Cold is the Grave

by Peter Robinson

  ‘I see. You want closure, is that it? Popular term, these days, especially with victims. Everyone wants the bad guys put away. Gives them a sense of closure. Are you a victim here, Wayne, is that it?’ Annie felt herself getting angry as she spoke, the indifference resolving itself into something else, into something harder. Two ramblers approached slowly from the woods beyond the river meadows.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Dalton.

  ‘Then tell me exactly what you did mean, Wayne, because from where I’m standing you’re the bad guy.’

  ‘Look, I know what we did was wrong, and I know that being drunk, being part of a group is no excuse. But I’m not that kind of person. It’s the first, the only time I’ve ever done anything like that.’

  ‘So you’re telling me that because you’re not a serial rapist you’re really an okay guy when it comes right down to it? Is that it? You just made one silly little mistake one night when you and your pals had had a bit too much to drink and there was this young bird just asking for it.’ She could tell her voice was rising as she spoke but she couldn’t help herself. She was losing it. She struggled for control again.

  ‘Christ, that’s not what I’m saying. You’re twisting my words.’

  ‘Oh, pardon me,’ said Annie, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what’s worse, a contrite rapist or an unrepentant one.’

  ‘Don’t get it all out of proportion. I didn’t rape you.’

  ‘No. You didn’t get your chance, did you? But you held me, you helped rip off my panties, and you stood there and enjoyed it while your friend raped me. I saw your face, Wayne. Remember? I know how you felt. You were just waiting for your turn, weren’t you, like a little kid waiting for his go on the swings. And you would have done it, if you’d got the chance. In my mind that doesn’t make you any different from the others. You’re just as bad as the others.’

  Dalton sighed and looked at the ground. Annie glared at him as the ramblers passed by. They said hello, but neither Annie nor Dalton answered.

  ‘So what do you want from me?’ he asked.

  ‘What do I want? I’d like to see you off the job, for a start. In jail would be even better. But I don’t suppose that’s going to happen, is it? Would I settle for an apology instead? I don’t think so.’

  ‘What more can I do?’

  ‘You can admit what happened. You can go back down there, go see the chief super again and tell him you lied, tell him the three of you got carried away and you raped me. That I did nothing to lead you on or encourage you or make you think I was going to let the three of you fuck me senseless. That’s what you can do.’

  Dalton shook his head. All the colour had drained from his face. ‘I can’t do that. You know I can’t.’

  Annie looked at him. She felt her eyes burning again. ‘Then the only thing you can do is fuck off, fuck off right out of my life and don’t ever come near me again.’

  Then she turned and crossed the swaying bridge back to Reeth, the tears like fire as they coursed down her cheeks, not turning to see Dalton staring pathetically after her.

  12

  Banks came out of the meeting early Monday afternoon with only a little more information than he went in with. A weekend of showing Emily’s photograph around town and making house-to-house inquiries had turned up several people who thought they had seen her in various Eastvale shopping areas on Thursday afternoon, always alone, but only one witness who thought she had seen her with anyone else. Unfortunately, the witness was about as useful as most; all she had seen was Emily getting into a car outside the Red Lion Hotel at the big York Road roundabout. She thought the time was about three o’clock. None of the bar staff at the Red Lion had seen Emily, and Banks was certain they would remember if they had.

  When it came to the make of car, they all looked the same to the witness. All she could say was that it was light in colour. She also hadn’t noticed anything in the least bit odd about what she saw; the girl had seemed to know the driver and smiled as she got in, as if, perhaps, she had been waiting for the lift. No, she hadn’t really got a glimpse of the driver at all, except that maybe he or she was fair-haired.

  So, if their witness were to be believed, Emily had got into a light-coloured car with someone she probably knew and trusted around the time of the meeting she had mentioned at lunch. She had left the Black Bull shortly before half past two. DC Templeton had checked the bus timetable and discovered that she must have taken the quarter to three to get there on time.

