On Beulah Height

by Reginald Hill

  So giving the sergeant his congé, plus a curiously puritanical self-doubt as to whether in a case like this at a time like this he had any right to such private and personal concerns, left the Fat Man uneasy.

  He shook his head to dislodge the feeling like a bear dislodging a bee, and considered his location. Left under an arch, down a ginnel, and the chapel’s in yard at bottom, the landlord had said.

  There was the arch. He turned under it. By contrast with the bright street the ginnel was a railway tunnel, so when the voice spoke, he had a problem spotting its source.

  ‘I see he’s back then.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Dalziel, poised on the balls of his feet with his fists lightly clenched, ready for either punching or grappling. Strange voices in dark places didn’t always presage trouble, but it was worth an each-way bet.

  ‘Yon mad bugger, Lightfoot. He’s back. I’d have thought you’d have known.’

  The voice was lightly matter of fact, and had the reediness of age or perhaps adolescence. Dalziel relaxed a little and blinked rapidly till his sight adjusted to the new light level.

  He saw a shape first, small enough to be a boy. Then his brain filled in a face and he leapt rapidly to the other end of the scale. It was a hollow sunken face with deep clefts in the skin to mark the cheekbones and split the brow over which hung a few wisps of thin greying hair.

  It also had something familiar about it.

  ‘Telford?’ said Dalziel doubtfully. ‘Joe Telford? Is that you?’

  ‘It was,’ said the man. ‘Long time no see, Mr Dalziel.’

  It was indeed. But not as long as that evidenced by this man’s appearance. He must still be in his forties! thought Dalziel. And while he’d never been a large man, surely he’d been taller than this?

  He took a few steps towards the sunlight at the end of the ginnel and the man moved back before him, like flotsam pushed up the beach by the tide. Now the reason for the height loss became evident. Telford walked with a stoop, leaning heavily on a thick ashen stick. The dark brown suit he wore, making no concessions to the heat, may once have fitted, but now it hung on his slight frame like a tea towel on a beer pump.

  The ginnel ended in an open cobbled yard across which Dalziel saw the Beulah Chapel. It was an imposing building, constructed of dark red brick and looking rather out of place, certainly out of proportion, in this location. A faint buzz came out of it as from a huge hive of bees. The yard itself was littered with a carpenter’s bench, several trestles bearing lengths of wood, and plastic carriers stuffed with tools.

  Telford had halted, still in the ginnel’s shade. He was tidy enough despite the ill-fitting suit, clean shaven, and smelt of soap and sawdust rather than neglect. This was slightly but not totally reassuring. Dalziel had met too many folk in whom cleanliness was next to dottiness, and his inner sensors were telling him Joe Telford was dotty as a dartboard.

  ‘So how’re you doing, Mr Telford?’ said the Fat Man.

  ‘I get by. It’s been a worry, but.’

  ‘Aye, I daresay it has,’ said Dalziel.

  ‘Still, wi’ a bit of luck, you’ll catch bugger this time and that’ll be an end on it.’

  It was the unremittingly matter-of-fact tone of voice which was perhaps the most unnerving thing about the man. In fact, the premature ageing apart, it was the only unnerving thing about him. So why was he getting that care-in-the-community tingle? Dalziel decided to apply a subtle psychological test.

  ‘Sorry to hear about your missus,’ he said. ‘Must’ve been a shock.’

  Telford looked at him and scratched his chin reflectively.

  ‘Not so much of a shock as it’ll be to our George when he sees what she does to a tube of toothpaste,’ he said.

  Dalziel smiled approvingly. Flying colours. That was how you expected a down-to-earth Yorkie to react to domestic strife.

  ‘So you’re letting the singers use the chapel,’ he said.

  ‘Aye. Why not? To tell truth, Mr Dalziel, I don’t spend a lot of time down here. And Mr Wulfstan were always a good customer in the old days. Owt needed done at Heck, he always went local, didn’t bring in some fancy Dan from town like a lot of them offcomers. He’ll be glad of it, too.’

  ‘Glad of having somewhere for his concert, you mean? I expect he will.’

