Gallows View ib-1

by Peter Robinson

  She wasn't scared; she wasn't even angry after the shock had worn off and the adrenaline dispersed. Surprisingly, her main feeling was pity-Harriet's compassion-because Sandra did feel sorry for the man in a way she found impossible to explain, even to herself.

  It was something to do with the unnaturalness of his act. Sandra had always been fortunate in having a healthy attitude toward sex. She had neither needed nor wanted the help of manuals, marital aids, awkward positions or suburban wife-swapping clubs to keep her sex life interesting, and it was partly because of this, her own sexual healthiness, that she felt sorry for the pathetic man who could only enjoy sex in such a vicarious, secretive way. Her pity was not a soft and loving feeling, though; it was more akin to contempt.

  That Sunday morning as she rang Selena Harcourt's doorbell, which played a fragment of "Lara's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago, she thanked her lucky stars for the hundredth time that she had managed to persuade Alan not to report the incident. It had gone against all his instincts, and the task had required all of Sandra's rhetorical expertise, but she had done it, and here she was, about to fulfill her part of the bargain.

  "Oh, hello, Sandra, do come in," Selena said in her cooing voice. "Excuse the mess."

  There was, of course, no mess. Selena's living room was spick and span, as always. It smelled of pine air-freshener and lemon-scented disinfectant, and all the souvenir ashtrays and costume-dolls from the Algarve, the Costa del Sol and various other European resorts simply glowed with health and shone with cleanliness.

  The only new addition to the household was a gloomy poodle, called Pepe, who turned around slowly from his spot by the fireplace and looked at Sandra as if to apologize for his ridiculous appearance: the clippings and bows that Selena had inflicted on him in the hope that he might win a prize in the upcoming dog show. Sandra duly lavished hypocritical praise upon the poor creature, who gave her a very sympathetic and conspiratorial look, then she sat uneasily on the sofa. She always sat uneasily in Selena's house because everything looked as if it were on show, not quite real or functional.

  "I was just saying to Kenneth, we haven't seen very much of you lately. You've not been to one of our coffee mornings for simply ages."

  "It's the job," Sandra explained. "I work three mornings a week for Dr. Maxwell now, remember?"

  "Of course," Selena said. "The dentist." Somehow or other, she managed to give the word just the right shade of emphasis to imply that although dentists might be necessary, they were certainly not desirable in respectable society.

  "That's right."

  "So what else have you been up to since we last had a little chat?"

  Sandra couldn't remember when that was, so she gave a potted history of the last month, to which Selena listened politely before offering tea.

  "Have you heard about this Peeping Tom business?" she called through from the kitchen. "Yes," Sandra shouted back.

  "Of course, I keep forgetting your hubby's on the force. You must know all about it, then?" Selena said as she brought in the tray bearing tea and a selection of very fattening confectionery.

  "On the force, indeed!" Sandra thought. Selena knew damn well that Alan was a policeman-in fact, that was the only reason she had ever talked to Sandra in the first place-and her way of digging for gossip was about as subtle as a Margaret Thatcher pep talk.

  "Not much," Sandra lied. "There's not much to know, really."

  "That Dorothy Wycombe's been having a right go at Alan, hasn't she?" Selena noted, with so much glee that the lah-de-dah inflection she usually imposed on her Northern accent slipped drastically around "having a right go."

  "You could say that," Sandra admitted, gritting her teeth.

  "Is it true?"

  "Is what true?"

  "That the police aren't doing much. Now, you know I'm no women's-libber, Sandra, but we do get treated just a teeny bit unfairly sometimes. It is a man's world, you know."

  "Yes. As a matter of fact, though, they're doing quite a lot. They've brought in a psychologist from the university."

  "Oh?" Selena raised her eyebrows. "What's he supposed to do?"

  "She helps tell the police what kind of person this peeper is."

  "But surely they know that already? He likes to watch women undress." "Yes," Sandra said. "But there's more to it than that. Why does he like to watch? What does he do while he's watching? Why doesn't he have a normal sex life? That's the kind of thing the psychologists are working on."