  If – and it was a big if – their witness was right, then the sighting raised several interesting points. Banks walked over to his office window and lit an illicit cigarette. The day was overcast but balmy for the time of year. A crew of council workers were putting up the Christmas tree in the market square, watched by a group of children and their teacher. The high-pitched whine of some sort of electric drill came from the extension down the corridor. It reminded Banks of the dentist’s, and he gave a little shudder.

  In the first place, Banks thought, why was Emily meeting someone on the edge of town rather than in another pub or in the Swainsdale Centre? Especially if this someone had a car and could easily drive into the town centre. Answer: because she was meeting someone who intended to kill her and who had insisted on the arrangement because he or she didn’t want to be seen with Emily. Any secrecy could easily be explained by the fact that drugs were being sold.

  Objection: if this person wanted to kill Emily, why not drive her into the country and do it at leisure, then bury her body where it would never be found?

  That raised the whole issue of the way she was killed. Poison, so the cliché goes, is a woman’s weapon. In this case, if Emily’s killer hadn’t been in the Bar None at the time of her death, then the murder had also occurred at some distance from the killer. That suggested someone who wanted to get rid of her but didn’t have any particular emotional stake in seeing her die. On the other hand, the use of strychnine as a method implied someone who wanted Emily to suffer an agonizing and dramatic death. There are far easier and less painful ways of getting rid of a pest. The murder had elements of both calculation in its premeditation and extreme sadism in its method, a profile which might easily fit Barry Clough, the gangster who didn’t like to lose his prized possessions. But would Clough drive all the way from London simply to give Emily some poisoned cocaine because she had insulted his macho vanity? He had said he was in Spain at the time, and Banks was having that checked. It wouldn’t be easy, given how lax border crossings were these days, but they could tackle the airlines first, and then find out if any of his neighbours in Spain had seen him.

  Also, while strychnine wasn’t as difficult to get hold of as some poisons, it wasn’t exactly on sale in the local chemist’s shop. Banks had looked it up. Strychnine, derived originally from the seeds of the nux vomica tree, which grows mainly in India, was used mostly as a rodenticide. It had some medical uses – vets used it as a mild stimulant, for example, and it was sometimes used in research, to cause convulsions in experiments for anti-seizure drugs, and in the treatment of alcoholism. None of Banks’s suspects was a doctor or a nurse, and strychnine wasn’t issued on prescription, so the medical side could be ruled out. Craig Newton was a photographer, and they sometimes had access to unusual chemicals, though not, as far as Banks could remember, strychnine. Barry Clough could no doubt get hold of anything he wanted.

  Then there was Andrew Handley to consider: ‘Andy Pandy’, Clough’s gofer, the one he had ‘given’ Emily to the night she fled to Banks’s hotel. Such rejection could have driven Handley to revenge, if he were that kind of person. Burgess had said he would put some men on trying to track down Handley, so maybe they would get a chance to ask him soon.

  But would Emily have smiled as she got in his car with either Clough or Handley? Christ, why hadn’t Emily told Banks who she was going to meet? Why hadn’t he asked her? He rested his forehead against the cool glass and felt the vein throb in his temple.

&nb
sp; It was no good, Banks decided; he needed far more information before he could even speculate about what had happened. He had found nothing of use in the contents of her handbag, once they had been gathered up and bagged. Nothing but the usual: cigarettes, tampons, electronic organizer, keys, a purse with £16.53 in it, make-up, a crumpled film magazine, an old family photograph – probably the one Ruth Walker had mentioned – Ruth’s driving licence, which she hadn’t even really needed any more, and the fake proof-of-age card.

  The SOCOs had turned up nothing of interest from the ladies’ toilet in the Bar None, except for any number of unidentified pubic hairs, and there were no prints except Emily’s on the plastic bag in which the cocaine and strychnine had been kept. There were hundreds of prints around the stall – which testified to the frequency with which the owners thought it necessary to clean the toilets – but Banks suspected they would come to nothing. He was convinced that the killer, whoever it was, hadn’t been in the Bar None toilets either with or without Emily, and had not even been in the club at the time of her death – had probably never been there. This was murder from a distance, perhaps even death by proxy, which made it all the more bloody difficult to solve.

