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want to tackle something like this, but perhaps not many twenty-two-year-olds have a voice with this kind of maturity."
    "Maybe so, but I still think it was a poor choice. There's a straining after effect, as if she doesn't trust the music and the words to do their share of the work. More after the break. This is Coming Out, your weekend review of the new releases."
    Ellie switched off.
    "Andy, you okay?"
    The Fat Man was standing rapt, no longer Hamelin child lured away by the piper, but Scottish thane after a chat with the witches.
    "Nay, I'm fine. Just feel like someone had walked over my grave, that's all."
    This time the Pascoes' gazes did meet and shared the message, It'd be a bloody long walk!
    He went on. "Yon lass, he said her name was Wulfstan?"
    "That's right. She's going to be singing in the Dales Festival. I saw the disc advertised in The Gramophone, special mail-order price, so I've got it coming, but I might not have bothered if I'd heard that review first. What do you think, Andy, being an expert? And are you sure you won't have a drink?"
    The gentle irony, or the repeated offer, brought Dalziel out of his reverie and for the first time his gaze acknowledged that Ellie was wearing a bikini whose cloth wouldn't have made a collar for his shirt.
    "Nay, lass. I know nowt about music. And there's no time for a drink. Sorry to be dragging him off on a Sunday, but."
    He made dragging off sound like a physical act.
    Ellie was puzzled. Three things which passeth understanding: Dalziel recognizing Mahler; Dalziel refusing a drink; Dalziel not clocking her tits straight off.
    "It sounds urgent," she said.
    "Aye, kiddie goes missing, it's always urgent," he said. "Where's young Rosie?"
    The juxtaposition of ideas was abrupt enough to be disturbing.
    Pascoe said quickly, "She's spending the weekend with a school-friend. Zandra with a Zed, would you believe? Zandra Purlingstone?"
    There was a teasing interrogative in his tone which Dalziel was onto in a flash.
    "Purlingstone? Not Dry-Dock Purlingstone's daughter?" he exclaimed.
    Derek Purlingstone, general manager of Mid-Yorks Water, PLC, the privatized version of the old Water Board, had played down the threat of shortages when this year's drought started by gently mocking the English preoccupation with bathing, adding, "After all, when you want to clean a boat, you don't put it in a bath, do you? You put it in a dry dock!"
    He had learned the hard way that only the sufferers are allowed to make jokes about their pain. Dalziel's surprise rose from the fact that Dry-Dock's position and politics made him the kind of man whose company Ellie would normally have avoided like head lice.
    "The same," said Pascoe. "Zandra's in Rosie's class at Edengrove and they've elected each other best friend."
    "Oh, aye? With all his brass, I'd have thought he'd have gone private. Still, it's reckoned a good school and I suppose it's nice and handy, being right on his doorstep."
    Dalziel spoke without malice, but Pascoe could see that Ellie was feeling provoked. Edengrove Primary, with its excellent reputation and its famous head, Miss Martindale, might lie right on Purlingstone's doorstep, but it was a good four miles north of the Pascoes', while Bullgate Primary was less than a mile south. Ellie had made inquiries. "Bullgate has many original and unique features," a friend in the inspectorate told her. "For instance, during break, they play tiggie with hammers." After that, she made representations, with the upshot that Rosie went to Edengrove. Even with the shining example of New Labour leadership before her, Ellie felt a little exposed, and as always was ready to counterpunch before the seconds had left the ring.
    "If Derek is democratic enough to send his girl to a state school, I don't see why we should try to prove him wrong by refusing to let Rosie make friends with Zandra, do you?" she said challengingly.
    Normally Dalziel would have enjoyed nothing more than winding Ellie Pascoe up.