On Beulah Height

SIX

The woman’s name was Jackie Tilney. She was overweight, overworked, over thirty, and so pissed off with having told her story to three different sets of cops that she was ready to tell the fourth to take a jump.

Only the fourth wasn’t a set, though possessed of enough flesh to make two or three ordinary bobbies, and if he’d taken her putative advice and jumped, she feared for the foundations of the public library where she worked.

So she told her story again.

She had definitely seen the man in the photograph. And she had spoken with him. And he had an Australian accent.

‘The first time was …’

‘Hang about. First time?’ said Dalziel. ‘How many times were there?’

‘Two,’ she retorted. ‘Don’t your menials tell you anything?’

Dalziel regarded her thoughtfully. He liked a well-made feisty woman. Then he recalled that in Cap Marvell, he’d got the cruiser-weight Queen of Feist, smiled fondly and said, ‘Nay, lass, I don’t waste time with tipsters when I can go straight to the horse’s mouth. Go on.’

Deciding there had to be a compliment in there somewhere, Jackie Tilney went on.

‘The first time was last Friday. He came to the reference desk and asked if we had anything about the building of the Dendale Reservoir. I told him that he could look at the local papers for the period on our microfiche system. Also this book.’

She showed him the volume. It was called The Drowning of Dendale, a square volume, not all that thick. He remembered it vaguely. It had been written by one of the Post journalists and contained more photographs than text, basically a before-and-after record.

‘He asked me to do a couple of photocopies,’ Tilney went on. ‘These maps.’

She showed him. One was of Dendale before the flooding, the other, after.

‘Did you chat to him at all?’

‘A bit. He had a nice easy manner. Just about the weather and such, how it was a lot cooler back home this time of year and how he’d packed three raincoats for his trip to England because everyone told him it rained all the time.’

‘Was he trying to chat you up, do you think? Good-looking lass like yourself, it ’ud not be surprising.’

‘Am I meant to be flattered?’ she said. ‘No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t come on at me at all. It made a nice change. World’s full of fellows who think, just because you’re on the other side of a counter, you’re sales goods. I got the impression he had other things on his mind, anyway.’

‘Such as?’

‘Look, mister, I’m too busy trying to keep an underfunded understaffed library system going in this town to have time to develop my psychic powers. I wouldn’t be spending this amount of time with you if it didn’t have something to do with that missing girl.’

‘Now, what makes you think that, luv?’

‘I read the Post, don’t I?’

She produced the paper and spread it before him, open at an article about the investigation with photos of Lorraine Dacre and her parents, of the Hardcastles and Joe Telford, of Geordie Turnbull and his solicitor, and one of Dalziel himself, caught at what looked like a moment of religious contemplation.

With that subtlety and taste for which British journalists are universally famed, the editor had opted to print on the page opposite a feature about the Mid-Yorkshire Music Festival, highlighting the facts that the opening concert was in Danby, featuring ‘Songs for Dead Children’ sung by Elizabeth Wulfstan, who as a child in Dendale fifteen years back had been the last and only surviving victim of the uncaught abductor of three local girls.

There was a full-figure picture of Elizabeth looking inscrutable, a close-up of Walter Wulfstan looking irritated, and a mid-shot of Sandel on a piano stool looking bored, with the Turnip by the piano looking charming.

Without being actionable, the combined effect of the two pages was to suggest that the police were as out of their depth now as they’d been fifteen years ago.

‘Sounds like you need all the help you can get,’ said Jackie Tilney.

‘I’ll not quarrel with that,’ said Dalziel. ‘So that’s the first time you saw him. What about the second?’

‘Yesterday afternoon, he were back. He went through the papers again. And then he went through the book. He was noting things down. Then I noticed he’d left the table where he’d been sitting and I thought he’d gone. But I glimpsed him over there, behind that stack.’

‘And what’s kept over there?’ asked Dalziel.

‘Business directories, mainly,’ said Tilney.

‘Oh aye?’

Dalziel strolled over and took a look. She was right. Why shouldn’t she be? He returned to the desk.

‘And then?’

‘And then he left. He was going somewhere else in town, I think. I saw him looking at one of those town maps you get from the Tourist Centre. And that was the last I saw of him till that constable of yours stuck that picture in front of me this morning. By the by, is he fit to be let out by himself? The bugger came after me with his stick!’

‘He’s an impulsive young lad,’ said Dalziel. ‘But good-hearted. I’ll have a fatherly word with him.’

He gave her a savage smile suggesting the father he had in mind was Cronos.

‘Are we done?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer. When you’ve caught a bright witness, don’t let it go till you’ve squeezed it dry, was a good maxim. A uniformed constable approached and was not put off by Dalziel’s Gorgon glare.

‘What?’

‘You’re to ring Sergeant Wield at the caravan, sir.’

Meaning, use a land line not your mobile for extra security. Meaning … Jackie Tilney said, ‘There’s a phone in the office. You can be private there.’

She’d caught the vibes of his reaction. Sharp lady.

He went through and dialled. Half a ring and the phone was answered.

‘It’s me,’ he said.

‘We’ve found her, sir.’

The tone told him, dead. His head had long since given up hope of any other outcome, but a tightening of the chest told him his heart had kept a secret vigil.

He said, ‘Where?’

‘Up the valley.’

Where he himself had ordered the abandonment of the search the previous night. Shit.

He said, ‘I’m on my way. You got things started?’

Unnecessary question.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And quiet as you can, Wieldy.’

Unnecessary injunction. Born of his own sense of missing things.

‘Yes, sir.’

He put the phone down and went back to the desk.

‘That’ll do for now, luv,’ he said. ‘Thanks for your help.’

Her eyes suggested his efforts to stay casual were failing.

He picked up The Drowning of Dendale.

‘All right if I borrow this?’

‘Long as you pay the fine,’ she said. ‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks,’ he said.

He strode out of the library. Suddenly he felt full of energy. The pain at the confirmation of the child’s death was still there, but alongside it was another feeling, less laudable and best kept hidden from others, but unhideable from himself.

After fifteen years, he finally had a body. Bodies told you things. Bodies had been in contact with killers at their most desperate, hasty, and unthinking moments. Mere vanishings were the mothers of rumours, of false trails, of myths and imaginings. But a body …!

He might hate himself for it, but he could not keep a spring out of his step as he headed for his car.