LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Should make a grand cuppa,’ said Dalziel. ‘Needs to be really hot. Mrs Coe, what do you reckon to Tony Dacre?’

      ‘What kind of question’s that?’ demanded the woman.

      ‘Simple one. How do you feel about your brother-in-law?’

      ‘Why’re you asking, is what I want to know.’

      ‘Don’t act stupid. You know why I’m asking. If I can eliminate him from my enquiries, then I won’t have to take this house to pieces.’

      Honesty is not only the best policy, it’s also sometimes the best form of police brutality, thought Pascoe, watching as shock slackened the woman’s solid features.

      Dalziel went on, ‘Afore you start yelling at me, think on, missus. You want me to have to start asking that poor woman if her man works on a short fuse or has got any special interest in his own daughter? You’re not daft, you know these things happen. So just tell me, is there owt I ought to know about Tony Dacre?’

      The woman found her voice.

      ‘No, there bloody isn’t. I don’t like him all that much, but that’s personal. As for Lorraine, he worships that little lass, I mean like a father should. In fact, if you ask me, he spoils her rotten, and if she set fire to the house he’d not lose his temper with her. Jesus, I’d not have your job for a thousand pounds. Aren’t things bad enough here without you looking for something even filthier in it?’

      Her tone was vehement, but she managed to control the sound level to keep it in the kitchen.

      ‘Grand,’ said Dalziel with a friendly smile. ‘Bring the tea through when it’s mashed, eh?’

      He went out, pulling the door shut behind him. Behind it, Pascoe noticed for the first time, was a dog basket. Lying in it was a small mongrel dog, somewhere between a spaniel and a terrier. Its eyes were open but it didn’t move. Pascoe stooped over it and now its ears went back and it growled deep in its throat. Pascoe responded with soothing noises and though its eyes remained wary, it accepted a scratch between the ears. But when his hand strayed down to its shoulder, it snarled threateningly and he straightened up quickly.

      ‘Anyone sent for the vet?’ he enquired.

      Mrs Coe said, ‘For crying out loud, my niece is missing out there and all you’re worried about is the sodding dog!’

      The sergeant replied, ‘Not that I know of. I mean, with everything else …’

      ‘Do it now, will you? I don’t like to see an animal in pain, but just as important, I want to know how it got its injuries.’

      ‘Oh aye. I didn’t think, sir,’ said Clark guiltily. ‘I’ll get on to it right away.’

      The woman, who’d busied herself mashing the tea, pushed past them angrily. Clark, following her, paused at the door and said, ‘Owt else I should have thought of, sir?’

      ‘Unless Lorraine turns up OK in the next half hour or so, this thing’s going to explode into a major enquiry. We’ll need an incident room. Somewhere with plenty of space and not too far away. Any ideas?’

      The sergeant’s broad features contorted with thought, then he said, ‘There’s St Michael’s Hall. It’s shared between the church and the primary school and it’s just a step away …’

      ‘Sounds fine. Now get that vet. Good job you thought of it before the super, eh?’

      He smiled as he spoke and after a moment Clark smiled back, then left.

      One thing about Dalziel, thought Pascoe. He provides solid ground to build a good working relationship with the troops.

      He opened the back door of the kitchen which led into a small, tidily kept yard with a patch of lawn and a wooden shed. He stepped out into the balmy air and opened the shed door. Some gardening tools, an old pushchair, and a child’s bike.

      Carefully controlling his thoughts, he next went to the yard door and unlatched it. He found himself looking across an area of worn and parched grassland scattered with clumps of furze whose bright yellow flowers threw back defiance at the blazing sun. This had to be Ligg Common with beyond it the long sweep of Danbydale rising northwards to Highcross Moor.

      Sunlight eats up distance and the head of the valley looked barely a half-hour’s stroll away, while the long ridge of the Neb stood within range of an outfielder with a good arm. He let his gaze cross to the valley’s opposite lower arm and here caught the glint of the sun on the glass of a descending car, and suddenly its tininess gave a proper perspective to the view.

      There was a huge acreage of countryside out there, more than a few dozen men could search properly in a long day. And when you added to the outdoors all the buildings and barns and byres from the outskirts of the town to the farmed limits of the fell, then what lay in prospect was a massive operation.

      He stood and felt the sun probe beneath his mop of light brown hair and beneath the surface of his fair skin. A few more minutes of this and he’d turn pink and peel like a new potato, while another hour or so would beat his brain into that state of sun-drunk insensibility he usually experienced on Mediterranean beach holidays while Ellie by his side only grew browner and browner and fitter and fitter.

      Sometimes insensibility was the more desirable fate.

      ‘You taken root or wha’?’

      He turned and saw Dalziel in the yard doorway.

      ‘Just thinking, sir. Anything happened?’

      ‘No. She’s quieter now. Much better with her mam than yon sister-in-law. Where’s Clark? I want to ask him about Dennis Coe, the brother.’

      ‘Mrs Coe’s husband?’

      ‘We’ll make a detective of you yet. Six or seven years older than Elsie, if I recall. We’ll need to take a close look at him.’

      ‘Why? Was he in the frame fifteen years back?’ asked Pascoe, thinking that Dalziel’s coup with Mrs Coe’s name was looking a pretty simple conjuring trick now.

      ‘Missing kids, every sod old enough to have a stiff cock ends up in the frame. He’d be eighteen or thereabout. Bad age. And all the kids who went missing were blonde and he wed himself a blonde …’

      ‘Come on!’ said Pascoe. ‘You reach any further and you’ll be in the X-files. In any case, I’d say Mrs Coe’s colour comes straight out of a bottle.’

      ‘So he married dark but let her know he preferred blondes. OK, stop flaring your nostrils else you’ll get house martins building. One thing you can’t argue with, he’s Lorraine’s uncle, and uncles rate high in the statistics for this kind of thing.’

      Pascoe shook his head and said dully, ‘Mrs Coe said she’d not have our job for a thousand pounds. She’s way out. Sometimes a million’s not enough for the way we have to look at things.’

      ‘Talking of looking, what’s yon?’

      The Fat Man was staring north. Over the distant horizon the heat haze had coalesced into something thicker.

      ‘Never a cloud, is it?’ said Dalziel.

      ‘Not of rain,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’d say smoke. Slightest spark starts a grass fire this weather.’

      ‘Best make sure some other bugger’s noticed,’ said Dalziel.

      He pulled out his mobile, dialled, spoke and listened.

      ‘Aye,’ he said, switching off. ‘They know. It’s a big one. And not the only one either. Brigade’s on full alert and they’re using our uniformed too, which isn’t good news for us if we have to hit the red button.’

      ‘When?’ said Pascoe. ‘You don’t think that there’s …’

      He was interrupted by Sergeant Clark from the doorway.

      ‘Excuse

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