On Beulah Height (40 page)

She said, "I wish I'd had this yesterday when I was down at Wark House."

"Never heard of the fax, Detective?" said Seymour. "Or take it with you. Didn't you say someone would have to talk to the old lady?"

"Yes. I'd have done it yesterday, only she wasn't up to snuff."

She must have sounded a touch defensive because Seymour said, "But you think a hard, insensitive man might have insisted? If you're thinking of a hard, extremely fat insensitive man, you're probably right. But no harm done. Much better to chat when the old girl can chat back. They're up and down like a fiddler's elbow, these old folk. She'll probably be bright as a button today."

"I hope so. But I'll fax the photo anyway. Sooner we get confirmation, the better."

She scribbled a note to Billie Saltair, asking her to show the accompanying picture to the nurse, Sally, and get her reaction, if any; also inquiring how Mrs. Lightfoot was this morning and stressing the necessity for an early interview.

Even her note lacked the true CID masculine assertiveness, she thought. But what-the-hell? Some of her male colleagues would still be questioning Winifred Fleck!

The reply came back ten minutes later.

"Great!" she said, reading it as it crept out of the machine. "Spitting image of the man who came to see old Agnes."

"Another triumph," mocked Seymour. "They'll be letting you lie in bed all day if you go on like this."

"Oh, shit," said Novello, the complete fax in her hand.

"Sorry. Didn't realize you were quite so sensitive."

"Not you. It's Agnes Lightfoot. She died in the night. I knew I should have talked to her yesterday!"

"Hey, what could she have told you that you don't know?" asked Seymour.

"I'll never know, will I?" said Novello savagely, grabbing the phone and dialing the Wark House number.

"Saltair," said the matron's husky voice. "That Detective Novello? Thought you'd be ringing."

"What happened?"

"Nature happened," said Billie Saltair. "It was her time. I think she'd just been waiting for a signal, and her visitor last week seems to have been it."

"Did she say anything before she died?" asked Novello without much hope.

"She did, as a matter of fact," said the matron. "She took my hand, looked up at me bright and hard. And said, "I knew he'd come. I knew. Benny's back." Then she died. That's it. Anything else I can help with?"

Novello thought hard.

"Yes," she said. "If anyone rings up asking about Agnes, don't say she's dead, okay? Just say she's pretty ill, too ill to talk on the phone. Can you do that?"

There was a pause, then Saltair said, "Yes, in this case, I think I can stretch to that. But only because no one's rung up asking about Agnes for so many years, I think the chances of causing distress are minimal. Anything else?"

"Yes. I think it would be a good idea if we had one of our people at the home, just in case Benny turns up in person to have another chat to his gran."

"Fine. But have you got anyone old enough to fit in?"

"We'll send a master of disguises. Thanks a lot. And I'm really sorry about Mrs. Lightfoot."

"Me too. Happens all the time, but you never get used to it. Bye."

Novello replaced the phone.

"So," said Seymour. "And who's this master of disguises?"

"There's only two of us here, and what is it you macho men are always saying, that putting the cuffs on a young, fit, and dangerous criminal's no job for a woman?"

"I've never said that in my life," said Seymour indignantly. "Bernadette would have my guts for garters if she thought I said things like that."

"Okay. Sorry. But someone's got to go. I'm sure if we could track the Fat Man down, he'd give the go-ahead. Lots of Brownie points for initiative on offer here, Dennis."

"I'm sure. So why aren't you rushing to collect them?"

"Because I think I need to talk to the DCI," said Novello unhappily.

"Mr. Pascoe? But he's--"

"Yes, I know. But this is .his line of inquiry. I spoke to him yesterday and he was very helpful. I need to bring him up to date and check whether there's anything I'm missing. This time I think I'd better go round and see him in person."

"To the hospital, you mean?" Seymour whistled and rose to his feet. "You're right, I reckon, Shirley. I've got the easy job. In these nursing homes, it's only the old who die."

"Wieldy, what the hell have you got there?" said Maggie Burroughs.

She was standing on the shady side of the mobile police van on Ligg Common, drinking a cup of tea.

