Cold is the Grave

by Peter Robinson

  ‘That’ll be five pounds seventy-two, please, love,’ said the plump, smiling woman at the checkout desk. Annie fiddled around in her purse and found a five-pound note and four twenty-pence pieces, which she promptly dropped from her shaking hands all over the floor. She picked them up and handed them to the woman.

  ‘What’s up, love? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Annie muttered, hurriedly putting away her purse and heading out with her groceries. She risked one quick glance over her shoulder. He was standing by the bargain reds section scanning the labels and prices. She was still certain that he hadn’t seen her.

  She burst out onto York Road and took a gulp of fresh air. Her heart was still beating fast and she felt herself shaking inside. It was Wayne Dalton; she was sure of it. Detective Inspector Wayne Dalton. One of the two men who had held her down while a third had raped her more than two years ago.

  Banks knew he shouldn’t have asked Annie out like that, on impulse, and he hoped he hadn’t put her off for good. He didn’t want to appear to be pestering her, especially as they worked together and he was, technically, her boss. Not that Annie would ever accuse him of sexual harassment, but . . .

  As it happened, his evening turned out to be just what he needed. He made a cheese and onion sandwich for tea and ate it while he read the paper in the kitchen. His son, Brian, phoned at about nine o’clock, excited about the CD. On a whim, Banks asked if he had ever heard of Barry Clough. He hadn’t, but said he’d ask around among his colleagues in the business. He also reminded Banks that punk had been a long time ago, as if Banks needed reminding of that.

  After lunch with Emily Riddle, Banks also felt the need to talk to Tracy. It would help balance his sanity. After listening to Emily for more than an hour, he had come away with a very warped idea about teenage girls. He needed to know they weren’t all like her, especially his own daughter.

  Amidst all the craziness, though, and after all she’d been through, Emily still seemed to have a cool head on her shoulders, if her talk about getting her A levels and going to university was to be believed. Like Banks, Tracy had had to work hard to get where she was. She was a bright girl, but not one of those who don’t have to apply themselves. The harder she worked, the higher her marks. Emily seemed to think her progress in the world was simply a matter of choice, of deciding what to do and then having it fall into her lap. Perhaps it was for her. Now that he had got a little beyond first impressions, Banks couldn’t help but like Emily, but she was the kind of girl he fretted about, and the kind who constantly exasperated him. He almost felt sorry for Jimmy Riddle.

  Tracy didn’t answer. Out with Damon, no doubt. He left her a message, nothing urgent, just to call if she didn’t get in too late.

  For a change from peat, Banks lit a log fire in the hearth, though it wasn’t a particularly cold evening, and sat down in the old armchair he had picked up at a local estate auction. The blue walls that he had worried might feel cold in winter had turned out just fine, he thought, as he watched the shadows cast by the flames flicker over them. Knotty wood spat and crackled in the fireplace, taking Banks back to his childhood, when the coal they used sometimes hissed and spat. There was no other source of heat in the house, so it was his father’s job in winter to get up while it was still dark and light the fire. Usually, when Banks came down for his jam and bread before school, there was a good blaze going, and it had taken most of the chill off the cool damp night air. The years in between, in various London flats and the Eastvale semi, he hadn’t had a coal or log fire, only gas or electric, so it was a luxury he was availing himself of a lot this winter.

  He put the first CD of Miles Davis’s Carnegie Hall concert on, the one with Gil Evans and his orchestra, picked up the latest Kate Atkinson novel, which lay face down on the chair arm about half read, and lit a cigarette. Though he had intended an early night, he found himself enjoying both the music and the book so much that he put another log on the fire and slipped in the second CD. It was a quarter past eleven, and he had set the book aside for a few moments to listen to the live version of the adagio from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, when the telephone rang.

  Thinking it might be Tracy, he turned down the stereo and snatched up the phone. The first thing that assaulted his ears was loud music in the background. He couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but it sounded like some sort of post-rave-techno-dance mix. The next thing to assail him was the squeaky voice of DC Rickerd shouting over the music.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Banks. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’m on duty tonight.’