  DC Templeton had come up with a lead on the couple seen leaving the Bar None at 10.47. A barmaid at the Jolly Roger pub, a popular place for the student crowd on Market Street, seemed to remember them being in the pub earlier that evening. She had seen them before, she said, but didn’t know their names; she only recognized the way they were dressed and thought they were students at the college, like most of her customers.

  Next, Banks turned his mind to Charlie Courage’s murder and felt a singular lack of progress there, too. Charlie’s murderer had been at the scene, of course, but Charlie himself had been far from home, in the middle of nowhere. The only solid piece of evidence was the tyre track, and that would be no use at all unless a corresponding car could be found. He decided to phone DI Collaton later in the day and see if anything had turned up at the Market Harborough end. Maybe he could have a word with DI Dalton, too, see if he had come up with anything more on PKF Computer Systems.

  Banks stubbed out his cigarette in his waste bin, making sure it was completely dead, and tried to clear the air as best he could by opening the window and waving a file folder about.

  When someone knocked at the door and walked in, he felt guilty, like the time his mother noticed cigarette ash on the window ledge of his room and stopped his pocket money. But it was only Annie Cabbot. He had asked her to drop by as soon as she had finished handing out actions to the newly drafted DCs that Red Ron McLaughlin had promised.

  She looked particularly good this morning, Banks thought, her shiny chestnut hair falling in waves over her shoulders, her almond eyes serious and alert, though showing just a hint of wariness. She was wearing a loose white shirt and black jeans, which tapered to an end just above her ankles, around one of which she wore a thin gold chain.

  ‘Annie. Sit down.’

  Annie sat and crossed her legs. She twitched her nose. ‘You’ve been smoking in here again.’

  ‘Mea culpa.’

  She smiled. ‘What did you want to see me about?’

  ‘In the first place, I’d like you to go over to the office at the bus station, see if you can find out who was driving the quarter to three bus to York, the one that stops at the roundabout.’

  Annie made a note.

  ‘Have a chat with him. See if he remembers Emily being on the bus and getting into a light-coloured car near the Red Lion. You might also see if he can give you any leads as to his other passengers. Someone might have noticed something.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And have a chat with the barmaid at the Jolly Roger, see if she can come up with anyone who might know where this couple lives, who they are. It’s probably a dead end, but we have to check it out.’

  Annie made a note. ‘Okay. Anything else?’

  Banks paused. ‘This is a bit awkward, Annie. I don’t want you to get the impression that this is in any way personal, but it’s just that since we started this investigation, I don’t feel I’ve had your full co-operation.’

  Annie’s smile froze. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean it feels like there’s a part of you not here – you’ve been distracted – and I’d like to know why.’

  Annie shifted in her chair. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Not from where I’m sitting.’

  ‘Look, what is this? Am I on the carpet, or something? Are you going to give me a bollocking?’

  ‘I just want to know what’s going on, if there’s something I can help with.’

  ‘Nothing’s going on. At least not with me.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Do I have to spell it out for you?’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘All right.’ Annie leaned forward. ‘You said this wasn’t personal, but I think it is. I think you’re behaving this way because of what happened with us, because I broke off our relationship. You can’t handle working with me.’

  Banks sighed. ‘Annie, this is a murder case. A sixteen-year-old girl, who also happens to be our chief constable’s daughter, was poisoned in a nightclub. I would have hoped I wouldn’t have to remind you of that. Until we find out who did it, this is a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job for us, and if you’re not up to it for one reason or another, I want to know now. Are you in or out?’

  ‘You’re blowing this out of all proportion. I’m on the job. I might not be obsessed with the case, but I’m on the job.’