  "Well, that's not much use, is it?" Selena observed. "Not until they've caught him, anyway."

  "That's what I came to see you about," Sandra said, forging ahead. "They're worried that he might not stop at looking-that might be just the beginning-so they're really stepping up the investigation. They've already got enough information to know that he checks out his areas before he strikes, so he knows something about the layout of the house. He probably finds out when people go to bed, whether the woman goes up alone first, that kind of thing. So I suggested that it would be a good idea if we all kept our eyes open for strangers, or anyone acting strangely around here. That way we could catch him before he did any real harm."

  "Good lord!" Selena exclaimed. "You don't really think he'd come around here, do you?"

  Sandra shrugged. "There's no telling where he'll go. They've not found any rhyme or reason to his movements yet."

  Selena's hand shook slightly as she poured more tea, and she bit her bottom lip between her teeth. "There was something," she started. "It was last week- Wednesday, I think-it startled me at the time but I never really gave it much thought later."

  "What was it?"

  "Well, I was walking back from Eloise Harrison's. She lives on Culpepper Avenue, you know, two streets down, and it's such a long way around if you go right to the main road and along, so I cut through the back here. There's a little snicket between the houses in the next street, you know, so I just go out of our back gate into the alley, then cut through the snicket, cross the street, do the same again, and I'm right in Eloise's back garden.

  "Coming back on Wednesday, it was quite dark and wet, a nasty night, and when I cut into our back alley I almost bumped into this man. It was funny, I thought, because he looked like he was just standing there. I don't know why, but I think if we'd both been moving we'd have really bumped into each other. Well, it made me jump, I can tell you that. There's no light out there except what shines from the houses, and it's a lonely sort of place. Anyway, I just hurried on through the back gate and into the house, and I never really thought much more of it. But if you ask me, I'd say he was just standing there, loitering."

  "Do you remember what he looked like?"

  "I'm sorry, dear, I really didn't get a good look. As I said, it was dark, and what with the shock and all I just hurried on. I think he was wearing a black raincoat with a belt, and he had his collar turned up. He was wearing a hat, too, because of the rain, I suppose, so I couldn't have seen his face even if I'd wanted to. It was one of those… what do you call them? Trilbies, that's it. I think he was quite young, though, not the dirty-old-man type."

  "What made you think that?"

  "I don't know, really," Selena answered slowly, as if she was finding it difficult to put her instincts and intuitions into words. "Just the way he moved. And the trilby looked too old for him."

  "Thank you," Sandra said, anxious to get home and make notes while it was all still fresh in her mind.

  "Do you think it was him?"

  "I don't know, but the police will be thankful for any information about suspicious strangers at the moment."

  Selena fingered the plunging neckline of her dress, which revealed exactly the right amount of creamy skin to complement her peroxide curls, moon-shaped face and excessive make-up. "If it was him, then he's been watching us. It could be any of us he's after. Me. You. Josephine. Annabel. This is terrible."

  "I shouldn't worry about it that much, Selena," Sandra said, taking malicious pleasure in comforting the woman
for worries that she, herself, had raised. "It was probably just someone taking a short cut."

  "But it was such a nasty night. What normal person would want to stand out there on a night like that? He must have been up to something. Watching."

  "I'll tell Alan, and I'm sure the police will look into it. You never know, Selena, your information might lead to an arrest."

  "It might?"

  "Well, yes. If it is him."

  "But I wouldn't be able to identify him. Not in a court of law, or one of those line-ups they have. I didn't really get a good look."

  "That's not what I mean. Don't worry, nobody's going to make you do that. I just meant that if he's been seen in the area, the police will know where to look."

  Selena nodded, mouth open, unconvinced, then poured more tea. Sandra refused.

  Suddenly, at the door, Selena's face brightened again. "I keep forgetting," she said, putting her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. "It's so silly of me. I've got nothing to worry about. I live right next door to a policeman!"

