‘Why did Steadman drink here, do you think?’
‘Steadman?’ Weaver seemed surprised to be so quickly jolted back to business. ‘Liked the beer, I suppose. And he was pally with a few of the regulars.’
‘But he had money, didn’t he? A lot of money. He certainly didn’t get that house on the cheap.’
‘Oh yes, he had money. Rumour has it he inherited over a quarter of a million from his father. His pals have money too, but they’re not nobs. Much more down-to-earth.’
Banks was still puzzled why someone so well off would drink in such a dump, good beer or not. By rights, Steadman ought to have been chugging champagne by the magnum to wash down his caviar. Those were London terms, though, he reminded himself: ostentatious display of wealth. Maybe people with over a quarter of a million who lived in Helmthorpe by choice were different. He doubted it. But Steadman certainly sounded unusual.
‘Liked his drink, did he?’
‘Never known him drink too much, sir. I think he just enjoyed the company here.’
‘Glad to get away from the wife?’
Weaver reddened. ‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir. Never heard anything. But he was a funny sort of chap.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, sir, like I said, he used to be a professor at Leeds University. When he inherited the money, he just packed in his job, bought the old Ramsden house and moved up here.’
‘Ramsden house?’ Banks cut in. ‘That wouldn’t have anything to do with Michael Ramsden, would it?’
Weaver raised an eyebrow. ‘As a matter of fact, sir, yes,’ he answered. ‘It was his parents’ house. Used to be a bed-and-breakfast place when Steadman and his wife started coming up here for their holidays ten years ago or more. Young Michael went to university and landed a good job with a publishing firm in London. Then, when old Mr Ramsden died, the mother couldn’t afford to keep on the house, so she went off to live with her sister in Torquay. It all happened at just the right time for Steadman.’
Banks looked at Weaver in astonished admiration. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-one, sir.’
‘How do you manage to know so much about things that happened before your time?’
‘Family, sir. I was born and raised in the area. And Sergeant Mullins. He runs the show around here usually, but he’s on holiday right now. There’s not much escapes Sergeant Mullins.’
Banks sat in silence for a moment and enjoyed his beer as he sifted the information.
‘What about Steadman’s drinking companions?’ he asked finally. ‘What kind of people are they?’
‘He brought them all together, sir,’ Weaver answered. ‘Oh, they all knew each other well enough before he moved up here, like, but Steadman was a friendly sort, interested in everything and everyone. When he wasn’t busying himself with his books or poking around ruins and abandoned mines he was quite a socializer. There’s Jack Barker, for one – you might have heard of him?’
Banks shook his head.
‘Writer. Mystery stories.’ Weaver smiled. ‘Quite good really. Plenty of sex and violence.’ He blushed. ‘Nothing like the real thing, of course.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Banks said, smiling. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, sir, he’s been here three or four years. Don’t know where he started from. Then there’s Doc Barnes, born and raised hereabouts, and Teddy Hackett, local entrepreneur. He owns the garage over there, and a couple of gift shops. That’s all, really. They’re all fortyish. Well, Doc Barnes is a bit older and Barker’s in his late thirties. An odd group, when you think about it. I’ve been in here a few times when they were together and from what I could hear they’d take the mickey out of Steadman a bit, him being an academic and all that. But not nasty like. All in good fun.’
‘No animosity? You’re certain?’
‘No, sir. Not as far as I could tell. I don’t get in here as often as I’d like. Wife and kid, you see.’ He beamed.
‘Work, too.’
‘Aye, that keeps me busy as well. But I seem to spend more time giving directions to bloody tourists and telling the time than dealing with local affairs. Whoever said “If you want to know the way, ask a policeman” ought to be shot.’
Banks laughed. ‘The locals are a fairly law-abiding lot, then?’
‘On the whole, yes. We get a few drunks now and then. Especially at the Hare and Hounds disco, as I said. But that’s mostly visitors. Then there’s the odd domestic dispute. But most of our troubles come from tourists leaving their cars all over the place and making too much noise. It’s a peaceful place, really, though there’s some as would say it’s boring.’
