On Beulah Height (24 page)

It was, partly because of the shade, but also on account of a portable air-conditioning unit standing in the corner of the living room. Turnbull was unmarried, Novello had established that from Bella. But this interior didn't look to be suffering from the absence of a woman's touch. Why should it? Man like this probably had a waiting list of local ladies queuing to cook, clean, and generally mollycoddle. The idea should have caused a pang of indignation. Instead she found herself straightening an antimacassar before she sat down in the chair he offered.

Come on, Novello, she warned herself. This guy's old enough to be your father. She made herself start looking at things like a cop again. He read the Daily Mirror. There was no sign of any other reading matter in the room. The furniture was old but not antique, and the woodwork had that nice glow which comes from frequent polishing--that female touch again? Also perhaps evidenced by the richly gleaming brass urn filled with fresh fern standing in front of the fireplace. Probably the ladies of the parish had a roster, taking turns to do the church flowers before coming on to sort out Mr. Turnbull. There I go again! she thought. Concentrate. The fireplace, now that was interesting. Handsome, Victorian, rather too large for the room and certainly not coeval with it.

Turnbull had gone into the kitchen and now returned bearing a tray with a jug of iced lemonade and three glasses. There'd been a pint pot and a can of bitter on a coffee table when they came in, but he'd taken these with him. Wanting to keep a clear head?

"Cheers," he said, raising his glass. "Now, what can I do you for, Mr. Wield?"

"Business bad?" said Wield.

"Eh?"

"Finding you home in the middle of the day. The 'dozer outside."

"Oh, no," said Turnbull. "The other way round, I'm glad to say. Things ticking away so nicely, the boss can afford to leave his lads to it while he catches up on a bit of paperwork."

Wield's gaze flicked to the Daily Mirror.

Turnbull laughed and said, "Not that paper. You caught me in my tea break. No, you should see my office."

"Thanks," said Wield standing up. "Which way?"

Turnbull looked momentarily nonplussed to have his remark taken literally, but he got to his feet and led the way out of the room.

The office was in what had probably been the bungalow's second bedroom. Not much use for a second bedroom here, Novello guessed. She somehow doubted if Turnbull's houseguests resulted in much extra laundering of bed linen. Trouble was, more she thought of him as a "ladies' man," the harder it was to see him as a child molester.

"Do you have someone to run your office, Mr. Turnbull?" she asked.

"Christ, yes. Too much for a simple soul like me. I've got this lovely lady who keeps me straight."

"I can imagine. Not here today?"

"No. I gave her the day off," said Turnbull.

Novello forced herself not to glance significantly at Wield. Giving the help a holiday the day after the abduction--possible abduction--that had to be, could be, might be, significant.

"Local, is she?" asked Novello.

"Very," said Turnbull. Then he laughed that infectious laugh it was so hard not to join in. "I bet you're thinking dollybird, bonny lass? Well, I did think of getting one of those, but I could foresee all sorts of problems. Never mix business and pleasure, as the bishop said to the prioress. Then I struck lucky. Mrs. Quartermain. Sixty-five. Widowed. Loves work. And she lives just down the road, in the vicarage."

"The vicarage?"

"That's right, pet. She's the vicar's mam. He's glad to get her out of his hair, I'm glad to get her into mine. But I let him have her back when he's got anything special on. It's the old folks' outing today. They'd not get out of the village if it wasn't for Ma Quartermain."

He grinned at her, inviting her to join in his amusement even though what joke there was was on her. She found herself smiling back, then tried to hide it by looking to see how Wield was reacting to this byplay.

He wasn't. He had been taking a slow stroll around the room, studying the filing cabinet, bulletin board, fax machine, copier, with which it was crowded though not cluttered. This was a very well-organized business. The business of a very well-organized man. Able to sort out his innermost life and urges with the same degree of precision? wondered the sergeant, who knew all about such things.

"Very impressive," he said finally. "You've done well, Mr. Turnbull. You didn't have your own business when you were working on the Dendale dam, did you?"

