Pascoe thought then said, 'Do me a favor. Get onto them and say
… no, on second thoughts, give me their number.'
George was quite capable of staging a breakdown of all communication equipment rather than risk getting involved in an unauthorized overtime scandal.
Pascoe dialed the diving team's mobile and was pleased to hear Tom Perriman's voice answer. They were old acquaintances and got on well.
'Pete, how are you? I heard about your trouble. How're things going?'
'Fine,' Pascoe assured him. 'Hairy while it lasted, but I think everything's going to be okay now. Listen, Tom, I'm on my way to join you, so don't rush off.'
'Oh, come on!' protested Perriman. 'We've just got all the gear packed.'
'It's all right. It's not diving I want you for. Listen, you can get started while I'm on my way.'
He explained what he wanted. When he finished, Perriman said, 'And it's your signature on the overtime authority?'
'It's more than my signature. It's my neck,' said Pascoe.
'I'll come to the execution,' said Perriman. 'Okay, see you soon.'
'Great,' said Pascoe. He turned off the Danby road and, using the sun as navigational aid, wove a path along quiet country lanes until he found himself on the road running into the mouth of Dendale.
The reservoir gate was still open and he drove all the way to where the underwater search van was parked. He could see the men down at the water's edge, wielding picks and shovels. Tom Perriman detached himself from the group and came to meet him.
'Who's a clever boy, then?' he said. 'I poked around with a grapple and came up with half a rib cage. I'd say it's pretty definite the rest of our guy's down there. It must have been a cellar, and when the house was 'dozed the slabs on the floor above cracked open to leave a space you could get down through. Somehow this poor sod got himself trapped. Probably got up far enough to get an arm through the gap, then his efforts brought the slab down on him. Water rose. He died, then decomposed till eventually his arm bones broke free and washed out a meter or so into the mere.'
'Great. So you've got the rest of the skeleton up?'
'Give us a chance,' said Perriman. 'It's still full of water down there and badly silted up. Also I'm not too happy sending someone down into gunge a body's been decaying in.'
'Thought this was the same gunge we're drinking and cooking with?'
'Not quite in this concentration. But I see you're in too much of a hurry to wait till we get a pump set up. Is it something identifiable you're after? Like a jawbone? Okay, I'll give it a whirl, but it'll cost you several large disinfectant Scotches.'
Pascoe stood and watched the operation. The slab they'd moved had left a space just wide enough for a diver to drop through. The water was dark and murky. Not even the warmth of the evening air could make the prospect of dipping into those depths attractive. Perriman had to work by touch. He sank out of sight and groped about the bottom till his fingers felt something. A femur emerged, then a scapula. Then a skull.
Pascoe took it and washed it in the cleaner waters of the mere. When he saw the gleam of a metal plate, he said, 'This'll do nicely. You can get out now before you catch your death of something.'
'Gee, thanks for your concern,' said Perriman. 'But I like it down there. Besides there's something else…'
He vanished again. Thirty seconds passed, then he erupted to the surface, both hands raised high, not in triumph but to display his trophy.
No length of white bone this time, but a coil of rusting chain.
Pascoe took it from him and laid its heavy length on the sun-baked ground. One end had been formed into a narrow noose by a padlock, the other had several large staples rammed into its links.
'Jesus,' said Perriman, who'd climbed out. 'Looks like the poor bastard could've been chained up down there. And I think there's a bit more of the stuff lying around.'
'Leave it till you've got the place pumped out,' said Pascoe.
'I was going to. Pete, you don't look too surprised.'
Pascoe looked down at the chain, then raised his gaze to take in the placid waters of the mere, the valley slopes, the long sweep of the fell ridge with the Neb and Beulah Height serenely mysterious against the deepening blue of the evening sky.
It seemed to him there was perfection out there which it would only take an outstretched hand to touch and absorb like an electric current into the very core of human life. It seemed so close that not to partake of it must be deliberate denial, at once willful and wicked.
Then he thought of his despair in the past forty-eight hours, of the Purlingstones' despair for the next God knows how many years, and finally as his gaze came full circle and took in the chain and the bones once more, of this man's despair as the waters floated him up toward light and freedom, and then drowned him.
'No,' he said. 'I'm not too surprised.'
He rang Danby Station, got Clark, and left his message for Dalziel. Then he strolled away along the margin of the lake and dialed the hospital and got them to fetch Ellie to a phone.
'Everything okay?' he said.
'Fine. Looking better by the minute. And you?'
'Making progress,' he said. 'I'm not sure when I'll be done, though.'
'That's okay. Plenty to occupy myself with here.'
'Oh, yes? You found a handsome doctor, or what?'
She laughed. It was a good sound to hear.
'No such luck. But I've got my pen. Got a few ideas I'd like to play with.'
'Oh, yes.' He was thinking, She can't really be thinking of using what we've been through-not yet… But how to say this?
He didn't need to. She laughed again and said, 'It's okay, Peter. It'll be a long time before I'll feel able to lay what we've been through on anyone else's plate. But it's not the same old stuff either. If no one will pay the piper, it's time to play a new tune. I think we'll all be ready for some new tunes after this, won't we?'
'Oh, yes,' he said fervently. 'Talking of old tunes, but, would you care to whistle me through Mahler's Second Symphony?'
'You what?'
He explained. They talked a little longer. Finally he rang off and looked around. His walk had brought him to the ruins of the old village which the sun had rescued from the deep. He still had the copy of Wield's map that Dalziel had given him. From it he tried to locate individual buildings but couldn't be positive about anything but the church. From what he'd read in The Drowning of Dendale, it had been built close by the crag under whose shelter the departed of Dendale had lain prior to their journey over the Corpse Road to St. Michael's. The rest of the village was just a jumble of stones, needing more local knowledge or archaeological expertise than he had to interpret.
He stood there a long while, feeling all about him the ghosts of the dead, and of the living, too, whose departure from this place had been a rehearsal for death. Then he heard a car engine and saw a police Range Rover bumping down the water's edge where the divers were. Out of it climbed Dalziel, followed by Wield and Novello.
By the time he joined them, they'd heard Perriman's account of things, but their first inquiries were after Rosie.
'Spoke to Ellie on my mobile not long back,' he said. 'She's still sleeping sound, I mean really sleeping. It looks good.'
'Great,' said Dalziel. 'And t'other lass, the one with the funny name?'
'Zandra?' said Pascoe. 'She died.'
'Oh, shit.'
There was a long silence, the sort which seems unbreakable. Finally Dalziel cleared his throat and said brusquely, 'Right, lad. So what's going off here? How come, with all you've had on your plate, you know more than I do?'
'I had help,' said Pascoe. 'From unexpected quarters.'