  III

  Sunday afternoon at Gristhorpe's farmhouse was a great success, though it did little for Banks's emotional confusion. On the way, he was not allowed to play opera in the car and instead had to put up with some dull, mechanical pop music on Radio One-mostly drum-machine and synthesizer-to keep Brian and Tracy happy. It was a beautiful day; the autumn sky was sharp blue again, and the season's hues glowed on the trees by the riverbank. In daylight, the steep dale sides showed a varied range of color, from the greens of common grazing slopes to the pink, yellow and purple of heather and gorse and the occasional bright edge of a limestone outcrop.

  Gristhorpe greeted them, and almost immediately the children went off for a pre-dinner walk while the three adults drank tea in the cluttered living room. The conversation was general and easy until Gristhorpe asked Banks how he was getting on with the "lovely" Jenny Fuller.

  Sandra raised her dark eyebrows, always a bad sign as far as Banks was concerned. "Would that be the Dr. Fuller you've been spending so much time with lately, Alan?" she asked mildly. "I knew she was a woman, but I'd no idea she was young and lovely."

  "Didn't he tell you?" Gristhorpe said mischievously. "Quite a stunner, our Jenny. Isn't she, Alan?"

  "Yes," Banks admitted. "She's very pretty."

  "Oh, come on, Alan, you can do better than that," Sandra teased. "Pretty? What's that supposed to mean?"

  "All right, beautiful then," Banks growled. "Sexy, sultry, a knockout. Is that what you want?"

  "Maybe he's smitten with her," Gristhorpe suggested.

  "I'm not smitten," Banks countered, but realized as he did so that he was probably protesting too forcefully. "She's being very helpful," he went on quickly. "And," he said to Sandra, "just so that I don't get accused of being chauvinistic about this, let me put it on record that Dr. Fuller is a very competent and intelligent psychologist."

  "Brains and beauty?" Sandra mocked. "How on earth can you resist, Alan?"

  As they both laughed at him, Banks slumped back into the armchair, craving a cigarette. Soon the talk changed direction and he was off the hook.

  The dinner, presented by a proud Mrs. Hawkins, was superb: roast beef still pink in the middle, and Yorkshire puddings, cooked in the dripping, with exactly the right balance of crispness outside and moistness within, smothered in rich gravy.

  After a brief post-prandial rest, Brian and Tracy were off playing Cathy and Heathcliffe again on the moorland above Gristhorpe's few acres of land, and Sandra took a stroll with her camera.

  "Do you know," Gristhorpe mused as they stood in the back garden watching Sandra and the children walk up the grassy slope, "millions of years ago, this whole area was under a tropical sea? All that limestone you see was formed from dead shellfish." He swept out his arm in an all-embracing gesture.

  Banks shook his head; geology was definitely not his forte.

  "After that, between the ice ages, it was as warm as equatorial Africa. We had lions, hyenas, elephants and hippopotami walking the Dales." Gristhorpe spoke as if he had been there, as if he was somehow implicated in all he said. "Come on." He took Banks by the arm. "You'll think I'm turning into a dotty old man. I've got something to show you."

  Banks looked apprehensively at the embryonic dry-stone wall and the pile of stones to which Gristhorpe led him.

  "They amaze me, those things," he said. "I can't imagine how they stand up to the wind and rain, or how anyone finds the patience to build them."

  Gristhorpe laughed-a great booming sound from deep inside. "I'll not say it's easy. Wall building's a dying art, Alan, and you're right about the patience. Sometimes the bugger runs me to the end of my tether." Gristhorpe's voice was gruff and the accent was clearly North Yorkshire, but it also had a cultured edge, the mark of a man who has read and traveled widely.

  "Here," he said, moving aside. "Why don't you have a go?"

  "Me? I couldn't," Banks stammered. "I mean, I wouldn't know where to start. I don't know the first thing about it."

  Gristhorpe grinned in challenge. "No matter. It's just like building a case. Test your mettle. Come on, have a go."

  Banks edged toward the heap of stones, none of which looked to him as if it could be fitted into the awesome design. He picked some up, weighed them in his hand, squinted at the wall, turned them over, squinted again, then picked a smooth, wedge-shaped piece and fitted it well enough into place.

