On Beulah Height

SEVEN

Tuesday’s bright dawn had brought little but the blackness of contrast to the Pascoes, but Wednesday’s brought a glimpse of hope.

Mrs Curtis, the consultant, was still several watts short of optimism, but when she said, ‘For a while yesterday we seemed close to falling through, but now it seems more likely we were simply bottoming out,’ Ellie didn’t even register the medically patronizing we but simply embraced the embarrassed woman.

She knew there was no question yet of celebration. Rosie was still unconscious. But at least and at last the sunshine brought with it the hope of hope. And with hope came space for her mind to relax its relentless focus on a single object.

Halfway through the morning, Ellie was in the washroom regarding herself critically in the mirror. She looked a wreck, but that was nothing to the way Peter looked. He looked like a wreck that had had another couple of accidents. Which, she thought, was not all that far from the truth.

They were both in the wrong jobs, she’d often thought it. He should have been basking on the fringes of the life academic, trying his hand at the novel introspective, running Rosie back and forth to school, keeping the house ticking over … no, more than ticking over; on the odd occasion when he’d taken over the ironing, she’d found him pressing underpants, for God’s sake! With Peter in charge, they’d have crisp new sheets every night.

And herself? She should have been out there on the mean streets, riding the punches and taking the bumps, moving on from one case to the next with nothing to show but the odd bit of scar tissue, none of these deep bruises which keep on haemorrhaging around the bone long after the surface flesh has apparently recovered.

Trouble was, though they shared great areas of social conscience in common, the spin that nature and/or nurture had put on hers made her regard the police force as a cure almost as bad as the disease. Peter, on the other hand, though not blind to its flaws, felt himself duty driven to work from within. A right pious little Aeneas, Italiam non sponte sequor and all that crap. Which made her … Odysseus? Fat, earthy, cunning old Odysseus? Hardly! That was much more Andy Dalziel. Then Dido? Come on! See her chucking herself on a pyre ’cos she’d been jilted. Helen? Ellie looked at herself in the mirror. Not today. So who?

‘Me, myself,’ she mouthed in the mirror. ‘God help me.’

As she returned to the ward, a nurse came towards her, saying, ‘Mrs Pascoe, we’ve got someone on the phone for your husband. She says she’s a colleague and it’s important.’

‘She does, does she?’ said Ellie. ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

She went to the phone and picked it up.

‘Hello,’ she said.

There was silence, then a woman’s voice said, ‘I was trying to get hold of DCI Pascoe …’

‘This is Mrs Pascoe.’

‘DC Novello, Shirley Novello. Hi. Mrs Pascoe, I was so sorry to hear … how is she, the little girl?’

‘Hanging on,’ said Ellie, not about to share her hope of hope with a woman she’d only met once briefly. ‘So tell me, DC Novello, what’s so important?’

Another silence, then, ‘I just wanted a quick word … Look, I’m sorry, this is a terrible time, I know. It’s just that there’s this line of enquiry he started, really, and it would be useful, the way he looks at things … I’m sorry … it’s really insensitive, especially … it really doesn’t matter Mrs Pascoe. I do hope your little girl gets better soon.’

She meant, especially because it’s about the child who’d gone missing from Danby, thought Ellie. This was the woman who’d rung yesterday. Peter had mentioned her, provoking an outburst of indignation at such crassness. What had Peter replied? She lit a candle for Rosie.

Ellie had no time for religion, but no harm in hedging your bets with a bit of good old-fashioned magic.

‘That candle still burning?’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind. What precisely do you want, Miss Novello? No way you get to tell Peter without telling me first.’

Five minutes later she re-entered the ward.

Pascoe looked up and said, ‘Still nice and peaceful. Hey, you going somewhere?’

Ellie had brushed her hair and used her minimalist make-up to maximum effect.

‘No. You are. I want you to go home, have a bath, get a couple of hours sleep in a real bed. No, don’t argue. Come here.’

She led him to the window and swung the panel so that it acted as a mirror.

