On Beulah Height

NINE

‘Don’t imagine just ’cos you don’t show it, I don’t know you think this is a waste of bloody time,’ snarled Dalziel.

Wield, by his side, viewing with his customary impassivity the overgrown hedgerows reducing the already narrow road along which they were moving at a perilous speed, did not bother to reply.

They were on their way from Danby to Nether Dendale to talk again with Mrs Holmes, and though the sergeant was certain he’d got all there was to be got out of the woman, and that he’d done all there was to be done about it, viz put out an alert for a white camper with a C, 2, and a 7 in its plate, arranged for copies of his updated picture of Benny Lightfoot to be distributed to all reliefs, and sent a fax to Adelaide saying their previous enquiry about the Slater family was now urgent, he didn’t think this revisit was a waste of time. This enquiry was building up a head of frustrated energy in the Fat Man which a wise subordinate took every opportunity to release. And besides, the very sight of the Fat Man at full throttle was often a remarkable aide-memoire even to the most co-operative of witnesses.

In fact, in terms of Mrs Holmes, it did turn out to be non-productive. She had given Wield her all. Dalziel kept on pressing till finally her husband growled through his tangle of beard, ‘Enough’s enough. You buggers got no beds to go to? You missed him last time, what meks you think all this durdum’s going to get you any closer this?’

‘What’s that you say?’ demanded Dalziel rounding on him.

Holmes didn’t flinch.

‘I said, my missus has told you all she’s got to tell and it’s about time …’

‘No, no,’ said Dalziel impatiently. ‘You said, all that durdum, right?’

‘It means fuss, or noise,’ Wield interpreted helpfully.

‘I know what it bloody well means,’ said Dalziel. ‘Mrs Holmes, I’m sorry to have kept you up late. You’ve been a great help. Thanks a lot. And Mr Holmes …’

‘Aye?’

‘I seem to recollect it’s a farmer’s responsibility to keep his hedges from blocking public roads. You should get them seen to afore there’s an accident. Good night.’

They got back in the car, but instead of heading back to Danby, Dalziel drove up the valley till they reached the locked gate across the reservoir road.

‘Fancy a walk?’ he said.

They took torches but didn’t need them. There was an almost full moon hanging like a spotlight in the inevitably clear sky. By its light they climbed the steps up to the top of the dam wall and stood there, looking across the silvered waters of the shrunken mere to the sharp silhouette of Lang Neb and Beulah Height.

‘Search is knackered over Danby side,’ said Dalziel. ‘And Desperate Dan wants his plods back. Mebbe we should have spent more time looking on this side, eh? At the very least, we should have looked in the mere. I’ll have a team of mermaids over here first thing in the morning. What do you think?’

‘Good idea, sir,’ said Wield. ‘I’ll see to it if you like.’

Privately he thought that trawling the mere was a waste of time, but he knew that the Fat Man was being driven by more than duty here, so he looked up at the magnificent sweep of stars and held his peace.

Nor did he complain when back at Danby, though there was nothing more to be done, Dalziel kept him from his bed for another half hour or more with fruitless speculation. But finally they were done and took leave of each other, and drove their separate ways home. Or rather, Wield drove home, but Dalziel drove back to Cap Marvell’s flat.

He didn’t know whether he’d have gone in if a light hadn’t been showing, but it was, so he did.

Cap was waiting up. She looked at him enquiringly and said, ‘Anything?’

He said, ‘Nowt that makes sense. If it is Benny back, it needs a wiser head than mine to suss out why.’

As on his first arrival, the revelation of vulnerability touched her deeply and she went to him and took him in her arms.

This time their love-making was slower, deeper, though its climax was as explosive as ever.

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘That was like … like …’

‘Like what?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. Like as if someone had shaken a bottle of bubbly up in heaven and popped the cork, and we were in one of the bubbles streaming out across the cosmos.’ Then she laughed at her own floweriness and went on, ‘Sorry about the purple prose, but you know what I mean, don’t you?’

‘Oh aye,’ he said. ‘But likely it were just God farting in his bath.’

