On Beulah Height

7

Peter Pascoe, being, as Ellie put it, not exactly a New Man but certainly a one-careful-lady-owner, genuine-low-mileage, full-service-record-available kind of used man, had tried his hardest to like Inspector Maggie Burroughs, but he couldn't quite manage it. That she was efficient was beyond doubt. That she had become a sort of unofficial shop steward for all Mid-Yorkshire's women officers was most commendable, given the number of female high fliers who adopted the Thatcher principle of I'm aboard, pull up the gangplank! That she was sociable, reasonable, and desirable was generally agreed.

And yet… and yet…

"I don't think I'd have taken to her even if she'd been a fellow," Pascoe told his wife in an effort to assure her that this was not a gender issue.

He was a little taken aback when Ellie's response was to hover between screaming with rage and laughter. Happily she had opted for the latter even when he compounded his unwitting condescension by adding, "No, no, I assure you, I really do see her as the future of the force…"

"Exactly. And like most men approaching an interesting age, the last thing you can look at with any equanimity is the future."

Perhaps she was right. But certainly not in every respect.

Because one identifiable factor in, but uncitable reason for, his dislike of Burroughs was that he'd detected she didn't care for Ellie, and that, especially in another woman, showed a deficiency of judgment beyond forgiveness or repair.

Unlike Dalziel, who let dislike show like buttocks through torn trousers, Pascoe hid his behind smiling affability.

"Hi, Maggie," he said. "How's it going?"

"Not a damn thing so far," she said. "I'm beginning to agree with the locals that she's not here."

"Car, you reckon? That's what Shirley Novello is plugging. Not to any great effect, mind you."

He made a wry face to dissociate himself from the Fat Man's putdown of the WOULDC, but Maggie Burroughs was shaking her head.

"No, not a car, but ghosts and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night-or the morning, in this case. They're all convinced this Benny guy's got her, and it's catching. What's the official line on that, sir? I mean, it is all bollocks, isn't it?"

"Benny is to Danby what Freddy was to Elm Street," said Pascoe. "A legend based on a terrible reality."

He saw her hide a smile and guessed he must have sounded a touch portentous.

"Just make sure every inch of ground gets covered," he said abruptly. "Sergeant Clark around?"

"Yes. Using his local knowledge to singularly little effect," said Burroughs scornfully.

"He's a good man," said Pascoe. "You know he was the resident constable over in Dendale when it all happened fifteen years ago?"

"I doubt if there's anyone over the age of two he hasn't told that," said Burroughs. "He's hanging around somewhere."

Advice formed in his mind. Make friends unless you feel strong enough to make enemies. But he kept it to himself. Perhaps she was tomorrow's version of Andy Dalziel. His own philosophy was You don't have to suffer fools gladly, but for a lot of the time it makes sense to suffer quietly. In any case he didn't think Clark was a fool, just the kind of steady stolid old-fashioned sergeant a go-getter like Burroughs would see as a dinosaur.

He found Clark pulling on a cigarette in the stingy shade of a clump of furze.

He dropped the butt end guiltily at Pascoe's approach and ground it under his heel.

"Make sure it's out," said Pascoe. "I'd rather you destroyed your lungs than set fire to the fellside. So, tell me about Jed Hardcastle."

"Oh, aye. Jed. Thing you should know is, Jed's the youngest of the Hardcastles out of Dendale-"

"Yes, yes, and he lives at Stirps End and he's got a sister, June, and they don't get on with their dad, I know all that stuff," said Pascoe impatiently. "What I want from you is why you think he's responsible for the graffiti."

He'd got his information from Mrs. Shimmings, never suspecting how much his interruption had pissed off Shirley Novello.

"Jed Hardcastle?" the head teacher had said. "Yes, I know him well. His eldest sister was one of the Dendale girls, but you'll know that."

"Yes," said Pascoe. "Tell me about Jed."

"Well, he was the youngest of the three Hardcastle children, only two years old when they moved over here, so he did all his schooling in Danby."

"So the move can't have had much effect on him?" said Pascoe.

"Growing up in a family where a child's gone missing must have had an effect, I imagine," she said quietly. "And in the Hardcastle family, there'd not be much doubt about it. None of the other kids were ever allowed to forget what happened to Jenny. Cedric blamed himself for not keeping a closer eye on her, and in reaction he brought up June, her young sister, like she was going to be empress of China. She couldn't do anything without close supervision. Didn't matter so much when she was a child, but when she got to be a teenager

… well, you know what teenage girls are like."

"I'm looking forward to finding out," said Pascoe. "My girl's seven."

"Then be warned. At seven, June was a quiet, biddable child but by the time she got to fifteen, she'd had rebellion bred into her. One day she took off to town. They found her and brought her back. She waited a year, then took off again, this time to London. It took months, but finally they made contact with her. But she's not coming back, she's made that quite clear."

"And Jed?"

"The same story but different. He suffered both ways. From over-protection when he should have been learning how to flex his wings. And from the Yorkshire farmer's assumption that an only son will follow in his father's footsteps when he's dead, but till that time he'll act as unpd, unprivileged farm laborer. It didn't help that Jed's a slightly built lad, and quite sensitive. To be told that your dead sister was a better help about the place when she was half your age can't be very encouraging."

"But he didn't follow his sister to the bright lights?"

"No. He got into a bit of bother, nothing serious, teenage vandalism, that sort of stuff. And life round the farm was one long slanging match with his father, so I gather. Heaven knows how it might have ended, but Mr. Pontifex -it's one of his farms that Cedric leases-saw the way the wind was blowing and took young Jed under his wing, gave him a job helping round the estate office. Like I say, he's bright, picks things up quickly, could do well in the right environment."

"Which isn't mucking out byres?"

"Especially not with your father telling you how useless you are all the time," agreed Mrs. Shimmings.

"And he still lives at home?"

"That was the main aim of the exercise," she said. "One thing everyone agrees on. If Jed leaves home, too, his mother will either kill herself or her husband before next quarter day."

No doubt he could have got some of this from Clark, but when it came to psychological profiling of the young of Danby, he preferred Mrs. Shimming's keener professional eye.

Clark said, "After we talked yesterday, I made out a list of possibles. We'd had a bit of bother with these spray-can jokers a while back and I'd tracked it back to a bunch of half a dozen of 'em-"

"But not Hardcastle," said Pascoe. "I ran his name through the computer. Nothing known."

"Not enough evidence to go to court, so I dealt with it myself," said Clark, making a small chopping gesture with his big right hand. Pascoe regarded him blankly. The mythology that there'd been a time when a clip round the ear from your friendly local bobby produced good upstanding citizens was not one he subscribed to, though he had to admit that healthy terror at the approach of Fat Andy did seem to have a temporarily salutary effect.

"So you had a short list. How come you picked out Hardcastle?"

"Made inquiries," said Clark vaguely. "Three of the lads I spoke to pointed the finger at Jed and his mate, Vernon Kittle."

He didn't make the gesture this time, but Pascoe could imagine the nature of the inquiries. What was more important was the reliability of the replies.

"This Kittle, anything known?"

"Bit of juvenile. Thinks he's a hard case. Impresses Jed but not many others."

"So why didn't you do something about this last night?" asked Pascoe.

"Sunday. Every bugger's off doing something, so it took me till last night to get hold of most on 'em."

"Even so-"

"And Jed weren't home," continued Clark. "Went off to the seaside with Kittle and a couple of birds in Kittle's van. Molly, that's Mrs. Hardcastle, she said there was no telling when he'd get back. Lads… well, you know. So I thought I might as well leave it till morning and pass it on to you."

So he'd been right. A gift to pay him back for protecting the sergeant from the wrath of Dalziel the previous day. They didn't like to be beholden, these Yorkshiremen. And they didn't like to be treated as fools, as Maggie Burroughs might find out to her cost someday.

He said, "Tell me, Nobby. All this stuff about Dendale, what do you reckon? Waste of time or could it lead somewhere?"

The sergeant hesitated, almost visibly weighing up the implications of the new intimacy implied by use of his nickname.

Then he said, "Happen it could. But I hope not."

"Why not? If it turns out there's a connection, we could solve four mysteries for the price of one."

"Mebbe. But what if we're just waking a lot of sleeping dogs for nowt? Folk were just about getting to be able to think of Dendale without just thinking about them poor lasses. That were terrible, but life's full of terrible things, and they shouldn't be let spoil everything that's lovely."

He spoke defiantly, as though anticipating objection, or more probably mockery, for his fancy words.

"And Dendale was lovely, was it?" said Pascoe.

"Oh, yes. It were a grand place, full of grand folk. Oh we had our bad 'uns, and we had our ups and downs, but nowt we couldn't sort ourselves. I'd have been happy to see my time out there, I tell you, promotion or not."

He spoke with a fervor that made Pascoe smile.

"You make it sound like Paradise," he said.

"Well, if it weren't Paradise, it were right next door to it, and as near as I'm like to get," said Clark. "Then it all got spoiled. From the moment Mr. Pontifex sold his land, that's how most people saw it."

"So what does that make Mr. Pontifex? The serpent? Or just poor gullible Eve?"

He'd gone too far with his light ironic touch, he saw instantly. Your Yorkshireman enjoys a bit of broad sarcasm but is rightly suspicious that light irony conceals the worm of patronage.

"Be able to see for yourself," the sergeant said gruffly. "Jed works for him, so The Grange is where we'll need to go if you want to talk to the lad."

"Oh, I do, I do," said Pascoe. "Lead on."

The Grange turned out to be a pleasant surprise, not the grim granite block of Yorkshire baronial he'd been expecting, but a long, low Elizabethan house in mellow York stone.

The estate office occupied what looked like a converted stables. No sign that anyone here rode anything more lively than the big blue Daimler standing before the house.

They parked in the shade of some old yew trees and walked across the yard toward the office. Its door opened as they approached and a man came out. He was silver haired, rising seventy, with a narrow, rather supercilious face. He carried a walking stick with a handle in the shape of a fox cast in silver, a perfect match for his hair; and in fact the stick did seem to be for effect rather than need, as he came to meet them with a bouncy sprightly step.

"Sergeant Clark," he said. "This is a terrible business. Have I the pleasure of addressing Superintendent Dalziel?"

A man who can believe that can believe anything was the reply which sprang to Pascoe's mind, but fortunately didn't make it any farther.

"No, sir. Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe. Mr. Dalziel sends his compliments but is detained in town."

A smile broke out on the man's face, changing its whole caste.

"Not the mode of speech my spies have led me to expect from Mr. Dalziel," he said. "And now I look more closely at you, I see that neither are you the mode of man. My apologies. I really must learn to hold my fire."

He had come very close and taken Pascoe's hand. Now Pascoe understood the cause of that screwed-up, apparently supercilious expression. The man was dreadfully shortsighted. Presumably the stick was for detecting obstacles on unfamiliar terrain.

Clark had taken a few steps toward the office. He paused and looked at Pascoe inquiringly. Pascoe gave him a slight nod and he went inside.

"So tell me, Mr. Pascoe, is there any news?" asked Pontifex.

"I'm afraid not," said Pascoe. "We can only hope."

"And pray," said the man. "I have heard that locally they are speaking of the man Lightfoot that so many blamed for the Dendale disappearances. Surely there can be nothing in this?"

Pascoe had heard the word surely spoken with more conviction.

He said, "At the moment, sir, we are keeping a completely open mind."

The man had released his hand but was still standing uncomfortably close. Pascoe turned as though to look at the house, using this as an excuse to step away.

"Lovely old building," he said appreciatively. "Elizabethan?"

"At its core. With later additions but always in the style."

"You're lucky to have had such tasteful ancestors," said Pascoe.

"Not really. The Pontifex connection only dates back to my father, whose eagerness to modernize the interior probably did more damage to the structure than anything in the previous four hundred years."

"So he bought the estate, did he?"

"Such as it was in the late twenties. Chap who owned it went under in the Depression. Too many bad guesses. My father moved in and set about expanding. Anything that came up, he bought, which was how he came to own a good number of farms over in Dendale. But not enough to form a viable whole. An estate, to be workable, needs to have unity, to be contained within a common boundary. There were too many gaps across in Dendale. If the dam hadn't come up, they would have had to be sold anyway."

Pascoe got a sense of hearing an excuse well rehearsed and often repeated. He guessed that in the eyes of some what was simply sequence-Pontifex selling, the dam being built, and the children disappearing-had become a chain of cause and effect. But it was surprising to find a presumably level-headed businessman affected by such idle chatter.

"Sir, he's gone."

