Hanging Valley ib-4

by Peter Robinson

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Just what you told me, sir. I said he’d gone off to Toronto to talk to Anne Ralston.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what, sir?’

  ‘What happened next, man? How did they react?’

  Hatchley took a long pull at his beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hairy hand. ‘Oh, they just looked at one another and raised their eyebrows a bit.’

  ‘Can you be a bit more specific, Sergeant? What did Sam Greenock say?’

  ‘He didn’t really say anything. Seemed excited to hear the news. I got the impression it made him a bit angry. And Stephen Collier went distinctly pale. That poncy brother of his just looked down his nose like I was something the cat dragged in.’

  ‘Who else was there?’

  ‘Only John Fletcher.’

  ‘Did he react in any way?’

  Hatchley scratched his ear. ‘I’d say he got a bit tight-lipped. You wouldn’t really say he reacted, but it was as if it rang a bell somewhere and sent him off in his own world. More puzzled and worried than anything else.’

  Gristhorpe thought over the information and filed it away in his mind. ‘Good work, Sergeant,’ he said finally. ‘You did well.’

  Hatchley nodded and started casually rocking his empty pint glass on the table. ‘What now, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘We keep an eye on them. Tomorrow I’m going to send DC Richmond to stay at the Greenock Guest House for a few days. I don’t think his face is well known in Swainshead.’ Gristhorpe turned up his nose and leaned forward to grind out Hatchley’s cigarette butt, which still smouldered in the ashtray. ‘We keep an eye on them,’ he repeated. ‘And we watch very carefully for one of them to make a slip or try and make a run for it. All right, Sergeant. You don’t have to break the bloody glass on the table. I know it’s my round. Same again?’

  THREE

  Somewhere, with maddening metronomic regularity, a bell was ringing. Banks rubbed his eyes and saw the seat-belt sign was lit up. The no smoking sign was still out, so he lit a cigarette immediately to clear his head. Looking out of the window, he saw a vast urban area below. It was too far down to distinguish details, but he could make out the grid system of roads and fancied he could see cars flash in the sun.

  The attendant said something over the PA system about a final descent, and passengers were then asked to extinguish their cigarettes. Banks’s ears felt funny. He swallowed and yawned to clear them, and the noise of the plane roared in again. All the way down he had to keep repeating the process every few seconds.

  The plane banked to the left and now individual buildings and moving vehicles stood out quite clearly.

  After a long turn, a great expanse of water came into sight on the right and a cluster of tall buildings appeared on the waterside. The plane was dropping quickly now, and within moments it touched the runway smoothly. The loud retro-jets kicked in. They felt like ropes tied to the back of the plane, dragging it to a halt. Several nervous passengers applauded.

  After some delay, the doors slid open and the slow line of people left the aircraft, running a gauntlet of fixed smiles from the attendants. Banks negotiated the stairs and corridors, then found himself in a long queue at Immigration. After that, there was another wait until the baggage came round on the carousel.

  Clutching his small suitcase, duty-free Scotch and cigarettes, he walked past the customs officers, who paid him no attention, and out into the throng of people waiting to welcome friends and relatives. As Gristhorpe suggested, he stood to one side and looked lost. It was easy.

  Soon he noticed an Adam’s apple the size of a tennis ball stuck in a long skinny neck below a head covered with long brown hair making its way through the crowd. As the head also wore a pair of ridiculously old-fashioned granny glasses, Banks risked a wave of recognition.

  ‘Gerry Webb,’ the man said, shaking hands. ‘Are you Chief Inspector Banks?’

  ‘Yes. Just call me Alan. I’m not here officially.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Gerry said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  They pushed their way through the crowds of relatives embracing long-lost children or parents, and took a lift to the multi-storey car park.

  ‘This is it,’ Gerry said, pointing proudly to a saffron Volkswagen bug. ‘I call her Sneezy because she’s a bit of a dwarf compared to most of the cars here, and she makes a funny noise when I try to start her in the mornings, especially during winter. Still, she gets me around.’ He patted Sneezy on the bonnet and opened the boot at the front. Case and duty-free securely stored, Banks got in the passenger door after a false start on the left.

  ‘It always happens when people visit from England,’ Gerry said, laughing. ‘Without fail. Just wait until you try and cross the road.’

  The first thing Banks noticed as Gerry drove out on to the expressway were the huge cars and the stifling heat. It was like trying to breathe at the bottom of a warm bath. In no time, his shirt was stuck to his skin.

  He took off his jacket and tossed it on the back seat. Even the draught through the open window was hot and wet.

  ‘You’ve come in the middle of a heatwave, I’m afraid,’ Gerry explained. ‘It’s been between thirty-three and thirty-six degrees for the past three days now. Above ninety per cent humidity, too.’

  ‘What’s a hundred like?’

