Cold Is The Grave

7

DS Jim Hatchley was the last to arrive at the scheduled meeting that Thursday afternoon, rolling in a little after quarter past five smelling of ale and tobacco and looking as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. Banks, Annie Cabbot and DCs Rickerd, Jackman and Templeton were already gathered in the “boardroom,” so called because of its panels, wainscoting and oil portraits of dead mill owners. A thin patina of dust from the renovations had even reached as far as the long banquet table, usually so highly polished you could see your reflection in it.

“Sorry, sir,” muttered Hatchley, taking his seat.

Banks turned to Annie Cabbot, who had just started an account of her afternoon at the Daleview Business Park. “Go on, DS Cabbot,” he said. “Now that we’re all here.”

“Well, sir, there’s not a great deal to add. Charlie turned up for work on Sunday afternoon, as usual, logged in, and he went home at midnight. His replacement for the midnight-to-eight shift, Colin Finch, says he actually saw him at four and midnight, so we know he was still alive when he left the park.”

“Did this Finch have anything more to tell us?” Banks asked.

“Said he hardly knew Charlie. They were ships that passed in the night. His words, not mine. And he’d no sense of anything dodgy going on at Daleview. Nobody else I spoke to there admits to knowing Charlie, either – not surprising, when you consider he was usually at work when the rest had gone home – and there had been no incidents reported at the park, so he didn’t even have very much to do.”

“Could his death be unrelated to his work, then?” Banks asked.

“It’s possible,” Annie said, glancing at Hatchley. “After all, he did have form. Mixed with some pretty rough company in his time. But there was one odd thing.”

“Yes?”

She took an envelope out of her briefcase and set it on the table. “One of the companies operating out of Daleview – PKF Computer Systems – cleared out lock, stock and barrel on Sunday evening.”

“Moonlight flit?”

“No, sir. All aboveboard, according to Colin Finch. Just very short notice. They were gone by midnight, when he started his shift.”

“Couldn’t pay their bills?”

“They weren’t owing when they left, but I should imagine a cash-flow problem might be at the back of it all.”

“Likely,” said Banks. “But they did nothing wrong?”

“No. Interesting timing, though, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would.” PKF had cleared off during Charlie Courage’s final evening shift. Banks didn’t like coincidences any more than any other copper worth his salt. “Go on.”

“Anyway, Ian Bennett had given me carte blanche and the keys were all there in Mr. Courage’s old office, so I had a quick shufti around the PKF unit.”

“Find anything?”

“Clean as a whistle. They’d obviously taken care to make sure they left nothing behind. Except this. I found it lodged behind the radiator. It must have fallen there.” She held the envelope and tipped it. A cracked plastic case about five-by-five-and-a-half inches fell onto the polished table’s surface.

“A CD case,” said Banks. “I suppose you’d expect to find something like that if they were in the computer business. Software and all that.”

“Yes,” said Annie. “It probably means nothing. In fact, the whole PKF thing’s probably nothing, but I handled it carefully just in case. We might want to check with fingerprints.”

“You think there’s something dodgy about PKF?”

Annie leaned back in her chair. She even looked comfortable in the notoriously hard and bum-unfriendly boardroom chair, thought Banks. “I don’t know, sir. It’s just the timing, them leaving the same weekend Courage disappeared. It might be worth looking into the company, see who they are, what they do. It might help explain Charlie’s sudden riches.”

Banks nodded. “Right you are. You can get stuck into that tomorrow. And it wouldn’t do any harm to get in touch with Vic Manson about those prints, either. If someone working at PKF turns up in our records, as well as Charlie…” He glanced over at the three DCs at the far end of the table. They had been on a house-to-house to find out if anyone had seen Charlie Courage after Sunday lunchtime. “Anything on the victim’s movements?”

Winsome Jackman spoke first. “A neighbor saw him going to work late Sunday afternoon, sir, and the man across the street saw him taking his milk in at about eight o’clock on Monday morning.”

“Anyone else?”

Winsome shook her head. Kevin Templeton said, “The woman at number forty-two, Mrs. Finlay, noticed something. She says she thought she saw Charlie get in a car with a couple of men later on Monday morning.”

“Description?”