At this point, Sergeant Hatchley walked in and joined them. He was a bulky, fair-haired and freckle-faced man in his early thirties, and he and Banks had developed a tolerable working relationship despite some early hostilities – partly due to north-south rivalry and partly to Hatchley’s having hoped for the job Banks got.
Hatchley bought a round of drinks and they all ordered steak and kidney pies, which turned out to be very tasty. Not too much kidney, as Weaver remarked. Banks complimented the landlord and was rewarded with an ambiguous ‘Aye.’
‘Anything new?’ Banks asked the sergeant.
Hatchley lit a cigarette, lounged back in his chair, rubbed a hand like a hairy ham across his stubbly cheek, and cleared his throat.
‘Nowt much, by the look of things. Old Tavistock went looking for a stray sheep and dug up a fresh corpse. That’s about the strength of it.’
‘Was it unusual for him to go poking around by that wall? Would other people be likely to go there?’
‘If you’re thinking that anyone could expect to dump a body there and leave it undiscovered for weeks, then you’re barking up the wrong tree. Even if old Tavistock hadn’t gone out looking for his bloody sheep, someone would’ve come along soon enough – hikers, courting couples.’
Banks sipped some more beer. ‘So he wasn’t dumped there for concealment, then?’
‘Shouldn’t think so, no. Probably put there just so we’d have to leg it halfway up to Crow bloody Scar.’
Banks laughed. ‘More likely so we wouldn’t know where he was killed.’
‘Aye.’
‘Why wasn’t Steadman reported missing, sir?’ Weaver cut in. He seemed anxious to restore to the chief inspector the respect that Hatchley appeared to be denying him.
Banks told him. Then he told Hatchley to get back to the Eastvale station, find out as much as he could about Steadman’s background and collate any reports that came in.
‘What about the press?’ Hatchley asked. ‘They’re all over the place now.’
‘You can tell them we’ve found a body.’
‘Shall I tell them who it is?’
Banks sighed and gave Hatchley a long-suffering look. ‘Don’t be so bloody silly. Not until we’ve got a formal identification you can’t, no.’
‘And what will you be doing, sir?’
‘My job.’ Banks turned to Weaver. ‘You’d better get back to the station, lad. Who’s in charge?’
Weaver blushed again, his pinkness deepening to crimson. ‘I am, sir. At least, I am at the moment. Sergeant Mullins is away for two weeks. Remember I told you about him, sir?’
‘Yes, of course. How many men have you got?’
‘There’s only two of us, sir. It’s a quiet place. I called some of the lads in from Lyndgarth and Fortford to help with the search. There’s not more than half a dozen of us altogether.’
‘All right, then,’ Banks said, ‘it looks like you’re in charge. Get a request for information printed up and distributed – shops, pubs, church notice board. Then start a house-to-house enquiry up Hill Road. That body wasn’t carried all the way up there, and somebody might just have seen or heard a car. At least it’ll help us narrow down the time of death. All right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And don’t worry. If you need any more men, let Eastvale station know
and they’ll see what they can do. I’m going to pay Michael Ramsden a visit myself, but if you ask for Sergeant Rowe, I’ll make sure he has full instructions.’
He turned to Hatchley again. ‘Before you go back, go and tell the men up in the field that they’re temporarily transferred to Helmthorpe and they’re to take their orders from Constable Weaver here. They’ll probably understand the situation already, but make it official. And check the car park for a beige Sierra.’ He gave Hatchley the number of the car and handed him the keys. ‘It’s Steadman’s car,’ he added, ‘and while it doesn’t look as if he got to use it last night, you never know. It might tell us something. Get forensic on to it right away.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hatchley said through clenched teeth as he left. Banks could almost hear the ‘three bags full, sir’ that the sergeant probably added when he got outside.
He grinned broadly at the nonplussed young constable and said, ‘Don’t mind him; he’s probably just got a hangover. Now, off you go, Weaver. Time to get to work.’
