Problem was solved by the appearance of the man in the doorway.
'What's that you've got there, bonnie lass?' he asked.
He sounded unconcerned. Perhaps in the circumstances too unconcerned, thought Novello. Wield ignored him.
'Get on the radio… no, make that the phone,' he said. 'Tell them what's going off and say I'd like a search team and forensic down here ASAP.'
Then finally he turned his attention to the man and began to intone, 'George Robert Turnbull, I must caution you…'
Andy Dalziel and Cap Marvell sat facing each other in the snug of The Book and Candle. The snug lived up to its name, having room for no more than half a dozen chairs and two narrow tables, under one of which their knees met, indeed more than met, had to interlock, but Dalziel's apologetic grunt having provoked nothing more than an ironic smile, he relaxed and enjoyed the contact.
The pub wasn't one he used often, its location 'in the bell' and its ultrarespectable ambience, marked by the absence of game machines, pool tables, and Muzak, making it unsuitable for most of a CID man's professional encounters. But, as it was a pub and as it was on his patch, he knew it, and was known in it, and the landlord had shown no surprise either at Dalziel's order of three pints of best and a spritzer, or his request that the snug should be regarded as closed for the next half hour.
The first pint hadn't touched the sides and the second was in sad decline before he opened the conversation.
'Missed you,' he said abruptly.
Cap Marvell laughed out loud.
'Would you like to try that again, Andy, and this time see if you can make it sound a bit less like some errant schoolboy's reluctant confession to self-abuse?'
He took another long pull at his pint, then growled, 'Mebbe I didn't miss you all that much.'
She squeezed his leg between her knees and said, 'Well I've missed you more than I would have believed possible.'
The admission provoked a feeling in him which he didn't altogether recognize.
While trying to identify it he said surlily, 'Your choice.'
'No,' she said calmly. 'There was no choice. Not then.'
'So why're you here now?'
'Because now there may be.'
'And?'
'And if there is, I'll choose.'
'Mebbe you should wait till you're asked,' he said. He had identified the feeling as embarrassed delight. It bothered him somewhat. He'd be blushing next!
'Oh, no. That's a cop-out. All the important choices are made in advance of their occasion.'
He sat looking at her, recognizing now it wasn't just the handsome face, the sturdy body, and the big knockers he'd missed, but her humor, her independence, and the no-crap way she put things, a quality sometimes obscured, sometimes underlined, by her posh accent. That was all that obviously remained of her previous life in which, barely out of finishing school, she had married into the lower reaches of the peerage, given birth to a son, and watched him (as closely as nannies and boarding school permitted) grow up into a young army officer who was reported missing, believed dead, in the Falklands War.
This had been her epiphanic experience, forcing her to a review of her life, which not even the news that her son was in fact heroically alive could reverse. There had followed, in not-too-rapid succession, disaffection from high society, divorce, deconstruction of all previous moral certainties, dissipation, dedication to a series of radical causes; and finally, Dalziel.
They had met when an animal rights group she was leader of had been involved in a murder investigation. Separated by a few years, several class-strat, and a moon river of attitudes, they had nevertheless felt a mutual attraction strong enough to bridge all gaps until her demand for trust and his need for professional certainties had required a bridge too far.
Now this chance encounter seemed to offer the possibility that this missing bridge could be put in place after all.
She said, 'So while we're choosing, let's chat. What brought you to Walter's house? Didn't I read that you're in charge of this missing-child case?'
So she took note of his name in the papers. He was pleased but hid it.
'That's right. His car were spotted parked near where she lived-lives. The Turnip's too.'
'Sorry?'
'Krog. The Swede.'
'Norwegian, I think. But hardly polite anyway.'
'Polite? Mebbe it were some other bugger you missed.'
'Could be. So you wanted to see them. Walter and the… and Krog?'
'Aye. For elimination.'
'Thought you sent sergeants to do that.'
This was a reference to his use of Wield to interview her when things got hot.
'Not when it's someone like Wulfstan,' he said.
'Andy, you're not suggesting the rich and powerful get treated better than poor plebs?' she mocked.
His brow creased like a field furrowed by a drunken plowboy. She'd not have said that if she knew the Wulfstans' history.
'How well do you know them, the Wulfstans?' he asked.
'Not well. The wife hardly at all. Walter only as chair of the festival committee. When I settled down here a few years back, I started going to concerts locally and made a few friends in musical circles, not people who overlapped with my other activities, I hasten to add, before you start asking for names. A particular friend was on the committee. When her job required her to leave the district, she recommended me to take her place, and that was how I got to know Walter.'
'Oh, aye? And he was impressed by your experience of organizing pickets and demos and illegal raids on private premises, was he?'
'I keep my life pretty well compartmentalized, Andy,' she said. 'Poke holes in dykes and trouble comes pouring through, as you and I found out. This is my first year on the committee, so I'm still feeling my way.'
'Thought you'd have been in charge by now.'
'Not much chance of that.' She smiled. 'It's so well organized, there's very little to do. This change of venue is our first real crisis, and Walter seems to have got that well under control.'
'So I gather. You'll be off to Danby to shift furniture, then?'
'Not today. But I've offered my services tomorrow if needed. Walter runs a tight ship, no evaders need apply. But that's really all I know about him. No use trying to pump me for more, Superintendent.'
'I'm not,' said Dalziel. 'I reckon I know all I need. Probably best you know it, too, in case you feel like letting on you're a friend of mine.'
She started to make a joke of this, saw his face, and stopped. Her expression turned dark as his as he told her about the Dendale disappearances.
'Those poor people… I remember how I felt when they told me Piers was missing…'
'Can't understand how you didn't read about it,' he said, half accusing.
'Maybe I did. But, Andy, fifteen years back I had other things on my mind. Now I see why you're giving Walter the softly, softly treatment. Poor man. But that explains why they adopted.'
'Elizabeth? Aye, you're right, she's not theirs. You managed to winkle that out even though you say you hardly know the Wulfstans, did you? Well, like they say, once a snout, always a snout.'
This ungallant comment was in fact a further reminder of their old intimacy, referring to a time when she'd been the source of some useful information.
'No, I did not winkle it out,' she said firmly. 'It was volunteered to me, and certainly not by the Wulfstans or anyone up here. By one of those coincidences which can hardly be part of a divine plan, as they keep on throwing us together, I have a friend in London, Beryl Blakiston, who happens to be head of school that Elizabeth attended for a