“Nothing very useful, sir.” Templeton doodled in the dust on the table as he spoke. “One was medium height, the other was a bit taller. They wore jeans and leather jackets – brown or black. The taller one, he was going bald; the other had short fair hair. She said she didn’t get a good look and wasn’t really paying attention. I asked her if she thought Mr. Courage was being forced in the car in any way, and she told me she didn’t get that impression, but she could have been wrong.”

Banks sighed. It was typical of most witness statements. Of course, if you didn’t know you were witnessing anything momentous, such as a man’s final journey, you didn’t pay that much attention. Most people don’t see much on the peripheries; they’re more concerned about where they’re going, what they’re doing and thinking. “What about the car?”

“Light-colored. Maybe white. That was the best she could say. Nothing fancy, but new-looking, with a nice shiny finish.”

“Okay,” said Banks. “Time? Did we fare any better there?”

“A little bit, sir,” said Templeton. “She said it must not have been long after ten o’clock, because she had just started listening to ‘Woman’s Hour,’ and that starts at ten o’clock.”

“Interesting.”

“Maybe the trip was prearranged?” Annie suggested. “It could have been something he was looking forward to. Maybe he thought he was going somewhere nice, getting some more money?”

“Could be.” Banks turned to Hatchley. “What did your afternoon in the fleshpots of Eastvale turn up, Jim?”

Hatchley scratched the side of his bulbous nose. “Charlie was up to something dodgy, I can tell you that much.”

“Go on.”

Hatchley got his notebook out. Workmen started hammering somewhere in the extension. Hatchley raised his voice. “According to Len Jackson, one of his old colleagues, Charlie was on to a nice little earner, and it wasn’t his job at Daleview, either.”

“Was it connected with that?”

“Charlie didn’t say. He was pretty vague about it all. What he did say, though, was that he was already bringing in a bit of extra and pretty soon he’d be in for a much larger slice of the pie. What he was getting now was peanuts to what he’d have soon.”

“Interesting. But he didn’t say what pie?”

“No, sir. Charlie was pretty cagey about it, apparently. He wanted his old mates to know he was doing well, but not how he was doing it. Scared of the competition, I suppose.”

“Okay,” said Banks. “Well, at least that tells us we’re on the right track. All we need to know now is what he was into and who was running it. Makes it sound easy, doesn’t it?” He shook his head. “Charlie, Charlie, you should’ve stayed on the straight and narrow this time.”

“He never was big-time, wasn’t Charlie,” added Hatchley. “He must have got in way over his head, not known who he was dealing with.”

Banks nodded. “Okay, that’s it for now,” he said.

Back in his office, with his door tightly shut to keep the noise out, Banks phoned DI Collaton down in Market Harborough to give him an update, more out of professional courtesy than anything else, as there wasn’t much to report. After that, he decided to call it a day. He tidied his desk and locked up, then headed for the door. Annie Cabbot was a flight ahead of him on her way down the stairs. She turned at the sound of his footsteps. “Oh, it’s you. Off home?”

“Unless you’d like to go for a quick drink or something?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “That bloody rain’s soaked right into my bones. All I want is to pick up something for dinner, then a long hot bath and a good book to curl up with.”

“Some other time?”

She smiled and pushed open the door. “Yes. Some other time.”

Maybe she should have accepted Banks’s offer of a drink, Annie thought, as she crossed the market square. It wouldn’t have done any harm, just a quick drink and a chat. She didn’t want to seem to be always giving him the brush-off, and it wasn’t as if the men were exactly queuing up to take her out. But things were still a little sensitive, and her inner voice told her to back off, so she did. Not that she always did what her inner voice told her to; if she had done that she would never have got in trouble in her life, and what a boring old time that would have been. But this time, she listened; at least for now.

Though she could still smell it in the air, the rain had stopped and the evening had turned quite mild. Colored lights hung across Market Street and around the cross, and the shoppers were out in force. She was lucky that most of the shops were staying open late until Christmas, or she’d have nothing but a couple of moldy old carrots and potatoes for dinner. There was the Indian shop on Gallows View that was always open, but they didn’t have much selection; besides, that was too far away in the wrong direction. What she wanted was something easy, something she could boil in the bag or stick in the oven for half an hour, no fuss.

