In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  What it all meant, he had no idea, except that he had to have the cottage.

  He didn’t think he would be able to afford it; properties in the Dales were fetching astronomical prices. But fortune and human eccentricity proved to be on his side for once. Mrs Perkins had no love whatsoever for the holiday cottage trade and no particular greed for mere money. She wanted to sell to someone who would actually live in the cottage. As soon as she found out that Banks was looking for just such a place, and that his name was the same as her maiden name, the deal was as good as done. The only black mark against Banks was that he wasn’t born a Yorkshireman, but she took to him anyway, convinced they were related, and she even flirted with him in that way some old ladies have.

  When she let him have the place for fifty thousand pounds, probably about half of what she could have got, telling him it would be enough to see her to her grave, Dimmoch, the estate agent, groaned and shook his head in disbelief. Afterwards, Banks always had the impression that Dimmoch suspected him of exerting undue pressure on Mrs Perkins.

  The cottage became Banks’s long-term project—his therapy, his refuge and, he hoped, his salvation. In an odd way, he felt, working on the cottage was like working on himself. Both needed renovating, and both had a long way to go. It was all new to him; he had never had the faintest interest in DIY or gardening before; nor had he been much inclined to self-analysis or introspection. But somehow he had lost his way over the past year, and he wanted to find a new one; he had also lost something of himself, and he wanted to know what it was. So far, he had fitted some pine cupboards in the kitchen, like the ones in his dream, installed a shower unit to replace the claw-footed Victorian bathtub, and painted the living-room. It hadn’t kept the depression away completely, but made it more manageable; at least he could always drag himself out of bed in the morning now, even if he didn’t always view the day ahead with any real relish.

  A nightbird called out far in the distance—a broken, eerie cry, as if perhaps some predator were threatening its nest. Banks stubbed out his cigarette and went back inside. As he got ready for bed, he thought of the skeletal hand, possibly human; he thought of DS Cabbot, definitely human; he thought of Hobb’s End, that lost, ruined village suddenly risen from the depths with its secrets; and somewhere in his mind, in the darkness way beyond the realms of logic and reason, he heard an echo, a click, felt something intangible connect across the years.

  Three

  Banks watched from the edge of the woods the next morning as the SOCOS slowly lifted the skeleton from its muddy grave under the expert direction of John Webb. First, they had to take down the wall next to which the bones were buried, then they made a trench around the area and dug down until the bones were exposed, about three feet below the surface. Next, they slipped a thin sheet of metal into the earth under the bones, and finally they got it in place, ready to lift out.

  The bones came up on the metal sheet, still packed in earth, and four SOCO pallbearers carried it up the slope, where they laid it out on the grass at Banks’s feet like a burnt offering. It had just gone eleven, and DS Cabbot still hadn’t shown up. Banks had already talked to Adam Kelly, who hadn’t been able to add anything to his previous statement.

  Adam was still shaken, but Banks sensed a resilience in him that he had also possessed as an early adolescent. Banks, too, had loved playing in derelict houses, of which there had been plenty in postwar Peterborough. The worst he had ever come away with was a scraped knee, but a pupil from the girls’ school had been killed by a falling rafter, so he knew how dangerous they could be. The council was always boarding them up. Anyway, Adam’s little adventure had done no lasting harm, and it would give him stories to tell well into the school term. He would enjoy celebrity status of a kind among his pals for a while.

  Banks stared at the filthy, twisted shape at his feet. It hardly looked human. The bones had taken on the muddy brown colour of the earth they had lain in for so long; they were also crusted with dark grungy muck. It stuck to the ribs the way a hearty stew was supposed to do, and it clung to various joints, clogging the cavities and crevices. The skull looked full of it—mud in the mouth, the nose, the eye-sockets—and some of the long bones looked like old, rusted metal pipes that had been underground for years.

  The sight of it all made Banks feel vaguely sick. He had seen much worse without throwing up, of course—at least there were no gaping red holes, no spilled intestines, no legs cut off at the thighs, skin riding up over the raw edges like a tight skirt—but he hadn’t seen much uglier.

