In a Dry Season (22 page)

“Everything all right, Miss?” he called out.

Annie put her hand over her heart. “What? Yes. Oh, yes. Sorry.”

He eyed her suspiciously and went back to his paper. Annie looked again. It wasn't mentioned in the catalogue, but there it was, plain as day, below
Reclining Nude
. A subtitle:
Gloria
,
Autumn 1944
.

Seven

O
n Monday morning, Banks looked again at the postcard reproduction of
Reclining Nude: Gloria, Autumn 1944
that lay on his desk. It was an uncanny and disconcerting experience to see an artist's impression of the flesh that had possibly once clothed the filth-covered bones they found last week, and to feel aroused by looking at it. Banks felt an exciting flush of adolescent guilt, the same as he had on looking at his first pictures of naked women in
Swank
or
Mayfair
.

Annie had picked up several copies of the postcard at the art gallery and, thrilled by her discovery, phoned him late on Saturday afternoon. They met for dinner at Cock-ett's Hotel, in Hawes, with every intention of going their separate ways later, both having agreed that they shouldn't rush things, that they needed their time alone. After the second bottle of wine, though, instead of leaving, they took a room and woke to Sunday-morning church bells. After a leisurely breakfast, they left, agreeing to restrict their trysts to weekends.

At home, Banks had tried to reach Brian all weekend, without any luck. He knew he should call Sandra and find out what she had to say about it all, but he didn't want to. Maybe it was something to do with sleeping with Annie, or
maybe not, but he didn't think he could handle talking to Sandra. He spent the rest of Sunday reading the papers and doing odd jobs around the cottage.

He walked over to stand by the open window. The gold hands against the blue face of the church clock stood at a quarter to eleven. Horns blared out in the street and the smell of fresh bread from the bakery mingled with the exhaust fumes. An irate van driver swore at a tourist. The tourist gave him the V sign and scurried off into the crowd. Another coach pulled up in the cobbled market square and disgorged its load of old ladies. From Worthing, Banks noticed, by the sign painted on the side.
Worthing.
Why couldn't the old biddies stay down there, maybe roll up their skirts and go for a paddle, stop and smell the seaweed? Why did everyone have to come to the bloody Dales? When it came right down to it, he blamed James Herriot. If they hadn't done that damn series on television, the place would be empty.

Banks lit a proscribed cigarette and wondered, not for the first time this past year, why he bothered with the job. There had been plenty of occasions when he felt like packing it all in. At first he hadn't done so because he simply couldn't be bothered. As long as people left him alone, it didn't really matter. He knew he wasn't working up to par, even on desk duties, but he didn't give a damn. It was easy enough to show up and push paper around without enthusiasm, or to play computer games. The truth was that he hurt so much after Sandra left that everything else seemed meaningless.

Then, when he bought the cottage and started pulling himself together, or at least managing to distance himself a bit from the pain, he seriously considered a career change,
but he couldn't think of anything else he was qualified for, or even wanted to do. He was too young to retire, and he had no desire whatsoever to go into security work or a private detective agency. Lack of formal education had closed most other paths to him.

So he stuck with it. Now, though, partly because of this dirty, pointless, dead-end case—or so Jimmy Riddle must have seen it—Banks was finally getting back to some sense of why he joined in the first place. When something becomes routine, mechanical, when you're just going through the motions, you have to dig down and find out what it was that you loved about it in the first place. What drew you to it? Or what obsessed you about it? Then you have to act on that, and to hell with all the rest.

Banks had cast his memory back and thought about those questions a lot over the past few months. It wasn't simply a matter of why he had walked into the recruiting centre that day, asked for information and then followed up on it a week later. He had done that partly because he hated business studies, and partly to piss off his parents. He and Sandra knew they were serious about one another by then, too; they wanted to get married, start a family, and he would need a steady job.

With Banks, it wasn't some abstract notion of justice, or being on the side of “good” and putting the “bad” guys away. He wasn't naïve enough to see the police as good, for a start, or even all criminals as bad. Some people were driven to crime through desperation of one kind or another; some were so damaged inside that they were unable to make a choice. When it came right down to it, Banks believed that most violent criminals were bullies, and ever since he was a kid he had detested bullies. At
school, he had always stuck up for the weaker kids against the bullies, even though he wasn't especially big or tough himself. He got frequent black eyes and bloody noses for his trouble.

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.