Authors: Reginald Hill
"Oh, I've seen it four or five times in the past couple of weeks. That's how I remember as much as I do about the number, I suppose. I'm so scatterbrained, if I'd just seen it once, I'd likely have told you it was a yellow Porsche with an 007 license plate. What will you do now? Put out some kind of alert?"
"Nothing as dramatic as that, Mrs. Dickens," said Novello.
It took a couple of minutes to persuade Mrs. Dickens that she wasn't about to conjure up the Flying Squad and a pack of bloodhounds. Finally, assurances that, as they'd missed her yesterday, the house-to-house team would probably be on her doorstep this very moment, got her on her way.
Novello returned to the Hall. Wield was nowhere to be seen, so she passed her information to Control and asked for a list of possibilities. Then, with one down, and feeling hot for hunches, she went in pursuit of another.
The two people reporting the white car at the edge of Ligg Common had been vague and contradictory. One described it as small, another as quite big. The first opined it might have been a Ford Escort, the second was certain it was some sort of Vauxhall but couldn't say which.
But there'd been a third sighting even vaguer, picked up during house-to-house: Mrs. Joy Kendrick, who'd been driving by the common early and thought she'd noticed a car and it could've been white, but she wasn't absolutely sure as the kids were being fractious in the back as they didn't like being left with their gran for the day, which was the purpose of the journey.
Novello had noticed children beginning to arrive for school as she went out to the Corpse Road. On her return, the numbers had grown considerably. Because of the constant coming and going of police vehicles from the incident center next door, a line of crowd-control barriers had been set up to reinforce the low wall which divided the playground from the Hall forecourt, and the naturally curious kids were pressing thick against them. There were a lot of adults there too. After yesterday's news, parents who'd normally just drop their kids off, or even let them walk there under their own steam, were taking extra precautions.
As Novello reemerged from the center, a couple of teachers were going along the barrier urging the children to go into the school. Novello entered the playground and approached one of them, showing her warrant card.
"I'm Dora Shimmings, head teacher," said the woman. "Look, I arranged with Mr. Pascoe yesterday that any general questioning of the children in Lorraine's class wouldn't be done until we'd got the school day under way in as normal a fashion as possible."
She spoke with a quiet authority that made Novello glad she wasn't about to contradict her.
"It's not that," she said reassuringly. "I just wanted to know if Joy Kendrick was one of your parents."
"Very much so. We have all three of hers. But none of them is in Lorraine's class."
"What age are they?"
"The twins are six and Simon's eight. There they are now."
Novello turned. A harassed-looking woman with loose blond hair bobbing around her shoulders with all the vigor but none of the gloss of a shampoo ad was shepherding a trio of children through the gate--twin girls who, contrary to the usual image of close love and special understanding, seemed each ambitious to achieve uniqueness by kicking shit out of the other, and an older boy, Simon, looking as bored and aloof as only an eight-year-old with twin sisters can.
"I'd like to meet them. It'll only take a few seconds," promised Novello.
Unlike most police promises, this one was just about kept.
After the introduction, Novello said, "Mrs. Kendrick, when you talked to the officer who called at your house yesterday, did he talk to the children?"
"No. They weren't there, were they? I didn't pick them up till seven."
"Of course not. Simon, your mum says there was a white car parked by the common as you drove past yesterday morning. You didn't happen to notice it, did you?"
"Yeah," he said. It wasn't an uninterested or ill-mannered monosyllable. Children, Novello recalled, tended to answer questions asked them, unlike adults, who were always reaching for your reasons for asking.
"So what kind was it?"
"Saab 900 convertible."
"Did you notice the number?"
"No, but it was the latest model."
That was that. She thanked the boy and his mother, who had been holding the twins apart like a pair of overpsyched contenders in a title fight, and now she continued dragging them toward the school entrance.
"Clever," said Mrs. Shimmings.
"Lucky," said Novello. "I could have got a boy whose sole obsession was football. So why did Mrs. K dump the kids on Gran all day yesterday, I wonder? Nothing to do with the case, just idle curiosity."
