clothes were sops to her father's disappointment at not having a son. But I don't think so, Elizabeth. I think they were your mother's deliberate attempt to make you as ungirllike as possible. She wanted to make you invisible to him. But you, what you wanted was visibility. Even after he was dead. Perhaps you thought it was because of the way you looked that he died. You blamed yourself for not being what he wanted. Which bring us to the question, how did you know what he wanted? How your mother knew… well, I think a wife has an instinct. There may be deep layers of pretense which will never permit a public acknowledgment, but she knows. And sometimes the knowledge becomes unbearable. But a little girl… Could be it was your sheer invisibility which was the trick. I bet you followed him around… I bet you could spot him half a mile away in a good light. Just the merest glimpse up the fell would be enough. Yes, I bet that was it, Betsy. I bet that was it.'
It wasn't working. He'd kept going at such length in the hope of seeing some cracks appearing, but there was nothing on the woman's face except that same frown of concentration. The others more than made up for it, however, as the implications of what he was saying got through. Wulfstan had emerged from his dark inner world, Krog's features had been surprised by a natural feeling. Sandel looked up from her piano amazed, and Chloe's grip on her daughter's hand came close to being an armlock.
She said, 'Betsy, please, what's he mean? What is he trying to say?'
'Pay no heed,' said Elizabeth harshly. 'Load of riddles. It's the way these buggers talk when they've got nowt to say.'
'Betsy, we can't pursue the dead, however guilty,' said Pascoe. 'But the living need to speak out. Think of the pain your silence has caused. Okay, a mixed-up child can't be blamed for keeping quiet, but you did more than keep quiet, didn't you? You misdirected. Think of the consequences. Think of that poor man drowning in a cellar. Think of little Lorraine. All these spring from your silence. There has to be an end.'
'Aye,' she said dragging her arm free from Chloe's grip. 'And I've reached it. I've had enough of this. I'm off first thing in the morning and I'd like a good night's sleep, if no one else would. Walter, I'm sorry the way things have worked out, but they can't do much to you for an accident. Chloe…'
In one last desperate appeal, Chloe said, 'Elizabeth, if you know anything, please, please, tell us.'
'Know what? What should I know?' cried Elizabeth.
'Where she is. Where my daughter is! Tell me. Tell me!'
Last chance, thought Pascoe. But to admit she knew would be to admit everything. Not least that she had let the suffering of her adoptive parents stretch out over all those years. Would she have the strength? He could see it was tearing her apart.
He murmured something to Wield, who delved into the files he was carrying and came up with the map he'd drawn of Dendale fifteen years earlier. He gave it to Pascoe, raising his eyebrows interrogatively. Pascoe took it in his left hand, at the same time showing Wield what he held in his right.
Instantly Wield was back on the sunlit fellside, the dale spread out below him like the Promised Land, behind him the fold built from stones first raised into walls here four thousand years before, beside him the dark, wiry shepherd, his dogs obedient at his feet, and in the gloaming air the song of larks and the bleating of the folded sheep.
…
You bastard! thought Wield, recalling his thoughts when he realized the dead sheep had been used to hide the missing child's whereabouts. Different man, but, yes, the same trick!
And Pascoe, like a conjurer, held up the map and CD, then turned the latter through forty-five degrees so that the silhouetted face became the outline of the Dendale fells with a formalized sun arrowing its rays down into what had been the girl's mouth.
He knew now what the notes coming out of her mouth signified. Ellie had recalled the hosts discussing it on the record review program she had been listening to that Sunday morning, which now seemed a million light-years away.
'Mahler's Second is known as the Resurrection Symphony,' she'd said. 'It's about the awakening of the dead, and judgment, and redemption. These bars are a quote from the first sounding of the resurrection theme, and there was a lot of speculation why she'd used them instead of a quote from the lieder themselves.'
Well, the speculation was over.
He held the disc cover close to the singer's eyes.
'I think you've told us where Mary and the others are already, Betsy,' he said. 'I think you've been longing to tell somebody for ages. You want it to be finished, you want to start moving forward, don't you? But you know there can't be any hope of redemption and renewal without resurrection. That's what you want to tell us, isn't it, Betsy? We'll catch up with them on Beulah Height. In bright sunlight. The weather's bright on Beulah Height.'
And though very little physical change was possible, it was as if they saw Elizabeth Wulfstan shrink to Betsy Allgood as she sat heavily on her chair and began crying.
Though he'd only heard them once, Pascoe could not get the words of the song out of his mind. They sounded there as he lay in bed and they were still with him next morning as he toiled up the fell.
Oh, yes, they've only gone out walking, Returning now, all laughing and talking.
There was no laughing and talking among the men who labored up the hillside with him. It was already warm enough to make them sweat under the burden of picks and shovels, even though the sun had not yet risen high enough to fill the valley. But up ahead the eastern flanks of the double peak were already washed with gold.
We'll catch up with them on Beulah Height In bright sunlight. The weather's bright on Beulah Height.
Now they were close enough to see the sheepfold, a semicircle of drystone wall built against the craggy face of the saddle.
Still no one spoke. Like men in a dream they moved, needing no instructions when they reached the fold, but advancing on the crag as if to some well-rehearsed choreography, and swinging their picks in unison as they probed for the weakness they knew must be present in its apparently solid facade.
Three times they swung and three times they struck, and at the third blow a strange thing happened.
Sparks flew as metal clashed against granite and all at once the air seemed to ignite as a bright lava of sunlight poured down the ridge into the hollow of the fold.
At the same time a huge slab of rock swung open like the gates of a fortress.
The men stepped back, amazed. And fearful too. Only Pascoe held his ground, straining his eyes to see into that black cavern, straining them so much that after a while his fancy created the impression of movement.
Fancy? This was no fancy. There was movement in there. He could see shapes in the darkness, small forms advancing slowly toward the light.
And now the first was close enough for the sun to give detail to the uncertain outline. Oh, Christ! It was a child, a girl with long blond hair, blinking her eyes against the unaccustomed light and bearing in her arms a bouquet of fresh-picked foxgloves. Behind her came another child, also carrying flowers. And another… Oh, sweet Jesus. He recognized these children from their photographs. The first was Jenny Hardcastle, the second Madge Telford. And the third Mary Wulfstan, her mother's features unmistakable in the small solemn face.
How to account for this Pascoe did not know. Nor did he care. His heart was swelling with such joy, he could hardly breathe. So this was how it ended. All that pain and grief and despair hadn't been for nothing. They were alive, alive, alive…
But the miracle wasn't over. Another figure came forward. He looked and did not dare believe. Lorraine. Lorraine Dacre, holding her flowers in one hand and rubbing her eyes with the other, as though just awoken from sleep.
And behind came another…
Now it wasn't joy that pumped Pascoe's heart, it was fear. He was choking. Not with fear of the child he was seeing, but fear of the knowledge that came with her-the knowledge that she had no place in this wild, high landscape, that it was only his imagination that could have put her there…
The fifth figure was Zandra Purlingstone.
He threw back his head and shrieked his rage and despair to the empty sky. For a second it seemed he stood alone on the bare hillside. Then even that illusion was gone. He was lying in his bed with the pearly light of dawn turning his window into a magic lantern screen against which moved the slender boughs of the silver birch which grew at the bottom of his garden.
He rose and dressed swiftly. He had plenty of time to keep his first appointment of the day, but there was something else he needed to do which took him in quite the wrong direction. Not pausing for breakfast, he got into
