On Beulah Height

TEN

Shirley Novello was not a natural liar. During childhood, both parental and religious influences had urged upon her the primacy of truth.

Her parents had believed, or pretended to believe, anything she told them. At first, this had seemed fun. You could eat your ice cream then tell them you’d tripped and dropped it in the sand, and they’d give you the money for another. Or you could blame your little brother for some breakage you’d done yourself and sit back and watch him get a spanking. It had seemed easy to reconcile this with the standard of absolute truth in the confessional which she accepted without question. After all, what was the point of lying to God who knew everything, especially when by confessing all the lies she told at home, she could get absolution for them?

Then one day after confession, the priest had asked, ‘Why do we tell God the truth, Shirley?’ And she’d replied, ‘Because He would know if we were telling lies.’ And he’d said, ‘No, that’s not it. It’s because of the pain we give those who love us when they know we’re telling lies.’

That was all. But she knew he was talking about her mum and dad. And that was the end of lying.

Except, of course, when it was absolutely necessary. Adolescence taught her that truth was not always an option, a lesson confirmed most forcefully by work in the CID. Far too much of your time was spent on the slippery slopes of ends justifying means.

And with colleagues almost as much as criminals.

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Detective Inspector Headingley. ‘The DCI has assigned you to watching Geordie Turnbull?’

‘Yes, sir.’

She’d been both lucky and unlucky to find Headingley in charge of the incident centre when she reported to Danby. While he was the least likely of the CID hierarchy to authorize her ‘poncing about’ (his epicene usage) on her own line of enquiry, he was also least likely to question the alleged authority of a senior.

‘You’re seeing a lot of Mr Pascoe,’ he observed.

‘The super’s had me following up some of his lines of enquiry, and now things are looking a bit better at the hospital, he wants to be sure I’m doing things right, sir.’

Headingley nodded approvingly. This he could understand. Even at moments of great personal crisis, any self-respecting CID officer wants to keep an eye on any airheaded female who was getting her painted fingernails into his … the metaphor tapered out, but he knew what he meant.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll put it in the book, DCI’s assignment. And don’t take all day over it.’

But all day looked like what she was going to have to take, and each succeeding minute made it more likely that she would have to explain herself to at best Wield, at worst, the Fat Man.

The truth of her ‘assignment’, which she’d wrapped up so imposingly for Headingley, was that Pascoe had listened, or half-listened, to her assertion that, prompted by the name TIPLAKE on the bulldozer in the Neb Cottage photograph, she had examined the driver through the magnifying glass and was almost certain she could identify him as Geordie Turnbull. Then he had said, ‘So what?’

Good question, but one she’d hoped he might try to answer rather than simply ask.

Not that she wasn’t willing to give it a go.

‘Well, Benny would know him, wouldn’t he? I mean, he was around the dale all that summer. And suppose the reason Benny’s come back is to clear his name … Yes, that could be it. Benny’s innocent and he’s trying to work out who really did it, and he recalls that Turnbull was taken in for questioning back then, and he sees in the papers that he’s been questioned again … then he spots him in that photo, and you can see the name of the firm on the bulldozer, the old name, I mean, Tiplake it was. So Lightfoot checks in the business directories at the library and finds the address, only it’s Turnbull’s now of course …’

‘And goes out there this morning to try and beat the truth out of Geordie?’ Pascoe concluded for her. He didn’t hoot with laughter. Even if his present situation hadn’t put so much ground between himself and amusement, he probably wouldn’t have openly ridiculed her. But his serious expression and even tone didn’t conceal the fact that he thought she was being ridiculous.

‘It’s possible,’ she said defiantly.

‘If he’d read what’s been written about Turnbull in the local papers this week, why would he need to go burrowing among the business directories?’ asked Pascoe. ‘No problem about finding him after he read that lot.’

Even with half his mind on her hypothesis, he could see the gaping cracks in it, she thought bitterly.

‘No, sir,’ she said, trying not to sound like a sulking child.

‘So what did you think might be your next move?’ Pascoe enquired courteously.

They had reached the Water Company building and she brought the car to a halt by the main entrance.

‘Well, I had thought maybe a watch on Turnbull might be a good move,’ she said for the want of anything better.

‘In case Lightfoot comes back to try what another beating might do?’

This time he did manage a faint smile, and with a great effort she matched it.

‘Yeah, well, now I think about it, doesn’t seem all that likely, even if I’d managed to get it right, which seems even less likely.’

He opened the car door.

‘So why not do it?’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Keep an eye on Geordie.’

