Feeling the sweat drip down the back of his neck, he walked along the narrow dirt path the hundred yards or so to the edge of the tarn and squatted by the waterside to fill his sample jar. It was so quiet up there, he could imagine himself the only man left in the world. Because he had to take samples from various depths, he got in the small dinghy and began to row. The tarn wasn’t much bigger than a large pond, maybe a couple of hundred yards long and a hundred wide, but it was quite deep in places. Andrew felt a little disquiet at being out there all alone, not another soul in sight, and whenever he looked down into the water he fancied he could see a roof or a street below. It was an optical illusion, of course, most likely caused by the sun on the water, but it unnerved him nonetheless.
When he neared the wall, he noticed some dark material snagged on the roots of an old tree. The tree was gone, but gnarled roots still jutted out of the bank like arms reaching out of a grave, and there was something about their arched, sinewy shapes that upset Andrew even more. Curious about the material, however, he put his fears aside and rowed closer. Legends and myths couldn’t harm him.
When he got near enough, he stretched out his arm and tried to free the material from the root. It was heavier than he thought, and as it jerked free, the dinghy tipped and Andrew, off-balance, fell into the tarn. He was a strong swimmer, so drowning didn’t worry him, but what chilled his blood was that the thing he was holding tightly as a lover in a slow dance was a dead body, and from its ashen face, open dead eyes looked directly into his.
Andrew let go of the burden, mouth full of bile. He struggled back into the dinghy, salvaged his oars and rowed back to shore, where he stopped only long enough to be sick, before squelching back to his van, hoping to God his mobile worked up there. It didn’t. Cursing, he threw it on the floor and started the van with shaking hands. As he drove back toward Helmthorpe, he glanced frequently in his rearview mirror to make sure that no misshapen, supernatural beasts from the depths of the tarn were following him.
Banks still felt angry when he pulled up outside his parents’ house, brakes squealing, but before he went inside he took several deep breaths, determined not to let it show. His parents didn’t need it; they had problems enough of their own. He found his father in front of the television watching horse racing and his mother in the kitchen fussing over a cake.
“I’m heading home this afternoon,” he said, popping his head around the kitchen door. “Thanks for letting me stay.”
“There’s always a bed for you here,” his mother said. “You know that, son. Have you finished what you came for?”
“Not really,” said Banks, “but there’s not a lot more I can do.”
“You’re a policeman. Surely you can do something to help?”
The ways Banks’s mother said “policeman” wasn’t quite as vehement as the way his father said it, nor was it as tinged with distaste as the way she used to say it, but it wasn’t far off, which was why it had surprised Banks when Mrs. Marshall told him his mother was proud of him. Banks’s mother had always made it clear that she thought he had sold himself short, that he should have gone into commerce and worked himself up to be managing director of some big international company. It didn’t seem to matter how well he did in his job, or how often he was promoted; to his mother, his career choice was undignified, and his achievements always seemed to pale beside those of his stockbroker brother, Roy. Banks had always suspected that Roy was a bit of a shady dealer, a frequent enough occurrence in the world of financial speculation, in his experience, though he would never voice such suspicions to his mother, or indeed to Roy himself. Still, he lived in dread of that telephone call coming from his brother one day: “Alan, can you help me? I’m in a bit of a fix with the law.”
“It’s not my case, Mum,” he said. “The locals are good. They’ll do the best they can.”
“Will you have something to eat with us before you go?”
“Of course. Know what I’d like?”
“What?”
“Fish and chips from over the road,” said Banks. “I’ll get them. My treat.”
“Well, maybe I’ll have a fish cake,” said his mother. “Your dad hasn’t eaten from there since it went Chinese, though.”
“Go on, Dad,” said Banks, turning to the living room. “Or maybe you should stick to your low-fat diet?”
“Bugger low fat,” said Arthur Banks. “I’ll have the special and chips. Just make sure there’s no bloody chop suey or sweet and sour sauce gone anywhere near it.” Banks winked at his mother and walked over to the shop.
