On Beulah Height

TWELVE

At five o’clock, Geordie Turnbull was on the move.

Novello had been driven by a call of nature to leave the car in search of seclusion. This enforced exploration had led her to a small copse in a field almost opposite the compound where, relief achieved, she discovered that with the aid of her glasses, she was able to get a view clear through the length of the bungalow’s living room, from open front window to open French door.

She could see Turnbull’s head and shoulders as he slouched in an armchair, occasionally taking a sip from a glass. Then he straightened up, reached out and picked up the telephone.

He didn’t dial so it had to be an incoming call. It didn’t last long. He replaced the receiver, drained his glass and stood up.

Then he moved out of sight. Novello didn’t hang about but headed back to her car fast.

Her instinct proved right. A minute later, Turnbull came out of the bungalow carrying a bag. He got into the Volvo estate and drove out through the compound gate, turning eastward. It was a fairly empty B-road and Novello hung well back. But six or seven miles beyond Bixford, the B-road joined the busy dual carriageway to the coast and she had to accelerate to keep him within sight.

A few miles further on he signalled to turn off into a service area. She thought it must be fuel he was after, but he turned into the car park, got out, still carrying the bag, and headed for the cafeteria.

Novello followed. She hung back till several more people joined the queue behind him, then took her place. He bought a pot of tea and carried it to a table by the window overlooking the road. She noticed he took the seat which gave him a view of the entrance door.

She got a coffee and found a seat a few tables behind him. Someone had left a newspaper. She picked it up and held it so that, if he should happen to glance round, half her face would be covered. If his roving eye was keen enough to identify her from the top half alone, tough.

He was waiting for someone, there was no doubt about that. He poured his tea and raised the cup to his lips with his left hand, his right never letting go of the handle of the bag on the chair next to his, and his head angled towards the doorway.

This went on for twenty minutes. People came and ate and left. A clearer-up tried to remove Novello’s empty cup, but she hung onto it. She had turned the pages of her paper several times without reading a word or even identifying which title she was holding. He likewise had squeezed the last drops out of his teapot. More time passed. Whatever reason he had for being here, he was determined his journey should not have been in vain.

Then finally he froze. Not that he’d been moving much before, but now he went so still he made the furniture look active.

Novello looked towards the entrance door.

She knew him at once from Wield’s doctored photograph.

Benny Lightfoot had just come into the cafeteria.

Andy Dalziel was standing at the edge of Dender Mere, close by the pile of stones which marked the site of Heck Farm. On the sun-baked mud at his feet lay a small selection of bones. He stirred them with his toe.

‘Radius, ulna, and we think these could be carpal bones, but being small, they’ve been a bit more mucked about,’ said the chief mermaid, whose everyday name was Sergeant Tom Perriman.

‘Age? Sex? How long they’ve been there?’ prompted Dalziel greedily.

Perriman shrugged his broad rubberized shoulders.

‘We just pulled ’em out,’ he said. ‘Adult, I’d say, or adolescent at least.’

‘And the rest?’

‘Still looking,’ said Perriman. ‘Funny really. Not much in the way of current here. You’d expect them to stay pretty much together even after a fairly long time. Pure chance I found them. We weren’t really interested in searching near the side where it’s so shallow …’

‘Where exactly?’ demanded Dalziel.

‘Just here,’ said Perriman, disgruntled at having his narrative flow interrupted.

He indicated a spot on the watery side of the exposed pile of rubble and went on, ‘I was just coming out, stood up to walk the last couple of yards and felt something under my foot. Of course it would have been a lot deeper here before the drought. But where’s the rest, that’s my question.’

‘Perhaps there is no more,’ suggested Wield.

‘What? Someone cut off an arm and hoyed it into the mere?’ said Dalziel. ‘Still means there’s the rest of him somewhere, or some bugger caused a bit of comment by going out for a stroll with a full set of arms and coming back one short.’

‘Some very secretive folk in Mid-Yorkshire, sir. Any road, chances are it’s nowt to do with our case.’

‘Oh aye? So what are you suggesting, Wieldy? Chuck it back and if any bugger asks, tell ’em it got away? Listen, even if it’s not our case, it’s certainly another of our cases. Bag this lot and get them down to the lab, Tom. And keep looking.’

The Fat Man turned and headed toward his Range Rover, Wield following.

‘There’s been a few suicides up here, sir,’ he said.

‘Aye, I think of them every time I mash my tea, Wieldy,’ said Dalziel. ‘But we usually trawl them out, don’t we?’

‘The ones we know about,’ agreed the sergeant. ‘But anyone could come up here and take a walk into the middle with a pocketful of stones and end up a statistic on our missing persons list.’