  The SOCOS had already photographed the skeleton during every stage of its excavation, and once they had finished carrying it up the hill, they went back down and started their detailed search of the area, digging deeper and farther afield, leaving John Webb to give it a poke here and a scrape there. Webb also searched through the dirt for any objects that had been buried at the same time—buttons, jewellery, that sort of thing.

  Banks leaned back against a tree trunk, as if on sentry duty, kept his nausea under control and watched Webb work. He was tired; he had not slept well after his late-night musings. Most of the night he had tossed and turned, waking up often from fragments of nightmares that scuttled off into dark corners when he woke, like cockroaches when you turn on the light. The morning heat made him drowsy. Giving in to the feeling for a moment, he closed his eyes and rested his head on the tree. He could feel the rough bark against his crown, and the sunlight made kaleidoscopic patterns behind his eyelids. He was at the edge of sleep when he heard a rustling behind him, then a voice.

  “Morning, sir. Rough night?”

  “Something like that,” said Banks, moving away from the tree trunk.

  DS Cabbot stared down at the bones. “So this is what we all come to in the end, is it?” She didn’t sound particularly concerned about it; no more troubled than she seemed about turning up so late.

  “Any luck?” Banks asked.

  “That’s what took me so long. The university year hasn’t started yet and a lot of profs are still away on holiday, or busy running research projects overseas. Anyway, I’ve tracked down a Dr Ioan Williams, University of Leeds. He’s a physical anthropologist with a fair bit of experience in forensic work. He sounded pretty excited by what we’ve found. Must be having a dull summer.”

  “How quickly can he get to it?”

  “He said if we could get the remains to the university lab as soon as possible, he’d have his assistants clean them up, then he’d manage a quick look by early evening. Only a preliminary look, mind you.”

  “Good,” said Banks. “The sooner we know what we’re dealing with here, the better.”

  If the skeleton had been lying there for a hundred years or more, the investigation wouldn’t really be worth pursuing with any great vigour, as they would be hardly likely to catch a living criminal. On the other hand, if it turned out to be a murder victim, and if it had been buried there during or since the war, there was a chance that somebody still living might remember something. And there was also a chance that the killer was still alive.

  “Want me to supervise the move?” Webb asked. Banks nodded. “If you would, John. Need a mortuary wagon?”

  Webb held his hand over his eyes to shield the sun as he looked up. A few of the silver hairs in his beard caught the light. “My old Range Rover will do just fine. I’ll get one of the lads to drive while I stay in the back and make sure our friend here doesn’t fall to pieces.” He looked at his watch. “With any luck, we can have it in the lab by one o’clock.”

  DS Cabbot leaned back against a tree, arms folded, one leg crossed over the other. Today she was wearing a red T-shirt and white Nikes with her jeans, her sunglasses pushed up over her hairline. Pretty loose dress codes at Harkside, it seemed to Banks, but then he was one to talk. He had always hated suits and ties, right from his early days as a business student at London Polytechnic. He had spent three years there on a sandwich course—six months college and six months work—an
d the student life fast made encroachments on his dedication to the business world. Everyone at the poly was joining up with the sixties thing back then, even though it was the early seventies; it was all caftans, bell-bottoms and Afghans, bright, embroidered Indian cheesecloth shirts, bandannas, beads, the whole caboodle. Banks had never committed himself fully to the spirit of the times, neither in philosophy nor in dress, but he had let his hair grow over his collar, and he was once sent home from work for wearing sandals and a flowered tie.

  “I need to know a lot more about the village,” he said to DS Cabbot. “Some names would be a great help. Try the Voters’ Register and the Land Registry.” He pointed towards the ruins of the cottage near the bridge. “The outbuilding clearly belonged to that cottage, so I’d like to know who lived there and who the neighbours were. It seems to me that we’ve got three possibilities. Either we’re dealing with someone who used the empty village as a dumping spot to bury a body during the time it was in disuse—”

  “Between May 1946 and August 1953. I checked this morning.”

