Novello made a note of the transporter number, called up Control on her radio, and asked for a vehicle check. It was registered to Kellaway Plant Sales, proprietor Liberace Kellaway. Novello gave details of the transporter's likely present location and asked if it could be stopped, ostensibly for a check on stability or something, but in fact to find out anything they could about the origins of the digger. When the sergeant i.c. Control came on to inquire who it was requesting this misuse of hardworked car officers' time, with the implication that it had better not be anyone low as a WOULDC, Novello thought of sheep and lambs and said, "Mr. Dalziel would be grateful."
In Mid-Yorkshire police circles, this was the equivalent of a royal command, and half an hour later the word came back. The transporter, which was being driven by Mr. Kellaway himself (liberace! thought Novello. What a fan his mother must have been. What a disappointment little Lib probably was!) had passed all tests satisfactorily. As for the digger, it had just been purchased from the firm of G. Turnbull, Contractor, Ltd., of Bixford, and he had the papers to prove it.
Novello uttered her thanks, plus a request that no further reference be made to this matter on open air, hoping thus to delay the moment when the Fat Man discovered his name had been taken in vain.
Now she settled down again to wait, still hungry, still hot, but refreshed by hope as her mind began to get an inkling of what that smart-ass Pascoe had probably worked out several hours before.
In fact, Shirley Novello was both overestimating Pascoe, and underestimating Dalziel.
The former, it was true, had glimpsed the outline of a sketch of a cartoon of a possible picture when he advised her to follow her heart, but no more than that, and in the hours since he had found little leisure or inclination to essay bolder strokes and finer shadings.
The awaking of Rosie was both huge joy and piercing pain.
She had opened her eyes and been instantly aware of her parents. Initially she showed no curiosity about where she was but babbled on-not deliriously but merely out of her customary eagerness to tell everything at once-about caves and pools and tunnels and bats and nixes.
Then she paused and said, "Where's Zandra? Is Zandra back too?"
That was the pain. The pain of her loss to come. And the infinitely greater pain of Derek and Jill Purlingstone's loss, which Pascoe shared by empathy as his heart and imagination showed him how he would have felt had it been Rosie, and which was joined by guilt as he found himself offering up thanks to the God he didn't believe in that it hadn't been her.
"It wasn't a choice, Peter," urged Ellie when he explained this. "There was no moment when someone, or something, decided, We'll take this one and let that one go."
"No," said Pascoe. "But if it had been a choice, and I had to make it, this is what I would have chosen without a second's thought."
"And that makes you feel guilty?" said Ellie. "If you'd needed a second's thought, that would have been something to feel guilty about."
Rosie had fallen asleep now, as if the excitement of recovery was as exhausting as the illness itself, but now her rest was recognizably the repose of sleep, with all the small grunts and changes of expression and shifts of position which her watching parents knew so well.
They sat by the bed hand-in-hand, sometimes talking quietly, sometimes in a shared silence full of pleasurable memory of times past, and in pleasurable anticipation of times to come; but always, if the silence went on too long, they would finally look at each other and register that each had drifted in his and her reverie to that other place in the hospital where a small form lay and two other parents sat in their own silence as profound and unbreachable as that beneath the sea.
As for Andy Dalziel, it was some time since he had turned his attention to the disposition of his troops and first of all he asked, "What's Seymour on?"
Wield, who made it his business to find out in rapid retrospect what he had failed to know in long advance, said, "He's at Wark House in case Lightfoot shows up there."
"Oh, aye? I thought that were Ivor's assignment."
"No. It were her idea to send Seymour."
"Her idea?" said Dalziel making it sound oxymoronic. "And where's she at?"
"She's watching Turnbull."
"And whose idea were that?"
"She says the DCI'S."
"She says! Meaning she's doing it off her own bat, I suppose. Dear God, Wieldy, you've got to watch these women. Give 'em an inch and they're black-leading your bollocks."
"You want I should call her up?"
"Nay. Let her be. There's nowt for her to do here and if she turns summat up, she'll be a hero."
"And if she doesn't?" said Wield.
"Then likely she'll be sorry she ever troubled the midwife," said Dalziel balefully.
The superintendent was in a bad mood. So far the fresh lines of inquiry he'd anticipated from the finding of the body hadn't materialized. The postmortem had confirmed the on-the-spot diagnosis. Death following a skull fracture caused either by being hit by an irregular-shaped object, probably a piece of rock, or by falling heavily against same. No sexual assault. Forensic examination of the clothing had so far come up with nothing. In fact the only opportunities for Dalziel to exercize any of his many skills came from being required by first the chief constable and secondly the press to explain how come an extensive, and expensive, search over the same ground had failed to turn up the child's corpse.
Desperate Dan Trimble, the CC, had been relatively easy to deal with. Despite their occasional differences, they had a lot of respect for each other, which is to say Trimble accepted that Dalziel's regime was good for the area's crime figures, and Dalziel accepted that as far as was possible, Trimble protected his back. Also Dan liked the way Dalziel made no effort to offload responsibility onto Maggie Burroughs or any other of the officers on the ground. "Shifting dead sheep and paying special heed to the area round about was my shout," said the Fat Man. "I missed it." And the question rose in his mind as to whether he might have missed it fifteen years ago also. If this were the same killer, why should he have bothered to learn new tricks?
