disturb Edwin, he was still thinking how pleasant it would be to be still lying abed on such a morning as this. But Danby called. And Dalziel.
He switched on the ignition and kicked the starter and as the engine roared into life, he cried to a surprised cat on the hunt for early birds, 'Hi-yo Silver. Away!'
In the Pascoe household, too, there was reluctance at all levels.
Pascoe himself, after rising early and settling down to read the Dendale file, had fallen asleep in his chair, and wasn't aroused till Ellie started the morning bustle of getting Rosie ready for school.
His first instinct, as he bestirred himself ere well awake, was to rush off unshaven and unfed, but Ellie's cooler counsel had brought him to his senses and when he rang St. Michael's Hall at Danby and was assured by the duty officer that the only thing disturbing the peace was the approaching roar of Sergeant Wield's motorbike, he had relaxed in the certainty that on-the-ground organization was in the best possible hands.
So he had sat down to the relatively rare pleasure of taking breakfast with his daughter.
It did not seem to be a pleasure shared. Rosie blinked her eyes irritably against the sun streaming in through the kitchen window and announced, 'I'm feeling badly.'
Her parents exchanged glances. Peter, left in sole charge some weeks earlier, had been targeted by his daughter at breakfast with little sighs and sobs as she bravely forced her bran flakes down, till, always a soft target, he had caved in and said, 'Are you feeling badly or something?'
'Yes,' she'd replied. 'I'm feeling very badly.'
'Then perhaps you'd better not go to school,' he'd replied, secretly glad of an excuse to keep her at home all day with him.
In the event, by halfway through the morning she'd recollected that her class was going out on a bird- spotting expedition that afternoon, so made a rapid recovery and nobly insisted it would be wrong of her to remain at home under false pretenses.
But the phrase I'm feeling badly, was thereafter used as a formula to unlock her father's heart when necessary.
Ellie Pascoe, however, was made of sterner stuff.
'I told you to keep your sun hat on yesterday,' she said indifferently.
'I did,' retorted Rosie. 'All the time.'
'Of course you did,' said Pascoe. 'Even when you were swimming underwater.'
'Don't be silly,' she snapped. 'It would float away. Do I have to go to school?'
'Oh, I think so,' he said. 'I think I saw Nina waiting at the gate for you just now.'
'No, you didn't. I told you. She got taken again. By the nix. I saw her get taken.'
Pascoe looked at Ellie, who made an I-forgot-to-mention-it face.
'Perhaps her dad's rescued her again,' he said.
'Not yet he won't have. It was only yesterday. You'll be sorry if I get taken too.'
Not so much a conversation stopper as a heart stopper.
'Well, try to hang around as long as you can,' he said lightly. 'It's the same for me, too, you know. I'd rather stay at home.'
'Not the same,' she said sullenly. 'You haven't got a stiff neck.'
'And you have? Like the people of Israel.' He laughed. 'We should have called you Rose of Sharon.'
Being a curious child, she usually insisted on explanations of jokes she didn't understand, but this morning all she did was repeat with great irritation, 'Don't be silly.'
'I'll try not to,' said Pascoe rising. 'See you tonight.'
Her skin was warm to his kiss.
At the front door he said, 'She does look a bit flushed.'
'You would, too, if you'd been running around in the sun all day,' said Ellie.
'I was,' he said. 'And no doubt will be again.'
'Well, keep your sun hat on,' said Ellie, determinedly cheerful. She had listened to his weary account of the day's frustrations when he got home the previous night, held him close for a while, then poured him a large whiskey and talked brightly about Rosie's trip to the seaside. At first he thought her motive was purely distraction, but after a while he became aware that it was her own mind she was distracting, too, from her unbearable empathy with Elsie Dacre. So he had switched on the TV, allegedly in search of the news, and instead had got a late-night discussion on the growing problem of juvenile runaways. A psychiatrist called Paula Appleby, whose strong opinions, linguistic fluency, and photogenic features had got her elected 'the thinking man's thinking woman,' was saying, 'When a child disappears, rather than simply looking for the child, we should be looking at first the parents, who are often the cause, then the police, who are more likely to be part of the problem than its solution.'
'Time for bed,' Pascoe had said, switching off.
Now he looked up at the perfectly laid blue wash of the sky and guessed that hours earlier the Dacres' dark- rimmed sleepless eyes had watched it pale from black to gray and then to pink and gold, and sought in the returning light and the rising birdsong some hint of that freshness and hope that had always been there before, but was now nowhere to be found.
And then his mind's eye ran up the Corpse Road and over the sun-rimmed Neb and looked down into Dendale, still filling with pearly light.
It seemed to him that he saw far below a shadowy figure who peered up toward the fell's gilded rim, then threw up its arms in welcome or derision, before slipping silent and naked into the still, dark waters of the mere.
Daylight visions now, he thought. were they better or worse than waking in the dark and still smelling the mud of Passchendaele?
'Peter!' said Ellie in a tone that told him she'd spoken his name already.
'Sorry,' he said. 'Miles away.'
'Yes, I've noticed. Peter, don't you think…'
But the moment wasn't ripe. A voice said, 'Lovely morning again, sod it!' and they saw the postman coming up the drive. He handed Pascoe two packages, one small, one large. Both were addressed to Ellie, but when he proffered them, she took the small one and ignored the other.
'Oh, good,' she said, tearing it open. 'That Mahler disc.'
'Songs for Dead Children. Just the stuff for a summer's day,' he said, taking it from her hand and replacing it with the other package, which bore a well-known publisher's logo. 'What about this?'
'If I want cheering up, I'll listen to Mahler,' she said.
'Perhaps they've just sent your manuscript back to ask you to make a few minor revisions?' he offered.
'Bollocks,' said Ellie. 'I've got these Braille-sensitive fingers. They can read Get stuffed through six layers of wrapping. Weird design.'
She was determined not to talk about the novel. He looked down at the disc, which bore a silhouette drawing of a girl's or cherub's profile, spouting a line of music. He found himself thinking of Dendale, though the connection seemed slight. Then he spotted what it was. In the bottom right corner, as on the map from the Dendale file, were the initials E. W. Not, of course, Edgar Wield this time, but, as was confirmed when he turned the disc over and read the small print on the back, Elizabeth Wulfstan.
'Does the translation, sings the songs, designs the cover, I wonder if she plays the instruments in the orchestra?' he said.
'Very likely. Some people get all the talent, which is why there's so little left over for the rest,' said Ellie dispiritedly.
'It'll happen, love. Really. You've got more writing talent in your little finger than any of those London creeps licking each other's bums in the Sunday reviews,' he said loyally, putting his arms around her.
They clung together as if he were going back to the Front after all too short a leave.
Then he got into his car and drove away.
'How many times?' said Father Kerrigan.
'Five.'
'Jesus! With the same fellow, was it?'
'Yes, Father,' said Detective Constable Shirley Novello indignantly.
'And on the Sabbath too.'
