In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  “I told you, it doesn’t really matter. I’ll take Scarborough, though, if you insist. I like the seaside there, and it’s not as far to drive.”

  “Okay. If I get an early enough start I can be up to Edinburgh and back by early evening. Plenty of time for us to compare notes. I’d like to get something on tonight’s news, first.”

  “Like what?”

  “I want to put Gloria’s name out there, see if anything comes back. I know we might be jumping the gun, but you never know. We’ve got no idea what happened to the Shackletons, and Gloria may have had family in London who are still alive. They might know what happened to her. Or, if we’re wrong about it all, she might drop by the station herself and let us know she’s still alive.”

  Annie laughed. “Right.”

  “Anyway, I’ll try local television. That way I can get them to show the postcard.”

  “What? Nudity on the local news?”

  “They can crop it.”

  “Let me know what time you’ll be on.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can set my VCR. Bye.”

  “So Jimmy Riddle thinks he’s dropped you in the shit with this one, then?” said DS Hatchley, after swallowing his first bite of toasted teacake.

  “To put it succinctly, yes,” said Banks. “I think he was also pretty sure this case wouldn’t involve race relations or any of his rich and influential friends from the Lodge.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Hatchley said. “I’d imagine quite a few of them have got skeletons in their cupboards.”

  “Ouch.”

  They were sitting in the Golden Grill, just across the street from Eastvale Divisional HQ. Outside, Market Street was packed with tourists, jackets or cardigans slung over their shoulders, cameras around their necks. Like sheep up on the unfenced moorland roads, they strayed all over the narrow street. The local delivery vans had to inch through, horns blaring.

  Most of the tables had already been taken when they went in, but they had managed to find one near the back. Once the two of them had sat down and given their orders to the bustling waitress, Banks told Hatchley about the skeleton. By the time he had finished, their order arrived.

  Banks knew his sergeant had a reputation as an idle sod and a thug. His appearance didn’t help. Hatchley was big, slow-moving and bulky, like a rugby prop forward gone to seed, with straw hair, pink complexion, freckles and a piggy nose. His suits were shiny, ties egg-stained, and he usually looked as if he had just been dragged through a hedge backwards. But it had always been Banks’s experience that once Hatchley got his teeth into something, he was a stubborn and dogged copper, and damned difficult to shake off. The problem lay in getting him motivated in the first place.

  “Anyway, we think we know who the victim was, but we want to cover all possibilities. What I’d like you to do is take PC Bridges and go down to London tomorrow. Here’s a list of information I’d like.” Banks passed over a sheet of paper.

  Hatchley glanced at it, then looked up. “Can’t I take WPC Sexton instead?”

  Banks grinned. “Ellie Sexton? And you a married man. I’m ashamed of you, Jim.”

  Hatchley winked. “Spoilsport.”

  Banks looked at his watch. “Before you go, could you put out a nationwide request for information on similar crimes in the same time period? This is a bit tricky because it’s an old crime and they’ll drag their feet. But there’s a chance someone might have something unsolved with a similar MO on the books. I’ll put someone on checking our local records, too.”

  “You think this was part of a series?”

  “I don’t know, Jim, but what Dr Glendenning told me about the manner of death made me think I shouldn’t overlook that possibility. I’ve also asked the SOCOS to broaden their search to include the general Hobb’s End area. Given what I’ve just heard from Dr Glendenning about the way she died, I wouldn’t like to think we’re sitting on another 25 Cromwell Street without knowing it.”

  “I’m sure the press would have a field day with that,” said Hatchley. “They could call it the Hobb’s End House of Horrors. Nice ring to it.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Aye.” Hatchley paused and finished his teacake. “This DS Cabbot you’re working with down Harkside,” said he. “I don’t think I’ve come across him yet. What’s he like?”

  “She’s pretty new around here,” Banks said. “But she seems to be working out okay.”

  “She?” Hatchley raised his eyebrows. “Bit of all right, then?”

