Was the Fat Man's concern for the woman genuine or just another way of turning the screw on her husband? wondered Pascoe.
Probably a bit of both. Dalziel was long practiced at bringing down whole flocks of birds with one stone.
'So it's cards-on-the-table time,' he said with all the engaging openness of a Mississippi gambler who has got pasteboard up his sleeve, down his collar, and behind his hatband, and in every orifice known to man. 'Who's going to start us off?'
Silence. Which was what he expected. Pascoe caught Wield's eye and murmured something in his ear. The sergeant nodded and moved quietly toward the exit.
'Stage fright, is it?' said Dalziel. 'All right. WOULDC Novello, why don't you see if you can give us a kick start?'
Jesus Christ! thought Novello, in both oath and prayer.
She had been watching with interest to see how the Fat Man was going to play this. Would he come in at the past or the present? Would he be open about what they'd found out or keep most of it back to trip them up with?
She'd been ready to make critical notes, to give mental marks. Now here she was, at the front of the class, chalk in hand.
Jesus, she repeated, this time wholly supplicatory.
Her mind was spinning between the chained skeleton at Heck, the blue sheets of Betsy's revised recollection, Barney Lightfoot's story, Geordie Turnbull's confession…
Then she thought, That's all to do with the past! Sod the past. Fat Andy might be anchored in it, but I'm not. The case I'm working on is the murder of Lorraine Dacre, age seven.
She said, 'Mr. Wulfstan, is there anything you'd like to add to your account of your visit to Danby early last Sunday morning?'
She focused hard on Wulfstan's gaunt features, partly in resistance to her desire to glance at Dalziel in search of approval, but also keen to catch any telltale reaction. An emotion did move like a mist-wraith across those passive features, but she couldn't quite read it. If anything it resembled… relief?
He said, 'As I told Mr. Dalziel, I went up the Corpse Road and stood for some time on the col, looking down into Dendale.'
'And then?'
'And then as I turned away to start the descent to Danby, I glanced along the ridge toward the Neb. And I saw a man.'
'A man? What man? You didn't mention this in your statement. Why not?'
She was gabbling too many questions in her eagerness to be at him.
He touched his hand to his face as though in need of tactile reassurance that he was flesh and blood.
Then he said quietly, 'Because it was Benny Lightfoot.'
Novello let out a snort of angry derision. The bastard was going to play silly buggers, was he? He was hoping to hide behind all this BENNY'S BACK! hysteria. But she had the wherewithal to chop that frail prop from under him.
Her voice sour with sarcasm, she said, 'You saw Benny Lightfoot? Now, that must have been a real shock, Mr. Wulfstan. Especially as you, of all people, must have known beyond any shadow of doubt that he was dead.'
If she'd expected shocksthorror all round, she was disappointed.
Wulfstan shook his head wearily and repeated, 'I saw him.'
The three women showed nothing, or very little, on their faces.
And Arne Krog said, 'It's true. There was a man.'
And to Wulfstan he said, almost apologetically, 'I followed you.'
This confirmation set Novello back for a second till she grasped its implications. Of course, there had been a man, not Benny but Barney, who'd talked about wandering high on the Neb in search of a bird's-eye view of the valley.
Wulfstan was looking at Krog, faintly surprised. Well, a man would be surprised to have his sighting of a ghost confirmed from such an unexpected source.
'So what did you do then, Mr. Wulfstan?' inquired Novello.
'I went up the ridge after him,' said Wulfstan.
'And did you catch up with him?' she asked.
'No. He disappeared.'
'You mean, like in a puff of smoke?' she mocked.
'No. There are crags and folds of ground along the ridge. He went out of sight and did not reappear. I assumed he'd dropped down one side or the other.'
She got his drift now. Benny/barney had dropped down on the Ligg Beck side and there encountered Lorraine and… Good try, Walter. Only, it wouldn't wash.
Feeling completely in control, she set about clearing the ground.
'What about you, Mr. Krog? You see which way this man went?'
Krog said, 'No. I saw Walter go after him, then I went back down the Corpse Road.'
'And you didn't see Mr. Wulfstan again?'
'Not till later that day at his house.'
So now you're on your own, Wulfstan. Just you, and me.
And the child.
'So what happened next, Mr. Wulfstan?' she asked gently. 'Did you walk along the ridge, looking left and right in search of this man you thought was Benny Lightfoot? And did you look down at the Ligg Beck side and see someone down there, far below? And was it a little girl you saw, Mr. Wulfstan?'
In court this would be called 'leading the witness.' She almost hoped he wouldn't let himself be led, forcing her to drive him with angry scorn.
But there was no defiance in his face, nor denial in his voice.
'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I looked down. And I saw a little girl. I looked down and I saw Mary.'
'Mary?' Novello was momentarily bewildered. Against her will she glanced sideways at the men. Pascoe gave a small encouraging nod. Wield, who had rejoined the group bearing the Dendale file and the envelope with Betsy Allgood's transcripts, was as unreadable as ever. Dalziel was staring at Wulfstan and frowning.
She, too, wrenched her attention back to the man. So he was still wriggling, was he? She gathered her strength for a frontal attack.
'Come on, Mr. Wulfstan!' she said. 'You mean Lorraine, don't you? You looked into the valley and saw Lorraine Dacre.'
There was a creaking sound as Dalziel shifted his weight forward on his uneasy chair.
'No, lass,' he corrected gently. 'He means Mary. That right, Mr. Wulfstan? You looked down toward Ligg Beck and you saw your daughter, Mary? Looking just like she looked last time you saw her, fifteen years back?'
And for the first time in their acquaintance, Wulfstan regarded Andy Dalziel with something close to gratitude and said, 'Yes. That's right, Superintendent. I saw my Mary.'
The sky shimmers like blown silk, the sun staggers drunkenly, the rocky ridge beneath his feet yields like a trampoline. After so many years, after so much pain, she is there, as blond and blithe as he remembers her, not a day older, not a whit changed. The ghost of the man who took her has led him back to her.
He does not pause to wonder how she has grown no older during all those years. He does not pause to ask why she is in this valley rather than Dendale where she was lost. He does not pause to consider the steepness of the hillside beneath him. Instead he plunges down the slope like a champion fell runner at the peak of his form. Nimble footed he bounds from rock to rock. Below, at the edge of the deep ghyll through which the beck runs out of sight, she gathers flowers, heedless of anything but herself and the plants beneath her feet, and perhaps the little dog that circles her, barking at bees and flies and nothing at all.
He calls her name. He is too breathless to call very loud, but he calls it all the same. The dog hears him first and looks up, its excited bark turning to deep-throated growl. He calls again, louder this time, and this time the girl hears him.
