In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  In some way, it all came together with Mick Slack, fifth-form bully, two years older and six inches taller than Banks. One day, in the schoolyard, for no reason, Slack started pushing and shoving a kid called Graham Marshall. Marshall was in Banks’s class and was always a bright, quiet, shy kid, the sort the others taunted by calling him a puff and a pansy, but mostly left alone. When Banks stepped in, Slack pushed him instead, and a skirmish followed. More by speed and stealth, Banks managed to wind Slack and knock him to the tarmac before the teacher came out and stopped it. Slack swore vengeance, but he never got the chance. He was killed two days later on his way to play for the school rugby team, when his motorbike ran smack into a brick wall.

  The strangest thing was, though, that about six months later, Graham Marshall disappeared and was never seen again. Police detectives came and questioned everyone in his class, asking if they had seen any strangers hanging around the school, or if Graham had told them about anyone suspicious, anyone who was bothering him. Nobody had. Banks felt especially impotent at being so useless to the police, and he remembered that feeling years later when he was on the other side of the interview table watching witnesses flounder as they tried to remember details.

  The theory was that Graham had been abducted by a child molester and his body buried in some forest miles away. That made three deaths Banks had been exposed to as an adolescent, including Phil Simpkins, who had swung onto the sharp iron railings, but it was the ultimate mystery of Graham Marshall’s disappearance that haunted him most of all.

  All the petty duties and details of a policeman’s job aside, Banks’s obsession was with reconstructing lives that had been viciously derailed or extinguished by violence, and with bringing down as many bullies as possible. When the victims were dead, of course, he couldn’t defend them, but he could damn well find out what had happened to them and bring the bullies to justice. It wasn’t foolproof; it didn’t always work; but it was all he had. That was what he had to get back to, or he might as well pack it all in and join Group 7 or some other private security outfit.

  He went back to his desk and sat down. As he looked at Gloria’s pose again—beautiful, erotic, sensual, playful, but also challenging, mocking, as if she knew some sort of secret about the artist, or shared one with him—he felt that in this case he was needed as much as ever. He was convinced that Gloria Shackleton was the victim they had found buried at Hobb’s End, and he wanted to know what she was like, what had happened to her and why no one had reported her missing. Did people just think she had vanished into space, been abducted by aliens or something? The bully who had killed her might well be dead, but that didn’t matter a damn to Banks. He needed to know.

  Dr Glendenning’s call cut into his thoughts.

  “Ah, Banks,” he said. “Glad I caught you in. You’re very lucky I happened to be in Leeds, you know. Otherwise you could have whistled for your post-mortem. There are plenty of fresh cadavers craving my expert attention.”

  “I’m sure there are. My apologies. I promise to do better in the future.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Nothing much to add to what Dr Williams told you, I’m afraid.”

  “She was stabbed, then?”

  “Oh, yes. And viciously, too.”

  “How many times?”

  “Fourteen or fifteen, as far as I can tell. I wouldn’t swear to that, of course, given the condition of the skeleton and the time that has elapsed since death.”

  “Is that what killed her?”

  “What do you think I am, laddie? A miracle worker? It’s not possible to say what killed her, though the knife wounds would have done the trick. Judging from the angles and positions of the nicks, the blade would almost certainly have pierced several vital organs.”

  “Did you find evidence of any other injury?”

  “Patience, laddie. That’s what I’m getting to, if you’ll slow down and give me the chance. It’s all that caffeine, you know. Too much coffee. Try a nice herbal tea, for a change.”

  “I’ll do that. Tomorrow. But tell me now.”

  “I found possible, and I stress possible, signs of manual strangulation.”

  “Strangulation?”

  “That’s what I said. And stop echoing me. If I needed a bloody parrot I’d buy one. I’m going by the hyoid bones in the throat. Now, these are very fragile bones, almost always broken during manual strangulation, but I say it’s only possible because the damage could have occurred over time, due to other causes. The weight of all that earth and water, for example. I must say, though, the skeleton was in remarkable condition considering where it’s been for so long.”

  “Would that make it more probable than possible?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “ ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  Glendenning sighed theatrically. “And to think that fellow was a doctor. All right, shall we say it’s certainly not impossible, and even quite likely that the poor woman was strangled. Is that clear enough for you?”

  “Before she was stabbed.”

  “How would I know that? Honestly, Banks, you either have an over-inflated opinion of the medical profession or you’re being just plain bloody-minded. Knowing you, I’d bet on the latter. But let us, just for once, be reasonable about this, shall we, and apply a little logic?”

  “By all means. My, my, you’re grumpy this morning, aren’t you, Doc?”

  “Aye. It’s what happens when my own doctor tells me to lay off the coffee. And I’ve told you before not to call me Doc. It’s disrespectful. Now, listen. The way this poor woman was stabbed stopped just short of chopping her into little pieces. It would seem very unlikely to me—not impossible, but very improbable, if you like—that her killer felt any need to strangle her after he had done this. The degree of rage involved would probably have left him quite exhausted, for a start, not to mention the anger vented, and the almost post-coital relaxation some killers feel after perpetrating extremely violent acts. So I’d say the strangulation came first and then, for whatever reason, the stabbing. That kind of thing is statistically more common, too.”

