On Beulah Height

SEVEN

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 judgement 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 put-down of the DC, 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 unpaid, unprivileged farm labourer. 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 enquiries,’ 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 enquiries. 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 some day.

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 nought 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 fervour 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 spoilt. 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 towards 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 further.

‘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 short-sighted. Presumably the stick was for detecting obstacles on unfamiliar terrain.

Clark had taken a few steps towards the office. He paused and looked at Pascoe enquiringly. 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 of 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 offence 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 practised 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 OK, 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 towards 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!’