The Hanging Valley

by Peter Robinson

  Banks smiled. ‘Yes. I know. Thanks anyway. I won’t waste any more of your time.’

  ‘No problem.’ Marilyn tossed her empty can into the waste-paper basket. ‘Hey!’ she called, as Banks left the staff lounge. ‘I think your accent’s cute, too.’

  But Banks didn’t have time to appreciate the compliment. Coming along the corridor towards him were two very large police officers.

  ‘Mr Banks?’ the taller one asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’d like you to come with us, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just a few questions. This way, please.’

  There was hardly room for them to walk three abreast down the hallway, but they managed it somehow. Banks felt a bit like a sardine in a tin. As they turned the corner, he noticed from the corner of his eye Tom Jordan wringing his hands outside his office.

  Banks tried to get more out of the officers in the lift, but they clammed up on him. He felt a wave of irrational fear at the situation. Here he was, in a foreign country, being taken into custody by two enormous uniformed policemen who refused to answer his questions. And the feeling of fear intensified as he was bundled into the back of the yellow car. The air smelled of hot vinyl upholstery; a strong wire mesh separated him from the men in the front; and the back doors had no inside handles.

  THREE

  ‘What does tha write, then?’ Freddie Metcalfe asked, expertly refilling the empty pint glass with Marston’s Pedigree Bitter.

  ‘Science fiction,’ said Detective Constable Philip Richmond. In his checked Viyella shirt and light brown cords, he thought he looked the part. Posing as a writer would make him less suspicious, too. He would be expected to spend some time alone in his room writing and a lot of time in the pub, with perhaps the occasional constitutional just to keep the juices flowing.

  ‘I knew a chap used to write books once,’ Freddie went on. ‘Books about t’ Dales, wi’ pictures in ’em. Lived down Lower ’Ead.’ He placed the foaming pint in front of Richmond, who paid and drained a good half of it in one gulp. ‘I reckon one of them there detective writers would ’ave a better time of it round ’ere these days.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Freddie leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Murder, that’s why,’ he said, then laughed and picked up a glass to dry. ‘Right baffled, t’ police are. It’s got that southron – little chap wi’ a scar by ’is eye – it’s got ’im running around like a blue-arsed fly, it has. And t’ old man, Gristhorpe – well, we all know he durst hardly show his face around ’ere since t’ last one, don’t we?’

  ‘Last what?’

  ‘Murder, lad! What’s tha think I’m talking about? Sheep-shagging?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Think nowt on it. I’m forgetting tha’s a foreigner. Tha sounds Yorkshire to me. Bit posh, mind you, but Yorkshire.’

  ‘Lancashire, actually,’ Richmond lied. ‘Bolton.’

  ‘Aye, well, nobody’s perfect. Anyroads, as I were saying – blue-arsed flies, t’ lot of ’em.’

  An impatient customer interrupted Freddie’s monologue, and Richmond took the opportunity to sip more beer. It was eight thirty on Monday evening, and the White Rose was about half full.

  ‘Keep your eyes skinned, lad,’ Sergeant Hatchley had instructed him. ‘Watch out for anybody who looks like doing a bolt.’ The orders couldn’t have been more vague. What on earth, Richmond wondered, did someone about to do a bolt look like? Would he have to sit up all night and watch for the culprit stealing down by the Swain with his belongings tied in a bag on the end of a stick slung over his shoulder, faithful cat at his heels, like Dick Whittington? Richmond had no idea. All he knew was that all the suspects had been told Banks had gone to Toronto.

  Richmond also had strict instructions not to identify himself and not to push himself forward in any way that might make the locals suspicious. In other words, he wasn’t to question anyone, no matter how casually. He could keep his ears open then, he was relieved to hear, especially for anything Sam Greenock might let slip over breakfast, or some titbit he might overhear in the White Rose. At least he’d pack away a few pints of Marston’s tonight. Maybe even smoke a panatella.

  ‘Where was I?’ Freddie asked, leaning on the bar again.

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Aye, murder.’ He nodded in the direction of the table in the far corner and whispered again. ‘And them there’s all t’ suspects.’

  ‘What makes them suspects?’ Richmond asked, hoping he was not exceeding his brief by asking the question.