‘See that antique wreck standing next to that gorgeous woman? That’s you. If Rosie opens her eyes and sees you first, she’ll think she’s done a Rip Van Winkle and slept for fifty years. So go home. Sleep with your mobile under your pillow. Slightest change and I’ll ring till you waken, I promise.’

‘Ellie, no …’

‘Yes. And now. I’ve fixed a lift for you, that nice young girl from your office called … Shirley Novello, is it? She said she’d be delighted to run you home. She’s down in the car park waiting.’

‘Shirley? Again? Jesus …’

‘She’s in touch with him, too, I gather. Listen, she wants help and she must think you’re the only one if she’s willing to come after you here. Perhaps she’s delusional, but I think in this case, if you can help, you ought to.’

He shook his head, not in denial but in wonderment.

‘You are … ineffable,’ he said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m looking forward to being effed quite a lot when this is over,’ she said lightly. ‘Now go.’

‘Only if you’ll promise to do the same when I get back.’

‘Drive around with a DC? You must be joking. Yes, yes, I promise.’

They kissed. It was, she realized, the first intimate non-comforting contact they’d had since this began.

She watched him go, hoping her homeopathic theory would work, if that was the right way to describe putting him in the way of other parents’ woe at the loss of a child. No, it wasn’t the right way, she told herself, turning now to look down at Rosie. They weren’t going to lose their child. There was a candle burning for her. And, like Dido, after all, her mother would make a candle of herself if that’s what it took.

‘Hello, sir.’

‘And hello to you, too, Shirley,’ said Pascoe, getting into the car. ‘Kind of you to drive me home. You’ve got between here and there to tell me what you want to tell me.’

Novello thought, if you want to know what a man will look like when he’s old, put him by his child’s sickbed for a couple of nights.

But she responded to his crisp speech, not his wrecked appearance, and ran off the resume she had prepared with a Wieldian conciseness and lucidity.

He offered no compliment. Indeed, he seemed to offer little attention, apparently more interested in the crackling air traffic of her car radio which she’d left switched on.

She reached down to turn it off, but he grasped her hand and said, ‘No, leave it.’

It was the first time they’d made physical contact and in other circumstances with other officers she’d have suspected it was the preliminary to a pass and prepared for defensive action.

He held the hand for a second, then she had to change gear and he released it.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Benny’s been seen in Dendale and in the Central Library by a reliable witness. Agnes drew the money out of the bank. And Geordie Turnbull’s been attacked.’

Novello, who’d included the latter piece of information only in the interests of comprehensiveness, said, ‘Yes, but that’ll probably be some local nutter, someone like this Jed Hardcastle, perhaps …’

‘Geordie Turnbull’s been living in Bixford for years and making no secret about it, not unless you think having your name printed in big red letters over a fleet of bulldozers is being secretive. Why wait so long?’

‘Because of the Dacre girl going missing,’ said Novello, stating the obvious, and wondering whether this had been such a good idea. ‘That started it all up again.’

To her surprise, he laughed. Or made a sound which had a familiar resemblance to laughter.

‘Shirley, you should get it out of your mind that what happened to those families who lost their daughters is something that needs starting up again. It’s a permanent condition, no matter how long they survive. Like losing an arm. You might learn to live without it, but you never learn to live as if you’ve still got it.’

He spoke with a vehemence she found disturbing and when he saw the effect he was having on her, he took a breath and made himself relax.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just that in a case like this you share in the woes of others only insofar as they relate to, or underline your own. When I heard Rosie was ill, the fact that the Dacres’ child was missing, probably abducted, possibly already murdered, may not have gone out of my mind altogether, but it certainly dropped right out of my consciousness. Understandable initial reaction, you think? Perhaps so. And the perspective will return. But never the same. I know now that if I was within an arm’s length of fingering the collar of Benny or any other serial killer, and someone said, “Rosie needs you,” I’d let him go.’