It was Clark who'd emerged from the office.

"Gone? Where?"

"Estate manager says he saw us out the window and next thing he knew, the lad had vanished."

"Was it Jed you wanted to see?" said Pontifex, sounding relieved. "Any particular reason?"

"Just checking with everyone to see if they noticed anyone strange wandering around yesterday, sir," Pascoe prevaricated.

"Of course. One of your chaps called. Wasn't able to help him, I'm afraid. You've seen how unreliable my eyesight is."

Did he want an affidavit? wondered Pascoe.

He shook hands and took his leave. As he walked back to the cars, he asked Clark, "Pontifex got any family?"

"Daughter. He's divorced. Wife got custody."

"So he lives here alone. Does he help a lot of lads or is Jed Hardcastle unique?"

Clark shot him a disapproving glance.

"Nothing of that," he said with distaste. "There's never been a sniff of that."

"I wasn't suggesting that," protested Pascoe. Or was I? From the sound of it, that was still a stonable offense round Danby. Better warn Wieldy!

"I reckon truth is that Mr. Pontifex feels he owes the Hardcastles something," continued Clark. "Lot of folk would agree. I mean, mebbe if he'd not sold his land…"

"But there'd have been a compulsory purchase order, wouldn't there?" objected Pascoe.

"Lot of difference between compulsion and profit," said Clark with Old Testament sternness.

"You think he might be to blame in some degree, then," said Pascoe curiously.

"Well, if it were someone local like Benny Lightfoot took them lasses, it could be that finding himself sold up and moved out triggered something off in him that might else have laid buried till his dying day."

From Old Testament sentence to modern psychobabble! Which was not to deny the possibility that there could be something in it. There'd been no such suggestion in the file, though. Fifteen years ago, offender profiling had been the job of a police artist, and even today in certain parts of Yorkshire it was an art practiced by consenting officers in private.

Pascoe asked, "Was the Lightfoot cottage part of Pontifex's estate?"

"No. Belonged to old Mrs. Lightfoot, Benny's gran. Way it was, her husband had it as a tied cottage from Heck when Arthur Allgood were farming there. When old Lightfoot died, his son, Saul, took it over on the same tie."

"That's Benny's father, the one who drowned?"

"You keep your lugs open," said Clark, admiring again. "That's right. After he died and Marion fell out with the old lady and took her kids off back to town, everyone thought Arthur would soon have her out of Neb Cottage to make way for a new man. But before he could do it, lo and behold, he snuffed it too! A hundred years ago I reckon they'd have had the old girl down for a witch."

"But what difference did that make? The cottage would still be tied."

"Oh, aye. But now it belonged to Chloe Allgood, Arthur's daughter, her that married Mr. Wulfstan. They wanted to hang on to Heck for a holiday place, but the rest of the farm they were happy to sell. Naturally Mr. Pontifex's agent were round there in a flash."

"But Pontifex didn't get Neb Cottage?"

"No, he didn't. Turned out the old lady had got hold of Chloe right after her dad's funeral and talked her into selling her the cottage. No one knows where the money came from-word was that she'd had a bit of insurance on her man and put it all into a bigger insurance on her son. Well, she knew that long as Saul were alive, she'd be okay, but if owt happened to him, she'd be in trouble."

"Bright lady," said Pascoe.

"Oh, aye. You had to get up early in the morning to reach market before Mr. Pontifex," said Clark, laughing. "I gather he weren't best pleased when he found he weren't getting Neb Cottage along with the rest of the Heck holdings."

"So what happened when Pontifex decided to sell up to the Water Board?"

"That were the finish, really. Most as owned their own places caved in and sold. Mr. Wulfstan at Heck made a fuss but it didn't get him anywhere. Only old Mrs. Lightfoot held out to the end, and they'd have had to send the bailiffs in to drag her out if she hadn't been taken ill with a stroke. It was all too much for her, they reckoned, the move and all that business about Benny. So they carried her off in an ambulance and 'dozed the cottage quick as maybe. It was a right shame, her ending her time in the dale like that. Something else on Mr. Pontifex's conscience, they reckoned."

"People blamed him, did they?"

"Aye. For everything. The move. And the vanishings. They were linked in people's minds, you see. And in Mr. Pontifex's too. That's why he gave Ced Hardcastle Stirps End, which by all accounts had been as good as promised to Jack Allgood, who were twice the farmer Cedric ever was. And it didn't stop there. Like I say, when he saw what was happening between Jed and his father, he stepped in and gave the boy a job in his office."

"After all those years?" said Pascoe. "Now, that's a tender conscience."

"Aye, in some folks it's like game. Longer it hangs, tenderer it gets."

Pascoe smiled and said, "Ever thought of writing for The Archers, Sergeant? They pay good money for lines like that."

They had reached their cars and were standing in the shade of a tall yew tree. It was pleasantly cool here out of the skull-drilling rays of the relentless sun.

"So whither away, Sergeant?"

"Sir?" Puzzled.

"It's your patch. I'm sure round here the word is that fear wists not to evade as Clark wists to pursue."

"Sir?" The monosyllable now bewildered.

"Where will we find the lad?" Pascoe spelled it out.

"He'll have gone home, won't he? Where else?" said Clark confidently. "You all right, sir?"

Pascoe had suddenly reached out to rest his hand against the rough bark of the yew tree.

"Fine," he said. "Someone must have walked across my grave. That's what comes of standing under this churchyard tree."

He moved briskly toward his car. He looked pale.

Clark said anxiously, "You sure, sir?"

"Yes, I'm fine," said Pascoe with some irritation. "And there's work to do. Just lead the way to Stirps End with all the majestic instancy you can muster, Sergeant!"

Ellie Pascoe was breaking the speed limit even before she got out of her own short driveway. She knew it was stupid, and, by great effort of will, got to braking distance of thirty miles per hour by the end of the street. It was only four miles to the school, and the difference between driving like normal and driving like a lunatic was significant only in the soul.

Miss Martindale greeted her with a face as placidly reassuring as her voice on the phone had been.

"Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Pascoe," she said. "Miss Turner thought she seemed a little bit distant, that was how she put it. Reluctant to get on with anything, and downright snappy if pressed. We all have days like that, days when we'd rather spend time inside ourselves than face outside demands. Happens to me all the time. Then Miss Turner noticed Rosie was a bit hot and flushed. Probably only the start of a summer cold. Getting hot and then cooling off all the time makes children susceptible. No real problem, but better nipped in the bud with half an aspirin and the rest of the day in bed."

The soothing flow of words relaxed Ellie, even though she recognized that this was what they were meant to do. Miss Martindale was a bright young woman. No; more than that; Ellie knew a lot of bright young women, but Martindale was one of the rare breed she felt her own genius rebuked by. Not that they were in competition, but on the rare occasions when they did lock horns, it was always Ellie who found herself giving ground.

She tried to explain this to Peter, who'd said, "Whatever she's taking, I wonder if she'll give me the name of her supplier?"

Rosie was sitting on the edge of the bed in the small medical room, watched over by the school's massively maternal secretary. When she saw her mother, she said accusingly, "I told you you shouldn't have made me go to school this morning."

Thanks a bunch, kid, thought Ellie.

She gave her a hug, then examined her closely. Her face certainly looked a bit flushed.

"Not feeling so good, darling?" she said, trying to keep it matter of fact. "Bed's the best place for you. Let's get you home."

She thanked Miss Martindale, who smiled reassuringly, but from the secretary, who clearly had her down as the kind of mother who sent her ailing child to school rather than spoil her own social life, all she got was an accusing glare. Ellie responded with a sweet smile. Okay, the head might have the hex on her, but she wasn't going to kowtow to a sodding typist.

On the way home she chatted brightly, but Rosie hardly responded. In the house, Ellie said, "Straight to bed, I think. Then I'll bring you a nice cool drink, shall I?"

Rosie nodded and let her mother unbutton her dress, something which in recent months had brought a fierce I can do that myself!

Ellie made her comfortable in bed, then went down to the kitchen and poured a glass of homemade lemonade. Then she poured another. Sickbed circumstances demanded a bit of indulgence.

"Here we are, darling," she said. "I brought one for Nina, too, in case she got thirsty."

"Don't you ever listen?" demanded Rosie. "I've told you a hundred times. Nina's back in the nix's cave. I saw her get taken."

The flash of spirit was momentarily reassuring, but it seemed to wear the little girl out. She took only a single sip of the drink, then sank back into her pillow.

"I'll leave it for her anyway," said Ellie cheerfully. "She might like it after her daddy rescues her."

"Don't be silly," muttered Rosie. "That was last time."

"Last time?" said Ellie, smoothing the single sheet over the slight body. "But there's only been one time, hasn't there, darling?"

For a moment, Rosie regarded her with a role-reversing expression in which affection was mixed with exasperation. Then she closed her eyes.

Ellie went downstairs. Worth bothering the doctor with? she wondered. While ready to go to the barricades for her rights under the NHS, she'd always been resolved not to turn into one of those mothers who demanded antibiotics for every bilious attack.

She made herself a cup of tea and went into the living room. The CD player was switched on with the pause light showing. She'd been listening to her new Mahler disc when Martindale rang.

The larger package remained unopened.

Few things are better suited to putting literary ambition in perspective than bringing a sick child home, so this seemed a good time to take her bumps.

She ripped open the package and took out her script. There was a letter attached.

"… shows promise, but in the present climate… hard times for fiction… much regret… blah blah…"

The signature was an indecipherable scrawl. Couldn't blame them, she thought. Assassination must be a real danger in that job. Even she, perspective and all, felt the sharp pang of rejection. Perhaps I'm simply barking up the wrong tree? Who the hell wants to read about the angst-ridden life of a late-twentieth-century woman when it's just like their own? Perhaps I should have a stab at something completely different… a historical, maybe? She'd always felt a bit guilty about her fondness for historical fiction, regarding it as pure escapism from life's earnest realities. But sod it, letters like this were an aspect of earnest reality she'd be only too glad to escape from!

Moodily she picked up the CD zapper and pressed the restart button.

"At last I think I see the explanation Of those dark flames in many glances burning."

It was the second of the Kindertotenlieder. She relaxed and let the rich young voice wash over her.

"I could not guess, lost in the obfuscation Of blinding fate…"

Obfuscation! Not a pretty word. But she sympathized with the translator. Unlike a lot of the multiinflected continental languages, English wasn't rich in feminine rhymes, and they often ran the risk of sounding faintly comic. Not here, though, not with the tragic power of this music setting the agenda.

"… even then your gaze was homeward turning, Back to the source of all illumination."

What made a composer choose to set one poem rather than another to music? In the brief introduction to the songs, she'd read that Alma Mahler had strongly resisted her husband's obsession with these poems of loss, superstitiously fearing he might be tempting fate to attack his own family. Okay, so it was irrational, but Ellie could sympathize, recalling her own impulse to break all traffic laws to get to Edengrove, despite Miss Martindale's assurance that there was nothing to worry about.

And there wasn't, was there? Not if Miss Martindale said there wasn't. Despite all her efforts to avoid the stereotype, she'd ended up as another silly, overanxious mother, like Alma Mahler… Except that Alma had been right, hadn't she? How she must have looked back on her fears and wished she'd protested even more vehemently when, a couple of years later, their eldest daughter died of scarlet fever.

"These eyes that open brightly every morning In nights to come as stars will shine upon you…"

And that's meant to be a consolation? She zapped off the melancholy orchestral coda, reached for the telephone, and started dialing Jill Purlingstone's number.

The Highcross Inn had once occupied a premier site where coachmen, drovers, horse riders, and foot travelers, about to start the long haul over the moor to Danby, took on sustenance, while those who'd completed the passage in the other direction treated themselves to congratulatory refreshment.

The internal combustion engine had changed all that. What had been effortful was now easy, and most travelers using the moor road were simply taking a shortcut to its junction with the busy north-south arterial.

Externally, apart from the signs advertising GOOD GRUB, DEEP PAN PIZZA, and a mention in some obscure guide written by some equally obscure journalist posing as a North Country expert despite the fact that he'd moved from Yorkshire to London at the age of eighteen and only returned twice for family funerals, the inn had changed little in two and half centuries. In fact some of the flaking paint looked as if it might be original, but that could be down to the long, hot summer.

Inside, though, things were different. Inside, it had presumably once looked like what an old country pub looks like. Then some keg-head brewer had decided it needed to look like what some flouncy designer thought an old country pub ought to look like. Out had gone the real and particular, in had come the ersatz and anonymous, and now a steady drinker might require to step outside from time to time to remind himself where he was steadily drinking.