  “Depends on your type. Anyway, you seem to be showing a dangerous interest in these things for a man with a wife and child of his own. How are Carol and April, by the way?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “Over the teething?”

  “A long time ago, that were. But thanks for asking, sir.” Banks finished his teacake. “Look, Jim,” he said, “if I’ve been a bit distant this past while, you know, haven’t shown much interest in you and your family, it’s just that . . . well, I’ve had a lot of problems. There’s been a few changes. A lot to get used to.”

  “Aye.”

  Bloody hell, Banks thought. Aye. The word with a thousand meanings. He struggled on. “Anyway, if you thought I ignored you or cut you out in any way, I apologize.”

  Hatchley paused for a moment, eyes everywhere but on Banks. Finally, he clasped his ham-like hands on the red-and-white checked tablecloth, still avoiding eye contact. “Let’s just forget about it, shall we, sir? Water under the bridge. We’ve all had our crosses to bear these past few months, maybe you more than most of us. Talking of crosses, I suppose you’ve heard they’re changing our name to Crime Management?”

  Banks nodded. “Yes.”

  Hatchley mimicked picking up a telephone. “Good morning, Crime Management here, madam. How can we help you? Not enough crime in your neighbourhood. Dear, dear. Well, yes, I’m certain there’s some to spare on the East Side Estate. Yes, I’ll look into it right away and see if I can get some sent over by this afternoon. Bye-bye, madam.”

  Banks laughed.

  “I mean, really,” Hatchley went on. “If this goes on, they’ll be calling you a Senior Crime Consultant next.”

  The door opened and WPC Sexton walked over to them. Hatchley nudged Banks and pointed. “Here she is. The belle of Eastvale Divisional.”

  “Fuck off, Sarge,” she said, then turned to Banks. “Sir, we just got an urgent message from a DS Cabbot in Harkside. She wants you to get down there as soon as you can. She said a lad named Adam Kelly has something he wants to tell you.”

  The telegram, in its unmistakable orange cover, came to the shop, for some reason. I remember the date; it was Palm Sunday, 18 April 1943, and Mother and I had just got back from church. Gloria was working that day, so, heart thumping and heavy, I had to leave Mother to her tears and run up to Top Hill Farm. Though it was a chilly afternoon, the sweat was pouring off me by the time I got there.

  I found Gloria collecting eggs in the chicken shack. She had one in her palm and she held it out to show me. “It’s so warm,” she said. “Freshly laid. But what are you doing here, Gwen? You look out of breath. Your eyes. Have you been crying?”

  Panting, I handed over the telegram to her. She read it, her face turned ashen and she sagged back against the flimsy wooden wall. A nail squealed in the wood and the chickens squawked. The sheet of paper fluttered from her tiny hand to the dirt floor. She didn’t cry right there and then, but a soft moan came from her mouth. “Oh, no,” she said. “No.” Almost as if she had been expecting it. Then her whole body started to tremble. I wanted to go to her, but somehow I knew that I mustn’t. Not just yet, not until she had let the first pangs of grief shake her and rip through her alone.

  She closed her hand by her side and the egg broke. Bright yellow yolk stained her dainty fingers, and long strings of viscous glair trailed down towards the straw-covered earth.

  The Kellys’ house stood in the middle o
f a terrace block on the B-road east of the Harkside. There was an infants’ school across the road, and next to that a Pay ’n’ Display car park to encourage tourists not to clog the village centre. Beyond the car park, a meadow full of buttercups and clover descended eastwards to the West Yorkshire border and the banks of Linwood Reservoir.

  Mrs Kelly answered the door and asked them in. Banks could sense the tension immediately. The aftermath of a scolding; it was a familiar childhood sensation of his, and the scoldings were usually dished out by his mother. Though it was never openly admitted, Banks knew his father believed that household discipline was a woman’s job. Only if Banks cheeked her off or tried to resist did his father step in and sort things out with his belt.