He realized that his laid-back confidentiality was troubling her as much as his previous vehemence. He recalled a long time ago in his early days with Dalziel, the Fat Man in his cups had come close to talking about his broken marriage, and he’d shied away from the confidence, unwilling to know what his superior might regret telling.

‘In other words, I think we need to look beyond the Dendale families for Turnbull’s attacker. And you say he didn’t want to report it? That’s interesting.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, aware that the distance between the hospital and Pascoe’s house was growing shorter. ‘But I’m not really concerned with that bit of the investigation any more.’

But you’ve not forgotten it was you who got the lead in the first place, thought Pascoe, detecting resentment.

He said gently, ‘I know that being mucked around can be a real pain sometimes. But you’ve got to keep the whole investigation in view. That’s what the people you think are mucking you around are doing. Don’t get mad, get promoted. Mr Dalziel has thought from the start that Lorraine Dacre’s disappearance was connected with Dendale fifteen years back. I didn’t agree, but the more I see the way things are working out, the more I think he may be right. So, don’t create connections, but don’t overlook them, either.’

‘No, sir,’ said Novello. ‘They do keep on jumping up, don’t they? I read the old files. You recall that girl, Betsy Allgood, the one who got away from Benny? Well, seems she’s back too!’

She reached into the back seat, picked up the Post and dropped it in Pascoe’s lap.

Not such a clever idea, she thought, as he spent the next couple of minutes studying both pages, the one on the case and the one on the concert.

‘Betsy Allgood,’ he murmured. ‘There was a photo in the file. She didn’t look much like that.’

‘We grow up, sir,’ she said. ‘We start looking the way we want, not our parents, as you’ll likely find out.’

He glanced at her sharply, then smiled his thanks for this oblique reassurance.

‘Well, it’s certainly an improvement,’ he said. ‘She was, if I recall, a rather unprepossessing child.’

It was her turn to give him the sharp glance. He thought, that was pretty crass, Pascoe, in your situation being snooty about other people’s kids.

But the photo continued to bother him. Or rather the photos, because while Betsy/Elizabeth who he’d seen before looked totally unfamiliar, Walter Wulfstan whom he’d never seen rang some kind of bell. But why not? Local dignitary, the kind of man you were likely to see on the top table at some of the civic occasions he’d been delegated to attend as what Dalziel called the ‘smart-arse face of policing’.

And something else was bothering him too …

He said, ‘Pull in here, will you? By that phone box.’

She obeyed, puzzled, but had the wit to sit in silence while Pascoe listened, frowning to the air traffic on her radio.

‘Something’s happening,’ he said.

She said, ‘I didn’t hear anything, sir …’

‘No, it’s not what anyone’s saying, just now and then a pause, an inflexion … Maybe I’m way off beam, but do me a favour, Shirley. Check with the incident room at Danby.’

‘OK,’ she said, pulling out her mobile.

‘No,’ he said, pointing to the phone box. ‘If I’m right, you won’t get anything unless you’re on a land line.’

She flushed at her slowness, and got out of the car.

Pascoe studied the paper again, then twisted round to place it on the rear seat. Novello had the same attitude as Ellie towards her car, he observed. You kept the driver’s seat free and used the rest as a mobile litter bin. He frowned as he saw a couple of plastic evidence bags amidst the debris. Things like that you kept locked in your boot till you could hand them in for examination or storage as soon as possible.

He picked the bags up and set them on his lap. They both had tags indicating their contents had been examined by the lab. The larger bag contained a cigarette packet, two Sunday papers and a stained tissue, the smaller one a camera battery and a silver earring in the shape of a dagger.

He was still looking at this bag when Novello got back into the car, but her words put any questions he had to the back of his mind.

‘They’ve found her,’ she said in a flat controlled voice. ‘I spoke to Mr Headingley. Not formally identified yet, but it seems Sergeant Wield’s sure. He took her dog up the valley …’

‘Clever old Wieldy,’ said Pascoe. ‘Doesn’t explain how everyone else missed her. Dogs, thermal imaging …’

‘There was a dead sheep. In this weather …’

‘Clever old killer,’ said Pascoe, trying to keep the image of the dead girl at arm’s length. ‘Anything on cause yet?’

