Cold is the Grave

by Peter Robinson

  After that, Annie had organized the investigation into Emily’s whereabouts between three and seven. She had ordered the posters the previous day and they were waiting when she got in. Banks had given her the photo he wanted used, and Annie thought it made Emily look a bit slutty. He said that was how people would remember her, and there was no point asking her parents for the sort of sanitized school photo or studio portrait they were likely to have. He also insisted that her description stressed that she looked older than her sixteen years.

  The photo came above the question, ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?’ and that in turn was followed by the description, the hours they were interested in, and a telephone number to contact. She had sent out half a dozen uniformed officers to fix them to hoardings and telegraph poles along all the main streets and in as many shop windows as they could manage. After that, the officers were engaged in conducting a house-to-house in central Eastvale and the area around the Black Bull. Despite the stolen driving licence, Emily didn’t drive or have access to a car, as far as anyone knew, so the odds were that she had stayed in town. She could have taken a bus or a train, of course, so both stations were being thoroughly covered. There was every chance that a bus driver, fellow passenger or ticket inspector would remember her if she had travelled anywhere in the missing four hours.

  Annie herself was set to go on the evening news, she remembered, with a little twinge of fear. She didn’t like television, wasn’t comfortable with it at all; no matter how serious and public-spirited your appearance was, you knew you were only there to make the presenter look good. But that was one little prejudice she would have to swallow if she were to get the appeal for information across.

  It was close to lunchtime, Annie’s first real chance that day to sit down at her own desk and do a bit of detective work, with Kevin Templeton making phone calls in the background. Though it was a long shot, she thought she should check and see if there were any other crimes with similar MOs, using cocaine laced with strychnine as a murder weapon. The PHOENIX system, set up by the National Criminal Records Office, offered her nothing. But then there was every chance this killer hadn’t ever been convicted.

  CATCHEM offered a few more options. Essentially, you could enter the victim details, stressing the salient features of the crime, and the system presented you with a potential scale of probability in several categories. After a little tinkering, Annie discovered that it was not necessarily likely that Emily knew her killer and that the killer might well be someone who felt slighted by society and had sadistic tendencies.

  So much for computers.

  She was just about to go to lunch when DS Hatchley came in. Annie was one of the few women in Eastvale Divisional HQ, or Western Divisional HQ, as it was now officially known, who didn’t particularly mind Sergeant Hatchley. She thought he was all show, all Yorkshire bluff. She knew he wasn’t soft underneath it all – Hatchley could be a hard man – but she didn’t think he was as daft as he painted himself, either, or as prejudiced as he pretended to be. Some men, she had come to realize over the years, act the way they think they’re supposed to act, especially in institutions such as the police and armed forces, while inside they might be desperate to be someone different, to be what they really feel they are. But they deny it. It is a kind of protective coloration. Hatchley was no pussy cat, but she thought he had a depth of understanding and sympathy that he didn’t know quite what to do with. Marriage and fatherhood, too, had knocked off a few of the rough edges, or so she had heard.

  Of course, despite Banks’s little crack the previous day, Annie hadn’t tracked down Dalton at the Fox and Hounds, and she felt a little guilty about palming Hatchley off on him. But not that guilty. Hatchley’s eyes had certainly lit up at the prospect of a pint. Annie knew that if Dalton stayed around much longer, it was only a matter of time before they bumped into one another. He might even walk into the CID office this very moment, and then there would be no avoiding him. She didn’t want to meet him, didn’t want to talk to him, but she wasn’t scared of him, and she was damned if she was going to go around the place trying to avoid him any more.

  Hatchley said hello and grumbled about his aching feet.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Annie asked, feeling conciliatory after asking the favour of him. ‘Not another alien abduction?’

  ‘No such luck. Charlie bloody Courage. You know, some people just don’t seem to care how much inconvenience they cause by getting themselves murdered.’

  Annie smiled. ‘Daleview again?’

  ‘Aye. And about as much use as the time you were there.’

  ‘Nobody saw the van?’