"Boyfriend," said Mrs. Shimmings laconically. "Kendrick took off last year. Joy's got herself a man, but Simon hates him. And you can't have good sex with a protest meeting going on outside your bedroom door, can you?"
"Never tried it," said Novello with a grin.
She went back to the Hall. Still no sign of Wield. No reply yet from Control to her query about the Discovery. She ought to give someone what she'd got, but she couldn't see anyone she altogether trusted to make sure the credit stayed with herself. Many of her male colleagues, even those not quite so chauvinist as to think a woman's place was in the kitchen, had no problem with thinking it was in the background. What man, complimented on his appearance, says, "My wife chose the tie, ironed the suit, washed the shirt, and starched the collar and cuffs?"
Anyway, she was hot, she was on a roll. Two down, one to go.
She went in search of Geoff Draycott of Wornock Farm, who'd seen the blue station wagon speeding away up the Highcross Moor road.
There were two men scrubbing away at the BENNY'S BACK! graffito on the railway bridge as Pascoe drove underneath it.
They didn't seem to be making much progress. Perhaps they would scrub and scrub till finally they wore out the solid stonework and nothing remained but the red letters hanging in the air.
An idle fancy, or a symptom? Reading the Dendale file earlier that morning, before his mind took refuge in sleep, he had found himself reluctant to engage with the facts as presented, or indeed any facts as presented, preferring to slip sideways into surreal imaginings. There had been a time when life seemed a smooth learning curve, a steady progress from childish frivolity through youthful impetuosity to mature certainty, which would occur somewhere in early middle age, whenever that was, but you'd recognize it by waking one morning and being aware that you'd stopped feeling nervous about making after-dinner speeches, you really believed the political opinions you aired at dinner parties, you no longer felt impelled to tie your left shoelace before your right to avoid bad luck, and you didn't have to read the instruction book every time you programmed the video.
Well, that was out, that was a sunlit plateau he knew now he was never going to reach. This, for what it was worth, was it. Not a steady climb but an aimless wandering along the mazy paths of the wildwood. Sometimes the pleasure of a sunlit glade or a crystal stream; sometimes the terror of a falling tree or snarlings and crashings in the undergrowth; and sometimes the path winding you back to your starting place, except that it never looked the same.
Did he think he was unique? Dr. Pottle, his tame shrink, had asked him. Or did he believe that everyone felt like this?
"Neither," he replied. "I'm sure many people don't feel like this, but I'm equally sure I'm not unique."
"Bang goes religion and politics," said Pottle. "It could be you're in the right job after all."
But it didn't feel like it. Curious how, as Ellie seemed (outwardly at least) increasingly resigned to the ambiguities of his work, he himself (inwardly at least) was finding them more and more troublesome.
A lost child. A dead child, that was how Dalziel saw it, he could tell. He felt the agony of her parents. And through his climb to the rim of the Neb, and his reading of the Dendale file, he felt the agony of all those other parents who'd seen their children go out and never saw them return.
But his empathy didn't make him want to toil tirelessly at the task of catching this man, this monster, who was responsible for these disappearings. No, all he wanted was to go home and stay home and hold eternal vigil over his own child. The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Cultivate your own garden. There is no such thing as society.
Which, he told himself sternly, was like rubbing away the solid stonework and leaving the red letters dancing in the empty air.
His introspective musings had got him through Danby on automatic pilot, and he found he was outside St. Michael's Hall. Near the main door was an empty parking space marked DCI. He smiled. As anticipated, Wield had things under control.
Inside he found a scene of well-ordered activity. The detective sergeant, regimental in front of the troops, stood up and said, "Good morning, sir."
"Morning," said Pascoe, thinking that probably even machines in a factory ran more smoothly when Wieldy showed his face. Not that his face was smooth. In fact it was possible to theorize that his penchant for organization was a reaction to having features that looked like creation a parsec after the Big Bang.
"Nice to see a hive of industry," he went on. "Got everything we need?"
"Except the fridge, and that's coming," said Wield.
"Fridge? You expecting samples?"
