On Beulah Height (16 page)

She'd observed with interest, but without comment, how her male colleagues reacted. Dalziel put the fear of God into them. His wrath was like being run over by a Centurion tank. On the other hand, going into battle, there's nothing an infantryman likes more than advancing behind a Centurion tank.

Pascoe was rated okay. Lots of concern for the troops. He'd long outlived his early disadvantage of a degree. Indeed most of them would never even think about it if it wasn't for the Fat Man's occasional weighty witticisms.

And Wield was ... Wield. Unreadable as a Chinese encyclopedia, but containing everything a cop needed to know. There were stories about his private life which might have washed away another man's career. But against that unyielding crag, they broke and vanished back into the sea.

Word was that when Dalziel spoke, you obeyed; when Pascoe spoke, you listened; when Wield spoke, you took notes.

But Novello had come to see them rather differently.

The rumors about Wield she ignored. It was so clear to her he was gay that she couldn't understand the need for whisperings. He was a good cop and she could learn a lot from him. But, she guessed, he was also a cop who'd made a conscious decision to stay at sergeant rather than risk the greater exposure of higher rank. This she could understand, but had no intention of taking as a role model.

Pascoe. At first she'd liked him. He'd been welcoming, helpful, protective, when she joined the squad. He still was. But when she'd talked about this with Maggie Burroughs, who'd helped her a lot in her transfer to CID, the inspector had said, "Watch out for the friendlies. They're sometimes the worst." And when, a few minutes after she started talking to the kids, Pascoe had stuck his head into the classroom and asked for a quick word with Mrs. Shimmings, all his apologetic smile had said to her was that what he was doing was beyond debate far more important than what she was doing.

Which left Dalziel. A tank was just a machine, but a machine needs someone to run it. A mechanic. Or God. Jokes were made about the Holy Trinity, usually with Pascoe as Son and Wield as Holy Ghost. Novello, as a sort of good Catholic, favored Pascoe as Holy Ghost. But big Andy Dalziel was beyond all dispute the Almighty. Get up his nose, and the best you could hope was a big sneeze might carry you a long way away. It was a small comfort to know no one was immune. Even that Spiritus Sanctus, Peter Pascoe, came in for a fair share of crap. So, I believe in Andy Dalziel was the first and last clause of the CID creed. But faith without works didn't get you into heaven, and even though the fat prophet had forecast that talking to kids was a waste of time, he'd probably still expect some form of result.

It was therefore with relief that she found only Wield in the incident center. He was poring over a thick file. In his hand was a can of mineral water.

He said, "The fridge has turned up. Help yourself."

Gratefully she took a can of lemonade. She would have liked to put it under her T-shirt and roll it around, but she instinctively avoided anything which would draw her male colleagues' attention to her sex. Even Wield's.

Perhaps, she thought, we have a lot in common.

"Any luck?" he asked without looking up.

"Not much. Some talk of Lorraine having a secret place up Ligg Beck, but none of them knows where."

"Well, they wouldn't, being a secret," said Wield with a childlike logic she recognized. He closed the file. Upside down she read DENDALE.

She said, "Nothing from the search team, Sarge?"

"Not a sign."

"So it could be she's long gone."

"Super seems to reckon they're still around here."

She noticed the they. He noticed her noticing but didn't correct it.

"What do you think, Sarge?" she asked.

He stared at her reflectively. His eyes she noticed for the first time were rather beautiful, circles of Mediterranean blue round a dark gray center set on a field of pristine white with not a red vein to be seen. It was like finding jewels in a ruin.

He said, "I think you've got a notion you'd like to let out. Something to do with yon blue station wagon is my guess."

This was opening enough. She went across to the wall map and said, "The Highcross Moor Road's got no turnoffs except a few farm tracks for four and a half miles till it swings east and joins the main road here. There's a pub, the Highcross Inn, at the junction. What I'd like to do is check out all the farms along the road and the pub, too, to see if anyone else noticed the blue station wagon."

It sounded pretty feeble now it was out. She was glad it wasn't the Fat Man she was talking to.