Novello quite liked it. She was young, and a townie, and this to her was what pubs usually looked like. She sat at the bar and ordered herself a lager and black-currant. At her initiation into the Mid-Yorkshire CID'S home pub, the Black Bull, she'd been foolish enough to request this mixture when invited to name her poison. The kind of great silence had fallen which usually only follows the opening of the seventh seal. Dalziel had fixed her with a look which confirmed the rumor that as a uniformed PC his number had been 666. Then some friendly angel had loosened her wits and her tongue, and she'd said, "But if it's not really poison you're offering, I'll have a pint of best."

Pascoe had got it for her, murmuring as he handed it over, "Your principles may be in tatters, but at least your soul is safe."

The pub was almost empty. The woman behind the bar had time to chat. She was middle aged, size sixteen, most of it muscle presumably developed from a life of pulling pumps and carting crates. The conviviality of her broad handsome face faded into inevitable wariness when Novello produced her warrant card. But when she mentioned the nature of her inquiries, indignation replaced all, and the woman said, "I'd castrate the bastards without anesthetic. Then hang them by what's left! How can I help, luv?"

Novello went at it obliquely. All she had was a blue station wagon, and she'd prefer to get anything there was to be got without too much prompting. Eagerness to cooperate could sometimes be as frustrating as reluctance to speak.

First she got personal details. This was Bella Postlethwaite, joint tenant with her husband, Jack. They'd been here five years and relied mainly on passing trade to scrape a living.

"There's not much local trade-I mean, look around outside-not exactly crowded with houses, is it? And you couldn't exercise an ant on the profit margins the brewery allows us. Bastards. Them's some more I'd like to see hanging high."

She was a very pendentious lady. Novello moved on to Sunday morning. She'd been up early. Jack had a bit of a lie-in. No, she'd noticed nowt out of the ordinary. What about the ordinary, then? Well, the ordinary was bugger all, not to put too fine a point on it. Couple of tractors. Other traffic? A bit on the main road. Not much being Sunday, but there was always some. And on the moor road? Yes, there had been a car. She'd been out front watering her tubs while they were still in the shade, and this car had been turning out of the moor road onto the main road. Just came up and turned, there was a stop sign, but you could see a long way down the main road and there was so little traffic on Sunday, you didn't need to halt. Kind of car? Don't be daft, luv! All the bloody same to me. Color, then. Blue, she thought. Definitely blue.

At this point her husband appeared. He was as thin as his wife was broad, angular, almost lupine. Jack Spratt and his wife. Introduced and put in the picture, he immediately poured scorn on any hope of getting useful information from Bella on the subject of motor vehicles.

"She can tell our Cavalier from the brewery wagon and that's about it," he averred.

His wife, though willing enough to admit her deficiencies voluntarily, was not disposed to have them trumpeted by one who didn't have enough spare flesh on him to merit the description "better half."

"At least I were up and about, not pigging it in my bed like some I could name," she said indignantly. "Mebbe if you hadn't spent most of Saturday night supping our profits, you'd have been lively enough to be able to help this lass instead of slagging me off."

Novello, though young in years, was old enough in experience to know that marital arguments have their long-established scripts which, once started, are very hard to stop.

She said loudly and firmly, "So it wasn't a Cavalier, then. Was it bigger?"

"Yes, bigger," said Bella, glaring defiantly at her husband.

"A lot bigger? Like a van, maybe?"

"No. Too many windows."

"A sort of jeep, then. You know, a Land-Rover like the farmers use? Fairly high?"

"No! It were more like one of them long things, like a funeral-car sort of thing. Like what Geordie Turnbull drives."

This last was aimed at her husband. Signaling a truce by appealing to his expertise, perhaps? Didn't sound like that somehow. More like a sly shot from a hidden gun.

"Oh, aye, you'd remember that all right," Postlethwaite spat out viciously.

"What kind of vehicle does this Mr. Turnbull drive?" asked Novello quickly, before his six-gun could clear leather.

"A Volvo station wagon," said the man. "Aye, and it's blue."

"Blue? Light blue? Dark blue?" demanded Novello.

"Light blue."

"And this vehicle you saw, Mrs. Postlethwaite, was that light or dark?"

"Lightish," admitted the woman meeting her husband's glare with a matching anger. "But it weren't Geordie's."

"How'd you know?" jeered Postlethwaite. "All you'll have studied close is his roof from the inside."

To hell with guns, this was hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets! Bella drew in a deep breath and looked ready to go for the jugular. Then she caught Novello's pleading gaze and decided to postpone the pleasure till she had him alone.

With a promissory glare at her husband, she said, "If I had a mind like thine, I'd grow mushrooms in it. And I know for a fact this couldn't have been Geordie's car, 'cos there were a kiddie in the back."

She didn't realize what she was saying until she'd said it, and in that moment the script changed from long-running soap to tragic drama.

Ten minutes later Novello was on her mobile, talking to Wield in St. Michael's Hall.

He listened with an intensity she could feel over the air and when she'd finished he asked, "How do you rate this Bella?"

"No good on car makes. Fair on colors. I tried her with some cars passing on the main road. Not what you'd call an artist's eye but she could tell blue from black, gray, and green."

"And the kiddie?"

"Just a glimpse. Little blond girl looking out of the back window."

"Frightened? Distressed? Waving? Or what?"

"Just looking. She didn't get a look at anyone else in the car, can't say if there was anyone but the driver. But even though it was just a glimpse, she's certain about the girl."

"Didn't mention her straight off, but."

"No reason to. I didn't want to risk leading her."

Novello described her interrogation stratagem.

"Nice," said Wield. "And this guy, Turnbull. Anything there?"

"She's adamant it wasn't his car."

"But it was her mentioned him first."

"Only to wind up her husband. Way I read it is, this Turnbull drops in fairly regularly and has a nice line in chat she enjoys. Maybe they've got something going, or maybe she just gets fed up of jealous Jack's innuendo. Either way, I'd guess he's a red herring. Bella may not know makes, but she insists this car was a lot newer and cleaner looking than Turnbull's."

"They've got these things called car washes," said Wield. "Couldn't she just be trying to get him off the hook she thinks she's put him on?"

He's doing the devil's disciple bit, thought Novello. Making me double-check my conclusions.

She said carefully, "I've heard her going on about what she'd do to child molesters. No way can I see her protecting anyone suspected of that."

"But if she's certain in her own mind this Turnbull couldn't be our man… There's men banged up for multiple murder who've got mothers and lovers protesting their innocence."

"You think I should give him a look," said Novello, uncertain whether to feel resentful or not.

"You know where he lives?"

"Oh, yes. Jealous Jack is very much of your mind, Sarge, and he insisted on giving me clear directions. Turnbull has a contracting business in Bixford on the coast road, about ten miles. He lives next to the yard, but if he's not there, Jack says it'll be easy to find him. Just look for bulldozers with GEORDIE TURNBULL painted on them in big red letters, crawling along, holdin' up bloody traffic…"

Novello had lapsed into what she thought was a rather good impression of the publican's bitter snarl, but Wield clearly didn't rate the act.

"What was that you said?" he interrupted. "Geordie Turnbull?"

"That's right."

"Hold on."

Silence. Had the Fat Man turned up? The silence stretched. She thought of suggesting they get a tape to play when they put you on hold. "The Gendarmes' Duet"? Too obvious. Judy Garland singing "The Man Who Got Away"? Her grandfather had been very partial to Garland. She was indifferent, but knew all the songs off by heart from hearing them blasted out of his old record player. Now approaching eighty, his taste was turning back to the Italian music of his childhood…

"You there?"

"Yes, Sarge."

"Don't move, I'm coming to join you."

His voice gave away as little as his face, but Novello detected an underlying excitement which filled her head with speculation. She reckoned that if Wield were juggling eggs as his lottery number came up, he'd never crack a shell. So for him to be excited…

She felt she'd done all that was to be done at present with the Postlethwaites, so she took her drink to a bench on the shady side of the pub and sat there trying to separate in her mind her real concern for the missing child and her imagined advancement if she should be the one who cracked it.

When Wield arrived he said to her, "I'm going over it all again with them."

"Sure," she said. "That's okay, Sarge."

"I'm not telling you so's not to hurt your feelings," he said. "I'm telling you so I can be sure you'll be listening close instead of feeling hard done to."

He went through it all again. When he was finished he said, "Thank you both very much. You've been very helpful."

They left Wield's car and drove in hers. She drove north on the main road without being told, watching for the sign pointing east to Bixford.

He said, "So what do you think? Hear anything you missed first time?"

"She was a bit more positive about shape and things. And also how bright and shiny it looked. Didn't sound much like an old Volvo."

"Like I said before, mebbe she was trying to make it sound as little like an old Volvo as possible."

"Could be, Sarge. But if it had been a car she knew well, wouldn't she have recognized it straight off? Also her husband…"

She paused to marshal her thoughts. Wield didn't prompt, but waited patiently for her to resume.

"I got the impression that he'd really like this Turnbull to be in bother with the police, but even though he resents the man, he can't bring himself to believe he'd be in this kind of bother. Maybe he just can't see how anyone who'd fancy someone like Bella could also fancy little children."

"That the way you feel?"

"Instinctively, yeah. But I've not had enough experience to know if my instinct's got anything to do with reality. Anyway, I'm really curious to meet this Turnbull."

"Why's that?" asked Wield.

"Because you are, Sarge. Do I get to hear why?"

"Simple," said Wield. "Fifteen year back when we were investigating the Dendale disappearances, one of the men we questioned was called Geordie Turnbull. He was a bulldozer driver on the dam site."

Novello whistled. It was one of many men sounds she had learned to produce as part of her work camouflage. Giggles, screams, anything which could be designated "girlish," were out. She had a good ear and had rapidly mastered, which is to say, mistressed, a whole range of intonation, accent, and rhythm. She'd even managed, like that old politician what's-her-name?, to drop her voice half an octave. Indeed she'd overcooked it and reached a sexy huskiness which was counterproductive, so had headed back up a couple of tones.

"But you didn't keep him in the frame?" she said.

"He stayed in the bottom left-hand corner, so to speak. Nothing to prove he couldn't have been around at the possible times, but even less to suggest he was. Only reason he got picked up in the first place was locals pointing the finger."

"He wasn't liked, then?"

"He were one of the best liked men I ever met," said Wield. "Everyone, men, women, kids, even jealous husbands, thought he were grand. But when trouble hit, it were loyalty, not liking, that mattered. The locals wanted to believe it were an outsider, not one of their own."

"God," she said with all the superiority of a townie in her early twenties for a rustic of any age. "Closed places, closed minds, eh?"

"Sorry?"

"Communities like Dendale," she explained. "They must get to be so inbred and inward looking, it's no wonder dreadful things happen."

"Sort of deserve it, you mean?"

There was nothing in his voice to suggest anything but polite interest, but she recalled that Wield was now living out in the sticks up some valley or other with his boyfriend.

"No, of course not," she said, trying to recover. "It's just that, like you say, any isolated community will tend to close ranks, blame the outsider. It's human nature."

"Yes, it is. It's also human nature to want your life to be as lovely as the place you're spending it in."

This came as close to a personal statement as she'd ever heard from Wield. Amazing that it was the kind of quote they'd love in Hello! magazine.

"You sound like you were fond of Dendale, Sarge," she pressed.

"Fond? Aye. It were a place a man could have got fond of," he said. "Even doing what we were doing. You can't always be looking at the sun and seeing eclipses, can you?"

Better and better. I should have a tape recorder! she thought.

"You mean, like, we're always looking at the dark side of things."

"Something like that. I recall a day…"

She waited. After a while she realized it wasn't a tape recorder she needed but a mind-reader.

… a day when lost for anything else to do, he'd walked off up the fell toward Beulah Height, justifying his absenteeism by following a team of dog handlers, whose animals were sweeping ever wider in their search for any trace of the missing girls.

It was early evening-the sun still two or three hours from completing its long summer circuit, but already giving that special gloaming light which invests everything it touches with magic-and as he climbed higher from the dale floor he felt the burden of the case slip slowly from his shoulders.