"For cold drinks," said the sergeant. "I can do you a coffee, but. And there's a note for you from Nobby Clark. I saw him when I arrived. He were very insistent I gave it to you direct. Think you've made a conquest there."
This was said with a straight face, or in Wield's case a crooked one, which in terms of inscrutability came to the same thing. But it also came as close to a bit of gay badinage as Pascoe had ever detected in the sergeant.
He opened the envelope. It contained a piece of paper bearing the name JED HARDCASTLE.
"That it?" said Pascoe. "No message?"
"He said something about paint," said Wield, handing over a mug of coffee. "I got the feeling he wanted to give you something you could pull out of your hat."
"God save me from the gratitude of the simple hearted," said Pascoe. "What am I expected to do? Tell Andy I've worked out the graffiti artist is called Jed Hardcastle only I don't know who he is or where he lives or anything about him?"
"Son of Cedric and Molly Hardcastle," said Wield. "Brother of Jenny, first lass to go missing in Dendale. Present address, Stirps End Farm, Danby."
"Oh, that Jed Hardcastle," said Pascoe with slight irritation, mainly at himself for not having made the link even though he'd just read the Dendale file a couple of hours earlier. God, his mind was really refusing to engage with the facts.
He sipped his coffee and said, "So another link with last time."
"Last time?"
"Dendale."
"Oh, aye. That's official is it? Dendale was last time?"
"The Fat Man seems to think so. He's had me reading the file. He even marched me up to the top of the Corpse Road last night."
"Did he, now? That sounds pretty official."
"You don't sound like it makes you happy."
"I think it's a bit soon to be talking of this time and last time, that's all."
"What about this fellow Lightfoot?" insisted Pascoe. "You must have met him. What did you reckon? I gather some folk thought he was the village idiot, but I've heard that in fact he was pretty bright."
"Oh, he was bright enough," said Wield. "But there was something about him. Like he came from another world."
This was untypically imprecise for the sergeant.
Pascoe said, "What do you mean, other world? Heaven? Hell? Jupiter? Wales?"
"Not as far removed as that," said Wield. "No, his other world was ... Dendale."
"I don't get you," said Pascoe. "Okay, that's where he lived, and I know that he was so upset when his mother decided to emigrate that he ran off to his gran's. But lots of people like where they are so much, it would take dynamite to shift them."
"It did take dynamite to shift them out of Dendale, remember?" said Wield. "Okay, for most of them, it was an uprooting, but the roots would take again in similar soil. The majority of them resettled over here around Danby, and from all accounts they've settled in very well. But the odd one ... well, since I've been living in Enscombe, I've got a different perspective on how folk relate to the place they call home. There's none of us there would want to leave. I feel like that, and I've not been living there long enough to shit my own weight, as they say. But I've met some people, like the Tokes--you recall the Tokes?--that I reckon you couldn't uproot, only break off at ground level."
The Tokes were a mother and son living in Enscombe who'd figured in the case which brought Wield and Edwin Digweed together.
"Yes, I remember the Tokes," said Pascoe. "Lightfoot was like that?"
"To some extent. You know how folk say, I belong to such a place. Just a figure of speech usually, but with Lightfoot, like with Toke, it really means what it says. The place owns them. For better or worse. For good or evil."
"Hold on, Wieldy," said Pascoe. "You're stealing my lines. I'm the one who goes all metaphysical, right? You're Mr. Microchip, the man with the pointy ears."
Wield scratched one of the organs which, though certainly irregular, were hardly pointed.
"Just goes to show what country life can do to you, doesn't it?" he said.
Like Shirley Novello earlier, Pascoe found it hard to tell if the sergeant was altogether joking, but he laughed anyway. There were enough uncertainties in life without admitting the possibility that your Rock of Ages might after all turn out to be soft centered.
He said, "But I agree with you about sticking to this time. Let's work with what we've got. There were some car sightings unaccounted for. ..."
"I've got Novello working on them," said Wield. "In fact, this came through for her a couple of minutes ago. Presumably it's to do with the sightings, but she's not around to tell me what."