He didn't make it sound too long, thought Dalziel.
They shook hands and took stock of each other. Wulfstan saw a man little changed from the crop-headed overweight creature he had once publicly castigated as gross, disgusting, and incompetent. Dalziel found recognition harder. Fifteen years ago he had first known this man as a lean, energetic go-getter with an expensive tan, bright impatient eyes, and a shock of black hair. News of his daughter's disappearance had hit him like a hurricane blast hitting a pine. He had bent, then seemingly recovered, pain, rage, and a desperate hope energizing him into a hyperbolical parody of his normal self. But it had been the false brightness of a Christmas tree and all these years on, nothing remained but dried-up needles and dying wood. The hair was gone, the skin was gray and stretched so tight across the skull that his nose and ears seemed disproportionately large, and his eyes glinted from deep caverns. Perhaps in an effort at concealment or compensation, he had grown a fringe of mustacheless beard. It didn't help.
'So, let's get to it,' said Wulfstan, remaining standing himself and not inviting Dalziel to sit. 'I'm very busy, and this necessity of finding a new venue for the opening concert has already taken up time I could ill spare.'
'Sorry about that, sir, but in the circumstances…'
He let his voice tail off.
Wulfstan said, 'I'm sorry, is that a sentence?'
If the bugger wants to play hard, let's play hard, thought Dalziel.
'I mean, in the circumstances, which are that a child's gone missing and we need a base to organize the hunt for her, I'd have thought mebbe, seeing what you went through, you'd have been a bit sympathetic. Sir,' said Dalziel.
Wulfstan said softly, 'Naturally when I hear that parents have lost a daughter and are relying on you and your colleagues to recover her, I am deeply sympathetic, Superintendent.'
Nice one, thought Dalziel appreciatively. His instinct was to hit back but his experience was that, if you lay down submissively, your antagonist often decided it was all over, got careless, and exposed his soft underbelly. So he sighed, scratched his breastbone raucously, and sat down in an armchair.
'If she's still alive we want to find her quick,' he said. 'We need all the help we can get.'
Wulfstan stood quite still for a moment, then pulled up an elegant but uncomfortable-looking wheelback chair and sat directly in front of the Fat Man.
'Ask what you need to ask,' he said.
'Where were you yesterday morning between, say, seven o'clock and ten o'clock?'
'You know already. I presume someone noticed my car.'
'I know where the vehicle was, sir, but that's not the same as knowing you were in charge of it.'
Wulfstan nodded acknowledgment of the point and said, 'I parked my Discovery by the Corpse Road not far from St. Michael's at about eight-thirty. I then went for a walk and returned to the car shortly after ten.'
'By yourself?'
'That's right.'
'And where'd you walk?'
'Up the Corpse Road to the col and back the same way.'
'That's thirty, thirty-five minutes up and twenty back. What about the rest of the time, sir?'
Wulfstan said flatly, 'I stood on the col and looked down into Dendale.'
The question At anything in particular? rose in Dalziel's throat, but he kept it there. The man was trying to cooperate.
'Up, down, or standing still, you see anyone else, sir?'
Wulfstan bowed his head forward and rested the index finger of each hand against his brow. It was a conventional enough 'thinking' pose, but in this man it gave an impression of absolute focus.
'There were a couple of cars in Dendale,' he said finally. 'Parked by the dam. Some people were walking from one of them. Tourists, I expect. The drought has caused a lot of interest as the ruins of the village start showing through. On the track itself, up and down, I saw no one. I'm sorry.'
He made as if to rise. End of interview. He thinks, thought Dalziel, making himself more comfortable in the armchair.
'You often walk up the Corpse Road, sir?' he asked.
'Often? What is often?'
'Witness who spotted your car says she'd noticed it several times in the past couple of weeks.'
'Not surprising. My firm has a research unit and display center at the Danby Science Park, and when I'm out there I frequently take the opportunity to stretch my legs.'
'Nowt better than a bit of exercise,' said Dalziel patting his gut with all the complacency of Arnold Schwarzenegger flexing his biceps. 'Sunday yesterday, but.'
'I know. I trained as an engineer, Superintendent, and one of the first things they taught us was the days of the week,' said Wulfstan acerbically. 'Has Sabbath breaking been reinstated as an actionable offense in Yorkshire?'
'No, sir. Just wondered about you going to work on a Sunday, and so early. You did say that's why you went to Danby, because of your business, not just to take a walk?'
'Yes, I did. And that's what I've been doing on and off for many years, Superintendent, as you can check, though why you should want to, I cannot imagine. Running the business takes up so much of my time, it is easy to lose sight of what makes the business run. I am an engineer first, a businessman second. In my work as in yours, it is easy to let yourself be lifted out of your proper sphere of competence.'
Like Traffic, you mean, thought Dalziel.
He rose, smiling.
'Well, thanks for your help, sir. One thing, but. You obviously knew about the missing lass, through the papers and having to change your concert venue and all. And you knew you'd been out there Sunday morning. Did you never think it might be an idea to give us a bell, just in case your vehicle had been noticed and we were spending time trying to eliminate it?'
Wulfstan stood up and said, 'You are right, Mr. Dalziel. I should have done. But knowing the questions you would ask, and knowing that nothing I said could assist you in any way, I felt that contacting you would simply be a waste of both our times. As it has proved, I fear.'
'Wouldn't say that, sir. Wouldn't say that at all,' said Dalziel offering his hand.
He gave him a Masonic handshake just for a laugh. He liked people to think the worst of him, because then the best often came as an unpleasant surprise.
'Tell Mrs. Wulfstan thanks for the drink. Hope the concert goes okay,' he said at the front door. 'Have you found somewhere else, by the by? Thought mebbe you'd use the church.'
This echo of what had happened in Dendale produced no perceivable reaction.
'Unfortunately St. Michael's has an intolerable acoustic,' said Wulfstan. 'But religion may still come to our aid. There's an old chapel which is a possibility.'
'Chapel?' said Dalziel doubtfully. 'From what I know of chapel folk, I should have thought this concert of thine would have been a bit too frivolous.'
'Mahler frivolous? Hardly. But profane, perhaps. However, happily, for us that is, the chapel is no longer used for worship. The sect that built it, the Beulah Baptists, I believe they were called, died out in this area before the war.'
'Beulah?' said Dalziel. 'Like in Pilgrim's Progress?'
'You've read it?' said Wulfstan, keeping his surprise just this side of insulting. 'Then you will recall that from the Land of Beulah the pilgrims were summoned to go over the river into Paradise, for some an easy, for others a perilous passage.'
'But they all got there just the same,' said Dalziel. 'When they tasted of the water over which they were to go, they thought it tasted a little bitterish to the palate, but it proved sweeter when it was down. Bit like Guinness.'
'Indeed. Well, it seems these Mid-Yorkshire Beulah Baptists, taking their example from Bunyan's text, went in for a form of total immersion which involved converts passing from one side of a river to the other. The river they used locally was the Strake, which, as you may know, is moderately deep and extremely fast flowing. The candidates for baptism were therefore aided by a pair of elders known, from the book, as Shining Ones.
