The Sentence Is Death

11 At the Station Inn

I thought we might go back to the hotel after Ingleton but first of all Hawthorne wanted to visit the entrance to Long Way Hole. I didn’t see how it could help but I was just grateful he wasn’t suggesting we kit up and drop into the cave system ourselves. Dave Gallivan drove us in his Land Rover, which was so beaten-up that I was nervous the whole thing would collapse when we drove over the next bump or a cattle grid. Hawthorne sat in the front. I was in the back, hemmed in between plastic barrels, ropes and backpacks, looking out through windows streaked and splattered with mud.

The railway line had slashed through the countryside but the roads allowed us to weave our way across it more gently. Everything – the cottages and farmhouses, streams and bridges, woodland and hills – looked even lovelier at close quarters. Gallivan gave us an occasional commentary but his observations seemed almost deliberately prosaic, as if he felt uncomfortable having a writer with him in the car.

‘That’s Whernside. It’s the tallest of the three peaks. And that’s Ingleborough. If you look up there, that ridge is carboniferous limestone. Those are Swaledale.’ (He was pointing at a flock of sheep.) ‘They’ve been grazing here two hundred year or more.’

Sitting next to him, Hawthorne had the best view, but again he showed no interest, sinking into his seat, saying nothing.

A rough lane forked off from the road and we followed it into the glorious green emptiness of the Dales, finally stopping at a gate built into a drystone wall. Apart from the crunch of our feet on the gravel, there was barely a sound as we walked away from the car, through the gate and up another track. It had been sunny when we were in Ingleton but now the weather was closing in and it occurred to me that this must have been what it looked like when Richard Pryce, Charles Richardson and Gregory Taylor had set out on their last trip. There was still plenty of blue sky but far away the clouds were rubbing up against each other, throwing dark shadows across the fields, broken only by the light slanting down in godlike shafts.

We came to a stream that bubbled cheerfully along until it reached a stone ledge where it suddenly spilled over and became a waterfall. It was impossible to see how deep it was but it seemed to continue into the very bowels of the earth. A hill rose up ahead with the dark mouth of a cave, surrounded by ivy and moss, looking very much like something out of a story designed to frighten children. This was where the three men had begun their descent, allowing themselves to be swallowed up by the dark.

‘Where’s the exit?’ Hawthorne asked.

Gallivan pointed. ‘Two miles east. Round the back of Drear Hill. You want to go there?’

Hawthorne shook his head. Scanning the horizon, he picked out a white-painted farmhouse, isolated, surrounded by grass. ‘Who lives there?’

‘That’s the man I told you about. Chris Jackson. That’s Ing Lane Farm.’

‘Will he be in?’

‘He might be. You want to talk to him?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Suit yourself.’

We didn’t walk. We went back to the car and drove through the gate and on along an even rougher track, the tyres spitting out stones and dust. I wondered if we were on the roof of Long Way Hole. This whole expedition seemed a little pointless to me. Did Hawthorne think that something suspicious had happened when the three men had gone caving together? It would be a good place to commit murder, far underground. At least there would be no need to bury the body. Suppose Richard and Gregory had murdered Charles Richardson. Someone had found out and had taken revenge, bludgeoning one of the killers and pushing the other under a train. It was a reasonable enough supposition. But why now? And why would three old university friends who only saw each other occasionally for adventure holidays have suddenly come to blows?

We reached the farm, which was about a mile away to the north, resting against the side of the hill like an old man, with discarded pieces of farm machinery and plastic sacks of animal feed piled up all round. Once again it was Dave Gallivan who knocked on the door but this time he waited until it was opened by a wiry, whip-thin man with grey hair and a straggling moustache, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He was ex-army. I could see it before he spoke a word. It was in the way he stood, the tattoos on his arms, the hardness of his eyes.

‘’Ey up?’ I won’t try to replicate the Yorkshire dialect – it will look ridiculous on the page – but those were his first two words as he carefully examined us.

Gallivan explained who we were and why we’d come.

‘You’d best come inside then.’

The front door led straight into the kitchen, which had a stone floor and nothing of comfort. We sat at the table. He didn’t offer us tea.

‘I knew there were going to be trouble that day,’ he told us. ‘The rain came bucketing down that afternoon and I feared the worst. I took a look out of the window at the stream that runs out the back. It’s bone dry half the year round, but, four o’clock, there was water gushing along. That stream’s a marker if ever there was one.’

‘A conditions marker,’ Gallivan added. ‘There are plenty of them around here. You know not to go caving if there’s so much as a trickle.’

‘That’s what I said to Barbara.’ He glanced upwards, which was presumably where his wife was to be found. ‘I just hoped there was no one stupid enough to be underground. But then, an hour later, there’s a knock at the door and two men come in – in a terrible state, soaking wet, one of them with a bloody nose. It took me a minute or two to recognise Greg Taylor. I didn’t know the chap who was with him. Anyway, they told me what had happened down at Long Way Hole. They’d been trying to fight their way back in to find their friend and they were beside themselves with worry. I got Barbara to make them a drink while I called the police.’

