The Price of Love and Other Stories (32 page)

“Oh, come on, Sandra –”

“No. I mean it. I don’t know what’s going on in your life – you don’t talk to me – and you don’t know what’s going on in ours. And what’s more, you don’t care.”

Banks sat up straight. “I do bloody care, if you’d just give me a chance!”

“How? Show me how you care. How much you care. What have you done lately to let us know you care? When did we last have sex?”

“I told you, things have been a bit tough, lately, I’m tired when I get home, or you’re out down at the arts centre … I –”

“Oh, bollocks, Alan. Bollocks. It’s just excuse after excuse with you.”

“I’m thinking of transferring up north,” Banks blurted out.

Sandra’s jaw dropped. “You’re what?”

Now he’d said it, there was no going back. “Well, all of us, of course. Not just me. But if I can get a transfer –”

Sandra put her palm to the side of her head and tapped gently. “Hang on a minute. Am I hearing you right? Am I missing something here? Did you ever hear me say I wanted to move up north?”

“Well, not in so many words, but you’ve complained often enough about the size of the flat here, and we’d be able to afford something bigger up there. Maybe in the country. We –”

“I complain about the flat because it
is
too small for the four of us. Maybe it’s not a bad thing that you
are
out all the bloody time. Makes the place seem less crowded.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Anyway, since when have you been entertaining this idea?”

“I heard about a position coming up. DCI. It’d mean more money, too. Maybe fast track to superintendent. I’d be home more. Stands to reason: smaller place, less crime.”

“Where is this Shangri-La?”

“Place called Eastvale.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Its on the map. North Yorkshire. I’m going up there. Sort of informal interview with the super.”

“When is this? You never told me.”

“It’s all very recent. I just haven’t had time. This murder and all … Couple of days, anyway. When I can get a break from the case. The weekend, maybe, if I can get away.”

“But Alan, we’re supposed to be having Charlie and Rose over for dinner on Saturday. Don’t you remember?”

Banks didn’t. “Of course. I’ll go Sunday,” he said. “I can get there and back in a day if I leave really early. I don’t mind the driving.
Maybe you can come? Maybe we can all go?” He stood up, excited by the idea. “I’ll drop you off in the town centre while I go for my chat – he lives out of the town – then pick you up later on the way back. We’ll have a nice drive in the country, a pub lunch.”

“It’s not exactly my idea of a perfect Sunday out,” said Sandra. “That’s a lot of hours in the car, and you know Tracy gets car sick.”

“She can take a Kwell.”

“They just put her to sleep. But I’ll see. You must promise you’ll be here on Saturday evening for dinner, though. It’s Rose’s birthday.”

“I’ll be here.”

Sandra ran her hand through her hair. “Christ, your job is turning me into a bloody shrew,” she said. “I never used to be like this before. It’s just that I don’t know where we stand anymore. All we ever seem to do when we are together is argue. And I’m not sure moving is the answer. I don’t know about moving up north. I don’t
know
the north. You should have asked me first.”

“Nothing’s been decided yet. I might not get it even if I do apply. And, of course, if you don’t want to move … ”

“I know. I know. It’s just so sudden. The way you sprung it on me. It’s just … well, I like London. I like the galleries, the parks, the pubs, the restaurants, the theatres. I just want to do it all with you, that’s all. Can’t you see that? You’re like a stranger to me these days. Is there someone else, Alan? Is that what it is?”

Banks put his arm around her. “Of course not,” he said. “Of course there’s no one else. It’s the Job, love. It’s just the Job.”

There were no developments over the next few days. One possible lead – a man Pamela had been seen talking to a couple of times in Naughty Nites – got everyone excited, then fizzled out when it turned out that he was in Barcelona on business at the time of the murder. The other girls Pamela worked with were interviewed, along with Micallef’s nominees and employees, then club owners, bouncers,
johns, pub managers and local shopkeepers, all to no avail. Pamela Morrison had met her death in a cramped room in Soho and nobody seemed to know a thing about it. Except her killer.