Dendale. Second mention. And again it seemed to cast a gloom on Turnbull's natural spirits. But it would, wouldn't it? On anyone's who'd been there. Jesus, this guy's got me working for the defense already! thought Novello.

"No, I was driving for old Tommy Tiplake back then. Sort of junior partner, really. Meaning I stuck with him in the bad times. No family of his own, old Tommy, or not any he bothered with, and we got on so well that I took over when he had to retire. I've been very lucky. Done nothing to deserve it, but I thank God every day for all His blessings."

They had returned to the living room as he talked and he gave Novello a waggle of the eyebrows as she sat down again, which said clear as speech that he rated her high among the aforementioned blessings.

"Didn't know you were a religious man," said Wield.

"Comes with age, I expect, Mr. Wield. Well, it's a good across-the-board bet, isn't it. Maybe that's why I employ the vicar's mother."

"So with all this religious feeling, you'd be at church on Sunday morning?" said Wield.

"As a matter of fact, I was," said Turnbull. "Why're you asking, Mr. Wield?"

You know why we're asking, thought Novello. It's been on the news. In the paper. In the Daily Mirror. Or perhaps you knew before that. ...

It was an afterthought. A professional coda. She must fight against this submission to charm which got employers leaving businesses to him and vicars passing over their mothers to work for him, and God knows what else. ...

"Which service?" asked Wield.

"Matins."

"That's eleven o'clock, right?"

"Right."

"And before that?"

"Before? Let me see. ..."

He screwed up his brow in a parody of remembrance.

"I got up about nine. I remember Alistair Cook's Letter from America was on the radio as I shaved. Then I made myself some coffee and toast and sat with it outside round the back because it was getting hot already, and I read the Sunday paper. That would take me up till about nine forty-five, I expect. That enough for you, Mr. Wield, or do you want more?"

There was an undertone of anger there now which he couldn't disguise. Or perhaps he could have disguised it perfectly well but just wasn't bothering. Or perhaps he wasn't angry at all.

"You were by yourself? You didn't see anyone? No one saw you?"

"Not till I went out to church," said Turnbull.

"How far's the church?"

"The other side of the village, about a mile."

"So you walk there?"

"Sometimes. Depends on the weather and what I'm doing afterward."

"And yesterday?"

"I drove there. I was picking up a friend, heading out for a day on the coast after the service."

"You always leave your car out front where it is now?"

"Not always. Sometimes I put it in the garage."

"And Saturday night?"

A hesitation. Would it be so hard to remember? Perhaps, like Novello, he was working out where Wield was going with this. And like her, getting there.

"In the garage," he said.

Which meant that if, say, the newspaper boy recalled that when he delivered the paper sometime before nine o'clock the car hadn't been visible, it signified nothing.

She looked at Wield. She knew, indeed had firsthand experience of, his reputation for thoroughness. He wasn't going to let this go till he had checked out everyone in the area who might have noticed Turnbull driving away from his house early on Sunday morning. Correction, she thought. Till I have checked them all out! Great.

Turnbull was on his feet. He went out of the room and they heard him dialing a number on the phone in the narrow hallway.

"Dickie," he said. "Geordie Turnbull. Yeah, not bad considering. Considering I've got company. The police. No, no trouble, but I think I'd like you down here to hold me hand. Soon as you can. Thanks, bonnie lad."

He came back in and said, "Dick Hoddle, my solicitor, is going to join us, Mr. Wield. Hope you don't mind?"

"It's your house," said Wield indifferently.

"Yes, and I'm staying in it," said Turnbull. "That's why I want Dickie here. One thing we should get straight, Mr. Wield. I've no intention of letting you take me over to Danby to help you with your inquiries. Not without I'm under arrest."

"You asked me before what this was about," said Wield. "Seems like you knew all the time."

"Oh, I knew all right, bonnie lad. Only I couldna believe it. You lot have done this to me once before, remember? I couldn't really believe you were going to do it again. But you are, aren't you?"

"We're going to pursue all possible lines of inquiry into the disappearance of Lorraine Dacre, yes," said Wield.

