On Beulah Height (20 page)

"Don't be silly," muttered Rosie. "That was last time."

"Last time?" said Ellie, smoothing the single sheet over the slight body. "But there's only been one time, hasn't there, darling?"

For a moment, Rosie regarded her with a role-reversing expression in which affection was mixed with exasperation. Then she closed her eyes.

Ellie went downstairs. Worth bothering the doctor with? she wondered. While ready to go to the barricades for her rights under the NHS, she'd always been resolved not to turn into one of those mothers who demanded antibiotics for every bilious attack.

She made herself a cup of tea and went into the living room. The CD player was switched on with the pause light showing. She'd been listening to her new Mahler disc when Martindale rang.

The larger package remained unopened.

Few things are better suited to putting literary ambition in perspective than bringing a sick child home, so this seemed a good time to take her bumps.

She ripped open the package and took out her script. There was a letter attached.

"... shows promise, but in the present climate ... hard times for fiction ... much regret ... blah blah ..."

The signature was an indecipherable scrawl. Couldn't blame them, she thought. Assassination must be a real danger in that job. Even she, perspective and all, felt the sharp pang of rejection. Perhaps I'm simply barking up the wrong tree? Who the hell wants to read about the angst-ridden life of a late-twentieth-century woman when it's just like their own? Perhaps I should have a stab at something completely different ... a historical, maybe? She'd always felt a bit guilty about her fondness for historical fiction, regarding it as pure escapism from life's earnest realities. But sod it, letters like this were an aspect of earnest reality she'd be only too glad to escape from!

Moodily she picked up the CD zapper and pressed the restart button.

"At last I think I see the explanation Of those dark flames in many glances burning."

It was the second of the Kindertotenlieder. She relaxed and let the rich young voice wash over her.

"I could not guess, lost in the obfuscation Of blinding fate ..."

Obfuscation! Not a pretty word. But she sympathized with the translator. Unlike a lot of the multiinflected continental languages, English wasn't rich in feminine rhymes, and they often ran the risk of sounding faintly comic. Not here, though, not with the tragic power of this music setting the agenda.

"... even then your gaze was homeward turning, Back to the source of all illumination."

What made a composer choose to set one poem rather than another to music? In the brief introduction to the songs, she'd read that Alma Mahler had strongly resisted her husband's obsession with these poems of loss, superstitiously fearing he might be tempting fate to attack his own family. Okay, so it was irrational, but Ellie could sympathize, recalling her own impulse to break all traffic laws to get to Edengrove, despite Miss Martindale's assurance that there was nothing to worry about.

And there wasn't, was there? Not if Miss Martindale said there wasn't. Despite all her efforts to avoid the stereotype, she'd ended up as another silly, overanxious mother, like Alma Mahler. ... Except that Alma had been right, hadn't she? How she must have looked back on her fears and wished she'd protested even more vehemently when, a couple of years later, their eldest daughter died of scarlet fever.

"These eyes that open brightly every morning In nights to come as stars will shine upon you. ..."

And that's meant to be a consolation? She zapped off the melancholy orchestral coda, reached for the telephone, and started dialing Jill Purlingstone's number.

The Highcross Inn had once occupied a premier site where coachmen, drovers, horse riders, and foot travelers, about to start the long haul over the moor to Danby, took on sustenance, while those who'd completed the passage in the other direction treated themselves to congratulatory refreshment.

The internal combustion engine had changed all that. What had been effortful was now easy, and most travelers using the moor road were simply taking a shortcut to its junction with the busy north-south arterial.

Externally, apart from the signs advertising GOOD GRUB, DEEP PAN PIZZA, and a mention in some obscure guide written by some equally obscure journalist posing as a North Country expert despite the fact that he'd moved from Yorkshire to London at the age of eighteen and only returned twice for family funerals, the inn had changed little in two and half centuries. In fact some of the flaking paint looked as if it might be original, but that could be down to the long, hot summer.