She pushed herself far enough back from him to beat his insensitive breast, then let him pull her close again.

‘How on earth have I let myself get involved with a Neanderthal like you, Andy?’ she asked.

‘It’s the uniform,’ he said.

‘You don’t wear a uniform.’

‘I’m speaking metabolically,’ he said. ‘It’s the authority turns you on. I’ve had snouts like you before. It’s my body they want, not my money.’

‘I’m not your snout,’ she protested.

‘No? Then it must be my natural charm. Am I to keep the key in case I can get tomorrow night?’

‘I suppose it’s marginally better than having you kick the door down. But tomorrow night I shall be busy myself till quite late. In Danby, oddly enough. It’s the first concert of the festival.’

‘I’d not forgotten,’ he said. ‘The Turnip and yon Wulfstan lass. I’ve been thinking about her.’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’ve been doing more than thinking. I’ve been talking. My friend, Beryl — you remember, the headmistress who had Elizabeth in her school …?’

‘Oh aye. One of your spiders on the worldwide web.’

‘Thank you for that, Andy. Well, she rang, and during the course of our conversation, I quite naturally mentioned Elizabeth Wulfstan …’

‘You pumped her!’ exclaimed Dalziel delightedly. ‘I always knew you were a natural!’

‘In its Elizabethan sense, I think I must be,’ said Cap. ‘What she told me was of great interest. And as I cannot see how it can be relevant to your enquiries and therefore qualifies as simple gossip, I shall not hesitate to pass it on. Of Elizabeth’s early history, Beryl knew nothing, except that she was in fact distantly related to Chloe Wulfstan … What’s the matter?’

‘Durdum,’ said Dalziel.

‘Sorry?’

‘Durdum. Means a lot of noise and fuss. I heard this farmer use it tonight. He’s from Dendale. It rang a bell. That’s the only place I’ve heard it used.’

‘Philology now,’ said Cap impatiently. ‘Shall I go on?’

‘The Wulfstan girl used it too,’ said Dalziel. ‘And glorrfat. Another Dendale word. She called me glorrfat. Either she’s really turning the screw or she’s from Dendale! And related to Chloe, you say?’

His mind was trying to superimpose an image of a tall slim woman with shoulder-length blonde tresses on an image of a small chubby child with cropped black hair. Nothing matched … except mebbe those dark, unblinking eyes …

‘Shall I go on?’

‘Yeah. What happened?’

‘Well, it was all very sad really, though happily it seems to have worked out more or less all right. It seems that when she first came to the school, Elizabeth was a rather unprepossessing, chubby child with short black hair … Andy, I wish you wouldn’t twitch? Is it a revival of sexual passion or merely the DT’s?’

‘Just keep talking,’ he urged.

‘Best offer I’ve had all night,’ she said. ‘But a change took place. Tell me, was the Wulfstans’ real daughter, the one who went missing, a slim, blonde child?’

‘Aye, were she,’ said Dalziel. ‘Pretty as a picture.’

‘Well, it was that picture which probably got into Elizabeth’s head. That’s what they all guessed she was trying to do. Turn herself into the child her adoptive parents had lost. She started to lose weight, but no one paid much heed. Adolescent girls do go through all kinds of changes. And she let her hair grow. Only of course it was the wrong colour. And that’s where the tragedy, or near tragedy, happened. It seems one night she shut herself in the bathroom with a bottle of bleach and set about trying to turn her hair blonde. The results were devastating. Fortunately, Chloe heard her screams and got her under the shower. But her scalp was badly damaged. She was lucky not to have got any in her eyes. And while she was in hospital they realized that far from just losing puppy fat, the girl was severely anorexic.’

‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Dalziel. ‘From the start. First off I thought she were taking the piss with the way she spoke. Even when I realized she weren’t, I still had this feeling she were having a secret laugh. It were because I didn’t recognize her.’

‘You knew her? When? How?’

‘Back in Dendale,’ said Dalziel. ‘She were the last of the girls to get attacked, the only one to get away. She were little Betsy Allgood.’