‘But you said … I thought you said …’ Time for truth, long past time for pussyfooting around. ‘… you did say, not in so many words, but what you meant was, it was a bloody stupid idea!’

He got out, closed the door, and leaned in through the open window.

‘No,’ he said mildly. ‘If I meant anything like that, it was that your reasons for doing it were … flawed. But the heart has its reasons that reason wots not of. I, for instance, have only the faintest notion what I’m doing here, but here I am. But it might be wise while you are keeping your watch to think up a better reason than the one you’ve offered me for doing it. Nor would I fall back on a French philosopher. Mr Dalziel is more a Nietzsche man. May I borrow your Post?’

He plucked the paper from the rear seat, managed the faint smile again, and walked away.

She stared after him without gratitude. All that crap about the heart’s reasons. The clever sod had some clever notions in his noddle that he didn’t have the time or maybe the inclination to waste on her. Or likely he’d say it was part of the learning process to make her work things out for herself. Who the fuck did he think he was? Socrates?

Now here she was, parked within sight of Turnbull’s bungalow, working out reasons for her presence, each ten times dafter than the last.

Turnbull was at home. Through her glasses she’d glimpsed him moving around inside. It had been early afternoon when she arrived, so whether he’d been out that morning or not, she had no way of knowing. Certainly there was only one digger remaining parked in the compound, so presumably the others were out on a job somewhere. Perhaps after the assault he didn’t feel well enough to go out to the sites himself.

Fortunately, Novello had had the sense to grab a pre-packed sandwich and a bottle of water from the incident room fridge. Even so, with the sun burning down and time ticking by, she guessed she was going to end up baked, parched and hungered before the day was out. And still nothing happened. The good part of the nothing was that nobody was trying to raise her with angry queries as to what the hell she thought she was doing. The bad part was that after an hour or so without further sight of Turnbull through the wide-open windows of the bungalow, she began to fear that he might somehow have slipped out of the back and away across the fields. Had there been a rear gate in the compound security fence? She tried to recall, and failed.

Perhaps she should take a stroll. Even if he clocked her, he’d only seen her the once, no reason he should remember.

Except of course that he was Geordie Turnbull. She recalled that unashamedly appreciative gaze which flattered rather than offended. Part of its power was that it seemed to be registering you as an individual, not just as an arrangement of tits and crotch. Once your face was filed in Geordie’s memory, she betted it was retrievable for ever.

But just as she thought both professional necessity and personal comfort made such a stroll essential, something happened.

A vehicle transporter turned into the compound. A flabbily fat man slid out and sat on the running board, gasping with the effort. He was wearing football shorts and a string vest through whose meshes glowed diamonds of red flesh. Flayed, you could have used him to decorate an Indian restaurant. Finally he recovered enough to reach into the cab, take out a plastic carrier bag and head to the bungalow, the door of which opened before him. He went inside. Twenty minutes later he re-emerged, minus the bag and plus a can of lager. Novello watched in envy as he squeezed the last drops into his mouth and handed the can to Turnbull who dropped it to the floor behind him. The two men now manoeuvred the digger on to the transporter, made it secure, and shook hands. Turnbull watched as the vehicle drove out of the compound, then turned back into the bungalow.

Novello made a note of the transporter number, called up Control on her radio and asked for a vehicle check. It was registered to Kellaway Plant Sales, proprietor Liberace Kellaway. Novello gave details of the transporter’s likely present location and asked if it could be stopped, ostensibly for a check on stability or something, but in fact to find out anything they could about the origins of the digger. When the sergeant i/c Control came on to enquire who it was requesting this misuse of hard-worked car officers’ time, with the implication that it had better not be anyone low as a DC, Novello thought of sheep and lambs and said, ‘Mr Dalziel would be grateful.’

In Mid-Yorkshire police circles, this was the equivalent of a Royal Command, and half an hour later the word came back. The transporter, which was being driven by Mr Kellaway himself (Liberace! thought Novello. What a fan his mother must have been. What a disappointment little Lib probably was!) had passed all tests satisfactorily. As for the digger, it had just been purchased from the firm of G. Turnbull, (Demolition amp; Excavation) Ltd of Bixford, and he had the papers to prove it.

Novello uttered her thanks, plus a request that no further reference be made to this matter on open air, hoping thus to delay the moment when the Fat Man discovered his name had been taken in vain.

Now she settled down again to wait, still hungry, still hot, but refreshed by hope as her mind began to get an inkling of what that smart-ass Pascoe had probably worked out several hours before.