  ‘’Ow would I know? All I know is that t’ police ’ave spent a lot of time wi’ ’em. An’ since yesterday they’ve all been on hot coals. Look at ’em now. You wouldn’t think they ’ad a big party coming up, would you?’

  It was true that the group hardly seemed jolly. John Fletcher chewed the stem of his stubby pipe; his dark brows met in a frown. Sam Greenock was staring into space and rocking his glass on the table. Stephen Collier was talking earnestly to Nicholas, who was trying very hard not to listen. Nicholas, in fact, seemed the only unconcerned one among them. He smiled and nodded at customers who came and went, whereas the other three hardly seemed to notice them.

  Richmond wished he could get closer and overhear what they were saying, but all the nearby tables were full. It would look too suspicious if he went and stood behind them.

  He ordered another pint. ‘And I’ll have a panatella too, please,’ he said. He felt like indulging in a rare treat: a cigar with his beer. ‘What party’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘A Collier do. Reg’lar as clockwork in summer.’

  ‘Can anyone go?’

  Tha must be joking, lad.’

  Richmond shrugged and smiled to show he was, indeed, jesting. ‘What’s wrong with them all, then?’ he asked. ‘You’re right. They don’t look like they’re contemplating a booze-up to me.’

  Metcalfe scratched his mutton chops. ‘I can’t be certain, tha knows, but it’s summat to do wi’ that London copper taking off for Canada. Talk about pale! Ashen, they went. But I’ll tell tha summat, it were good for business. Double brandies all round!’ Freddie nudged Richmond and laughed. ‘Aye, there’s nobody drinks like a murder suspect.’

  Richmond drew on his cigar and looked over at the table. Outside some enemy back in Toronto, it came down to these four. Come on, he thought to himself, make a bolt. Run for it, you bugger, just try it!

  FOUR

  ‘I don’t know what people do where you come from, but over here we like a bit of advance warning if some foreigner’s come to invade our territory.’

  Banks listened. There was nothing he could say; he had been caught fair and square. Fortunately, Staff Sergeant Gregson of the Toronto Homicide Squad was nearing the end of what had been a relatively mild bollocking, and even more fortunately, smoking was allowed – nay, encouraged – in his office.

  It was an odd feeling, being on the carpet. Not that this was the first time for Banks. There had been many occasions at school, and even one or two in his early days on the Metropolitan force, and they always brought back those feelings of terror and helplessness in the face of authority he had known as a working-class kid in Peterborough. Perhaps, he thought, that fear of authority might have motivated him to become a policeman in the first place. He knew he didn’t join in order to inflict such feelings on others, but it was possible that he did it to surmount them, to conquer them in himself.

  And now here he was, tongue-tied, unable to say a word in his own defence, yet inwardly seething with resentment at Gregson for putting him in such a position.

  ‘You’ve got no power here, you know,’ Gregson went on.

  Finally, Banks found his voice. Holding his anger in check, he said, ‘I wasn’t aware that I needed any special power to talk to people – either in England or in Canada.’

  ‘You won’t get anywhere being sarcastic with me,’ Gregson said, a smile tugging at the corners of his tightly clamped
mouth.

  He was a round man with a square head. His grey hair was closely cropped, and a brush-like wedge of matching moustache, nicotine-yellow around the ends of the bristles, sprouted under his squashed nose. As he spoke, he had a habit of running his fingers under the collar of his white shirt as if it was too tight. His skin had a pinkish plastic sheen, like a balloon blown up too much. Banks wondered what would happen if he pricked him. Would he explode, or would the air hiss out slowly as his features folded in on themselves?

  ‘What have you got against irony, Sergeant?’ Banks asked. That felt odd, too: being hauled up before a mere sergeant.

  ‘You know what they say about sarcasm being the lowest form of wit, don’t you?’ Gregson responded.

  ‘Yes. But at least it is a form of wit, which is better than none at all.’

  ‘I didn’t bring you here to bandy words.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Banks lit another cigarette and looked at the concrete and glass office blocks out of the window. His shirt was stuck with sweat to the back of the orange plastic chair. He felt his anger ebb into boredom. They were somewhere downtown in a futuristic air-conditioned building, but the office smelt of burning rubber and old cigar smoke. That was all he knew.

