On Beulah Height (47 page)

He looked at her with an intensity almost tangible, but all he said was "You are planning to raise your register?"

"What? Oh, Melba. Yeah, mebbe. I could do it, I think. We'll see what that old woman in Italy says next year."

"That old woman in Italy is one of the finest voice coaches living," said Wulfstan. "And not cheap."

"Oh, aye," said Elizabeth indifferently. "When she hears me, she'll likely work for IOU'S and know her money's safe. What's going off down there, do you think?"

There were men standing in the shallows close by the ruins of Heck. One of them moved out of the water and went to a parked Range Rover and took a long crowbar out of the back. As they watched, he returned to the water's edge and began to probe in the rubble.

"It seems they are looking for something," said Wulfstan.

"Oh, aye? And is there owt to find, do you think?"

He looked at her for a moment then said, "I saw him, you know."

"Who?"

"Benny Lightfoot. I was up here and I saw him."

"Down there?"

"No. Up here on the ridge. Walking toward the Neb."

"And what did you do?"

"I followed him, of course. Isn't that why evil spirits visit us, so they can lure us to our destruction?"

"And did he?"

"Of course. It wasn't a long journey. Elizabeth ..."

"Yes?"

"One thing remains. If ..."

"Yes," she said. "I think mebbe it's time we made a start."

"That fresh start, you mean?"

"Aye, that too. Though mebbe that's been made for us. Walter, I'm sorry."

"For what? How is anything your fault?"

"Nay, but I always thought everything was, and I can't be altogether wrong, can I? Let's talk. But not till after I've sung, eh?"

She took his hand and turned him away from the valley, and hand-in-hand they began to descend the Corpse Road.

It had been a risk, but a small one, for Novello to leave the cafeteria to ring in for backup. She had spent enough hours in the police gym to feel fairly confident about confronting one unarmed man, but two was pushing things. And while Turnbull with a weapon other than his charm seemed unlikely, she couldn't be sure about Lightfoot.

Moving back to the entrance, she saw that she'd just been in time. The two men were rising together and making for the door. She noted that Lightfoot was carrying the leather bag, which meant he had one hand occupied. She retreated before them to the parking lot.

No sign yet of any help, but it should be close. The coast road was well patrolled. She wouldn't hear it coming, as she'd asked specifically for no siren. Sometimes she suspected some of her male colleagues learned more from cop shows than police college. No one on the telly seemed to have worked out the advantages of sneaking up on a suspect. They either rang a warning bell or simply shouted, "Oy! You!" from a distance of fifty yards. Of course this meant you got an exciting chase or lively shootout, which was a visual plus. In real life, you wanted to be neither seen nor heard till you'd got within half-nelson distance.

Anyway, close or not, she couldn't wait. A suspect in a car was an arrest problem squared.

She turned away as they approached, watching them in the window of a parked Peugeot. Then as they drew level, she turned, smiled widely, and said, "Geordie, how're you doing? Why don't you introduce me to your lovely friend?"

Turnbull instinctively smiled back before recognition began to dawn. She reached out her hand to Lightfoot. Instinctively he took it. She twisted his arm sharply, at the same time pulling him off balance and driving her toe cap into his shin.

He fell forward against the car, setting its alarm off, and Novello forced his arm up between his shoulder blades till he yelled with pain.

Into his left ear she told him he was being arrested on suspicion of murder and advised him of his right to remain silent, but he carried on yelling all the same. She glanced sideways to see how Turnbull was taking all this. To her surprise he was standing watching with an expression in which resignation warred with admiration.

"I hope you and me are going to stay good friends, bonny lass," he said. She smiled. He had the great gift of making you smile, but in this case half her pleasure came from the sight over his shoulder of a police car nosing into the car park. Attracted by the alarm and also a gathering group of spectators they came straight to her, and two young constables got out.

"You Novello?" asked one of them.

"That's right. Cuff this one, I'll take care of the other."

Relieved of Lightfoot, she bent down and picked up the bag he'd dropped. She pulled open the zip.

It was full of money.