  ‘I know that. What is it? Will you get to the point? And do you have to shout so loud?’

  ‘Well, I’m at the Bar None, sir. It’s pretty noisy here.’

  The Bar None was one of Eastvale’s most popular nightclubs for the young crowd. Situated under the shops across the market square from the police station, it usually opened up an hour or so before pub closing time and attracted those kids who were too pissed to drive to Leeds or Manchester, where there were far better clubs. ‘Look,’ said Banks, ‘if there’s been a fight or something, I don’t want to know.’

  ‘No, sir, it’s nothing like that.’

  ‘Well?’ Banks lost Rickerd’s next words to a surge in the background noise. ‘Can you get them to turn the music down?’ he yelled.

  ‘It’s a suspicious death,’ Rickerd said.

  ‘How suspicious?’

  ‘Well, she’s dead, sir. I’m pretty sure of that. Inspector Jessup agrees with me, sir. And the blokes from the ambulance. It looks as if somebody beat her up pretty badly.’

  If Chris Jessup, inspector in the uniformed branch, thought it was serious enough to call Banks in, then it probably was. ‘Who is the victim?’ he asked.

  ‘You’d better get down here, sir . . .’ Here he became inaudible again. ‘ . . . can’t handle . . . myself.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘Inspector Jessup and me and three PCs, sir.’

  ‘That should be enough. I’m sure Inspector Jessup knows exactly what to do. Help him make sure no one leaves and secure the scene. We don’t want anyone else tramping about near the body until I get there, including the ambulance crew. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Better put a call through to Dr Burns, too. It’ll take him a while to get there.’ Banks was about to ask Rickerd to send for the SOCO unit, but decided to wait until he could assess the scene himself. No sense spending the taxpayers’ money until he knew exactly what he was dealing with. ‘Have you got the victim’s name?’

  ‘Yes, sir. She had a driving licence and one of those proof-of-age cards some of the clubs give out to kids. It’s got her photo on it.’

  ‘Good work. What’s her name, Rickerd?’

  ‘It’s Walker, sir. Ruth Walker.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Banks. ‘I’ll be right there.’

  Could it be the same Ruth Walker Banks had talked to in London? If so, what the hell was she doing in an Eastvale nightclub, unless she had come up from London to go clubbing with Emily Riddle? And if Ruth were dead, then Banks wouldn’t be at all surprised if Emily was in trouble, too.

  Banks picked up his cigarettes and grabbed his leather jacket off the hook at the back of the door. Before he left, he went back to the phone. It was a snap decision between Jim Hatchley, who lived in Eastvale, and Annie Cabbot, who had as long a drive as Banks. Annie won, hands down. He would have been a liar if he had denied any personal preference for Annie’s charms over Jim Hatchley’s ugly mug, but he didn’t do it from entirely selfish motives. Annie was new to Eastvale, and she needed all the experience she could get; she was ambitious, whereas Hatchley was content to remain a DS for the rest of his days; Annie would welcome the opportunity, whereas Hatchley would grumble at being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night; Hatchley had his wife and baby to consider, while
Annie lived alone.

  There you go rationalizing, Banks thought, as he dialled her number. He could justify calling her until the cows came home if he had to, but what it came down to was that he still fancied her and he thought, with Sandra announcing she wanted to divorce and remarry, that he might be able to get over the stumbling blocks that had derailed him and Annie in the first place and rekindle what they once had.

  But even that desire took second place to his concern about Ruth Walker and Emily Riddle.

  Annie drove home like a bat out of hell, and when she got to her tiny terraced cottage, she locked, bolted and chained the door, then checked the back and all the windows. Only when she was certain that everything was as secure as it could be did she pour herself a large glass of wine and sit down.