"You do that. And I hope you find the bastard responsible. But you people track your muddy boots through people's lives and never think about the mess you leave behind. I'm not going anywhere there'll be cameras and reporters. Anything you want from me you'll get here, else you'll not get it at all."

"Fine," said Wield. "Here's where we want to be. To start with I appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Turnbull. We'll need to search your premises. And examine your car. Is that agreeable to you?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Oh, yes. Between sooner or later," said Wield.

"Go ahead," said Turnbull tossing his car keys onto the floor in front of Novello. "Do what you bloody well like. You always did."

He spoke with a good deal of bitterness, but it was diluted by something else, thought Novello as she picked up the keys. Something which had been there almost from the start. Something very like ... relief?

But relief at what? That finally his crimes were catching up with him? Or perhaps simply relief that something he'd feared was actually under way?

She went out to the car.

Wield walked round the room whistling, not very tunefully "A Wandering Minstrel I." Music for him began with Gilbert and ended with Sullivan.

"Nice room, Mr. Turnbull," he said when he completed the circuit and rejoined the other in front of the fireplace.

"Like I say, I've been lucky. And people have been good to me. Tommy Tiplake. And all the folk round here. They'll speak for me, Mr. Wield."

It was almost an appeal, and Wield was almost affected.

"Nice to have friends," he said. "Grand old fireplace, that."

"Yes."

"Bit big for here, mebbe. And it looks, don't know how, familiar."

"Grand memory you've got there," complimented Turnbull. "It came out of the Holly Bush in Dendale. The snug bar, remember? Don't worry. It was paid for. Tommy and the other demolition men did a deal with the Water Board for any bits and pieces they fancied. It'll be in their records."

"I'm sure it will," said Wield. "Better for something like that to find a good home than end up in pieces at the bottom of the mere, eh?"

There was a moment of shared nostalgia for a past through which progress had plowed its six-lane highway.

Then from the doorway, Novello said, "Sarge."

He went out. She showed him a pair of evidence bags. In one was a child's pink-and-white sneaker. In the other a blue silk ribbon tied in a bow.

"The ribbon was down the backseat," she said. "The sneaker was buried beneath a whole pile of stuff in the trunk."

Wield stood in silent thought. Novello guessed what the thought was. Confront Turnbull with their discovery now or wait till they'd tried to get an identification from the Dacres?

Problem was solved by the appearance of the man in the doorway.

"What's that you've got there, bonnie lass?" he asked.

He sounded unconcerned. Perhaps in the circumstances too unconcerned, thought Novello. Wield ignored him.

"Get on the radio ... no, make that the phone," he said. "Tell them what's going off and say I'd like a search team and forensic down here ASAP."

Then finally he turned his attention to the man and began to intone, "George Robert Turnbull, I must caution you ..."

Andy Dalziel and Cap Marvell sat facing each other in the snug of The Book and Candle. The snug lived up to its name, having room for no more than half a dozen chairs and two narrow tables, under one of which their knees met, indeed more than met, had to interlock, but Dalziel's apologetic grunt having provoked nothing more than an ironic smile, he relaxed and enjoyed the contact.

The pub wasn't one he used often, its location "in the bell" and its ultrarespectable ambience, marked by the absence of game machines, pool tables, and Muzak, making it unsuitable for most of a CID man's professional encounters. But, as it was a pub and as it was on his patch, he knew it, and was known in it, and the landlord had shown no surprise either at Dalziel's order of three pints of best and a spritzer, or his request that the snug should be regarded as closed for the next half hour.

The first pint hadn't touched the sides and the second was in sad decline before he opened the conversation.

"Missed you," he said abruptly.

Cap Marvell laughed out loud.

"Would you like to try that again, Andy, and this time see if you can make it sound a bit less like some errant schoolboy's reluctant confession to self-abuse?"

He took another long pull at his pint, then growled, "Mebbe I didn't miss you all that much."

She squeezed his leg between her knees and said, "Well I've missed you more than I would have believed possible."

The admission provoked a feeling in him which he didn't altogether recognize.

While trying to identify it he said surlily, "Your choice."

"No," she said calmly. "There was no choice. Not then."

"So why're you here now?"