  ‘No. Glad you’re close to getting things sorted. He’ll be wanting to see his little lass as much as me.’

  ‘See his lass?’ echoed Dalziel. ‘Aye, I daresay, I daresay.’

  He was thinking remains. He didn’t need any bereavement counsellor to tell him how important it was for a parent’s peace of mind to have a proper funeral, a proper leave-taking after no matter how many years.

  But Telford’s next words sent him reeling back to his initial diagnosis.

  ‘This sun’s a bloody nuisance, but. You’ll have to take care of that when you find them. Could burn their eyes out after all them years in the dark. Best wait for night afore you fetch them out.’

  ‘Fetch them out? Out of where, Mr Telford?’

  ‘Out of yon hole in the Neb he’s been keeping them in all these years. Aye, night ‘ud be best. Then let them get used to the light gradual like.’

  Oh, fuck, thought Dalziel. The poor bastard wasn’t talking remains, he was talking recovery, he was talking resurrection. He thought his lost lass was going to come up blinking out of some dark cave in the hillside where Benny had kept her all these years. Did he think she’d be older or that some magical suspension of time would have kept her the same age as when she got taken? Dalziel didn’t want to know. It was that rare thing, a problem beyond his competence. He remembered Telford’s wife. A small strong woman who had balled up her apron and stuffed it into her mouth when she heard the news. He guessed she’d have kept her suffering to herself as far as she could, would finally have come to some sort of terms with it. But what was beyond her strength, what she couldn’t come to terms with after all these years was the matter-of-fact craziness of her husband, his gentle insistence that little Madge was alive under the Neb somewhere, just waiting to be rescued. So she’d run. Not far, just to George, who bore a strong physical resemblance to his brother. He bet they lived close. He bet they kept a close eye on Joe. And the Danbyians would accept it. In matters of extra-marital lust Yorkshire rustics could be as unforgiving as a government chief whip, but in terms of domestic practicality, they were often more laid back than Latins.

  He said gently, ‘We’ll do what’s right, Mr Telford. Is Mr Wulfstan here now?’

  Aye, him and some others. I’m just waiting for the truck to come. Mr Wulfstan’s arranged to have my bits and pieces taken round to store at his place in the Science Park. I told him not to bother, they’d not come to harm in this weather. But he insisted. He’s a good man.’

  ‘I’ll go and have a word with him then, Mr Telford. You take care now.’

  He strode across the yard thinking, this is no place for me. He didn’t mean the Beulah Chapel, he meant Danby. Soon as he’d got news of the case, he should have gone sick, taken a holiday, dumped the whole thing in Peter Pascoe’s lap. Then he recalled what else had been dumped in his lieutenant’s lap and growled to himself, ‘Get a grip on yourself, man, or you’ll end up daft as poor Joe Telford.’

  He glanced back to the ginnel. The man had stepped further back into the deep shade and was only visible now as a gleam of eye white. Perhaps he haunted shadowy places because he felt they somehow kept him in touch with his daughter.

  Shaking the depressing thought from his mind, Dalziel pushed open the door of the chapel.

  There were several people in there, three of them using suction cleaners which explained the buzzing. The floor space was devoid of pews. Perhaps they’d been removed when the chapel was decommissioned. Or maybe the Beulahites didn’t believe in sitting at worship. There was nowt so harmless that some religious sect hadn’t made it a sin.

  At the far end where presumably the altar (if they went in for altars) had stood, he
saw Wulfstan in a little group which included the two singers. Behind them, Inger Sandel was sitting at a piano, plucking out single notes and examining them long after they had ceased to resound in Dalziel’s ear. There was no sign of Cap Marvell. He felt a sag of disappointment, then told himself he had no right to be disappointed, not when the man he wanted to see was in place.

  Not that his reason for wanting to see him was any stronger than not having anyone else he wanted to see at that moment. Some investigators he knew, when things ground to a halt in an enquiry, got through by sitting down and going over the story so far with a fine-tooth comb. He had two on his team who could do that, in their different ways. But his own way was to make things happen, keep prodding, never let the opposition have a rest, even when you didn’t have the faintest idea who the opposition was. When this ignorance had been put to him as a possible invalidation of the technique by Peter Pascoe, Dalziel had replied, ‘Doesn’t matter. The bugger knows who I am and so long as he sees me busy, there’s no way he’ll rest peaceful in his bed. Push, push, and see what gives.’