In the end, it was a toss-up between vegetarian lasagna and Indonesian curry. The lasagna won, mostly because she had a bottle of Sainsbury’s Chianti at home that would complement it nicely. She also needed eggs, milk, cereal and bread for breakfast.

As she wandered the busy aisles casting her eyes over the myriad varieties of meals specially prepared for those who dined alone, she remembered a book she had read many years ago – something her father had given her – that explained the underhand strategies supermarkets use to make you buy things you don’t want. The lighting, for a start, and the soft, hypnotic music. At this time of year, of course, it was all Christmas music played in a cheery, sugary sort of style. Annie sometimes thought that if she heard one more “fa-la-la-la-la” she would scream. The manufacturers also used certain colors in packaging their products, and there was something about bright things being placed at eye level that just made you reach out and grab them. She couldn’t remember all the details, but the book had made an impression on her, and she always felt manipulated when she left a supermarket with more than she had intended to buy. Which she always did. It was the chocolate ice cream this time; it had hardly been at eye level, nor was the package of a color that made you reach for it, but even stuck away in the freezer it had seemed to be screaming, “Buy me! Buy me!” and now it nestled in her basket as she waited in the queue to pay.

Maybe if she had been at Eastvale a couple of months, she thought, then she might have taken Banks up on his offer. It was just too soon: too soon after their affair, and too soon after her transfer. If truth be told, she still didn’t trust herself with him, either. A couple of drinks might loosen her inhibitions a bit too much, as they almost had the last time she’d been out with him. Then where would she be? It had been all right sleeping with Banks when she worked out of Harkside and he worked out of Eastvale, but if they were both in the same station, it could be awkward.

Suddenly, as she was queuing up to pay, Annie saw someone she knew, someone she had never expected to see again, not here, not anywhere. And someone she had never wanted to set eyes on again. He was walking into the wines and spirits section. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t seen her. What the hell was he doing here? Annie felt her skin turn clammy and her heart start to pound.

“That’ll be five pounds seventy-two pee, please, love,” said the plump, smiling woman at the checkout desk. Annie fiddled around in her purse and found a five-pound note and four twenty-pee pieces, which she promptly dropped from her shaking hands all over the floor. She picked them up and handed them to the woman.

“What’s up, love? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Something like that,” Annie muttered, hurriedly putting away her purse and heading out with her groceries. She risked one quick glance over her shoulder. He was standing by the bargain reds section scanning the labels and prices. She was still certain that he hadn’t seen her.

She burst out onto York Road and took a gulp of fresh air. Her heart was still beating fast and she felt herself shaking inside. It was Wayne Dalton; she was sure of it. Detective Inspector Wayne Dalton. One of the two men who had held her down while a third had raped her over two years ago.

Banks knew he shouldn’t have asked Annie out like that, on impulse, and he hoped he hadn’t put her off for good. He didn’t want to appear to be pestering her, especially as they worked together and he was, technically, her boss. Not that Annie would ever accuse him of sexual harassment, but…

As it happened, his evening turned out to be just what he needed. He made a cheese-and-onion sandwich for tea and ate it while he read the paper in the kitchen. His son, Brian, phoned at about nine o’clock, excited about the CD. On a whim, Banks asked if he had ever heard of Barry Clough. He hadn’t, but said he’d ask around among his colleagues in the business. He also reminded Banks that punk had been a long time ago, as if Banks needed reminding of that.

After lunch with Emily Riddle, Banks also felt the need to talk to Tracy. It would help balance his sanity. After listening to Emily for over an hour, he had come away with a very warped idea about teenage girls. He needed to know they weren’t all like her, especially his own daughter.

Amidst all the craziness, though, and after all she’d been through, Emily still seemed to have a cool head on her shoulders, if her talk about getting her A-Levels and going to university was to believed. Like Banks, Tracy had had to work hard to get where she was. She was a bright girl, but not one of those who don’t have to apply themselves. The harder she worked, the higher her marks. Emily seemed to think her progress in the world was simply a matter of choice, of deciding what to do and then having it fall into her lap. Perhaps it was for her. Now that he had got a little beyond first impressions, Banks couldn’t help but like Emily, but she was the kind of girl he fretted about, and the kind who constantly exasperated him. He almost felt sorry for Jimmy Riddle.