‘No sir. The SOCO team’s up there with the doctor now. This knocks my notion about abduction on the head.’

She too was trying to cope with it by losing the child’s body in a heap of detective abstractions.

Pascoe said, ‘I bet the super’s pleased.’

‘Sir?’ Her indignation couldn’t be hidden.

‘Because he’s got a body,’ said Pascoe. ‘He’d given her up long since. From the very first moment he heard she’d gone missing, I think. But to get after the killer he needs something concrete. Otherwise you’re just punching air. So, anything else?’

‘Yes, the super briefed the DI before he went off up the valley.’

She passed on the results of Dalziel’s interview with Jackie Tilney, with an amount of detail that surprised Pascoe.

‘You must have a lot of influence with George Headingley,’ he said.

The DI belonged to an old school who believed that telling DCs too much only confused them and telling female DCs anything other than how many sugars you took was a complete waste of breath.

‘Told him I was under instructions from you, sir, and you wanted a blow-by-blow. He sends his best wishes, by the way, for … you know …’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Pascoe. ‘This book … The Drowning of Dendale. Ellie’s got a copy lying around somewhere. She’s into this local-history stuff. But why would Benny want to see it? And what would he need photocopies of the maps for? By all accounts, he knew the valley like the back of his hand.’

‘That was fifteen years ago, before the valley was flooded,’ said Novello.

‘With the drought it’s pretty well back to what it was,’ objected Pascoe.

‘Except that all the buildings have been bulldozed,’ said Novello, starting up the car and pulling away from the kerb.

‘I suppose so,’ said Pascoe. ‘Tell me, these evidence bags …’

She had noticed the bags in his lap and anticipated his reprimand.

‘It’s OK, sir,’ she said. ‘They’re for dumping not storing. It’s stuff I got out of the litter bin at the viewpoint on the Highcross Moor road when I was thinking abduction. The lab found nothing, not surprising now the girl’s been found in the valley. I’ll stick them back in a rubbish bin next time I have a clear out.’

‘Fine,’ he said.

He sat in silence for the rest of the journey. Not the best idea she’d ever had, thought Novello. But what had she expected? He’d been useful last time, probably because his mind had already taken a couple of hypothetical steps ahead before his personal crisis intervened. But since then, as he said himself, the Dacre case had been relegated to a very low place in his mental priorities.

When they reached his house, he got out, still clutching the plastic bags.

‘Sir,’ she said, pointing.

‘What? Oh, yes. I’ll stick them in our bin, shall I? Look, come inside for a moment.’

She followed him inside. He headed straight upstairs, leaving her wondering whether she was meant to follow. Not that she cared what was meant. Down here by the open door was the place to be. Pascoe was neither a verbal nor a physical groper, but men under stress could behave strangely, and being assaulted by a popular senior officer with a kid on the danger list was not a good career move for an ambitious woman police officer.

A few moments later, he came back down, clutching a book.

‘Here we are. I knew we had a copy. The Drowning of Dendale. Let’s see if we can find what so interested Lightfoot.’

‘It was the maps, sir. We know that,’ she said patiently, like an infant teacher.

He caught the intonation, smiled at her, and said, ‘Thank you, nurse, but that was the first time. He had photocopies of them. So what brought him back to take another look?’

He went into the lounge, sat down and began to flip through the book. Novello stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.

He supposed he must have glanced through the volume some time in the past, but apart from the first panoramic view of the dale which Mrs Shimmings had shown him, he could remember nothing of it. In any case, what would any previous examination have meant to him? But now he had looked down at the dale as it had become, and he had seen several of its old inhabitants as they had become, and these pictures brought the past to life in a way that, unaided, his imagination could never have managed.

Here were all the buildings he knew only as heaps of rubble scarcely distinguishable from the stony fellside on which they lay.

