'No, sir,' said Novello. 'They do keep on jumping up, don't they? I read the old files. You recall that girl, Betsy Allgood, the one who got away from Benny? Well, seems she's back too!'
She reached into the backseat, picked up the Post, and dropped it in Pascoe's lap.
Not such a clever idea, she thought as he spent the next couple of minutes studying both pages, the one on the case and the one on the concert.
'Betsy Allgood,' he murmured. 'There was a photo in the file. She didn't look much like that.'
'We grow up, sir,' she said. 'We start looking the way we want, not our parents, as you'll likely find out.'
He glanced at her sharply, then smiled his thanks for this oblique reassurance.
'Well, it's certainly an improvement,' he said. 'She was, if I recall, a rather unprepossessing child.'
It was her turn to give him the sharp glance. He thought, That was pretty crass, Pascoe, in your situation, being snooty about other people's kids.
But the photo continued to bother him. Or rather the photos, because while Betsy/elizabeth, who he'd seen before, looked totally unfamiliar, Walter Wulfstan, whom he'd never seen, rang some kind of bell. But why not? Local dignitary, the kind of man you were likely to see on the top table at some of the civic occasions he'd been delegated to attend as what Dalziel called the 'smart-arse face of policing.'
And something else was bothering him too…
He said, 'Pull in here, will you? By that phone box.'
She obeyed, puzzled, but had the wit to sit in silence while Pascoe listened, frowning, to the air traffic on her radio.
'Something's happening,' he said.
She said, 'I didn't hear anything, sir…'
'No, it's not what anyone's saying, just now and then a pause, an inflection… maybe I'm way off beam, but do me a favor, Shirley. Check with the incident room at Danby.'
'Okay,' she said, pulling out her mobile.
'No,' he said, pointing to the phone box. 'If I'm right, you won't get anything unless you're on a land line.'
She flushed at her slowness, and got out of the car.
Pascoe studied the paper again, then twisted round to place it on the rear seat. Novello had the same attitude as Ellie toward her car, he observed. You kept the driver's seat free and used the rest as a mobile litter bin. He frowned as he saw a couple of plastic evidence bags amid the debris. Things like that you kept locked in your trunk till you could hand them in for examination or storage as soon as possible.
He picked the bags up and set them on his lap. They both had tags indicating their contents had been examined by the lab. The larger bag contained a cigarette pack, two Sunday papers, and a stained tissue, the smaller one a camera battery and a silver earring in the shape of a dagger.
He was still looking at this bag when Novello got back into the car, but her words put any questions he had to the back of his mind.
'They've found her,' she said in a flat, controlled voice. 'I spoke to Mr. Headingley. Not formally identified yet, but it seems Sergeant Wield's sure. He took her dog up the valley…'
'Clever old Wieldy,' said Pascoe. 'Doesn't explain how everyone else missed her. Dogs, thermal imaging…'
'There was a dead sheep. In this weather…'
'Clever old killer,' said Pascoe, trying to keep the image of the dead girl at arm's length. 'Anything on cause yet?'
'No sir. The scene-of-crime team's up there with the doctor now. This knocks my notion about abduction on the head.'
She, too, was trying to cope with it by losing the child's body in a heap of detective abstractions.
Pascoe said, 'I bet the super's pleased.'
'Sir?' Her indignation couldn't be hidden.
'Because he's got a body,' said Pascoe. 'He'd given her up long since. From the very first moment he heard she'd gone missing, I think. But to get after the killer he needs something concrete. Otherwise you're just punching air. So, anything else?'
'Yes, the super briefed the DI before he went off up the valley.'
She passed on the results of Dalziel's interview with Jackie Tilney, with an amount of detail that surprised Pascoe.
'You must have a lot of influence with George Headingley,' he said.
The DI belonged to an old school who believed that telling DC'S too much only confused them and telling WOULDC'S anything other than how many sugars you took was a complete waste of breath.
'Told him I was under instructions from you, sir, and you wanted a blow-by-blow. He sends his best wishes, by the way, for… you know.
…'
'Yes, I know,' said Pascoe. 'This book -The Drowning of Dendale. I'm sure Ellie's got a copy lying around somewhere. She's into this local history stuff. But why would Benny want to see it? And what would he need photocopies of the maps for? By all accounts he knew the valley like the back of his hand.'
'That was fifteen years ago, before the valley was flooded,' said Novello.
'With the drought it's pretty well back to what it was,' objected Pascoe.
'Except that all the buildings have been bulldozed,' said Novello, starting up the car and pulling away from the curb.
'I suppose so,' said Pascoe. 'Tell me, these evidence bags…'
She had noticed the bags in his lap and anticipated his reprimand.
'It's okay, sir,' she said. 'They're for dumping, not storing. It's stuff I got out of the litter bin at the viewpoint on the Highcross Moor road when I was thinking abduction. The lab found nothing, not surprising now the girl's been found in the valley. I'll stick them back in a trash bin next time I have a clear-out.'
'Fine,' he said.
He sat in silence for the rest of the journey. Not the best idea she'd ever had, thought Novello. But what had she expected? He'd been useful last time, probably because his mind had already taken a couple of hypothetical steps ahead before his personal crisis intervened. But since then, as he said himself, the Dacre case had been relegated to a very low place in his mental priorities.
When they reached his house, he got out, still clutching the plastic bags.
'Sir,' she said, pointing.
'What? Oh, yes. I'll stick them in our bin, shall I? Look, come inside for a moment.'
She followed him inside. He headed straight upstairs, leaving her wondering whether she was meant to follow. Not that she cared what was meant. Down here by the open door was the place to be. Pascoe was neither a verbal nor a physical groper, but men under stress could behave strangely, and being assaulted by a popular senior officer with a kid on the danger list was not a good career move for an ambitious
WOULDC.
A few moments later he came back down, clutching a book.
'Here we are. I knew we had a copy. The Drowning of Dendale. Let's see if we can find what so interested Lightfoot.'
'It was the maps, sir. We know that,' she said patiently, like an infant teacher.
He caught the intonation, smiled at her, and said, 'Thank you, nurse, but that was the first time. He had photocopies of them. So what brought him back to take another look?'
He went into the living room, sat down, and began to flip through the book. Novello stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.
He supposed he must have glanced through the volume sometime in the past, but apart from the first