Lightfoot, upright now with his hands cuffed behind his back, was glaring in angry disbelief at Turnbull.

"Why the hell'd you do this, you stupid bastard? You think this is going to get you anywhere but jail?"

He spoke pure Strine.

"Get him into the car," said Novello. A crowd was forming. She didn't want anyone to have the chance to recognize Lightfoot and warn the media pack.

They pushed him into the backseat of the police car and she turned to the onlookers.

"Okay," she said. "Show over. Nothing to bother yourselves with."

They looked unconvinced.

The owner of the beeping Peugeot arrived, pressed his remote key, and silenced it.

"Did he get inside?" he demanded, examining the bodywork for damage.

"No, sir, it's fine. Good alarm that you've got."

"Look, I'm in a hurry. Do I have to make a statement?"

"No, thank you, sir. We've got enough and we've noted your vehicle number if we need you."

"Great. Hope they hang the bastard."

The man got into his car and the onlookers drifted away. Just another car break-in, nothing worth boasting that you'd seen.

"Clever," said Turnbull. "You did that really well, petal."

"Mr. Turnbull, I am not your petal," said Novello wearily.

She stooped to the window of the police car. Lightfoot was looking more angry than afraid. He said, "What the hell are you talking about, murder? Okay, I gave the guy a pasting, but the money's mine. Tell them, you stupid bastard! The money's mine!"

"Where do you want him, luv?" inquired the driver.

She said, "First I need his keys."

The constable sitting beside Lightfoot dug his hand into the prisoner's pocket and came up with the keys.

"Where are you parked?" asked Novello.

"Over there," he said jerking his head. "You're making a big mistake here, girl."

She spotted the top of the white camper a couple of rows away. At the same time, with relief, she saw another couple of police cars turning into the parking lot. This meant she had enough personnel to take care of the prisoners separately, plus both their vehicles. She made a quick calculation. They'd make quite a little procession, but there shouldn't be anyone alerted yet to take notice of it.

"Danby," she said. "I think we should all go to Danby."

In company of their friends, Peter and Ellie Pascoe mocked the kind of well-heeled people who lived "within the bell," but privately they both lusted for a house here. This was the nearest you could get in Mid-Yorkshire to rus in urbe, all the peace of the countryside in your lovely back garden, all the pleasures of the city outside your front door.

Or, to put it more crudely, you could get pissed out of your pericranium in your favorite pub and not need to rely on a sourly sober spouse to drive you home.

So usually when he had occasion to be in "the bell," his imagination was as active as an oil sheikh's in Mayfair, selecting this property and discarding that with reckless abandon.

Today, however, despite the fact that Holyclerk Street looked at its most seductive in the cidrous aureola of the early evening sun, the springs of covetousness were quite dried up within him as he walked along looking for the Wulfstan residence.

Ellie had told him she knew that being a policeman rotted your soul, but when you considered the Wulfstans' tragic history, not to mention the fact that his own daughter was just recovering from a serious illness, he was breaking all known records of insensitivity, illogicality, and irresponsibility. ...

"Listen," he said. "It's because of Rosie I'm doing this--"

"Because of what an overexcited kid thinks she saw? Because of a fucking picture book?" she'd interjected. "Now I've heard everything!"

"No," he said with matching ferocity. "Because we nearly lost her. Because in my head I did lose her, and I got to understand what I've often observed but never really fathomed before, why all those poor sods who do lose a kid run around like headless chickens, organizing protests and pressure groups and petitions and God knows what else. It's because you've got to make some sense of it, you've got to juggle with reasons and responsibilities, you've got to know the whys and the wherefores and the whens and the hows and the whos, oh, yes, especially the whos. Listen, you want to find out what you can do for Jill, and when you think you've found it, nothing will stop you doing it. Well, that's how I feel about Mr. and Mrs. Dacre. Knowing is all that's left for them, I'm not talking justice or revenge at this stage, just simple knowing. I may be right off-line here, but I owe it to them, I owe it to whatever God or blind fate gave us back Rosie, to check this thing out."

She had never seen him, certainly never heard him, like this before, and for once in their life together, she let herself be beaten into silence by his flailing words.

