The Hanging Valley

by Peter Robinson

  ‘You’ve got something for us?’ Banks asked eagerly.

  ‘It’s a bit complicated. Would it be a great inconvenience for you to drop into the lab?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ Banks looked at his watch. ‘If I leave now I can be there in about an hour. Can you give me some idea over the phone?’

  ‘I think we’ll be able to trace the identity of your corpse before too long, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t think his dentist is too far away.’

  ‘With all due respect, I don’t see how that can be, Doctor. We’re pretty sure he was a Canadian.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ Passmore replied. ‘But his dental work’s as English as yours or mine.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  Still puzzled, Banks slipped a cassette into the machine and eased the Cortina out of the car park at the back of the station. At least something was happening. He drove slowly, dodging the tourists and shoppers who seemed to think Market Street was for pedestrians only. The breathy opening of Donovan’s ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ started on the tape.

  He passed the new estate under construction on the town’s southern edge, then he put his foot down once he got out of the built-up area. Leaving the Dales for the plain, he drove through a patchwork landscape of green pasture and fields of bright yellow rape, divided by hawthorn hedgerows. Bluebells and buttercups, about the only wild flowers Banks could put a name to, were in bloom among the long grass by the roadside. A frightened white-throat darted out in front of the car and almost ended up, like so many unfortunate rabbits and hedgehogs, splattered all over the tarmac.

  The forensic lab was a square three-storey red-brick building just north of Wetherby. Banks identified himself at reception and climbed up to Passmore’s second-floor office.

  Dr Passmore gave new meaning to the term ‘egghead’. The Lilliputians and the Blefuscudians could have had a fine war indeed over which end to open his egg-shaped skull. His bare shiny dome, combined with circumflex eyebrows, a putty nose and a tiny rosebud of a mouth, made him look more like an android than a human being. His mouth was so small that Banks wondered how there could be room for teeth in it. Perhaps he had chosen his profession out of tooth-envy.

  Banks sat down as directed. The office was cluttered with professional journals and its one glassed-in bookcase was full to overflowing. The filing cabinets also bulged too much to close properly. On Passmore’s desk, among the papers and pencil stubs, stood a toothless skull and several sets of dentures.

  ‘Glad you could make it, Chief Inspector,’ Passmore said, his voice surprisingly rich and deep coming from such a tiny mouth. ‘I’m sorry to drag you all the way down here, but it might save time in the long run, and I think you’ll find it worth the journey.’

  Banks nodded and crossed his legs. He looked around for an ashtray, but couldn’t see one; nor could he smell any traces of smoke when he surreptitiously sniffed the air. Bloody hell, another non-smoker, he cursed to himself.

  ‘The victim’s teeth were very badly damaged,’ Passmore went on. ‘Dr Glendenning said that he was hit about the face with a rock of some kind, and I concur.’

  ‘He was found close to a stream,’ Banks said. ‘There were plenty of rocks in the area.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Passmore nodded sagely and made a steeple of his fingers on the desk. ‘Anyway, I’ve managed to make a rudimentary reconstruction for you.’ He pushed a brown envelope towards Banks. ‘Not that it’ll do you much good. You can hardly have every dentist in the country check this against every chart he or she has, can you?’

  Banks was beginning to wonder why he’d come when Passmore stood up with surprising energy and walked over to a cabinet by the door. ‘But,’ he said, pausing dramatically to remove something and bring it back to the table, ‘I think I might be able to help you with that.’ And he dropped what looked like a fragment of tooth and pink plastic on the desk in front of Banks. ‘A denture,’ he announced. ‘Upper right bicuspid, to be exact.’

  Banks stared at the object. ‘You got this from the body?’

  Passmore nodded. ‘It was badly shattered, of course, but I’ve managed to reassemble most of it. Rather like putting together a broken teacup, really.’

  ‘How does this help us?’

  ‘Well, in the first place,’ Passmore said, ‘it tells us that the deceased was more likely to be British than Canadian.’

  ‘How?’