  ‘Are you implying I am obsessed?’

  ‘I’m not implying anything, but if the cap fits . . . What I will say is that it’s a damn sight more personal for you than it is for me. I didn’t go to London to track her down, or have lunch with her on the day she died. You did.’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there. We’re talking about your commitment to the case. What about Sunday?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sunday morning, when I called in for an update. You were out of contact all morning, and DC Jackman sounded decidedly cagey.’

  ‘I’m hardly responsible for DC Jackman’s telephone manner.’ Annie stood up, flushed, put her palms on his desk and leaned forward, jutting her chin out. ‘Look, I took some personal time. All right? Are you going to put me on report? Because if you are, just do it and cut the fucking lecture, will you. I’ve had enough of this.’

  With anyone else, Banks would have hit the roof, but he was used to Annie’s insubordinate manner. It was one of the things that had intrigued him about her in the first place, though he still couldn’t be sure whether he liked it or not. At the moment, he didn’t. ‘The last thing I want to do is put you on report,’ he said. ‘Not with your inspector’s boards coming up. I would hope you’d know that. That’s why I’m talking to you privately. I don’t want this to go any further. I’ll tell you something, though: if you keep on behaving like this whenever anyone questions your actions, you’ll never make inspector.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. Look, Annie, sit down. Please.’

  Annie held out for a while, glaring, then she sat.

  ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to help you out here?’ said Banks. ‘If there’s a problem, something personal, something to do with your family, I don’t know, then maybe we can work it out. I’m not here to supervise you twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘But I need to be able to trust you, to leave you alone to get on with the job.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘Because I don’t think that’s what you’ve been doing.’

  ‘I trusted you, and look what I found out.’

  Banks sighed. ‘I’ve explained that.’

  ‘And I’ve explained what I was doing.’

  ‘Not to my satisfaction, you haven’t, and I don’t have to remind you that I’m SIO on th
is one. It’s my head on the block. So if there’s a problem, if it’s something I can help you with, then spit it out, tell me what it is, and I will. No matter what you believe, I’m not after doing you any harm because of what did or didn’t happen between us. Not everything is as personal as you think it is. Credit me with a bit more professionalism than that.’

  ‘Professionalism? Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘Annie, there’s something wrong. Let me help you.’

  She gave a sharp jerk of her head and got to her feet again. ‘No.’

  At that moment, DI Dalton popped his head around the door.

  ‘What is it?’ Banks asked, annoyed at the interruption. Dalton looked at Banks, then at Annie, and an expression of panic crossed his features.

  ‘What is it, DI Dalton?’

  Dalton looked at them both again and seemed to compose himself. ‘I thought you might like to know that the van driver died early this morning. Jonathan Fearn. Never regained consciousness.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Banks, tapping his pen on the desk. ‘Okay, Wayne, thanks for letting me know.’

  Dalton glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be off back to Newcastle now.’

  ‘Keep in touch.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Dalton and Annie looked at one another for a split second before he left, and Banks saw right away that there was something between them, some spark, some secret. It hit him smack in the middle of the chest like a hammer blow. Dalton? So that was what she had been up to. It fitted; her odd behaviour coincided exactly with his arrival in Eastvale. Annie and Dalton had something going. Banks felt icy worms wriggle their way up inside his spine.

  Annie stood for a few seconds, her eyes bright, glaring at Banks defiantly, then, with an expression of disgust, she turned on her heels, strode out of his office and slammed the door so hard that his filing cabinet rattled.

  Sometimes trying to get a lead was like pulling teeth, Annie reflected. The bus driver had been easy enough to find – in fact he had been eating a late breakfast in the station café before his first scheduled trip of the day – but he had been no help at all. All he’d been able to tell her was that he remembered Emily getting off at the roundabout, but there had been far too much traffic to deal with for him to notice anything more. The bus had been mostly empty, and he didn’t know who any of the other passengers were. He could, however, state with some certainty that Emily was the only person to get off at that stop.