  Her hand was still shaking, she noticed, as she took a gulp. And she thought she’d got over her experience. The counselling had helped at first, but when the counsellor said she could do no more, it had been Annie’s own inner strength that pulled her through. Through meditation, yoga and diet, she had slowly healed herself. The country seclusion had helped, too: leaving a big city force for a peaceful backwater like Harkside. She still had dreams in which she experienced the fear, claustrophobia and powerlessness she had felt during the assault and woke up sweating and screaming, and she still had dark moods in which she felt worthless and tainted. But not so often. And she could handle them now; she knew where they came from and could almost stand outside looking down on them, separating herself from the bad feelings, isolating them as you would a tumour. She had even got so far, after two years, as allowing herself that romantic and sexual involvement with Banks, which had been extremely satisfying, not least because it pleased her to find she was still capable of it. What had ended that was nothing at all to do with her rape experience; it was plain, old-fashioned fear of involvement, of emotional entanglement, something that had always been a part of her.

  What the hell was Wayne Dalton doing in Eastvale? That was what she wanted to know. Was he on a case? Had he been reassigned to Eastvale Divisional HQ? She didn’t think she could handle working with him, not after what happened. The last she had heard he had transferred to the Met. Surely he couldn’t be seeking her out? Coming to torment her? True, she had complained to their chief super the following morning, but there was no evidence; it was simply her word against the three of them. The chief super knew that something had gone on, and he also knew it was something he didn’t want aired in his station, thank you very much, so Annie got shipped out sharpish and the three men, after being rapped on the knuckles, were encouraged to transfer at their leisure.

  Later, in her bath, Annie remembered Wayne Dalton’s flushed and sweating face as he held her, the little ginger hairs up his nose as he stood over her, waiting his turn. A turn that never came. She remembered walking the streets for hours after her escape, languishing in her bath, just like now, listening to the radio, the sounds of normal life, and scrubbing their filth from her body. Something she shouldn’t have done. Something she, in her turn, had advised rape victims not to do. But it was far easier to say ‘do as I say, not as I do’. At the time, she hadn’t thought, had only wanted an escape, a way of undoing what had been done, of going back in time to a day when it had never happened. Foolish, perhaps, but perfectly reasonable, she thought.

  And she was still in her bath, on her third glass of wine, when, close to twenty past eleven, her telephone rang.

  It was five to twelve when Banks, who had driven well over the speed limit the whole way, parked in the market square next to the ambulance and headed for the club door. DC Rickerd had got a uniformed constable to guard the entrance, Banks was pleased to see, and had even put blue-and-white police tape across the doorway. As he headed down the stone steps, he was also pleased to hear that the music had been silenced and the only sounds drifting up were the murmured conversations of detained clubbers grumbling at the tables.

  ‘Over here, sir.’

  The only lights on were the coloured disco lights that whirled over the dance floor, eerie without the accompaniment of music and gyrating bodies. Banks could make out Rickerd and Jessup standing by the door to the ladies’ toilet with the ambulance crew, a couple of uniformed officers and a young man. Before he could get there, someone tugged at his sleeve.

  ‘Excuse me, are you in authority?’

  ‘Looks that way,’ said Banks. The speaker, wearing jeans and a white shirt, was probably in his early twenties, skinny, with bright eyes and dilated pupils. It wasn’t particularly hot in the Bar None, but a sheen of sweat covered his face.

  ‘Why are you keeping us here? It’s been nearly an hour now. You can’t just keep us here.’

  ‘It’s my understanding that there’s been a serious crime, sir,’ said Banks. ‘Until we get things sorted, I’m afraid none of you is going anywhere.’ He noticed the boy was still holding his sleeve and plucked it away.

  ‘But this is outrageous. I want to go home.’

  Banks leaned forward, close enough to smell the beer and fish and chips on his breath. ‘Look, sonny,’ he whispered, ‘go sit down with your mates and be quiet. One more word out of you and I’ll have the Drugs Squad down on you like a ton of bricks. Understand?’

  The boy looked as if he were going to protest further, but thought better of it and swayed over to the table where his friends sat. Banks continued on his way to meet Rickerd and Jessup. One of the ambulance crew looked at him and shook his head slowly. Annie Cabbot hadn’t arrived yet. She had sounded edgy when he’d called and he had wondered if he had woken her. She said not.