Here was Heck, a solid, rather stern house even in the bright sunlight which filled all the photos. No one in sight, but a child’s swing on an oak tree in the garden had a twist to its ropes as if some small form had just stepped off and slipped quietly away.

Here was Hobholme, one of those old farms which had grown in linear progression, with barn tagged on to house, shippen to barn, lambing shed to shippen, and so on as each need arose. A woman was caught walking purposefully along the line of buildings with a pail in either hand. In the delicate young profile, Pascoe had no difficulty in identifying the features of Molly Hardcastle. Here she was going about her business with the dutiful stoicism of a hillfarmer’s wife, not happy exactly, her mind perhaps preoccupied with contrasting the hard expectations of her husband with the softer approaches of Constable Clark. Were these just the idle dreams of a hard-worked wife? Was her love for her three young children, and perhaps the memory that Hardcastle too had once been tender, enough to have kept her anchored here at Hobholme? Or was she seriously contemplating braving her husband’s anger and her neighbours’ gossip and making a break for happiness? Idle dreams or positive planning, how she must have felt she had paid for either so soon after when little Jenny walked away alone from the bathing pool …

A few pages on was The Stang, with the carpenter’s shed bigger than the whitewashed cottage, smoke pouring out of its chimney to remind the onlooker that fire was a necessary workmate even when the sun was hot enough to bake apples on the tree. Outside the shed stood two men, stripped to the waist with runnels of sweat down their forearms and pectorals, one clutching a saw and the other a plank, both smiling at the camera, clearly relieved at this excuse to pause and take a well-earned breather. There was a strong family resemblance. One was doubtless Joe Telford, the other his brother George, but an unfamiliar eye couldn’t tell the difference between them. Doubtless anybody could now.

The church was here too, St Luke’s, with a newly-wed couple emerging, all smiles and happiness; the Holly Bush Inn with folk sitting outside, enjoying a drink in the evening sun, looking as used to these al fresco pleasures as any Provencal peasant; Low Beulah, where the Allgoods lived, with a slim dark-haired man emerging, his leathery face creased into a Heathcliffian frown as though about to give the photographer a piece of his mind.

And here was the village school.

Pascoe’s heart contracted, and he felt Shirley Novello stiffen beside him. All the valley’s children were here, about two dozen of them, posed in three rows, front sitting on the ground, middle kneeling, back standing with their teachers, Mrs Winter and Miss Lavery, at either side. His eyes ran along the rows. There had been photos of the missing girls in the file and he picked out their little blonde heads and smiling faces one by one. The dark solemn features of Betsy Allgood were easily spottable too. And another face which looked familiar among the bigger girls on the back row … now he made the connection … this must be Elsie Coe, age ten or eleven, unmistakable to anyone who’d studied the police hand-out photo of her daughter, Lorraine Dacre.

The school photo had the caption Smiling on a bright future, but not in Dendale!

No. Not in Dendale.

There were other landscape pictures — of the mere with someone swimming in it; of Beulah Height with the old sheepfold built from stones of the even older hill-fort; of White Mare’s Tail in full spate, which meant it was probably taken earlier than the others, before the drought took hold. Then he reached the second section, ‘The Drowning’, with the epigraph:

Now followed photos of the building of the dam and the clearing of the valley. Here were people loading possessions into vans or on to trailers pulled by tractors. Here were sheep being brought down the fellside by the Heathcliffian character who was probably Mr Allgood; here was the churchyard with graves gaping wide and an anxious-looking vicar watching the disinterment of a coffin. Here was the Holly Bush with the landlord removing the sign. Here was the schoolroom, empty of children and desks, with only a few remnants of artwork stuck to the windows to show what this place had once been. And here was the village hall, a man coming out, his arms weighed down with box files, back-heeling the door shut behind him.

The face was unmistakable. Sergeant Wield. The police, too, had had to pack up, though the text made no reference to the other tragedy being played out in Dendale that long hot summer. Probably right for this kind of book. Those involved in the investigation would need no souvenir.