At the press conference summoned in late afternoon in a classroom at St. Michael's school, the ladies and gents of the press were another kettle of fish. The locals, knowing that keeping on the right side of Dalziel was good survival technique, were relatively kind, but the national pack had no such inhibitions. After they'd worried the police incompetence hare to death, they turned their attention to their second perceived prey, the Dendale connection. This was a two-pronged onslaught, with the sensationalist tabloids eager to tell their readers this was the same killer come back to start again (which meant that police incompetence fifteen years ago was now coming back to haunt them), while the rest were pursuing the line that the two cases were probably not connected but Dalziel was letting his obsession with Dendale contaminate the contemporary investigation.
The Fat Man bit back the word bollocks! and said, "Nay, we've got an open mind to all possibilities, and we hope you gents will keep an open mind too"… and I'll be happy to help open it with a hatchet, his thoughts ran on.
A smarmily sarky sod from one of the heavyweight Sundays said, "I presume it's in pursuance of this open-minded approach that you still have a diving team searching the Dendale Reservoir?"
Shit! thought Dalziel. So much had happened today that he'd forgotten to call the mermaids off!
"In view of the discovery of the lass's body," he said portentously, "we are of course now re-searching the whole area for traces of the assailant."
"Think he got away by swimming, do you?" called someone to laughter.
"Water's a good place for getting rid of things," said Dalziel stonily.
"Like a murder weapon, you mean?" said the sarky sod. "Which, I understand, is likely to have been a rock? You mean, you've got a team of divers searching the bed of a reservoir in a Yorkshire dale for a rock? Tell me, Superintendent, have they managed to find one yet?"
More amusement
. This was getting out of hand.
He waited for silence, then said, "I see the serious questions are over, so I'll get back to work now. I know I don't need to remind you folk that there's people suffering out there, and there's people frightened, and the last thing they need is for what's gone off to be sensationalized or trivialized."
He let his gaze run slowly over the assembled faces, as if committing each one to memory, then spoke again.
"Up here we judge folk not only by the way they keep the law but by the way they treat each other. And we don't take kindly to intrusion or harassment. So think on."
He rose, ignoring the attempts to continue the questioning, and walked out.
"You were good," said Wield.
"I were crap," said Dalziel indifferently. "Wieldy, get on the line to them mermaids and tell them to start toweling off."
The sergeant went away. He was back in a couple of minutes, looking-so far as it was possible to tell from that fractured and foreate face -unhappy.
"All sorted?" said Dalziel.
"Not really," said Wield. "When I got through they were just on the point of contacting us. Sir, they've found some bones."
"What? You mean, human?"
"Aye. Human."
"Champion," said Dalziel looking out of the window at the infinite blue of the sky. "Like my old dad used to say, it never bloody rains but it pours!"
12
At five o'clock, Geordie Turnbull was on the move.
Novello had been driven by a call of nature to leave the car in search of seclusion. This enforced exploration had led her to a small copse in a field almost opposite the compound where, relief achieved, she discovered that with the aid of her glasses, she was able to get a view clear through the length of the bungalow's living room, from open front window to open French door.
She could see Turnbull's head and shoulders as he slouched in an armchair, occasionally taking a sip from a glass. Then he straightened up, reached out, and picked up the telephone.
He didn't dial, so it had to be an incoming call. It didn't last long. He replaced the receiver, drained his glass, and stood up.
Then he moved out of sight. Novello didn't hang about but headed back to her car fast.
Her instinct proved right. A minute later, Turnbull came out of the bungalow carrying a bag. He got into the Volvo station wagon and drove out through the compound gate, turning eastward. It was a fairly empty B road and Novello hung well back. But six or seven miles beyond Bixford, the B road joined the busy dual parkway to the coast and she had to accelerate to keep him within sight.
A few miles farther on he signaled to turn off into a service area. She thought it must be fuel he was after, but he turned into the parking lot, got out, still carrying the bag, and headed for the cafeteria.
Novello followed. She hung back till several more people joined the queue behind him, then took her place. He bought a pot of tea and carried it to a table by the window overlooking the road. She noticed he took the seat which gave him a view of the entrance door.
She got a coffee and found a seat a few tables behind him. Someone had left a newspaper. She picked it up and held it so that, if he should happen to glance round, half her face would be covered. If his roving eye was keen enough to identify her from the top half alone, tough.
He was waiting for someone, there was no doubt about that. He poured his tea and raised the cup to his lips with his left hand, his right never letting go of the handle of the bag on the chair next to his, and his head angled toward the doorway.
This went on for twenty minutes. People came and ate and left. A clearer-up tried to remove Novello's empty cup, but she hung on to it. She had turned the pages of her paper several times without reading a word or even identifying which title she was holding. He likewise had squeezed the last drops out of his teapot. More time passed. Whatever reason he had for being here, he was determined his journey should not have been in vain.