  “Right. Either then, or the body was buried while the village was still occupied, before May 1946, and the victim wasn’t buried too far from home. Or it was put there this summer, as you suggested earlier. It’s too early for speculation, but we do need to know who lived in that cottage when, and if anyone from the village was reported missing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened to the church? I’m assuming there was one.”

  “A church and a chapel. St Bartholomew’s was decon-secrated, then demolished.”

  “Where are the parish records now?”

  “I don’t know. Never had cause to seek them out. I imagine they were moved to St Jude’s in Harkside, along with all the coffins from the graveyard.”

  “They might be worth a look if you draw a blank elsewhere. You never know what you can find out from old church records and parish magazines. There’s the local newspaper, too. What’s it called?”

  “The Harkside Chronicle.”

  “Right. Might be worth looking there, too, if our expert can narrow the range a bit this evening. And DS Cabbot?”

  “Sir?”

  “Look, I can’t keep calling you DS Cabbot. What’s your first name?”

  She smiled. “Annie, sir. Annie Cabbot.”

  “Right, Annie Cabbot, do you happen to know how many doctors or dentists there were in Hobb’s End?”

  “I shouldn’t imagine there were many. Most people probably went to Harkside. Maybe there were a few more around when everyone was working in the flax mill. Very altruistic, very concerned about their workers’ welfare, some of these old mill owners.”

  “Very concerned they were fit to work a sixteen-hour shift without dropping dead, more like,” said Banks.

  Annie laughed. “Bolshevik.”

  “I’ve been called worse. Try to find out, anyway. It’s a long shot, but if we can find any dental records matching the remains, we’ll be in luck.”

  “I’ll look into it, sir. Anything else?”

  “Utilities, tax records. They might all have to be checked.”

  “And what should I do next year?”

  Banks smiled. “I’m sure you can conscript one of your PCs to help. If we don’t get a break soon, I’ll see what I can do about manpower, though somehow I doubt this is a high-priority case.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “For now, let’s concentrate on the identity of the victim. That’s crucial.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just a thought, but, do you happen to know if there’s anyone who lived in Hobb’s End still alive, maybe living in Harkside now? It doesn’t seem an unreasonable assumption.”

  “I’ll ask Inspector Harmond. He grew up around these parts.”

  “Good. I’ll leave you to it and see these bones off to Leeds with John.”

  “Do you want me to go down there this evening?”

  “If you like. Meet me at the lab at six o’clock. Know where it is?”

  Annie nodded. “Dr Williams explained over the phone.” She told Banks.

  “In the meantime,” he said, “here’s my mobile number. Give me a ring if you come up with anything.”

  “Right you are, sir.” Annie seemed to just touch her sunglasses and they slid down perfectly into place on her nose. With that, she turned and strode off into the woods.

  Banks was an odd fish, Annie thought as she drove back to Harkside. Of course, before she’d met him she’d heard a few rumours. She knew, for example, that Chief Constable Riddle hated him, that Banks was under a cloud, almost lost in the clouds, though she didn’t know why. Someone had even hinted at fisticuffs between the two. Whatever the reason, his career was on hold and he was not a good horse to hitch one’s wagon to.

  Annie had no particular liking for Jimmy Riddle, either.

  On the one or two occasions she had met him, she had found him arrogant and condescending. Annie was one of Millie’s projects—ACC Millicent Cummings, new Director of Human Resources, dedicated to bringing more women into the ranks and seeing that they were well treated—and the antagonism between Millie and Riddle, who had opposed her appointment from the start, was well known. Not that Riddle was especially for the ill-treatment of women, but he preferred to avoid the problem altogether by keeping their presence among the ranks to an absolute minimum.