  ‘On a Sunday night about ten o’clock? Nobody there.’

  ‘Except Charlie.’

  ‘Except the PKF people, who we’re trying to find, Charlie himself, and Jonathan Fearn, the van driver, who’s still in a coma in Newcastle.’

  ‘Best way to be, in Newcastle,’ said Annie.

  ‘Nay, lass, it’s not such a bad place. Some grand pubs there. Anyway, according to my sources, Charlie did know Jonathan Fearn, so we’ve got a connection there, however tenuous. Peas in a pod.’

  ‘Maybe Courage lined up the job for him, thought he was doing him a favour?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘What did you find out from this DI . . . what’s his name?’

  ‘Dalton. DI Wayne Dalton. Seems a nice enough sort of bloke. You ask me, though, he’s down on a weekend break.’

  ‘In December?’

  ‘Why not? The weather’s not so bad. He’s a bit of a rambler, apparently. Talking about going walking up Reeth way on Sunday morning. Says if he gets a nine o’clock start, he’ll just about be ready to enjoy a pint and roast beef dinner at the Bridge in Grinton by twelve. The Bridge does a lovely roast beef and Yorkshire pud. Nice pint, too. Not that you’d catch me walking, mind you.’

  Looking at him, Annie could believe it. Hatchley was about six foot two, with fine fair hair starting to thin a bit on top, the ‘roast beef’ complexion of someone with blood-pressure problems and about thirty or forty pounds excess baggage.

  Her thoughts drifted to what he had said. Maybe that was the answer. If Dalton were indeed planning a walk on Sunday, the odds were that there wouldn’t be many people around. The middle of nowhere might be the best place to confront him. The idea excited her. It would mean making herself scarce on Sunday morning, but she thought she could probably manage that if she had everything in order by then. After all, with Banks away, she was in charge, so nobody was going to question her if she was out of the station for a few hours.

  Dare she do it? What would she say if she stepped out in front of him on a deserted footpath? What would he do? Would he get physical, perhaps even try to get rid of her permanently? Having seen him again, Annie didn’t think she need worry on that score.

  But perhaps, when it came down to it, what worried her more than what he might do to her in a lonely place was what she might do to him.

  The lights were blazing in Barry Clough’s Little Venice villa when Banks and Burgess arrived shortly after eight that Saturday evening. Someone had even rigged up some Christmas lights on the façade of the house and put up a big tree in the garden.

  ‘Bit early for a party, isn’t it?’ said Burgess, glancing at his watch.

  ‘It’s never too early for this lot,’ said Banks. ‘Their whole life is one long party.’

  ‘Now, now, Banks. Isn’t envy one of the seven deadly sins? Thou must not covet thy neighbour’s arse, and all that.’

  The iron gates were open, but a minder stood at the front door asking for invitations. He wasn’t one of the two Banks had seen on his previous visit. Maybe Clough went through minders the way some people went through chauffeurs or maids. Hard to get good staff these days. Banks and Burgess showed him their warrant cards, but he clearly wasn’t programmed to deal with anything like that. The way he screwed up his face in concentration as he looked at them, Banks wondered if he even got past the ph
otographs.

  ‘These mean we get in free,’ said Burgess.

  ‘I’ll have to check with the boss. Wait here.’

  The minder opened the door to go inside, and before he could close it, Burgess had followed him, with Banks not far behind. Banks realized he had to remember who he was with, what a loose cannon Burgess could be, and how he’d have to be on his toes. Still, he had invited the bastard, and it was good to have company you could depend on if the shit hit the fan. Burgess wasn’t one to shirk trouble, no matter what form it came in.

  There were people all over the place. All sorts of people. Young, old, tough-looking, arty-farty, well-dressed, scruffy, black, white – you name it. Music blasted through speakers that seemed to be positioned, discreetly out of sight, just about everywhere. Cream’s ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’, Banks noticed. How retro. Still, Clough would have been in his mid-twenties when he was a roadie for the punk band, which meant he had been in his teens when Cream came along, pretty much the same age as Banks. The air reeked of marijuana smoke.

