Sleeping in the Ground: An Inspector Banks Novel (Inspector Banks Novels)

by Peter Robinson

  8

  Christmas fell upon Eastvale like a knife-wielding mugger desperate for a fix, and with the St. Mary’s killer no longer representing a threat to the community, the investigation slowed down over the holiday period, and the town was able to get into the spirit of the season without that undercurrent of fear that a gunman on the loose inspires. The retailers loved it because people got out and went shopping rather than cloistering themselves indoors.

  It might not have been a white Christmas—for the most part it was the color of a puddle in a cowpat—but chains of festive lights lit up the market square, wound around the ancient cross and strung up over the numerous cobbled streets and ginnels nearby. The castle battlements and keep were floodlit, too, and many of the shopkeepers hung strings of lights over their signs, put up decorated Christmas trees or stuck red-and-white Santas to the insides of their windows. A huge Christmas tree arrived from the unpronounceable town in Norway with which Eastvale was twinned, and was duly set up and decorated beside the market cross. In the square, seasonal music overflowed from the pubs and filled the air. Even Cyril at the Queen’s Arms entered into the spirit of things with his Christmas playlist, which, Banks was pleased to hear, included a whole range of songs and carols from Nick Lowe and the Ronettes to Bing Crosby and Renée Fleming.

  On working days, detectives returned to the Upper Swainsdale District Rifle and Pistol Club and interviewed more members who had known Martin Edgeworth. They also talked to just about everyone in the village of Swainshead. But they learned very little. He came from a normal middle-class background in Spalding, Lincolnshire. His parents, both deceased, were decent, law-abiding members of the community who did the best they could for their only child. Edgeworth was well behaved at school, the local comprehensive, and always came in the top five at the end-of-term exams. He showed some skill at cricket, a bit less at rugby. He came second in his graduating class at dental college. After a few years on his own, he started a successful partnership with Jonathan Martell, then retired two years ago. He gave generously to charities such as Save the Children and the British Heart Foundation, and his hobbies include military history, shooting, rambling, golf and photography.

  All efforts to forge a connection between Edgeworth and any of the dead or wounded members of the wedding party came to nothing. The counterterrorist officers and spooks packed up shop and went back home to London. They said they wouldn’t be back unless something new came up to connect the St. Mary’s shooting with terrorism, though they doubted it would.

  Edgeworth’s son and daughter came to Eastvale to identify the body and kick up a fuss. Their father couldn’t possibly have done such a terrible thing, they argued. The police must have got something wrong. They refused to talk to the media. Connie, the ex-wife, never showed up at all. Banks and Annie visited her in Carlisle and came away feeling they had wasted their time. She could shed no light on why Edgeworth might have done what he did, though she was quick to point out his deficiencies as a husband: “selfish, pompous and lousy in bed.” Most of all, she was terrified of being publicly connected with Edgeworth in any way. She had quickly forged a new life for herself with Norman Lavalle, a New Age chiropractor, who had a lucrative practice among a wealthy clientele of the northwest. She didn’t want anyone to know about her previous existence as the wife of a dentist turned mass murderer. Unfortunately, less than a week after their visit, Banks spotted a well-illustrated feature on her in one of the less discriminating Sunday newspapers.

  To the media, Edgeworth remained a fascinating mystery: an enigma, the mass murderer who defied all definition. To some of the more sensational reporters, he became the killer who made a mockery of criminal profiling, which hardly thrilled Jenny Fuller. Adrian Moss turned out to be right. As the bloodshed receded in people’s minds, the media did their best to keep the story alive by asking questions about police actions on the day of the murders and by examining Edgeworth’s life in detail for anything that might help to explain the grotesque act he had committed. They were no more successful than Gerry had been, though some of them were far more willing to play fast and loose with the truth when the occasion demanded it.

  While Banks was as perplexed as the next person about Edgeworth’s motives, certain aspects of the case nagged away at him—a small but insistent voice almost, but not quite, drowned out the louder cries. He didn’t know what it was, but there was something fishy about the whole business.