  “So why the stabbing? To make sure she was dead?”

  “I doubt it. Though it’s true she may have still been alive after the strangulation, may just have lost consciousness. As I said, we’re dealing with anger, with rage, here. That’s the only explanation. In the vernacular, whoever did it got carried away with killing. Literally saw red. Either that or he knew exactly what he was doing and he enjoyed himself.”

  “He?”

  “Again, statistically more likely. Though I wouldn’t rule out a strong woman. But you know as well as I do, Banks, that these sorts of things are usually lust-related. Either that or they stem from very strong passions, such as jealousy, revenge, obsession, greed and the like. I suppose it could have been a wronged wife or a woman spurned, a lesbian relationship gone wrong. But statistically speaking, it’s men who do these things. I hesitate to do your job for you, but I don’t think you’re dealing with a run-of-the-mill sort of crime. It doesn’t look like a murder committed during a robbery, or to cover up a secret. Of course, murderers can be damnably clever sometimes and disguise one sort of crime to look like another. Fault of all these detective novels, if you ask me.”

  “Right,” said Banks, scrawling away on the pad he’d pulled in front of him. That was the trouble with computers; it was bloody awkward to write on them when you were speaking on the telephone. “What about the parturition marks?”

  “That’s exactly what they are, in my opinion.”

  “So there’s no chance that they were also caused by the knife, or by time?”

  “Well, there’s always a chance that something else could have caused them, some animal, friction from a small stone or pebble, or suchlike, though given where she was found I say we can pretty much exclude
the chance of scavenger activity. After so long, though, it’s impossible to be a hundred per cent sure about anything. But judging by the distinctive position and appearance, I’d say they’re parturition marks. The woman had a baby, Banks. There’s no saying when, of course.”

  “Okay,” said Banks. “Thanks very much, Doc.”

  Glendenning snorted and hung up.

  All through February and March 1942, day after day, I followed the news reports. They were censored and incomplete, of course, but I read about the estimated sixty thousand British taken prisoner at Singapore, and about the fighting near the Sittang River, from where Matthew wrote Gloria another letter, telling her how things were pretty dull and safe really, and not to worry. Clearly, it’s not only governments that lie during wartime.

  Then, on 8 March, we heard about the fall of Rangoon. Our morale at home was pretty low, too. In April, the Germans gave up all pretence of bombing military and industrial targets and started bombing cities of great architectural beauty such as Bath, Norwich and York, which was getting very close to home.

  I remembered when Leeds, only about thirty miles away, had its worst raid of the war, about a month before Gloria arrived. Matthew and I took the train in the next day to see what it looked like. The City Museum, right at the corner of Park Row and Bond Street, had taken a direct hit and all the stuffed lions and tigers we had thrilled over on childhood visits hung in the overhead tram wires like creatures thrown from an out-of-control carousel. I wanted to go and see the damage in York, but Mrs Shipley, our stationmaster, told me York station had been bombed, so no trains were allowed in. At least she was able to assure me that they hadn’t destroyed the Minster.

  It was a miserable spring, though we had the sunniest April in forty years. There were the usual random shortages. Items simply disappeared from the shelves for weeks on end. One week you couldn’t get fish for love nor money; the next it was poultry. In February, soap was rationed to sixteen ounces every four weeks; the civilian petrol ration was cut out completely in March, which meant no more motoring for pleasure. We still managed to retain a small petrol ration, though, because we needed the van to make pick-ups from wholesalers.

  I followed the news far more closely than I had before, scouring all the newspapers, from The Times and the News Chronicle to the Daily Mirror, the minute they came in on the first train, cutting out articles and pasting them into a scrapbook, spending hours tracing meandering rivers and crooked coastlines in the atlas. Even so, I never managed to get a true picture of what life was like for Matthew out there. I could imagine it from my reading of Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham, but that was the best I could do.

  I wrote to him every day, which was probably more often than Gloria did. She was never much of a letter-writer. Matthew didn’t write back that often, but when he did he would always assure us he was well. Mostly, he complained about the monsoons and the humid jungle heat, the insects and the dreadful terrain. He never said anything directly about fighting and killing, so for a long time we didn’t even know if he had been in battle. Once, though, he wrote that boredom seemed the greatest enemy: “Long stretches of boredom relieved only by the occasional brief skirmish,” was the way he put it. Somehow, I had the idea that these “brief skirmishes” were a good deal more dangerous and terrifying than the boredom.

  As time passed, we got used to Matthew’s absence and enjoyed what we could of him through his letters. Gloria would read bits from his to her (no doubt missing out all the embarrassing lovey-dovey stuff) and I would read from his to me. Sometimes, I sensed, she was jealous because he wrote to me more about ideas and books and philosophy and to her mostly about day-to-day things like food and mosquitoes and blisters.