  The minder, who had noticed his mistake, elbowed his way roughly through the crowd in the hall, upsetting one or two less-than-sober guests whose drinks he spilled, and returned before the song finished with Barry Clough in tow.

  The man himself.

  ‘Did we come at a bad time, Barry?’ Burgess asked.

  After the initial cold anger had flitted across his chiselled features, Clough smiled with all the warmth of a piranha, clapped his hands and rubbed them together. ‘Not at all. Not at all.’ The black T-shirt he was wearing stretched tight over his biceps, and other muscles bulged at the chest and shoulders. All he needed for the complete look was a cigarette packet shoved up the sleeve. He wore no jewellery this time, and he was wearing his greying hair loose, tucked behind his ears on each side and hanging down to his shoulders. Banks was glad of that; he didn’t think he could handle matching ponytails. The loose hair made Clough look younger and softened his appearance a little, but there was still no mistaking the icy menace in his eyes and the feral threat in his sharply angled features.

  ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’ segued into ‘swlabr’. Someone bumped into Banks from behind and muttered an apology. He turned and saw it was an attractive young girl, not much older than Emily had been. He vaguely recognized her from some- where, but before he could remember, she had disappeared into the crowd.

  ‘Is there somewhere quiet we can talk?’ Banks asked Clough.

  Clough appeared to consider the question for a moment, head cocked to one side, as if it were his decision, a not-so-subtle way of gaining a psychological edge in an interview. It was wasted on Banks. He jerked his head towards the stairs. ‘Up there, for example,’ he said.

  Finally, Clough gave a minuscule nod and led them up the stairs. The first room they went into turned out to be occupied by a couple squirming and moaning on a pile of the guests’ coats.

  ‘It’s unhygienic, that,’ said Burgess. ‘I go to a party, you know, I don’t expect to go home with my raincoat covered in other people’s love juices.’

  Clough twisted one corner of his tight lips into what passed for a smile. ‘They’ll be too fucking stoned to notice,’ he said, then he turned to Banks. ‘You’re not Drugs Squad, are you?’

  Banks shook his head.

  ‘It’s just that there are a lot of important people here. Even a few coppers. Anything like that would be terribly messy. It would make the Stones’ drugs bust look like a vicarage tea party.’

  ‘I remember that one,’ said Burgess. ‘I wasn’t there, but I always wanted to meet the young lady with the Mars bar.’ A skinny young girl with a joint in her hand walked past them in the hall. ‘In fact,’ Burgess went on, grabbing the joint from her, ‘some of us coppers quite enjoy a little recreational marijuana every now and then.’ He took a deep toke, held the smoke a while, then let it out slowly. ‘Paki black? Not bad.’ Then he dropped the joint on the carpet and trod on it. ‘Sorry, Banks,’ he said when he’d done. ‘Forgot you might have wanted a toke. On the other hand, you don’t strike me as the toking type.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Banks, who actually wouldn’t have minded trying the stuff again on another occasion. But he was keeping his mind clear for Emily. Instead, he lit a cigarette.

  ‘I see,’ said Clough, staring down at the burnt spot on the carpet. He looked at Burgess. ‘You’re the bad cop and he’s the good cop, right?’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  A muscular young man with bleached-blond hair came up to them as they walked along the upstairs hall. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked Clough. ‘Only I didn’t think Mr Burgess here was on the invitation list.’

  ‘Yeah, everything’s fine and dandy. Maybe we should remember to add him in future. Seems like the life and soul of the party type to me.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Banks asked Burgess.

  ‘Jamie Gilbert. Nasty little psycho. He’s Barry’s chief enforcer.’

  Gilbert walked away laughing and Clough turned to them. ‘Jamie’s my administrative assistant,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that covers a multitude of sins,’ Burgess shot back.

  They finally found an empty room on the top floor. Completely empty. No furniture. White walls. White floorboards.

  ‘Is this the best you can do?’ said Banks.