The psychologist Banks and Albright spoke with didn’t have much to add at such an early stage, either, but he stressed the ritualistic element and that however odd the actions seemed, the killer would be able to justify them to himself. The killer was self-controlled, he said, and the way the body was posed not only accorded with his idea of innocence but hid the reality of what he had done from himself. In a way, he couldn’t face his acts. There was a strong chance, the psychologist said, that the killer could unravel before long, but there might be other victims first. The press was kept briefed and up to date, but Hatchard was as good as his word and careful not to let slip any of the unusual details: the posing of the body, the Sellotape, the makeup wiped off.

Saturday’s dinner was a success, and Banks was only three-quarters of an hour late. He had a nagging hangover early on Sunday morning when they set off through the deserted London streets towards the M1. Brian was quiet, gazing out of the window, and Tracy was sleepy after taking her Kwell. The old Cortina moved along smoothly and Banks slipped in a cassette of
Bags Groove
. Miles Davis, Monk and Milt Jackson. Nice music for a peaceful, sunny morning in London. It could have been a soundtrack for the opening of a movie. Tracy didn’t stir and nobody else complained, so Banks left it on. Soon, he felt worlds away from Soho, Pamela Morrison, Jackie Simmons and Matthew Micallef.

The journey up the M1 was easy enough; not many lorries, just a few Sunday drivers slowing down the lanes, crawling a mile or two from one junction to the next to visit their children or grandchildren. Banks had a bit of trouble negotiating the stretch between the M1 and the A1 – he left the motorway too soon – and he found himself passing road signs to Normanton, Featherstone, Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley. He passed through some small mining
communities and realized he was in Pamela Morrison’s part of the world. None of them had ever been further north than Cambridge before, so everyone was very excited, the kids with their noses pressed against the car windows.

But soon everyone became quiet.

Banks hadn’t really known what to expect; he had only seen images on the news, usually of miners fighting pitched battles with the riot police. The reality was grim, even in the sunshine of a beautiful summer’s day, from the rows of grimy back-to-back terrace houses to the newer redbrick council estates put up in the sixties and already shabby, and the weedy patches of waste ground where groups of children organized makeshift games of football, using their jackets to mark the goalposts. He drove past rows of shops, most of them boarded up or advertising closing-down sales, the rest selling second-hand clothing or market-stall priced household cleaners and utensils.

There was an aura of gloom about the place, but it was the gloom of poverty and despair, not lack of sunlight. The same bright sun shone on the soot-blackened civic buildings up here as it did on the majestic architecture of Westminster or the dome of St. Paul’s. The few people Banks noticed on the streets seemed to shuffle along, hands in their pockets, heads hung low, avoiding eye contact with anyone else. Across a field, Banks saw a still pit-wheel silhouetted against the blue sky and a slag heap covered in weeds. In the distance, smoke poured from the huge cooling towers of Ferrybridge power station.

Banks couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be a miner. Certainly the long hours, claustrophobic conditions, the danger and filth of it put him off. But people did it. Generation after generation. And they fought long and hard for such basic rights as showers at the pithead and permission to use them after their shifts. Now it was all gone, wiped out. You could argue all you wanted about the economic necessity of closing the pits, he thought, but none of that took into
account the level of human misery it caused in some of these communities. It was more than just the loss of jobs, of income, as if that weren’t bad enough; it was the loss of a community’s identity, its way of life, traditions, history and culture. He felt as if he were driving through a vanishing world.

Banks found the A1 just beyond Fryston and Fairburn and carried on north past Wetherby, turning off just north of Ripon. Nobody had spoken much since the detour through industrial West Yorkshire, but the general consensus was that lunch was in order. Banks stopped at the first village they came to on the Eastvale road. He had arranged to go and see Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe at his home in a village called Lyndgarth at two-thirty, which gave them plenty of time to enjoy a pub lunch in the country.

They sat at a wooden bench outside a seventeenth-century limestone pub, looking out over the village green and enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. Beyond the green and the houses on the other side, Banks could see the beginnings of the Dales, hump-backed hills that rolled into the hazy distance like giant frozen waves.

Because he was driving and attending an interview, however informal, Banks was off the booze for the day, and he drank warm fizzy lemonade instead. The kids had the same, while Sandra asked for a half-pint of cold lager. It was good to see her relaxing and unwinding for a change, Banks thought. Years of care seemed to slip off her shoulders as she smoked a rare cigarette and smiled mischievously at him, sipping her lager and gazing at the view. She even got out her camera and took a few photos.