Tracy didn’t answer. Out with Damon, no doubt. He left her a message, nothing urgent, just to call if she didn’t get in too late.

For a change from peat, Banks lit a log fire in the hearth, though it wasn’t a particularly cold evening, and sat down in the old armchair he had picked up at a local estate auction. The blue walls that he had worried might feel cold in winter had turned out just fine, he thought, as he watched the shadows cast by the flames flicker over them. Knotty wood spat and crackled in the fireplace, taking Banks back to his childhood, when the coal they used sometimes hissed and spat. There was no other source of heat in the house, so it was his father’s job in winter to get up while it was still dark and light the fire. Usually, when Banks came down for his jam and bread before school, there was a good blaze going, and it had taken most of the chill off the cool damp night air. The years in between, in various London flats and the Eastvale semi, he hadn’t had a coal or log fire, only gas or electric, so it was a luxury he was availing himself of a lot this winter.

He put the first CD of Miles Davis’s Carnegie Hall concert on, the one with Gil Evans and his orchestra, picked up the latest Kate Atkinson novel, which lay facedown on the chair arm, about half read, and lit a cigarette. Though he had intended an early night, he found himself enjoying both the music and the book so much that he put another log on the fire and slipped in the second CD. It was a quarter past eleven, and he had set the book aside for a few moments to listen to the live version of the adagio from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, when the telephone rang.

Thinking it might be Tracy, he turned down the stereo and snatched up the phone. The first thing that assaulted his ears was loud music in the background. He couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but it sounded like some sort of post-rave-techno-dance mix. The next thing to assail him was the squeaky voice of DC Rickerd shouting over the music.

“Sir?”

“Yes,” sighed Banks. “What is it?”

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’m on duty tonight.”

“I know that. What is it? Will you get to the point? And do you have to shout so loud?”

“Well, I’m at the Bar None, sir. It’s pretty noisy here.”

The Bar None was one of Eastvale’s most popular night-clubs for the young crowd. Situated under the shops across the market square from the police station, it usually opened up an hour or so before pub closing time and attracted those kids who were too pissed to drive to Leeds or Manchester, where there were far better clubs. “Look,” said Banks, “if there’s been a fight or something, I don’t want to know.”

“No, sir, it’s nothing like that.”

“Well?” Banks lost Rickerd’s next words to a surge in the background noise. “Can you get them to turn the music down?” he yelled.

“It’s a suspicious death,” Rickerd said.

“How suspicious?”

“Well, she’s dead, sir. I’m pretty sure of that. Inspector Jessup agrees with me, sir. And the blokes from the ambulance. It looks as if somebody beat her up pretty badly.”

If Chris Jessup, inspector in the uniformed branch, thought it was serious enough to call Banks in, then it probably was. “Who is the victim?” he asked.

“You’d better get down here, sir…” Here he became inaudible again. “…can’t handle… myself.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Inspector Jessup and me and three PCs, sir.”

“That should be enough. I’m sure Inspector Jessup knows exactly what to do. Help him make sure no one leaves and secure the scene. We don’t want anyone else tramping about near the body until I get there, including the ambulance crew. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Better put a call through to Dr. Burns, too. It’ll take him a while to get there.” Banks was about to ask Rickerd to send for the SOCO unit, but decided to wait until he could assess the scene himself. No sense spending the taxpayers’ money until he knew exactly what he was dealing with. “Have you got the victim’s name?”

“Yes, sir. She had a driving license and one of those proof-of-age cards some of the clubs give out to kids. It’s got her photo on it.”

“Good work. What’s her name, Rickerd?”

“It’s Walker, sir. Ruth Walker.”

“Shit,” said Banks. “I’ll be right there.”

Could it be the same Ruth Walker Banks had talked to in London? If so, what the hell was she doing in an Eastvale nightclub, unless she had come up from London to go clubbing with Emily Riddle? And if Ruth was dead, then Banks wouldn’t be at all surprised if Emily was in trouble, too.