Wield said, "We've had men out at all those farms."

"Yes, Sarge. But they'll have been searching barns, outbuildings, stables, and such. I'd be asking a specific question about a specific car."

"You've got a feeling about this blue station wagon, haven't you?"

"Sort of," she admitted reluctantly.

"You won anything on the National Lottery?" he inquired.

"Ten pound."

"Not enough to retire on if Mr. Dalziel catches you running around following hunches," said Wield. "But as I can't think of anything else for you to do, off you go. But keep in close contact. And you get buzzed to come back here, no mucking about saying reception's bad because of the hills, that sort of crap. You come running. Okay?"

"Okay, Sarge. Thanks."

And turning quickly before he could change his mind, she hurried out into the sweaty embrace of the panting sun.

As she got into her car she saw DI George Headingley's gleaming Lada turn into the parking lot. She sent her beat-up Golf roaring past him with a casual wave. George had always had a reputation as a careful man, but as retirement loomed closer, carefulness became an obsession. Privately, not a penny was spent unnecessarily and it was rumored he'd worked out to the hour if not the minute the best time to take his pension. Professionally, he did everything by the book, and if the book didn't tell him what to do, he did what he thought would please the chief constable and Andy Dalziel, not necessarily in that order.

No way if he'd arrived ten minutes earlier would she have been heading out on a hunch. "Make us a cup of tea, Shirl," he would have said. "Then you can take care of answering the phone till the super gets back."

But now with one mighty bound, she was free. She gunned the car up the rising road, wound down the window, and pulled up her T-shirt to let the cooling draft play upon her burning skin.

She didn't stop till she reached the high bend where Geoff Draycott thought the blue station wagon might have halted. Recognizing that a lot of people would be tempted to stop here for the view, the council, when they improved the road in response to Danby's growing prosperity, had put down some hardstanding to make a small informal parking lot complete with rubbish bin.

Are we the only race in the world, she wondered, who if they visit a place of great natural beauty where there isn't a rubbish bin, would just dump their litter all over the ground?

She got out of the car and viewed the view. It was worth looking at in every direction. She had a pair of binoculars with her, and through them she scanned the peaceful roofs of Danby, gray and blue slated, red, yellow, brown, and ochre tiled, basking and baking far below. Then she followed the winding line of Ligg Beck up the valley. She began to feel her good feeling drain out of her as she reached a police Range Rover and remembered why she was here.

She picked out Maggie Burroughs, wearing a very unofficial straw sunbonnet as she pored over a map on the open tailgate and talked into a radio. And standing a little apart in deep conversation with Sergeant Clark was Peter Pascoe, shirtsleeved, his fair skin pinking, looking very like a young gent from the twenties out on a walking tour.

She continued her sweep up the valley, moving over the double line of searchers advancing slowly a half mile ahead of the Range Rover, till the slight eastward twist put the valley head out of her vision.

And finally she came full circle and looked at the closest section, that which fell away immediately beneath her feet.

Now, this was interesting. The valley narrowed the farther up it you went, and this, plus the location of the viewpoint on a spur of ground, meant that the deep gash which marked the beck's course in the upper reaches was relatively close here. Of course the tucks and folds of the terrain meant a lot remained hidden. But a man standing up here and glimpsing a child walking along the path beside the gill, say at that point there, would have no problem moving down the valley flank, far less steep on this side than on the Neb, and cutting her off, say there.

She lowered the glasses and studied the scene without them. Now it all looked a lot farther off. Well, it would, wouldn't it? But no reason someone stopping here shouldn't have a pair of binoculars. And with them it would be all too easy to establish that what you were looking at was one small girl, alone, except for one equally small dog. ...

All theory, of course. Not to be paraded naked before the skeptical gaze of the Holy Trinity. But clothe it with a couple of relevant facts ...

She scanned the ground at the edge of the hardstanding in hope of seeing something to show that someone had headed down the slope. Rapidly she realized it was not a very profitable way of spending her time. She was no Chingachgook to read in bent and heather who had passed this way and when. Also probably every kid in every family who'd ever stopped here had run a little way down the fellside.