  “He won’t say owt,” Mrs Kelly said. She was a plain, harried-looking woman in her early thirties, old before her time, with limp, tired hair and a drawn face. “I challenged him on it when he came home for his lunch, and he ran off up to his room. He wouldn’t go back to school and he won’t come down.”

  “Challenged him on what, Mrs Kelly?” Banks asked.

  “What he stole.”

  “Stole?”

  “Yes. I found it when I were cleaning his room. From that . . . that there skeleton. I left it where I found it. I didn’t want to touch it. Anyone would think I haven’t brought him up right. It’s not easy when you’re on your own.”

  “Calm down, Mrs Kelly,” Annie said, stepping forward and resting her hand on her arm. “Nobody’s blaming you for anything. Or Adam. We just want to get to the bottom of it, that’s all.”

  The room was hot and a woman on television was explaining how to make the perfect soufflé. Because it was late afternoon, and they were facing east, there was very little light. Banks was already beginning to feel claustrophobic.

  “May I go up and talk to him?” he asked.

  “You’ll get nowt out of him. Clammed up, he has.”

  “May I try?”

  “Suit yourself. Left at the top of the stairs.”

  Banks glanced at Annie, who tried to settle Mrs Kelly in an armchair, then he made his way up the narrow, carpeted stairway. He knocked first on Adam’s door and, getting no response, opened it a short way and stuck his head around. “Adam?” he said. “It’s Mr Banks. Remember me?”

  Adam lay on his side on the single bed. He turned slowly, wiped his forearm across his eyes and said, “You’ve not come to arrest me, have you? I don’t want to go to jail.”

  “Nobody’s going to take you to jail, Adam.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing, honest I didn’t.”

  “Why don’t you just calm down and tell me what happened? We’ll get it sorted. Can I come in?”

  Adam sat up on the bed. He was a fair-haired kid with thick glasses, freckles and sticking-out ears, the kind who is often teased at school and develops an active fantasy life to escape. The kind Banks used to defend from bullies, perhaps. His eyes were red with crying. “Suppose so,” he said.

  Banks went inside the small bedroom. There were no chairs, so he sat on the edge of the bed, at the bottom. Posters of muscular sword-and-sorcery heroes wielding enormous broadswords hung on the walls. A small computer sat on a desk, and a pile of old comic books stood by the bedside. That was about all there was room for. Banks left the door open.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” he asked.

  “I thought it were magic,” Adam said. “The Talisman. That’s why I went there.”

  “Went where?”

  “Hobb’s End. It’s a magic place. It were destroyed in a battle between good and evil, but there’s still magic buried there. I thought it would make me invisible.”

  “He reads too many of them comic books,” a voice said, accusingly. Banks turned to see Mrs Kelly standing in the doorway. Annie came up beside her. “Head in the clouds, he has,” Adam’s mother went on. “Dungeons and dragons, Conan the Barbarian. Myst. Riven. Stephen King and Clive Barker. Well, he’s gone too far this time.”

  Banks turned. “Mrs Kelly,” he said, “will you let me talk to Adam alone for a few minutes?”

  She stood in the doorway, arms folded, then made a sound of disgust and walked off.

  “Sorry,” Annie mouthed to Banks, following her.

  Banks turned. “Right, Adam,” he said. “So you’re a magician, are you?”

  Adam looked at him suspiciously. “I know a bit about it.”

  “Would you tell me what happened at Hobb’s End that day, when you fell?”

  “I’ve already told you.”

  “The whole story.”

  Adam chewed his lower lip.

  “You found something, didn’t you?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Will you show it to me?”

  The boy paused, then reached under his pillow and pulled out a small, round object. He hesitated, then passed it to Banks. It was a metal button, by the look of it. Corroded, still encrusted with dirt, but clearly a button of some sort.

  “Where did you find this, Adam?”

  “It fell into my hand, honest.”

  Banks turned away to hide his smile. If he had a penny for every time he’d heard that from an accused thief, he’d be a rich man by now. “All right,” he said. “What were you doing when it fell into your hand?”

  “Pulling the hand out.”