Standing on the higher of the two peaks of Beulah with his back to Dendale, he looked out over a tumble of hills and moorland. He could see far but not clearly. The heat smudged the sharp lines of the horizon into a drowsy golden mist, and it was possible for a man to think he could walk off into that golden haze and by some ancient process of absorption become part of it. Even when, attracted by the baaing of sheep and barking of dogs, he turned and looked down, he was still able for a while to keep that feeling. Between the two tops a craggy rock face about ten feet deep fell to a relatively level area of turf which had been turned into a sheepfold by the erection of a semicircular drystone wall. Wield, who had read the tourist books about Dendale as assiduously as his master in their desperate search for anything which might throw light on what had happened here, knew that the stones forming the wall had probably been used in the prehistoric hill-fort which had once stood on the Height. The fold was full of sheep at the moment, and they and the collies belonging to the man who'd brought them there were getting agitated at the approach of the search dogs.

For a while, though, it was possible to let the image of the shepherd with his long carved crook, and the sound of the sheep and the dogs, blend into his sense of something that had been before, and would be long after, this present trouble.

Then one of the search dogs and one of the collies launched themselves in a brief but noisy skirmish, the shepherd and the handler shouted and dragged them apart, and Wield, too, felt himself dragged back to here and now.

By the time he descended to the fold, the searchers had moved on. In an effort to reestablish his previous mood, he'd greeted the shepherd cheerfully.

"Lovely day again, Mr. Allgood," he said. "Right kind of weather to be up here doing this job, I should think."

He knew everyone in the dale by sight and name now. This was Jack Allgood from Low Beulah, a whipcord-thin man with skin tanned dark brown by wind and weather, and a black unblinking gaze which gave promise of assessing the exact value of sheep or of a man in a very few seconds.

"That's what you think, is it?" retorted Allgood. "I'm supposed to be grateful, am I? Mebbe you should stick to your own job, Sergeant, though you don't seem to be so hot at that either."

The man had a reputation for being a prickly customer, but this seemed unprovoked.

"Sorry if I've said owt to offend you," said Wield mildly.

"Aye, well, not your fault, I suppose. Reason I'm getting my sheep ready for bringing down this time of year is they've all got to go. Aye, that's right. What did you think? That we'd be dragged out of our houses but all the stock would just stay here to take care of itself?"

"No. I'm sorry. It must be hard. Leaving somewhere like this. Your home. All of it."

For a moment the two men stood looking down at the valley bottom-the village with its church and inn, the scattered farms, the mere blue with reflected sky. And then their eyes dropped down to the dam site with its moving machines, its cluster of prefabs, and the wall itself, almost complete now.

"Aye," said Allgood. "Hard."

He turned back to his sheep and Wield set off down the fellside, the sun still as warm, the day still as bright, the view still as fair, but with every step he felt the burden reassembling on his shoulders…

"Sarge?" prompted Novello. "You were saying?"

"Next right's the turn to Bixford," said Wield. "Slow down, else you'll miss it."

"Mr. Dalziel," said Walter Wulfstan. "It's been a long time."

He didn't make it sound too long, thought Dalziel.

They shook hands and took stock of each other. Wulfstan saw a man little changed from the crop-headed overweight creature he had once publicly castigated as gross, disgusting, and incompetent. Dalziel found recognition harder. Fifteen years ago he had first known this man as a lean, energetic go-getter with an expensive tan, bright impatient eyes, and a shock of black hair. News of his daughter's disappearance had hit him like a hurricane blast hitting a pine. He had bent, then seemingly recovered, pain, rage, and a desperate hope energizing him into a hyperbolical parody of his normal self. But it had been the false brightness of a Christmas tree and all these years on, nothing remained but dried-up needles and dying wood. The hair was gone, the skin was gray and stretched so tight across the skull that his nose and ears seemed disproportionately large, and his eyes glinted from deep caverns. Perhaps in an effort at concealment or compensation, he had grown a fringe of mustacheless beard. It didn't help.

"So, let's get to it," said Wulfstan, remaining standing himself and not inviting Dalziel to sit. "I'm very busy, and this necessity of finding a new venue for the opening concert has already taken up time I could ill spare."

"Sorry about that, sir, but in the circumstances…"

He let his voice tail off.

Wulfstan said, "I'm sorry, is that a sentence?"

If the bugger wants to play hard, let's play hard, thought Dalziel.

"I mean, in the circumstances, which are that a child's gone missing and we need a base to organize the hunt for her, I'd have thought mebbe, seeing what you went through, you'd have been a bit sympathetic. Sir," said Dalziel.

Wulfstan said softly, "Naturally when I hear that parents have lost a daughter and are relying on you and your colleagues to recover her, I am deeply sympathetic, Superintendent."

Nice one, thought Dalziel appreciatively. His instinct was to hit back but his experience was that, if you lay down submissively, your antagonist often decided it was all over, got careless, and exposed his soft underbelly. So he sighed, scratched his breastbone raucously, and sat down in an armchair.

"If she's still alive we want to find her quick," he said. "We need all the help we can get."

Wulfstan stood quite still for a moment, then pulled up an elegant but uncomfortable-looking wheelback chair and sat directly in front of the Fat Man.

"Ask what you need to ask," he said.

"Where were you yesterday morning between, say, seven o'clock and ten o'clock?"

"You know already. I presume someone noticed my car."

"I know where the vehicle was, sir, but that's not the same as knowing you were in charge of it."

Wulfstan nodded acknowledgment of the point and said, "I parked my Discovery by the Corpse Road not far from St. Michael's at about eight-thirty. I then went for a walk and returned to the car shortly after ten."

"By yourself?"

"That's right."

"And where'd you walk?"

"Up the Corpse Road to the col and back the same way."

"That's thirty, thirty-five minutes up and twenty back. What about the rest of the time, sir?"

Wulfstan said flatly, "I stood on the col and looked down into Dendale."

The question At anything in particular? rose in Dalziel's throat, but he kept it there. The man was trying to cooperate.

"Up, down, or standing still, you see anyone else, sir?"

Wulfstan bowed his head forward and rested the index finger of each hand against his brow. It was a conventional enough "thinking" pose, but in this man it gave an impression of absolute focus.

"There were a couple of cars in Dendale," he said finally. "Parked by the dam. Some people were walking from one of them. Tourists, I expect. The drought has caused a lot of interest as the ruins of the village start showing through. On the track itself, up and down, I saw no one. I'm sorry."

He made as if to rise. End of interview. He thinks, thought Dalziel, making himself more comfortable in the armchair.

"You often walk up the Corpse Road, sir?" he asked.

"Often? What is often?"

"Witness who spotted your car says she'd noticed it several times in the past couple of weeks."

"Not surprising. My firm has a research unit and display center at the Danby Science Park, and when I'm out there I frequently take the opportunity to stretch my legs."

"Nowt better than a bit of exercise," said Dalziel patting his gut with all the complacency of Arnold Schwarzenegger flexing his biceps. "Sunday yesterday, but."

"I know. I trained as an engineer, Superintendent, and one of the first things they taught us was the days of the week," said Wulfstan acerbically. "Has Sabbath breaking been reinstated as an actionable offense in Yorkshire?"

"No, sir. Just wondered about you going to work on a Sunday, and so early. You did say that's why you went to Danby, because of your business, not just to take a walk?"

"Yes, I did. And that's what I've been doing on and off for many years, Superintendent, as you can check, though why you should want to, I cannot imagine. Running the business takes up so much of my time, it is easy to lose sight of what makes the business run. I am an engineer first, a businessman second. In my work as in yours, it is easy to let yourself be lifted out of your proper sphere of competence."

Like Traffic, you mean, thought Dalziel.

He rose, smiling.

"Well, thanks for your help, sir. One thing, but. You obviously knew about the missing lass, through the papers and having to change your concert venue and all. And you knew you'd been out there Sunday morning. Did you never think it might be an idea to give us a bell, just in case your vehicle had been noticed and we were spending time trying to eliminate it?"

Wulfstan stood up and said, "You are right, Mr. Dalziel. I should have done. But knowing the questions you would ask, and knowing that nothing I said could assist you in any way, I felt that contacting you would simply be a waste of both our times. As it has proved, I fear."

"Wouldn't say that, sir. Wouldn't say that at all," said Dalziel offering his hand.

He gave him a Masonic handshake just for a laugh. He liked people to think the worst of him, because then the best often came as an unpleasant surprise.

"Tell Mrs. Wulfstan thanks for the drink. Hope the concert goes okay," he said at the front door. "Have you found somewhere else, by the by? Thought mebbe you'd use the church."

This echo of what had happened in Dendale produced no perceivable reaction.

"Unfortunately St. Michael's has an intolerable acoustic," said Wulfstan. "But religion may still come to our aid. There's an old chapel which is a possibility."

"Chapel?" said Dalziel doubtfully. "From what I know of chapel folk, I should have thought this concert of thine would have been a bit too frivolous."

"Mahler frivolous? Hardly. But profane, perhaps. However, happily, for us that is, the chapel is no longer used for worship. The sect that built it, the Beulah Baptists, I believe they were called, died out in this area before the war."

"Beulah?" said Dalziel. "Like in Pilgrim's Progress?"

"You've read it?" said Wulfstan, keeping his surprise just this side of insulting. "Then you will recall that from the Land of Beulah the pilgrims were summoned to go over the river into Paradise, for some an easy, for others a perilous passage."

"But they all got there just the same," said Dalziel. "When they tasted of the water over which they were to go, they thought it tasted a little bitterish to the palate, but it proved sweeter when it was down. Bit like Guinness."

"Indeed. Well, it seems these Mid-Yorkshire Beulah Baptists, taking their example from Bunyan's text, went in for a form of total immersion which involved converts passing from one side of a river to the other. The river they used locally was the Strake, which, as you may know, is moderately deep and extremely fast flowing. The candidates for baptism were therefore aided by a pair of elders known, from the book, as Shining Ones. Unfortunately at one ceremony in the late thirties, the river was in such spate that not even the strength of the Shining Ones was able to withstand it, and they and their baptismal candidate, a ten-year-old boy, were swept away and drowned. Local revulsion was so great that the sect withered away after that. I'm surprised you have not heard of the case. The police were accounted much to blame for their incompetence in allowing such a dangerous activity to persist. But perhaps with only one child dying, it was not reckoned a failure to mark down in the annals."

Dalziel, who had been wondering if the revelation of shared acquaintance with The Pilgrim's Progress had modified Wulfstan's attitude to him, realized that he'd got it wrong. But a soft answer turned away wrath.

"And you reckon this chapel might do?" he said.

"Local memory avers that as a place to sing in it had no equal. Whether it can be rendered usable in so short a space remains to be seen. For some years now it's been rented by a local joiner for use as a workshop. You may recall him. Joe Telford from Dendale."

Oh, shit. He didn't let up, did he? Dalziel, for whom the study of revenge and immortal hate was among his favorite hobbies, almost admired the man.

"Telford," he echoed, playing along. "Him whose daughter…"

"That's right, Mr. Dalziel. Him whose daughter. Telford moved his business to Danby, but by all accounts his heart was never in it. It was his brother, George-you remember him?-who held things together. Joe became increasingly reclusive. His marriage suffered. Eventually his wife could take no more. She went off. With George."

He spoke flatly, with a lack of emphasis that was more emphatic than a direct accusation that this tragedy, too, was down to police incompetence.

"That must have been a shaker," said Dalziel.

"They say Joe hardly noticed."

"And the business?"

"Joe does nothing but a bit of odd-jobbing now, I believe. But he still has a lease on the Beulah Chapel. If he's agreeable and we can get his junk moved, the place cleaned up and certificated by the fire officer in forty-eight hours, then we can go ahead. As a voluntary and amateur body, we have to rely on ourselves to do most of the work, so if I've seemed a little impatient…"

The ghost of an apology. Funny how folk imagined they had the power to give, and he the thin skin to take, offense.

"Nay, I know all about pressure," said Dalziel.

They shook hands. Level on points. But Dalziel knew in his heart that no matter what happened in his encounters with this man, he could never count himself the winner. Mary Wulfstan had been the last of the Dendale girls to go. By then he'd been on the spot for long enough to have taken care of that. You've got a strong suspect and you're running out of time, break the bugger's leg rather than let him loose. He remembered with affection the old boss who'd given him that advice. Perhaps if he'd contrived an "accident" as Benny Lightfoot was brought up from the cells to be released, Mary Wulfstan would still be alive.

…

He put the thought out of his mind and let it be replaced by another as he was escorted to the front door.

Driving into and through Danby yesterday morning, Wulfstan must have seen the BENNY'S BACK! signs. Why'd he not mentioned them?

It was worth asking, perhaps. He turned. The door was almost closed, but he did nothing to prevent it closing. His gaze had brushed across his car parked a little way down the street, and all desire to resume his interrogation fled.

There was a figure standing by it looking toward him.

He blinked against the dazzle of the sun, and felt a surge of heat up his body which had nothing to do with the weather.