Then finally he froze. Not that he'd been moving much before, but now he went so still, he made the furniture look active.
Novello looked toward the entrance door.
She knew him at once from Wield's doctored photograph.
Benny Lightfoot had just come into the cafeteria.
Andy Dalziel was standing at the edge of Dender Mere, close by the pile of stones which marked the site of Heck Farm. On the sun-baked mud at his feet lay a small selection of bones. He stirred them with his toe.
"Radius, ulna, and we think these could be carpal bones, but being small, they've been a bit more mucked about," said the chief mermaid, whose everyday name was Sergeant Tom Perriman.
"Age? Sex? How long they've been there?" prompted Dalziel greedily.
Perriman shrugged his broad rubberized shoulders.
"We just pulled 'em out," he said. "Adult I'd say, or adolescent at least."
"And the rest?"
"Still looking," said Perriman. "Funny, really. Not much in the way of current here. You'd expect them to stay pretty much together even after a fairly long time. Pure chance I found them. We weren't really interested in searching near the side where it's so shallow-"
"Where exactly?" demanded Dalziel.
"Just here," said Perriman, disgruntled at having his narrative flow interrupted.
He indicated a spot on the watery side of the exposed pile of rubble and went on. "I was just coming out, stood up to walk the last couple of yards, and felt something under my foot. Of course it would have been a lot deeper here before the drought. But where's the rest, that's my question."
"Perhaps there is no more," suggested Wield.
"What? Someone cut off an arm and hoyed it into the mere?" said Dalziel. "Still means there's the rest of him somewhere, or some bugger caused a bit of comment by going out for a stroll with a full set of arms and coming back one short."
"Some very secretive folk in Mid-Yorkshire, sir. Any road, chances are it's nowt to do with our case."
"Oh, aye? So what are you suggesting, Wieldy? Chuck it back and if any bugger asks, tell 'em it got away? Listen, even if it's not our case, it's certainly another of our cases. Bag this lot and get them down to the lab, Tom. And keep looking."
The Fat Man turned and headed toward his Range Rover, Wield following.
"There's been a few suicides up here, sir," he said.
"Aye, I think of them every time I mash my tea, Wieldy," said Dalziel. "But we usually trawl them out, don't we?"
"The ones we know about," agreed the sergeant. "But anyone could come up here and take a walk into the middle with a pocketful of stones and end up a statistic on our missing persons list."
"I may have to give up tea," said Dalziel. "You know, I never liked this water from the first time I saw it. Something about Dender Mere always gave me the creeps. Here, that sounds like George Headingley laying an egg on the car radio. What's woken him up, I wonder?"
"Soon find out," said Wield, picking up the mike and responding.
"Is he there, Wieldy?" demanded Headingley. "Tell him we've just got a message in from WOULDC Novello. She says she's sitting in the cafeteria of the Orecliff Services cafeteria on the coast road watching Geordie Turnbull having a chat with Benny Lightfoot. You see what this means? They could be in it together! Two of them, not just the one. That 'ud explain a hell of a lot, wouldn't it?"
Dalziel reached over and took the mike.
He said, "It wouldn't explain what you're doing telling the world and his mother this on the open air, George. So shut up unless you're sending the four-minute warning. We're on our way!"
"So what do you think, sir?" said Wield as they drove away. "Two for the price of one?"
"I think George Headingley got his brain on the National Health and his immune system's rejecting it," said Dalziel. "But if yon Ivor really has got us Benny Lightfoot, I think I might have to marry her."
At about the same time, Rosie Pascoe woke again and announced she was hungry. When she was only allowed a very light amount of
liquid intake, she started to complain bitterly and her parents looked at each other with broad smiles.
"Am I very ill?" the little girl asked suddenly.
Pascoe's heart jolted for a second, but Ellie's ear was much more attuned to the note of calculation in the question.
"You've been fairly ill," she said firmly. "But now you are much better. And if you're completely better in time for the Mid-Yorks Fair, Daddy will take you and you can go on the Big Loop. Now Mummy's got to go out for a little while, but I'll be back shortly."
Pascoe followed her to the door.
"What was all that about?" he asked.
"The trick is to make the reward for getting better, not for being ill, otherwise she'll spin the invalid state out for months," said Ellie patiently.
"Yes, I got that. I meant about the Big Loop. You know it makes me sick."
"Peter, though I'll deny ever having said it, sometimes a little more Schwarzenegger, a little less Hugh Grant, would be a useful corrective."
"Okay. Where the hell do you think you're going, babe?"
"That is pure Cagney," she said. Then, more serious, "I'm just going to check on Jill. Okay, I understand what you said before, and I'm not going to push myself on her. She'll be at home now anyway, I should think. But I wanted to talk to someone about her and try to work out what's best for us to do."
"Okay," said Pascoe. "I'll entertain the monster."
After a fairly short spell of "entertainment," the monster looked ready to go back to sleep again.
"That's right, sweetie. You have a nap, get your strength up," said Pascoe. "In hospital you need to be fit to keep an eye on all the visitors trying to steal your grapes."
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