Inside, though, things were different. Inside, it had presumably once looked like what an old country pub looks like. Then some keg-head brewer had decided it needed to look like what some flouncy designer thought an old country pub ought to look like. Out had gone the real and particular, in had come the ersatz and anonymous, and now a steady drinker might require to step outside from time to time to remind himself where he was steadily drinking.

Novello quite liked it. She was young, and a townie, and this to her was what pubs usually looked like. She sat at the bar and ordered herself a lager and black-currant. At her initiation into the Mid-Yorkshire CID'S home pub, the Black Bull, she'd been foolish enough to request this mixture when invited to name her poison. The kind of great silence had fallen which usually only follows the opening of the seventh seal. Dalziel had fixed her with a look which confirmed the rumor that as a uniformed PC his number had been 666. Then some friendly angel had loosened her wits and her tongue, and she'd said, "But if it's not really poison you're offering, I'll have a pint of best."

Pascoe had got it for her, murmuring as he handed it over, "Your principles may be in tatters, but at least your soul is safe."

The pub was almost empty. The woman behind the bar had time to chat. She was middle aged, size sixteen, most of it muscle presumably developed from a life of pulling pumps and carting crates. The conviviality of her broad handsome face faded into inevitable wariness when Novello produced her warrant card. But when she mentioned the nature of her inquiries, indignation replaced all, and the woman said, "I'd castrate the bastards without anesthetic. Then hang them by what's left! How can I help, luv?"

Novello went at it obliquely. All she had was a blue station wagon, and she'd prefer to get anything there was to be got without too much prompting. Eagerness to cooperate could sometimes be as frustrating as reluctance to speak.

First she got personal details. This was Bella Postlethwaite, joint tenant with her husband, Jack. They'd been here five years and relied mainly on passing trade to scrape a living.

"There's not much local trade--I mean, look around outside--not exactly crowded with houses, is it? And you couldn't exercise an ant on the profit margins the brewery allows us. Bastards. Them's some more I'd like to see hanging high."

She was a very pendentious lady. Novello moved on to Sunday morning. She'd been up early. Jack had a bit of a lie-in. No, she'd noticed nowt out of the ordinary. What about the ordinary, then? Well, the ordinary was bugger all, not to put too fine a point on it. Couple of tractors. Other traffic? A bit on the main road. Not much being Sunday, but there was always some. And on the moor road? Yes, there had been a car. She'd been out front watering her tubs while they were still in the shade, and this car had been turning out of the moor road onto the main road. Just came up and turned, there was a stop sign, but you could see a long way down the main road and there was so little traffic on Sunday, you didn't need to halt. Kind of car? Don't be daft, luv! All the bloody same to me. Color, then. Blue, she thought. Definitely blue.

At this point her husband appeared. He was as thin as his wife was broad, angular, almost lupine. Jack Spratt and his wife. Introduced and put in the picture, he immediately poured scorn on any hope of getting useful information from Bella on the subject of motor vehicles.

"She can tell our Cavalier from the brewery wagon and that's about it," he averred.

His wife, though willing enough to admit her deficiencies voluntarily, was not disposed to have them trumpeted by one who didn't have enough spare flesh on him to merit the description "better half."

"At least I were up and about, not pigging it in my bed like some I could name," she said indignantly. "Mebbe if you hadn't spent most of Saturday night supping our profits, you'd have been lively enough to be able to help this lass instead of slagging me off."

Novello, though young in years, was old enough in experience to know that marital arguments have their long-established scripts which, once started, are very hard to stop.

She said loudly and firmly, "So it wasn't a Cavalier, then. Was it bigger?"

"Yes, bigger," said Bella, glaring defiantly at her husband.

"A lot bigger? Like a van, maybe?"

"No. Too many windows."

"A sort of jeep, then. You know, a Land-Rover like the farmers use? Fairly high?"

"No! It were more like one of them long things, like a funeral-car sort of thing. Like what Geordie Turnbull drives."

This last was aimed at her husband. Signaling a truce by appealing to his expertise, perhaps? Didn't sound like that somehow. More like a sly shot from a hidden gun.

"Oh, aye, you'd remember that all right," Postlethwaite spat out viciously.