  Passmore frowned, as if Banks was being purposely obtuse. ‘Contrary to what some people believe,’ he began, ‘British dentists aren’t very far behind their North American cousins. Oh, they might instigate new procedures over there before we do, but that’s mostly because they have more money. Dentistry’s private over there, you know, and it can be very expensive for the patient. But there are differences. Now, if your victim had come from Russia, for example, I could have told you immediately. They use stainless steel for fillings there. But in this case, it’s merely an educated guess, or would be if it weren’t for something else, which I’ll get to in a moment.’

  Come on, Banks thought, fidgeting with the cigarette packet in his jacket pocket, get to the bloody point. Putting up with rambling explanations – full of pauses for dramatic effect – seemed to be the price he so often had to pay for information from specialists like Passmore.

  ‘The mere fact that your corpse has denture work leads me to conclude that he’s European rather than North American,’ the doctor continued. ‘The Americans go in for saving teeth rather than replacing them. In fact, they hardly do denture work at all.’

  ‘Very impressive,’ Banks said. ‘You mentioned something else – something important.’

  Passmore nodded. ‘This,’ he went on, holding up the false tooth, ‘is no ordinary denture. Well, it is, but there’s one big difference. This is a coded denture.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A number of dentists and technicians have taken to signing their work, so to speak, like painters and sculptors. Look here.’

  Passmore prodded the denture with a pointed dental instrument, the one that always gave Banks the willies when he was in the chair. He looked closely at the pink plastic and saw a number of dark letters, which he couldn’t quite make out.

  ‘The code,’ Passmore said. ‘It’s formed by typing the letters in a small print face on a piece of nylon, which you put between the mould and the plastic. During the manufacturing process, the nylon becomes incorporated into the denture and the numbers are clearly visible, as you can see.’

  ‘Why do they go to such trouble?’ Banks asked.

  Passmore shrugged. ‘For identification purposes in case of loss, or fire.’

  ‘And what does the code tell us?’

  Passmore puckered his mouth into a self-satisfied smile. ‘Everything we need to know, Chief Inspector. Everything we need to know. Have a closer look.’

  Banks used a pair of tweezers to pick up the denture and looked at the code: 5493BKJLS.

  ‘The last two letters give us the city code, the ones before that are the dentist’s initials, and the rest is for identification of the owner.’

  ‘Amazing.’ Banks put the false tooth down. ‘So this will lead us to the identity of the victim?’

  ‘Eventually. First, it’ll lead us to his dentist.’

  ‘How can I find out?’

  ‘You’d consult the directory in the library. But, luckily, I have a copy here and I’ve done it for you.’

  ‘And?’

  Passmore smiled smugly again and held up a school-teacherly finger. ‘Patience, Chief Inspector Banks, patience. First, the city. Do you recognize that postcode?’

  ‘Yes. LS is Leeds.’

  ‘Right. So the first thing we discover is that our man’s dentist practises in Leeds. Next we look up the initials: BKJ. I found two possibilities there: Brian K. Jarrett and B. K. James.’

  ‘We’ll have to check them both,’ Banks said. ‘Can I use your phone?’

  Passmore rubbed his upper lip. ‘I, er, I al
ready took the liberty. B. K. James doesn’t do denture codes, according to his assistant, so I called Brian K. Jarrett.’

  ‘And?’

  Passmore grinned. ‘The patient’s name is Bernard Allen.’

  ‘Certain?’

  ‘He’s the one who was fitted with the denture. It was about four years ago. I’ll be sending down the charts for official confirmation, of course, but from what we were able to compare over the phone, I’d say you can be certain, yes.’

  ‘Did you get an address?’

  Passmore shook his head. ‘Apparently Allen didn’t live in Leeds. Mr Jarrett did give me the sister’s address, though. Her name’s Esther Haines. Is that of any use?’

  ‘It certainly is.’ Banks made a note of the first real lead so far. ‘You’ve done a great job, Dr Passmore.’ He stood up and shook hands.

  Passmore inclined his head modestly. ‘If ever you need my help again . . .’