  ‘What are you going to do, then?’ Banks asked. ‘Arrest me?’

  Gregson shrugged. ‘For what? You haven’t done anything wrong.’

  Banks leaned forward. ‘Then why the bloody hell did you get Laurel and Hardy out there to bundle me in the back of a car and bring me here against my will?’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ Gregson said. ‘When Jordan phoned me and said there was a suspicious Englishman asking questions about Bernard Allen, what the fuck else could I do? What would you have done? Then it turned out to be you, a goddamn police inspector from England. And I hadn’t even been advised of your visit. I considered that an insult, which it is. And I didn’t find your remark on the phone about getting my man particularly funny, either. I’m not a Mountie.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused you, Sergeant,’ Banks said, standing up, ‘but I’d like to enjoy the rest of my holiday in peace, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Gregson said, making no move to stop him walking over to the door. ‘I don’t mind at all. But I think you ought to bear a few things in mind before you go storming off.’

  ‘What things?’ Banks asked, his palm slippery on the doorknob.

  ‘First of all, that what I said to you on the phone before is true: we don’t have the resources to work on this case. Secondly, yes, you can talk to as many people as you wish, providing they want to talk to you. And thirdly, you should have damn well asked for permission before jumping on that fucking jet and flying here half-cocked. What if you find your killer? What are you going to do then? Have you thought about that? Smuggle him out of the country? You could be getting yourself into a damn tricky legal situation if you’re not very careful.’ Gregson rubbed his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘All I’m saying is that there are things you can’t do acting alone, without authority.’

  ‘And you don’t have the resources. I know. You told me. Look, this is where I came in, so if you don’t mind—’

  ‘Wait!’ Gregson jumped to his feet and reached for his jacket.

  ‘Wait for what?’

  Gregson pushed past him through the door. ‘Come on,’ he said, half turning. ‘Just come with me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m going to save you from yourself.’

  Banks sighed and followed the sergeant down the corridor and down in the lift to the car park.

  There was enough room for a football team on the front seat of Gregson’s car. With the open windows sucking in what hot wet air they could, the staff sergeant drove up Yonge Street and turned right at the Hudson’s Bay building. On the crowded street corner, vendors sold icecream, T-shirts and jewellery; one man, surrounded by quite a crowd, was drawing large portraits in coloured chalk on the pavement.

  Farther along, Banks recognized the stretch of the Danforth he’d walked the previous day: the Carrot Common shopping centre; the little Greek restaurant where he’d eaten lunch; Quinn’s pub. They came to an intersection called Coxwell, and Gregson turned left. A few blocks up, he pulled to a halt outside a small apartment building. Sprinklers hissed on the well kept lawn. Banks was tempted to run under one for a cold shower.

  They walked up to the third floor, and Banks followed Gregson along the carpeted corridor to apartment 312.

  ‘Allen’s place,’ the staff sergeant announced.

  ‘Why are you helping me?’ Banks asked, as Gregson fitted the key in the door. ‘Why are you bringing me here? You said your department didn’t have the resources.’

  ‘That’s true. We’ve got a hunt on for a guy who sodomized a twelve-year-old girl, then cut her throat and dumped her in High Park. Been looking for leads for two months now. Twenty men on the case. But this is personal time. I don’t like it that a local guy got killed any more than you do. So I show you where he lived. It’s no big deal. Besides, like I said, I’m saving you from yourself. You’d probably have broken in, and then I’d have had to arrest you. Embarrassing all round.’

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ Banks said.

  They walked into the apartment.

  ‘Building owner’s been bugging us to let him rent it out again, but we’ve been stalling. He knows he’s sitting on a gold mine. We’ve got a zero vacancy rate in Toronto these days. Still, Allen paid first and last month when he moved in, so I figure he’s got a bit of time left. To tell you the truth, we don’t know who’s gonna take care of the guy’s stuff.’

  There wasn’t much: just a lot of books, Swedish assemble-it-yourself furniture, pots and pans, a few withered house plants and a desk and typewriter by the window. Bernard Allen had lived simply.

  The room was hot and stuffy. There was no sign of an air-conditioner, so Banks went over and opened a window. It didn’t make much difference.