The strip of shops across the main road, set back by a stretch of tarmac for customer parking, had gone through dozens of changes over the years. When Banks first moved to the estate, he remembered, there had been the fish and chips shop, a ladies’ hairdresser, a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s and a launderette. Now there was a video-rental shop, a take-away pizza and tandoori place called Caesar’s Taj Mahal, a minimart and a unisex hair salon. The only constants were the fish and chips shop, which now also sold take-away Chinese food, and the newsagent’s, which, according to the signs, was still run by the Walkers, who had taken over from Donald Bradford all those years ago, in 1966. Banks wondered what had become of Bradford. He was said to have been devastated over what had happened to Graham. Had the local police ever followed up on him?
Banks waited to cross the busy road. To the left of the shops stood the remains of the old ball-bearing factory, still untouched for some reason. It could hardly be for historical preservation, as it was a real eyesore. The gates were chained and padlocked shut, and it was surrounded by high wire-mesh fencing with barbed wire on top, the windows beyond covered by rusty grilles. Despite these security precautions, most of the windows were broken anyway, and the front of the blackened brick building was covered in colorful graffiti. Banks remembered when the place was in full production, lorries coming and going, the factory whistle blowing and crowds of workers waiting at the bus stop. A lot of them were young women, or girls scarcely out of school – a rough lot, his mother called them – and Banks often used to time his visits to the shops to coincide with the factory gates opening because he lusted after some of the girls.
There was one girl in particular, he remembered, who used to stand at the bus stop smoking, a faraway look in her eyes, scarf done up like a turban on her head. Even her serviceable work clothes couldn’t disguise the curves, and she had pale smooth skin and looked a bit like Julie Christie in Billy Liar. When Banks used to walk as casually as possible past the bus stop, he remembered as he stood in the fish and chips shop queue, the other girls used to tease him with lewd comments and make him blush.
“Hey, Mandy,” one of them would call out. “Here comes that lad again. I think he fancies you.”
They would all howl with laughter, Mandy would tell them to shut up and Banks would blush. Once, Mandy tousled his hair and gave him a cigarette. He smoked it over a week, taking a few drags at a time, then nicking it to save for later. In the end it tasted like something he might have picked up from the gutter, but he finished it anyway. After that, Mandy would sometimes smile when he passed by. She had a nice smile. Sometimes strands of hair escaped from under her turban and curled over her cheek, and other times she might have a smudge of oil or dirt on her face. She must have been about eighteen. Four years age difference. Far from an impossible gap when you get older, but wider than the Grand Canyon at that age.
Then, one day, he noticed that she had started wearing an engagement ring, and a few weeks later she no longer stood at the bus stop with the others, and he never saw her again.
Where was Mandy now? he wondered. She’d be in her fifties if she was still alive, older than Kay Summerville. Had she put on a lot of weight? Had her hair turned gray? Did she look old and worn after years of struggle and poverty? Had she stayed married to the same man? Had she won the lottery and gone to live on the Costa del Sol? Did she ever think of that lovestruck adolescent who used to time his vis
its to the shops so he could see her waiting at the bus stop? He doubted it very much. The lives we leave behind. So many people. Our paths cross for a while, even as fleetingly as his had crossed Mandy’s, and we move on. Some encounters are impressed indelibly in our memories; others slip away into the void. Of course Mandy never thought of him; he was a mere passing amusement to her, whereas she fed deeper into his adolescent dreams of sex, and in his memory she would always be standing there with her hip against the bus stop, smoking with a faraway look in her eyes, a loose lock of hair resting softly against her pale cheek, always beautiful and always eighteen.
“Two specials and chips and one fish cake.”
Banks paid for the fish and chips and set off back home carrying the paper bag. No newspaper-wrapped fish and chips anymore. Dirty. Not healthy.
“There was a telephone call for you while you were out, Alan,” his mother said when he got back.