As if in answer to her question, from the basket strapped to the sergeant's passenger saddle came a sharp yap.

"This is Tig, ma'am," he said. "Lorraine's dog. Vet says he's fit enough to go home."

"You think the Dacres'll want it?" said Burroughs doubtfully. "Every time they look at it ..."

"Yeah," said Wield. "No telling how it'll take people."

"There's always the RSPCA," said Burroughs with the indifference of a non-animal lover. "So why've you brought it here?"

"Just thought it might be worthwhile taking him up the valley."

She looked at him doubtfully and said, "Might have been a good idea two days ago, but I can't see what you can hope for when men, dogs, and thermal imaging cameras haven't come up with anything more interesting than a dead sheep. You know the search has been scaled down? Super's got a frog team diving in the reservoir. Worth a look, I suppose. But this side, we're done. The van will stay for a couple of days just to show willing, maybe jog someone's memory. But that's it."

Does she think I'm asking permission? wondered Wield. Technically she was in charge of the search, that was true. But now there wasn't any search for her to be in charge of.

"So you reckon I shouldn't bother?" he said.

It was the old put-up-or-shut-up technique. But Maggie Burroughs was up to it.

She took a long sip of tea, then smiled at him.

"Not up to me to tell CID how to pass their time," she said. "No, Sergeant, you take your walk. But do me a favor. Write it up for me. It'll round the search report off. Show we tried everything."

Show you tried everything, thought Wield, who had no doubts about, or problems with, the extent of Maggie Burroughs's ambition.

He said, "Thank you, ma'am," revved up, and sent the bike bumping up the dusty path running alongside the creeping beck.

Burroughs watched him go. In her eyes a middle-aged queer on a vintage motorbike was not the image of modern policing she wanted to project. But he was close to Dalziel, and she didn't reckon that falling out with the Fat Man's favorites was any way for an ambitious officer to get on in the Mid-Yorkshire force.

Wield took the bike as far as he could before the path became too steep and rocky for comfort. He was almost at the spot where Tony Dacre had found Tig that Sunday morning, and assuming the frightened and injured animal had headed for home, the attack must have taken place upstream from here.

"Right, lad. Walkies," said Wield.

At first he put the little animal on a lead, frightened it might simply run away. But when it showed no inclination to do anything but trot up the familiar path with occasional stops to cock its leg or bark at a bird or butterfly, Wield took the risk of letting it run free.

They were now high up the valley, where it narrowed considerably. Westward rose the steep side of the Neb, while to the east the ground sloped a little more easily to the Danby-Highcross Moor road. Here Ligg Beck ran through a steep sided ghyll, no Grand Canyon, but deep enough for a bone-breaking fall. In spate, there must have been fine cascades here, but this summer all that remained of the water which over a thousand years had etched this crack in the bare rock was a trickle of damp in the depths, where ferns drooped and mosses clung.

Wield took a breather. He'd brought a bottle of water, and after taking a swig himself, he poured some into the palm of his hand and let the dog have a drink.

Likely Burroughs was right, he thought. This was a waste of time. Except that in his methodical mind, even negatives needed to be tested before you put them to one side.

He'd also brought a pair of field glasses. He put them to his eyes and slowly scanned the valley. Not a sign of life, except for the odd sheep. If he stood up, he could get a good view of the rooftops of Danby. The Highcross Moor road was visible in glimpses lower down, but immediately above him, the folds of ground kept it out of sight, though he could see the back of a square plaque on a metal post which he worked out must be the NO LITTER sign at the viewpoint young Novello had had such high hopes of.

Mebbe her theory wasn't so daft after all. If he could see the sign so clearly, anyone up there with glasses would easily be able to pick out a small girl walking her dog along this path.

There'd been no glasses in Turnbull's car but there had been a powerful pair in his bungalow.

He lowered the binoculars and let his naked eye take in the proper scale of the thing. The slope was steep but not too steep, and mainly grassy. Man in a hurry could come down here in four or five minutes, he reckoned.

Going back up, carrying a child, that was something else. Twenty minutes ... probably thirty, depending how fit you were. Turnbull looked strong enough in the shoulders to carry the girl, but how much exercise did those legs get?

