okay, Sarge. Thanks."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All theory, of course. Not to be paraded naked before the skeptical gaze of the Holy Trinity. But clothe it with a couple of relevant facts…

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

She went to the car, found a pair of plastic gloves, and removed the inner liner of the rubbish bin. It was packed full. This would have been a popular stopping place yesterday as the day wore on, and the presence of a Sunday tabloid on the top indicated it hadn't been emptied since. She tipped the contents onto the ground and began to sift through the lower strata. From her convent-school Latin lessons the word haruspex popped into her mind; a soothsayer who based his prognostications on the entrails of animals. Good name for those FBI investigators she'd read about who specialized in the interpretation of trash. Could be Scotland Yard or MI5 had a few, too, but it didn't rate high in the Mid-Yorkshire training program. Possibly an expert could have made much of the food containers and wrappings which made up the greater part of the rubbish, but Novello concentrated on the rest and after a few minutes she had isolated a lithium 3V battery of the type used in some cameras, an empty Marlboro Lite cigarette pack, two Sunday papers (one broadsheet, one tabloid), a broken earring, and a tissue with a brown stain that might be blood.

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

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

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

But she was determined that whatever other accusation might be aimed at her, halfheartedness wasn't going to be on the agenda. Thoroughness, an old teacher had once told her, was its own reward. Which was just as well, as by the time she crossed off the last farm, she had to acknowledge she had reaped no other.

So finally she came down to the Highcross Inn.

There was a RESIDENTS PARKING only sign at either end of Holyclerk Street.

Dalziel nipped into a spot ahead of an old lady who scanned his screen furiously for sight of a resident's disc, found none, started to get out of her car to remonstrate, glimpsed that huge face regarding her with a Buddha's benevolence, felt her road rage evaporate, and drove on.

Had she followed her first instinct and dropped a lighted match into his gas tank, Holyclerk Street would not have been surprised. There was very little of human emotion and appetite it hadn't seen during its long history.

Its name pointed its link with the great cathedral which loomed over the human dwellings like an oceangoing liner over a fleet of bumboats. It stood "within the bell," which meant that anyone living here could set out at a brisk pace on the first note of any summons and guarantee being in his place by the last. Nowadays a house "within the bell" usually cost at least twenty percent more than a comparable house without, but it was not always thus.

The original medieval street containing the seminary from which it derived its name had by the reign of Queen Anne fallen almost completely into disrepair and disrepute. The timbered buildings had developed such alarming lists and been so often patched and propped, they looked like a file of drunken veterans staggering home from a very hard war. No person of wealth or standing would have dreamt of occupying one, and they had declined to low taverns, verminous lodging houses, and brothels.

That such a civic sore should pustulate within pissing distance of the cathedral was regarded by many good burghers as an offense against both God and man. But as a substantial number of the said good burghers actually owned the houses and shared in their profits, man delayed so long in providing a remedy that God grew impatient, and one dark September night, having first ensured the wind was in the right quarter, He tripped a drunken punk and her geriatric jo as they climbed the stairway to her reechy bed and sent their link flying like a meteor through a hole in the rotten boards down into the cellar, where it landed in an open cask of illicit brandy.

The resultant fire left an ashen scar which for many years was regarded as lively evidence of the wrath of the living God, but when a combination of shantytown and Paddy's market looked to be developing there, the city fathers this time preempted the Deity by sweeping the area clean of undesirables and initiating a building program of dwellings fit for dignitaries of the church.

It was these elegant residences that now lay before Dalziel's unimpressed eye. He knew little of medieval history and eighteenth-century fires, but he could look back to a period when the well-to-do had demonstrated their well-to-do-ness by migrating to the Green Belt, leaving the likes of Holyclerk Street to fragment into student flats and fly-by-night offices. But the Church had flexed its financial muscle (this was before its commissioners had demonstrated their inability to serve either God or Mammon by losing several millions), purchased and refurbished, then made a killing when a hugely successful tele-adaptation of the Barchester novels cast a romantic glow over cathedral closes and made living "within the bell" once more the thing.

The sun was laying its golden blade right down the center of the street so there was no shade to be found. Dalziel thought of following the example of the owner of the white convertible parked in front of him which had been left with its top down and its expensive hi-fi equipment on open offer. Surely in these ecclesiastic surroundings such confidence was justified? He wound his window down an air-admitting fraction, walked a step or two away, remembered the church commissioners, and returned to wind the window up as far as it would go.

This second passing of the white convertible registered that it was a Saab 900, the property of a national rental car company. He checked the resident's parking disc. It was marked temporary and the address on it was 41 Holyclerk Street. The Wulfstan house.

Glancing up at the cathedral tower, he nodded appreciatively and moved on.

At No. 41 he leaned on the doorbell a measured second, then stepped back and waited.