It was the woman he'd glimpsed in Wulfstan's committee meeting. The woman to whom he owed his tenuous acquaintance with Mahler. And much, much more.

She watched his approach with a faint smile on her full lips.

"How do, Andy?" she said. "What fettle?"

Her imitation of his speech mode was unmistakable, but, unlike Elizabeth Wulfstan's wrongly suspected mockery, unresentable. Piss taking between lovers, even ex-lovers, was an expression of intimacy, of true affection.

"Nowt wrong wi' me that the sight of you plus two pints of best can't put right, Cap," he said.

Amanda Marvell, known to her friends as Cap, let her smile blossom fully and held out her hand.

"Then let's go and complete the medication, shall we?" she said.

Stirps End Farm lay in the sun like an old ship on a sandbank, lapped around by thistled meadows and surging fell. Everything about the farmhouse and its yard said, "We have lost, you have won, leave us be, here to rot, washed by rain, parched by sun. Trouble us not and we'll not trouble thee."

They pushed open a gate hanging off its hinges, though they could as easily have stepped through the dry stone wall at several places where its fallen stones lay cradled in nettles.

"Don't know much about farming," said Pascoe. "But this looks like second-division stuff."

"Cedric were always a make-do-and-mend kind of farmer," replied Clark. "But recent years, he's just stuck to making do."

"And you reckon Pontifex gave him the tenancy out of guilt?" said Pascoe, looking round with distaste at the rusting relicts of agricultural machinery which littered the yard. "Lot of guilt to put up with this for fifteen years."

"Lose a kid, what's fifteen years?" said Clark.

Pascoe felt reproved. Out of the barn, which was a continuation of the house and seemed to lean against it for mutual support, a man had emerged and was standing in the dark rhomboid of its warped doorway, regarding them with weary hostility.

"What you after, Nobby?" he demanded.

His voice was harsh and grating, as if from long disuse. He was unageable without expert medical testimony, anything between forty and sixty, with a sharp nose, hollow cheeks, and a salt-and-pepper-stubbled chin indicating an early beard or a very late shaving. He was broad in the shoulder and the hip, but the frayed and patched coveralls he wore hung loosely on him, giving the impression of a big man who'd somehow collapsed in on himself.

"How do, Cedric. This here's Chief Inspector Pascoe. We'd like a word with Jed."

"At work, if that's what you can call it," said Hardcastle. "You'd think there was nowt to do round here."

It would take a great leap of the imagination, or no imagination at all, to think that, thought Pascoe.

"No, he's here, Sergeant," said a woman's voice.

In the doorway of the farmhouse a woman had appeared. She was small and neat and had been baking. Her hands were floured and she wore a dark blue apron over a gray dress. Her long hair was tied up in a square of blue silk, giving a wimpled effect. Indeed with her gray dress and above all a stillness of body and softness of voice which seemed to reflect some deep calm within, she could have passed for a nun.

"How do, Mrs. Hardcastle?" said Clark. "All right if we come in?"

Pascoe noted the formality of their exchange, contrasting with the use of first names man to man. But he got the impression that there was little correlation between form of address and warmth of feeling here. On the contrary.

It was a relief to step out of the hot dung-scented air of the yard into the cool interior, but the contrast didn't stop at temperature. Here was no sign of neglect. On the contrary, everything was neat and cherished, the old oak furniture glowed with that depth which only comes from an age of loving polishing, and brass candlesticks shone on the long wooden mantelshelf flanking almost religiously a large head-and-shoulders photograph of a young girl. Other pictures of the same child were visible; in the nook by the fireplace where in old times a salt box would have stood, and on each of two low windowsills which also held vases of wildflowers, among which Pascoe recognized foxgloves and hawk's-beard, glowing like candles lit to light a lost sailor home.

"You'll take a glass of lemon barley against the warm," said the woman.

"Can't think of anything I'd like more," said Pascoe.

She called, "Jed. Visitors," up the stone stair which rose at one end of the long low-beamed room, then went out into the kitchen.

For a few moments there was no sound. Then, just as Mrs. Hardcastle returned bearing a tray with glasses and a pot jug, footsteps clattered down the stairs and a young man erupted into the room.

He had nothing of his father's wariness or mother's calm, but emanated nervous energy even when he stood still, which was not often. He was slightly built, dressed in a black T-shirt and the kind of tight-fitting jeans which gave a male profile once only enjoyed by aficionados of the ballet. What happened if you got excited? wondered Pascoe.

"Yeah?" said the youth staring defiantly at Clark.

"Nice to see you, too, Jed," said the sergeant. "Couple of questions we'd like to ask. About Saturday night."

The youngster's stare had moved round to Pascoe, who was drinking his lemon barley and finding it as cool and refreshing as a thirsty cop could desire.

"Who's this? Your minder?"

Trying too hard to sound big, thought Pascoe. Especially for a boy who hadn't run any farther from the estate office than home. It had been his intention to stand back and let Clark's local knowledge have room to play. But with the weak it was often familiarity that gave strength, and Clark's most effective interrogatory weapon, which seemed to be a clip round the ear, could hardly be used in present company.

He stepped closer to the youth and said pleasantly, "I'm Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe. I'm making inquiries into the disappearance of a young girl yesterday morning. How old are you, Jed?"

"Seventeen, just turned." He shot an enigmatically accusing glance at his mother, then went on. "You gonna send me a card or something?"

"No," said Pascoe equably. "Just want to check you're an adult in the eyes of the law. That way we don't need to bother your parents to accompany you down to the station. Sergeant, bring him."

He turned away. Mrs. Hardcastle looked like he'd just condemned her son to death. Her husband stood in the doorway, his features working angrily. Even Clark looked shell-shocked.

Pascoe halted his progress to the door, turned back, and said, "Of course, if you answer a couple of questions here, we may not need to trouble you further. Who actually did the spraying? It's always interesting to see if the stories match. Was it you or Kittle?"

It worked. The boy said, "You been talking to Vern? What's he say?"

Pascoe smiled enigmatically and said, "Well, you know Vern."

"What the hell's this mad bugger on about?"

Hardcastle senior had found his voice at last.

Pascoe said, "I'm talking about the words BENNY'S BACK!, sprayed by your son and his mate on the old railway bridge and various other sites around the village. And in view of the fact that Lorraine Dacre went missing yesterday morning, I'm interested to know why he sprayed them."

"It had nowt to do with that," protested the boy. "We did it Saturday night. We knew nowt about the Dacre lass then."

"So why'd you do it?" demanded Pascoe. "Just got an urge, did you? Thought it would be funny? Maybe seeing those words put the idea of taking the girl in someone's mind. Maybe it put it in your mind or Vernon's mind…"

"No!" screamed the boy. "I did it 'cos I've had it up to here with Benny fucking Lightfoot. He's been around this house all my life. Take a look around, see if you can find a picture of me or our June. No, there's nowt but our Jenny who got took by Benny Lightfoot all them years ago. We even have a cake for her on her birthday, candles and all, can you believe that? Well, it were my birthday on Saturday and I tret myself to a long lie-in and I got up at dinnertime, thinking there'd be presents and cards like, and a special meal, and what did I find, I found bugger all! I found Mam sitting there trembling and Dad raging like a mad thing and you know why? She'd been out and seen Benny Lightfoot! My birthday, and all I get is-He's back, Benny's back! So I took off out and later I was having a few beers with Vern and he said, "Well, if he's back, let's tell the whole fucking world, see if we can't spoil some other fucker's birthday."

"So you decided to do some spraying? Good thinking," said Pascoe.

The youth was trembling with the emotion of his outburst, but his mother looked to be in a worse state.

She said, "Oh, Jed, I'm sorry… I'm really sorry…"

Pascoe said, "Mrs. Hardcastle, I need to ask-" but Clark had moved past him, almost shouldered him aside, and taking the woman by the arm, he said, "I'll see to this, sir," and steered her into the kitchen.

Interesting, thought Pascoe.

He turned to the elder Hardcastle and said, "Did you see Lightfoot, too, sir?"

"No!" spat the man. "Do you think I'd have seen him and not tore his throat out? But I always knew he'd be back. I've been saying for years, it's not over, not yet, not by a long chalk. Them as thought they were safe, they all looked church solemn and said how sorry they were, but all the time they were thinking, Thank God it was yours not mine, thank God I've got away safe. It's Elsie Dacre's kid that's gone, isn't it? Elsie Coe as was. She were a girl herself back then when it happened and I recall her dad saying he'd see nowt happened to his lass even if it meant keeping her in shackles. But it has happened, hasn't it? It has!"

"We don't know what's happened, sir. But we need to look into every possibility."

He turned to the boy. No defiance or even anger there anymore, just a lost child's face with tears swelling at the eyes.

Hardcastle was right. Whatever the truth about Lightfoot's return, it hadn't been over, not for this boy and his runaway sister, because it would never be over for their parents.

He said gently, "You've been very silly, Jed, and I may need to talk to you again. Meanwhile, hadn't you best get back to work?"

The boy nodded gratefully, then pushed by his father without a word.

Happy families, thought Pascoe.

He went into the kitchen. Clark had had his innings. He found the sergeant sitting close to Mrs. Hardcastle at a long kitchen table, scrubbed almost white by generations of strong country women.

At sight of him Clark stood up and said, "Thanks, then, Mrs. Hardcastle. I'll be in touch. Take care."

Pascoe let himself be steered out of the house. In the yard he stopped and said mildly, "Right, Sergeant. Now persuade me that I shouldn't be back in there, questioning Mrs. Hardcastle for myself."

"She's told me all she knows," said Clark.

"Tell me, then."

"She went out on Saturday morning to gather some bilberries. Bilberry pie is a favorite of Jed's and she wanted to make one for his birthday. The best place for them round here is high up the far side of the dale where it gets the morning sun. She went over there, and went higher and higher and finally got to the ridge. She says she had a fancy to look down into Dendale 'cos she'd heard about the village showing up again with the drought, but she'd not cared to take a look so far. And when she did look down she saw more than she bargained for. She saw Benny Lightfoot down there, wandering around close by where Neb Cottage used to be."

"So what did she do?"

"Just stood and looked till he looked up the fellside toward her. He were a good way off, but she says she saw him smile. Then she dropped all her berries and turned and ran down the fell all the way home."

"When she says he was wandering around, she means walking? On his feet? Not floating over the ground?"

Clark took a deep breath and said, "She's not daft, sir. She's been through what would have broke a lot of women, but she's still got all her wits."

"And her eyesight? Has she still got that?"

"I've not heard her complain. And she doesn't wear glasses."

"Perhaps she should. How old did Lightfoot look?"

"Sorry?"

"Was he the same age as last time she saw him, or did he look fifteen years older?"

"Don't know, sir. Didn't ask."

Pascoe shook his head irritably. The cooling effect of the shadowy interior plus the lemon barley was rapidly being evaporated by the uncomfortably warm air.

"You know I'm going to have to talk to her, don't you?" he said. "I'm going to need a properly witnessed statement."

"Yes, sir. But not now, sir." Clark's voice was pleading.

"Forgive me for being personal," said Pascoe, "but you haven't got something going with Mrs. Hardcastle, have you?"

"No," exclaimed Clark. Then, more softly. "No, not now. Once, a long time since, there was… something. But she had three kiddies, it didn't seem right, even though her and Cedric… well, who knows what might have happened? What did happen was little Jenny got took. And that was that. Some women might have got out after that. She saw it as a kind of judgment. And the way it hit Cedric, she knew she'd never leave him, come what might. She told me, no need really, I could see it… so now we're Sergeant Clark and Mrs. Hardcastle. But I'll not see any harm come to her, sir. No matter what."

He spoke defiantly.

"I'm pleased to hear it," said Pascoe. "Look, it's probably best we see her down at the hall, when Mr. Dalziel's back. Get back in there and tell her we'll need to see her down there in, say, two hours. That should give us time to get hold of the super."

"I'll ask her, sir."

"You tell her," said Pascoe fiercely. "Middle of an investigation like this is no time for personal feelings, Sergeant."

Was Clark going to turn out to be a liability? he wondered. It was what he was coming to think of as the Dendale effect. Bit like Gulf War syndrome; hard to define, but impossible to deny once you'd met a few of those suffering from it. Including perhaps the Fat Man himself.

He would prefer to believe Dendale was irrelevant, but all roads seemed to lead back there, and till he saw a signpost pointing definitely in another direction, perhaps he ought to follow, if only to confirm a dead end.

He said, "Sergeant."