“Who was it?”
“Same woman as called last night. Have you got a new girlfriend already?”
Already. Sandra had been gone nearly two years, was pregnant with another man’s child and about to marry him. Had Banks got a new girlfriend already?
“No, Mum,” he said. “It’s one of the local coppers. You already know that from last night. They let women on the force these days.”
“No need to be cheeky. Eat your fish and chips before they go cold.”
“What did she say?”
“To ring her back when you had a moment. I wrote down the number just in case you’d forgotten it.”
Banks’s mother rolled her eyes when he left the table and headed toward the telephone. His father didn’t notice; he had his fish and chips on the paper on his lap and was eating them with his fingers, engrossed in the one-thirty from Newmarket, glass of beer balanced precariously on the arm of the chair.
The number scribbled on the pad by the hall telephone wasn’t familiar. It certainly wasn’t Thorpe Wood. Curious, Banks dialed.
“DI Hart here. Who’s speaking?”
“Michelle? It’s me. Alan Banks.”
“Ah, DCI Banks.”
“You left a message for me to call. Is this your mobile number?”
“That’s right. Look, first off, I’m sorry about Detective Superintendent Shaw this morning.”
“That’s all right. Not your fault.”
“I just felt… well, anyway, I’m surprised he’s taking such an interest. It’s not even his case. I had him marked down as just putting in time till his retirement; now he’s all over me like a dirty shirt.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Are you going home?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. This afternoon. This evening. No point hanging around where I’m not wanted.”
“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. It doesn’t suit you. Only I was wondering if you’d like to meet up for a chat before you go, if you’re not in a hurry?”
“Any particular reason?”
“Perhaps because I didn’t treat you like an undesirable alien, despite your less than polite introduction.”
“Yes, okay. Why not?”
“Shall we say half past five in Starbucks, Cathedral Square?”
“There’s a Starbucks? In Peterborough?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. We’re very with-it these days. There’s a McDonald’s, too, if you’d prefer?”
“No. Starbucks will do fine. Half-five it is. That’ll give me plenty of time to pack and say my good-byes. See you there.”
Annie and Gristhorpe arrived at Hallam Tarn in time to see two police frogmen haul up the body and pull it back to shore with them. Peter Darby, crime scene photographer, sat in a dinghy nearby and videotaped everything. He had already taken several stills and Polaroids of the spot where the body had been first seen by Andrew Naylor. One of the lads at Helmthorpe had found a dry set of clothes for Naylor, and he stood with the small group, chewing his fingernails as the frogmen edged closer to shore.
Once on shore, they laid the body on the grass at the feet of Dr. Burns, the police surgeon. Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, was unavailable that day, as he had been called in to help a colleague with a difficult case in Scarborough. Detective Sergeant Stefan Nowak, crime scene coordinator, and his scene-of-crime officers were on their way.
Well, Annie thought with some relief, at least it wasn’t a floater. She had been at the scene of more than one bloated, misshapen lump pulled from the water, and she didn’t relish another. But when she saw the face, she would gladly have accepted an anonymous floater any day. The body was Luke Armitage’s. No doubt about it. He was wearing the black T-shirt and jeans that Robin said he had on when he went to Eastvale, and he hadn’t been in the water long enough for his features to become unrecognizable, though the skin was white and there were signs of cutis anserina, more commonly known as gooseflesh. The once dark curls were straight now and stuck to his head and face like seaweed.
Annie stood aside and let Dr. Burns perform his in situ examination. “This is going to be difficult,” he told Annie. “In general, bodies decompose twice as fast in air as in water, but there are so many variables to take into account.”
“Any chance he drowned?”
The doctor examined Luke’s mouth for signs of foam and his eyes for the telltale petechial hemorrhages associated with asphyxia, of which drowning is a form. He shook his head and turned back to Annie. “Hard to be certain. We’ll have a better idea when Dr. Glendenning checks the lungs and runs a diatomic analysis.”
