lug up here? wondered Pascoe. A kitchen sink?
"This is where it all started, lad," said Dalziel. "This is what I wanted you to see."
"Thank you for the thought, sir," said Pascoe. "Is there anything in particular I should be looking at or is it just the general aesthetic I should be drinking in?"
"Is that what they call irony?" wondered Dalziel. "That's sarcasm for intellectuals, isn't it? Lost me. I just want you to have some idea what it used to be like down there, what it must have felt like fifteen years back when they were told they had to get out. I reckon it pushed one of the buggers over the edge. Now, I know you think I've been brushing my teeth in home brew or something, but if I'm going to be tret like a half-wit, I'd like to be tret like a half-wit by some half-wit who's got half an idea what I'm talking about. You with me, lad?"
"Trying to be, sir."
"That the best you can do?"
"I've always felt that if Satan took me up to a high place, I'd be inclined to go along with most anything he said till I got down safe," said Pascoe. "So fire away. Give me a guided tour."
"No need," said Dalziel. "I've got a map. It was in the file. I've got the rest of the file down in the car. You can take it home tonight and have a good read. Here."
He passed over a sheet of cartridge paper. Pascoe looked at it and smiled.
"I recognize this fair hand, surely? Yes, there they are, the magic initials E. W."
"Aye, it's one of Wieldy's. Thing you've got to remember is that what he's marked as houses are nowt but piles of rubble down there."
"Was that the action of the water?" wondered Pascoe.
"No. The Water Board bulldozed them. They reckon if they left buildings standing underwater, there'd be paying off subaqua freaks' widows forevermore. Even the houses that weren't going to be submerged they knocked down. Didn't want anyone trying to sneak back and take possession."
Pascoe studied the map. Dalziel passed him the glasses.
"Start at the main body of the village," said Dalziel. "If you follow the Corpse Road down, you'll see it ends at a bloody great rock. Shelter Crag, that is. So called 'cos that's where they used to lay their dead 'uns, all wrapped up nice and cold for their trip over the hill to St. Mick's. When they got their own church, that seemed obvious place to build it, and that's what that big pile of stones was."
Slowly Dalziel guided Pascoe round the ruined valley with the care and precision of a courier who'd made the trip too often ever to forget. The main body of the village was easy enough to sort out once he'd got the church located. In any case its relicts were substantial enough to be immediately obvious. Buildings which had stood apart weren't so easily identified. Hobholme, the farm where the first girl had lived, wasn't too difficult, but The Stang, site of the dale joinery, seemed to have been scattered far and wide. Heck, the Wulfstans' house, had reemerged as a substantial promontory of stones running out from the new shore to the edge of the shrinking mere, and on the far side it was easy to spot the long rounded hillock alongside which had stood Low Beulah, the home of the girl who had survived.
But Neb Cottage, home of prime suspect Benny Lightfoot, and scene of that last attack, perhaps because it was high enough up the fell not to have spent the last fifteen years underwater, was very hard to spot. Perhaps like the man himself, it had reentered the earth from which its stones had been prized.
He didn't share this fancy with the Fat Man but swung the glasses to bring the dam wall into view.
Somewhere there was a valley--the Lake District, was it?--whose naive inhabitants, according to legend, built a wall to keep the cuckoo in and so enjoy spring forever. Here the purpose had been scientifically sounder but not all that much more successful. With two thirds of its footing in dried-up clay and the middle third lapped by sun-flecked wavelets that wouldn't have swamped a matchbox, the dam wall
"This is where it all started, lad," said Dalziel. "This is what I wanted you to see."
"Thank you for the thought, sir," said Pascoe. "Is there anything in particular I should be looking at or is it just the general aesthetic I should be drinking in?"
"Is that what they call irony?" wondered Dalziel. "That's sarcasm for intellectuals, isn't it? Lost me. I just want you to have some idea what it used to be like down there, what it must have felt like fifteen years back when they were told they had to get out. I reckon it pushed one of the buggers over the edge. Now, I know you think I've been brushing my teeth in home brew or something, but if I'm going to be tret like a half-wit, I'd like to be tret like a half-wit by some half-wit who's got half an idea what I'm talking about. You with me, lad?"
"Trying to be, sir."
"That the best you can do?"
"I've always felt that if Satan took me up to a high place, I'd be inclined to go along with most anything he said till I got down safe," said Pascoe. "So fire away. Give me a guided tour."
"No need," said Dalziel. "I've got a map. It was in the file. I've got the rest of the file down in the car. You can take it home tonight and have a good read. Here."
He passed over a sheet of cartridge paper. Pascoe looked at it and smiled.
"I recognize this fair hand, surely? Yes, there they are, the magic initials E. W."
"Aye, it's one of Wieldy's. Thing you've got to remember is that what he's marked as houses are nowt but piles of rubble down there."
"Was that the action of the water?" wondered Pascoe.
"No. The Water Board bulldozed them. They reckon if they left buildings standing underwater, there'd be paying off subaqua freaks' widows forevermore. Even the houses that weren't going to be submerged they knocked down. Didn't want anyone trying to sneak back and take possession."
Pascoe studied the map. Dalziel passed him the glasses.
"Start at the main body of the village," said Dalziel. "If you follow the Corpse Road down, you'll see it ends at a bloody great rock. Shelter Crag, that is. So called 'cos that's where they used to lay their dead 'uns, all wrapped up nice and cold for their trip over the hill to St. Mick's. When they got their own church, that seemed obvious place to build it, and that's what that big pile of stones was."
Slowly Dalziel guided Pascoe round the ruined valley with the care and precision of a courier who'd made the trip too often ever to forget. The main body of the village was easy enough to sort out once he'd got the church located. In any case its relicts were substantial enough to be immediately obvious. Buildings which had stood apart weren't so easily identified. Hobholme, the farm where the first girl had lived, wasn't too difficult, but The Stang, site of the dale joinery, seemed to have been scattered far and wide. Heck, the Wulfstans' house, had reemerged as a substantial promontory of stones running out from the new shore to the edge of the shrinking mere, and on the far side it was easy to spot the long rounded hillock alongside which had stood Low Beulah, the home of the girl who had survived.
But Neb Cottage, home of prime suspect Benny Lightfoot, and scene of that last attack, perhaps because it was high enough up the fell not to have spent the last fifteen years underwater, was very hard to spot. Perhaps like the man himself, it had reentered the earth from which its stones had been prized.
He didn't share this fancy with the Fat Man but swung the glasses to bring the dam wall into view.
Somewhere there was a valley--the Lake District, was it?--whose naive inhabitants, according to legend, built a wall to keep the cuckoo in and so enjoy spring forever. Here the purpose had been scientifically sounder but not all that much more successful. With two thirds of its footing in dried-up clay and the middle third lapped by sun-flecked wavelets that wouldn't have swamped a matchbox, the dam wall
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