In A Dry Season

SEVEN

On 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 probably 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 Cockett’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 swore back 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 had 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 walked in the recruiting center that day, asked for information and then followed up on it a week later. He had done that partly because of his disenchantment with the bohemian scene after Jem’s death, 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 naive 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. 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, until Jem’s death some years later, and in a way it was his curiosity and unaccountable feelings of guilt over it that were behind his decision to join the police years later.

All the petty duties and details of a policeman’s job aside, Banks’s obsession was 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 postmortem. 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 overinflated 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, the almost postcoital 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 percent 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 the eighth of March, we heard about the fall of Rangoon. Our morale at home was pretty low, too. In April, the Germans gave up all pretense 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 or 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 pickups 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 over 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 night birds call, 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 toward 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 Stalingrad; 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 couple of 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 they 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 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 Saint Catherine’s House tomorrow. Which do you fancy: Edinburgh or Scarborough?”

“Doesn’t matter to me. Anything’s better than checking birth, death and marriage records.”

“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.”

“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 tea cake.

“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 were already taken, 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 backward. 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 tea cake. “This DS Cabbot you’re working with down Harkside,” said Hatchley. “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 tea cake. “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 hamlike 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 neighborhood. 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, the eighteenth of 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 toward the straw-covered earth.

The Kellys’ house stood in the middle of a terrace block on the B-road east of 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 center. Beyond the car park, a meadow full of buttercups and clover descended eastward 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 Talisman. 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 Gloria Shackleton’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 it 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 money 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, bus fare 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 offense, 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 downstairs 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.