  On Christmas Eve, Banks attended the midnight service at St. Agnes, in Helmthorpe. He wasn’t especially religious—and nor was Ray, who went with him—but he enjoyed the sense of community in the crowded church, the fine organ playing, the choir and all the old familiar songs from his childhood—“Once in Royal David’s City,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Silent Night”—rekindling his childhood memories of the tiny fake Christmas tree with its tinsel and lights, Uncle Ted having too much port and lemonade to drink, and Aunt Ellen’s raucous laughter as they played charades.

  Penny Cartwright and Linda Palmer were at the service, too, and afterward Banks and Ray were invited back to Penny’s for mulled wine, Christmas cake and a bit of a wassail. Some of Penny’s folk-community friends turned up and sang traditional Yorkshire Christmas songs, one of them a favorite of Banks’s from a Kate Rusby album, called “Serving Girl’s Holiday.” They continued singing and drinking well into the night, and Banks and Ray wandered home though the churchyard, both slightly tipsy, singing the schoolboy version of “Good King Wenceslas.” When they got back, they rather foolishly poured another drink and put A Christmas Carol on the DVD player. Banks was asleep before the Spirit of Christmas Present appeared.

  As a consequence, on Christmas morning Banks and Ray were both hungover, but Ray still managed to cook an excellent Christmas dinner, turkey and all the trimmings, and Annie drove out to Gratly to join them. They pulled crackers, wore silly hats and read out bad jokes, and again they drank and ate too much. Annie spent the night in the spare room. On Boxing Day, Banks made time to visit his parents in Durham, feeling guilty as usual because he didn’t go to see them often enough.

  Whenever the commercial onslaught of the season sagged, and whenever Banks’s thoughts about the St. Mary’s Massacre ebbed, Emily was waiting right there in the wings. Most of his memories of her were warm with summer sunshine and sweet air, lazy afternoons on the grass in Regent’s Park or Hyde Park with her head on his lap and all well with the world, but they had also been together through two winters. He remembered in particular one magical bone-chilling night when they were both home for the holidays and escaped from their respective family Christmases to go for a walk over the rec. Despite the amber glow of the streetlamps surrounding the field, the black velvet sky was scattered with bright stars and the frozen puddles crackled under their feet. They kissed for a while in the old bandstand, warming each other, smoked a cigarette or two, then went back to rejoin their families. Whenever Banks heard the sound of ice cracking underfoot, and whenever he heard Simon and Garfunkel’s “For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her,” he thought of that cold amber night all those years ago, and the memory warmed his heart rather than chilled it.

  Things didn’t start moving again at the station until a few days later. Naturally, there had been a number of incidents over the holiday period—domestics, a pub fight or two—but none of them had required the expertise of Homicide and Major Crimes.

  Then, just a few days into the new year, Banks received a phone call from Dr. Glendenning that brought the St. Mary’s case back to the forefront of his thoughts again.

  The Unicorn, across the road from Eastvale General Infirmary, was a run-down street-corner Victorian pub clad in dull green tiles, with wobbly chairs and cigarette-scarred wooden tables inside. Most of its clientele consisted of hospital workers, including nurses and doctors, especially after a late shift at A&E. It was hardly the sort of place to impress a date, but the landlord kept a decent pint, and there was no loud music or video games to make co
nversation difficult.

  On a Thursday lunchtime early in January, when Banks went there in response to the phone call from Dr. Glendenning, the only other customers were a couple of orderlies and a table of pupils from the comprehensive school playing truant. They probably weren’t old enough to be drinking, but it was hard to tell these days. He didn’t care if they were underage; he had managed to get served in pubs and get in to X-certificate films when he was sixteen. Good luck to them.

  Dr. Glendenning was already waiting in the corner with a tumbler of whiskey in front of him. Banks went to the bar and bought a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord’s Bitter and joined him.