All she said as he left the hospital, where Rosie had fallen into a deep, peaceful sleep which looked set to last the night, was "Softly, softly, eh, love?" then kissed him hard.

He had gone on his way, not exactly triumphing, but with that glow of righteousness which springs from winning a heated moral debate.

But now, as he stood before the door of No. 41, it suddenly seemed to him, as so very often in the past, that though Ellie might not be right in every respect, she was right enough to have got the points decision.

This was crazy. Or if in its essentials, which were that something had come up in connection with a serious inquiry that needed to be investigated, not altogether crazy, certainly in this way of going about it totally bonkers.

He took a step back from the door, and might have fled, or might not, he never knew which, for at that moment the door opened and he found himself looking at Inger Sandel.

They had never met, but he recognized her from the photograph in the Post, which he was carrying in his briefcase.

She said, "Yes?"

He said, "Hello. I'm Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe."

She said, "Mr. Wulfstan is already gone to Danby with Elizabeth, but Chloe is still here, if you want to talk to her."

"Why not?" he said, though he could think of reasons.

He stepped into the hall. There were several boxes full of compact discs standing on the floor.

"We poor troubadours must be our own merchants too," she said, catching his glance. "They are to sell at the concert."

"Oh, yes?" He picked up the Kindertotenlieder disc. "Interesting design. The bars of music are Mahler, I presume?"

"Yes. But not from the lieder. The second symphony, I think." She paused as if waiting for a response, then went on. "You would like to buy one?"

"No, thanks," he said, putting it down hastily. "My wife's got one already. Mrs. Wulfstan's in, you say?"

"Yes, she is," she said, smiling as if at some private joke. "Goodbye, Mr. Pascoe. Nice to have met you."

She stepped outside and began pulling the door to behind her.

"Hold on," he said anxiously. "Mrs. Wulfstan ..."

"It's all right," she reassured him. "I must go out for a little while. Just shout."

He'd have preferred that she did the shouting. As he'd once explained to Ellie, being a cop isn't a cure for shyness, it just makes it rather inconvenient on occasion, as when for example you found yourself in a strange house without any visible authority.

He first coughed, then called, "Hello," in the small voice, at once summons and apology, he used for waiters.

He strained his ears for a response. There was none, but he thought he detected a distant murmur of voices.

Dalziel would either have bellowed, "SHOP!" or taken the chance to poke around.

He opened his mouth to shout, then decided that on the whole for a man of his temperament, being caught poking around was the lesser of two embarrassments.

He pushed open the nearest door with an apologetic smile ready on his lips.

It opened onto what looked like a gent's study of the old school. He ran his eyes over the glazed bookcases, the mahogany desk, the oak wainscoting, and thought of the converted bedroom which he used as a home office. Perhaps he should start taking bribes?

The room was empty and even his decision to follow one of the Fat Man's paths didn't mean he could go as far as poking through the desk drawers.

He went back into the hall and tried the door opposite. This led into a small sitting room, also empty, which had another door leading into a nicely sized dining room, very Adam, with an oval table so highly polished, it must have been a card-sharper's delight.

In the wall opposite the door he'd come in by was a serving hatch, partially open. The voices he'd heard before were now quite distinct, and he went forward and peered through the hatch without opening it further.

He found he was looking into a kitchen, but the talkers weren't in there. The back door was wide open onto a patio with one of those lovely long luscious "bell" gardens beyond, and he felt the stab of covetousness once more. He could see two people out there. One, a woman, visible in half profile, was seated into a low-back wicker chair. The other, a man, was leaning over her from behind with his hands inside her blouse, gently massaging her breasts.

The man (again identified from the Post) was Arne Krog. The woman he assumed to be Chloe Wulfstan, a deduction quickly confirmed.

Krog was saying, "Enough is enough. Someday you will have to leave him. If not now, when?"

The woman replied agitatedly, "Why will I have to leave? All right, yes, you're probably right. But it's an option. Like suicide. Knowing you can, knowing one day you probably will, is a great prop to endurance."