  ‘Funny, that,’ Gerry said. ‘We never get a hundred. Not even during a thunderstorm. Summer can be a real bitch here. Toronto’s a city of extremes as far as climate is concerned. In winter it’s bloody cold, real brass monkey weather, and in summer it’s so hot and humid it’s unbearable, as you can tell. Pollution count goes way up, too.’

  ‘What about spring?’

  ‘We don’t have one. Just a lot of rain and then the sun. Fall’s the best. September. October. Warmish days, cool evenings. Beautiful.’ He glanced sideways at Banks. ‘I suppose you were expecting icicles and snowmen?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I didn’t expect the heat to be this bad.’

  ‘You should see the Americans,’ Gerry said. ‘I lived in Windsor for a while when I was doing my M.Sc, and I worked for customs during summer. They’d come over the border from the Detroit suburbs in the middle of July with skis on top of their cars and fur coats on the back seats. What a laugh that was.

  Americans know bugger all about Canada.’

  ‘I can’t say I know much, myself,’ Banks admitted.

  ‘Worry not. Keep your eyes and ears open and all will be revealed.’ Gerry had an odd accent, part Yorkshire and part North American, with a mixed vocabulary to match.

  They swung eastwards around a bay. For a moment, Banks thought they were on the wrong side of the road. He tensed and the adrenalin prickled in his veins. Then, again, he realized he was in Canada.

  On the right was Lake Ontario, a ruffled blue sheet with millions of diamonds dancing on it. The white triangular sails of yachts leaned at sharp angles. There seemed to be at least a cooler breeze coming from the water and Banks envied the idle rich who could spend their days sailing like that.

  ‘Those are the Islands over there,’ Gerry said, pointing towards a low hazy blur of green. ‘They’re just a long sandbar really, but everyone calls them islands. People live on the far ones, Ward’s and Algonquin, but the politicians want to chuck them off and make a heliport or a mini golf course.’

  ‘That sounds typical,’ Banks said, recalling the various schemes for developing adventure playgrounds and safari parks in the Dales.

  ‘A lot of trouble over it,’ Gerry said. ‘At first, the islanders even got themselves a home guard organized -

  hard hats, the lot. They were prepared to fight off an invasion.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It’s still going on really. Oh, various bright sparks come up with ideas for long-term leases and whatnot, but there’s always trouble brewing. It’s jealousy, I think. Most of the people who live there now are academics or artists and a lot of peopl
e stuck in the city envy them their lives. They think only the filthy rich ought to be able to afford such a pleasant environment.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I don’t envy anyone who survives winter after winter out there in not much more than a wooden shack.

  Look.’ He pointed ahead.

  In front of them a cluster of tall buildings shimmered in the heat like a dot matrix block graph. A few were black, others white, and some even reflected the deep gold of the sun. Close to the lake, dominating them all, was a tapering tower with a bulbous head just below its long needle-point summit. It was a phallic symbol of such Olympian proportions that it made the London Post Office Tower look like it had a serious sexual dysfunction.

  ‘The CN Tower,’ Gerry said. ‘Toronto’s pride and joy. Tallest free-standing structure in the world - or at least it will be until the Japanese build a bigger one. See those elevators going up the outside?’

  Banks did. The mere thought of being in one made him feel dizzy. He wasn’t afraid of heights up to a certain point, but he’d never felt like risking a meal in a revolving restaurant at the top of a tower.

  ‘What’s it for?’ he asked.

  ‘Well you may ask. For show really.’

  ‘What’s at the top?’

  ‘A restaurant, what else? And a disco, of course. This is the height of Western civilization. A feat on a par with the Great Pyramids and Chartres cathedral.’

  ‘A disco?’

  ‘Yes. Honest. Oh, I suppose I’m being flippant. They do use the place as a radio and TV transmitter, but it’s basically just one of man’s muscle-flexing exercises. This is downtown.’

  The expressway, on a kind of elevated ramp, rolled past the backs of warehouses and billboards. Because the buildings were so close, the speed the car was travelling at was exaggerated and Banks felt as if he was on a roller coaster.

  Finally, Gerry branched off, drove through an industrial wasteland of dirty old factories with external plumbing, then turned on to a busy street. Most of the buildings seemed quite old and run-down, and Banks soon noticed that nearly all the shop signs were in Chinese. Roast ducks hung by their feet in shop windows and teeming stalls of colourful fruit and vegetables blocked the pavements in front of grocery stores. One shop displayed a handwritten sign offering a mysterious combination of LIVE CRABS & VIDEOS. The street was bustling with people, mostly Chinese, pushing and shoving to get to the best deals, picking up and examining wares. The rich smell of food gone bad in the heat, mingled with the aroma of exotic spices, drifted into the car along with the suffocating air. A red and cream tram rattled along its track beside them.

  ‘Chinatown East,’ Gerry said. ‘Not far to go now.’

  He continued up the street past a prison and a hospital. To the left was a broad green valley. Beside the road, it sloped like a huge lawn down to the broad bottom, where a busy expressway ran beside the brown river. Above the trees on the far side, the downtown towers shimmered, greyish blurs in the heat haze.