  “This bloody weather,” Glendenning grumbled. “Chill gets in your bones. I’d rather have a bit of snow and ice and get it over and done with it.”

  It was true that the rain seemed to have been falling nonstop for weeks now, and every day there was a new story in the papers about somewhere or other being flooded, or on the verge of flooding, from the Lake District to the far end of Cornwall. If you were to believe everything you read or saw on TV, you might be forgiven for thinking that whole country was underwater, and that it was just a matter of time before some present-day Noah would appear with his ark and start shepherding people and animals on board.

  “What’s on your mind, doc?” Banks asked. Dr. Glendenning didn’t usually request lunchtime meetings in quiet pubs; in fact, this was the first time Banks could remember having a drink with him in all his years in Eastvale. This seemed to be a case of firsts. He realized how little he knew the man behind the white coat, what his life was like, his family, even though they had worked together for close to thirty years. Glendenning must certainly be approaching retirement. Banks contemplated the craggy, lined face with its bristly gray mustache, brick-red complexion and head of neat thin gray hair. He could have been a leftover colonel from the Raj in some long-forgotten Saturday-afternoon film on TV. The mustache was stained yellow close to his upper lip, and it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the good doctor was still sneaking a cigarette whenever the opportunity offered itself.

  “Good holiday?” Glendenning asked.

  “You know. The usual. Turkey, green paper hats, crackers that don’t crack and too much to drink.”

  “Aye. Only had two suicides this year, mind you. Usually a bumper time for suicides is Christmas.”

  “So you say every year.”

  Glendenning sipped some whiskey and grimaced as it burned on the way down. “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” he said. “In a way.”

  “The Christmas suicides?”

  “One suicide in particular. Martin Edgeworth.”

  “I see.” Banks leaned back in his chair. It wobbled dangerously, so he sat up straight again. It was uncomfortable no matter how he arranged himself. “Go on, then.”

  “It’s a bit awkward,” Glendenning went on. “Not that I missed anything, you understand. Not as such. Natalie, one of my most capable assistants, carried out the postmortem. Under my supervision, of course. Definitely not her fault. It’s more a matter of interpretation than anything else.”

  “I understand.”

  “Unfortunately, even we scientists have to connect the dots on occasion without any clear idea of the order they’re in.” Glendenning seemed a little embarrassed, and Banks was careful not to tease or push him. After a few moments’ thought, the doctor seemed to make up his mind to carry on. “Well, the truth is that I had one or two niggling doubts when I read Natalie’s report after postmortem. Things I couldn’t quite put my finger on. So I decided to go back and have a look myself, reconstructing the sequence of events in my mind. I even revisited the scene, then I reexamined the body. Fortunately, the coroner hasn’t released it for burial yet. Not a full second postmortem, you understand, but just another look at one or two features that puzzled me. I had Natalie show me what she had done and what she had found, and she agreed.”

  “And?”

  “Well, perhaps our glee at believing we’d found a mass murderer might have put blinkers on us as regards considering any alternatives.”

  “Such as?”

  “That somebody else did it. Or killed Edgeworth. Or both.” Glendenning held his hand up. “Now, I’m not saying that’s what happened. First of all, I had a hard time trying to visualize how and why the man sort of flopped down backward against the wall to shoot himself. There’s a bruise on his left shoulder consistent with its bumping against the wall. Usually suicides are . . . well, more careful, more fastidious, even, in an odd sort of way. I mean, it’s your last act, so you might as well make it as neat and tidy as possible. According to all the crime-scene photographs I looked at, his outer clothing was folded neatly beside him. The anorak, the waterproof trousers, the black woolly hat on top.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that on the one hand you have the signs of a careful, a neat man, even on the verge of suicide, but slumping against the wall doesn’t fit. It’s sloppy. You’d expect him to position himself carefully, perhaps even on a chair rather than on a dirty cellar floor. Don’t forget, this is a man who neatly folds an anorak. But he was sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out and his back against the wall when the shot was fired.”