  ‘What kind of search did your men do?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Routine. We didn’t open up every book or read every letter, if that’s what you mean. The guy didn’t keep much personal stuff around, anyway. It was all in that desk drawer.’

  Banks extracted a messy pile of bills and letters from the drawer. First, he put aside the bills then examined the sheaf of personal mail. They were all dated within the last six months or so, which meant that he threw his letters out periodically instead of hoarding them like some people. There were letters from his parents in Australia and one brief note from his sister acknowledging the dates of his proposed visit. Banks read these carefully, but found nothing of significance.

  It was a postcard from Vancouver dated about two weeks before Allen set off for England that proved the most revealing, but even that wasn’t enough. It read:

  Dear Bernie,

  Wrapping things up nicely out here. Weather great, so taking some time for sunbathing on Kitsilano Beach. It’ll be a couple more weeks before I get back, so I’ll miss you. Have a great trip and give my love to the folks in Swineshead! (Only joking – best not tell anyone you know me!) See you in the pub when you get back.

  Love,

  Julie

  It was perfectly innocent on the surface – just a postcard from a friend – so there was no reason why Gregson or his men should have been suspicious about it. But it was definitely from Anne Ralston, and it told Banks that she was going under the name of Julie now.

  ‘Looks like you’ve found something,’ Gregson said, looking over Banks’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s from the woman I’m looking for. I think she knows something about Allen’s murder.’

  ‘Look,’ Gregson said, ‘are we talking about a criminal here? Are there charges involved?’

  Banks shook his head. He wasn’t sure. Anne Ralston could certainly have murdered Raymond Addison and run for it,
but he didn’t want to tell Gregson that and risk the local police scaring her off.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They used to know each other in Swainshead, that’s all.’

  ‘And now they’ve met up over here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So?’

  Banks told him about Ralston’s disappearance and the Addison murder, stressing that she wasn’t seriously implicated in any way.

  ‘But she might have known something?’ Gregson said. ‘And told Allen. You think that’s what might have got him killed?’

  ‘It’s possible. We know that she asked him to keep quiet about meeting her over here, and we know he didn’t.’

  ‘Who did he talk to?’

  ‘That’s the problem. Someone who makes it his business to make sure that everyone who counts knows.’

  ‘It won’t be easy.’

  ‘What?’

  Gregson tapped the postcard. ‘Finding her. No address. No phone number. Nothing.’

  Banks sighed. ‘Believe me, I know. And all we’ve got is her first name. I’m just hoping I can dig out some of the spots she might turn up. She mentioned the pub, so at least I was right about her drinking with him there.’

  ‘Know how many pubs there are in Toronto?’

  ‘Don’t bother to tell me. I’d only get discouraged. It’s the kind of job I should have sent my sergeant on.’ Banks explained about Hatchley’s drinking habits and Gregson laughed.

  ‘Can I have a good look around?’ Banks asked.

  ‘Go ahead. I’ll be down in the car. Lock up behind you.’

  After the staff sergeant left, Banks puzzled over him for a moment. He was beginning to warm to Gregson and get some understanding of Canadians, especially those of distant British origin. They behaved with a strange mixture of patronage and respect towards the English. Perhaps they’d had British history rammed down their throats at school and needed to reject it in order to discover themselves. Or perhaps the English had simply become passé as far as immigrants went, and had been superseded by newer waves of Koreans, East Indians and Vietnamese.

  The next item of interest Banks found was an old photograph album dating back to Allen’s university days. There were pictures of his parents, his sister, and of the Greenocks standing outside a typical Armley back-to-back. But the most interesting was a picture dated ten years ago, in which Allen stood outside the White Rose with a woman named as Anne in the careful white print under the photo on the black page. The snap was a little blurred, an amateur effort with a Brownie by the look of it, but it was better than the one he’d got from Missing Persons. Anne looked very attractive in a low-cut T-shirt and a full, flowing Paisley skirt. She had long light brown hair, a high forehead and smiling eyes. Her face was heart-shaped and her lips curved up slightly at the corners. That was ten years ago, Banks thought, carefully taking the photo from its silver corners and pocketing it. Would she look like that now?