  “It was in the skeleton’s hand?”

  “Must’ve been, mustn’t it?”

  “As if the victim had been holding it in her palm?”

  “You what?”

  “Never mind. Why didn’t you tell us about it sooner?”

  “I thought it were what I’d gone there for. The Talis-man. It’s not easy to get. You have to pass through the veil to the Seventh Level. There’s sacrifice and fear to overcome.”

  Banks hadn’t a clue what the boy was talking about. In Adam’s imagination, it seemed, the old button had taken on some magical quality because of how it had been delivered to him. Not that it mattered that much. The point was that Adam had taken the button from the skeleton’s hand.

  “You did well,” Banks said. “But you should have passed this on to me the first time I came to see you. It’s not what you were looking for.”

  Adam seemed disappointed. “It’s not?”

  “No. It’s not a talisman, it’s just an old button.”

  “Is it important?”

  “I don’t know yet. It might be.”

  “Who was it? Do you know? The skeleton?”

  “A young woman.”

  Adam paused to take it in. “Was she pretty?”

  “I think she was.”

  “Has she been there a long time?”

  “Since the war.”

  “Did the Germans kill her?”

  “We don’t think so. We don’t know who killed her.” He held out the button on his palm. “This might help us find out. You might help us.”

  “But whoever did it will be dead by now, won’t he?”

  “Probably,” said Banks.

  “My granddad died in the war.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it, Adam.” Banks stood up. “You can come down now, if you want. Nobody’s going to do you any harm.”

  “But my mum—”

  “She was just upset, that’s all.” Banks paused in the doorway. “When I was a lad your age, I once stole a ring from Woolworth’s. It was only a plastic ring, not worth much, but I got caught.” Banks could remember as if it were yesterday: the smell of smoke on the department-store detectives’ breath; their overbearing size as they stood over him in the cramped triangular office tucked away under the escalator; the rough way they handled him and his fear that they were going to beat him up or molest him in some way, and that everyone would think he deserved it because he was a thief. All for a plastic ring. Not even that, really. Just to show off.

  “What happened?” Adam asked.

  “They made me tell them my name and address and my mother had to go down and see them about it. She stopped my pocket mone
y and wouldn’t let me go out to play for a month.” They had searched him roughly, pulling everything from his pockets: string, penknife, cricket cards, pencil stub, a gobstopper, busfare home and his cigarettes. That was why his mother had stopped his pocket money: because the Woolworth’s store detectives told her about the cigarettes. Which they no doubt smoked themselves. He always thought that was unfair, that the cigarettes had nothing to do with it. Punish him for stealing the ring, yes, but leave him his cigarettes. Of course, over the subsequent years, he had come across many more examples of life’s basic unfairness, not a few of them perpetrated by himself. He had to admit that there were occasions when he had arrested someone for a driving offence, found a few grams of coke or hash in his pocket and added that to the charge sheet.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “it took me a long time to work out why she was so upset over something so unimportant as a plastic ring.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was ashamed. It humiliated her to have to go down there and listen to these men tell her that her son was a thief. To have them talk down to her as if it were her fault and have to thank them for not calling the police. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t done anything serious. She was ashamed that a son of hers would do such a thing. And worried it might be a sign of what I’d turn into.”

  “But you’re a copper, not a thief.”

  Banks smiled. “Yes, I’m a copper. So come on down-stairs and we’ll see if we can make your mother a bit more forgiving than mine was.”

  Adam hesitated, but at last he jumped up from the bed. Banks moved aside and let him go down the narrow staircase first.

  Adam’s mother was in the kitchen, making tea, and Annie was leaning against the counter talking to her.

  “Oh, so you’ve decided to join us have you, you little devil?” said Mrs Kelly.

  “Sorry, Mum.”

  She ruffled his hair. “Get on with you. Just don’t do owt like that again.”

  “Can I have a Coke?”

  “In the fridge.”

  Adam turned to the fridge and Banks winked at him. Adam blushed and grinned.