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‘Why’re you asking, is what I want to know.’
‘Don’t act stupid. You know why I’m asking. If I can eliminate him from my enquiries, then I won’t have to take this house to pieces.’
Honesty is not only the best policy, it’s also sometimes the best form of police brutality, thought Pascoe, watching as shock slackened the woman’s solid features.
Dalziel went on, ‘Afore you start yelling at me, think on, missus. You want me to have to start asking that poor woman if her man works on a short fuse or has got any special interest in his own daughter? You’re not daft, you know these things happen. So just tell me, is there owt I ought to know about Tony Dacre?’
The woman found her voice.
‘No, there bloody isn’t. I don’t like him all that much, but that’s personal. As for Lorraine, he worships that little lass, I mean like a father should. In fact, if you ask me, he spoils her rotten, and if she set fire to the house he’d not lose his temper with her. Jesus, I’d not have your job for a thousand pounds. Aren’t things bad enough here without you looking for something even filthier in it?’
Her tone was vehement, but she managed to control the sound level to keep it in the kitchen.
‘Grand,’ said Dalziel with a friendly smile. ‘Bring the tea through when it’s mashed, eh?’
He went out, pulling the door shut behind him. Behind it, Pascoe noticed for the first time, was a dog basket. Lying in it was a small mongrel dog, somewhere between a spaniel and a terrier. Its eyes were open but it didn’t move. Pascoe stooped over it and now its ears went back and it growled deep in its throat. Pascoe responded with soothing noises and though its eyes remained wary, it accepted a scratch between the ears. But when his hand strayed down to its shoulder, it snarled threateningly and he straightened up quickly.
‘Anyone sent for the vet?’ he enquired.
Mrs Coe said, ‘For crying out loud, my niece is missing out there and all you’re worried about is the sodding dog!’
The sergeant replied, ‘Not that I know of. I mean, with everything else …’
‘Do it now, will you? I don’t like to see an animal in pain, but just as important, I want to know how it got its injuries.’
‘Oh aye. I didn’t think, sir,’ said Clark guiltily. ‘I’ll get on to it right away.’
The woman, who’d busied herself mashing the tea, pushed past them angrily. Clark, following her, paused at the door and said, ‘Owt else I should have thought of, sir?’
‘Unless Lorraine turns up OK in the next half hour or so, this thing’s going to explode into a major enquiry. We’ll need an incident room. Somewhere with plenty of space and not too far away. Any ideas?’
The sergeant’s broad features contorted with thought, then he said, ‘There’s St Michael’s Hall. It’s shared between the church and the primary school and it’s just a step away …’
‘Sounds fine. Now get that vet. Good job you thought of it before the super, eh?’
He smiled as he spoke and after a moment Clark smiled back, then left.
One thing about Dalziel, thought Pascoe. He provides solid ground to build a good working relationship with the troops.
He opened the back door of the kitchen which led into a small, tidily kept yard with a patch of lawn and a wooden shed. He stepped out into the balmy air and opened the shed door. Some gardening tools, an old pushchair, and a child’s bike.
Carefully controlling his thoughts, he next went to the yard door and unlatched it. He found himself looking across an area of worn and parched grassland scattered with clumps of furze whose bright yellow flowers threw back defiance at the blazing sun. This had to be Ligg Common with beyond it the long sweep of Danbydale rising northwards to Highcross Moor.
Sunlight eats up distance and the head of the valley looked barely a half-hour’s stroll away, while the long ridge of the Neb stood within range of an outfielder with a good arm. He let his gaze cross to the valley’s opposite lower arm and here caught the glint of the sun on the glass of a descending car, and suddenly its tininess gave a proper perspective to the view.
There was a huge acreage of countryside out there, more than a few dozen men could search properly in a long day. And when you added to the outdoors all the buildings and barns and byres from the outskirts of the town to the farmed limits of the fell, then what lay in prospect was a massive operation.
He stood and felt the sun probe beneath his mop of light brown hair and beneath the surface of his fair skin. A few more minutes of this and he’d turn pink and peel like a new potato, while another hour or so would beat his brain into that state of sun-drunk insensibility he usually experienced on Mediterranean beach holidays while Ellie by his side only grew browner and browner and fitter and fitter.
Sometimes insensibility was the more desirable fate.
‘You taken root or wha’?’
He turned and saw Dalziel in the yard doorway.
‘Just thinking, sir. Anything happened?’
‘No. She’s quieter now. Much better with her mam than yon sister-in-law. Where’s Clark? I want to ask him about Dennis Coe, the brother.’
‘Mrs Coe’s husband?’
‘We’ll make a detective of you yet. Six or seven years older than Elsie, if I recall. We’ll need to take a close look at him.’
‘Why? Was he in the frame fifteen years back?’ asked Pascoe, thinking that Dalziel’s coup with Mrs Coe’s name was looking a pretty simple conjuring trick now.