  ‘Superintendent,’ Wulfstan greeted him. ‘I hope you have not decided that you need this hall also.’

  ‘Nay, this is all yours,’ said Dalziel magnanimously. ‘Standing- room only, is it? Like in the Prams?’

  ‘Proms, I think you mean. Where people do stand, yes, but the majority sit. Here everyone will sit. We’re having the chairs brought round as soon as we get the place properly cleaned.’

  ‘Aye, I can see you’re giving it a good going over,’ said the Fat Man.

  ‘The atmosphere of a carpenter’s shop is not helpful to a singer’s throat,’ said Wulfstan. ‘I’ll be having a commercial dust extractor brought down from my works later to complete the job. So, how can I help you?’

  ‘Just a word,’ said Dalziel. ‘Private.’

  He glanced at the others in the group. The three he didn’t know drifted away. Krog and the woman remained where they were.

  ‘Please, you may say what you will before Elizabeth and Arne,’ said Wulfstan. Dalziel shrugged.

  ‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘Driving into Danby on Sunday morning you’d have to pass under the old railway bridge. There was a big sign sprayed on it. It said BENNY’S BACK. You must have noticed it. But you didn’t mention it to me.’

  He’d placed himself so that all three were in his sight line and he saw the woman’s intense gaze move from his face to her father’s as though curious as to the answer to this question. Well, why not? It was a question to be curious about.

  Wulfstan said, ‘I did not mention it because it did not seem relevant, and in any case, I did not doubt that you yourself would already have seen it, or had it pointed out to you.’

  Reasonable explanation? Or rather, explanations, there being two of them. In Dalziel’s maths, this meant reasonableness divided rather than multiplied by a factor of two.

  He said, ‘Not relevant? After what happened back in Dendale? I’d have thought you’d have felt it relevant, if anyone did.’

  ‘And the shock of seeing that name would have brought everything flooding back?’ Wulfstan smiled wearily. ‘First of all, Mr Dalziel, it has never been away. Not a day passes without me thinking of Mary. That was how I was able to return to Yorkshire, because I realized that distance made no difference.’

  Dalziel clocked Elizabeth again to see if there was any reaction to this unambiguous statement of the order of things, the dead natural daughter still ranking ahead of the live adopted one. There wasn’t.

  ‘As for Lightfoot’s name,’ the man went on, ‘there was a time when it caused a reaction. But that was several years ago when I first returned here to Danby. He has entered the local folklore. The children have a skipping rhyme that uses his name, and when they play hide and seek the seeker is called Benny. The men in the pubs describing the speed of some football player will say, “He can move like Benny Lightfoot.” Most of them have no idea who they’re referring to, of course. With my work-site here, I had to get used to the name. And I did.’

  Dalziel nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Aye, grin and bear it, that’s the Yorkshire way,’ he said.

  That got a flicker of amusement from the woman.

  Wulfstan said, ‘Now if that’s all… I’m expecting the fire inspector any minute now …’

  ‘Sorry, I know you’re busy. Yes, that’s it … except…’

  Dalziel bowled a good except. He gave it plenty of air so the batsman had lots of time to worry whether it was his googly or not.

  ‘… except, you’ve been set up here in Danby for several years now, right? But witness who saw your car parked up the Corpse Road says she’s only started noticing it there in the last couple of weeks, and she’s been walking her dog up there every morning, come rain or shine, for years.’