Banks picked up his cigarettes and grabbed his leather jacket off the hook at the back of the door. Before he left, he went back to the phone. It was a snap decision between Jim Hatchley, who lived in Eastvale, and Annie Cabbot, who had as long a drive as Banks. Annie won, hands down. He would have been a liar if he had denied any personal preference for Annie’s charms over Jim Hatchley’s ugly mug, but he didn’t do it from entirely selfish motives. Annie was new to Eastvale, and she needed all the experience she could get; she was ambitious, whereas Hatchley was content to remain a DS for the rest of his days; Annie would welcome the opportunity, whereas Hatchley would grumble at being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night; Hatchley had his wife and baby to consider, while Annie lived alone.

There you go rationalizing, Banks thought, as he dialed her number. He could justify calling her until the cows came home if he had to, but what it came down to was that he still fancied her and he thought, with Sandra announcing she wanted to divorce and remarry, that he might be able to get over the stumbling blocks that had derailed him and Annie in the first place and rekindle what they once had.

But even that desire took second place to his concern about Ruth Walker and Emily Riddle.

Annie drove home like a bat out of hell, and when she got to her tiny terrace cottage, she locked, bolted and chained the door, then checked the back and all the windows. Only when she was certain that everything was as secure as it could be did she pour herself a large glass of wine and sit down.

Her hand was still shaking, she noticed, as she took a gulp. And she’d thought she’d got over her experience. The counseling had helped at first, but when the counselor said she could do no more, it had been Annie’s own inner strength that pulled her through. Through meditation, yoga and diet, she had slowly healed herself. The country seclusion had helped, too: leaving a big city force for a peaceful backwater like Harkside.

She still had dreams in which she experienced the fear, claustrophobia and powerlessness she had felt during the assault and woke up sweating and screaming, and she still had dark moods in which she felt worthless and tainted. But not so often. And she could handle them now; she knew where they came from and could almost stand outside looking down on them, separating herself from the bad feelings, isolating them as you would a tumor. She had even got so far, after two years, as allowing herself that romantic and sexual involvement with Banks, which had been extremely satisfying, not least because it pleased her to find she was still capable of it. What had ended that was nothing at all to do with her rape experience; it was plain, old-fashioned fear of involvement, of emotional entanglement, something that had always been a part of her.

What the hell was Wayne Dalton doing in Eastvale? That was what she wanted to know. Was he on a case? Had he been reassigned to Western Divisional Headquarters? She didn’t think she could handle working with him, not after what happened. The last she had heard he had transferred to the Met. Surely he couldn’t be seeking her out? Coming to torment her? True, she had complained to their chief super the following morning, but there was no evidence; it was simply her word against the three of them. The chief super knew that something had gone on, and he also knew it was something he didn’t want aired in his station, thank you very much, so Annie got shipped out sharpish and the three men, after being rapped on the knuckles, were encouraged to transfer at their leisure.

Later, in her bath, Annie remembered Wayne Dalton’s flushed and sweating face as he held her, the little ginger hairs up his nose as he stood over her, waiting his turn. A turn that never came. She remembered walking the streets for hours after her escape, languishing in her bath, just like now, listening to the radio, the sounds of normal life, and scrubbing their filth from her body. Something she shouldn’t have done. Something she, in her turn, had advised rape victims not to do. But it was far easier to say “Do as I say, not as I do.” At the time, she hadn’t thought, had only wanted an escape, a way of undoing what had been done, of going back in time to a day when it had never happened. Foolish, perhaps, but perfectly reasonable, she thought.

And she was still in her bath, on her third glass of wine when, close to twenty past eleven, her telephone rang.

It was five to twelve when Banks, who had driven well over the speed limit the whole way, parked in the market square next to the ambulance and headed for the club door. DC Rickerd had got a uniformed constable to guard the entrance, Banks was pleased to see, and had even put blue-and-white police tape across the doorway. As he headed down the stone steps, he was also pleased to hear that the music had been silenced and the only sounds drifting up were the murmured conversations of detained clubbers grumbling at the tables.

“Over here, sir.”

The only lights on were the colored disco lights that whirled over the dance floor, eerie without the accompaniment of music and gyrating bodies. Banks could make out Rickerd and Jessup standing by the door to the ladies’ toilet with the ambulance crew, a couple of uniformed officers and a young man. Before he could get there, someone tugged at his sleeve.