In any case it was a hell of a risk to take.

But, seeing the girl down here, alone and vulnerable, what would such a sick mind as this man must have reck of risk?

Wield was brought out of his reverie by the sound of Tig barking.

It seemed to be coming from the bowels of the earth, and his first thought was that the daft animal had gone down a rabbit hole. Then he realized the noise was coming from the ghyll.

Tig was down there somewhere, and he sounded as if he'd found something.

Getting down the ghyll proved fairly easy. A narrow sheep trod angled down the slope, offering little problem to a man who kept himself in trim. He soon found himself in shade but any hope that this would be better than the heat of the sun soon vanished. It was like descending into a sludge of warm air, and what was worse the atmosphere was foul with the stink of corruption.

Dogs, men, thermal image cameras--they couldn't possibly have missed this, thought Wield.

And now he saw that of course they hadn't. The trod ran across the bottom of the ghyll and up the other face till it was blocked by a slab of rock resting at an angle of about thirty degrees, where it turned back on itself and zigzagged up the remaining slope.

Across the path by the slab lay the remains of a sheep. The scavengers had been here and there were bones lying apart from the main carcass. But decay had been rapid enough in this heat to quickly rot the flesh to a state not even a hungry fox found appetizing, and the body had been left to the depredations of flies, which rose like wind-tugged pall each time Tig barked.

"Come away, boy!" called Wield.

The dog turned, took an uncertain step toward him, then turned back.

"For Christ's sake, didn't that vet feed you?" demanded the sergeant. "You've got to be desperate to want to stick your gob into that lot!"

He took a deep breath and held it as he crossed the streambed and started up the other side, planning to grab Tig and keep going to the top.

The dog struggled as it felt Wield's hands seize it and whimpered piteously as he lifted it up to his chest.

Got to be desperate ... His own words echoed in his head.

He stopped and had to take a breath. But now he ignored the stench. He was looking at the spot where the carcass lay. Directly above it, the side of the ghyll was almost sheer. It was easy to see how the sheep, grazing too near the edge and stretching down in search of the not-so-sun-scorched vegetation growing between the rocks, could have lost its footing and plunged to the bottom, breaking its back.

But surely it would have been to the bottom of the ghyll, not this angle of the trod, which was barely more than a six-inch ledge on the steep slope?

The dog lay dormant in his arms now, as if sensing that he was no longer the object of reprimand.

Wield went back down to the streambed. There was a rock there with some wool on it and a brown stain which might be blood. He looked up toward the carcass. The grass on the bank of the almost dried-up stream was slightly flattened and some of the ferns were snapped. As if something had been dragged. And there were more traces of wool up the rocky slope to the trod.

He put the dog down and climbed back up to the carcass. The ground was too rocky to bury anything here. But that rock slab, the way it lay, there could be a space beneath in the angle it made with the ghyll wall.

He would need to move the sheep to see.

Not even the heat of the chase could make him contemplate taking his hands to that task. He found a large flat piece of stone which he used as a shovel, and gagging from the foulness directly beneath his nose, he began to lever the rotting corpse away from the slab. It came to pieces as he pushed, and fell in stinking gobbets to the streambed below. Flies rose in a fetid, humming spiral around his head, which he shook like an irritated bullock. Tig, dodging the descending bones, was now by his feet as the gap beneath the slab was revealed. Only, there wasn't a gap. It was choked with stones and turf and wads of heather. But that hadn't got there naturally, that hadn't grown there. Using his hands now that it was just good, honest rock and vegetation he had to deal with, he began to unplug the hole. Suddenly his hand was through into space. He withdrew it. The hole was big enough to admit a rabbit. Or a small dog. Before Wield could grab him, Tig was through, barking fiercely for a moment; then, perhaps the most terrible noise Wield had ever heard, the bark died to an almost inaudible whimper.

Wield tried to proceed systematically but despite himself he found he was tearing at the remaining debris with a ferocity which brought sweat streaming down his face and blood from his fingernails.

Finally he stopped. He hadn't got a flashlight. Mistake. Man should never go anywhere without a length of string, a cutting blade, and a flashlight.