Clark, moving slowly back to the farmhouse, turned to show an unhappy face and said, "Sir?"

"This fellow Benny Lightfoot, who was he close to?"

"No bugger," said Clark. "A right loner."

"So if he did come back, there's nowhere special he'd head?"

"Only Dendale, and there's nowt there for him now, not even with the drought. All the buildings got 'dozed down before they flooded the dale, including Neb Cottage, where he lived with his gran."

"His gran. What happened to her?" asked Pascoe.

"She dug her heels in, said they'd have to carry her out of her cottage, and that's what they had to do," said Clark. "She barricaded herself in, then had a stroke. I went up there to try to talk some sense into her and I saw her through the window. Another few hours, I reckon she'd have snuffed it."

"Lucky you were so conscientious," said Pascoe.

"I'm not sure she saw it that way," said Clark. "I went to see her in hospital and she didn't exactly seem grateful."

"Did she recover?"

"Depends who was talking to her," said Clark with a reminiscent grin. "Any official questions about Benny and she'd lost the power of speech and memory. She was certainly a bit confused and had trouble with finding the right words, but she was soon well enough to be a right trouble to the nurses. They'd have discharged her a lot sooner, only they had to find a place for her to go. She couldn't look after herself, you see. Even after she got most of her speech back, she was partially paralyzed down one side. So it had to be nursing home, and she led the Social Services a merry dance when they started making suggestions."

"But in the end she went?"

"No. A niece turned up. Lived somewhere near Sheffield. Said she'd take her. And that's the last anyone round here saw of her."

"So she could be still alive," said Pascoe.

"She'd be getting on, but she's the kind who'd stay alive forever if she thought folk were expecting her to die."

"Can't remember the niece's name, can you?"

"No. But they might still have a record down at Social Services."

"Depends who was running the case," said Pascoe unoptimistically.

"I can tell you that. Lass name of Plowright."

"You don't mean Jeannie Plowright who's head of Social Services at County Hall now?" said Pascoe, hope reviving.

"Aye, she's done right well," said Clark. "I thought she would. Anyone who could survive dealing with old Mrs. Lightfoot was always going to make it right to the top!"

He went into the house. Pascoe took out his mobile and dialed.

"County Hall."

"Social Services. Ms. Plowright, please."

A pause, unfilled (thank God) by soothing music. Then a man's voice.

"Hello?"

"Is Jeannie there, please?"

"Sorry, she's out. Can I help?"

"No. When will she be back?"

"Not till this late afternoon, maybe early evening. Look, if it's about-"

"It's not about anything you can help with," said Pascoe. "Can you make sure she gets a message?"

"I expect so, but listen-"

"No. You listen. Carefully. My name is Pascoe. Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe. Tell Ms. Plowright I shall call to see her in her office at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. This is urgent and confidential police business, okay? Subject of meeting: Mrs. Agnes Lightfoot, formerly of Neb Cottage, Dendale. You got that? Good. Thank you."

He rang off. If you see me coming, better step aside, he thought. Bullying Clark for having personal feelings. Now riding roughshod over some poor devil whose name or status I didn't even bother to find out. Another fifteen stone and I'll be indistinguishable from Dalziel!

The phone rang.

"Hello!" he barked.

"Peter, it's me. Listen, don't worry, but Rosie wasn't well at school and Miss Martindale sent for me and I brought her home and I thought it was just too much sun or something, then I got to thinking about Zandra so I rang Jill and she said Zandra was a lot worse, and she'd got the doctor there so I started getting a bit concerned and rang Dr. Truman and he's here now and he says he'd like Rosie to go to hospital for some tests… Peter, can you get there soon?… Please

…"

He'd never heard Ellie like this before. The world reeled as if the great ocean of heathery moor had decided to shrug its shoulders and ease Stirps Farm off its sandbank.

Then all went still again.

He said, "I'm on my way."

So much for hard cases, he thought. So much for slagging people off for letting personal feelings get in the way. Dalziel was right. If there was a god, he dearly loved a joke.

"Sergeant Clark!" he roared.

And set off at a run toward the car.

When Wield and Novello reached Bixford, there was no need to ask for directions.

Towering over the sign extending Bixford's welcome to careful drivers was a hoarding proclaiming the imminence of GEORDIE TURNBULL (Demolition and EXCAVATION) LTD.

It stood inside a high chain-link security fence running round a site of about an acre. At its center stood a bungalow, on one side of which was parked a bright yellow bulldozer bearing Turnbull's name in fiery red, and on the other a light blue Volvo station wagon.

It bore not a trace of dirt or dust and sparkled in the sunlight.

Novello drove in through the open gate and parked next to the Volvo.

Wield got out and walked slowly around the station wagon, peering in through the gleaming windows. Novello went up to the bungalow and pressed the doorbell. After a short delay the door opened. A short, stout man appeared, dressed in khaki shorts, a string vest, and espadrilles. His coarse blond hair was standing on end and he was yawning and rubbing his eyes, as though just roused from sleep. But his yawn stopped and his eyes brightened and a welcoming smile spread like dawn across his round and ruddy face as he clocked Novello.

"Hello, there," he said. "Just having a nap, but this is worth waking up for. And what can I do for you, bonny lass?"

Geordie was more than just a version of George, then. The ripple of the Tyne was in his speech.

"Mr. Turnbull, is it?" she asked, noticing that his bare, muscular arms were covered with a light golden down which seemed to reflect the warmth of the sun.

"Aye, it is. Will you come inside out of this blessed heat and slake your thirst on a can of lager? Or lemonade, if you've come to talk to me about Jesus."

She found herself smiling back.

It was remarkable. In the space of a few seconds Turnbull had made the transition from fat, disgusting middle-aged slob to pleasant, amusing, cuddly koala. It was partly the radiance of his smile, partly the undisguised, nonthreatening, wholly flattering admiration of his regard, but perhaps largely the readiness with which he offered refreshment before finding out what her business was. The Englishman on his doorstep is by nature a suspicious creature, always anticipating the worst. Novello knocked on a lot of doors in her job. She didn't look very menacing and not at all (she hoped) like a cop. But the usual response ranged from neutrally guarded to downright hostile, and that was before she identified herself.

Now she produced her warrant card and said, "Detective Constable Novello. Could we have a little chat, Mr. Turnbull?"

One eyebrow flickered up comically, but otherwise there was no change to the sunny welcome of his expression as he said, "It'll be the lemonade then, pet? Come on through."

And then there was a change, like the shadow of a thin, high cloud moving swiftly over a golden landscape, passing almost before you saw it.

"Mr. Turnbull."

Wield had come up behind her. Turnbull recognized him, of that she was sure. And the recognition had not been pleasing to him. Interesting to see if the man admitted old acquaintance or played hard to get.

But even as the thought formed in her mind, Turnbull's smile had turned up a kilowatt and he was saying, "It's Mr. Wield, isn't it? Aye, of course it is. Two of a kind, you and me, Sergeant. Once seen, never forgotten."

It should have been offensive, but it didn't come out that way, just one guy confident that appearance didn't matter to another he flattered by including him in the same club.

Wield took the outstretched hand and said, "Long time since Dendale."

"You're right. But always seems like yesterday, something like that," said Turnbull, solemn suddenly. "Come away in. Cooler inside."

It was, partly because of the shade, but also on account of a portable air-conditioning unit standing in the corner of the living room. Turnbull was unmarried, Novello had established that from Bella. But this interior didn't look to be suffering from the absence of a woman's touch. Why should it? Man like this probably had a waiting list of local ladies queuing to cook, clean, and generally mollycoddle. The idea should have caused a pang of indignation. Instead she found herself straightening an antimacassar before she sat down in the chair he offered.

Come on, Novello, she warned herself. This guy's old enough to be your father. She made herself start looking at things like a cop again. He read the Daily Mirror. There was no sign of any other reading matter in the room. The furniture was old but not antique, and the woodwork had that nice glow which comes from frequent polishing-that female touch again? Also perhaps evidenced by the richly gleaming brass urn filled with fresh fern standing in front of the fireplace. Probably the ladies of the parish had a roster, taking turns to do the church flowers before coming on to sort out Mr. Turnbull. There I go again! she thought. Concentrate. The fireplace, now that was interesting. Handsome, Victorian, rather too large for the room and certainly not coeval with it.

Turnbull had gone into the kitchen and now returned bearing a tray with a jug of iced lemonade and three glasses. There'd been a pint pot and a can of bitter on a coffee table when they came in, but he'd taken these with him. Wanting to keep a clear head?

"Cheers," he said, raising his glass. "Now, what can I do you for, Mr. Wield?"

"Business bad?" said Wield.

"Eh?"

"Finding you home in the middle of the day. The 'dozer outside."

"Oh, no," said Turnbull. "The other way round, I'm glad to say. Things ticking away so nicely, the boss can afford to leave his lads to it while he catches up on a bit of paperwork."

Wield's gaze flicked to the Daily Mirror.

Turnbull laughed and said, "Not that paper. You caught me in my tea break. No, you should see my office."

"Thanks," said Wield standing up. "Which way?"

Turnbull looked momentarily nonplussed to have his remark taken literally, but he got to his feet and led the way out of the room.

The office was in what had probably been the bungalow's second bedroom. Not much use for a second bedroom here, Novello guessed. She somehow doubted if Turnbull's houseguests resulted in much extra laundering of bed linen. Trouble was, more she thought of him as a "ladies' man," the harder it was to see him as a child molester.

"Do you have someone to run your office, Mr. Turnbull?" she asked.

"Christ, yes. Too much for a simple soul like me. I've got this lovely lady who keeps me straight."

"I can imagine. Not here today?"

"No. I gave her the day off," said Turnbull.

Novello forced herself not to glance significantly at Wield. Giving the help a holiday the day after the abduction-possible abduction-that had to be, could be, might be, significant.

"Local, is she?" asked Novello.

"Very," said Turnbull. Then he laughed that infectious laugh it was so hard not to join in. "I bet you're thinking dollybird, bonny lass? Well, I did think of getting one of those, but I could foresee all sorts of problems. Never mix business and pleasure, as the bishop said to the prioress. Then I struck lucky. Mrs. Quartermain. Sixty-five. Widowed. Loves work. And she lives just down the road, in the vicarage."

"The vicarage?"

"That's right, pet. She's the vicar's mam. He's glad to get her out of his hair, I'm glad to get her into mine. But I let him have her back when he's got anything special on. It's the old folks' outing today. They'd not get out of the village if it wasn't for Ma Quartermain."

He grinned at her, inviting her to join in his amusement even though what joke there was was on her. She found herself smiling back, then tried to hide it by looking to see how Wield was reacting to this byplay.

He wasn't. He had been taking a slow stroll around the room, studying the filing cabinet, bulletin board, fax machine, copier, with which it was crowded though not cluttered. This was a very well-organized business. The business of a very well-organized man. Able to sort out his innermost life and urges with the same degree of precision? wondered the sergeant, who knew all about such things.

"Very impressive," he said finally. "You've done well, Mr. Turnbull. You didn't have your own business when you were working on the Dendale dam, did you?"

Dendale. Second mention. And again it seemed to cast a gloom on Turnbull's natural spirits. But it would, wouldn't it? On anyone's who'd been there. Jesus, this guy's got me working for the defense already! thought Novello.

"No, I was driving for old Tommy Tiplake back then. Sort of junior partner, really. Meaning I stuck with him in the bad times. No family of his own, old Tommy, or not any he bothered with, and we got on so well that I took over when he had to retire. I've been very lucky. Done nothing to deserve it, but I thank God every day for all His blessings."

They had returned to the living room as he talked and he gave Novello a waggle of the eyebrows as she sat down again, which said clear as speech that he rated her high among the aforementioned blessings.

"Didn't know you were a religious man," said Wield.

"Comes with age, I expect, Mr. Wield. Well, it's a good across-the-board bet, isn't it. Maybe that's why I employ the vicar's mother."

"So with all this religious feeling, you'd be at church on Sunday morning?" said Wield.

"As a matter of fact, I was," said Turnbull. "Why're you asking, Mr. Wield?"

You know why we're asking, thought Novello. It's been on the news. In the paper. In the Daily Mirror. Or perhaps you knew before that.

…

It was an afterthought. A professional coda. She must fight against this submission to charm which got employers leaving businesses to him and vicars passing over their mothers to work for him, and God knows what else…

"Which service?" asked Wield.

"Matins."

"That's eleven o'clock, right?"

"Right."

"And before that?"

"Before? Let me see…"

He screwed up his brow in a parody of remembrance.