She went to the car, found a pair of plastic gloves, and removed the inner liner of the rubbish bin. It was packed full. This would have been a popular stopping place yesterday as the day wore on, and the presence of a Sunday tabloid on the top indicated it hadn't been emptied since. She tipped the contents onto the ground and began to sift through the lower strata. From her convent-school Latin lessons the word haruspex popped into her mind; a soothsayer who based his prognostications on the entrails of animals. Good name for those FBI investigators she'd read about who specialized in the interpretation of trash. Could be Scotland Yard or MI5 had a few, too, but it didn't rate high in the Mid-Yorkshire training program. Possibly an expert could have made much of the food containers and wrappings which made up the greater part of the rubbish, but Novello concentrated on the rest and after a few minutes she had isolated a lithium 3V battery of the type used in some cameras, an empty Marlboro Lite cigarette pack, two Sunday papers (one broadsheet, one tabloid), a broken earring, and a tissue with a brown stain that might be blood.

These she bagged separately. The rest she replaced in the plastic liner, which she sealed with tape and placed in the trunk of her car. She had no real hope that any of it would have anything to do with the case, but if it did, she didn't want to have to tell Dalziel that the rest of the potential evidence was in some municipal dump.

Now she scanned her map. There were four farms worth visiting. Her hopes were high. She felt things were going well.

A couple of hours later, things were grinding to a halt. Finding the farms was easy. Finding all the folk who might have been around on Sunday morning was less so. Soon, as she tramped across tussocky heather and grazed her knees and elbows clambering over drystone walls, all that was left of the famous "feeling" was aching muscles and the beginnings of a heat rash under her arms.

But she was determined that whatever other accusation might be aimed at her, halfheartedness wasn't going to be on the agenda. Thoroughness, an old teacher had once told her, was its own reward. Which was just as well, as by the time she crossed off the last farm, she had to acknowledge she had reaped no other.

So finally she came down to the Highcross Inn.

There was a RESIDENTS PARKING only sign at either end of Holyclerk Street.

Dalziel nipped into a spot ahead of an old lady who scanned his screen furiously for sight of a resident's disc, found none, started to get out of her car to remonstrate, glimpsed that huge face regarding her with a Buddha's benevolence, felt her road rage evaporate, and drove on.

Had she followed her first instinct and dropped a lighted match into his gas tank, Holyclerk Street would not have been surprised. There was very little of human emotion and appetite it hadn't seen during its long history.

Its name pointed its link with the great cathedral which loomed over the human dwellings like an oceangoing liner over a fleet of bumboats. It stood "within the bell," which meant that anyone living here could set out at a brisk pace on the first note of any summons and guarantee being in his place by the last. Nowadays a house "within the bell" usually cost at least twenty percent more than a comparable house without, but it was not always thus.

The original medieval street containing the seminary from which it derived its name had by the reign of Queen Anne fallen almost completely into disrepair and disrepute. The timbered buildings had developed such alarming lists and been so often patched and propped, they looked like a file of drunken veterans staggering home from a very hard war. No person of wealth or standing would have dreamt of occupying one, and they had declined to low taverns, verminous lodging houses, and brothels.

That such a civic sore should pustulate within pissing distance of the cathedral was regarded by many good burghers as an offense against both God and man. But as a substantial number of the said good burghers actually owned the houses and shared in their profits, man delayed so long in providing a remedy that God grew impatient, and one dark September night, having first ensured the wind was in the right quarter, He tripped a drunken punk and her geriatric jo as they climbed the stairway to her reechy bed and sent their link flying like a meteor through a hole in the rotten boards down into the cellar, where it landed in an open cask of illicit brandy.

The resultant fire left an ashen scar which for many years was regarded as lively evidence of the wrath of the living God, but when a combination of shantytown and Paddy's market looked to be developing there, the city fathers this time preempted the Deity by sweeping the area clean of undesirables and initiating a building program of dwellings fit for dignitaries of the church.