‘Missing kids, every sod old enough to have a stiff cock ends up in the frame. He’d be eighteen or thereabout. Bad age. And all the kids who went missing were blonde and he wed himself a blonde …’
‘Come on!’ said Pascoe. ‘You reach any further and you’ll be in the X-files. In any case, I’d say Mrs Coe’s colour comes straight out of a bottle.’
‘So he married dark but let her know he preferred blondes. OK, stop flaring your nostrils else you’ll get house martins building. One thing you can’t argue with, he’s Lorraine’s uncle, and uncles rate high in the statistics for this kind of thing.’
Pascoe shook his head and said dully, ‘Mrs Coe said she’d not have our job for a thousand pounds. She’s way out. Sometimes a million’s not enough for the way we have to look at things.’
‘Talking of looking, what’s yon?’
The Fat Man was staring north. Over the distant horizon the heat haze had coalesced into something thicker.
‘Never a cloud, is it?’ said Dalziel.
‘Not of rain,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’d say smoke. Slightest spark starts a grass fire this weather.’
‘Best make sure some other bugger’s noticed,’ said Dalziel.
He pulled out his mobile, dialled, spoke and listened.
‘Aye,’ he said, switching off. ‘They know. It’s a big one. And not the only one either. Brigade’s on full alert and they’re using our uniformed too, which isn’t good news for us if we have to hit the red button.’
‘When?’ said Pascoe. ‘You don’t think that there’s …’
He was interrupted by Sergeant Clark from the doorway.
‘Excuse me, sir, but Mr Douglas the vet’s here. We got him on his mobile coming back from a farm call.’
‘Vet?’ said Dalziel to Pascoe. ‘What’s up? Feeling badly?’
In the kitchen they found a broad-built grey-bearded man kneeling down by the dog basket. His examination of the mongrel produced the odd rumbling growl but nothing as menacing as the snarl provoked by Pascoe’s inexpert probe.
Finally he stood up and turned his attention to the humans.
‘Peter Pascoe, DCI,’ said Pascoe, offering his hand. ‘And this is Superintendent Dalziel.’
‘We’ve met,’ said Douglas shortly. His voice had a Scots burr.
‘Aye, what fettle, Dixie?’ said Dalziel. ‘So, what’s the damage?’
‘Shoulder and ribcage badly bruised. I don’t think there’s a fracture, but he needs an X-ray to be sure. Possibility of internal injury. I think it’s best in all the circumstances if I take him back to the surgery with me. Any news of the wee lassie?’
‘Not yet,’ said Pascoe. ‘These injuries, what do you think caused them?’
‘No accident, that’s for sure,’ said the vet flatly. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say someone had given the poor beast a good kicking. Good day to you.’
Gently he lifted the dog from the basket and went out of the kitchen.
‘Good man, that,’ said Sergeant Clark approvingly. ‘Really worries about sick animals.’
‘Aye, well, he supports Raith Rovers,’ said Dalziel. ‘So someone gave the dog a kicking. That’s enough to get the show on the road. Good thinking to have the beast checked out.’
Pascoe said, ‘Yes. Well done, Sergeant Clark. So what do you want me to do, sir? Call in the troops and set up an incident room?’
‘Aye, best go by the book,’ said Dalziel without enthusiasm. ‘Any suggestions, Sergeant? As far as I recall, your Section Office isn’t big enough to swing a punch in.’
‘St Michael’s Hall, sir,’ said Clark with brisk efficiency. ‘Doubles as assembly hall and gym for the primary school and as a community centre. I’ve spoken on the phone with Mrs Shimmings the school head. You’ll likely remember her, sir. She were in Dendale, like me. Miss Lavery, she was then. She’s really upset. Says she’ll go to the school now to be on hand in case we need her help, talking about the little girl and such.’
Dalziel looked at him reflectively and said, ‘Well done, Sergeant. You’re thinking so far ahead, you’ll end up telling fortunes. OK, Peter, off you go. Tell ’em I want someone from uniformed who knows left from right to head up the search team. Maggie Burroughs’ll do nicely. And we’ll need a canteen van. It’ll be thirsty work tramping round them fells. And an information caravan for the Common. I’ll be here to see they get themselves sorted. Any questions?’
‘No, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘Lead on, Sergeant.’
Clark went out. As Pascoe followed, Dalziel’s voice brought him to a halt.
‘Word of advice, lad,’ he said.
‘Always welcome,’ said Pascoe.
‘Glad to hear it. So listen in. You do Nobby Clark a favour, don’t let him pay you back in beer. Make sure you work the bugger’s arse off. All right?’
Not just a conjuring trick, thought Pascoe. He really does know everything.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Right off its haunches.’
SIX (#ulink_6174160c-e9c5-5ffa-87e2-2b5ee9943f72)
St Michael’s Primary, like Danby itself, had grown.