  Gerry turned right into a tree-lined street and pulled up in the driveway of a small brick house with a green and white porch.

  ‘Home,’ he announced. ‘I’ve got the bottom floor and there’s a young couple upstairs. They’re generally pretty quiet, so I wouldn’t worry too much about noise.’ He put his key in the lock and opened the door.

  ‘Come on in. I’m dying for a cold beer.’

  The place was small and sparsely furnished - apparently with cast-offs bought from second-hand shops -

  but it was clean and comfortable. Books stuffed every possible shelf and cavity. The Gristhorpe clan certainly seemed to be great readers, Banks thought.

  Gerry led him into the small kitchen and took two cans of Budweiser from the fridge. Banks pulled the tab and poured the iced, slightly malty beer down his throat. When Gerry tipped back his can to drink, his Adam’s apple bobbed wildly.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘I’m sorry it’s so hot in here too, but I can’t afford an air-conditioner. Actually, I’ve lived in worse places. There’s a good through-draught, and it does cool down a bit at night.’

  ‘What’s this area of town called?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Riverdale. It’s gone very yuppie in the past few years. Property values have shot up like crazy. You’ll see the main drag, the Danforth, if you walk or take a streetcar up to the corner. It used to be all Greek cafйs, restaurants and twenty-four-hour fruit and vegetable stores. Now it’s all health foods, late-night bookshops, and bistros with long-stemmed wineglasses and coral-pink tablecloths. All right if you like that kind of thing, I suppose.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’

  ‘There’s a few unpretentious places left. You get some good blues at the Black Swan on Saturday afternoons. And then there’s Quinn’s, not a bad pub. Some of the old Greek places are still around, but I can’t say I’ve ever been fond of Greek food myself - it’s all greasy lamb, eggplant and sticky desserts as far as I’m concerned.’

  They sat down on the sofa, an overstuffed maroon 1950s monstrosity with arms like wings, and finished their beers.

  ‘Your uncle said you had to go to a conference somewhere,’ Banks said. ‘I hope I’m not driving you out?’

  ‘Not at all. Actually, the conference isn’t so important, but Banff is a great place - right on the edge of the Rockies - so I’ll get a bit of hiking and partying done too.’

  ‘How are you getting there?’

  ‘Sneezy.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘A couple of thousand miles. But you get used to distances like that here. Sneezy’s done it before. She quite likes long journeys. I’ll take my tent and camp out on the way. If you need a car…’

  Banks shook his head. ‘No. No, I wouldn’t dare drive on the wrong side of the road. What’s the public transport like?’

  ‘Very good. There’s a subway, buses and the streetcars you’ve seen. We don’t call them trams here.’

  ‘I was surprised,’ Banks said. ‘I haven’t been on one of them since I was a kid.’

  ‘Well, now’s your chance to make up for lost time. I use them a lot myself to get around the city. Often it’s not worth the bother of parking in town, and the cops can be pretty sticky about drinking and driving.

  Oops, sorry.’

  Banks laughed.

  ‘Anyway,’ Gerry went on, delving into a drawer and bringing out a couple of maps, ‘this is the city - easy to find your way about as it’s mostly an east-west, north-south grid system. And here’s the transit map. It’s not as complicated as the London Underground, so you shouldn’t have much trouble.’

  And Gerry went on giving information about subway tokens and free transfers from one mode of transport to another. But after the journey and in the sweltering heat, Banks felt his eyes closing. He could do nothing about it.

  ‘Here,’ Gerry said, ‘I’m boring you to death. I don’t suppose you’re taking any of this in.’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Do you want to go to bed?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a nap.’

  Gerry showed him the bedroom.

  ‘Isn’t this your room?’ Banks asked.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll bed down on the couch tonight.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Not necessary. I’m off early in the morning anyway. This’ll be your room for the next week.’

  Too tired to argue more and, frankly, grateful for a bed, Banks undressed, sank on to the mattress and fell asleep within seconds.

  When he woke he was disoriented at finding himself in an unfamiliar bed. It took him a few moments to remember where he was. It was hot and dark, and the sheets felt moist with sweat. Hearing sounds in the front room, Banks rubbed his eyes, pulled on his trousers and walked through. He found Gerry stuffing clothes into a huge backpack. For a moment, it made him think of Bernard Allen.

  ‘Hi,’ Gerry said. ‘I thought you were out for the count.’

  ‘What time
is it?’

  ‘Ten o’clock. Three in the morning, your time.’

  ‘I just woke up suddenly. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Jet lag does funny things like that. It’s much worse going the other way.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  Gerry grinned. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

  ‘Sure. We’re not all coffee-drinking barbarians out here, you know.’

  Gerry switched on the television and went into the kitchen. Banks sank into the sofa and put his feet up on a battered pouffe. A pretty woman was talking very intensely about a debate in the House of Commons.