  TWO

  Katie walked down to the shops in Lower Head later than usual that day. There was no road on her side of the beck, just a narrow path between the houses and the grassy bank. At the junction with the main Helmthorpe road, where the River Swain veered left into the dale proper, a small wooden bridge, painted white, led over to the village green with its trees and benches, and the path continued to the row of shops around the corner from the church.

  As she neared the road, a grey Jaguar passed by with Stephen Collier behind the wheel. He slowed down at the intersection, and Katie became flustered. She half raised her hand to wave, but dropped it quickly. Stephen didn’t acknowledge her presence at all; he seemed to be looking right through her. At first she told herself he hadn’t seen her, but she knew he had. Perhaps he was thinking of something else and hadn’t noticed his surroundings. She often walked around in a daze like that herself. The blood ran to her face as she crossed the road and hurried on to the shops.

  ‘Afternoon, Katie love,’ Mrs Thetford greeted her. ‘A bit late today, aren’t you? Still, I’ve saved you some nice Brussels sprouts.’

  Katie thanked her and paid, her mind still on Stephen Collier. Why had he called last night when he knew Sam was out? Katie couldn’t understand his desire to talk to her about his problems, or his apparent concern for her.

  ‘Your change, dearie!’ Mrs Thetford called after her.

  Katie walked back to the counter and held out her hand, smiling. ‘I’d forget my head if it was loose.’

  She called at the butcher’s and bought some pork loin chops, the best he had left, then turned back towards home. Stephen really had sounded as if he needed a friend. He had been tired, burdened. Katie regretted letting him down, but what else could she have done? She couldn’t be his friend; she didn’t know how. Besides, it wasn’t right.

  She noticed the speeding Mini just in time to dodge it and crossed the green again. A few people, mostly old women, sat on the benches nattering, and a light breeze rustled the new pale green leaves on the trees. What Stephen had said about her being unhappy was true. Was it so obvious to everyone, or did he really sense a bond between them? Surely with all his money and success he couldn’t be unhappy too.

  Katie tried to remember when she had last been happy, and thought of the first weeks in Swainshead. It had been hard work, fixing up the house, but they had done it. And what’s more, they had done it together. After that though, when everything was ready, Sam left the running of it all to her. It was as if he’d finished his life’s work and settled into early retirement.

  ‘Ideas above his station,’ her granny had always said of Sam. And sure enough, no sooner were they in residence than he was off to the White Rose ingratiating himself with the locals. As soon as he found out that the Colliers, who owned the big house over the road, were the dale’s wealthiest and most powerful family, there was no stopping him. But give him his due, Katie thought, he never fawned or lowered himself; he just seemed to act as if he’d found his natural place in the order at last. Why they accepted him, if indeed they did, she had no idea.

  When she wasn’t busy running the guest house, Katie became an adornment, something for Sam to hang on his arm at the summer garden parties. She was a kind of Cinderella for whom the ball was always ending. But unlike the fairy-tale character, Katie hated both her roles. She had no love for gowns and glass slippers. Finery, however stylish and expensive, made her feel cheap and sinful. Once, a workmate fortunate enough to go on holiday to Paris had brought her back a pretty green silk scarf. Her granny had snipped it into pieces and scattered them like spring leaves into the fire.

  Perhaps, though Katie hated to admit it, she had last been truly happy when her grandmother died. She and Sam hadn’t seen much of the old woman after they went to live with his parents in Armley. They visited her in hospital though, where she lay dying of cancer of the colon, bearing all the pain and humiliation with the same hard courage as she had suffered life. She lay there, silver head against the white pillow, and would accept no comfort for what ‘God’s Will’ was gracing her with. It was almost, Katie thought, as if she had found true joy in the final mutiny of the flesh, of its very cells, as if dying was proof to her that life on earth really was nothing but a vale of tears. But that couldn’t be true, Katie realized, for her granny had never taken pleasure in anything in her life.

