'Happen not. Owt from Burroughs?'
'Not a thing. They've been right up the valley and back down again. She's waiting to be told what to do next.'
Dalziel pondered, his great face brooding like God's over a tricky piece of epeirogeny.
'We'll get 'em off the fell,' he said finally. 'Hit the buildings again. I want every farmhouse, barn, byre, pigsty, hen coop, garden shed, outside privy, every bloody thing turned upside down. She's close, Wieldy. I feel it.'
It would have taken a brave man in search of a medal to point out he'd felt much the same back in Dendale all those years ago, and Wield, though no coward, was equally no pot hunter.
He said, 'And Turnbull, sir? Does he walk?'
'Don't be bloody daft! Whatever Hoddle says, he's not leaving here till the twenty-four hours are up. No bugger's going to say I let a possible child killer loose afore I were forced to, not this time.'
'No, sir. Novello were wondering if mebbe now things have been going on so long, she could sit in…'
'No,' said Dalziel irritably. 'Besides what I said before, bring a new face in now and Hoddle will be abso- bloody-lutely certain he's got us on the run. Tell her to take the Dendale file and learn it by heart. Tomorrow morning, nine o'clock, Peter had an appointment with yon Plowright woman who runs Social Services. Thought he might get a line on old Mrs. Lightfoot, who's probably dead, but if she's not, then she's the one Benny would want to find if he came back, which I don't believe. Ivor can go along instead.'
'Sounds like a waste of time,' said Wield.
'Better a DC'S time than a DCI'S,' said Dalziel. 'Think of the money we'll save. Any word of the little lass, by the way?'
'I rang the hospital,' said Wield in a flat voice which concealed the effort of will even that call had required. 'No change.'
He still hadn't been able to bring himself to try and contact Pascoe direct. That needed to be a face-to-face contact, he told himself. But he wasn't sure he believed himself.
'Life's a bastard, eh, Wieldy?' said Dalziel wearily.
'Yes, sir. And then we die,' said Edgar Wield.
And so the second day of the Lorraine Dacre inquiry draws to an end.
As the shadows lengthen, her parents, unable now to bear any company but their own, sit together holding hands in the tiny living room of their cottage, neither of them deriving any comfort from their contact except for the possibility of giving it to the other. Hope has died in both their hearts, and all that remains is the concealment of despair.
Between Peter and Ellie Pascoe, too, there is a silence born of a secret, but the secret here is not the death of hope but its survival. Life without Rosie is unimaginable, so they refuse to imagine it. Like primitives in a cave, they watch darkness running toward them across the fells and know it holds danger, but know also that tomorrow the sun will rise again and make all things well.
And Rosie Pascoe?
Rosie Pascoe is in the nix's cave.
It's dark down here, but a little light filters down the long, winding tunnel leading to the entrance. Gradually her eyes begin to adjust and shapes and textures begin to rise out of the darkness.
She is on the edge of a small pool of black water. At least at first it seems dull black, but as she peers into it, a little of the light from that sunlit world far above runs across its surface, polishing it as it passes, so that the blackness shines like a mirror held up to the night sky.
In that dark mirror she sees the roof of the cave, soaring high above, like the ceiling of a great old cathedral. And up there something moves, not much, just enough to catch her eye.
It is a bat, hanging upside down at the topmost point of that high ceiling.
Rosie shivers and lets her gaze move across the pool to its far margin. And there in its black mirror she sees another face, bright shining eyes, sharp prying nose, a lantern jaw fringed with jagged whiskers, and teeth like a length of ripsaw in the smile-parodying mouth.
She cries out and raises her terrified gaze from the reflection to the reality.
It is the nix himself, crouched opposite on the far bank of the pool. Seeing that he has her attention, the nix slowly raises his left hand, andwitha long, thin finger tapering to a long, sharp nail, he beckons to her.
Rosie shakes her head.
The nix stands up straight. Crouched, he had seemed froglike, a large frog it is true, but with the comforting promise of a frog's awkward movement out of the water. Now he straightens into a tall, thin man whose long legs have brought him halfway round the pool before fear, which has locked her muscles, becomes terror, which releases them, and she scrambles away from him over the stones and bones which litter the floor of the cave.
Her first thought, for despite everything she's still thinking, is to keep the water between them, and for a while she succeeds. But her young limbs are growing tired, and on her third circuit of the pool, it seems that the thin light spilling through the entrance tunnel is brightening to a golden glow as if that distant sun is shining directly on its mouth in the gray fellside far above.
The way is long and hard, she knows, and very steep. In a straight race she doubts if she would have much chance against those long, skinny legs. But the call of the sun is too strong.
She breaks away and heads into the tunnel.
How rocky the ground is! How full of twists and turns the passage! How low the ceiling!
She comforts herself with the thought that what is awkward for her must be very difficult indeed for the nix, but when she risks a glance back she sees him crouched low and squat once more, not like a frog this time, but scuttling along like a huge spider.
The sight gives her new strength. Also the growing brightness, which has in it now not just the light but the warmth of the sun.
She turns another bend. Still far above her, but now clearly visible, she glimpses the tiny circle of blue sky. And as she looks, the blue becomes a frame round a familiar face and she hears a familiar voice crying her name.
'Rosie. Rosie.'
'Daddy! Daddy!' she calls back, and strives toward him.
But the scuttling noise behind is very close now. She feels those bony fingers tighten round her ankles, she feels those rapier nails digging into her flesh.
And she sees the circle of blue shrink to a pinhole, then vanish altogether as the nix drags her back down to his gloomy cavern and his black and fathomless pool.
DAY 3 The Drowning of Dendale
Betsy Allgood [PA/WWST11-6-88]
Transcript 2 No. 2 Of 2 Copies
Once it started raining, it rained like it were bent on catching up in a week for all the dry weather we'd had over the past months.
That first day was a real cloudburst, then it settled into a steady downpour, sometimes slackening for a while but never really stopping. Back in Dendale we heard they were finishing off the clearing-up job, shifting any big stuff left, sorting out the electrics and such, and when that were all done, they bulldozed the buildings. Seems it didn't matter whether they were going to be drowned or not, the Board didn't want owt left standing to tempt folk to explore either under the water or out of it.
So school, pub, church, houses, barns, byres, everything were knocked flat in preparation for flooding the dale. The dam was nigh on finished, the becks were full bubble, the Neb was spouting water like a leaky bucket, and White Mare's Tail was wagging full force again, so that Dender Mere was nearly up to its old flood level, and high on Black Moss col, twixt the Neb and Beulah the new tarn, were broadening and deepening, ready for its release into the valley below.
All this I picked up the usual way kids pick things up, by hanging around grown-ups with mouth shut and lugs open. No chance of seeing any of it for myself. I'd been warned like all the rest of us not to go anywhere near Dendale. Partly it were that our mams and dads were still feart of Benny Lightfoot or the nix or whoever had taken the three girls. Partly I think they knew how much it would hurt them to see their old homes flattened and drowned, and reckoned it would be just as bad or worse for us kids.
In my case they were dead wrong. I really liked it in Danby. I settled in real quick. And when school started
