On Beulah Height (44 page)

The half of the woman visible above the reception desk of the Mid-Yorkshire Water Company was welcoming and fair, but her implacability toward those seeking entrance to the world behind her hinted the presence of a cry of hell hounds below.

Pascoe looked easy meat. During the past couple of years, as complaints about drought, pollution, and directors' perks had multiplied, she had become adept at repelling much heavier onslaughts than promised by this slim, pale, disheveled figure.

"I'm afraid Mr. Purlingstone is unavailable today. If you leave your name I'll see he's told you called."

"Just tell him I'm here now. Pascoe's the name. Pascoe. Just tell him."

He saw her right hand move and guessed it was on its way to a security button. With a sigh, he produced his warrant card.

"Chief Inspector Pascoe. Tell him."

She picked up the phone and moments later Pascoe was floating to the top floor in a scented musical lift.

Purlingstone was waiting for him when the door slid open.

"What?" he demanded. "What's happened? Why've you come?"

"It's okay," said Pascoe. "Nothing to do with Zandra. Really. It's okay."

He felt a huge pang of guilt. He wasn't thinking straight, coming round here like this. Just because the man was dealing with his trauma by fleeing from its center to the place where he still had power and control didn't mean he wasn't in pain. And what else would he think on hearing of Pascoe's arrival but the worst?

The two men hadn't spoken since their quarrel, and this, thought Pascoe, is no way to build bridges.

"Derek," he said. "I'm sorry. I should have rung. Everything's fine at the hospital. They'd be in touch direct if anything was wrong, wouldn't they?"

This appeal to logic seemed to work, as worry was replaced by suspicion.

"Okay, so what the hell are you doing here?" demanded Purlingstone.

"I'm sorry," repeated Pascoe. "There are just a couple of questions I'd like to ask."

"You sound just like a policeman," sneered Purlingstone.

It was true, thought Pascoe. His phraseology was straight out of a TV cop show. But so what? We are what we are.

He said, "Where did you stop on Sunday?"

"What?"

"Rosie said you stopped for a breakfast picnic on your way to the coast. I just wondered which way you went and where. ..."

He faltered to a halt, not because the other man was looking angry, but because his annoyance was visibly fading and being replaced by a sort of wary pity.

He thinks I've cracked, thought Pascoe. He thinks I've lost it entirely.

It might have been clever to use this wrong impression as a basis for winning both sympathy and information, but he wasn't able to go along with that. What he felt about his sick daughter was his business, not communicable to anyone save Ellie, and certainly not usable in this kind of situation to gain an advantage.

He said sharply, "Come on. It's a simple question. Where did you stop to picnic?"

"On the moor road out of Danby," replied Purlingstone. "I prefer to go that way to the coast. It's a bit farther but it misses a hell of a lot of the traffic. Look, what's all this about? I can't believe it's police business ... but it is, isn't it? Jesus Christ, how insensitive can you get, Pascoe?"

No pity now, just anger.

"No, not really, well, in a way but ..." Pascoe was stuttering in his effort to offer an explanation and avoid another open quarrel. He saw from Purlingstone's face that he wasn't making much headway either way.

"It's just that Rosie lost this cross she wore --well it wasn't really a cross, one of Ellie's earrings shaped like a dagger, actually, and one of my DC'S found one like it in a trash bin, and I wondered how ... it is it, you see ... I checked ... I mean, it's probably just coincidence but ..."

A phone had been ringing in a room behind Purlingstone. It stopped and a young woman came out.

"Derek," she said urgently.

"What?"

"Sorry, but it's the hospital. They said, can you get back there straightaway?"

"Oh, Christ."

The two men looked desperately at each other, each hoping for a reassurance the other couldn't give. Pascoe was thinking, they could be ringing home, and I'm not there, and I've had my mobile switched off. ...

He said, "Can you give me a lift? Please."

"Come on."

Ignoring the elevator, together the two men ran down the stairs.

They could have rung from the car, but they didn't. The pain of ignorance can end. The pain of knowledge is forever. They knew it was very bad as soon as they entered the waiting room. The two women were clinging close, but on sight of her husband Jill Purlingstone broke loose and rushed to his arms.

"What's happened?" demanded Pascoe, going to Ellie.

"Exactly what, I don't know, but it doesn't sound good," said Ellie in a low voice.

"Oh, Christ, and she was doing so well. I should never have left. ..."

"It isn't Rosie," hissed Ellie in his ear. "She's doing fine. It's Zandra."

For a moment his relief was so strong, he could have laughed out loud. Then his gaze went to the other couple, locked in an embrace which looked like an attempt to crush out all feeling, and shame at his joy came rushing in.

"Should I go and try to find out something?" he asked Ellie, his voice as low as hers.

"No. They said they'd let Jill know as soon as there was anything more to tell."

The door opened. Mrs. Curtis, the pediatric consultant, came in. Ignoring the Pascoes she went toward the Purlingstones, who broke apart like guilty lovers surprised. Only their hands remained in fingertip contact.

"Please," said the consultant. "Shall we sit down?"

"Oh, God," breathed Ellie, for the woman's voice had the ring of death as sure as any passing bell.

Pascoe took her arm and drew her unresisting body out of the room.

In the corridor she looked up at him pleadingly, as if in hope of finding contradiction in his face. He had none to offer. There was a hush about the wards and a set look on the faces of two nurses who went quietly by which confirmed what they already felt.

Ellie turned back toward the door, but Pascoe tightened his grip on her.

"Jill will need me," she said fiercely.

"No," he said. "We're the last people on earth those two will want to see at the moment."

From inside the waiting room a voice--it could have been either male or female--screamed, "Why?"

It was the universal cry of loss; but it contained in it the particular question, Why my child? Why not someone else's?

Ellie heard it at all its levels and ceased her efforts to pull away.

"Let's go in and see Rosie," said Pascoe.

They found the attending nurse full of excitement.

"She opened her eyes just now. I think she's beginning to wake up," she said. "I've been talking to her, but it's your voices she'll be wanting to hear."

They stood on either side of the bed, leaning over the small, still figure of their daughter. Ellie tried to speak, but there were too many conflicting emotions squeezing at her throat.

Pascoe said, "Rosie, darling. Come on, now. This is Daddy. Time to wake up. It's time to wake up."

In the gloomy cave, the nix has made his move. No pursuit round the pool this time; instead he comes running straight across it, splashing through the black waters so that they part on either side like the water in the tank at the fairground when the roller coaster comes hurtling down.

Taken by surprise, Rosie and her companion break apart and take flight, one to the left, one to the right. The air is filled with noise, the animal roar of the nix, the high, spiraling squeaks of the bat, the screams of the two little girls--and something else, a voice, her father's voice, calling Rosie's name.

Her flight has brought her round the pool to the mouth of the exit tunnel. Here the voice is clearer. She looks up into the brighter light, then looks round to see where the nix is.

He is on the far side of the pool once more. He is standing over the other girl, who has stumbled to the ground.

Her hair has fallen over her face so that all Rosie can see are her eyes, which might be Nina's, or Zandra's, or some other child's altogether, peering at her so fearfully, so pleadingly, she hesitates for a moment.

Then her father's voice again. Come on, Rosie, time to wake up!

And she turns her back on the cave and the pool and the dark world of the nix, and goes running up the tunnel into the light.

10

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 center 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 inquiry, 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 inquiry, 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 its 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 inquired 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, andwitha 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?"