Alone, he slipped his new pipe from his jacket pocket and stuffed it with shag. Drawing in the harsh tobacco, he coughed and shook his head. He still couldn’t get used to the damn thing; maybe mild cigarettes would be better, after all.
TWO
Excited, Sally had watched Banks drive off towards the village and followed in the same direction. She stopped to pick a campion by the hedgerow and casually admired its pinkish-purple colour, the petals like a baby’s splayed fingers. Then, thinking about what she had to tell her friends, she let it drop and hurried on her way.
She had actually seen the man, the policeman in charge, close up, and had had to stifle a giggle as he lost his footing climbing the low wall. It was obvious he wasn’t used to bounding about the northern countryside; perhaps he’d been sent up by Scotland Yard. She found his gaunt angled face under the short neat black hair attractive, despite a nose that had clearly been broken and imperfectly reset. The sharp restless eyes expressed energy and power, and the little white scar beside his right eye seemed, to Sally, a mark of exotic experience. She imagined he’d got into a fight to the death with a blood-crazed murderer. Even though he seemed too short for a policeman, his wiry body looked nimble and strong.
At the western edge of the village, near the Bridge, was a coffee bar where Sally and her friends hung out. The coffee was weak, the Coke warm and the Greek owner surly, but the place boasted two video games, an up-to-date jukebox and an ancient pinball machine. Of course, Sally would rather have expertly applied a little make-up and passed for eighteen in one of the pubs – especially the Hare and Hounds on disco night – but in such a small community everyone seemed to know a little about everyone else’s business, and she was worried in case word got back to her father. She had been in pubs in Eastvale with Kevin, though even that was risky with the school so close by, and in Leeds and York, which were safer, and nobody had ever questioned her about her age.
The door rattled as she pushed it open and entered to the familiar bleeping of massacred aliens. Kathy Chalmers and Hazel Kirk were engrossed in the game, while Anne Downes looked on coolly. She was a bookish girl, plain and bespectacled, but she wanted to be liked; and if that meant hanging around with video-game players, then so be it. The others teased her a bit, but never maliciously, and she was blessed with a sharp, natural wit that helped her hold her own.
The other two were more like Sally, if not as pretty. They chewed gum, applied make-up (unlike Sally, they did this badly) and generally fussed about their hair and clothes. Kathy had even got away with a henna treatment. Her parents had been furious, but there was nothing much they could do after the fact. It was Hazel, the sultry, black-haired one, who spoke first.
‘Look who’s here,’ she announced. ‘And where have you been all weekend?’ The glint in her eye implied that she knew very well where Sally had been and who she had been with. Under normal circumstances Sally would have played along, hinting at pleasures she believed Hazel had only read about in books, but this time she ignored the innuendo and got herself a Coke from the unsmiling Greek. The espresso machine was hissing like an old steam engine and the aliens were still bleeping in their death throes. Sally leaned against the column opposite Anne and waited impatiently for a silence into which she could drop her news.
When the game was over, Kathy reached for another coin, a manoeuvre that necessitated arching her back and stretching out her long legs so that she could thrust her hand deep enough into the pocket of her skintight Calvin Kleins. As she did this, Sally noticed the Greek ogling from behind his coffee machine. Choosing her moment for best dramatic effect, she finally spoke: ‘Guess what. There’s been a murder. Here in the village. They dug up a body under Crow Scar. I’ve just come from there. I’ve seen it.’
Anne’s pale eyes widened behind her thick lenses. ‘A murder! Is that what those men are doing up there?’
‘They’re conducting a search of the scene,’ Sally announced, hoping she’d got the phrasing right. ‘The scene of the crime. And the forensic team was there too, taking blood samples and tissue. And the police photographer and the Home Office pathologist. All of them.’
Kathy slid back into her seat, forgetting the game. ‘A murder? In Helmthorpe?’ She gasped in disbelief. ‘Who was it?’