  Annie had also heard that Banks’s wife had left him for someone else not too long ago. Not only that, but there were stories going around that he had a woman in Leeds, had had for some time, even before his wife left. She had heard him described as a loner, a skiver and a Bolshy bastard. He was a brilliant detective gone to seed, they said, over the hill since his wife left, past it, burned out, a shadow of his former self.

  On first impressions, Annie didn’t really know what to make of him. She thought she liked him. She certainly found him attractive, and he didn’t look much older than his mid-thirties, despite the scattering of grey at the temples of his closely cropped black hair. As far as being burned out was concerned, he seemed tired and he seemed to carry a burden of sadness in him, but she could sense that the fire still smouldered somewhere behind his sharp blue eyes. A little diminished in power, perhaps, but still there.

  On the other hand, perhaps he really had lost it, and he was simply going through the motions, content to shuffle paper until retirement. Perhaps the fire she sensed in him was simply embers, not fully extinguished yet, just about to cave in on themselves. Well, if Annie had learned one thing over the past couple of years, it was not to jump to conclusions about anyone: the brave man often appears weak; the wise man often seems foolish. After all, enough people thought she was weird, too, and it wouldn’t be hard to argue that she been merely going through the motions lately, either. She wondered if there were any rumours about her going around the region. If there were, she had a good guess what they would be: dyke bitch.

  Annie parked on the strip of tarmac beside the ugly brick section station and walked inside. Only four of them worked directly out of the station: Inspector Harmond, Annie and PCs Cameron and Gould. Apart from Samantha, their civilian clerk, Annie was the only woman. That was okay with her; they seemed a pretty decent bunch of men, as men go. She certainly felt no threat from any of them. PC Cameron was married, with two kids to whom he was clearly devoted. Gould seemed to be one of those rare types who have no sexual dimension whatsoever, content to live at home with his mum, play with his model trains and add stamps to his album. She knew that in books such types often turn out to be the most dangerous of all, the serial killers and sexual deviants, but Gould was harmless. Even if he liked to wear women’s underwear in private, Annie didn’t care. Inspector Harmond was, well, avuncu-lar. He liked to think himself as a bit like Sergeant Blake-ton out of “Heartbeat,” but he didn’t even come close, in Annie’s opinion.

  Harkside police station might be ugly on the outside but at least inside it was a sparsely populated open-plan office area—
apart from Inspector Harmond’s office, partitioned off at the far end—and there was plenty of room to spread oneself around. Annie liked that. Her L-shaped desk was the messiest of all, but she knew where everything was and could put her hands on anything anyone asked her for so quickly that even Inspector Harmond had given up teasing her about it.

  Annie’s desk also took up a corner, part of which included a side window. It wasn’t much of a view, only the cobbled alley, a gate and the back wall of the Three Feathers, but at least she was close to a source of light and air, and it was good to be able to see something of the outside world. Even if there was hardly any breeze these days, she loved each gentle waft of warm air through the window; it lifted her spirits. These little things mattered so much, Annie had discovered. She had had her shot at the big-time, the fast-track, with all its excitement, but it had ended badly for her. Now she was slowly rediscovering what mattered in life.

  Harkside was generally a law-abiding sort of community, so there wasn’t a lot for a detective sergeant to do. There was plenty of paperwork to keep her occupied, make her feel she’d earned her pay, but it was hardly a high-overtime posting, and there were slack periods. That also suited her fine. Sometimes it was good to do nothing. And why should she complain if enough people weren’t getting robbed, killed or beaten up?

  Just now, she had two domestic violence cases and a spate of after-dark vandalism on her plate. And now the skeleton. Well, the others could wait. Inspector Harmond had increased patrols in the area most often hit by the vandals, who would probably be caught red-handed before long, and the wife-beaters were at the moment contrite and arranging to seek help.

  Annie headed first to the coffee machine and filled her mug, the one with “She Who Must Be Obeyed” written on it, then she walked over and knocked on Inspector Harmond’s door. He asked her to come in.

  “Sir?”

  Harmond looked up from his desk. “Annie. What is it, lass?”