  That September, Pride and Prejudice, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, finally came to the Lyceum. Gloria had just had a tooth extracted by old Granville after suffering toothache for several days. I told her I thought it was a crime the prices he charged for such poor work, but she countered that Brenchley, in Harkside, a notorious butcher, was even more expensive. As usual, Granville did more damage than good and poor Gloria had been bleeding from the torn gum for more than a day. She was just beginning to feel a little better and I managed to persuade her to come to the pictures with me. As it turned out, she actually admitted to enjoying the film. That shouldn’t have surprised me. It wasn’t exactly the sharp-witted, ironic Jane Austen I knew from the books; it was far more romantic. Still, it made a nice change from all the silly comedies and musicals she had been dragging me to see lately.

  Double summer time made it easy for us to see our way across the fields that night. It was a beautiful autumn evening tinged with smoky green and golden light, the kind of evening when I used to go out and enjoy the stubble-burning just after dark before the war, when you could smell the acrid, sweet smoke drifting in the air over the fields and see the little fires stretched out for miles along the horizon. Sadly, there was no stubble-burning in the war; we didn’t want the Germans to know where our empty fields were.

  This evening was almost as beautiful, even without the smoke and the little fires. I could see the purple heather darkening on the distant moortops to the west, hear the nightbirds calling, smell clean, hay-scented air and feel the dry grass swish against my bare legs as I walked.

  Despite the ravages of war and Matthew’s being far away, I felt as deeply content as I had ever been at that moment. Yet as we came down towards the fairy bridge in the gathering darkness, I felt that chilling shudder of apprehension, as if a goose had stepped over my grave, as Mother would have said. Gloria, arm linked in mine, was chatting on and on about how handsome Laurence Olivier was, and she obviously didn’t notice, so I let it go by.

  As the weeks passed, I tried to dismiss the feeling, but it had a way of creeping back. There was plenty to rejoice about, I told myself: Matthew continued to write regularly and assured us he was doing well; the Red Army seemed to be making gains at Stal-ingrad; and the tide had turned in North Africa.

  But after the victory at El Alamein that November, when I lay on my bed and listened to the church bells ring for the first time in years, all I could do was cry because Matthew had had no bells at his wedding.

  “First off,” Annie told Banks over the phone later that day, “I can find no official record of Gloria Shackleton at all after the wedding notice in 1941. There’s no missing-persons report in our files and no death notice anywhere. The Harkside Chronicle, by the way, suspended publication between 1942 and 1946 because of paper shortages, so that’s no use as a source. There’s always the Yorkshire Post, of course, if they took any interest in the Harkside area. Anyway, it looks as if she disappeared from the face of the earth.”

  “Did you check with immigration?” Banks asked.

  “Yes. Nothing.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “Well, I was able to dig up a bit more about her life at Hobb’s End, most of it pieced together from the parish magazine. She’s first mentioned in the May 1941 issue, welcomed to the parish as a member of the Women’s Land Army, assigned to work at a place called Top Hill Farm, just outside the village.”

  “Top Hill Farm? Did you find out who owned the place?”

  “I did. It was a Mr Frederick Kilnsey and his wife, Edith. They had one son called Joseph, who was called up. That’s why they got Gloria. Apparently, it wasn’t a very big farm, just a few cows, poultry, sheep and a few acres of land. Anyway, Joseph didn’t come back. Killed at El Alamein. By then, Gloria was living at Bridge Cottage.”

  “Still working for the Kilnseys?”

  “Yes. I suppose it was a mutually convenient arrangement. They needed her, especially with Joseph dead, and she could live at Bridge Cottage and stay close to what family she had in Hobb’s End.”

  “All this from the parish magazine?”

  “Well, I’m embroidering just a little. But it’s remarkably informative, don’t you think? I mean, it’s easy enough to joke about how petty the news items the
y publish are at the time—you know, like ‘Farmer Jones loses sheep in winter storm’—but when you’re looking back into something like this, it’s a real treasure trove. Unfortunately, they also stopped publication early in 1942. Paper shortage again.”

  “Pity. Go on.”

  “That’s about it, really. Gloria married the Shackletons’ eldest child, Matthew. He was twenty-one and she was nineteen. He had a younger sister called Gwynneth. I assume she was the same one who witnessed the marriage.”

  “What became of her?”

  “She was still around in the last issue, March 1942, as far as I know. Wrote a little piece on growing your own onions, in fact.”

  “How fascinating. What about Matthew?”

  “The last time he was mentioned he was shipping overseas.”

  “Where?”

  “Didn’t say. Secret, I suppose.”

  “Any idea where any of these people moved to when they cleared out of Hobb’s End?”

  “No. But I did ring Ruby Kettering. She knows two people still living who lived in Hobb’s End during the war. There’s Betty Goodall, who lives in Edinburgh, and Alice Poole in Scarborough. She thinks they’d be thrilled to talk to us.”

  “Okay. Look, I’ve decided to send DS Hatchley to London tomorrow. Which do you fancy: Edinburgh or Scarborough?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me. Anything’s better than checking births and deaths.”

  “I’ll toss for it. Heads or tails?”

  “How can I trust you over the telephone?”

  “Trust me. Heads or tails?”

  “This is crazy. Heads.”

  Annie paused a moment and heard a sound like a coin clinking on a metal desk. She smiled to herself. Insane. Banks came back on. “It was heads. Your choice.”