In its previous posh manifestation he'd guess this street's doors had been opened by a uniformed maid, but nowadays domestic servants were pretty thin on the ground, if only because the kind of people who needed the work weren't prepared to kowtow to the kind of prats who needed the servants.

He recognized instantly the woman who opened the door, though it was fifteen years since they had met.

And Chloe Wulfstan's face showed that she recognized him.

"Mr. Dalziel," she said.

Age hadn't changed her much. In fact she looked a lot younger than last time he'd seen her, but that wasn't so surprising. Then, the news of her daughter's disappearance not only drained the blood from her face but also melted the flesh from her bones. But he had never seen her cry, and somehow he knew that she hadn't cried in private either. All her energy had gone to holding herself together even at the expense of locking everything inside.

No point in mucking about.

He said, "I'm sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Wulfstan. You'll have heard about this lass who's gone missing from Danby?"

"It was on the radio," she said. "And in this morning's paper. Is there any news?"

The voice was level, conventionally polite, as if he were the vicar being invited to take tea. Fifteen years back he recalled that she'd still retained a trace of the accent of her birth and upbringing on Heck Farm; educated, yes, but enough there to remind you that she was a Mid-Yorkshire lass. Now that had entirely gone. She could have been presenting Woman's Hour.

Over her shoulder he could see a hallway hung with prints of musical cartoons. Down a broad staircase drifted the tinkle of a piano and a woman's voice singing.

"When your mother dear to my door draws near, And my thoughts all center there to see her enter Not on her sweet face first off falls my gaze, But a little past her…"

There was the sound of discord, as if someone had banged a hand down on the piano keys, and a man's voice said, "No, no. Too much too soon. At this point he is still trying to be matter of fact, still trying to be rational about his own irrational behavior."

That voice. He thought he recognized it. Both voices, in fact. The woman's was the lass he'd heard singing on the radio at Pascoe's the previous morning. Same bloody set of songs too. His memory took him back to the first time he'd heard them… He wrenched it back to the other voice, the man's. That rather too perfect English. Surely it was the Turnip? Despite Wield's frequent reminders that Arne Krog was a Norwegian, not a Swede, Dalziel had persisted in his awful joke. Poncy sod had once dared correct his English, and Dalziel was an unforgiving God.

"Mr. Dalziel?" said Chloe Wulfstan.

He realized he hadn't answered her question.

"No. No news," he said.

"I'm sorry for it," she said. "How are… no, I needn't ask."

"How're the parents?" he concluded. "Just like you'd expect. You'd likely know the mother. Came from Dendale. Elsie Coe afore she married."

"Margaret Coe's girl? Oh, God. Margaret was very ill last year. Her recovery seemed a miracle. Now I wonder if it wasn't a curse. Is that a wicked thing to say, Mr. Dalziel?"

He shrugged impassively, denying the inclination rather than the qualification to judge.

She went on, in a curious reflective tone. "I got used to thinking wicked things, you know. When I saw their sympathetic faces, women like Margaret Coe, I used to think, Inside you're really glad it's me, not you, glad it's my Mary who's gone, not your Elsie or…"

She stopped as if someone had alerted her to her hostessly duties and said, briskly, "Is it Walter you want to see, Mr. Dalziel? He is here, but he's in the middle of a meeting about the music festival. They have to find a new location for the opening concert… but of course, you'd know that. I'm being very rude keeping you on the doorstep. Do step inside. I'll let him know you're here."

He advanced into the hallway. It was a relief to be out of the sun's direct rays, but even with all the windows open, its heat walked in with him.

You'd have thought a bugger into solar power would have installed air-conditioning, grumbled Dalziel.

Chloe Wulfstan knocked gently on a door, opened it, and slipped inside.

In his brief glimpse into the room, which looked like an old-fashioned oak-paneled study, Dalziel saw three people, one full-face, one in profile, and one just the back of a head above an armchair. But it was the back of the head that he focused on. He felt something inside him tighten for a second, his stomach, his heart, it wasn't possible to be anatomically precise, but it was the kind of feeling he couldn't recollect having for a long long time.

The door opened again and Mrs. Wulfstan came out. The piano had started again upstairs.

"But a little past her, seeking something after, There where your own dear features would appear Lit with love and laughter…"

The woman in the chair had turned her head and was peering toward the doorway. Their gazes met. Then the door closed.

"If you can give him just a minute," said Chloe Wulfstan apologetically. "He should be able to bring the meeting to a close, then the other committee members won't have to hang around waiting for Walter to return. In here, if you please."

She led him into a drawing room at the back of the house with French windows wide open onto a long garden whose lawn showed the effect of the drought.

"One is tempted, of course," she said, following his gaze. "But I'm afraid that we've all become water vigilantes, and if anyone thought our lawn was looking a little too green… Quite right, too, I suppose. But when I think that we gave up Dendale to provide a sure supply for the future… it makes you think, doesn't it?"