Here Sally had to admit lack of information, which she disguised neatly by assuming that Kathy meant ‘Who was the murderer?’ ‘They don’t know yet, you fool,’ she replied scornfully. ‘It’s only just happened.’ Then she hurried on, keen not to lose their attention to further fleets of aliens. ‘I saw the superintendent close up. Quite a dish, actually. Not at all what you’d expect. And I could see the body. Well, some of it. It was buried by the wall up in Tavistock’s field. Somebody had scraped away some of the loose soil and then covered it with stones. There was a hand and a leg sticking out.’
Hazel Kirk tossed back a glossy raven’s wing of hair. ‘Sally Lumb, you’re a liar,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t see that far. The police wouldn’t have let anyone get that close.’
‘I did,’ Sally countered. ‘I could even see the wet patches under the superintendent’s arms.’ She realized too late that this outburst clashed with her more romantic image of the ‘superintendent’ and rushed on, hoping nobody would notice. Only Anne wrinkled her nose. ‘And old man Tavistock was there. I think he discovered the body. And all the policemen from miles around. Geoff Weaver was there.’
‘That pink-faced pansy,’ Kathy cut in.
‘It wasn’t so pink today, I can tell you. I think he’d been sick.’
‘Well, wouldn’t you be if you’d just found a dead body?’ Anne asked, coming to the defence of young Weaver, on whom she had had a schoolgirl crush for nearly six months. ‘It was probably all decomposed and rotten.’
Sally ignored her. ‘And there was another inspector, or whatever they call them. He wasn’t in uniform anyway. Tall, strawy hair – a bit like your dad, Kathy.’
‘That’ll be Jim Hatchley,’ Anne said. ‘Actually, he’s only a sergeant. My father knows him. Remember when the social club was broken into last year? Well, they sent him from Eastvale. He even came to our house. My dad’s treasurer, you know. Hatchley’s a coarse pig. He’s even got hairs up his nose and in his ears. And I’ll bet that other chap was Chief Inspector Banks. He had his picture in the paper a while back. Don’t you ever read the papers?’
Anne’s stream of information and opinion silenced everyone for a moment. Then Sally, who read nothing but Vogue and Cosmopolitan, picked up the thread again. ‘They’re here now. In the village. They drove down before I came.’
‘I’m surprised they didn’t give you a lift,’ Hazel said, ‘seeing as how you’re on such good terms.’
‘Shut up, Hazel Kirk!’ Sally said indignantly. Hazel just smirked. ‘They’re here. They’ll be questioning everybody, you know. They’ll probably want to talk to all of us.’
‘Why should they want to do that?’ Kathy asked. ‘We don’t k
now anything about it.’
‘It’s just what they do, stupid,’ Sally retorted. ‘They do house-to-house searches and take statements from everyone. How do they know we don’t know anything till they ask us?’
Sally’s logic silenced Kathy and Hazel.
‘We don’t even know who the victim was yet,’ Anne chimed in. ‘Who do you think it was?’
‘I’ll bet it was that Johnnie Parrish,’ Kathy said. ‘He looks like a man with a past to me.’
‘Johnnie Parrish!’ Sally sneered. ‘Why, he’s about as interesting as a… a…’
‘A dose of clap?’ Anne suggested. They all laughed.
‘Even that would be more interesting than Johnnie Parrish. I’ll bet it was Major Cartwright. He’s such a miserable, bad-tempered old bugger there must be lots of people want to kill him.’
‘His daughter, for one,’ Hazel said, and giggled.
‘Why?’ Sally asked. She didn’t like to think she was excluded from what appeared to be common knowledge.
‘Well, you know,’ Kathy stalled. ‘You know what people say.’
‘About what?’
‘About Major Cartwright and his daughter. How he keeps such a tight rein on her since she came back to the village. Why she ran off in the first place. It’s unnatural. That’s what people say.’
‘Oh, is that all,’ Sally said, not quite sure she understood. ‘But she’s got her own place, that cottage by the church.’
‘Maybe it was Alf Pringle,’ Hazel suggested. ‘Now there’s a nasty piece of work. Be doing us all a favour if somebody did away with him.’
‘Wishful thinking.’ Kathy sighed. ‘Do you know, he chased me off his land the other day. I was only picking wild flowers for that school project. He had his shotgun with him, too.’
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