‘Did the two of them say anything more while they were here?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘They said a lot of things but not a lot of it made much sense. The rain was still coming down and we were waiting for cave rescue to arrive. I’ll tell you something, though. Greg was the worse of the two of them. The other chap was silent. He was sitting there like he was haunted or something. But Greg? “This is my fault.” That’s what he said. “This is my fault. This is my fault.” He said it over and over. There was no stopping him.’

‘What happened then?’

‘A police car came and took them away. By that time, Dave and his team were doing what they could, although it was already too late. The last I saw, Greg was staring out of the window like a dead man. But he weren’t the one that died that day.’

‘He’s dead now,’ Gallivan muttered.

‘Aye. So I hear. Maybe it was his reckoning. Who can say? It catches up with us all in the end.’

We had dinner at the Station Inn that evening in a cosy room with low ceilings and varnished beams. A single railway line had been set along the floor next to the bar, acting as a footrest. I could imagine the place heaving in the summer but it was very quiet that evening. In one corner there was a massive fruit machine that sat there like an alien invader, blinking and flickering, but nobody played it. A plump Labrador dog slumbered in its basket.

Hawthorne had asked Gallivan to join us and the three of us sat at a table by the window with views across to another viaduct, a sister to the one I had seen at Ingleton. We had been served gigantic portions of steak and kidney pudding which Hawthorne ate warily, as if he was suspicious of the contents. Gallivan and I had pints of Yorkshire bitter. As usual, Hawthorne had water.

We talked generally for a while – tourism, caving, local gossip – but there was only one reason Hawthorne would have invited Gallivan along and that was because there was something he wanted to know, and sure enough it wasn’t long before he pounced.

‘So maybe you can tell me what it is you’re hiding, Dave?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Gallivan stopped, his fork halfway to his mouth.

‘When we were with Susan Taylor, she mentioned you were at the inquest.’

‘I was.’

‘You told them there was nothing suspicious, nobody to blame.’

‘That was the truth.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Gallivan said nothing, so Hawthorne went on. ‘You were uncomfortable with her and you’re uncomfortable now. I didn’t spend twenty years in the police not to notice when someone’s lying to me. What is it you’re not telling us?’

‘There’s nothing . . .’

‘Two people are dead, Dave. Your mate Greg went under a train. The last person he saw got bludgeoned to death twenty-four hours later. It may be connected to what happened here and I need to know.’

‘All right!’ Gallivan put his fork down. His eyes flared. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it in front of her and I’m not sure I want to tell you now. There’s no proof. Nothing. It’s just a feeling.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, Charlie Richardson may not have been a professional but he was an experienced caver. He knew what he was doing. So I never understood how he could have been so bloody stupid. The simple fact of the matter is that there was no reason for him to die.’

Now that he had started, the food was forgotten. It was as if he had been waiting to tell his side of the story ever since the accident had occurred. His eyes were bleak as he went back. ‘Gregory Taylor leads them into the cave. Richard Pryce is next. Charlie Richardson brings up the rear. Of course, they don’t know it yet, but the rain has been pouring down above ground. By the time they realise what’s happening, it’s too late. A flood pulse has formed and it’s heading their way.’

‘How would they know if they can’t see it?’ I asked.

‘They can hear it. It’s a sort of booming and a mumbling . . . the worst sound in the world and it’s all around them, getting louder and louder. And very soon they can feel it. The rain has made its way through, coming off the cracks and the stalactites.’ He dismissed me angrily, turning back to Hawthorne. ‘They have to make a decision fast. They’ve got maybe ten minutes. A quarter of an hour at most. So they decide to keep going and, as you know, Richardson misses Drake’s Passage – that’s the name of the contortion – and continues into Spaghetti Junction. It’s easily enough done, particularly if you’re in a hurry. But here’s what I don’t understand.’ He tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. ‘Once he was there, why didn’t he just stay where he was? He could have found higher ground and sat it out until all the water had passed through. The worst that would have happened was that he’d have been left on his own in the dark and might have had to wait for us to come and find him.’

‘Maybe he panicked,’ I suggested.

Gallivan shook his head. ‘An experienced caver doesn’t panic. He had plenty of battery power. More than that, he was carrying a safety bag.’ He explained what it was before we could ask. ‘It’s made of waterproof fabric. You pull it over your head and sit inside. It keeps you warm while you wait to be rescued. But Charlie allowed it to kill him.’