  ‘In here, sir,’ said a whey-faced Rickerd, pointing into the ladies’. ‘It’s not very pretty.’ Someone had placed more tape at the entrance, effectively creating an inner crime scene. That was often useful, as you could afford to let some people into the first scene and lead them to think they were privileged, but you kept the real crime scene uncontaminated.

  ‘Who’s he?’ Banks gestured towards the young man beside Rickerd.

  ‘He found her, sir.’

  ‘Okay. Keep an eye on him. I’ll talk to him later. Did you call Dr Burns?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He said he’d get here as soon as he could.’

  Banks turned to Inspector Jessup. ‘What happened, Chris?’

  ‘Call came in at six minutes past eleven. That lad you just noticed. Name’s Darren Hirst. It seems he was with the victim. She went to the toilet and didn’t come out. He got worried, went in for a butcher’s and called us.’

  Banks slipped on his latex gloves and stepped under the tape.

  The ladies’ toilet was small, given the size of the club. White tile, three stalls, two sinks under a long mirror. The ubiquitous condom machine hung on the wall, the kind that sells all sorts of flavours and colours – Lager & Lime, Rhubarb & Custard, Curry & Chips. The stalls had flimsy wooden doors. ‘Cindy Sucks Black Cock’ was scrawled in lipstick across the front of one of them.

  ‘It’s this one, sir,’ said Rickerd, pointing to the end stall.

  ‘Was it locked?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How did you open it?’

  Rickerd took off his glasses and wiped them with a white handkerchief. It was a habit Banks had noticed before. ‘From the next stall, sir. I stood on the toilet seat, leaned over with a stick and slipped the bolt. It was easy enough. We’re bloody lucky the door opens outwards.’

  ‘A locked-toilet mystery, then,’ Banks muttered, thinking Rickerd had shown more initiative than he would have expected.

  ‘I didn’t disturb anything any more than necessary, sir. Just to establish who she was and that she was dead. Inspector Jessup supervised, and the others made sure no one left.’

  ‘That’s all right. You did well.’ He pulled the door slowly towards him with his fingertips, anxious not to mess up an already messy scene.

  ‘You won’t believe this, sir.’ Rickerd said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Ne
ither had Banks.

  The girl’s body was wedged crabwise from wall to wall, her back arched about two feet over the toilet, knees jammed against one wall and her shoulders pushed up hard against the other, her neck bent at an awkward angle. A trickle of blood had run from her nose and there were contusions on her face and head. Broken mirror glass and white powder lay scattered on the floor amid the spilled contents of her handbag. Banks knew that the eyes of the dead have no expression, but hers seemed full of terror and agony, as if she had looked the Grim Reaper right in the eye. Her face was dark, suffused with blood, and the corners of her mouth were turned up in a parody of a grin.

  But the worst thing about it all, the thing that caused Banks’s blood to scream in his ears and his knees to turn watery and bring him so close to falling down that he had to grab onto the door jamb to stay on his feet, was that the body wasn’t Ruth Walker’s at all; it was Emily Riddle’s.

  8

  ‘Alan?’ The voice seemed to reach Banks’s ears from a great distance. ‘Alan? So now you’re hanging around ladies’ toilets.’

  Banks felt someone touch his sleeve, and he turned to see Annie Cabbot standing in the doorway. Never had he seen a more welcome sight. He wanted to fall forward into her arms, have her stroke his head and kiss his face and tell him everything was all right, he’d just had a bad dream, that’s all, and it would all be gone in the morning.

  ‘Alan, you’re pale as ashes. Are you all right?’

  Banks moved away from the doorway to let Annie have a look. ‘I’ve got a daughter not much older than her,’ he said.

  Annie frowned and edged forward. Banks watched her and noticed the way her eyeballs flicked around, taking in all the details: the body’s unusual position, the broken mirror, the white powder, the spilled cosmetics, the contusions. Some of the buttons on Emily’s black silk blouse had popped, and the dark spider tattoo was visible against the pale skin below her navel ring. Annie touched nothing but seemed to absorb everything. And when she had finished, even she was pale.