The original stone building, apparently modelled on the old church from which it took its name, had sprouted several unbecoming modern extensions which compensated in airiness for what they lacked in beauty. The Hall, standing between the church and the school, was clearly designed by the same hand and even had a belfry and stained-glass windows through which filtered a dim religious light to illumine a spacious lofty interior with a stage at one end and a small gallery at the other.
Pascoe wrinkled his nose as the musty smell set up resonances both of lessons in the gym and of amateur dramatics in draughty village halls. Not that the entertainments on offer here were totally amateur. Among the notice board’s ‘Forthcoming Attractions’ he saw a poster for the opening concert of the eighteenth Mid-Yorkshire Dales Music Festival due to take place the following Wednesday and consisting of a song recital by Elizabeth Wulfstan, mezzo-soprano, and Arne Krog, baritone.
That name again. He recalled the strong young voice singing mournfully, And now the sun will rise as bright/As though no horror had touched the night …
The heat wave looked set for many more days, perhaps weeks, but he doubted if there’d be any more bright dawning for the Dacres.
For Christ’s sake! he admonished himself. Don’t rush to embrace the worst.
‘This will do nicely,’ he said to Clark, and got on his mobile. He’d already set the operation in motion back at Liggside and this was merely to confirm the location. ETA of the first reinforcements was given as thirty minutes.
‘I’ll go and have a word with Mrs Shimmings,’ he said. ‘You OK, Sergeant?’
The man was pale and drawn, as if he’d been exposed to biting winds on a winter’s day.
‘Yes, fine. Sorry. It’s just being here at the school, the incident room … suddenly it’s really happening. I think up till now I’ve been trying to pretend it were different from last time, over in Dendale, I mean. Not that it wasn’t the same then to start with, telling ourselves that at worst there’d been an accident and little Jenny Hardcastle ’ud be found or manage to get back herself …’
‘Then you’ll know how these things work,’ said Pascoe harshly. ‘One thing we’ll need to get sorted quickly is this Benny business. Someone’s responsible for these graffiti. We need to find out who, then we can start asking why. Any ideas?’
‘I’m working on it,’ said Clark. ‘Has to be a stupid joke and a lousy coincidence, hasn’t it, sir? I mean, it were done last night and Lorraine didn’t vanish till this morning. And the perp wouldn’t do it in advance, would he?’
‘Less chance of being caught,’ said Pascoe.
‘But that ’ud mean the whole thing were planned!’
‘And that’s worse than impulse? Well, you’re right. Worse for us, I mean. Impulse leaves traces, plans cover them up. Either way, we need the spray artist.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Clark. ‘Sir …’
‘Yes?’ prompted Pascoe.
‘Benny. Benny Lightfoot. Anything you know that I don’t? I mean, there could be information that reached HQ but you felt best not to pass on down here, for fear of opening old wounds …’
‘You mean, could Benny really be back?’ said Pascoe grimly. ‘From what I’ve heard, I doubt it. But the very fact that you can ask shows how important it is to finger this joker’s collar. Get to it.’
He walked across the playground to the school. He could see the figure of the head teacher at the window of a classroom he guessed would be Lorraine’s. She’d been standing at the main entrance when they arrived, but after a brief exchange, he’d cut the conversation short and headed into the hall.
Now he joined her in the classroom and said, ‘Sorry about that, Mrs Shimmings, but I had to get things rolling.’
‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘I know how these things work.’
He recalled then that like Clark, she too had been here before. Looking at her closely, he detected the same symptoms of re-entry to a nightmare she thought she’d left behind.
She was a slimly built woman with greying chestnut hair and candid brown eyes. Late forties. Thirty-plus when Dendale died.
She said, ‘So you think the worst?’
‘We prepare for the worst,’ said Pascoe gently. ‘Tell me about Lorraine.’
‘She was … is a bright, intelligent child, a little what they used to call old-fashioned in some ways. It doesn’t surprise me to hear that she got up early and decided to take her dog for a walk all by herself. It’s not that she’s a solitary child. On the contrary, she’s extremely sociable and has many friends. But she never has any difficulty performing tasks by herself and on occasion, if given a choice, she will opt for the solitary rather than the communal activity.’
After the initial slip, she had kept determinedly, almost pedantically to the present tense. As she talked, Pascoe let his gaze wander round the classroom. Bringing up Rosie had honed his professional eye to the school environment. Now he found himself assessing the quality of wall displays, the evidence of thought and order, the use of material that was stimulating aesthetically, intellectually, mathematically. In this classroom everything looked good. This teacher hadn’t shot away on Friday afternoon but had stayed behind after the children had gone, to refine their efforts at tidying up and make sure the room was perfectly prepared for Monday morning. This teacher, he guessed, was going to be devastated when she discovered what had happened to one of her pupils.
He said, ‘Would she go off with a stranger?’