‘I may have to give up tea,’ said Dalziel. ‘You know, I never liked this water from the first time I saw it. Something about Dender Mere always gave me the creeps. Here, that sounds like George Headingley laying an egg on the car radio. What’s woken him up, I wonder?’

‘Soon find out,’ said Wield, picking up the mike and responding.

‘Is he there, Wieldy?’ demanded Headingley. ‘Tell him we’ve just got a message in from DC Novello. She says she’s sitting in the cafeteria of the Orecliff Services on the coast road watching Geordie Turnbull having a chat with Benny Lightfoot. You see what this means? They could be in it together! Two of them, not just the one. That ’ud explain a hell of a lot, wouldn’t it?’

Dalziel reached over and took the mike.

He said, ‘It wouldn’t explain what you’re doing telling the world and his mother this on the open air, George. So shut up unless you’re sending the four-minute warning. We’re on our way!’

‘So what do you think, sir?’ said Wield as they drove away. ‘Two for the price of one?’

‘I think George Headingley got his brain on the National Health and his immune system’s rejecting it,’ said Dalziel. ‘But if yon Ivor really has got us Benny Lightfoot, I think I might have to marry her.’

At about the same time, Rosie Pascoe woke again and announced she was hungry. When she was only allowed a very light amount of liquid intake, she started to complain bitterly and her parents looked at each other with broad smiles.

‘Am I very ill?’ the little girl asked suddenly.

Pascoe’s heart jolted for a second, but Ellie’s ear was much more attuned to the note of calculation in the question.

‘You’ve been fairly ill,’ she said firmly. ‘But now you are much better. And if you’re completely better in time for the Mid-Yorks Fair, Daddy will take you and you can go on the Big Loop. Now, Mummy’s got to go out for a little while, but I’ll be back shortly.’

Pascoe followed her to the door.

‘What was all that about?’ he asked.

‘The trick is to make the reward for getting better, not for being ill, otherwise she’ll spin the invalid state out for months,’ said Ellie patiently.

‘Yes, I got that. I meant about the Big Loop. You know it makes me sick.’

‘Peter, though I’ll deny ever having said it, sometimes a little more Schwarzenegger, a little less Hugh Grant, would be a useful corrective.’

‘OK. Where the hell do you think you’re going, babe?’

‘That is pure Cagney,’ she said. Then, more serious, ‘I’m just going to check on Jill. OK, I understand what you said before, and I’m not going to push myself on her. She’ll be at home now anyway, I should think. But I wanted to talk to someone about her and try to work out what’s best for us to do.’

‘OK,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ll entertain the monster.’

After a fairly short spell of ‘entertainment’, the monster looked ready to go back to sleep again.

‘That’s right, sweetie. You have a nap, get your strength up,’ said Pascoe. ‘In hospital you need to be fit to keep an eye on all the visitors trying to steal your grapes.’

‘Will I get a lot of visitors?’ asked Rosie sleepily.

‘Depends on the quality of your grapes.’

‘Will Zandra come?’

Pascoe made a huge effort to keep his voice light.

‘If she can,’ he said.

He didn’t know when the time would be ripe to tell her, but he knew it wasn’t now.

‘I haven’t seen her since Sunday. Not to talk to, anyway. She might have the photos Derek took by now.’

‘Yes. Darling, remember when you had your breakfast picnic on Sunday?’

He felt guilty about asking but assured himself he wouldn’t have brought it up if she hadn’t mentioned Zandra herself.

‘Yes. And I saw the nix taking Nina,’ she said.

It was as if he’d somehow conveyed the trend of his thought to her.

‘That’s right. You were using Derek’s binoculars, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. They make things a lot bigger than yours, you know,’ she said seriously.

‘I’m sure,’ he said, smiling. ‘And you saw Nina down in the valley. By herself was she?’

‘Yes. No. She had a little dog.’

‘Then the nix came.’

‘Yes. He came running down the hill and he threw her into a hole in the ground. I expect his cave is down there somewhere.’

Her voice was very faint and weary now.

Pascoe pulled Novello’s Post out of his pocket and unfolded it so that the double-page spread at its centre showed.

‘Just before you drop off, darling, anyone here you recognize?’

She peered through half-closed eyes, then smiled and stabbed with her finger.

‘That’s Uncle Andy,’ she said.

‘Hello. What’s this game you’re playing?’ said Ellie’s voice.

She had come in undetected and her tone was light and playful. But something in her husband’s manner as he looked up must have alerted her, for now she asked suspiciously, ‘What is that you’re showing her, Peter?’

‘Just a photo of Uncle Andy, that’s all,’ said Pascoe, starting to fold the paper.

But before he could do this, the little hand reached out and the finger stabbed again.

‘And that’s the rotten old nix,’ said Rosie Pascoe.

Then she yawned hugely and fell asleep.