  Katie fainted at her funeral and then gagged on the brandy the minister gave her to bring her round. Now all she had left of Granny was the heavy wooden cross on the living-room mantelpiece. A bare dark cross, with no representation of the crucified Christ (for such things smelled too much of popish idolatry for Granny), it symbolized perfectly the harsh arid life the old woman had chosen for herself and her granddaughter. Katie hated the thing, but she hadn’t been able to pluck up the courage to throw it out. Outbreaks of boils and plagues of locusts would surely follow such a blasphemous act.

  So Stephen Collier was right – she was unhappy. There was nothing anyone could do about it though, except perhaps . . . But no. She had a terrible feeling of apprehension about the future, certain that her only possible escape route was cut off now. Why she should feel that way she didn’t know, but everyone was behaving oddly again – Stephen, Sam, John Fletcher. Could it really be a coincidence that Anne Ralston’s name had been mentioned to her again so recently? And that so soon after it had come up, there had been another murder in the village?

  Shuddering as if someone had just stepped over her grave, Katie walked back up the path and into the house to get on with cleaning the rooms.

  THREE

  After leaving the lab, Banks first drove into Wetherby and bought an A to Z street atlas of Leeds. He knew the city reasonably well, but had never been to Armley, where Allen’s sister lived. He studied the area and planned a route over lunch in a small pub off the main street, where he ate a rather soupy lasagne and drank an excellent pint of Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter.

  He listened to the Donovan tape as he drove. Those old songs certainly brought back memories. Why did the past always seem so much brighter than the present? Because he had been more innocent then? Surely every childhood summer couldn’t have been as sunny as he recalled. There must have been long periods of rain, just as there always seemed to be these days. What the hell, he thought, humming along with ‘Teen Angel’ as he drove – today’s beautiful, enjoy the sun while it’s here. Most of all, he wanted to put out of his mind for as long as possible what he would soon have to tell Bernard Allen’s sister.

  He lit a cigarette and turned on to the Leeds Inner Ring Road, which skirted the city centre by a system of yellow-lit tunnels affording occasional flashes into the open and glimpses of church spires, tower blocks and rows of dark terraced houses. It still felt warm, but the sun was now only a blurred pearl behind a thin grey gauze of cloud.

  He came out on to Wellington Road, by the Yorkshire Post building, then crossed the River Aire and, immediately afterwards, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

  There had been a great deal of developme
nt in the area, and one or two very colourful red-and-gold barges stood moored by the quay. But the river and canal banks were still very much of a wasteland: overgrown with weeds, littered with the tyres and old prams people had dumped there.

  Many of the huge Victorian warehouses still hung on, crumbling and broken-windowed, their red brick blackened by the industrial smoke of a hundred years or more. It was a little like the Thames, Banks thought, where old wharfs and warehouses, like the warrens where Fagin had run his band of child-thieves, were daily being converted into luxury apartment complexes, artists’ studios and office space. Because Leeds was in the depressed and abandoned North though, the process of regeneration would probably take quite a bit longer, if indeed it ever happened at all.

  Skilfully navigating the lanes of traffic and a huge roundabout, Banks managed to get on Armley Road. Soon he was at the bottom of Town Street, where the road swung right, past the park, to Bramley and Stanningley. He turned left up Crab Lane, a narrow winding one-way street by a small housing estate built on a hill, and parked on the street near the library.

  Banks soon found Esther Haines’s house. It had a blue door, freshly painted by the look of it. In the garden was an overturned plastic tricycle, green with thick yellow wheels.

  Banks pressed the bell and a thin-faced woman answered. She was perhaps in her late twenties, but she seemed haggard and tired. Judging from the noise inside the house, Banks guessed that the cares of motherhood had worn her down. She frowned at him and he showed her his identification card. Immediately, she turned pale and invited him in. For people on estates like this, Banks realized, a visit from the police always means bad news. He felt his stomach muscles tighten as he walked inside.

  In the living room, cluttered with children’s toys, Mrs Haines had already sat down. Hands clasped in her lap, she perched on the edge of her seat on the sofa. A dark-haired man came through from the kitchen, and she introduced him as her husband, Les. He was wearing only vest and trousers. His shoulders and chest were matted with thick black hair, and he had a tattoo of a butterfly on his right bicep.