  Wulfstan looked at him broodingly for a long moment. He looked like … something, Dalziel couldn’t remember what. Then he gave an exasperated smile and said, ‘If your question is, why now? the answer is so obvious, I would have thought even a man in your line of work might have got within hailing distance of it unaided. Morbid curiosity, Superintendent. This heat wave has gone on so long that what remains of Dendale village has begun to re-emerge. I climb up the Neb to watch its progress. And sometimes as I walk up the Corpse Road, I fantasize that when I reach the Neb, I’ll see everything as it was, I mean everything as it was. There. Now you see the depths of absurdity to which the rational mind can descend.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen minds that have gone a sight deeper than that,’ said Dalziel. ‘Thanks for being so frank. And I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

  ‘No trouble. And perfect timing. There, I believe, is the fire inspector. Excuse me.’

  He headed towards a man who’d just stepped through the door and was looking around with that sceptical have-we-got-trouble-here expression which is the first thing safety inspectors learn at college.

  ‘How about us, Superintendent? You got any excepts for us?’

  Elizabeth Wulfstan’s accent still bothered him even though he’d absolved her of taking the piss.

  He said, ‘None I can think of, miss. Except, them Kraut songs about dead kids, you still planning to sing them tomorrow?’

  ‘I am. After a complimentary ticket, are you? Well, we might manage one, but I reckon someone as glorrfat as you ‘ud need two and I don’t know if we can spare that many.’

  This was piss-taking in any language.

  He said, ‘Just thought you might have changed your mind, all things considered.’

  The Turnip gave him a nod of approval, but the woman just shrugged indifferently.

  She said, ‘Kids die, all the time. Show me somewhere I could sing them that no kids have died.’

  ‘We’re not talking general, we’re talking specific here,’ he said.

  ‘I thought the Liggside lass were only missing,’ she said. ‘Like the others. They’re only missing, right? You never found any bodies, did you?’

  She spoke mildly, as if they were discussing some minor point of etiquette.

  Dalziel said, ‘Fifteen years is a long time missing. I don’t think anyone …’

  He paused. He’d been going to say he didn’t think anyone was expecting them to come walking back through the door, but his encounter with Joe Telford popped up in his mind. And what did he really know about what Wulfstan and his wife were thinking? Or the Hardcastles. From what Clark had told him it sounded like all that family had gone doolally to some degree or another.

  Perhaps he was the only man in Mid-Yorkshire who was certain beyond doubt all the children were dead … No, not the only one … there was another…

  He said, ‘Any road, it’s none of my business. You can sing what you like, luv, long as it doesn’t offend public decency.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said seriously. ‘But I’ll not be singing at all if this place doesn’t suit. You done yet, Inger?’

  Inger Sandel hadn’t once glanced Dalziel’s wa
y during the whole of his conversation with the Wulfstans, concentrating on what sounded to his untutored ear like an unnecessary fine tuning of the piano. But he had the feeling that she hadn’t missed a thing. Now she sat back and started to play a scale, tentative at first, then expanding till she was sweeping up and down the whole length of the keyboard. The notes filled the chapel. Finally she stopped and listened to their dying echoes with the same rapt attention as she’d paid to the originals. Then she turned to the other woman and gave a barely perceptible nod.

  ‘Let’s give it a bash, then,’ said Elizabeth Wulfstan.

  Dalziel moved towards the door, Ame Krog fell into step beside him.

  ‘I think you are right, Mr Dalziel,’ he said. ‘Elizabeth should not sing the Kindertotenlieder. For the sake of this place. And for her own sake.’

  ‘Her own sake?’

  Krog shrugged.

  ‘Elizabeth is strong, like a steel door. You cannot see what is behind it. But as you know, the way the child is shaped forms the adult. Perhaps that’s where we should look.’

  Before Dalziel could reply, Inger Sandel started playing the piano; an abrupt, rapid, disturbing torrent of notes before the singer came in, with words to match.

  In such foul weather, in such a gale,

  I’d never have sent them to play up the dale!

  They were dragged by force or fear.

  Nought I said could keep them here.

  She spat out the words with such power they turned the Beulah Chapel into a self-contained storm in the midst of the bright sunny day outside. As she sang, her eyes were once more fixed on Wulfstan, who at first tried to keep his conversation with the fire inspector going but soon turned his head to watch the singer.

  In such foul weather, in sleet and hail,

  I’d never have let them play out in the dale,

  I was feart they’d take badly;

  Now such fears I’d suffer gladly.