  “But what does it matter?” Banks argued. “He was going to shoot himself. I mean, he’d just killed a number of people, and he was about to end his own life. He was no doubt agitated.”

  “Why did he even remove his outer clothing in the first place, then?” asked Glendenning.

  “Any number of reasons. He was too warm, too uncomfortable . . .”

  “It was chilly in that cellar.”

  “Perhaps he had been home for a while. The house upstairs would have been warm enough, with that big Aga. Perhaps he took his outer clothing off when he first came in?”

  “In that case, why was it folded neatly beside him in the cellar?”

  “I see your point. But none of that necessarily means anything. I should imagine he was in an unusual state of mind, perhaps not thinking clearly. Certainly not acting normally. He did take his boots off upstairs. We found them.”

  “Balance of his mind disturbed? Yes. Even so . . . if it were only that . . .”

  “What else?”

  “I was curious, so I went and had a chat with the forensic chappies who examined the clothes and had them go over their findings with me.”

  “We got their original report,” said Banks. “No unexplained hairs or fibers.”

  “Yes,” said Glendenning. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd? If he wore those clothes over the clothes he was wearing—and we’ve no reason to think he didn’t—then surely there would have been traces of his sweat, fibers from the shirt itself, and perhaps other things? You can’t tell me he climbed that hill and shot all those people without a shedding single drop of sweat. Or hair. He wasn’t bald, so you would expect hairs inside the woolly hat, wouldn’t you, and perhaps on the shoulders of the anorak, but there are none.”

  “OK,” said Banks, frowning.

  “It was as if the outer clothes were new, as if they hadn’t been worn. Fair enough, they were damp, there were a couple of grass stains and a streak of mud here and there, but again, anyone could have rubbed them on the ground. One of the CSIs suggested that if someone had worn those clothes to commit the murders, the stains were in the wrong places. Especially the knees, as they must have made contact with the earth when he got to his feet or lay down.”

  “I get your point,” said Banks. “There were no prints on the shell casings or the other bullets, either,” he said, almost to himself. “Mike Trethowan didn’t think it odd, but it bothered me. What are you suggesting?”

  “Perhaps the clothes the killer wore were different altogether? The same kind, of course, and same color, but not the ones found at the house. If anyone saw him from a distance, all they would see was dark outer clothing and a black cap of some sort. All he’d have to do was dampen the othe
r set of clothes and rub them in the grass and mud.”

  “So you’re suggesting two sets of clothing? One set folded neatly by Edgeworth, unworn, and another worn by someone else? The real killer? If you’re right, what happened to the outfit the real killer wore?”

  “No idea,” said Glendenning. “You’re the detective. He probably destroyed it if he had any sense. Evidence. Damn. I swore I wouldn’t, but I’m going to have another.” He glanced toward Banks’s glass. “You? And before you say anything, it’s my day off, and I’m not going to be staggering over to the hospital to commit medical atrocities on an unfortunate corpse.”

  This was a first, and Banks was certain he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity of having the doctor buy him a drink. “Things are pretty quiet for me, too,” he said. “Same again, please. Landlord’s Bitter.”

  Glendenning grunted and went to the bar, leaving Banks to think unwelcome and chaotic thoughts.

  When the doctor came back, he plonked down the drinks and said, “And there’s another thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “It was impossible to tell at the scene or at the postmortem, because the shot blew off the back of his head. Natalie is certainly blameless in all this. But when I managed to gather the skull fragments together—it was a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle—I found something odd. Odd and very disturbing.”

  “What?”

  “A slight indentation in the area of the exit wound.”

  “Indentation?”

  “Yes. It was very difficult to see because of the fragmentation of the skull, not to mention the general mess the bullet made. Even then I might have thought nothing more of it, assuming he just banged his head on the wall as he flopped down, or when he pulled the trigger. Those old cellar walls are rarely smooth. They’re full of bumps and pits.”