Diatoms, Annie knew from her basic courses in forensic science, were microorganisms that lived in the water. If you drowned, you breathed in a lot of them with the water and they spread to every nook and cranny of your body, even your bone marrow; if you hadn’t drowned but were found dead in water, then a few diatoms might be found, but they would be nowhere near as abundant or widely spread.
Dr. Burns turned the body over and pointed to the back of Luke’s head. Annie could see the signs of a blow. “Would that have been enough to cause death?” she asked.
“Hard blow to the cerebellum?” said Dr. Burns. “Certainly.” He began to examine the body in more detail. “He’s cold,” he said, “and there’s no rigor.”
“What does that tell you?”
“Usually a body is cold after eight to ten hours in the water. I’ll have to take his temperature to substantiate this, of course, and we’ll need to know the temperature of the water, too. As for the rigor, given the obvious effects of water on his skin, it must have come and gone.”
“How long does that take?”
“In water? Anything from two to four days.”
“Not sooner?”
“Not usually, no. Again, though, I’ll have to make some temperature checks. It might be summer but we’ve hardly been enjoying seasonal temperatures of late.”
Two days, Annie thought. It was Thursday afternoon now, and the ransom demand had come two days ago, on Tuesday evening. Was Luke already dead by then? If so, his death had nothing to do with her rash actions. She began to feel a glimmer of hope. If that was the case, then the kidnapper was trying to cash in on Luke’s death, which could have come about for other reasons. Curious. She would have to begin casting about for a motive now.
The sound of an approaching van interrupted Annie’s stream of thought, and she looked across to the wall to see DS Nowak and his SOCO team jumping the stile one after another, looking like sheep in their white protective clothing. Well, she thought, maybe the experts would be able to tell her a bit more.
Banks arrived half an hour early for his meeting with Michelle, parked in the short stay round the back of the town hall and cut through the arcade to Bridge Street, where he nipped into Waterstone’s and bought a book called The Profession of Violence, the story of the Kray twins. As he walked up the busy street toward the square, he marveled at how much the city center had changed since his d
ay. For a start, it was all pedestrian precinct now, not busy roads the way it had been when he lived there. And it seemed cleaner, the buildings less shabby and grime-coated. It was a sunny afternoon, and tourists wandered in and out of the cathedral grounds into the square to spend a while browsing through the shops. Banks found it all quite pleasant, which didn’t square with his memory of being stuck in a dirty, small-minded provincial backwater. Maybe it was he who had changed the most.
He found Starbucks on the corner by the cathedral entrance and sipped a grande latte while he flipped through the book.
Michelle arrived five minutes late, cool and collected, wearing black slacks and a slate-gray jacket over a cream blouse. She went to the counter for a cappuccino, then sat down opposite Banks.
“Bit of a shock for you, wasn’t it, this morning?” she said.
“I suppose so,” Banks said. “After all these years… I don’t know, I suppose I’d allowed myself to believe there had to be a connection. Conned myself.”
“We all do, one way or another.”
“You’re too young to be so cynical.”
“And you should be old and wise enough to realize that flattery will get you nowhere. You’ve got a bit of froth on your lip.”
Before Banks could wipe it away, Michelle reached out her finger and did it for him, her fingertip brushing his lip.
“Thanks,” he said.
Michelle blushed, turned her head away and let out a little giggle. “I don’t know why I did that,” she said. “My mother used to do it when I drank milk shakes.”
“Haven’t had a milk shake in years,” said Banks.
“Me, neither. What next?”
“Home. And you?”
“Dunno. The leads are hardly jumping out at me left, right and center.”
Banks thought for a moment. He hadn’t told Shaw about the possible Kray connection because Shaw had behaved like a bastard. Besides, it wasn’t his case. There was no reason to keep it from Michelle, though. It probably meant nothing, but at least it would give her something to do, the illusion of progress.
Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was) Page 15