  Gristhorpe looked at the stone expressionlessly, then at Banks. He reached out, picked it up, turned it around and fixed it back into place.

  "There," he said. "Perfect. A damn good choice." Banks couldn't help but laugh. "What was wrong with the way I put it in?" he asked.

  "Wrong way around, that's all," Gristhorpe explained. "This is a simple wall. You should have seen the ones my grandfather built-like bloody cathedrals, they were. Still standing, too, some of them. Anyway, you start by digging a trench along your line and you put in two parallel rows of footing stones. Big ones, square as you can get them. Between those rows you put in the hearting, lots of small stones, like pebbles. These bind together under pressure, see. After that, you can start to build, narrowing all the time, two rows rising up from the footing stones. You keep that gap filled tight with hearting and make sure you bind it all together with plenty of through-stones.

  "Now, that stone you put in fit all right, but it sloped inward. They have to slope outward, see, else the rain'll get in and soak the hearting. If that happens, when the first frost comes it'll expand, you see." He held his hands close together and moved them slowly apart. "And that can bring the whole bloody thing tumbling down."

  "I see." Banks nodded, ashamed at how such basic common sense could have been beyond him. Country wisdom, he guessed.

  "A good dry-stone wall," the superintendent went on, "can stand any weather. It can even stand bloody sheep scrambling over it. Some of these you see around here have been up since the eighteenth century. Of course, they need a bit of maintenance now and then, but who doesn't?" He laughed. "You and that lass, Jenny," he asked suddenly. "Owt in it?"

  Surprised at the question coming out of the blue like that, Banks blushed a little as he shook his head. "I like her. I like her a lot. But no." Gristhorpe nodded, satisfied, placed a through-stone and rubbed his hands together gleefully.

  That evening, back at home, Alan and Sandra shared a nightcap after they had sent Tracy and Brian off to bed. The opera ban was lifted, but it had to be quiet. Banks played a tape of Kiri te Kanawa singing famous arias from Verdi and Puccini. They snuggled close on the sofa, and as Sandra put her empty glass down, she turned to Banks and asked, "Have you ever been unfaithful?"

  Without hesitation, he replied, "No." It was true, but it didn't feel true. He was beginning to understand what Jimmy Carter's predicament had been when he said that he had committed adultery in his mind.

  Chapter ELEVEN

  I

  By midday on Monday, DC Richmond had not only discove
red from the Eastvale census records and electoral lists that there were almost eight hundred men aged between twenty and thirty-five living either alone or with a single parent, but he also had a list of their names.

  "Marvelous what computers can do these days, sir," he said to Banks as he handed over the report.

  "Keen on them, are you?" Banks asked, looking up and smiling.

  "Yes, sir. I've applied for that course next summer. I hope you'll be able to spare me."

  "Lord knows what'll be going on next summer," Banks said. "I thought I was all set for the quiet life when I came up here, and look what's happened so far. I'll bear it in mind, anyway. I know the super's keen on new technology-at least as far as the workplace is concerned."

  "Thank you, sir. Was there anything else?"

  "Sit down a minute," Banks said as he started reading quickly through the list. The only names he recognized at first glance were those he had heard from Robin Allott the previous day: Geoff Welling and Barry Scott.

  "Right," he said, shoving the papers toward Richmond. "There's a bit more legwork to be done. First of all, I want you to check into the two names I've ticked here. But for God's sake do it discreetly. I don't want anyone to know we're checking up on private citizens on so little evidence." He grinned at Richmond. "Use your imagination, eh? First thing to find out is if they have alibis for the peeping incidents. Clear so far?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "The next job might take a bit more doing." Banks explained about Mr. Patel's observations, hoping that he might also relieve any anxieties Richmond had about his being in The Oak with Jenny on Saturday evening. "Someone else might have seen him in the area, so talk to the residents and local shopkeepers. Also, see if you can find out who the bus drivers were on the routes past The Oak that night. Talk to them, find out if they noticed our man. All right?"