When they had finished their roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, they set off for Eastvale. It seemed like a pleasant market town, with a cobbled square, a church and an ancient market cross, a ruined castle looming over it all. They passed a sign pointing down a hill to the river. It was worlds away from what they had seen in West Yorkshire. None of the shops was boarded up, and those that weren’t open were closed only because it was Sunday. The darkness that had
swallowed up much of the rest of the country beyond the Home Counties didn’t seem to have cast much of a pall up here.

There were quite a few tourists about, many kitted out for walking. The outside tables at the pubs were busy, and it was impossible to find a parking spot in the square. Banks just dropped Sandra, Brian and Tracy off outside a Tudor-fronted building that appeared to be the police station, and said he’d pick them up at the same spot in a couple of hours. They waved goodbye as he drove away. Just like a real family.

Banks pulled up outside the isolated farmhouse at the end of the rutted drive and turned off his engine. He got out of the car and for a moment just took in the countryside, which was silent but for the sounds of the birds and someone hammering in the distance. The farm stood outside the village of Lyndgarth, about halfway up the northern daleside, and it commanded a magnificent view down the slope towards the winding, wooded river, then across and all the way up the other side, to green fields marked out into odd shapes by drystone walls – a teacup, a milk churn, a teardrop. Sheep grazed on the lower pastures, and higher up the green paled to a dry brown, and outcrops of limestone broke through the rough grass. At the very top was a long limestone scar, which gleamed like a row of giant teeth in the sunlight. Banks thought he could see a line of walkers moving along the top, tiny dots in the distance.

Banks next took in the façade of the house. Built of limestone, with cornerstones and lintels of gritstone, and a flagstone roof, it was perfectly symmetrical, with two downstairs and two upstairs windows on each side of the red door. A bit austere for his taste. Over the doorhead, a date and some initials had been chiselled into the stone: ADH 1779. Banks could imagine that a farmhouse in such a wild and isolated place needed to be built like a fortress. It was probably windswept and lashed by rain for much of the year.

“Three foot,” said a deep voice beside him.

Banks turned, startled. He hadn’t heard anyone approach him, had been so lost in his contemplation of the view and the house that he hadn’t noticed the man come around the side and stand by the corner.

“I mean, if you were wondering how thick the walls are,” the man said. “And the initials are the original owner’s, the date probably when the house was built, or the commemoration of an important family marriage. It’s also the year that state prisons were first authorized, but I don’t really think that has a lot to do with the owner’s reason for carving it there, do you?” He walked over to Banks and rubbed his hands on the sides of his jeans. “I’m Gristhorpe, by the way.”

They shook. His hand was dry and calloused. “Alan Banks.”

“Good journey?”

“Excellent.” Banks gestured around him. “I’ve never been … I mean, I hadn’t realized how beautiful it is up here.”

Gristhorpe laughed. “You should pay us a visit in December before you make your mind up about that. Or talk to one of the local farmers.”

“I suppose so.”

“Come round the back. You’ll probably be wanting a drink?”

“No thank you,” said Banks. “I’m driving.”

“Most admirable, but I was thinking of tea. You wouldn’t believe how refreshing it is on a hot day.”

“Tea would be fine,” said Banks, following him around the side of the house to the back.

Two fold-out chairs awaited on a stone patio beside the back door. Beyond stretched Gristhorpe’s garden, or “acreage” as they would probably call it up here. It was certainly too big to be a garden, though there was a vegetable patch next to one of those drystone walls that seemed so common in the area. This one seemed to have collapsed in a couple of places.

“I’ll ask Mrs. Hawkins to rustle up some tea for us. She won’t mind.”

Gristhorpe disappeared for a moment, then came back and sat opposite Banks. He was a tall and solidly built man of about fifty, well padded some might say, with a shock of unruly silver hair, a ruddy pockmarked complexion and a bristly grey moustache. The most disconcerting thing about him, Banks thought, was not so much the dungarees and collarless striped shirt he was wearing, but his eyes. Set under bushy eyebrows, they were wide, deep blue and guileless, like a child’s. It would be hard lying to this man, Banks sensed immediately, or at least it would be hard to believe that he would believe your lies.