Pascoe flicked on, wondering what the hell, maps apart, Benny Lightfoot — if it were he — could have been interested in?

In the first section there had been only one glimpse of Neb Cottage seen distantly, but here there was another, much closer. Yet not the kind of shot the returning native would want to pore over. It showed the cottage at the very moment of its destruction. It was a dramatic picture with evening sunlight setting everything in bold definition. A bulldozer with the name TIPLAKE clearly legible down the arm of its shovel was climbing up the side of the building like a rapacious dinosaur, the walls were collapsing like a shot beast and the chimney stack had cracked above the gable and was leaning back like a mouth gaping to let out an agonized death cry.

He went on to the end. The second-last picture showed the release of the Black Moss waters from Highcross Moor over the col between the Neb and Beulah Height. It was a dark and dismal picture, with the skies heavy with cloud and the air dense with the downpour which had broken the drought.

And the last picture of all showed the new dale, in sunshine again, with the reservoir brimfull, a scene as quiet and as peaceful and as lifeless as a crematorium Garden of Remembrance.

He looked up at Novello. She met his gaze hopefully, but not, he was glad to gauge, expectantly.

He said, ‘He goes to see his gran, he visits the Central Library and studies old newspapers and this book, he takes photocopies of the maps and camps out in Dendale till yesterday morning when he packs up and comes back to town and the library. This we know. What more do you want to know?’

Her expression changed from vague hope to bafflement.

‘Well, I want to know what he’s up to, I want to know why he …’

‘Yes,’ he interrupted. ‘But why do you want to know why?’

‘Because … because …’ Then suddenly she was with him.

‘Because knowing might help us catch him soon as possible so we can question him about his possible involvement in the killing of Lorraine Dacre,’ she said.

‘That’s right. Might help us catch him. Frankly, it’s much more likely we’ll pick him up through the camper van, or because he calls in again at Wark House. You’ve got that covered, I take it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So don’t beat your brains out on this clever detective stuff,’ he said wearily. ‘Curiosity’s fine, but there comes a time when you’ve got to rejoin the team, even if it means pouring the tea, OK?’

‘I just thought …’

‘No harm in thinking. Here. Take a look yourself before you go. Just slam the door behind you. But not too loud, eh?’

He rose and left the room. She heard him going up the stairs again.

She sat down, opened the book at random and found herself looking at the picture of the bulldozer destroying Neb Cottage.

Significant or not, this is one picture Benny Lightfoot would spend time over, she was sure. She tried to imagine herself looking at a similar photo of the destruction of the suburban semi where she’d been brought up. Even though it had none of the individuality of Neb Cottage, it would rend her heart to see the rooms where she had felt uniquely secure ripped open to the sky.

But Pascoe was right, she thought, closing the book. You shouldn’t confuse idle curiosity with good CID work. Time to head out to Danby, see what new assignments were being dished out following the discovery of the body, play in the team even if you ended up pouring the tea …

‘Fuck that,’ she said aloud. Opened the book again. Looked again. Went to the foot of the stairs and called, ‘Sir? You still awake?’

There was a pause, then Pascoe’s voice said, ‘What?’

She went up the stairs, previous doubts forgotten, and stood at the open bedroom door. Pascoe was sitting at a dressing table on to whose surface he had spilled what looked like the contents of a jewel box. He glanced up at her and said again irritably, ‘What?’

‘Have you got a magnifying glass?’ she asked.

She half expected some sarcasm about Sherlock Holmes, but all he said impatiently was, ‘Bureau. Left-hand drawer,’ and resumed his sorting out of the shining baubles.

She went downstairs, found the bureau, found the glass, and returned to the book.

‘Bingo,’ she said.

‘Still here? Good.’ Pascoe was in the hallway.

‘Sir, take a look …’

‘Yes, yes, tell me all about it in the car. I need a lift back to town.’

‘But I thought … Mrs Pascoe said …’

‘Just take me back.’

‘Yes, sir. To the hospital, sir?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You can take me to the offices of Mid-Yorkshire Water plc.’