"What kind of vehicle does this Mr. Turnbull drive?" asked Novello quickly, before his six-gun could clear leather.

"A Volvo station wagon," said the man. "Aye, and it's blue."

"Blue? Light blue? Dark blue?" demanded Novello.

"Light blue."

"And this vehicle you saw, Mrs. Postlethwaite, was that light or dark?"

"Lightish," admitted the woman meeting her husband's glare with a matching anger. "But it weren't Geordie's."

"How'd you know?" jeered Postlethwaite. "All you'll have studied close is his roof from the inside."

To hell with guns, this was hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets! Bella drew in a deep breath and looked ready to go for the jugular. Then she caught Novello's pleading gaze and decided to postpone the pleasure till she had him alone.

With a promissory glare at her husband, she said, "If I had a mind like thine, I'd grow mushrooms in it. And I know for a fact this couldn't have been Geordie's car, 'cos there were a kiddie in the back."

She didn't realize what she was saying until she'd said it, and in that moment the script changed from long-running soap to tragic drama.

Ten minutes later Novello was on her mobile, talking to Wield in St. Michael's Hall.

He listened with an intensity she could feel over the air and when she'd finished he asked, "How do you rate this Bella?"

"No good on car makes. Fair on colors. I tried her with some cars passing on the main road. Not what you'd call an artist's eye but she could tell blue from black, gray, and green."

"And the kiddie?"

"Just a glimpse. Little blond girl looking out of the back window."

"Frightened? Distressed? Waving? Or what?"

"Just looking. She didn't get a look at anyone else in the car, can't say if there was anyone but the driver. But even though it was just a glimpse, she's certain about the girl."

"Didn't mention her straight off, but."

"No reason to. I didn't want to risk leading her."

Novello described her interrogation stratagem.

"Nice," said Wield. "And this guy, Turnbull. Anything there?"

"She's adamant it wasn't his car."

"But it was her mentioned him first."

"Only to wind up her husband. Way I read it is, this Turnbull drops in fairly regularly and has a nice line in chat she enjoys. Maybe they've got something going, or maybe she just gets fed up of jealous Jack's innuendo. Either way, I'd guess he's a red herring. Bella may not know makes, but she insists this car was a lot newer and cleaner looking than Turnbull's."

"They've got these things called car washes," said Wield. "Couldn't she just be trying to get him off the hook she thinks she's put him on?"

He's doing the devil's disciple bit, thought Novello. Making me double-check my conclusions.

She said carefully, "I've heard her going on about what she'd do to child molesters. No way can I see her protecting anyone suspected of that."

"But if she's certain in her own mind this Turnbull couldn't be our man ... There's men banged up for multiple murder who've got mothers and lovers protesting their innocence."

"You think I should give him a look," said Novello, uncertain whether to feel resentful or not.

"You know where he lives?"

"Oh, yes. Jealous Jack is very much of your mind, Sarge, and he insisted on giving me clear directions. Turnbull has a contracting business in Bixford on the coast road, about ten miles. He lives next to the yard, but if he's not there, Jack says it'll be easy to find him. Just look for bulldozers with GEORDIE TURNBULL painted on them in big red letters, crawling along, holdin' up bloody traffic. ..."

Novello had lapsed into what she thought was a rather good impression of the publican's bitter snarl, but Wield clearly didn't rate the act.

"What was that you said?" he interrupted. "Geordie Turnbull?"

"That's right."

"Hold on."

Silence. Had the Fat Man turned up? The silence stretched. She thought of suggesting they get a tape to play when they put you on hold. "The Gendarmes' Duet"? Too obvious. Judy Garland singing "The Man Who Got Away"? Her grandfather had been very partial to Garland. She was indifferent, but knew all the songs off by heart from hearing them blasted out of his old record player. Now approaching eighty, his taste was turning back to the Italian music of his childhood. ...

"You there?"

"Yes, Sarge."

"Don't move, I'm coming to join you."

His voice gave away as little as his face, but Novello detected an underlying excitement which filled her head with speculation. She reckoned that if Wield were juggling eggs as his lottery number came up, he'd never crack a shell. So for him to be excited ...