Free On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill Page A

little," said Pascoe thinking of Ellie cajoling her rebellious husband and daughter into completing the Three Peaks Walk last spring.
    "Then you'll know that, in the street if a complete stranger says hello to you, you think there's something wrong with him, but up there on the hills if you meet anyone, you automatically exchange greetings, sometimes even stop and have a chat. Not to say something would be the odd thing. Yes, I think that nowadays we've all got our children trained to regard strangers with the utmost suspicion, but they learn by example more than precept, and out in the country the example they get is of strangers being greeted almost like old acquaintances."
    "So she might stop and talk."
    "She wouldn't be surprised if someone spoke to her and she wouldn't run. Indeed up there, what would be the point? Didn't she have her dog with her, though?"
    "Dogs are an overrated form of protection," said Pascoe. "Unless they're so big and fierce, you wouldn't let a little girl take it out alone anyway. This one may have tried. It got badly kicked about for its pains. Any of these Lorraine's?"
    He was looking at a display of paintings with the general heading "My Family."
    Even as he asked he saw the neatly printed label LORRAINE'S FAMILY under a picture of a man and a woman and a dog. The human figures were of roughly equal size, both with broad slice-of-melon smiles. The dog was, relatively, the size of a Shetland pony. Psychologist would probably say this meant she had no hang-ups with either parent, but was really crazy about Tig. Just what you'd hope to find in a seven-year-old girl. He recalled his own sinking feeling a little while back when, without comment, Ellie had shown him a painting of Rosie's which had her standing there like the fifty-foot woman and himself a mere black blob in a car moving away fast.
    "Happy family?" he said.
    "Very happy. I've known the mother since she was a girl."
    "Of course. You used to teach in Dendale back before they built the reservoir, I gather."
    "That's right. Like everyone else, I had to move out. Part of the price of progress."
    "But in the end, some people were probably glad to go, even to see the valley underwater?" he probed.
    "You think Lorraine's disappearance may have something to do with what happened back then?"
    "You tell me, Mrs. Shimmings," said Pascoe. "I wasn't around then. You've heard about these painted signs? BENNY'S BACK!?"
    She nodded.
    "So, could he be back? And if so, where's he been? I heard he was a bit simple."
    "He could have been living with people who don't ask questions or make judgments," she offered. "Like these New Age travelers. Anyway, Benny wasn't simple. In fact he was very bright."
    "I'm sorry. I was told he'd had an accident ... something about a plate in his head. ..."
    "Oh, that," she said dismissively. "I taught Benny both before and after that accident, Mr. Pascoe. And he was just as sharp after it as before. But he was always different, and folk in Yorkshire confuse different with daft just as readily as anywhere else. No, he wasn't simple, but he was ... fey, I think that's the word. I taught him till he was old enough to go to the secondary. That meant taking the bus out of the dale, and he wasn't keen. But his father told him to go and do his best, and Benny paid a lot of heed to Saul, his dad. Then when Benny was twelve, Saul Lightfoot died."
    "How?" asked Pascoe. The policeman's question.
    "He drowned. He was a fine athletic man," said Mrs. Shimmings with what a romantic observer might have called a faraway look in her eyes. "He used to go swimming in the mere. He was a good strong swimmer but they think he got tangled up with a submerged tree branch. It devastated poor Benny. The family all lived with old Mrs. Lightfoot, Benny's gran, in Neb Cottage. It must have been a tight squeeze; there were three kids, Benny and his younger brother and sister, Barnabas and Deborah. But it worked all right as long as Saul was around. He