"I got up about nine. I remember Alistair Cook's Letter from America was on the radio as I shaved. Then I made myself some coffee and toast and sat with it outside round the back because it was getting hot already, and I read the Sunday paper. That would take me up till about nine forty-five, I expect. That enough for you, Mr. Wield, or do you want more?"

There was an undertone of anger there now which he couldn't disguise. Or perhaps he could have disguised it perfectly well but just wasn't bothering. Or perhaps he wasn't angry at all.

"You were by yourself? You didn't see anyone? No one saw you?"

"Not till I went out to church," said Turnbull.

"How far's the church?"

"The other side of the village, about a mile."

"So you walk there?"

"Sometimes. Depends on the weather and what I'm doing afterward."

"And yesterday?"

"I drove there. I was picking up a friend, heading out for a day on the coast after the service."

"You always leave your car out front where it is now?"

"Not always. Sometimes I put it in the garage."

"And Saturday night?"

A hesitation. Would it be so hard to remember? Perhaps, like Novello, he was working out where Wield was going with this. And like her, getting there.

"In the garage," he said.

Which meant that if, say, the newspaper boy recalled that when he delivered the paper sometime before nine o'clock the car hadn't been visible, it signified nothing.

She looked at Wield. She knew, indeed had firsthand experience of, his reputation for thoroughness. He wasn't going to let this go till he had checked out everyone in the area who might have noticed Turnbull driving away from his house early on Sunday morning. Correction, she thought. Till I have checked them all out! Great.

Turnbull was on his feet. He went out of the room and they heard him dialing a number on the phone in the narrow hallway.

"Dickie," he said. "Geordie Turnbull. Yeah, not bad considering. Considering I've got company. The police. No, no trouble, but I think I'd like you down here to hold me hand. Soon as you can. Thanks, bonnie lad."

He came back in and said, "Dick Hoddle, my solicitor, is going to join us, Mr. Wield. Hope you don't mind?"

"It's your house," said Wield indifferently.

"Yes, and I'm staying in it," said Turnbull. "That's why I want Dickie here. One thing we should get straight, Mr. Wield. I've no intention of letting you take me over to Danby to help you with your inquiries. Not without I'm under arrest."

"You asked me before what this was about," said Wield. "Seems like you knew all the time."

"Oh, I knew all right, bonnie lad. Only I couldna believe it. You lot have done this to me once before, remember? I couldn't really believe you were going to do it again. But you are, aren't you?"

"We're going to pursue all possible lines of inquiry into the disappearance of Lorraine Dacre, yes," said Wield.

"You do that. And I hope you find the bastard responsible. But you people track your muddy boots through people's lives and never think about the mess you leave behind. I'm not going anywhere there'll be cameras and reporters. Anything you want from me you'll get here, else you'll not get it at all."

"Fine," said Wield. "Here's where we want to be. To start with I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Turnbull. We'll need to search your premises. And examine your car. Is that agreeable to you?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Oh, yes. Between sooner or later," said Wield.

"Go ahead," said Turnbull tossing his car keys onto the floor in front of Novello. "Do what you bloody well like. You always did."

He spoke with a good deal of bitterness, but it was diluted by something else, thought Novello as she picked up the keys. Something which had been there almost from the start. Something very like… relief?

But relief at what? That finally his crimes were catching up with him? Or perhaps simply relief that something he'd feared was actually under way?

She went out to the car.

Wield walked round the room whistling, not very tunefully "A Wandering Minstrel I." Music for him began with Gilbert and ended with Sullivan.

"Nice room, Mr. Turnbull," he said when he completed the circuit and rejoined the other in front of the fireplace.

"Like I say, I've been lucky. And people have been good to me. Tommy Tiplake. And all the folk round here. They'll speak for me, Mr. Wield."

It was almost an appeal, and Wield was almost affected.

"Nice to have friends," he said. "Grand old fireplace, that."

"Yes."

"Bit big for here, mebbe. And it looks, don't know how, familiar."

"Grand memory you've got there," complimented Turnbull. "It came out of the Holly Bush in Dendale. The snug bar, remember? Don't worry. It was paid for. Tommy and the other demolition men did a deal with the Water Board for any bits and pieces they fancied. It'll be in their records."

"I'm sure it will," said Wield. "Better for something like that to find a good home than end up in pieces at the bottom of the mere, eh?"

There was a moment of shared nostalgia for a past through which progress had plowed its six-lane highway.

Then from the doorway, Novello said, "Sarge."

He went out. She showed him a pair of evidence bags. In one was a child's pink-and-white sneaker. In the other a blue silk ribbon tied in a bow.

"The ribbon was down the backseat," she said. "The sneaker was buried beneath a whole pile of stuff in the trunk."

Wield stood in silent thought. Novello guessed what the thought was. Confront Turnbull with their discovery now or wait till they'd tried to get an identification from the Dacres?

Problem was solved by the appearance of the man in the doorway.

"What's that you've got there, bonnie lass?" he asked.

He sounded unconcerned. Perhaps in the circumstances too unconcerned, thought Novello. Wield ignored him.

"Get on the radio… no, make that the phone," he said. "Tell them what's going off and say I'd like a search team and forensic down here ASAP."

Then finally he turned his attention to the man and began to intone, "George Robert Turnbull, I must caution you…"

Andy Dalziel and Cap Marvell sat facing each other in the snug of The Book and Candle. The snug lived up to its name, having room for no more than half a dozen chairs and two narrow tables, under one of which their knees met, indeed more than met, had to interlock, but Dalziel's apologetic grunt having provoked nothing more than an ironic smile, he relaxed and enjoyed the contact.

The pub wasn't one he used often, its location "in the bell" and its ultrarespectable ambience, marked by the absence of game machines, pool tables, and Muzak, making it unsuitable for most of a CID man's professional encounters. But, as it was a pub and as it was on his patch, he knew it, and was known in it, and the landlord had shown no surprise either at Dalziel's order of three pints of best and a spritzer, or his request that the snug should be regarded as closed for the next half hour.

The first pint hadn't touched the sides and the second was in sad decline before he opened the conversation.

"Missed you," he said abruptly.

Cap Marvell laughed out loud.

"Would you like to try that again, Andy, and this time see if you can make it sound a bit less like some errant schoolboy's reluctant confession to self-abuse?"

He took another long pull at his pint, then growled, "Mebbe I didn't miss you all that much."

She squeezed his leg between her knees and said, "Well I've missed you more than I would have believed possible."

The admission provoked a feeling in him which he didn't altogether recognize.

While trying to identify it he said surlily, "Your choice."

"No," she said calmly. "There was no choice. Not then."

"So why're you here now?"

"Because now there may be."

"And?"

"And if there is, I'll choose."

"Mebbe you should wait till you're asked," he said. He had identified the feeling as embarrassed delight. It bothered him somewhat. He'd be blushing next!

"Oh, no. That's a cop-out. All the important choices are made in advance of their occasion."

He sat looking at her, recognizing now it wasn't just the handsome face, the sturdy body, and the big knockers he'd missed, but her humor, her independence, and the no-crap way she put things, a quality sometimes obscured, sometimes underlined, by her posh accent. That was all that obviously remained of her previous life in which, barely out of finishing school, she had married into the lower reaches of the peerage, given birth to a son, and watched him (as closely as nannies and boarding school permitted) grow up into a young army officer who was reported missing, believed dead, in the Falklands War.

This had been her epiphanic experience, forcing her to a review of her life, which not even the news that her son was in fact heroically alive could reverse. There had followed, in not-too-rapid succession, disaffection from high society, divorce, deconstruction of all previous moral certainties, dissipation, dedication to a series of radical causes; and finally, Dalziel.

They had met when an animal rights group she was leader of had been involved in a murder investigation. Separated by a few years, several class-strat, and a moon river of attitudes, they had nevertheless felt a mutual attraction strong enough to bridge all gaps until her demand for trust and his need for professional certainties had required a bridge too far.

Now this chance encounter seemed to offer the possibility that this missing bridge could be put in place after all.

She said, "So while we're choosing, let's chat. What brought you to Walter's house? Didn't I read that you're in charge of this missing-child case?"

So she took note of his name in the papers. He was pleased but hid it.

"That's right. His car were spotted parked near where she lived-lives. The Turnip's too."

"Sorry?"

"Krog. The Swede."

"Norwegian, I think. But hardly polite anyway."

"Polite? Mebbe it were some other bugger you missed."

"Could be. So you wanted to see them. Walter and the… and Krog?"

"Aye. For elimination."

"Thought you sent sergeants to do that."

This was a reference to his use of Wield to interview her when things got hot.

"Not when it's someone like Wulfstan," he said.

"Andy, you're not suggesting the rich and powerful get treated better than poor plebs?" she mocked.

His brow creased like a field furrowed by a drunken plowboy. She'd not have said that if she knew the Wulfstans' history.

"How well do you know them, the Wulfstans?" he asked.

"Not well. The wife hardly at all. Walter only as chair of the festival committee. When I settled down here a few years back, I started going to concerts locally and made a few friends in musical circles, not people who overlapped with my other activities, I hasten to add, before you start asking for names. A particular friend was on the committee. When her job required her to leave the district, she recommended me to take her place, and that was how I got to know Walter."

"Oh, aye? And he was impressed by your experience of organizing pickets and demos and illegal raids on private premises, was he?"

"I keep my life pretty well compartmentalized, Andy," she said. "Poke holes in dykes and trouble comes pouring through, as you and I found out. This is my first year on the committee, so I'm still feeling my way."

"Thought you'd have been in charge by now."

"Not much chance of that." She smiled. "It's so well organized, there's very little to do. This change of venue is our first real crisis, and Walter seems to have got that well under control."

"So I gather. You'll be off to Danby to shift furniture, then?"

"Not today. But I've offered my services tomorrow if needed. Walter runs a tight ship, no evaders need apply. But that's really all I know about him. No use trying to pump me for more, Superintendent."

"I'm not," said Dalziel. "I reckon I know all I need. Probably best you know it, too, in case you feel like letting on you're a friend of mine."

She started to make a joke of this, saw his face, and stopped. Her expression turned dark as his as he told her about the Dendale disappearances.

"Those poor people… I remember how I felt when they told me Piers was missing…"

"Can't understand how you didn't read about it," he said, half accusing.

"Maybe I did. But, Andy, fifteen years back I had other things on my mind. Now I see why you're giving Walter the softly, softly treatment. Poor man. But that explains why they adopted."

"Elizabeth? Aye, you're right, she's not theirs. You managed to winkle that out even though you say you hardly know the Wulfstans, did you? Well, like they say, once a snout, always a snout."

This ungallant comment was in fact a further reminder of their old intimacy, referring to a time when she'd been the source of some useful information.

"No, I did not winkle it out," she said firmly. "It was volunteered to me, and certainly not by the Wulfstans or anyone up here. By one of those coincidences which can hardly be part of a divine plan, as they keep on throwing us together, I have a friend in London, Beryl Blakiston, who happens to be head of school that Elizabeth attended for a while."

"Bugger me," he said admiringly. "With you upper-class lot, who needs the Internet?"

She regarded him narrowly, suspecting that his acquaintance with the Internet was as vague as hers with the arcana of tactics in the front row of a rugby scrum. But she'd learned it was dangerous to challenge without certainties and went on. "I lunched with Beryl in the spring. Exchanging notes, I mentioned my new responsibilities as a member of the festival committee-it comforts her to hear I keep a couple of toes on the strait and narrow-and she said, was this Wulfstan I mentioned the father of the singer? And I said, yes, because I knew that Elizabeth was penciled in for this year's festival. End of story."

He took a long swallow which brought the end of the second pint a lot closer.

"Bollocks," he said.

"I'm sorry?"

"First off, you've already let on that your mate Beryl told you the lass were adopted. And second with a couple of go.-and-that.'s in your belly and a bottle of burgundy on the table, there's no way a pair of likely lasses like you two were going to let go of any interesting subject until well chewed."

"Why do you designate someone you haven't met a likely lass?"

"'Cos you'd not keep on meeting her for lunch else. So what did she say?"

Cap Marvell fixed him with a cool, assessing gaze and said, "Andy, this isn't official, I hope? A drink with an old friend is one thing, but if this is turning into an interrogation, I want my solicitor playing gooseberry."

He looked hurt.

"Nay, lass, I've told you, only reason I came round to see Wulfstan myself was because of what happened way back. Routine inquiry. He's not in the frame. All I'm doing here is making polite conversation till I see which side up the toast is going to fall. If you like, we can talk about the England cricket team. Or the government. Makes you weep, doesn't it?"