‘How was that?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘That was how he got stuck. The safety bag was attached to his caving harness by a short rope and it got caught in the contortion as he dropped down. Do you understand what I’m saying?’ He made a shape with his hands, a narrow tube running vertically. ‘He leaves Spaghetti Junction and finds his way back to Drake’s Passage. He drops down, trying to catch up with the others, but the bag gets stuck. He’s got his full weight on the cord and there’s nothing he can do. He’s got no purchase to climb up again without his mates there to assist him. The silly bugger isn’t carrying a knife, so he can’t cut the rope and he’s left dangling. When the pulse hits, he drowns.’ He paused. ‘That was how I found him. Maybe he’d been knocked out first. That would have been a mercy.’

‘Did you ever talk about any of this with Gregory Taylor?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Of course I talked to him. Apart from the fact that we were mates, it was my job as duty controller. But he wasn’t there when the other man died. He and Pryce had already gone on ahead. What was going on in Richardson’s head right then? Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘Why didn’t all three of them wait in Spaghetti Junction? If you say it was safer there.’

‘Maybe they should have done. But Greg told me he was afraid that once they went in, they’d never find their way out. And he had a point. I’ve been in there and it’s a bloody nightmare.’ Gallivan sighed. ‘Anyway, it’s easy enough to be wise after the event. They heard the water coming and they wanted out. I might have made the same decision if I’d been with them.’

There was a long silence. I became aware that I was the only one who was still eating. I put down my knife and fork.

‘There is one other thing you might want to know,’ Gallivan added. ‘Greg rang me from London, the day he died.’

‘The Saturday?’ Hawthorne said.

‘That’s right. Saturday afternoon. He was on his way to the station. He said he wanted to talk to me about Long Way Hole – about what really happened.’

‘Is that what he said? Were those his exact words?’

‘That’s right. He said he’d been thinking about it and there was something he wanted to get off his chest. We arranged to meet here, at this very pub, on Monday night. Seven o’clock.’

‘But he never got home.’

‘He went under that train and that was it.’

There was a moment of clarity that came to me in much the same way as water must have come rushing through Long Way Hole. It was suddenly obvious. Gregory Taylor knew something that nobody else did. Something had happened just before the fatal accident. He had wanted to tell Dave Gallivan. But he had been killed before he could get home.

He had been murdered. And that was the reason.

I said as much to Hawthorne later that evening after Gallivan had left but, annoyingly, he didn’t seem quite so sure. ‘It doesn’t quite stack up, mate. If he made the call on the way to the station and someone overheard him, they’d have had to be with him, and according to his wife he was on his own.’

‘He could have met someone in London.’ I thought about the time frame. ‘It could have been Davina Richardson. We know he was near her home.’

‘What? And you think she followed him to King’s Cross station and pushed him under a train?’

‘Why not? If she blamed Richard Pryce and Gregory Taylor for the death of her husband, she could have killed both of them.’

‘But she didn’t blame them. She’d forgiven Pryce and she hadn’t seen Taylor for six years. We don’t even know if she saw him the day he died.’

‘Presumably you’re going to ask her.’

Hawthorne gave me his most reasonable smile. ‘Of course we’ll ask her. You liked her, didn’t you ?’

‘She seemed nice enough.’

‘And she had a son who read your books!’

‘Unlike your son. Yes!’

There was one other odd development that evening. We’d finished early as we had a seven o’clock start the next morning and we were about to go up to our rooms when a man came into the pub. I noticed him standing by the door, looking at us, puzzled. He was late thirties, fair-haired, short and quite slender, wearing a hoody and jeans. He hesitated, then came over to us and I assumed that he had recognised me and was going to say something about my books.

But actually it was Hawthorne he thought he knew. ‘Billy!’ The single word was somewhere between a statement and a question. Hawthorne looked up at him but showed no recognition at all and now the man doubted himself. ‘It’s Mike,’ he said. ‘Mike Carlyle.’

‘I’m sorry, mate.’ Hawthorne shook his head. ‘My name’s not Billy. And I don’t know any Mike Carlyle.’

The man was completely thrown. He had recognised the face and he thought he knew the voice too. ‘You weren’t in Reeth?’

‘No. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just up from London. I’ve never been to anywhere called Reeth.’

‘But . . .’ He wanted to continue but Hawthorne hadn’t just been definitive. He’d been almost hostile. ‘I’m sorry,’ the man stammered. He was still staring at Hawthorne. He couldn’t bring himself to leave.

Hawthorne picked up his glass of water. ‘No problem.’ I could hear the steel in his voice. It was also there in his eyes.

‘Sorry.’ The man got the message. He didn’t just back away. If he’d come here for a pint, he’d changed his mind. He left the way he had come.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Hawthorne said.

I wanted to ask him what had just happened. Had he once been known as William or Billy or had it simply been a case of mistaken identity? These things happen. But somehow I was sure there was more to it than that and that somehow Mike Carlyle was connected to the strange mood Hawthorne had been in all day.

Hawthorne left without saying another word and he didn’t mention it again when we met for breakfast the next morning, or on the train all the way back to London.