Her tone was now bright, polite, and light.

"It does that," he said. "Reservoir's right down. Do you ever go back to take a look, Mrs. Wulfstan?"

"No," she said. "I never do, Mr. Dalziel."

He studied her for a moment, pulling at his heavy lower lip. It came across as a skeptical assessing stare, but in fact his eyes were seeing another face completely.

"Would you like a glass of something cold?" asked Chloe Wulfstan.

"What? Oh, aye, that 'ud be nice," he said. "By the by, there's a car outside, white Saab, got a visitor's parking disc…"

"That's Arne's. You remember Arne? Arne Krog, the singer. He's staying with us during the festival. And Inger. His accompanist. She's here too."

"Well, she would be. Accompanying him," said Dalziel. He smiled to show he was attempting a joke but she just looked faintly puzzled, then left the room.

Old habits die hard and Dalziel immediately started wandering round, glancing at the papers on an open bureau, trying the odd drawer, but his heart wasn't in it. Upstairs the piano had fallen silent again and there'd been another spate of raised voices. Suddenly the door burst open and a tall slim woman strode into the room. She was wearing black cotton trousers and a black T-shirt which accentuated the whiteness of her skin and the paleness of her long ash-blond hair. She stopped dead at sight of Dalziel and regarded him impassively out of slate-gray eyes that somehow looked ageless by comparison with the rest of her, which looked early twenties.

He put the voice and place together and said, "How do, Miss Wulfstan. I'm Detective Superintendent Dalziel."

If he'd expected his prescience to impress, he was disappointed. If anything she seemed amused, a faint smile touching her long still face like a sun-start on a mountain tarn.

"How do, Superintendent. You being tekken care of or have you just brok in?"

For a second he thought she was taking the piss by imitating his accent. Before he could decide between the put-down oblique (Throat sore from too much singing, luv?) and the put-down direct (Happen you'll make a nice grown-up woman when your mind catches up with your tits), another woman came into the room, blond also, but shorter, more solidly built, and about twenty years older.

She said, "Are we finished? If so, I shall go and sunbathe."

"Not much point asking me, luv. You'd best ask the lord and master. Him that knows it all!"

The Yorkshire accent remained in place. So, not a piss-taking exercise after all. Dalziel felt grateful he hadn't spoken, but only mildly. Embarrassment didn't rate high on his list of pains and punishments.

"Arne will help as long as you want help," replied the other woman.

This one was Inger Sandel, the pianist. She'd put on a bit of weight in fifteen years and he might not have recognized the face. But the voice, with its flat Scandinavian accent, triggered his memory. Not that she'd spoken much all those years back. It had nothing to do with use of a foreign language. In fact, the accent apart, her English was excellent. It was simply that she never said more than the situation warranted. Perhaps she saved her expressive energies up for her playing, but even here she had opted for being an accompanist. In his head, the voice belonging to the face glimpsed through the open door said, "In lieder recitals, the pianist and the singer are equal partners." But to Andy Dalziel an accompanist was still someone who thumped a guiding rhythm while the boys in the bar roared out their love of Annie Laurie or their loathing of Adolf Hitler.

"Help!" exclaimed Elizabeth Wulfstan. "You call nonstop carping help, do you?"

There was little heat in her voice. She made it sound like a real question.

"I think you are lucky to have someone with Arne's experience to advise you," said Inger, very matter-of-fact.

"You reckon? Well, if he's so fucking good, why's he not singing at La fucking Scala?"

"Because Mid-Yorkshire is so much cooler than Milano at this time of year, or at least it used to be," said Arne Krog, timing his arrival with a perfection Dalziel guessed came from listening in the hallway for a good cue. Wanker. But there was no denying the Turnip had aged well. Bit heavier all round, but still the same easy movement, the same regular good-looking features with that faint trace of private amusement round the mouth which had once pissed Dalziel off.

At sight of the fat detective now, however, the face became entirely serious and he advanced with hand outstretched, saying, "Mr. Dalziel, how are you? It's been a long time."

They shook hands.

"Nice to see you, too, Mr. Krog," said Dalziel. "I'm only sorry about the circumstances. You'll likely have heard there's a little lass been missing from Danby since yesterday morning? We're talking to possible witnesses."

"And you have come to see me?" said Krog, nodding as if in confirmation of something half expected. "Yes, of course, I was at Danby yesterday, but I do not think I can be of help. But, please, ask your questions. Perhaps I saw something and did not realize the significance."

Dalziel was unimpressed by this openness. Leaving your car in full view near a crime scene could as easily be evidence of impulse as innocence, and while you might keep quiet initially in the hope you hadn't been spotted, once you got a hint that you had, you got your admission in quick.

He said, "Happen you did. You parked on the edge of Ligg Common, right?"