"The government?"

"Don't be daft. I don't waste tears on yon prancers."

She laughed and said, "Okay. I believe you, Andy. So, what Beryl told me was that Elizabeth was an adopted child and that there'd been some trouble with her early on, but she'd settled down-"

"Trouble?" interrupted Dalziel. "I like trouble. Tell me about it."

"Beryl didn't go into detail. There is such a thing as professional discretion even after a bottle of burgundy. But I got the impression that it was a question of expectations unsatisfied; the girl's of her adoptive parents, theirs of their adopted child. It was serious enough to require the services of a psychologist, or psychiatrist, I'm not sure which. But in the end it all worked out, mainly, Beryl surmised, because of the girl's burgeoning musical talent. Which, of course, was the main occasion and topic of our discussion."

"Burgeoning," said Dalziel dreamily. "I love it when you talk fancy. Even when I don't understand half you're saying."

"I'm saying that through her singing, Elizabeth discovered a sense of her own value, and also a belief that her adoptive parents valued her. After that, it was possible for her to get back to normal development."

"Normal? Like the way she talks?"

"The accent, you mean? I'm surprised you think there's anything abnormal about that, Andy," she said with wide-eyed innocence.

"Ha ha. It's all right for an ignorant tyke like me, but a lass brought up by the Wulfstans, going to fancy schools and colleges down south, she talks like that out of choice. You've only got to hear her sing to know that."

"You've heard her sing?"

"Aye. On the wireless. Yon dreary stuff you used to play."

"Yon dreary stuff," she echoed. "Is this a portmanteau term to cover all my collection? Or did you have some particular piece of dreariness in mind?"

"It were one of them songs about dead children. Mahler. Only it were in English, and she didn't sing it with a Yorkie accent."

"Ah, the Kindertotenlieder. Yes, I've heard it. Very interesting."

The Fat Man laughed.

"Don't much like it, eh?"

"Why do you say that?"

"I've got this lad, Peter Pascoe-you'll likely recall him, Ellie Pascoe's man-he's sort of cultured, degree and such. I've tried to squeeze it out of him but it's like malaria, once you've had it, it stays in the blood, and you never know when you're going to start shaking. Well, I've noticed with him, and buggers like him, whenever they don't much like summat, but it's not polite or fashionable to say it's crap, what they say is, it's very interesting."

Cap Marvell smiled and said, "How you do pin us butterflies down, Andy. But you're right. I didn't care much for the translation, and I didn't think her voice was yet ready for those particular songs."

"So why'd she choose them? More to the point, why'd the record company let her choose them?"

"Her reasons I can't guess at. But the recording company… well, it's a very minor label, too small to catch anyone really big, so they concentrate on young hopefuls, get them to sign up for three or four discs, and hope by the time they get to the third or fourth some of them will have made it to stardom. Elizabeth has great potential. After the concert, she's heading for Rome, where she's been taken on by Claudia Alberini, one of the top voice coaches in Europe. I suspect that if she dug her heels in and told the record company she wasn't going to sign unless she started with the Kindertotenlieder, they decided it was a risk worth taking. Particularly when she said she wanted to do them in her own translation."

"Why'd that help?"

"It's a talking point. Anything that rouses interest and gets exposure is okay. You still can't make it unless you're good, but if you're good and marketable, then you hit the heights a lot quicker. Nigel Kennedy was a good example back in the eighties."

"Didn't he start speaking funny too?"

"Yes, he did. And you could be right," said Cap. "Beryl reckoned she went on speaking like this at school just to make a statement of individuality, you know, "I might be adopted but I'm not dependent on anyone." But of course now she's starting on her career, she might see it as a marketing image thing. I don't know. Like I say, I don't really know the girl at all. But singing the cycle on Wednesday doesn't look like a good choice."

"Because of Lorraine Dacre, you mean?"

"Indeed. Also musically. I've never heard them without the original orchestral accompaniment. Sandel's a fine pianist, but they're bound to lose something."

A phone rang. It took Dalziel a second to realize it was in his own pocket.

"Bloody hell," he said. "Can't escape these things even in the bog. Hello! Wieldy, what's amiss? Hold on. I can hardly hear you."

He stood up, said to Cap, "I've marked my drink," and went out of the snug.

When he returned she said, "You weren't long. I've hardly touched your beer."

He finished the second pint, looked sadly at the third, and said, "I've got to go."

"Still business before pleasure," she said.

"This business," he said somberly. "Someone's been picked up. Just for questioning, nothing definite, but I need to be there. Sorry."

"Of course you've got to go," she said. "Andy…"

She hesitated. She'd anticipated having more time for negotiation about a possible future meeting before they parted. She hadn't yet made up her mind how she wanted to play it, but now wasn't the time to prevaricate.

"Andy, there's still a lot to say," she went on. "Promise you'll ring. Or better still call round. I've always got plenty of tofu in the fridge."

This reminder of her vegetarianism brought a wan smile.

"It's a date," he said. "See you."

He hurried out, leaving for possibly the first time in his life an untouched pint on the table.

She drew it to her and took a sip.

Not a gap bridged, she thought. But certainly a bridge commenced, even if it consisted only of pontoons, lifting and shifting in currents and tides, and promising only the most perilous of passages for each to the other's distant shore.

The first hospital gate Pascoe reached had an EXIT ONLY sign.

Pascoe turned in and roared up the drive toward the looming gray building.

There was a parking space vacant next to the main entrance. It was marked CHIEF EXEC. Pascoe swung into it, narrowly missing a reversing Jag XJS. He got out, slammed his door shut, and set off running. Through the Jag's open window a man called angrily, "Hey, you. That's my spot."

Over his shoulder Pascoe called, "Fuck you!" without slackening his pace.

He'd been here before, knew the layout well. Ignoring the elevator lift, he ran up the stairs to the third floor. It required no effort. Far from panting, it was as if his body had given up the need for breathing. There was a waiting room at the end of the children's ward. Through the open door he saw Ellie. He went in and she came to his arms.

He said, "How is she?"

"They're doing tests. They think it might be meningitis."

"Oh, Christ. Where is she?"

"First left, but they say we should wait till they tell us…"

"Tell us what? That it's too late?"

"Peter, please. Dick and Jill are here…"

For the first time he noticed the Purlingstones, clinging together on a sofa. The man tried a smile which made as little impression on his tense face as a damp match on concrete.

Pascoe didn't even try.

Breaking away from Ellie's grasp, he went out of the waiting room and straight through the first door on the left.

It was a small side ward with only two beds. In one he saw the blond head of little Zandra Purlingstone. In the other, Rosie.

There were doctors and nurses standing round. Ignoring them he went to the bedside and took his daughter's hand.

"Rosie, love," he said. "It's Daddy. I'm here, darling. I'm here."

For a fraction of a second it seemed to him the eyelashes flickered and those dark, almost black eyes registered recognition. Then they vanished, and there was nothing to show that she was even breathing.

Someone had him by the arm. A voice was saying, "Please, you must go. You have to wait outside. Please, let us do our job."

Then Ellie's voice saying, "Come on, Peter. For Rosie's sake, come on."

He was back in the corridor. The door closed. His daughter vanished from his sight.

He said to Ellie, "She recognized me. She really did. Just for a second. She knows I'm here. She'll be all right."

"Yes," said Ellie. "Of course she will."

Two men were coming along the corridor. One wore the hospital security uniform, the other an elegantly cut lightweight linen suit.

The suit said, "That's the fellow. Damn cheek."

The uniform said, "Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Lillyhowe says you've left your car in his reserved place."

Pascoe looked at them blankly for a long moment, then said slowly, "I'm not sure…"

"Well I'm absolutely sure," snapped the suit. "It was you. And you swore at me-"

"No," said Pascoe, balling his fist. "I mean, I'm not sure which of you to hit first."

The suit took a step back, the uniform a half step.

Ellie moved swiftly into the space created.

"For God's sake," she said crisply to the suit. "Our daughter's in there…"

The crispness faded, crumbled. She took a deep breath and tried again.

"Our daughter's in… Rosie's in…"

To her surprise she found the world had run out of words. And out of space, except that little room which held her daughter's life. And above all it had run out of time.

She sat in a waiting room, staring at a poster which proclaimed the comforts of the Patients' Charter. Peter was there, too, but after a few fruitless attempts they made no effort to speak. Why speak when all the words were done? The Purlingstones weren't there. Perhaps they were in another room like this one. Perhaps they were taking a miraculously recovered Zandra home. Either way, she didn't care. Their grief, their joy, was nothing to her. Not now. Not in this helpless, hopeless, endless now.

Something happened. A noise. Peter's mobile phone. Was time starting again?

He put it to his ear. Mouthed something at her. Dee. Ell. Dalziel. Fat Andy. She remembered him as in a dream, so surfeit swell'd, so old, and so profane. Peter was saying to her, "You okay?" She nodded. Why not? He said, "I'll go outside."

In the corridor Pascoe put the phone to his ear again, a gesture somewhat superfluous with Dalziel bellowing full blast, "Hello! HELLO! You there? Sod this bloody useless thing."

"Yes, I'm here," said Pascoe.

"Oh, aye? Where's here? Down a sodding coal mine?"

"At the Central Hospital," said Pascoe. "Rosie's here. They say she may have meningitis."

There was a silence, then the sound of a tremendous crash, as from a fist hitting something hard, and Dalziel's voice declared savagely, "I'll not thole it!"

Who, or what, he was addressing was unclear. Another silence, much briefer, then he spoke again in his more everyday matter-of-fact tone.

"Pete, she'll be okay. Right little toughie that one, like her mam. She'll make it, no bother."

It was completely illogical but somehow the blunt assurance, with its absence of breathless sympathy and request for details, did more for Pascoe's spirits than all the medical staff's qualified reassurances.

He said, "Thank you. She's… unconscious."

He found he couldn't say in a coma.

"Best thing," said Dalziel with a Harley Street certainty. "Time out to build up strength. Pete, listen, owt I can do, owt at all…"

Again, no conventional offer of help this. Pascoe guessed that if he hinted the hospital wasn't doing enough, the chief executive would find himself in an interview room, being made an offer he couldn't refuse.

"That's good of you," he said. "Was there some special reason you ringing, sir?"

"No, nowt. Well, in fact we've got someone in the frame. I'm on my way to Danby now. Likely it'll be nowt. Listen, Pete, forget the job

… well, no need to tell you that. But is there owt you were doing that I should know about and no other bugger can tell me?"

"Don't think so," said Pascoe. "Nobby Clark can fill you in on… oh, hang on, I've made an appointment to see Jeannie Plowright at Social Services at nine tomorrow morning. It's about Mrs. Lightfoot, the grandmother. There's stories about Benny being seen, Clark's got details, and I thought the old lady's the only person he'd want to make contact with, if she's alive, which I doubt, and if he's here, which I doubt even more. Straw clutching. Probably simplest to cancel it if you've got a better straw to clutch."

"No, we'll leave it till I see how things are looking. Pete, I'll be in touch. Remember, owt I can do. Luv to Ellie. Tell her…"

For once the Dalziel word-horde seemed to be empty.

"Yes," said Pascoe, "I'll tell her."

He stood for a moment, reluctant to move, as if the clocks had stopped and his movement would start them ticking again. A nurse passed him, paused, looked back, and said, "Excuse me, sir, no mobiles in here. They can set up interference."

"Interference?" said Pascoe. "Yes. Of course. Sorry."

He went back into the waiting room and put his arm round Ellie's shoulders.

"Andy sends his best. He says she'll be okay."

"He does? Oh, good. That's it, then. Let's all go home."

"Come on," he chided. "Who'd you rather have being optimistic? The pope or Fat Andy?"

She managed the ghost of a smile and said, "Point taken."

"There's a coffee machine on the next floor, look, it says so here. Let's head down there and treat ourselves."

"Suppose something happens…"

"It'll only take a minute. Better than sitting here… anything's better… Everything's going to be fine, love. Uncle Andy's promised, remember?"

The door opened. A woman came in. They knew her name was Curtis. She was the pediatric consultant.

She came straight to the point.

"She's very ill. I'm afraid we can now confirm it's meningitis."

"What kind?" demanded Ellie.

"Bacterial."

The worst kind. Even if he hadn't known that, Pascoe could have guessed from Ellie's expression.

He put his arm round her, but she twisted away. She was looking for someone to hit out at just as he had been with the chief executive and the security man.

He said, "Ellie."

She turned on him and yelled. "What price Uncle Andy now, eh? What price the fat bastard now?"