  Clough shrugged. ‘Take it or leave it.’

  At least it was protected for the most part from the music downstairs, and there was a light. Trying to conduct an interview while sitting on the floor wouldn’t be very dignified, so they all chose to stand and lean against walls. It gave a strange sort of three-sided edge to the conversation.

  Clough folded his arms and leaned back. ‘So, what’s it all about, then?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know,’ said Banks.

  ‘Humour me. Last time I saw you, you were a friend of Emily’s father.’

  ‘I thought she was called Louisa.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You knew what her name was. I only found out from the papers.’

  ‘So you do know what happened?’

  ‘I know she’s dead, yes. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Well, excuse us for thinking you’re a good bet,’ Burgess cut in. He had agreed to let Banks do most of the interviewing, but Banks knew he would be impossible to shut up completely. Clough stared at Burgess as if he was a piece of dog shit on his shoe. He didn’t know that Burgess thrived on looks like that; they only made him better at his job.

  Banks could make out the faint sounds of ‘White Room’ coming from downstairs. A ‘best of’ album, then, and not Disraeli Gears, as he had originally thought. The song was strangely appropriate, Banks thought, looking around. He wasn’t sure what he expected from this interview. Certainly not for Clough to confess. If anything, he wanted to go away with the certainty that he had the right man in his sights, a gut feeling, if that was the best he could come up with, then begin the slow painstaking grind towards finding enough evidence to prove it, knowing that was only the beginning of the struggle.

  Between the Crown Prosecution Service’s reluctance to prosecute anyone, and the expensive barristers to whom Clough no doubt had access, there was every possibility that the man could get away with murder. Then what? Private vengeance? Would Riddle do it himself or try to hire Banks to kill Clough the way he had used him to find Emily? Christ, though, you had to draw the line somewhere, and Banks thought he drew his at murder, no matter how despicable the victim. He wasn’t too sure about Burgess, though; sometimes his cynical grey eyes took on the look of a killer.

  ‘What we’d expect you to say,’ Banks went on, ‘but let’s back up a little, first. How did you feel when Emily left you?’

  ‘What do you mean, left me? I threw her out.’

  ‘Not what I heard.’

  ‘You heard wrong.’

  ‘Okay.’ Banks held his hand up. ‘I can tell you’re sensitive about it, so let’s carry on. That final night, at
the party, you pushed her into a room with Andrew Handley, right?’

  ‘I pushed her nowhere. She was so stoned she could hardly walk. She stumbled in there herself.’

  ‘But you don’t deny she ended up in a room with Handley?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘And that he tried to rape her?’

  ‘Rape’s a bit strong for what happened there.’

  ‘Attempted rape, then? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Call it what you like. It was nothing to do with me. If Andy wanted to try it on with the little slut, that was his business.’

  ‘And Emily escaped, ran away?’

  ‘When did she tell you all . . . wait a minute.’ Clough put one hand to the side of his head and made an expression of mock thinking. ‘Wait a minute. I get it. After she left the party, she ran to you. Right? She knew where you were staying. She spent the night with you. That’s why you’re so upset. Tell me, Chief Inspector Banks, did you like it? Did you like that wet, scaly little tongue of hers licking your—’

  Clough didn’t finish the sentence because, as Banks struggled with the desire to lash out, Burgess beat him to it and gave Clough a backhander that sent him staggering towards the other wall. Typical Burgess, that; it was all right for him to tease Banks about sleeping with Emily, but not anyone else. Clough looked ready to fight back, muscles twitching, wiping a little thread of blood from the side of his mouth and giving Burgess one of those looks. But he regained his composure. And to give him his due, Banks thought, he didn’t make any noise about lawsuits or revenge.

  He stuck his tongue out and licked the blood from the corner of his mouth. ‘Sorry,’ he said, taking up his position against the wall again. ‘I got a little carried away then. Very rude of me to speak ill of the dead like that. I apologize.’

  Banks relaxed and offered him a cigarette. ‘Apology accepted.’