“Excuse me, are you in authority?”

“Looks that way,” said Banks. The speaker, wearing jeans and a white shirt, was probably in his early twenties, skinny, with bright eyes and dilated pupils. It wasn’t particularly hot in the Bar None, but a sheen of sweat covered his face.

“Why are you keeping us here? It’s been nearly an hour now. You can’t just keep us here.”

“It’s my understanding that there’s been a serious crime, sir,” said Banks. “Until we get things sorted, I’m afraid none of you is going anywhere.” He noticed the boy was still holding his sleeve and plucked it away.

“But this is outrageous. I want to go home.”

Banks leaned forward, close enough to smell the beer and fish and chips on his breath. “Look, sonny,” he whispered, “go sit down with your mates and be quiet. One more word out of you and I’ll have the Drugs Squad down on you like a ton of bricks. Understand?”

The boy looked as if he was going to protest further, but thought better of it and swayed over to the table where his friends sat. Banks continued on his way to meet Rickerd and Jessup. One of the ambulance crew looked at him and shook his head slowly. Annie Cabbot hadn’t arrived yet. She had sounded edgy when he’d called and he had wondered if he had woken her. She said not.

“In here, sir,” said a whey-faced Rickerd, pointing into the ladies’. “It’s not very pretty.” Someone had placed more tape at the entrance, effectively creating an inner crime scene. That was often useful, as you could afford to let some people in the first scene and lead them to think they were privileged, but you kept the real crime scene uncontaminated.

“Who’s he?” Banks gestured toward the young man beside Rickerd.

“He found her, sir.”

“Okay. Keep an eye on him. I’ll talk to him later. Did you call Dr. Burns?”

“Yes, sir. He said he’d get here as soon as he could.”

Banks turned to Inspector Jessup. “What happened, Chris?”

“Call came it at six minutes past eleven. That lad you just noticed. Name’s Darren Hirst. It seems he was with the victim. She went to the toilet and didn’t come out. He got worried, went in for a butcher’s and called us.”

Banks slipped on his latex gloves and stepped under the tape.

The ladies’ toilet was small, given the size of the club. White tile, three stalls, two sinks under a long mirror. The ubiquitous condom machine hung on the wall, the kind that sells all sorts of flavors and colors – Lager amp; Lime, Rhubarb amp; Custard, Curry amp; Chips. The stalls had flimsy wooden doors. “Cindy Sucks Black Cock” was scrawled in lipstick across the front of one of them.

“It’s this one, sir,” said Rickerd, pointing to the end stall.

“Was it locked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you open it?”

Rickerd took off his glasses and wiped them with a white handkerchief. It was a habit Banks had noticed in him before. “From the next stall, sir. I stood on the toilet seat, leaned over with a stick and slipped the bolt. It was easy enough. We’re bloody lucky the door opens outwards.”

“A locked-toilet mystery, then,” Banks muttered, thinking Rickerd had shown more initiative than he would have expected.

“I didn’t disturb anything any more than necessary, sir. Just to establish who she was and that she was dead. Inspector Jessup supervised, and the others made sure no one left.”

“That’s all right. You did well.” He pulled the door slowly toward him with his fingertips, anxious not to mess up an already messy scene.

“You won’t believe this, sir,” Rickerd said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Neither had Banks.

The girl’s body was wedged crabwise from wall to wall, her back arched about two feet over the toilet, knees jammed against one wall and her shoulders pushed up hard against the other, her neck bent at an awkward angle. A trickle of blood had run from her nose and there were contusions on her face and head. Broken mirror glass and white powder lay scattered on the floor amid the spilled contents of her handbag. Banks knew that the eyes of the dead have no expression, but hers seemed full of terror and agony, as if she had looked the Grim Reaper right in the eye. Her face was dark, suffused with blood, and the corners of her mouth were turned up in a parody of a grin.

But the worst thing about it all, the thing that caused Banks’s blood to scream in his ears and his knees to turn watery and bring him so close to falling down that he had to grab on to the doorjamb to stay on his feet, was that the body wasn’t Ruth Walker’s at all; it was Emily Riddle’s.