He'd made an instant decision to question him in front of the other two. That made it more casual, less threatening. Also it provided an audience who knew him a lot better than Dalziel did, and while there was little chance of such a seasoned performer getting stage fright, if he resorted to any bits of stage business, they might notice and react.

Neither of the women offered to leave the room, nor did they disguise their interest in what the men were saying.

"That's right."

"Why?"

Many people would have shown, or pretended, puzzlement, obliging him to be more precise. Krog didn't.

"I felt restless yesterday morning, hemmed in by the heat and the city. So I went for a drive in the country. I felt like a walk, somewhere where the air was fresh and I could be alone, so that if I opened my lungs and sang a few scales, I would frighten nobody except perhaps the sheep. I chose Danby because I know the countryside round there. I have sung often in St. Michael's Hall during previous festivals and I always like to take a stroll by myself before I perform."

That was pretty comprehensive, thought Dalziel.

He glanced at Elizabeth Wulfstan. Something about her that bothered him. Mebbe it was just those old eyes in that young face.

He said, "How about you, luv? Do you like a walk afore you perform?"

She shook her head.

"Not me. On wi' the motley and over the plonk," she said.

"And you, miss?"

This to Sandel.

"No. I take exercise for necessity, not for recreation," she said.

He returned his attention to Krog.

"So where did your walk take you?"

"Across the common, to the right-the east, that would be? I'm not so hot on points of the compass."

"Aye. East. Not up the beck path, then?"

"No. I had thought of going up the beck, but when I got out of the car and realized how warm it was, I decided to head in this other direction. There is farmland over there, with trees-no big woods, just some copses, but at least they provide some shade. The little girl went up the beck path, did she? I wish now I had done so too. Perhaps if I had…"

Chloe Wulfstan had come back into the room, bearing Dalziel's cold drink. As she handed it to him, behind her back Krog made a little gesture of the head, inviting Dalziel to continue his interrogation out of her presence.

Ignoring the gesture, Dalziel sipped the freshly pressed lemonade and said, "That's grand, luv. So you saw nowt, Mr. Krog?"

"Of course I saw sky and earth and trees, and I heard birds and sheep and insects. But I did not see or hear any other person that I recall. I'm sorry."

"That's okay. You'd see the Neb, too, of course."

"What?"

First time he didn't appear fully briefed.

"The Neb. Being on the other side of the valley, you'd not be able to avoid looking over at it, I'd have thought. You didn't think of strolling up there along the Corpse Road, say, and taking a look down into Dendale?"

He was still speaking over Mrs. Wulfstan's shoulder. Her eyes were fixed unblinkingly on his face.

"No, I did not," said Krog angrily. "I have told you what I did, Mr. Dalziel. If you have any more questions to ask, I think that common courtesy, if not common decency, requires that you ask them elsewhere."

"By gum, I reckon tha talks better English than a lot of us natives, Mr. Krog," said Dalziel. He caught Elizabeth Wulfstan's eye as he spoke and fluttered a gentle wink her way. That got him that faint brief smile again.

Chloe Wulfstan said, "If you're done here, Superintendent, Walter's meeting is over. He thought you might prefer to talk to him in private, so if you care to go into the study…"

"Thanks, luv," said Dalziel. He finished his lemonade, handed her the glass, nodded pleasantly at the other two women, and went out of the door.

Arne Krog followed.

"You are seeing Walter about the Danby girl too?" he asked.

"Happen," said Dalziel.

"Do you really think it has something to do with Dendale all those years ago?"

"Any reason it should have, Mr. Krog?"

"I drove to Danby yesterday morning, remember? I saw those words painted on the old railway bridge," said Krog somberly. "At the time I thought little of it. Graffiti these days is like advertising. You see the signs without registering the message, not consciously anyway. But later, when I heard…"

"Mustn't jump to conclusions," said Dalziel with the kindly authority of one who in his time had jumped to more amazing conclusions than "Red Rum."

"You are right, of course. But please, I beg you, think of Chloe, Mrs. Wulfstan. In this house we try to avoid mention of anything which might remind her of that dreadful time."

He let the note of accusation sound loud and clear.

"Very noble," said Dalziel. "But a waste of time."

"I'm sorry?"

"You don't imagine a day's gone by in the last fifteen years without her thinking of her daughter, do you, Mr. Krog?" said Dalziel. "Thing like that, just waking up each morning reminds her of it."

He spoke with great force and Krog looked at him curiously.

"And you, too, Superintendent. I think you have thought of it."

"Oh, aye. But not every day. And not like her. I just lost a suspect, not a daughter."

"I think perhaps if you had, you would not have lost your suspect also," said Krog, making a sharp chopping movement with his right hand.

"For a foreigner, you're not so bloody daft, Mr. Krog," said Andy Dalziel.