harder now and it seemed to stot up from ground to join the mist so that you could really feel it like stroking your face and arms and legs as you moved along. It were a funny feeling but I were so wet now that I didn't mind it, in fact I think I might have quite enjoyed it if I hadn't been so worried about Bonnie. I couldn't see a thing, but I thought as long as I were going uphill I couldn't come to much harm, and all the time I kept on shouting his name.
And then I heard him meowing back.
I knew right off there were summat wrong. I know all the sounds Bonnie makes, and the kind of yell he gives when he's hungry and wants his supper, or when you've left him shut up for a long time and he's narked with you, is a lot different from the noise he makes when he's scared.
I thought, Mebbe he's hurt himself, and I shouted again, and he shouted back, and I went toward the noise.
First thing I saw was this big pile of stones. Then I heard Bonnie again and I saw his eyes, two slivers of green glistening in the dark. But they were quite high up and I thought he must be standing on this pile of stones. Then above his eyes I saw something else, a paleness in the air, and another pair of eyes, and I took a step closer and saw that someone was holding Bonnie tight against his chest.
And at the same time I realized the pile of stones was all that was left of Neb Cottage and the man holding Bonnie was Benny Lightfoot.
He said, 'Is that you, Betsy Allgood?'
His voice were low and unearthly, and his face so thin and his eyes so staring, he looked just like one of the nixes I recall seeing in an old picture book. I'd never been so scared before, nor since. But he had Bonnie and I knew that nixes ate any beasts they took, lambs or dogs, or cats.
So I said, 'Yes, it is.'
He said, 'And you've come calling for me,' sort of wonderingly.
I said, 'No, I were calling for my cat.' Then seeing how he'd made his mistake, I went on, 'He's Bonnie. That's what I were calling. Bonnie, not Benny.'
'Bonnie not Benny,' he echoed. Then he sort of smiled, and he said, 'Never mind, you're here now, Betsy Allgood. Come here.'
'No, I don't want to,' I said.
'You mean, you don't want your cat?'
He held Bonnie up in both hands and he must have squeezed or something, because Bonnie let out a squawk of pain. I didn't decide to do anything, I just found myself walking toward him.
He were standing higher than I was, being up the fell and also on one of the stones from the cottage, and he held Bonnie out toward me. I reached up to take him, but just as my fingers were almost touching his fur, Benny pulled him back with one hand andwiththe other he grabbed me by the arm.
I started screaming, and he pulled me closer to him, his fingers so tight around my flesh, I thought he were going to snap the bone. His face came down close to mine and I could feel his breath on my face, his cold wet lips against my neck, as he spoke in a horrible, breathless whisper, 'Listen, listen, little Betsy. I don't want to hurt you, all I want you to do is-'
Then, because I were twisting so hard to get away, he must have slackened his grip on Bonnie, and Bonnie shot up into the air and caught with his claws at Benny's face to stop himself falling.
Now it were Benny's turn to scream. He let go of me to grab at the cat, but Bonnie was already dropping to the ground, and I stooped down and scooped him up. Benny made another grab for me, I felt his fingers touch my hair, but it were so short and so wet, he couldn't get any grip, and then I was running away fast as I could with Bonnie in my arms.
How far I ran I don't know. Not all that far. The ground was damp and skiddy and covered with rocks and I soon tripped and fell. I could feel my ankle hurting, so I didn't try to get up but rolled over under a big boulder and lay there, panting so hard, I thought I must be heard half a mile away. But slowly my breathing eased, and Bonnie, tight against my chest, seemed to know that it wasn't a good idea to make a lot of noise, and eventually I could hear the hiss of the rain once more, and the thunder of White Mare's Tail, and the roar of the new force tumbling down from Black Moss.
There were other sounds, too, movings, shiftings, breathings, which could have been Benny looking for me, so I closed my eyes and lay there quiet as I could and tried to say my prayers like the Reverend Disjohn had taught me. But I couldn't say them in my mind and I didn't dare say them out loud for fear of sharp ears out there listening for me. In the end I think I fell asleep. Or mebbe I started to die. Mebbe it's the same. One moment you're here, next you're nowhere.
Then suddenly I were plucked from that peaceful darkness by arms seizing me close and a voice crying in my ear. For a second I struggled wildly, thinking that Benny had got me again. Then the smell of the body I was pressed against and the sound of the voice in my ears told me it was my dad who'd got ahold of me, and I pressed close as I could, and I knew everything was going to be all right now. I thought everything was going to be all right forever.
On the third day of the Lorraine Dacre inquiry, Shirley Novello woke up feeling pissed off.
The feeling hit her a good minute before she'd struggled far enough out of the clutches of sleep to identify its source. Feelings were like that. Sometimes she woke up happy and lay there luxuriating in mindless joy till finally her waking brain reminded her what she was happy about.
Now she opened her eyes, saw the inevitable bright sunlight spilling in through the thin cotton curtains, yawned, and remembered.
Andy Dalziel, the Pol Pot of Mid-Yorkshire, the thinking woman's Kong, had told her to keep Peter Pascoe's appointment with Ms. Jeannie fucking Plowright, head of Social Services, this morning.
She tried to tell herself she should be flattered to be handed the DCI'S assignment, but all she could feel was pissed. Like yesterday. She'd done all the hard work on the cars, then she'd been shoved off into the school to talk to the kiddywinks. She'd dragged herself back from that by persuading Wield that it was worth asking questions about the blue station wagon the whole length of the Highcross Moor road. He'd gone along with it more, she guessed, because he couldn't think of anything better for her to do than in expectation it would be worth doing. Well, she'd proved him wrong. Result, they had a suspect. Okay, no one seemed very hopeful, but no one had come up with anyone better. Turnbull was for the time being the focal point of the inquiry. The clock was ticking. He would have to be released later today if nothing concrete emerged. But that gave them several more hours to hammer away. She ought to be there, helping with the hammering. Instead of which she was pushed out to the periphery again, all because these pathetic men were scared something from a fifteen-year-old cock-up might come back to haunt them.
Unfair, she told herself. She'd spent a good part of last night studying the Dendale file. The photos of those three little blond-haired girls had gripped her throat like a cold hand and she'd had to pour herself a drink. There'd been a photo of the fourth girl, too, Betsy Allgood, the one who got away, a strange little chubby-faced creature, with cropped black hair, more like a boy than a girl, except for those wide watchful eyes which seemed to belong to some creature of the night. What had become of her? Had the experience of being attacked by Lightfoot left its mark on her soul forever? Or had the resilience of childhood been powerful enough to shrug it off, leaving her free to go forward unscathed?
Whatever, yes, if she'd been engaged in such a case and not brought it to a satisfactory conclusion, then she, too, might find it haunting her dreams for the rest of her life. In fact, if they didn't get a result in the Lorraine Dacre inquiry, perhaps fifteen years from now…
She pushed the thought away. They were going to get a result. And if the memory of Dendale made the Fat Man even more determined to get his man, that was all to the good.
But this concern with old Mrs. Lightfoot was surely clutching at straws. She was old and sick fifteen years ago. She was almost certainly long dead. God rest her soul, she added, crossing herself. Police work meant you had to become hardened to death in the physical sense, able to look at all sorts and conditions of corpse without spewing your guts. She was becoming better at that. But she was determined to avoid that parallel and irreversible hardening of the emotional and spiritual response.
Now the reason why the DCI couldn't keep his own appointment rose to the surface of her mind and with it a surge of guilt at her own resentment.
She slipped out of bed, dropped on her knees before the ghastly picture of the Blessed Virgin her mother had
